ABSTRACT

On 10 February 1355, two Oxford students, named Walter Spryngeheuse and Roger de Chesterfield, went out together for a drink at a tavern. Angry at the poor quality of the wine they were served, they complained, quarrelled with the tavern-keeper, and threw their drinks in his face. The chancellor refused to arrest the students, who, instead, rang the bell of the University Church, summoning 200 others, who joined in the violence against the tavern-keeper, his friends, family, and even the mayor. This chapter considers the St Scholastica's Day massacre, a series of events, which have lingered in the collective and historical memory principally because of their sheer brutality. There was a particular context in early fifteenth-century Oxford that sharpened the need for students to make their political loyalties clearer: namely, the damaging association with the Lollard heresy, a set of ideas privileging vernacular literacy and potentially subversive notions of ecclesiology.