To counter this threat, the masters sought to combat the public disorder by curbing profiteering by the townspeople as landlords and tradespeople and reining in the student's freedoms.
[5] Student housing was regulated as early as 1214, when a papal legate issued an ordinance to resolve a dispute over two clerks who had been hanged by townspeople.
[1] The religious privileges enjoyed by students and masters and the presence of so many clerks lead to jurisdictional disputes between the university's attendees and the townsfolk.
Moreover, differences between academics related to England's north south divide and an influx of poorly behaved young students with no higher authority to answer to made Thirteenth-Century Oxford a volatile place.
This was followed by a royal ordinance in 1420 requiring students to swear to obey the university statutes, be governed by a principal and not live in private houses.
[1] In the 19th century the halls were able to offer a less expensive education than the colleges; however this advantage was removed by the admission of unattached students, who could live in lodgings, in 1868 and the opening of Keble in 1870.
[11] In 1877 Prime Minister Disraeli appointed commissioners under Lord Selborne and later Mountague Bernard to consider and implement reform of the university and its colleges.