was a rallying cry of rebellious townspeople during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 in Cambridge, during which they sacked the university and official buildings and burnt legal documents and charters en masse.
[4][note 1] On 15 June, 1381, revolt broke out in Cambridgeshire, led by a gang from Suffolk and local men who had been involved in the London riots and had returned to spread unrest.
[1] The university was particularly unpopular in Cambridge because it took a heavy-handed role in the town's policing, and because its scholars received benefit of clergy which effectively exempted them from lay courts.
[15][16] Starre may not have been averse to literacy itself, suggests the Chaucerian Susanne Sara Thomas, as much as the oppressive bonds charters represented,[17] and they may have been more generally a symbol of "the establishment".
[20] In any case, although part of what Barker has called a "summer of blood" and "a general riot of destruction and death", Starre destroyed property but did not kill anyone,[16] although a later attempt was made on the life of the University bedel.