How a Murder and Lynching Helped Create Cambridge University
Early 13th-century events led members of Oxford University to flee
Although founded in the 12th and 13th centuries, the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge are among today’s most prestigious universities. Oxford is the oldest English-speaking university and Cambridge is the second oldest; they rank second and fourth among the world’s oldest universities. Yet it was a murder in Oxford that helped spur Cambridge’s existence.
Oxford University developed gradually in the 12th century as a loose association of masters and scholars, according to the multi-volume A History of the County of Oxford. There was no physical campus. Teachers, called masters, gave lectures in whatever space they could find. Students, called scholars, lived among the town’s residents. Because most of the students were clerics, they were also known as clerks.
Both the state and the church granted privileges to masters and scholars, which allowed them to regulate themselves and be free from secular control. Such privileges, the economic disparity between townspeople and university members, and students drinking, fighting, and the like led to conflicts between the university and town residents. This “town and gown” problem still exists today in college towns.
