Roger of Wendover wrote shortly after the…

Roger of Wendover wrote shortly after the foundation of the University of Cambridge that it could trace its origins to a crime committed in 1209.

Although not always a reliable source, the detail given in his contemporaneous writings lends them credence.

Two Oxford scholars, convicted of the murder or manslaughter of a woman, had been hanged by the town authorities with the assent of King John.

The University of Oxford had gone into voluntary suspension in protest at the hanging, and scholars migrated to a number of other locations, including the preexisting school at Cambridge (Cambridge had been recorded in 1201 as a “school” rather than as a university when John Grim held the office of Master there).

These exile Oxford scholars (postgraduate researchers by present day terminology) in 1209 start Cambridge’s life as a university.