Some curious and amusing entries are to be found in the _Munimenta Academica_ of the University of Oxford, as to the regulations for the brewing trade in the fifteenth century. In the year 1434 we find it recorded that, “Seeing how great evils arise both to the clerks and to the townsmen of the City of Oxford, owing to the negligence and dishonesty of the brewers of ale,” Christopher Knollys, commissary, assembles the brewers together in the church of the Blessed Mary the Virgin, and commands them to provide sufficient malt for brewing; and that two or three shall twice or thrice in the week carry round their ale for public sale, under a penalty of 40s.; and John Weskew and Nicholas Core, two of their number, are appointed supervisors of the brewers. Each brewer is then made to swear on the Blessed Evangelists to brew good ale and wholesome, and according to the assize, “so far as his ability and _human frailty permits_.” It would appear that very considerable disorders prevailed in that ancient seat of learning at this period. The Warden of Canterbury College, for instance, is accused of having incited his scholars to make a raid upon the ale of other scholars of the town, which they accordingly did, and carried off ale to the value of 12d. The fair brewsters of the period seem to have held much the same ideas as to the relative importance of the patronage of Town and Gown as a fashionable Oxford tailor of the present day may be supposed to entertain. In 1439 Alice Everarde is suspended “ab arte pandoxandi” (from practising brewing) for ever, because she refused to brew ale for sale for the common people of Oxford. In 1444 the brewers were made to swear before the Chancellor that they would brew wholesome ale, and in such manner that the water {105} should boil until it emitted a froth, that they would skim the froth away, and that they would give the ale sufficient time to settle before they sold it in the University; and Richard Benet swore that he would let his ale stand twelve hours to clear, before he carried it to hall or college, and that he would not mix the dregs with the ale when he carried it for sale within the University. In 1449 the stewards and manciples of the college swear that nine of the brewers have broken the assize and have brewed “an ale of little or no strength, to the grave and no mean damage of the University and Town, and that they are obstinate and rebels and refuse to serve the Principals and others of the Halls with ale.” In 1464 John Janyn is ordered by the Commissary to refund to Anisia Barbour, without the east gate of Oxford, the sum of 8d., because he had sold her a cask of ale for 20d., and “in our opinion and that of others who have just tasted it, it is not worth more than 12d.”