Note 367 — Chapter IV · COLLEGIATE AND SOCIAL LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY

The enmity of ‘town and gown,’ a consequence, no doubt, of the thronging of our university towns with an alien population, is traditional, and we first hear of it in 1249 before any colleges were built. Fifty years later (in 1305) the townsmen attacked the gownsmen, wounding and beating both masters and scholars “to the manifest delaying of their study” says the King’s letter on the subject (33rd of Edw. I.). Bad relations between ‘town and gown’ prevailed throughout the reign of Elizabeth. Cf. v. p. 261.