Now, in this affair of 1214 we have a strange passage of history, which happily illustrates the growth of the University. The beginning of the whole affair was the quarrel with the town, which, in 1209, had hanged two clerks, ‘in contempt of clerical liberty.’ The matter was taken up by the Legate—in those bad years of King John the Pope’s viceroy in England—and out of the humiliation of the town the University gained money, privileges, and halls at low rental. These were precisely the things that the University wanted. About these matters there was a constant strife, in which the Kings, as a rule, took part with the University. The University possessed the legal knowledge, which the monarchs liked to have on their side, and was therefore favoured by them. Thus, in 1231 (Wood, _Annals_, i. 205), ‘the King sent out his Breve to the Mayor and Burghers commanding them not to overrate their houses’; and thus gradually the University got the command of the police, obtained privileges which enslaved the city, and became masters where they had once been despised, starveling scholars. The process was always the same. On the feast of St. Scholastica, for example, in 1354, Walter de Springheuse, Roger de Chesterfield, and other clerks, swaggered into the Swyndlestock tavern in Carfax, began to speak ill of John de Croydon’s wine, and ended by pitching the tankard at the head of that vintner. In ten minutes the town bell at St. Martin’s was rung, and the most terrible of all Town-and-Gown rows began. The Chancellor could do no less than bid St. Mary’s bell reply to St. Martin’s, and shooting commenced. The Gown held their own very well at first, and ‘defended themselves till Vespertide,’ when the citizens called in their neighbours, the rustics of Cowley, Headington, and Hincksey. The results have been precisely described in anticipation by Homer: τόφρα δ’ ἄρ οἰχόμενοι Κίκονες Κικόνεσσι γεγώνευν οἴ σφῖν γείτονες ἦσαν ἅμα πλέονες καὶ ἀρείους . . . . . ἦμος δ’ Ηέλιος μετενίσσετο βουλυτόνδε καὶ τότε δὴ Κίκονες κλῖναν δαμάσαντες ’Αχαιούς.