How local government is threatening Oxford University’s competitiveness

The press love a bit of Oxbridge competition, but Oxford is embroiled in a far older and more ruthless rivalry: town vs. gown.

It was in a dispute between the university and city of Oxford that Cambridge University has its foundations. In 1209, according to Roger of Wendover’s chronicle, an Oxford liberal arts scholar accidentally killed a woman. The Mayor led a group of townspeople to the killer’s house, only to find that he had fled – instead, they seized the three innocent scholars with whom he rented the house and hanged them. Fearing future tyranny and terrified of their fellow citizens, an exodus of Oxonians left the dreaming spires for a provincial backwater on the river Cam.

History repeated itself in 1355. A pub fight escalated into the two-day Battle of St. Scholastica’s Day, during which local citizens took to the academic community with bows and arrows; in penance, the Mayor and Bailiffs were subsequently forced to swear an annual oath to uphold the university’s privileges.