The Dispersal of Scholars from Oxford and the Beginnings of a University at Cambridge

The purpose of this article is to re-examine the sources concerning the dispersal of scholars from Oxford which occurred as the result of the hanging of two of their number by the town authorities, and which is generally held to have resulted in the establishment of a university at Cambridge. The earliest of these sources is almost certainly the Dunstable Annals, which were compiled by, or under the supervision of, Richard de Mores, prior of the Augustinian house of Dunstable in Bedfordshire. Richard has been identified with the canon lawyer Ricardus Anglicus.1 Given his training at Bologna and the fact that he later spent a year at the University of Paris, he might be expected to have had an interest in university affairs. The Dunstable Annals state that it was the king who ordered the killing of two clerks at Oxford, as a result of which the schools dispersed.2 This is the last entry under the year 1209, but it is dated January, so the year must be 1210.3

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