Oxford University is famed for the intelligence and innovation of its students. However, not all the undergraduates have devoted their talents to academia; instead they spent their time devising ingenious and hilarious pranks to play on their unsuspecting dons. This fascinating volume recalls some of the greatest stunts and practical jokes in the university's history, including those by Oscar Wilde, Percy Shelly, Richard Burton and Roger Bacon. Ranging from the stunt that gave Folly Bridge its name and a nineteenth-century jape that resulted in the expulsion of all the students from University College, to the long-running rivalry between Town and Gown and the exploits of the infamous Bullington Club, this enthralling work will amaze and entertain in equal measure – and may well prove a source of inspiration for current students wishing to enliven their undergraduate days.
Oxford University is famed for the intelligence and innovation of its students. However, not all the undergraduates have devoted their talents to academia; instead they spent their time devising ingenious and hilarious pranks to play on their unsuspecting dons. This fascinating volume recalls some of the greatest stunts and practical jokes in the university's history, including those by Oscar Wilde, Percy Shelly, Richard Burton and Roger Bacon. Ranging from the stunt that gave Folly Bridge its name and a nineteenth-century jape that resulted in the expulsion of all the students from University College, to the long-running rivalry between Town and Gown and the exploits of the infamous Bullington Club, this enthralling work will amaze and entertain in equal measure – and may well prove a source of inspiration for current students wishing to enliven their undergraduate days.
eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Oxford University is famed for the intelligence and innovation of its students. However, not all the undergraduates have devoted their talents to academia; instead they spent their time devising ingenious and hilarious pranks to play on their unsuspecting dons. This fascinating volume recalls some of the greatest stunts and practical jokes in the university's history, including those by Oscar Wilde, Percy Shelly, Richard Burton and Roger Bacon. Ranging from the stunt that gave Folly Bridge its name and a nineteenth-century jape that resulted in the expulsion of all the students from University College, to the long-running rivalry between Town and Gown and the exploits of the infamous Bullington Club, this enthralling work will amaze and entertain in equal measure – and may well prove a source of inspiration for current students wishing to enliven their undergraduate days.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780750954051 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 08/16/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 128 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
| Age Range: | 12 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Oxford Student Pranks
A History of Mischief & Mayhem
By Richard O. Smith
The History Press
Copyright © 2013 Richard O. SmithAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7509-5405-1
CHAPTER 1
THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
Although Oxford chooses to shrug off its Town and Gown divisions whenever inspected from outside (like an arguing couple who claim their spats are an inevitable part of a deeper relationship that disqualifies outsiders from understanding or advising) and the city projects an unwavering party line of unity within a shared municipal identity, rivalry between the Town and Gown has been present from the University's inception.
The Gown's ascendancy over the Town was practically secured as early as 1214 by the papal legate, and continued to become more concentrated over each passing decade. The townspeople would frequently retaliate. Some of their more moderate tactics included creating huge rubbish piles directly outside college gates and slaughtering livestock in the street, next to a college building and deliberately underneath a (preferably opened) scholar's window.
CARDINAL SIN
Such was the extent of student debauchery in Oxford that word eventually reached the Vatican. A papal legate was despatched to Oxford in an attempt to sanctify the city and save its collective soul. Unsurprisingly, matters did not follow the papal plan.
Corruption reform was intended to start at Osney Abbey, where the papal legate was to reside during his stay in Oxford, and the chosen location for his first reforming speech. Oxford's scholarly population hatched a plan that was so cunning it would have scored a ten on the Baldrick plan scale of cunning; equally it would have scored a ten on the Bal-drick plan scale of ineptitude.
The plan was: visit the cardinal daily and ply him with copious plates of food, bottles of strong wine, port and beer ... and a working girl. The students were putting all their eggs in one fraying basket i.e. the entire plan pivoted on the certainty that he would be a bent papal legate. Unfortunately for the entire plan, he wasn't. Therefore it was time for Plan B; regrettably, Plan B would also have been approved by Baldrick.
Plan B involved a sizable student army marching to Osney Abbey to engage in a mutually respectful two-way dialogue/kick his holy ass back to Rome. Sensing the students' intentions were not peaceful, the gatemen at Osney Abbey refused the scholars entry. Tensions were escalated by several of the legate's entourage shouting Italian-accented insults at the Oxford scholars from atop the abbey walls (this is getting so Monty Python ...).
Sparked into even greater anger by the Italian taunters, the scholar army then busied themselves collecting fallen tree trunks to provide makeshift battering rams and improvised weapons. The ecclesiastical Italians similarly tooled themselves up with staves, pikes and homemade spears – similar to what one imagines the paramilitary wing of the Salvation Army would be like.
As dusk descended, the students initiated their attack. The Osney cook, who was the brother of the papal legate, had clearly studied Module One of Tactics for Defending a Medieval Castle: The Boiling Pot. Predicting the attempted student invasion of the abbey, he utilised the available time during the siege whilst the scholars were arboretum-bound collecting weapons, to order everyone to boil bowls of water or oil. As soon as the students broke through the abbey gates, he provided the prior agreed signal for the boiling liquids to cascade down onto the students below. A Welsh student was badly scolded in the face and retaliated by firing an arrow at the cook, killing him instantly.
Sensing they were outnumbered, the cardinal then raised the order for his entourage to abandon the main abbey buildings, but take refuge in the belfry. Shortly after midnight, the besieged papal delegation decided to relay a message outlining their predicament to attract help. Yet accomplishing this objective would necessitate sending a man out past the amassed students. Hence a distraction for the students was duly planned. (If only they'd had some traffic cones to put out ... students are undeniably incapable of not being distracted by traffic cones.)
Fortunately for the besieged cardinal, students possess a hardwired inability to avoid alcohol too – and there were bountiful amounts in the abbey resulting form the donations/attempted bribes. Thus, as the student voices became louder as the night wore on the cardinal was elected as the man to attempt an escape, tiptoeing out of the abbey, past the drunken and loudly loquacious students, to reach the authorities grasping a written proclamation for support and reinforcements.
Using the moonlight reflected from the River Thames, the cardinal was able to escape (well, a man dressed head to foot in a bright red velvet gown accessorized with a huge red shiny hat isn't going to be that easy to spot), whilst the boozy students were presumably too enraptured by their own conversations to notice an escapee cardinal.
The cardinal headed south along the Thames path, reaching Abingdon before dawn. Here he received word that the King was currently (and somewhat fortuitously for the cardinal) staying in nearby Wallingford. Upon hearing the cardinal's account of the Osney Abbey events, the King's mood quickly turned bellicose and an army, led by a royal standard bearer, was hastily despatched from the Wallingford barracks to Oxford. The professional army soon reached Osney and stormed virtually unopposed through the abbey gates, leaving the huddled and newly meek students to ponder their ironic fate of now being the besieged as opposed to the besieger of only thirty-six hours earlier.
Justice was swift and pernicious, and thirty-eight students were rounded up and sent to Wallingford to face the King. From here, they journeyed by open-top carts – their humiliation was deliberate – to London, where a delegation of high-ranking bishops intervened, eventually brokering their absolution from the legate, but only after sufficient penance had been pledged to serve as a visible punishment.
The legate may have eventually won the battle, but the war on Oxford's immorality would not prove so accomplishable; there's certainly been no sign of a breakthrough in the ensuing 800 years!
CAMBRIDGE'S INSALUBRIOUS ORIGINS
Oxford's students already had form when it came to papal legates, as a townswoman (supposedly a prostitute) was killed by two students in 1209. Enraged townspeople stormed the students' house, and, finding them out, the mob opted to kill several innocent students instead who had the misfortune to share dwellings. Fearing similar recriminations, the actual murderers considered it expedient to flee Oxford instantaneously. Once they had journeyed approximately ninety miles east, they decided it would be safe to remain there, and form their own University. That, ladies and gentleman, is how Cambridge University was founded in 1209: by two Oxford rejects who were prostitute murderers. How do you feel now, Cambridge?
As a consequence of the townspeople murdering students (not, you notice, the townswoman being slain), a papal bull was issued banning all teaching in Oxford for several months.
MACE IN YOUR FACE
Such was the deteriorating relationship between Oxford University and the townspeople, that as early as 1242 an official bailiff had been appointed, charged with the specific responsibility of keeping order between a skirmishing Town and Gown. The first holder of this newly minted bailiff's badge was Peter Torald, who had previously been the city's sheriff in 1225, and, although he encountered elements encumbering the peace process, he evidently performed the role with sufficient success to be subsequently twice elected as mayor.
In the thirteenth century, Oxford hosted numerous city riots that an average football hooligan would have considered unnecessarily violent and pointlessly irresponsible. On 21 February 1298, the town's bailiff was parading through the city, proudly holding the heraldic mace of office. On reaching Carfax, he discovered a mob loitering outside St Martin's Church (the tower still survives today, albeit rechristened Carfax Tower). The mob were students and, in some thirteenth-century equivalent of flash mobbing, had all agreed to convene at Carfax at this appointed time, with the intention of stealing the bailiff's mace – which is such a defining student prank.
The bailiff was one Robert Worminghall, who had been elected to the role fully eight years earlier, in what I'm sure was a fair and transparent election, and utterly disconnected to the fact that his brother Phillip Worminghall was the mayor and subsequently in charge of appointing the well-remunerated post.
There are only so many students that one man can hit over the head with a sturdy – and now evidently dented – mace, and an immense discrepancy in personnel quickly occurred in the students' favour (contemporary accounts conferred that the students were too many to comfortably count – though with medieval peasants commonly innumerate, this doesn't help much), whilst the bailiff was left 'with a mere handful of townspeople'. Snatching the mace, the students then committed a tactical mistake. Rather than heading back to their college bars with the mace held aloft like a captured sports trophy, they decided to remain at Carfax and await a retaliatory mob of townspeople galvanised into revenge by the circulating news.
Ringing the bells of St Martin's summoned town reinforcement and swelled their side to an intimidating majority over the students. Several students were then attacked, with bottles being broken over heads like a big-budget Western salon fight scene. The perceived leader of the students was captured and marched towards the town jail. Just as a lengthy stay in the stocks looked likely as a plausible excuse for missing a tutorial, a further group of student reinforcements arrived, which reclaimed the personnel majority back in favour of the Gown.
Having sprung the student ringleader from jail, the angry student mob now marched towards the bailiff's house. They smashed down the doors and windows of his abode, like a particularly angry, big bad wolf (the house was made of timber, not brick – the bailiff clearly didn't read fairytales), and proceeded to demolish the dwelling. Next the students unsheathed their swords and advised the bailiff to offer his last prayer to God, whom he was due to meet imminently.
With a critical sense of timing almost non-existence outside drama productions, reinforcements of townspeople arrived and re-engaged with the students, allowing the bailiff to escape and hide in a house built on the site now occupied by Radcliffe Square.
So, after his escape, could peace finally descend on the city again? No, in fact, far from being over, an escalation in the crisis was about to happen. The next day, students arrived in the morning at St Mary's Church in the High Street (being students, I'm guessing it wasn't that early: they probably said 'meet at 11 a.m.', with the first student eventually showing up at noon-ish). Ignoring the protocol of a church providing sanctuary, they entered the building and 'beat wickedly and trampled thereon those inside'.
When Thomas Attechurcheye, a local tradesman, left his house to walk the two miles into Oxford from the neighbouring village of Iffley that morning, he probably wasn't expecting a deviation from his normal commuting routine. Unfortunately, he was never to return home, as his journey along the High Street took him past St Mary's Church and straight into the eye of a riotous storm. Identified as a member of the trading classes by his clothes, the students realised that Thomas was a townsman, and promptly murdered the unfortunate local. Unsettled by the violent escalation, several townspeople began to disperse and sought sanctuary inside other city churches.
Spotting the town burgess John Dorre, who had presumably felt obligated not to join the retreat given his official standing, the students forcibly dragged him by his hair until they were level with the altar inside St Mary's, before kicking him unconscious. The scholars then turned to the frightened congregation and issued a proclamation to the fearful townspeople inside that they would soon all be robbed and murdered. Such rebarbative statements ensured the townspeople instantly fled through all available (and unavailable, in the case of much window breaking) exits.
Two days later, the battle was re-ignited. Indeed, this time it had escalated to nuclear. Fully 1,000 students, armed with bows and full quivers, pikes and swords, broke into the houses of Oxford residents at dinner time, in an entirely pre-planned operation. Four workplaces were identified as strategic targets in the town: a butcher's shop, spice emporium, cutlery store and restaurant. The students stole every item they could carry and took the assembled swag to their colleges, whilst simultaneously committing vandalism on a scale that would have amply outraged the average bus-stop-vandalising, delinquent teenage hoodie.
This sufficiently incensed the town's people to seek murderous revenge, and a student was duly chased, cornered and killed; his body was left face down in the street as a symbol to the impunity of scholarly privileges.
Both brothers, Robert and Philip Worminghall, serving as bailiff and mayor respectively, were exiled from Oxford as a punitive gesture for their active role in the rioting, and specifically for allowing a student to be murdered on what was deemed to be their watch. Notice how blame was purely apportioned to the Town side – a rumbling injustice that would continue to cause friction throughout the centuries ahead.
Yet, with fatal causalities on both the Town and Gown sides, neither party was ready to endorse appeasement. The following year, the townspeople, their anger clearly still smouldering, defiantly elected Robert as mayor for another term – this was despite him having been banished from Oxford for several months for his role in murdering a student and injuring several others – which might constitute a slightly embarrassing scandal in today's media-savvy age (indeed, both Worminghall brothers had so many skeletons in their cupboard that they could hardly shut the door). Presumably Robert campaigned on a 'reduce Oxford's congestion, kill a student' ticket.
Re-electing him as mayor was not an expedient move by the town, as it led indirectly to an additional tightening of University privileges over the city, decreed by royal assent. Almost inevitably, this led to further shock waves of discontent amongst the townspeople: gunpowder was being stored, and sparks were about to fly.
RUFFIAN TREATMENT
Henry III branded Oxford students 'incorrigible and rebellious ruffians' and ordered every student to register, or as he said at the time: 'to matricula' (the origins of matriculation derives from the word 'matriculate' – literally meaning 'registration roll'). By formally joining the University on a Saturday at the beginning of Michaelmas term when Oxford's new student intake matriculate, the ceremony continues to indulge Henry III's branding of the aforementioned incorrigible and rebellious ruffians – aka students.
FORWARD ESCORTS
The University's expanding authority inevitably caused jealous frictions with the townspeople, particularly as the colleges enjoyed privileges set by the King. Although the university attempted to control Oxford as if they were the sole inhabitants of the town, Oxford was growing in size outside the University, as proved by an inventory of buildings conducted in 1279, which listed 466 houses, 147 shops and 48 taverns. Nowadays, the numbers would be 466 houses in Oxford (that are not sub-let), 147 mobile phone shops and 48 coffee shops.
The perceived image of the townspeople focused almost entirely on their ability to provide menial support work for the University. Inevitably, this led to multiple conflicts, very much of the bloody variety. Especially given that an expansive employment sector for the townspeople was prostitution, whose scale had become sufficiently notorious for news to have reached the Pope; the pontiff once again despatching a communiqué to Oxford's students warning of 'debauch behaviour'.
The University decided to curtail student debauchery by exiling prostitutes from Oxford; a directive somewhat half-heartedly implemented by the Town. John Ayliffe states in The Ancient and Present State of the University of Oxford that, 'King Henry III ordered the town mayor and bailiffs to release all lewd women then in prison, on condition that they leave the town immediately, declaring that they do not come to Oxford again. Upon publication of this writ many loose women were expelled from Oxford.' So, around the 1230s, Oxford provided an amnesty for its sex workers, a policy overseen by the city's mayor, Adam Fettiplace. Fettiplace was a rich merchant, owning both the impressively capacious Drapery Hall in Cornmarket and Shelde Hall located near St Edmund Hall; it's probably a fair assumption that Fettiplace was mixing both business and pleasure with this encouraging legislation that inevitably attracted more prostitutes to the city given that a free ride home was a preferable choice to the customary jail sentence provided elsewhere by rival towns.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Oxford Student Pranks by Richard O. Smith. Copyright © 2013 Richard O. Smith. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction,1. The Thirteenth Century,
2. The Fourteenth Century,
3. The Fifteenth Century,
4. The Sixteenth Century,
5. The Seventeenth Century,
6. The Eighteenth Century,
7. The Nineteenth Century,
8. The Twentieth Century,
9. The Twenty-First Century,
About the Author,
Bibliography,