In vain, after one great outbreak in 1252, were formal articles of peace drawn up; in vain were the combatants bound over to keep the peace, and to give secret information to the Chancellor if they heard of others who were preparing to break it. In vain was the celebration of the national festivals forbidden, and the masters and scholars prohibited, under pain of the greater excommunication, from "going about dancing in the churches or open places, wearing masks or wreathed and garlanded with flowers" (1250). In vain was it decreed that the two nations should become one and cease, officially, to have a separate existence (1274). Though the Faculty of Arts might vote from this time forward as a single body, yet one Proctor was always a Borealis and the other an Australis; and when, in 1320, it was decreed that one of the three guardians of the Rothbury Chest should always be a Southerner and another a Northerner, the University admitted the existence of the two rival nations within its borders once more. Only a few years after this, in fact (1334), its very existence was threatened by the violence of the factions. The Northerners gave battle to the Southerners, and so many rioters were arrested that the Castle was filled to overflowing. Many of the more studious clerks resolved to quit this riotous University for ever, and betook themselves to Stamford, where there were already some flourishing schools. They were compelled at last to disperse or to return by the King, who refused to listen to their plea, that their right to study in peace at Stamford was as good as that of any other person whatever who chose to live there. So serious was this secession, and so much was the rivalry of Stamford feared, that all candidates for a degree were henceforth (till 1827) required to swear that they would not give or attend lectures there "as in a University." It was on the occasion of this migration that the members of Brasenose Hall, which adjoined S. Mary's Entry, Salesbury Hall, Little University Hall and Jussel's Tenement, carried with them, as a symbol of their continuity, the famous Brazen Nose Knocker to Stamford. There the little society settled; an archway of the hall they occupied there still exists, and now belongs to Brasenose College. The knocker itself was brought back in 1890 to a place [Illustration: Quadrangle Brasenose] of honour in the college hall. For in the meantime the old hall, after a career of over two hundred years, had been converted into a college, founded by William Smyth, Bishop of Lincoln, and Master Sotton, very much as a protest against the new learning which was then being encouraged at Corpus Christi. The continuity of the society is indicated by the fact that the first Principal of the college was the last Principal of the old "Aula Regia de Brasinnose." The foundation stone was laid in 1509, as the inscription in the old quadrangle, to which a story was added in the time of James I., records.