We have spoken of the early foundation of the Guild College as in some sense an effort on the part of the Cambridge burgesses of the fourteenth century to take some worthy share in the development of university life. Unfortunately the good feeling between town and gown was not of long duration. As the older burgesses who had been brethren of the gilds of Corpus Christi and S. Mary died off, an estrangement sprang up between the members of the college they had founded and the new generation of townsmen. The initial cause of trouble arose from the character of some of the early endowments of the College. It would seem that in addition to the many houses and tenements in the town which had been bequeathed to the College, a particularly objectional rate in the form of "candle rent" was exacted by the College authorities. It is said that so numerous were the Cambridge tenements subjected to this rate, that one-half of the houses in the town had become tributary to the College. The townsmen did not long confine themselves to mere murmuring or "passive resistance." In 1381 the populace, taking advantage of the excitement caused by the Wat Tyler rebellion, vented their animosity and unreasoning hatred of learning by the destruction of all the College books, charters, and writings, and everything that bespoke a lettered community on the Saturday next after the feast of Corpus Christi, prompted perhaps by their hatred of the pomp and display of wealth in connection with the great annual procession of the Host through the streets. The bailiffs and commonalty of Cambridge, so we read in the old record, assembled in the town hall and elected James of Grantchester their captain. "Then going to Corpus Christi College, breaking open the house and doors, they traitorously carried away the charters, writings, and muniments." On the following Sunday they caused the great bell of S. Mary's Church to be rung, and there broke open the university chest. The masters and scholars under intimidation surrendered all their charters, muniments, ordinances, and a grand conflagration ensued in the market-place. One old woman, Margaret Steere, gathered the ashes in her hands and flung them into the air with the cry, "Thus perish the skill of the clerks! away with it! away with it!" Having finished their work of destruction in the market-place, the crowd of rioters marched out to Barnwell, "doing," so Fuller tells the story, "many sacrilegious outrages to the Priory there. Nor did their fury fall on men alone, even trees were made to taste of their cruelty. In their return they cut down a curious grove called Green's Croft by the river side (the ground now belonging to Jesus College), as if they bare such a hatred to all wood they would not leave any to make gallows thereof for thieves and murderers. All these insolencies were acted just at that juncture of time when Jack Straw and Wat Tyler played Rex in and about London. More