ABSTRACT
The early sixteenth century was a time of much trouble and quarrelling between the town and the university of Cambridge. Cooper’s Annals and various volumes of records recite one set of articles after another in which the mayor and burgesses charged the vicechancellor, his proctors, and scholars with breaches of the peace and usurpation of power; on the other side, the university often felt its ancient privileges in danger and attempted to secure fresh recognition from king and Council. How unquiet a time it was is illustrated with pungency by the diarist who recorded in 1534 that
The pub-crawling cleric presumably has only himself to blame for his somewhat disconcerting losses, but the gentlemen of King’s Hall who used daggers to settle their quarrels in a fashion which would enliven some present-day donnish controversies gave proof of an unusual vigour. Scholars who would fight each other after dark and stick knives in each other’s ribs were not likely to hang back when the cry of privileges endangered was raised against the townspeople.
