Okay, so picture this. It is June 16th, 1381.
You're standing right in the middle of Market
Square in Cambridge. And the visual is just,
it's arresting. You've got smoke, chaos, a massive
bonfire roaring in the center of town. But it's
the smell that probably hits you first. Yeah,
it's not wood smoke. No, it's the smell of burning
parchment, animal skin. We're talking hundreds
of years of legal history just going up in flames.
And right in the middle of it all, almost, uh...
Orchestrating the scene is this figure, Marjorie
Starr. And the sources all call her a bell -dam.
Ah. Which is such a loaded word, isn't it? It
suggests this, you know, frail, hag -like figure.
Very G, almost. Yeah, exactly. But the accounts
don't describe a frail old lady. She's dancing.
Oh, she's dancing triumphantly. She's grabbing
handfuls of these hot ashes and throwing them
into the air, scattering them to the four winds.
And she's screaming this line that has somehow
survived for six centuries. Away with the learning
of clerks. Away with it. That's the one. It's
so cinematic. But if you just look at it on the
surface, it feels like simple anti -intellectualism.
Yeah. You know, a mob that hates books. Right.
The simple reading. But when you actually dig
into the records from the Peasants' Revolt in
Cambridge and look at the analysis from historians
like Silvio Federico and Barry Dobson, that bonfire
wasn't about hating education at all. No, not
even close. It was a forensic attack on the legal
system. It was about hating paperwork. Exactly.
Marjorie Starr wasn't trying to stop people from
reading. She was trying to break the paper chains
that held the entire town of Cambridge captive.
So today we're going to strip back that crazy
mob narrative to figure out why she was dancing
in the ashes and what this moment really tells
us about the town versus gown war, about legal
loopholes and about the women who helped lead
these rebellions. Because this wasn't just a
riot. It was a very targeted strike against the
University of Cambridge. So let's set the scene
because the context here is just so volatile.
It's the summer of 1381. Yeah. The Peasants'
Revolt is in full swing. London is already on
fire. The rebels have just razed the Savoy Palace,
which was John of Gaunt's home. And that violence
just radiates outwards. It hits Cambridgeshire
by the middle of June. But the makeup of the
mob in Cambridge is what's really fascinating.
It's not your stereotypical peasants with pitchforks.
Right. The records mention a gang from Suffolk,
some locals coming back from the riots in London.
But it's the leadership structure that really
jumped out at me. This wasn't a leaderless rabble
just breaking windows. No, it was organized.
Very organized. The mob was being led by the
mayor of Cambridge. Which just completely changes
how you see the event, doesn't it? When the mayor
is leading the riot, it's not an uprising against
civic order. It is the civic order. It is. It's
the town mobilizing against a rival power. And
that rival is the university. The University
of Cambridge in 1381 was, well... Suffocating
is probably the right word for it. It wasn't
just a school. It was a landlord. It was a police
force. And it was a court system all rolled into
one. This is that classic town versus gown dynamic,
but on steroids. I think today we might assume
a university town loves the college. It brings
in money, prestige. A good sports team, you know.
Right. But back then, the university was basically
an occupying force. They had regulatory power
over everyone in town. They could police your
behavior. They could set prices at the market,
control who could trade. But the real point of
friction, the thing that likely drove the mayor
to side with the rioters, was something called
the benefit of clergy. An ultimate legal loophole.
It really was. Basically, if you are a scholar
or a clerk or a priest, you are exempt from the
normal courts. So if a student assaulted a local
shopkeeper, that student wouldn't face the king's
justice. He'd face a church court. An ecclesiastical
court, yeah. Which was notoriously - lenient.
A slap on the wrist. Pretty much. So you have
the shopkeeper seeing a student commit a crime
theft, assault, whatever, and get nothing, while
that same shopkeeper would probably hang for
the same offense. So it creates this two -tiered
society. If you're a townsperson, you're not
looking at the university as a center of learning.
You're looking at it as a fortress of royal privilege
that is totally immune to consequences. Exactly.
And because they had the king's protection, There
was no legal recourse. You couldn't sue them.
You couldn't arrest them. The resentment just
built and built for decades. So when the violence
finally explodes on June 15th, the day before
our bonfire, they have. very specific targets
in mind. They aren't just smashing random windows.
No, this is surgical. They go for the institutions.
They hit Great St. Mary's Church first. Which
seems odd until you realize that's where the
university kept its paperwork. Exactly. The bulls,
the papal decrees, the charters, the title deeds,
they dragged them all out. But the main event,
the attack that really explains the town's anger,
was the one on Corpus Christi College. Why Corpus
Christi in particular? I mean, Cambridge had
other colleges. It did, but Corpus Christi was
a massive landowner in the town, and they were,
frankly, terrible landlords. There was this one
specific grievance that keeps coming up in the
sources. Candle rents. This detail really stood
out to me. It sounds so petty, doesn't it? Candle
rent. It does. But when you look at the economics,
it was just this constant intrusive drain. The
college owned a bunch of houses and charged rent
based on the number of wax tapers candles that
were used in the house. So the more light you
need to live your life. the more you owe the
college. It's a very rigid, very controlling
way of extracting wealth. Plus, Corpus Christi
had political ties to John of Gaunt. Ah, the
big bad of the whole revolt. The man they blamed
for the poll tax. The very same. So Corpus Christi
came to represent everything the town hated.
The university, the church, and the corrupt crown.
So on June 15th... The mob attacks. And it's
worth pointing out the mob included some students.
That's the twist, isn't it? Even some of the
gown turned against the college. They gutted
the buildings. They broke down doors, stole the
college plate, the silverware and valuables.
But the silver wasn't the main prize. No, the
priority was what they called the muniments.
The legal documents. Chests full of rent rolls,
charters and deeds. All the paper that said,
you owe us money or we own this land. Corpus
Christi later sued for 80 pounds in damages.
Which is, what, roughly 50 ,000 pounds today?
It's a huge sum. So they wrecked the college,
they grabbed the valuables, and they dragged
these heavy chests of paper to the market square.
And that brings us back to June 16th, the day
of the bonfire, and to Marjory Starr. Right.
The summer of blood, as one historian calls it.
And in the midst of all this violence, we get
this moment of what Dan Jones calls jubilant
vandalism. It's just so interesting that the
history books tend to focus on the men want Tyler,
John Ball, the mayor. But in this one iconic
incident, the camera zooms right in on a woman.
And she's not just a participant. She's the orchestrator.
She is the absolute focal point. She's the one
scattering the ashes. And that cry of hers, away
with the learning of clerks. We really need to
unpack that. Because learning makes it sound
like she's attacking knowledge itself. Like she
wants everyone to be ignorant. It feeds right
into that Dark Ages mob stereotype. That's the
traditional kind of snobbish reading of it, yes.
The ignorant peasants destroying wisdom. But
scholars like Suzanne Sarah Thomas argue that
we need to think about what learning actually
meant to a 14th century townsperson. They weren't
burning poetry, were they? They weren't burning
philosophy or medical texts. No, they were burning
the university's statutes. To someone like Marjorie
Starr, a piece of parchment with Latin on it
wasn't a vehicle for enlightenment. It was a
weapon. It was the document that could evict
you from your home. It was the paper that said
you owed candle rent. So learning in this context
is really just shorthand for bureaucracy. Precisely.
It's the establishment. The historian Barry Dobson
points out that burning records was a popular
activity all across England during the revolt.
They called it burning records and writings in
the House of Justice. There is a deep irony here,
though. Another historian, Edmund King, he points
out that the mob probably didn't realize how
little actual learning was in those chests. That's
the funny part. They thought they were destroying
the secret knowledge of the clerks, the almost
mystical source of their power. But in reality,
they were mostly just burning invoices. Boring
administrative data. Very boring. But the symbolism
holds up. To them, the administration was the
oppression. The learning was the ability to write
down the rules that kept them poor. And Marjorie's
role here, it connects to a much bigger... often
overlooked story about women in the revolt. It
really does. Silvia Federico points out that
women are all over the judicial records from
1381. They're not just bystanders or victims.
They're listed as maintainers of rebel bands.
Instigators, accomplices. Federico argues that
Marjorie's story is often treated like a colorful
little anecdote, a side detail. But it actually
highlights the fact that women had their own
specific grievances against the system. It just
completely challenges that Beldam narrative.
Calling her a crazy old woman is a way of minimizing
what she was actually doing. She was a political
agitator. She was engaging in political theater.
It was a performance. And there's a fantastic
literary parallel that Suzanne Sarah Thomas draws.
She compares Marjorie Starr to Chaucer's Wife
of Bath. Oh, I love this connection. We all remember
the wife of Bath as this boisterous, dominant
character. But her relationship with books and
texts is really adversarial. Absolutely. Her
fifth husband, Jankian, he's a clerk, a scholar,
and he loves to torment her by reading from his
Book of Wicked Wives. Right, a big book just
cataloging all the supposed sins of women throughout
history. Exactly. He uses the text, the learning,
to control and shame her. So what does she do?
She rips the pages out. She rips the pages out
and then makes him burn. in the book. It's the
same energy as Marjorie Starr. It is. It's a
complete rejection of text. It is a tool of patriarchal
control. I mean, in the Middle Ages, writing
was power and that power was overwhelmingly male
and clerical. So when the wife of Bath rips up
the book or when Marjorie Starr burns the charters,
they're both effectively saying, I do not consent
to the authority of this piece of paper. It's
a way of saying, if the book says I'm lesser
or if this charter says I owe you money I can't
pay. then the book has to go. It also reminds
me of that famous line from Shakespeare's Henry
VI from the Jack Cade rebellion scenes. The first
thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. That's
it. Which is often quoted as a joke, but in the
context of the play, it's a deeply revolutionary
statement. Thomas Shippey makes that exact comparison
to Marjorie Starr, doesn't he? He does. It's
that same deep -seated fear that a man with a
pen and some ink can ruin your life faster than
a man with a sword. Marjorie is the embodiment
of that anxiety. She's fighting the abstraction
of power. You can fight a soldier. It's much
harder to fight a deed to a house. Unless you
can burn it. So looking back at the aftermath,
the bonfire burns out. The king's forces eventually
regain control. What happened to Cambridge? Well,
it's the usual story. Order was restored and
the university's privileges weren't just restored.
They were actually strengthened in the years
that followed. Of course, the empire strikes
back. The town definitely lost the war against
the gown, but the memory of it stuck around.
The image of the mayor leading a mob and an old
woman dancing on the ashes. It exposed just how
fragile the university's authority really was.
It all relied on paper. And paper is very, very
flammable. It's a stark reminder that our institutions
only really function as long as we all agree
to respect the documentation. When that social
contract snaps. the archives are one of the first
things to go. Exactly. I think that's why Marjorie
Starr's story still resonates almost 650 years
later. She didn't have an army. She didn't have
a title. She just had a match. And she used it
to physically dismantle the abstract things that
were controlling her community. It's such a powerful
story about the intersection of literacy, law,
and class. It is ironic, though. Her whole goal
was to destroy the learning of clerks, but now
she's trapped inside it. The only reason we even
know her name is because the clerks wrote it
down in the legal records. She's been preserved
by the very bureaucracy she tried to incinerate.
But at least now, thanks to historians like Federico
and Thomas, we're reading those records in a
different way. We aren't just seeing a beldam
or a witch. We're seeing a revolutionary. It
does leave you with a thought for our own time.
We are so much more documented than 14th century
Cambridge. Our debts, our deeds, our very identities,
they're not on parchment in a wooden chest anymore.
No, they're on servers. They're in the cloud.
So if Marjorie Starr were here today, she wouldn't
be in Market Square with a torch. No, she'd be
looking for a magnetic degausser. Or maybe just
the delete key. It makes you wonder if a community
today felt that same level of candle rent oppression,
that same feeling of a rigged system, what is
the modern equivalent of that bonfire? Is it
a cyber attack? Is it wiping a database clean?
The medium changes, right? Parchment to silicon.
But the impulse is identical. Erase the record.
Erase the debt. Erase the control. The power
of the record versus the power of the people.
We'll leave you to chew on that one. Thanks for
walking us through the smoke today. A pleasure,
as always. And to our listener, thanks for joining
the deep dive. We'll see you next time.