The Strange Case of Henry Symeonis

Does infamy create celebrity- or do we Brits celebrate the bad guys?

The Strange Case of Henry Symeonis

The curious thing is that for at least much of the 600 years during which Oxford MA graduates swore never to rehabilitate Henry Symeonis, no-one actually knew who he was, nor what he had done to deserve such opprobrium. It was not until the 1920s when one historian, Reginald Lane Poole looked into it that we discover a little more about this shadowy character.

He was a rich Oxford property owner. (From his name I would guess Jewish. There was a large Jewish population in and around St Aldates at the time, and it is quite likely that they were the largest property owners in the town.) It appears that in 1242 he and a number of other Oxford townsmen were found guilty of murdering a student of the University. They were fined £80 by King Henry III and exiled from Oxford, although only for 12 months or so. Yet it was not for another 20 years that the issue really came to a head, when in 1264, Henry III suspended the University and sent it away from Oxford, saying that he could not protect its masters and scholars in the city and that they would be safer elsewhere. That coincided with the King finally pardoning Henry Symeonis for the murder. It seems to have been a serious outbreak of town vs gown violence, which the King (and his henchman, Henry Symeonis) won. The University were so cross about the outcome that they condemned Henry Symeonis to obloquy and derision for 600 years thereafter with the unique honour of being named in the University’s statutes.

The strange case of Henry Symeonis is an example of the longevity of historic personal animosity. The curious thing is that it actually resulted in prolonging his celebrity, immortalising a man whom it had considered a villain. The Name Henry Symeonis would have long been lost in the mists of antiquity were it not for this personal animosity by the University.