The Project Gutenberg EBook of Oxford and its Story, by Cecil Headlam This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license Title: Oxford and its Story Author: Cecil Headlam Illustrator: Herbert Railton Fanny Railton Release Date: July 13, 2014 [EBook #46274] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OXFORD AND ITS STORY *** Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive) Every attempt has been made to replicate the original as printed. Some typographical errors have been corrected; a list follows the text. In certain versions of this etext, in certain browsers, clicking on this symbol will bring up a larger version of the image. The "Tinted Lithographs" appear black, white and gray in this etext. Preface Contents List of Illustrations Index (etext transcriber's note) cover OXFORD AND ITS STORY Oxford Castle (Photogravure) Oxford Castle (Photogravure) O X F O R D AND ITS STORY BY CECIL HEADLAM, M.A. AUTHOR OF “NUREMBERG,” “CHARTRES,” ETC. ETC. T colophon WITH TWENTY-FOUR LITHOGRAPHS AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS BY HERBERT RAILTON THE LITHOGRAPHS BEING TINTED BY FANNY RAILTON 1912 LONDON J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. First Edition, 1904 Second and Cheaper Edition, 1912 All rights reserved ALMAE MATRI FILIUS INDIGNUS HAUD INGRATUS PREFACE HE Story of Oxford touches the History of England, social and political, mental and architectural, at so many points, that it is impossible to deal with it fully even in so large a volume as the present. Even as it is, I have been unavoidably compelled to save space by omitting much that I had written and practically all my references and acknowledgments. Yet, where one has gathered so much honey from other men’s flowers not to acknowledge the debt in detail appears discourteous and ungrateful; and not to give chapter and verse jars also upon the historical conscience. I can only say that, very gratefully, J’ai pris mon bien où je l’ai trouvé, whether in the forty odd volumes of the Oxford Historical Society, the twenty volumes of the College Histories, the accurate and erudite monographs of Dr Rashdall (“Mediæval Universities”) and Sir Henry Maxwell Lyte (“History of the University of Oxford to the year 1530”) or innumerable other works. Where so much has been so well done by others in the way of dealing with periods and sections of my whole subject, my chief business has been to read, mark, digest, and then to arrange my story. But to do that thoroughly has been no light task. Whether it be well done or ill-done, the story now told has the great merit of providing an occasion, excuse was never needed, for the display of Mr Herbert Railton’s art. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi CHAPTER I ST FRIDESWIDE AND THE CATHEDRAL 1 CHAPTER II THE MOUND, THE CASTLE AND SOME CHURCHES 22 CHAPTER III THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY 61 CHAPTER IV THE COMING OF THE FRIARS 93 CHAPTER V THE MEDIÆVAL STUDENT 148 CHAPTER VI OXFORD AND THE REFORMATION 240 CHAPTER VII THE OXFORD MARTYRS 276 CHAPTER VIII ELIZABETH, BODLEY AND LAUD 291 CHAPTER IX THE ROYALIST CAPITAL 312 CHAPTER X JACOBITE OXFORD—AND AFTER 349 INDEX 357 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Oxford Castle (Photogravure) Facing page Frontispiece TINTED LITHOGRAPHS Magdalen Tower from the Water Walks Facing page 4 Christ Church “ 20 Cornmarket Street “ 26 Entrance Front, Pembroke College “ 46 Archway and Turret, Merton College “ 62 University College “ 78 Garden Front, S. John’s College “ 90 Wadham College, from the Gardens “ 104 Oriel College and Merton Tower “ 122 Balliol College “ 130 S. Mary’s Porch “ 148 S. Alban Hall, Merton College “ 174 Quadrangle, Brasenose College “ 202 Bell Tower and Cloisters, New College “ 220 The Founder’s Tower, Magdalen College “ 230 Front Quadrangle, Corpus Christi College “ 250 Cloisters, Christ Church “ 262 Grammar Hall, Magdalen College “ 274 President’s Lodge, Trinity College “ 286 Quadrangle, Jesus College “ 294 The Gardens, Exeter College “ 302 Oriel Window, S. John’s College “ 308 The Cloisters, New College “ 330 Quadrangle and Library, All Souls’ College “ 340 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS BLACK AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Oxford Cathedral (Interior) Facing 8 Oxford Cathedral (Exterior) 13 Hall Stairway, Christ Church 17 Abingdon Abbey 24 The Bastion and Ramparts in New College Facing 30 City Walls 31 Chapel of Our Lady 32 Bird’s-eye View of Oxford (1578) Facing 32 Oxford Castle 35 S. Peter’s in the East Facing 42 The “Bishop’s Palace,” S. Aldate’s 50 The Radcliffe Library, from Brasenose College 85 Gables in Worcester College 103 Gateway, Worcester Gardens 106 Oriel College Facing 108 Doorway, Rewley Abbey 109 Old Gateway, Merton College 117 Monastic Buildings, Worcester College 127 Oriel Window, Lincoln College 147 The High Street 151 S. Mary’s Spire from Grove Lane 155 Gables and Tower, Magdalen College 195 Open Air Pulpit, Magdalen College 199 Magdalen College Facing 210 In New College 223 Kemp Hall Facing 228 Magdalen Bridge and Tower 233 Niche and Sundial, Corpus Christi College 248 I South View of Bocardo 281 Chapel in Jesus 298 Cooks Buildings, S. John’s Facing 300 From the High Street 314 Courtyard to Palace Facing 320 View from the Sheldonian Theatre 337 Oriel Window, Queen’s Lane 342 OXFORD & ITS STORY CHAPTER I S. FRIDESWIDE AND THE CATHEDRAL “He that hath Oxford seen, for beauty, grace And healthiness, ne’er saw a better place. If God Himself on earth abode would make He Oxford, sure, would for His dwelling take.” Dan Rogers, Clerk to the Council of Queen Elizabeth. “Vetera majestas quædam et (ut sic dixerim) religio commendat.” Quintilian. T is with cities as with men. The manner of our meeting some men, and the moment, impress them upon our minds beyond the ordinary. And the chance of our approach to a city is full also of significance. London approached by the Thames on an ocean-going steamer is resonant of the romance of commerce, and the smoke-haze from her factories hangs about her like folds of the imperial purple. But approach her by rail and it is a tale of mean streets that you read, a tale made yet more sad by the sight of the pale, drawn faces of her street-bred people. Calcutta is the London of the East, but Venice, whether you view her first from the sea, enthroned on the Adriatic, or step at dawn from the train into the silent gondola, is always different yet ever the same, the Enchanted City, Queen of the Seas. And many other ports there are which live in the memory by virtue of the beauty of the approach to them: Lisbon, with the scar of her earthquake across her face, looking upon the full broad tide of the Tagus, from the vantage ground of her seven hills; Cadiz, lying in the sea like a silver cup embossed with a thousand watch towers; Naples, the Siren City; Sidney and Constantinople; Hong- Kong and, above all, Rio de Janeiro. But among inland towns I know none that can surpass Oxford in the beauty of its approach. Beautiful as youth and venerable as age, she lies in a purple cup of the low hills, and the water-meads of Isis and the gentle slopes beyond are besprent with her grey “steeple towers, and spires whose silent finger points to heaven.” And all around her the country is a harmony in green—the deep, cool greens of the lush grass, the green of famous woods, the soft, juicy landscapes of the Thames Valley. You may approach Oxford in summer by road, or rail, or river. Most wise and most fortunate perhaps is he who can obtain his first view of Oxford from Headington Hill, her Fiesole. From Headington has been quarried much of the stone of which the buildings of Oxford, and especially her colleges, have been constructed. Oxford owes much of her beauty to the humidity of the atmosphere, for the Thames Valley is generally humid, and when the floods are out, and that is not seldom, Oxford rises from the flooded meadows like some superb Venice of the North, centred in a vast lagoon. And just as the beauty of Venice is the beauty of coloured marbles blending with the ever-changing colour of water and water- laden air, so, to a large extent, the beauty of Oxford is due to this soft stone of Headington, which blends with the soft humid atmosphere in ever fresh and tender harmonies, in ever-changing tones of purple and grey. By virtue of its fortunate softness this stone ages with remarkable rapidity, flakes off and grows discoloured, and soon lends to quite new buildings a deceptive but charming appearance of antiquity. Arriving, then, at the top of Headington Hill, let the traveller turn aside, and, pausing awhile by “Joe Pullen’s” tree, gaze down at the beautiful city which lies at his feet. Her sombre domes, her dreaming spires rise above the tinted haze, which hangs about her like a delicate drapery and hides from the traveller’s gaze the grey walls and purple shadows, the groves and cloisters of Academe. For a moment he will summon up remembrance of things past; he will fancy that so, and from this spot, many a mediæval student, hurrying to learn from the lips of some famous scholar, first beheld the scene of his future studies; this, he will remember, is the Oxford of the Reformation, where, as has been said,[1] the old world and the new lingered longest in each other’s arms, like mother and child, so much alike and yet so different; the Oxford also of the Catholic reaction, where the young Elizabethan Revivalists wandered by the Isis and Cherwell framing schemes for the restoration of religion and the deliverance of the fair Mary; the loyal and chivalrous Oxford of the Caroline period, the nursery of knights and gentlemen, when camp and court and cloister were combined within her walls; the Oxford of the eighteenth century, still mindful of the King over the water, and still keeping alive in an age of materialism and infidelity some sparks of that loftier and more generous sentiment which ever clings to a falling cause. It is the Oxford, again, of the Tory and High Churchman of the old school; the home of the scholar and the gentleman, the Wellesleys, the Cannings, the Grenvilles and the Stanleys. But the Wesleys call her Alma Mater also, and, not less, Newman. Methodism equally with the High Church movement originated here. Old as the nation, yet ever new, with all the vitality of each generation’s youth reacting on the sober wisdom of its predecessor, Oxford has passed through all these and many other stages of history, and the phases of her past existence have left their marks upon her, in thought, in architecture and in tradition. To connect {1} {2} {3} events with the traces they have left, to illustrate the buildings of Oxford by her history, and her history by her buildings, has been the ideal which I have set before myself in this book. Let our traveller then at length descend the hill and passing over Magdalen Bridge, beneath the grey tower of ever-changing beauty, the bell-tower of Magdalen, enter upon the “stream-like windings of that glorious street,” the High. So, over Shotover, down a horse path through the thick forest the bands of mediæval scholars used to come at the beginning of each term, and wend their way across the moor to the east gate of the city. There is no gate to stop you now, no ford, no challenge of sentinels on the walls. The bell-towers of S. Frideswide and Osney have long been levelled to the dust, but the bells of Christ Church and Magdalen greet you. But not altogether unfortunate, though perhaps with less time to ruminate, will he be who first approaches Oxford by means of the railway. If he is wise, he will choose at Paddington a seat on the off side of the carriage, facing the engine. After leaving Radley the train runs past low-lying water-meadows, willow-laden, yellow with buttercups, purple with clover and the exquisite fritillary, and passing the reservoir ere it runs into the station, which occupies the site of Osney Abbey, it gives the observant traveller a splendid view of the town; of Tom Tower, close at hand, and Merton Tower; of the spires of the Cathedral and S. Aldate’s; of S. Mary’s and All Saints’; of Radcliffe’s Dome and the dainty Tower of Magdalen further away; of Lincoln Spire and S. Michael’s Tower, and of S. Martin’s at Carfax. And at last, very near at hand, the old fragment of the Castle: “There, watching high the least alarms, The rough, rude fortress gleams afar Like some bold veteran, grey in arms And marked with many a seamy scar.” Of the approaches to Oxford so much may be said; and as to the time when it is most fit to visit her, all times are good. But best of all are the summer months. In the spring or early summer, when the nightingales are singing in Magdalen walks and the wild flowers Magdalen Tower from Addison’s Walk Magdalen Tower from Addison’s Walk spring in Bagley Woods, when the meadows are carpeted with purple and gold: “The frail, white-leaved anemony, Dark blue-bells drenched with dews of summer eves, And purple orchises with spotted leaves;” in June, in Eights’ Week, when the University is bravely ploughing its way through a storm of gaiety and athleticism into the inevitable maelstrom of examinations, when the streets are crowded with cricketers, oarsmen, and their sisters, when the Schools and College quads are transformed into ball-rooms and many a boat lingers onward dreamily in the golden light of the setting sun beneath the willows that fringe the Cherwell—at these times Oxford seems an enchanted city, a land where it is always afternoon. But you will come to know her best, and to love her perhaps more dearly, if you choose the later summer months, the Long Vacation. Then all the rich meadow-lands that surround her are most tranquil, green and mellow, and seem to reflect the peace of the ancient city, freed for a while from the turmoil of University life. Then perhaps you will best realise the two-sided character of this Janus-City. For there are {4} {5} two Oxfords in one, as our story will show, upon the banks of the Isis—a great county town besides a great University. And as to the mood in which you shall visit her, who shall dictate a mood in a place so various? Something of the emotion that Wordsworth felt may be yours: “I could not print Ground where the grass had yielded to the steps Of generations of illustrious men Unmoved. I could not always pass Through the same gateways, sleep where they had slept, Wake where they waked, range that inclosure old, That garden of great intellects, undisturbed;” or something of the charming fancifulness of Charles Lamb which may lead you to play the student, or fetch up past opportunities, and so “pass for nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor.” Or it may please you best to spend not all your time among the bricks and stone and mortar, ever-changing as they are in hue and aspect, or amid the College groves and gardens, rich as is their beauty, perfect as is their repose. The glories of the surrounding country may tempt you most. You may wander many happy miles through cool green country, full of dark-leaved elms and furzy dingles, with the calm, bright river ever peeping at you through gaps in woods and hedges, to Godstow, where Rosamund Clifford lived and died; to Cumnor, the warm green-muffled Cumnor Hills, and those oaks that grow thereby, on which the eyes of Amy Robsart may have rested. You may choose to track the shy Thames shore “through the Wytham flats, Red loosestrife and blond meadow-sweet among, And darting swallows and light water-gnats—” and, with the poet, learn to know the Fyfield tree, the wood which hides the daffodil: “What white, what purple fritillaries The grassy harvest of the river-fields, Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields, And what sedged brooks are Thames’s tributaries.” Whichever way you choose you will turn now and again to look back upon the spires and towers of Oxford and Radcliffe’s dome, clustering together among rich gardens and noble trees, watered by the winding, willow-fringed Cherwell and the silver stream of Isis, “rivulets,” as Wood quaintly phrases it, “which seem to the prying spectator as so many snakes sporting themselves therein.” And so gazing you will let your fancy roam and think of her past history and her future influence on thought and the affairs of State. Within fifty years of their first landing the Northern hordes had conquered the greater part of Britain. Mercia, the border kingdom of the marches, had been formed, embracing the site of Oxford; its heathen King Penda had lived and died, the Mercians had embraced Christianity, and Dorchester had become the seat of a Christian bishop. But it was not till the eighth century A.D. that the vill of Oxford, an unfortified border town on the confines of the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex, came into existence; it was not till the year 727, one hundred and thirty years after S. Augustine’s mission to England, that a religious community settled there. The history of that settlement is bound up with the story of S. Frideswide—Fritheswithe, “the Bond of Peace.” For although the details of the legend are evidently in part due to the imagination of the monastic chroniclers, yet there is no reason to doubt the main facts of time and place. That Frideswide, the daughter of an under-king named Didan, founded a nunnery at a spot where a bank of gravel ran up from what is now Christ Church Meadow, and offered a dry site, raised above the wandering, unbarred streams, set amid lush meadows untainted as yet by human dwellings, and fringed by the virgin forests that clad the surrounding hills, we need not hesitate to believe, or that here Didan presently built a little church, some traces of which yet remain in Christ Church Cathedral. For the rest, how Frideswide escaped by a miracle to Binsey and lived there in the woods, in dread of the hot courtship of a young and spritely prince; how that prince was miraculously deprived of his sight when about to assault the city in revenge for his disappointment, and how from that time forward disaster dogged the footsteps of any king who entered Oxford; how the virgin Frideswide returned at last to Oxford, and, after performing many miracles there, died and was buried in her church—are not all these things told at length in the charming prose of Anthony Wood? The Lady Chapel of the Cathedral, on the north side of the choir aisle, is the architectural illustration of this story in Oxford. It was enlarged in the thirteenth century, and has the early English pillars and vaulting of that period, but the eastern wall carries us back to S. Frideswide’s day. And on the floor is a recent brass which marks the spot where the bones of the virgin Saint are now supposed to rest. Here too is the Shrine of S. Frideswide—that shrine which used to be visited twice a year by the Vice-Chancellor and the principal members of the University in solemn procession “to pray, preach and offer oblations at her shrine in the Mother Church of University and town.” This is the site of S. Frideswide’s first church. The Lady Chapel is in a line with what was the ancient nave, the central apse of that church, and there, at the east end of it and of the adjoining aisle, are the rough rag-stone arches which were built for her, and which led, according to the ancient Eastern plan, into three apses. And inseparably connected with S. Frideswide too is the adjacent Latin Chapel, by virtue of that window designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones, one of the earliest and one of the most beautiful of the artist’s designs, so lovely in its conception that, if you take each picture separately, it seems like some perfect poem by Rossetti translated into colour by a mediæval craftsman. But take it as a whole and the effect is quite other than this. It is so full of subjects and dabs of bright colour that it is dazzling and almost unintelligible. Burne-Jones had not grasped, even if he had studied the glazier’s art. Apart from the fact that the great predominance of fiery reds offends the eye, the design is essentially one that has been made on paper and not in glass, drawn with pencil and brush and not in lead. Worked out on a flat, opaque surface the fussy effect of the window would not be foreseen; but the overcrowded and broken character of the design is painfully obvious when set up as a window. The scenes here depicted form an illustrated history of the story {6} {7} {8} of S. Frideswide. The splendid fourteenth-century glass of the Latin Chapel contains also, besides figures of S. Catherine, the patroness of students in divinity, two representations of S. Frideswide. This chapel was built on to the rest at two periods; the first bay from Oxford Cathedral (Interior) Oxford Cathedral (Interior) the west is part of the transept aisle, the second bay belongs to the thirteenth century, the third and fourth were added in the fourteenth, from which period the decorated vaulting, with its bosses of roses and water-lilies, dates. The chapel was used till recently as a lecture- room by the Regius Professor of Divinity. The carved wood-work of the stalls and desks should be noticed. Didan’s or S. Frideswide’s Church was burnt on S. Brice’s Day, 1002, when the general massacre of Danes, which Æthelred the Unready, in a fit of misguided energy, had ordered to take place on that day throughout the country, was carried out at Oxford. The Danes in their extremity rushed to S. Frideswide’s Church, burst open the doors, and held the tower as a fortress against their assailants. The citizens failed to drive them out. As a last resource they set fire to the wooden roof and burned the church, “together with the ornaments and books thereof.” The Danes perished in the burning. Nothing now remains, save the parts that I have mentioned, of the church which was then gutted. But after the massacre the King made a vow that he would rebuild S. Frideswide’s, and the church he then began to erect forms the main part of the Cathedral as we see it to-day. Those arches, so plain and massive, over the western bays of the north choir aisle and Lady Chapel, were part of Æthelred’s transept aisle; the south transept aisle, now S. Lucy’s Chapel; the walls of the south choir aisle; the pillars of the choir and the open triforium of the south transept—these are the chief portions of the Cathedral which are thought to be unrestored parts of Æthelred’s work. It is now generally admitted that the Saxons, at the date of the Conquest, were more advanced than the Normans in the fine arts. Their sculpture was more highly finished and their masonry more finely jointed. We need not therefore be surprised at the excellence and ornamentation of the work in Oxford Cathedral, which is attributed to this date, nor, when we remember that Æthelred was the brother-in-law of Richard-le-bon, the great church-builder of Normandy, need we wonder at the unwonted magnificence of Æthelred’s plans for this church. The Danes soon took ample revenge for that treacherous massacre. They ravaged Berkshire and burned Oxford (1009). The climax came when Sweyn arrived. The town immediately submitted to him, and “he compelled the men of Oxford and Winchester to obey his laws” (Saxon Chronicle). Æthelred’s work was interrupted by the coming of Sweyn, and the King’s flight to Richard’s court in Normandy. In the south- east pier of the Cathedral tower there is a noticeable break in the masonry, which marks, it is supposed, the cessation of building that coincided with the close of Anglo-Saxon rule. When Sweyn died Æthelred returned, and for three years held Cnut in check. The work at S. Frideswide’s was probably resumed then. The richly carved, weather-beaten capitals of the choir, with their thick abaci and remarkable ornamentation, partly Saxon and partly Oriental in character, are eloquent of the exile of Æthelred and of the influence of the Eastern monks whom he met at the court of his brother in Normandy. And they speak not only of Byzantine influence, passing through Normandy into England, but also, through the existing traces of exposure to rain and wind, of the ruinous state into which the church had fallen when “whether by the negligence of the Seculars or the continuall disturbance of the expelled Regulars, it was almost utterly forsaken and relinqueshed, and the more especially because of that troublesome warre betweene King Harold and William the Conqueror.” {9} {10} For the nunnery which S. Frideswide founded had soon ceased to be a nunnery. By the irony of fate, soon after her death, the nuns were removed, and the priory was handed over to a chapter of married men, the Secular Canons, whom S. Dunstan, in his turn, succeeded in suppressing. But the nuns never came back, for, after many vicissitudes, the priory was finally restored, under Henry I. (1111), as a house of the Canons Regular of S. Augustine. Some have thought that Guimond, the first prior (1122), was responsible for the building of the whole church, but he more probably found enough to do in re-establishing order and restoring the monastic buildings. His successor, Robert of Cricklade, perhaps it was who restored Æthelred’s church on the old plan and inserted most of the later Norman work, especially the clerestory and presbytery. The triforium and clerestory in the nave (roofed in with sixteenth-century wood-work) give us an interesting example of the latest Norman or Transitional style. The clerestory consists of a pointed arch enriched with shafts at the angles, and supported on either side by low circular arches which form the openings of a wall passage. The arrangement of the triforium is remarkable. The massive pillars of the nave are alternately circular and octagonal. From their capitals, which are large, with square abaci, spring circular arches with well-defined mouldings. These are, in fact, the arches of the triforium, which is here represented by a blind arcade of two arches set in the tympanum of the main arch. The true arches of the nave spring from half capitals, set against the pillars, and are plain, with a circular moulding towards the nave. The crown of these arches is considerably below the main capitals of the pillars, from which the upper or triforium arches spring. The half capitals assist in carrying the vaulting of the aisles. The whole arrangement, rare on the Continent, is extremely unusual in England, but occurs, for instance, in the transept of Romsey Abbey. The pillars of the choir date, as has been said, from Æthelred’s day; the rest is twelfth-century restoration, save the rich and graceful pendent roof, which accords so strangely well with the robust Norman work it crowns. The clerestory was converted into Perpendicular, and remodelled to carry this elaborate vaulting, which should be compared with that of the old Divinity School, or Henry VII.’s Chapel at Westminster, and attributed, not in accordance with tradition to the time of Wolsey, but to the close of the fifteenth century. The very effective east end is a conjectural restoration of the old Norman design, and was the work of Sir Gilbert Scott, who also opened the lantern-story and made many other sweeping changes and restorations, necessitated by the previous restorations of seventeenth-century Dean Duppa, and the neglect of his successors. When Cricklade’s restoration was finished, or nearly so, it was decided, in order to revive the once so famous memory of S. Frideswide, to translate her relics from their obscure resting-place (probably the southernmost of the three Saxon apses) to some notable place in the church. The King, the Archbishop, many bishops, and many of the nobility and clergy gathered together to take part in this great ceremony. The bones of the Saint were taken up, set in a rich gilt coffin and placed on the north side of the choir. Miracles were wrought at the new shrine, and pilgrims crowded thither. The money brought in by these means was badly needed, both for the purpose of the restoration which had been in process, and which was further necessitated by the great fire which destroyed a large part of Oxford in 1190, and, whilst damaging the church, much injured the monastic buildings. The fine old Norman doorway of the Chapter house, which is attributed to Prior Guimond (1122), still bears the red marks of that fire. The Chapter house itself is a very perfect chamber of the early English period. The rich and graceful carving of the capitals, the bosses of the roof, and the curious corbels, the superb glass in the side windows, the beautiful arcade of five arches, pierced for light, which fills the entire east end, complete and confirm, so pure are they in style, so excellent in detail, the just proportions of this noble room. Early in the thirteenth century was built also the upper portion of the tower, and that lowly spire was added, which appears scarce Oxford Cathedral Oxford Cathedral {11} {12} {13} peeping above the College buildings, modestly calling attention to the half-concealed site of the smallest cathedral in England. Oxford is a city of towers, and domes, and steeples, all of which possess their own peculiar character and beauty. As different as possible from the perfect proportions of Magdalen Tower or the ornate magnificence of the elaborate spire of the University Church, this spire is low and simple—squat almost in appearance. Its lowliness is easily explained. It was perhaps the very first spire built in England. The masons were cautious, afraid of their own daring in attempting to erect so lofty a construction, octagonal, upon the solid base of the Norman lower story. In this first effort they did not dream of the tapering elegance of the soaring spire of Salisbury, any more than of the rich ornamentation, the profusion of exuberant pinnacles, the statues and buttresses, gargoyles, crockets and arabesques, with which their successors bedecked S. Mary’s or the Clocher Neuf of Chartres. Strength and security was their chief aim here, though the small turrets, terminating in pyramidal octagons, which surmount the angles of the tower, are the forerunners of that exuberant ornamentation. In 1289 the bones of S. Frideswide were again translated. They were put in a new and more precious shrine, placed near where the old one stood. Fragments of the marble base of this shrine have been found, pieced together and set up in the easternmost arch between the Lady Chapel and the north choir aisle. These fragments of a beautiful work are themselves beautiful; they are adorned with finely carved foliage, intended to symbolise S. Frideswide’s life when she took refuge in the woods. The story of the destruction of the shrine is a strange one. Before the Reformation the Church of S. Frideswide and her shrine had enjoyed a high reputation as a place of sanctity. Privileges were conceded to it by royal authority. Miracles were believed to be wrought by a virtue attaching to it; pilgrims from all parts resorted to it—among them Queen Catherine of Aragon. Such practices and privileges seemed to the zealous Reformers to call for summary interference. The famous shrine was doomed to destruction, and was actually destroyed. The fragments were used either at the time, or not long afterwards, to form part of the walls of a common well. The reliques of the Saint, however, were rescued by some zealous votaries, and carefully preserved in hope of better times. Meantime Catherine (the wife of Peter Martyr, a foreign Protestant theologian of high repute, who had been appointed Regius Professor of Theology) died, and was buried near the place lately occupied by the shrine. Over her grave sermons were preached, contrasting the pious zeal of the German Protestant with the superstitious practices that had tarnished the simplicity of the Saxon Saint. Then came another change. The Roman Church, under Mary Tudor, recovered a brief supremacy. The body of Peter Martyr’s wife was, by order of Cardinal Pole, contemptuously cast out of the church, and the remains of S. Frideswide were restored to their former resting-place. But it does not appear that any attempt was made to restore the shrine. Party zeal still prevailed. Angry contests continued between the adherents of the two parties even after the accession of Elizabeth. At length the authorities of Christ Church were commissioned to remove the scandal that had been caused by the inhuman treatment of Catherine Martyr’s body. On January 11th, 1562, the bones of the Protestant Catherine and the Catholic S. Frideswide were put together, so intermingled that they could not be distinguished, and then placed together in the same tomb: “Iam coeunt pietas atque superstitio.” Under the easternmost arch, between the Lady Chapel and the Latin Chapel, is the fine chantry tomb, an elaborately wrought and very beautiful example of Perpendicular workmanship, which is supposed to have been the third and more splendid shrine of S. Frideswide, or else to have served as a “Watching Chamber,” as it is Hall Stairway Christchurch Herbert Railton Oxford commonly called, to protect the gold and jewels which hung about the earlier shrine. Under the Prior Guimond there was certainly a school connected with the convent. Whatever the origin of the University may have been—and there are those who maintain that it sprang from the schools of S. Frideswide as naturally as that of Paris from the {14} {15} {16} {17} {18} {19} schools of Notre Dame—it is pleasant to remember, when you stand in the middle of Tom Quad, that you are on the site of this, the first educational institution of Oxford, just as when you stand in the Lady Chapel of the Cathedral you are on the site of the old priory, the mother church of the University and town. Another faint echo of the priory days may be traced in the annual Cakestall in S. Olds, which is a survival of the Fair of S. Frideswide that used to last seven days. During that time the keys of the city passed from mayor to prior, and the town courts were closed in favour of the Pie-Powder Court,[2] held by the steward of the priory for the redress of all disorders committed during the fair. The entrance to the Cathedral is through the two arches in the cloisters, directly opposite to you as you pass into Tom Quad beneath Tom Tower. This curious entrance reminds you at once of the peculiar position of the Cathedral as three parts College chapel. Tom Quad is the largest quadrangle in Oxford (264 by 261 feet), and was begun by Wolsey on a scale which is sufficient evidence of the extreme magnificence of his plans for “Cardinal’s College.” It was begun, but has never been finished. The shafts and marks of the arches, from which the vaults of the intended cloister were to spring, are, however, plainly visible. Of the old cloister of the monastery no trace remains save the windows and door of the chapter house; the fifteenth-century cloisters that do exist are not to be compared with those of New College or Magdalen. One side of them was destroyed by Wolsey to make room for the College Hall. On the south side of the cloister is the old library, which was formerly the refectory of the monastery. With the chapter house doorway it survives as a relic of the old conventual buildings, in quiet contrast to the splendour of the superb kitchen, and the still more magnificent hall, with its valuable collection of portraits. The vaulted chamber, which contains the staircase by which this hall is approached, is one of the most beautiful things in Oxford. The lovely fan-tracery of the vault and the central pillar were the work of “one Smith, an artificer from London,” and were built as late as 1640, in the reign of Charles II. It affords a striking instance of the fact in architectural history, that good Gothic persisted in Oxford long after the influence of Italian work had destroyed it elsewhere. To make room for this magnificent quadrangle of his the Cardinal also destroyed the three western bays of the Church of S. Frideswide. He had intended to build a new chapel along the north side of Tom Quad which should rival the chapel of King’s College at Cambridge. But this work was interrupted by his fall. The foundations of the chapel have been traced, and they show that the west end ran in a line with the octagonal turrets in S. Aldate’s Street, and the walls reached nearly to Fell’s passage into Peckwater. For its massive walls Wolsey used some of the stones from the demolished Osney Abbey. The building at the time of his fall had risen some feet above the ground. Dean Fell, it is supposed, used it as a quarry for the construction of his own quadrangle. Now, there had been constructed a new straight walk in the Meadows, and Fell, anxious to improve it, carted the chippings from his own work to lay on it. The chippings were white, so the walk got the name of White. This was corrupted at the end of the eighteenth century to Wide Walk, and hence to Broad Christ’s Church Christ’s Church Walk—its present name—which really describes it now better than the original phrase. The destruction of the western bays of the church by Wolsey accounts for the shortened aspect of the nave, slightly relieved though it is by the new western bay which serves as a sort of ante-chapel to the nave and choir which now form the College Chapel of Christ Church. But the appearance of the Cathedral owes something of its strangeness to the fact that it represents, in general plan, the design of King Æthelred’s Church reared upon the site of S. Frideswide’s. CHAPTER II {20} {21} {22} T Abingdon Abbey Abingdon Abbey THE MOUND, THE CASTLE AND SOME CHURCHES HE property of S. Frideswide’s Nunnery formed one of the chief elements in the formation of the plan of Oxford. The houses of the population which would spring up in connection with it were probably grouped on the slope by the northern enclosure wall of the nunnery, and were themselves bounded on the north by the road which afterwards became the High Street, and on the west by that which was afterwards named Southgate Street, then Fish Street, and is now known as S. Aldate’s. This road, giving access from Wessex to Mercia, was probably one of the direct lines from the north-west to London in the tenth century. It led down to the old fords over the shallows which once intersected the meadows of South Hincksey, and gave, as some suppose, its name to the town.[3] The fords were superseded by the old Grand Pont, and Grand Pont in turn by Folly Bridge. Folly Bridge, as it now stands, was built a little south of Grand Pont, the old river-course to the north having been filled up by an embankment. The river now marks the Shire boundary which was once marked hereabouts by the Shire Ditch. Crossing the bridge to the Berkshire shore, the road, wherein you may still trace the piers of the old Grand Pont “linked with many a bridge,” leads up to Hincksey. There the modern golf-links are, and the “lone, sky-pointing tree” that Clough and Arnold loved. And this road it was which, in the poetic imagination of Matthew Arnold, was haunted by the scholar gipsy. The main road leads over the hill, which is crowned by Bagley Wood, to Abingdon. That charming village, where once the great monastery stood, was separated in early days from the city by a great oak forest. Wandering therein, book in hand, a certain student, so the story runs, was met by a ferocious wild boar, which he overcame by thrusting his Aristotle down the beast’s throat. The boar, having no taste for such logic, was choked by it, and his head, borne home in triumph, was served up, no doubt, at table in the student’s hall with a sprig of rosemary in its mouth. The custom of serving a boar’s head on Christmas Day at Queen’s College, whilst the tabarder sang: “The Boar’s Head in hand bear I Bedecked with bays and rosemary, And I pray you masters merry be— Quotquot estis in convivio. Chorus—Caput apri defero Reddens laudes Domino,” etc., is said to have originated in that incident. S. Aldate’s Road, after leaving the river, skirted the enclosure of S. Frideswide, and gradually ascended the sloping gravel bank in a northerly direction. Here it was met by another road which, coming from the east, connected Oxford with the Wallingford district. The crossing of these roads came to be known as the Four Ways, Quadrifurcus, corrupted into Carfax. And Carfax was the second of the chief elements in the formation of Oxford. For at this point, as if to mark its importance in the history of the town, was erected S. Martin’s Church, which has always been the city church, and in the churchyard of which Town Councils (Portmannimotes) perhaps were held. It was founded under a Charter of Cnut (1034) by the wealthy and vigorous Abbey of Abingdon, which, together with the foundation at Eynsham, seems to have thrown the Monastery of S. Frideswide very much into the shade both as to energy and influence. The tower, restored by Mr T. G. Jackson, is the only remaining fragment of the old church. A modern structure was wisely removed in 1896 to broaden the thoroughfare. Two quaint figures, which in bygone days struck the quarters on the old church, have been restored to a conspicuous position on the tower. Shakespeare, who on his way to Stratford used to stop at the Crown Inn, a house then situated near the Cross in the Cornmarket, is said to have stood sponsor in the old church to Sir William Davenant in 1606. John Davenant, father of the poet and landlord of the Inn, was Mayor of Oxford. His wife was a very beautiful woman. Scandal reported that Shakespeare was more than godfather to Sir William. But if the tower be all that remains of the original structure, “S. Martin’s at Carfax” still commands the High Street, and, serene amidst the din of trams, of skurrying marketers and jostling undergraduates, recalls the days when the town was yet in the infancy of its eventful life. The third element in the formation of the place was the Mound. Mediæval towns usually began by clustering thickly round a stronghold, and there is reason to believe that at the beginning of the tenth century Oxford was provided with a fortress. In the year 912 Oxford is mentioned for the first time in authentic history. For there is an entry in the Saxon Chronicle to the effect that “This year died Æthelred, ealdorman of the Mercians, and King Edward took possession of London and Oxford and of all the lands which owed obedience thereto.” The Danes were ravaging the country. Mercia had been over-run by them the year before. The Chronicle for several years presents a record of the Danes attacking various places, and either Eadward or his sister Æthelflæd defending them and building fortresses for their defence. They fortified, for instance, Tamworth and Warwick and Runcorn, and at each of these places the common feature of fortification is a conical mound of earth. Take a tram from Carfax to the railway station, and stop at the County Courts and Gaol on your way. The County Gaol you need not visit, or admire its absurd battlements, but within the sham façade is the tower that remains from the Castle of Robert D’Oigli, and beside the tower is just such a conical mound of earth—the Castle Mound. Against raids and incursions Oxford was naturally protected on three sides. For the Thames on the west and south and the Cherwell on the east cut her off from the attack of land forces, whilst even against Danes coming up the Thames from Reading, marsh lands and minor streams within the belt of these outer waters protected her. For in those early days, when Nature had things almost {23} {24} {25} entirely her own way, there were many more branches of the river, many minor tributary streams flowing where now you see nothing but houses and streets. The Trill Mill stream, for instance, which left the main stream on the west of what is now Paradise Square, is now covered over for the greater part of its course; whilst the main stream, after passing beneath the road some seventy yards outside South Gate, gave off another stream running due south, parallel with the road to Folly Bridge, but itself evidently continued its own course across Merton Fields by the side of what is now Broad Walk, and finally found its way into the Cherwell. And besides this stream, which ran under S. Frideswide’s enclosure, there were, on the east, the minor streams which now enclose the Magdalen Walks. But what Oxford needed to strengthen her was some wall or fosse along the line occupied afterwards by the northern wall of the city, along the line, that is, of George Street, Broad Street and Holywell, and also some place d’armes, some mound, according to the fashion of the times, with accompanying ditches. With these defences it seems probable that she was now provided. Thus fortified Oxford becomes the chief town of Oxfordshire, the district attached to it. And during the last terrible struggle of England with the Danes its position on the borders of the Mercian and West-Saxon realms seems for the moment to have given it a political importance under Æthelred and Cnut strikingly analogous to that which it acquired in the Great Rebellion. After Sweyn’s death Oxford was chosen as the meeting-place of the great gemot of the kingdom. The gemots, which were now and afterwards held at Oxford, were probably held about the Mound, where houses were erected for the royal residence. In one of these Æthelweard, the King’s son, breathed his last; one was the scene of another dastardly murder of Danes, when Eadric (1015) ensnared Sigeferth and Morkere into his chamber, and there slew them. And here it was, according to Henry of Huntingdon, that King Edmund, who had been making so gallant a struggle against the conquering Cnut, was murdered by Eadric’s son. Eadric, we know, was a traitor, and well-skilled in murders at Oxford. He, when his son had stabbed Edmund by his directions, came to Cnut and Cornmarket Street Cornmarket Street “saluted him, saying, ‘Hail, thou art sole king.’ When he had laid bare the deed done, the King answered, ‘I will make thee on account of thy great deserts higher than all the tall men of England.’ And he ordered him to be beheaded and his head to be fixed on a pole on the highest tower of London. Thus perished Edmund, a brave king.” And Cnut, the Dane, reigned in his stead. Beneath the shadow of the Mound, built to repel the Danish incursions, the Danish King now held an assembly of the people. At this gemot “Danes and Angles were unanimous, at Oxford, for Eadgar’s law.” The old laws of the country were, then, to be retained, and his new subjects were reconciled to the Danish King. But these subjects, the townsmen of those days, are but dim and shadowy beings to us. It is only by later records that we see them going on pilgrimage to the shrines of Winchester, or chaffering in their market-place, or judging and law-making in their husting, their merchant-guild regulating trade, their reeve gathering his King’s dues of tax or honey, or marshalling his troop of burghers for the King’s wars, their boats floating down the Thames towards London and paying the toll of a hundred herrings in Lent-tide to the Abbot of Abingdon by the way. For the river was the highway, and toll was levied on it. In Edward the Confessor’s time, in return for the right of making a passage through the mead belonging to Abingdon, it was agreed that all barges that passed through carrying herrings during Lent should give to the cook of that monastery a hundred of them, and that when the servant of each barge brought them into the kitchen the cook should give him for his pains five of them, a loaf of bread and a measure of ale. In the seventeenth century the river had become so choked that no traffic was possible above Maidenhead till an Act was passed for the re-opening of it. It was at Oxford that a great assembly of all the Witan was held to elect Cnut’s successor Harold, and at Oxford, so pernicious a place for kings, that Harold died. At Oxford again when the Northumbrian rebels, slaying and burning, had reached it (1065), the gemot was held which, in renouncing Tostig, came to the decision, the direct result of which was to leave England open to the easy {26} {27} {28} conquest of William of Normandy when he landed in the following year. Five years later we find Robert D’Oigli in peaceful possession of Oxford, busy building one of those Norman castles, by which William made good his hold upon England, strongholds for his Norman friends, prisons for rebellious Englishmen. The river he held by such fortresses as this at Oxford, and the Castles of Wallingford and Windsor. Oxford had submitted without resistance to the Conqueror. There is no evidence that she suffered siege like Exeter or York, but many historians, Freeman among them, state that she was besieged. They have been misled by the error of a transcriber. Savile printed Urbem Oxoniam, for Exoniam, in his edition of “William of Malmesbury,” and the mischief was done. A siege at this time has been supposed to explain a remarkable fact which is recorded in the Domesday Survey. “In the time of King Edward,” so runs the record of Domesday Book: “Oxeneford paid for toll and gable and all other customs yearly—to the king twenty pounds, and...