holiday accommodation royston
 |
 |
holiday accommodation royston, bed, breakfast, cambridge, cambridgeshire, melbourn, duxford, farmhouse, business, stansted, luton, ely, quiet, comfortable, countryside, village, airport, holiday accommodation royston
Parliament was due to sit in Cambridge for 6 weeks in 1386 so the King ordered the Chancellor to clean up the streets in advance. Parliament met at Barnwell Priory and produced the Statute of Cambridge, making all urban sanitation the responsibility of the local mayor and bailiffs.
In the second half of the Fifteenth Century the University and Colleges acquired by gift and purchase more and more land from the surrounding fields. This was to have great significance later. Far from opposing this, townsmen contributed.
In 1492 the University devised a new weapon against offending townsmen: discommoning (commons were supplies). Persistently offending traders were declared as off-limits to students. This proved highly effective. It was used in addition to fines, excommunication and imprisonment.
The University and town used arbitration for the first time in 1502-3 to solve yet another disagreement over privileges, sponsored by the King's mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. Three of the King's legal officers arbitrated, with a bond of 500 marks from each side, resulting in a lengthy composition.
The Vice-Chancellor voluntarily renounced his right of excommunication in personal temporal cases in 1533, probably partly for the growing Protestant feeling and partly as discommoning was proving more effective.
The Act of Parliament for the dissolution of Colleges in 1545 was in the pattern of the dissolution of the monasteries and was aimed at colleges, chantries, hospitals, fraternities and guilds. The University managed to persuade King Henry VIII to appoint as commissioners the Vice-Chancellor, Matthew Parker, and two chaplains of the University, with no townsmen. They ensured the King left the Colleges untouched, essentially by a piece of creative accountancy showing they were all poor.
In 1561 Sir William Cecil (later Lord Burleigh), Secretary of State and Chancellor of the University, secured a new charter for the University which confirmed and increased the University's privileges. It now had total control over trading standards and licencing and exemption from all taxes, except for £10 per year paid to the Exchequer. It was exempt from military service and from various other State requisitions.
The charter was renewed in 1589, in an attempt to end quarrels such as over who was entitled to the protection of the University. There was a further renewal and extension in 1605, this time concentrating on illegal entertainments such as bull-baiting in Chesterton - the Vice-Chancellor could ban entertainments within five miles of Cambridge.
By the 1620s and 1630s a number of wealthier townspeople had purchased University privilege, exempting them from various taxes and requisitions such as poor relief. This put a heavy burden on the remaining people.
The Municipal Corporation, Highways and Weights & Measures Acts of 1835 made great reforms but all explicitly preserved the University's privileges. The University ensured the Railway Act of 1844 included clauses granting the University officers powers over University personnel's use of the station and trains. It also banned arrivals between 10am and 5pm on Sundays. Another act of 1844 prohibited any theatre within 14 miles of Cambridge - this remained in force for 50 years.