The offended students also
applied to the Pope, who laid the city under an interdict
and discharged all professors from teaching in it. This step
completely humbled the citizens, who sent a deputation of
the most respectable to wait on the Pope's legate (then at
Westminster) to acknowledge their rashness and request
mercy; the legate (Nicholas, Bishop of Tusculum, ) granted
their petition only on the most humiliating terms. The mayor
and corporation were en-joined, by way of penance, to
proceed annually, on the day dedicated to St. Nicholas, to
all the parish churches bare-headed, with hempen halters
round their necks, and whips in their hands, on their bare
feet, and in their' shirts, and there pray the benefit of
absolution from the priests, repeating the penitential
psalms, and to pay a mark of silver per annum to the
students of the hall peculiarly injured; in addition to
which they were, on the recurrence of the same day, to
entertain one hundred poor scholars "_honestis
refectionibus_," the abbot of Evesham yearly paying sixteen
shillings towards the festival expense A part of this
ceremony, but without the degrading marks of it, is
continued to this day.
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