Henry Symeonis

Reginald Lane Poole argues that the exodus of the scholars from Oxford was in protest over the return of Henry Symeonis.

According to Millea, King Henry suspended the university because Oxford had become the center of the royal military operations during the Second Barons' War.

The archivist Brian Twyne wrote in his 1608 book, Antiquitatis Academiae Oxon Apologia, that Henry Symeonis was a Regent in Arts who falsely claimed to be a BA in order to enrol into a foreign monastery.

[1] 17th-century antiquary Anthony Wood reports that the removal of the oath referring to Henry Symeonis was proposed and rejected, for reasons he does not mention, during the University of Oxford's review of the statutes in 1651–52.

Alice Millea of Oxford's Bodleian Library presumes that by that time the origin and meaning of the oath had already been forgotten.

[1] The English bishop Christopher Wordsworth, who described the oath as "quaintly personal", wrote in 1874: "It is thought that the culprit had, to gain some end, dissembled his degree in king John's reign.