"To the King and Council: Walter de Harewell, burgess and inheritor in Oxford, showing that whereas the Chancellor of the University has cognizance of offences and contracts between clerk and clerk, and clerk and lay, in the town, but nowhere else, one William de Wyneye, clerk, impleaded him before the Chancellor for offences done out of his jurisdiction in a foreign county; the said Walter justified himself before the Chancellor, but the said Chancellor, notwithstanding, condemned him to prison and kept him in prison in Oxford till he contented the said William with a large sum of money, and made an obligation of L20 to be at the will of the said University, and still he had to find mainprise before he could be set free. And because when he was taken and led to prison by the bedels of the University, he entered his house and shut his coffers and chests and the door of his room for the safety of his goods and chattels, the said Chancellor banished him out of the town, and had it proclaimed everywhere, as though he were an outlaw, and sequestered all his goods and chattels, threatening if he entered the town to imprison him again for six days. No one ever had such franchise or power thus to outlaw, destroy, and banish the King's burgesses in the said town. Prays a remedy for charity."[5] Owing perhaps to their peculiar position as the King's chattels, neither the chartered rights of the citizens nor the Privilege of the University could be directly asserted against the Jews, of whom a considerable body appears to have been settled at Oxford, but the unbelievers were not allowed to do as they pleased. A critical instance occurred at Ascensiontide, 1268, in connexion with a solemn procession to St. Frideswyde's, when certain horrible Jews, _demoniaco spiritu arrepti_, seized a cross from the bearer, broke it, and trampled it under foot. Complaint was made to the King, who happened to be at Woodstock, and he issued an order for the making of two crosses at the expense of the Jews, one of which was to be of silver gilt and portable, and the other of marble and stationary. These were to be preserved for the perpetual remembrance of the outrage; and the silver cross was presented to the Chancellor, masters, and scholars, to be borne before them in their solemn procession. An ordinance states that "since the relics of the Blessed Frideswyde repose in the borough of Oxford, and more especially ought to be deservedly honoured as well by the University as by others, particularly by all who dwell in the aforesaid town, that the said University may obtain, through the intervenient merits and prayers of the same, more abundant tranquillity and peace for the future, a solemn procession be made in the middle, to wit, Lent term, to the church of the same virgin, for the peace and tranquillity of the University, and that solemn mass be held there in respect of the above-said virgin." ACADEMIC CHAPTER IX THE "STUDIUM GENERALE"