Saint Scholastica’s Day Riots

When you think of Oxford University, what springs to mind. A serious yet peaceful seat of learning, full of people in robes with nothing more on their minds than the study of Latin or Theology.

Certainly not a place of murder, of people being thrown into wells or drowned in privies!??!?

Well, that’s just what Charlie Higson thought of it too, until that is, he studied the life of John Wycliffe in a previous episode, because that’s when he discovered the Saint Scholastica’s Day Riots.

On the 10th February 1355 there was indeed a mass riot in Oxford which led to three days of rioting in which 63 students and about 30 townspeople were killed!

Charlie welcomes Professor Rory Cox back to talk about this amazing incident which put Oxford on the murder map over 600 years before Inspector Morse came along. 

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