Away with the Clerics – Cambridge 1381

Flames flickered and sparked into the late afternoon air as a bonfire of royal charters, books of learning, and university documents were turned into wafers of ash. Three days of looting, arson, and murder had reached their climax. The rioters were certain of victory and the end of oppressive rules forced upon them since the arrival of a group of scholars just over a hundred years earlier.

Six months previously, in December 1380, the Chancellor of the University of Cambridge had instructed the mayor to deal with ‘divers evildoers’ who’d appeared in the town. The amiable Burgomaster, however, had already spotted these so-called ‘evil doers’ but had little inclination, or any real power, to expel every ‘suspicious’ character whose face unsettled senior members of the university.

Exactly what happened in Cambridge during the next few months is not fully known. But plots were plotted, and secrets kept. The violence of the Peasants’ Revolt was spreading its way across East Anglia. Old scores were being settled. The townspeople had had enough of the meddling ways of the masters and scholars of the university. Men and boys in holy orders, protected by ecclesiastical law and continuously favoured by kings and queens, were forcing the townspeople into servitude. Resentment and thoughts of rebellion had steadily increased since the arrival of a band of scholar’s in 1208. Now seditious reinforcements were eager to aid their brothers and sisters against every injustice that hampered their freedom. 

On the morning of 15 June 1381, the rhythmic tolling of the great bell of Great St Mary’s Church, on the Market Square, was heard. It was the rallying cry the rioters had been expecting. A large crowd of townsmen, and ‘wastours’ gathered. The first target was a house in Bridge Street where Roger Blankgreen, the collector of the detested poll tax, lived. Quickly the crowd set to work looting and searching for the detested man, but Blankgreen had fled. He’d made it across the river to St Giles Church. But the angry mob found his hiding place and dragged him into the churchyard, where he was shown no mercy as his head was brutally severed from his body. 

That night, ‘at about 10 de la clokke’, the house of William Wigmore, Bedall to the university, was ransacked and burned. Simultaneously, another mob, led by the mayor, advanced on Corpus Christi College. A fierce fight between scholars and townsmen resulted in much injury and the death of a townsman. The bloodied victors carried off all the documents and books they could find. In the darkness and confusion of that night, other break-ins and robberies occurred, for which no one was ever brought to justice.

On the Sunday morning, while some of the townsmen rode out into the countryside to bring in more rabble-rousers, another mob surged into Great St Mary’s Church while mass was being celebrated. There, they seized a chest belonging to the university. Next, they smashed into the nearby Carmelite Friary, where the Chancellor was known to keep documents. There, they stole anther chest full of books and documents.

The loot was hauled to the Market Square. There, the heavily secured chests were levered open. Inside, the looters found jewels and plate, charters and documents relating to university privileges. Royal seals were ‘mercilessly broken with knives, sticks and other weapons’, and the chests themselves were sold to the highest bidders.

A bonfire fuelled by hatred, charters, documents, and books of learning was built. The haul blazed on the Market Square, a favoured place of protest, as the protestors yelled and danced in glee. As the flames consumed the precious manuscripts, an old woman called Margaret Starre flung a handful of ashes up to the sky, crying out, ‘Away with the learning of clerks, away with it’.

On the 1 July, the machinery of the law swung into action. The Assize court devoted that entire month to bringing the ringleaders, who hadn’t fled or were dead, to justice. Some were hanged, but most were imprisoned in the castle jail.

But the greater punishment came later that year. The King granted the Chancellor and Scholars of the University of Cambridge the rights to the licencing of the sale of bread, wine and ale, and the control of weights and measures. The town was £100 a year worse off and even more tightly under the control of those they had planned to crush. There would be six centuries of bitter unrest before those rights were returned to their original owners.