Mediæval London, Volume 1: Historical & SocialBesant, Walter
History
Mediæval London, Volume 1: Historical & Social
Besant, Walter
London (England) -- History -- To 1500; London (England) -- Social life and customs -- To 1500
In the year 1236 water was first brought into the City by pipes from
the Tyburn, or from wells or springs in the district called Tyburn,
now Marylebone. These pipes were of lead and discharged the water
into cisterns which were afterwards castellated with stone. The most
important of them was that in Chepe: there were in all, when other
pipes had been laid down, nineteen conduits: and it became the custom,
once a year, for the Mayor and Aldermen to ride out in order to inspect
the Heads from which the conduits were supplied, after which they were
wont to hunt a hare before dinner and a fox after dinner in the fields
about Marylebone.
In the year 1238 a singular procession passed out of St. Paul’s
Cathedral along Fleet Street and the Strand as far as Durham House,
then the palace of the Legate. The procession consisted of a large
body of ecclesiastics, Doctors in Divinity and Law, followed (or
preceded) by a company of young men: they were ungirded, without gown,
bareheaded and barefooted. There were the Heads of Houses, the Master
and Students of the University of Oxford headed by Ado de Kilkenny,
Standard Bearer to the scholars: they were on their way to pray the
Legate’s pardon for a late lamentable outbreak in Oxford. It began with
an Irish undergraduate, who went into the Legate’s kitchen to beg for
food. The cook in reply took up a pot filled with hot broth and threw
it in his face. A Welsh student, also come on the same errand, was so
exasperated at the sight of the outrage that he killed the cook, there
and then. After which the students rose in a body and attacked the
house. The Legate fled for his life, taking refuge in a church steeple
whence he escaped under cover of the night. As soon as he was safe he
interdicted the University, and excommunicated all concerned in the
riot. But on their submission he granted his forgiveness and removed
the Interdict.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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