Oxford

Oxford stands where the Thames and the Cherwell meet, and its schools grew into a university in the 12th century. Disputes between scholars and townsmen were constant, and on 10 February 1355, the feast of St Scholastica, a quarrel over wine in a tavern turned into three days of fighting. Edward III sided with the university: it gained new powers over the town, the town was fined 500 marks and its mayor and bailiffs were jailed, and each year on St Scholastica's Day they had to attend a Mass for the dead. In 1379 William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, founded New College to train priests after the Black Death.

The Reformation closed the city's monasteries in the 1530s. In October 1555 Bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burned at the stake in Oxford for heresy. When Charles I left London in 1642 he made Oxford his capital, and the court stayed until 1646. In 1678–83 the Ashmolean Museum, the first university museum in the world, was built to house a collection of curiosities.