Black Assize

Black Assize, the popular name commemorative of an extraordinary and fatal pestilence which broke out at Oxford at the close of the assizes, July 6, 1577. It was popularly interpreted as a divine judgment on the cruelty of a sentence passed by the court. From the 6th of July to the 12th of August, 300 persons in Oxford and the neighbourhood are said to have died of this terrible malady, among whom were the chief officials who sat on the assize, most of the jury, and many members of the university. Women, poor people, physicians, visitors, and children are said to have escaped the infection. A similar event is recorded as having taken place at Cambridge at the Lent Assizes in 1521.