Bad booze and beatings in medieval Oxford - The Scholastica Day 'riot'

Medieval boozers.

10 February 1355, town versus gown friction in Oxford reached an all time low. The St Scholastica Day Riot (surely a more proper name would be 'massacre') over bad beer wine erupted when a slanging match and a thrown tankard led the tavern owner and the mayor to call the townspeople to arms in retaliation. 2000 men raided Oxford colleges in search of the original instigators, killing 63 scholars. The scholars were hardly innocent in events either - two of them had provoked the retaliation by beating the tavern owner, then 200 had gathered around them and roughed up the mayor before the town finally responded. During the rioting as many as 30 townspeople were also killed, bringing the total deaths to as many as 93.

Despite the horrendous behaviour on both sides, only the townspeople were punished, and ordered to say mass every subsequent St Scholastica Day, and pay a fine of a penny for every scholar killed. Bad feeling continued for centuries to come, and in 1575 the university claimed 15 years breach of contract - even though the mass had been illegal since the accession of Elizabeth I. The payment of fines continued until 1825, when the mayor refused to take part, but a formal reconciliation did not occur until 1955, just 600 years after the events concerned.

One might ask why this event is not more notorious. For comparison, only 38 men were murdered at the notorious Glencoe Massacre (although 40 more [men, women and children] died of exposure subsequently). The massacre of Jews at York, perhaps numerically the largest ever massacre in mainland Britain (although dwarfed by some of the massacres that have happened in Ireland), saw 150 die in 1190. By any measure the Scholastica Day Riot deserves to be better known.

More details at:
http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/St_Scholastica_Day_riot
http://organizations.ju.edu/fch/1993miller.htm