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Title: Oxford and Its Story

Author: Cecil Headlam

Illustrator: Fanny Railton
Herbert Railton

Release date: July 13, 2014 [eBook #46274]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OXFORD AND
ITS STORY ***

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Preface
Contents
List of Illustrations
Index
(etext transcriber's note)

OXFORD
AND ITS STORY

Oxford Castle (Photogravure)

OXFORD

AND ITS STORY
BY

CECIL HEADLAM, M.A.
AUTHOR OF “NUREMBERG,” “CHARTRES,”
ETC. ETC.

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

T 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
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.

I 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 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

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 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 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)

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.”

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

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 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

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

THE MOUND, THE CASTLE AND SOME CHURCHES

T 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
Abingdon Abbey
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 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

“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 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
six measures of honey, and to Earl Algar ten pounds, besides his mill within the [city]. When the king
went out to war, twenty burgesses went with him in lieu of the rest, or they gave twenty pounds to the
king that all might be free. Now Oxeneford pays sixty pounds at twenty-pence to the ounce. In the
town itself, as well within the wall as without, there are 243 houses that pay geld, and besides these
there are 478 houses unoccupied and ruined (tam vastæ et destructæ) so that they can pay no geld.
The king has twenty wall mansions, which were Earl Algar’s in the time of King Edward, paying
both then and now fourteen shillings less twopence; and one mansion paying sixpence, belonging to
Shipton; another paying fourpence, belonging to Bloxham; a third paying thirty pence, belonging to
Risborough; and two others paying fourpence, belonging to Twyford in Buckinghamshire; one of

these is unoccupied. They are called wall mansions because, if there is need and the king command
it, they shall repair the wall.... All the burgesses of Oxeneford hold in common a pasture outside the
wall that brings in six shillings and eightpence.... If any stranger who chooses to live in Oxeneford,
and has a house, dies there without relatives, the king has all that he leaves.”

The extraordinary proportion of ruined and uninhabited houses
enumerated in this record, however, was probably due not to any siege by
the Normans and not mainly to harsh treatment at their hands, but to the
ravaging and burning of that rebellious band of Northumbrians who had
come upon Oxford “like a whirlwind” in 1065. Robert D’Oigli himself is
recorded to have had
“forty-two inhabited houses as well within as without the wall. Of these sixteen pay geld and
gable, the rest pay neither, on account of poverty; and he has eight mansions unoccupied and thirty
acres of meadow near the wall and a mill of ten shillings. The whole is worth three pounds and for
one manor held he holds with the benefice of S. Peter....” (sentence incomplete).

These houses belonged wholly to Holywell Manor,[4] and the mill
referred to is no doubt that known as Holywell Mill, supplied with water
from the Cherwell.
Thus Domesday Book gives us a glimpse of a compact little town within
a vallum, half a mile from east to west, and a quarter of a mile south to
north. We may think of the gravel promontory as covered with houses and
their gardens, and inhabited by some thousand souls.
A market-place there would have been at or near Carfax, and fairs must
have been held there, though we have no mention of them till the reign of
Henry I.
The “wall” of the enceinte, which, according to Domesday Book, the
inhabitants of the mural mansions were compelled to repair, was probably a
vallum of earth faced with stone, protected by a deep ditch in front, and
surmounted by wood-work to save the soldiers from arrows.
D’Oigli, we may presume, put the existing fortifications of the town in
order.
The fortifications, which were constructed in the reign of Henry III.,
followed in the main the line of the vallum repaired by D’Oigli. They
consisted of a curtain wall and outer ditch, protected by a parapet and by
round towers placed at regular intervals and advanced so as to command
besiegers who might approach to attack the wall. There were staircases to
the top of the towers. A good idea of them and the general scheme of the
fortifications may be obtained by a visit to the fragment of the city wall

which yet remains within the precincts of New College. The Slype, as it is
called, forms a most picturesque approach to New College Gardens, and the
old-bastioned wall forms part of the boundary between the New College
property and Holywell Street. It is indeed owing to this fact that the wall
still remains there intact, for the licence to found a College there was
granted to William of Wykeham on condition of keeping the city wall in
repair and of allowing access to the mayor and burgesses once in three
years to see that this was done, and to defend the wall in time of war. From
New College the city wall ran down to the High Street.[5]
The East Gate Hotel, facing the new schools, marks the site of the old
entrance to the city hereabouts. It is a recent construction in excellent taste
by Mr E. P. Warren. From this point the wall ran on to Merton, and thence
to Christ Church. The south wall of the Cathedral chapter house is on the
line of the old city wall. It is said that some of the old wall was taken down
for the erection

The Bastion and Ramparts in New College

of the College Hall. Along the north side of Brewer Street (Lambard’s Lane,
Slaying Lane or King’s Street) are here and there stones of the city wall, if
not remnants of the walling. At the extreme end of Brewer Street the arch of
Slaying Lane Well is just visible, once described as “under the wall.”
The south gate spanned S. Aldate’s, close to the south-west corner of
Christ Church; Little Gate was at the end of Brewer Street, and the west
gate was in Castle Street, beyond the old Church of S. Peter-le-Bailly. From
the south gate faint traces in “The Friars” indicate its course, and the
indications are clear enough by New Inn Hall Street, Ship Inn Yard and
Bullock’s Alley. Cornmarket Street was crossed by S. Michael’s Church,
where stood the north gate. The gate house of the north gate was used as the
town prison. It rejoiced in the name of Bocardo, jestingly so called from a
figure in logic; for a man once committed to that form of syllogism could
not expect to extricate himself save by special processes.

Old bastions and the line of the ditch are found
behind the houses opposite Balliol College. The site of
Balliol College was then an open space, and Broad Street
was Canditch. This name was derived by Wood from
Candida Fossa, a ditch with a clear stream running along
it. Wood’s etymology is not convincing. Mr Hurst has
suggested a more likely derivation in Camp Ditch. As a
street name it reached from the angle of Balliol to Smith
Gate. An indication of the old fosse, filled up, is to be
found in the broad gravel walk north of the wall near
New College. City Walls
From Bocardo the wall ran towards the Sheldonian
Theatre. The outer line of the passage between Exeter Chapel and the house
to the north of it was the line of the south face of the old city wall. A bastion
was laid bare in 1852 in the north quad of Exeter. The wall passed in a
diagonal line across the quadrangle south of the Clarendon Building, turned
northwards in Cat’s Street, and ran up to the octagonal Chapel of Our Lady
by Smith Gate. The remains of this little chapel, with a beautiful little
“Annunciation” in a panel over the south entrance, have recently been
revealed to the passer-by by the new buildings of Hertford College, between
which and the feeble mass of the Indian Institute it seems strangely out of
place.
From Smith Gate the wall returned to New College,
and so completed the circuit of the town. A reference to
the map will elucidate this bare narration of mine.
But to return to Robert D’Oigli, the Conqueror’s
Castellan. From what little we know of him, he would
appear to have been a typical Norman baron, ruthless, yet
superstitious, strong to conquer and strong to hold. Very
much the rough, marauding soldier, but gifted with an
instinct for government and order, he came over to the
conquest of England in the train of William the Bastard
and in the company of Roger D’Ivry, his sworn brother, to
Chapel of Our
whom, as the chronicler tells us, he was “iconfederyd and
Lady.
ibownde by faith and sacrament.” Oxfordshire was
committed to his charge by the Conqueror, to reduce to
final subjection and order. He seems to have ruled it in

rude soldierly fashion, enforcing order, tripling the taxation of the town and
pillaging without scruple the religious houses of the neighbourhood. For it
was only by such ruthless exaction that the work which William had

BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF OXFORD BY RALPH AGAS (1578): FROM THE ENGRAVING BY
WHITTLESEY (1728).

set him to do could be done. He had indeed been amply provided for, so far
as he himself was concerned, by the Conqueror, chiefly through a marriage
with a daughter of Wiggod of Wallingford, who had been cupbearer to
Edward the Confessor; but money was needed for the great fortress which
was now to be built to hold the town, after the fashion of the Normans, and
by holding the town to secure, as we have said, the river.
“In the year 1071,” it is recorded in the Chronicle of Osney Abbey, “was
built the Castle of Oxford by Robert D’Oigli.” And by the Castle we must
understand not the mound which was already there, nor such a castle as was
afterwards built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but at least the great
tower of stone which still exists and was intended to guard the western
approach to the Castle. S. George’s tower, for so it was called because it
was joined to the chapel of S. George’s College within the precincts, was
upon the line of the enceinte. The walls are eight feet four inches thick at

the bottom, though not more than four feet at the top. The doorway, which
is some twelve feet from the ground, was on the level of the vallum or wall
of fortification, and gave access to the first floor. There are traces of six
doorways above the lead roof, which gave access to the “hourdes.” These
were wooden hoardings or galleries that could be put up outside. They had
holes for the crossbows, and holes for the pouring down of stones, boiling
pitch or oil on to the heads of threatening sappers. They were probably
stored in the top room of the tower, which is windowless.
The construction of the staircase of the tower is very peculiar. Ascend it
and you will obtain a magnificent view of Oxford, of Iffley and Sandford
Lock, Shotover and the Chiltern Hills, Hincksey, Portmeadow, Godstow,
Woodstock and Wytham Woods.
On the mound close at hand there was, after D’Oigli’s day, a ten-sided
keep built in the style of Henry III. To reach the mound you go within the
gaol, and pass by a pathetic little row of murderers’ graves, sanded heaps,
distinguished by initials. Under the mound is a very deep well, covered over
by a groined chamber of Transitional design.
Five towers were added later to the Castle, as Agas’ map (1568) shows
us. After the Civil War, Colonel Draper, Governor of Oxford, “sleighted,” as
Wood expresses it, the work about the city, but greatly strengthened the
Castle. But in the following year (1651), when the Scots invaded England,
he, for some reason, “sleighted” the Castle works too. The five towers,
shown in Agas’ map, and other fortifications then disappeared. S. George’s
tower alone survives.
Stern and grim that one remaining fragment of the old Castle stands up
against the sky, a landmark that recalls the good government of the Norman
kings. But the most romantic episode connected with it occurred amidst the
horrors of the time when the weakness and misrule of Stephen, and the
endeavours of Matilda to supplant him, had plunged the country into that
chaos of pillage and bloodshed from which the Norman rule had hitherto
preserved it. After the death of his son, Henry I. had forced the barons to
swear to elect his daughter Matilda as his successor. But they elected
Stephen of Blois, grandson of the Conqueror, whose chief claim to the
Crown, from their point of view, was his weak character. In a Parliament at
Oxford (1135) he granted a charter with large liberties to the Church, but
his weakness and prodigality soon gave the barons opportunities of revolt.

Released from the stern control of Henry they began to fortify their castles;
in self-defence the great ministers of the late King followed their example.
Stephen seized the Bishops of Salisbury and Lincoln at Oxford, and forced
them to surrender their strongholds. The King’s misplaced violence broke
up the whole system of government, turned the clergy against him and
opened the way for the revolt of the adherents of Matilda. The West was for
her; London and the East supported Stephen. Victory at Lincoln placed
Stephen a captive in the hands of Matilda, and the

Oxford Castle

land received her as its “Lady.” But her contemptuous refusal to allow the
claims of the Londoners to enjoy their old privileges, and her determination
to hold Stephen a prisoner, strengthened the hand of her opponents. They
were roused to renew their efforts. Matilda was forced to flee to Oxford,
and there she was besieged by Stephen, who had obtained his release.
Stephen marched on Oxford, crossed the river at the head of his men,
routed the Queen’s supporters, and set fire to the city. Matilda shut herself

up in the Castle and prepared to resist the attacks of the King. But Stephen
prosecuted the siege with great vigour; every approach to the Castle was
carefully guarded, and after three months the garrison was reduced to the
greatest straits. Provisions were exhausted; the long-looked-for succour
never came; without, Stephen pushed the siege harder than ever. It seemed
certain that Matilda must fall into his hands. Her capture would be the
signal for the collapse of the rebellion. But just as the end seemed
inevitable, Matilda managed to escape in marvellous wise. There had been a
heavy fall of snow; so far as the eye could see from the Castle towers the
earth was hidden beneath a thick white pall. The river was frozen fast. The
difficulty of distinguishing a white object on this white background, and the
opportunity of crossing the frozen river by other means than that of the
guarded bridge, suggested a last faint chance of escape. Matilda’s courage
rose to the occasion. She draped herself in white, and with but one
companion stole out of the beleaguered Castle at dead of night, and made
her way, unseen, unheard through the friendly snow. Dry-footed she stole
across the river, and gradually the noise of the camp faded away into the
distance behind her. For six weary miles she stumbled on through the heavy
drifts of snow, until at last she arrived in safety at Wallingford.
The bird had flown, and the Castle shortly afterwards surrendered to the
baffled King (Gesta Stephani).
During this siege the people were deprived of the use of the Church of S.
George, and to supply their spiritual needs a new church sprang into
existence. It was dedicated to S. Nicholas, and afterwards to S. Thomas a
Becket. Of the original church, just opposite the L. & N.W. Railway
Station, part of the chancel remains. The tower is fifteenth century.
The Castle mill is mentioned in the Domesday Survey. The present mill
no doubt occupies the same site; its foundations may preserve some of the
same masonry as that which is thus recorded to have existed hereabouts
before the Conquest.
You will notice that the Castle occupies almost the lowest position in the
town, and remembering all the other Norman castles you have seen,
Windsor or Durham, Lincoln or William the Bastard’s own birth-place at
Falaise, the Oxford site may well give you pause, till you remember that the
position of the old tenth-century fort had been chosen as the one which best
commanded the streams against the Danes, whose incursions were mainly

made by means of the rivers. If Carfax had been clear, D’Oigli would have
built his castle at Carfax; but it was covered with houses and S. Martin’s;
and, shrinking from the expense that would have been involved, and the
outcry that would have been raised, if he had cleared the high central point
of the town, he was content to modify and strengthen the old fort. But as the
descent of Queen Street from Carfax threatened the Castle, if the town were
taken, there was no regular communication made between the Castle and
the town. A wooden drawbridge across the deep ditches that defended the
Castle led to the town, somewhere near Castle Street. This would be
destroyed in time of danger. No other entrance to the town was allowed on
this side. “All persons coming across the meadows from the West and all
the goods disembarked at the Hythe from the barges and boats would have
to be taken in at the North Gate of the town, the road passing along the
North bank of the City ditch and following, probably, exactly the same
course as that followed by George Street to-day” (Parker). And round about
the Castle itself an open space was preserved by the policy of the Castellan,
and known as the Bailly (ballium, outer court). The Church of S. Peter le
Bailly recalls the fact.
Study the history of most cathedrals and you will discover that, like
Chartres or Durham, “half house of God, half castle ‘gainst the Scot,” they
have served and were intended to serve at some period of their career as
fortresses as well as churches.
When Bishop Remigius removed the see from Dorchester to Lincoln, as
he did at this time (1070), Henry of Huntingdon writes: “He built a church
to the Virgin of Virgins, strong in a strong position, fair in a fair spot, which
was agreeable to those who serve God and also, as was needful at the time,
impregnable to an enemy.” The tower of S. Michael’s at North Gate is a
good example of this mingling of the sacred with the profane, and the
architectural feature of it is that it combines the qualities of a campanile
with those of the tower of the Castle. It was a detached tower, and not part
and parcel of the church which stood at the North Gate, as it is now. In the
fifteenth century the city wall was extended northwards so as to include the
church.
The tower is placed just where we should expect to find that the need of
fortification was felt. South and East, Oxford was now protected by the
Thames and the Cherwell as well as by her “vallum,” and on the west was
the Castle. But the North Gate needed protection, and D’Oigli built the

tower of S. Michael’s to give it, spiritual and temporal both. At a later date
there was erected a chapel, also dedicated to S. Michael, near the South
Gate, and with reference to this church and chapel and the Churches of S.
Peter in the East and in the West, there is a mediæval couplet which runs as
follows:
“Invigilat portæ australi boreæque Michael,
Exortum solem Petrus regit atque cadentem.”

“At North Gate and at South Gate too S. Michael guards the way,
While o’er the East and o’er the West S. Peter holds his sway.”

The military character of S. Michael’s tower is marked by that round-
headed doorway, which you may perceive some thirty feet from the ground
on the north side. Just as the blocked-up archways at the top of the Castle
tower once gave access to the wooden galleries which projected from the
wall, so this doorway opened on to a lower gallery which guarded the
approach to the adjoining gateway. On the south side of the tower you will
find traces of another doorway, the base of which was about twelve feet
from the level of the ground. It is reasonable to suppose that the tower
projected from the north side of the rampart, and that this doorway was the
means of communication between them. The other doorway, on the west
side, level with the street, gave access from the road to the basement story
of the tower.
Architecturally the tower may be said to be a connecting link between
the romanesque and Norman styles. The system of rubble, with long-and-
short work at the angles, has not yet given place to that of surface ashlar
masonry throughout, and the eight pilaster windows, it should be observed,
of rude stone-work carved with the axe, present the plain, pierced arches,
with mid-wall shafts, which preceded the splayed Norman window and
arches with orders duly recessed. The church itself adjoining the tower is of
various periods, chiefly fourteenth century. It was, together with S.
Mildred’s, united (in 1429) to All Saint’s Church, which then was made a
collegiate parish church by the foundation of Lincoln College adjoining.
Not only was Robert D’Oigli a builder of walls and towers, but, in the
end, of churches also. The Chronicle of Abingdon Abbey records the story
of his conversion.

“In his greed for gain, says the Chronicler, he did everywhere harass the churches, and especially
the Abbey of Abingdon. Amongst other evil deeds he appropriated for the use of the Castle garrison a
meadow that lay outside the walls of Oxford and belonged to the Abbey. Touched to the quick the
brethren assembled before their Altar and cried to Heaven for vengeance. Meantime, whilst day and
night they were thus calling upon the Blessed Mary, Robert fell into a grievous sickness in which he
continued many days impenitent, until one night he dreamed that he stood within the palace of a
certain great King. And before a glorious lady who was seated upon a throne there knelt two of the
monks whose names he knew and they said ‘Lady, this is he who seizes the lands of your church.’
After which words were uttered she turned herself with great indignation towards Robert and
commanded him to be thrust out of doors and to be led to the meadow. And two youths made him sit
down there, and a number of ruffianly lads piled burning hay round him and made sport of him.
Some tossed haybands in his face and others singed his beard and the like. His wife, seeing that he
was sleeping heavily, woke him up and on his narrating to her his dream she urged him to go to
Abingdon and restore the meadow. To Abingdon therefore he caused his men to row him and there
before the altar he made satisfaction.”

There are two points to be noted in this story. First, that the meadow in
question was doubtless that which bears the name of King’s Mead to this
day; second, that the river was a much used highway in those and in much
later times, ere money and Macadam, and afterwards George Stephenson,
had substituted roads and rails and made the water-way slow and no safer.
To return to our Chronicler.
“And after the aforesaid vision which he had seen, how that he was tortured by evil demons at
the command of the Mother of God, not only did he devote himself to the building of the Church of
S. Mary of Abingdon but he also repaired at his own expense other parish churches that were in a
ruined state both within and without the walls. A great bridge, also, was built by him on the North
side of Oxford (High or Hythe (= Haven) Bridge). And he dying in the month of September was
honourably buried within the Presbytery at Abingdon on the north side, and his wife lies in peace
buried on his left.”

Together with his sworn friend, Roger D’Ivry, he founded the “Church
of S. George in the Castle of Oxenford.” This church stood adjacent to the
Castle tower, but it was removed in 1805 to make room for the prison
buildings.[6]
Probably, also, D’Oigli founded a church, dedicated to S. Mary
Magdalen, situated just without the North Gate, and intended to supply the
spiritual wants of travellers and dwellers without the walls. The church was
on the site of the present Church of S. Mary Magdalen; but no trace of the
original work has been left by the early Victorian restorers. It passed with
the Church of S. George to Osney Abbey, and then with its patron to the
successors of the canons of S. Frideswide’s, the prebends or canons of
Christ Church.

D’Oigli probably built also the Church of S. Michael at the North Gate
and S. Peter’s within the East Gate; and as for his restorations, they may
have included the parish church, S. Martin’s, and also S. Mary’s and S.
Ebbe’s, which latter may possibly have been built in the time of Edward the
Confessor.
How very literally S. Peter’s guarded the east may be gathered by
inspecting the two turrets at the east end of the church. There were small
openings in these whence a watch could be kept over the streams and the
approach to East Gate.
Whether the crypt of this church, as we now have it, dates entirely from
D’Oigli’s time is a moot point. It may be that it does, but the actual
masonry, it will be noticed, the ashlar work, capitals and arches, are
superior to that of the Castle and S. Michael’s. The plan of the original crypt
of S. George’s in the Castle shows that it had, in accordance with the
general rule of eleventh-century work in this country, an apsidal
termination. The crypt of S. Peter’s, as built in D’Oigli’s day, was, it is
suggested, no exception. It had an apsidal termination which did not extend
so far towards the east as the present construction. But, as happened again
and again in the history of innumerable churches and cathedrals at

S. Peter’s in the East

home and abroad, of Chartres, Rochester, Canterbury, for instance, the crypt
was presently extended eastwards. The extension in the present case would
enable the small apse to be changed into a larger choir with a rectangular
east end. The result is, that looking eastwards, and noticing that there is no
apparent break between the wall of the crypt and the wall of the chancel
above, which evidently belongs to the middle of the twelfth century, you
would be inclined to attribute the whole crypt to that date, if you did not
notice the small doorways on either side and at the western end. Looking
westward, you see work which carries you back to the days when S.
Michael’s and the Castle tower were being built. For the three western
arches, two of them doorways now blocked up and the central one open,
indicate a type of crypt which is generally held not to have been used later
than the beginning of the twelfth century. The essential features of this type
were that the vault of the crypt was raised some feet above the level of the
floor of the nave, and that both from the north and south side of the nave
steps led down into the crypt. And in some cases there were central steps as
well, or at least some opening from the nave. Here then, as at Repton, you

have indications of this type, for behind each of the blocked-up doorways is
a passage leading to some steps or clear traces of steps, and the central
archway may have provided originally an opening to the nave, through
which a shrine may have been visible, or else a communication by central
steps.
The entrance to this remarkable crypt, with its vaulting of semi-circular
arches of hewn stone, is from the outside. The crypt has capitals of a
peculiar design to several of the shafts, and four of the bases ornamented
with spurs formed by the heads of lizard-shaped animals. The chancel and
the south doorway afford remarkably rich examples of the late Norman
style. The fifteenth-century porch, with a room over it, somewhat hides, but
has doubtless protected the latter. The early decorated tower, the exterior
arcading of the chancel, the unique groining of the sanctuary (“S. Peter’s
Chain,”) and the two beautiful decorated windows on the north, and the
early English arcade of the nave, are all worthy of remark in this interesting
church.
Of the old Church of S. Ebbe (S. Æbba was the sister of S. Oswald),
which was rebuilt in 1814 and again partially in 1869, nothing now remains
save the stone-work of a very rich late Norman doorway, which was taken
down and built into the south wall of the modern building.
The other church which is mentioned at this period is S. Aldate’s. Now,
nothing is known of the Saint to whom this church is supposed to have been
dedicated, and from whom, as we have seen, the street which runs from
Carfax to Folly Bridge borrows its name. In no ancient martyrology or
calendar does S. Aldate appear. It is quite possible that there was such a
Saint, and if there was, he would not be the only one who survives in our
memory solely by virtue of the churches dedicated to him. But the
corruption—S. Told’s—S. Old’s is found in thirteenth-century chartularies
and in popular parlance to-day. This corruption is curious, and may be
significant. S. Aldate’s Church at Oxford lies just within the old South Gate
of the town; the only other church of the same name lies just within the old
North Gate of Gloucester. In an old map of Gloucester this latter church is
called S. Aldgate’s; in an old map of Oxford the same spelling occurs. At
Oxford the street now known as S. Aldate’s was once called South Gate
Street. It seems likely, therefore, that Aldate represents a corruption from
Old Gate = Aldgate = Aldate, and that the name, when it had become so far
corrupted, was supposed to be that of a Saint. But the true meaning, as so

often happens, lived on, when men spoke with unconscious correctness of
S. Old’s.
The church itself, as it now stands, is chiefly the product of a restoration
in 1863,[7] but the south aisle was built in 1335 by Sir John Docklington, a
fishmonger who was several times mayor. Over it there used to be an upper
story which served as a library for the use of students in Civil Law who
frequented the neighbouring hall, Broadgates Hall, which became
Pembroke College in 1624, when Thomas Tesdale endowed it and named it
after Lord Pembroke the Chancellor, and King James assumed the honours
of founder. In the library the refectory of the old hall survives. The rest of
the front quadrangle was added in the seventeenth century and Gothicised
in the eighteenth. It was in a room over the gateway that Dr Johnson lived,
when Pembroke was “a nest of singing birds.” The eighteenth-century
chapel, decorated (1884) by Mr Kempe, and the new hall should tempt the
visitor into the back quadrangle.
In the days of Robert D’Oigli, then, Oxford was provided with no less
than eight churches, dedicated to S. Frideswide, S. Martin, S. George, S.
Mary Magdalen, S. Mary the Virgin, S. Peter, S. Michael and S. Ebbe. By
the end of the reign of Henry I. this number had been more than doubled.
And seeing that much church building is and always was a sign of
prosperity and security, the fact that eight new churches sprang up within so
short a time after the Norman Conquest may be taken to prove that under
her sheriffs and portreeves Oxford enjoyed good government and made
rapid progress in population and wealth. Of these eight or ten new churches
no trace remains of S. Mildred’s, save the pathway across the old
churchyard which survives in the modern Brasenose Lane; and the church
dedicated to S. Eadward the martyr, which lay between S. Frideswide’s and
the High, has likewise disappeared; the exact sites of the church of S.
Budoc, the Chapel of the Holy Trinity and of S. Michael at the South Gate,
cannot be identified; the Chapel of S. Clement, on the other side of
Magdalen Bridge, gave way to a fourteenth-century church, and was wholly
cleared away at the beginning of the nineteenth century; All Saint’s and S.
Peter’s, in the bailey of the Castle, were entirely rebuilt in the eighteenth
century, and the latter re-erected on another site in the nineteenth. The old
chancel arch in the Church of S. Cross (Holywell) dates from the end of the
eleventh century, and this church was probably founded about this time by

Robert D’Oigli or his successors for the benefit of the growing population
on Holywell Manor.
The present Church of S. Clement, on the Marston Road, near the new
Magdalen and Trinity Cricket Grounds, is an early Victorian imitation of
Norman style, and well described as the “Boiled Rabbit.”
The Castle tower, the tower of S. Michael’s, the crypt of S. Peter’s in the
East, Holywell and the Castle mill, the chancel of S. Cross, these are all
landmarks that recall the days when D’Oigli governed Oxford, and the
servants of William surveyed England and registered for him his new estate.
But there is one other item in the Domesday record which deserves to be
noticed:
“All burgesses of Oxford hold in common a pasture without the wall which brings in 6s. 8d.”

How many Oxford men realise, when they make their way to Port
Meadow to sail their centre-boards on the upper river, that this ancient
“Port” (or “Town”) Meadow is still set apart for its ancient purpose, that the
rights of the freemen of Oxford to have free pasture therein have been
safeguarded for eight hundred years by the portreeve or shire-reeve
(sheriff), annually appointed to fulfil this duty by the Portmannimot (or
Town Council)?
Robert D’Oigli died childless. He was succeeded by his nephew, the
second Robert, who had wedded Edith, a concubine of Henry I. She,
dwelling in the Castle, was wont to walk in the direction of what is now the
Great Western Railway Station and the cemetery, being attracted thither by
the “chinking rivulets and shady groves.”

Entrance Front Pembroke College

And it is said that there one evening, “she saw a great company of pyes gathered together on a
tree, making a hideous noise with their chattering, and seeming, as ‘twere, to direct their chatterings
to her.” The experience was repeated, and the Lady sent for her confessor, one Radulphus, a canon of
S. Frideswide’s, and asked him what the reason of their chattering might be. Radulphus, “the wiliest
pye of all,” Wood calls him, explained that “these were no pyes, but so many poor souls in purgatory
that do beg and make all this complaint for succour and relief; and they do direct their clamours to
you, hoping that by your charity you would bestow something both worthy of their relief, as also for
the welfare of yours and your posterity’s souls, as your husband’s uncle did in founding the College
and Church of S. George.” These words being finisht, she replied, “And is it so indeed? now de
pardieux, if old Robin my husband will concede to my request, I shall do my best endeavour to be a
means to bring these wretched souls to rest.” And her husband, as the result of her importunities,
“founded the monastery of Osney, near or upon the place where these pyes chattered (1129),
dedicating it to S. Mary, allotting it to be a receptacle of Canon Regulars of S. Augustine, and made
Radulphus the first Prior thereof.”

Osney was rebuilt in 1247. The Legate proclaimed forty days’
indulgence to anyone who should contribute towards the building of it. The
result was one of the most magnificent abbeys in the country. “The fabric of
the church,” says Wood, “was more than ordinary excelling.” Its two stately
towers and exquisite windows moved the envy and admiration of
Englishmen and foreigners alike. When, in 1542, Oxford ceased to belong

to the diocese of Lincoln, and the new see was created, Robert King, the
last Abbot of Osney, was made first Bishop of Osney. But it was only for a
few years that the bishop’s stool was set up in the Church of S. Mary. In
1546 Henry the VIII. moved the see to S. Frideswide’s, and converted the
priory, which Wolsey had made a college, into both college and cathedral.
And the Abbey of Osney was devoted to destruction. “Sir,” said Dr Johnson
when he saw the ruins of that great foundation, stirred by the memory of its
splendid cloister and spacious quadrangle as large as Tom Quad, its
magnificent church, its schools and libraries, the oriel windows and high-
pitched roofs of its water-side buildings, and the abbot’s lodgings, spacious
and fair, “Sir! to look upon them fills me with indignation!” Agas’ map
(1568) represents the abbey as still standing, but roofless; the fortifications
in 1644 accounted for the greater part of what then remained. The mean
surroundings of the railway station mark the site of the first Cathedral of
Oxford. The Cemetery Chapel is on the site of the old nave. A few tiles and
fragments of masonry, the foundations of the gateway and a piece of a
building attached to the mill, are the only remains that will reward you for
an unpleasant afternoon’s exploration in this direction. Better, instead of
trying so to make these dead stones live, to go to the Cathedral and there
look at the window in the south choir aisle, which was buried during the
Civil War and, thus preserved from the destructive Puritans, put up again at
the Restoration. This painted window, which is perhaps from the hand of
the Dutchman Van Ling (1634), represents Bishop King in cope and mitre,
and among the trees in the background is a picture of Osney Abbey already
in ruins. The bishop’s tomb, it should be added, of which a missing
fragment has this year been discovered, lies in the bay between the south
choir aisle and S. Lucy’s Chapel. But there is one other survival of Osney
Abbey of which you cannot long remain unaware. You will not have been
many hours in the “sweet city of the dreaming spires” before you hear the
“merry Christ Church bells” of Dean Aldrich’s[8] well-known catch ring
out, or the cracked B flat of Great Tom, booming his hundred and one
strokes, tolling the hundred students of the scholastic establishment and the
one “outcomer” of the Thurston foundation, and signalling at the same time
to all “scholars to repair to their respective colleges and halls” and to all the
Colleges to close their gates (9.5 P.M.).
And these bells, Hautclerc, Douce, Clement, Austin, Marie, Gabriel et
John, as they are named in the hexameter, are the famous Osney bells,

which were held to be the finest in England in the days when bell-founding
was a serious art and a solemn rite, when bells were baptized and anointed,
exorcised and blessed by the bishop, so that they might have power to drive
the devil out of the air, to calm tempests, to extinguish fire, and to recreate
even the dead. They are hung within the Bell-Tower (above the hall-
staircase of Christ Church), which Mr Bodley has built about the wooden
structure which contains them, and which he intended to surmount with a
lofty and intricate wooden superstructure.
But Tom is placed in his own tower, over the entrance from S. Aldate’s
into the great Quad to which he has given his name.
The lower story of Tom Tower was built by Wolsey (the Faire Gate it
was called, and the cardinal’s statue is over the gateway), but the octagonal
cupola which gives to it its characteristic appearance was added by Sir
Christopher Wren. Tom weighed 17,000 pounds, and bore the inscription:—
In Thomæ laude resono Bim Bom sine fraude,

but he was re-cast in 1680 (7 ft. 1 in. in diameter, and weighing over 7
tons). The inscription records:—
Magnus Thomas Clusius Oxoniensis renatus, Ap. 8, 1680.

Translated here, he has rung out, since the anniversary of the Restoration
on the 29th of May 1684, nightly without intermission, save on that night
some years ago when the undergraduates of Christ Church cut the rope as a
protest when they were not allowed to attend the ball given at Blenheim in
honour of the coming of age of the Duke of Marlborough, and curfew did
not ring that night.
There is one other monument in Oxford which is connected by popular
tradition with the last Abbot of Osney, and that is the exceedingly
picturesque old house[9] in S. Aldate’s. Richly and quaintly carved, this old
timber mansion is known as the Bishop’s Palace, and is said to have been
the residence of Bishop King, after the See was transferred from Osney to
Christ Church.
The town, we have seen, had been ruined,
and very many of the houses were “waste,”
when the Normans conquered England. But in
the new era of prosperity and security which
their coming gave to the land, in the sudden

development of industry and wealth which the
rule of the conquerors fostered, Oxford had her
full share. The buildings of which remnants or
records remain bear witness to the new order of
things.
Such works as those which we have
described could not then or now be done
without money. The transformation of Oxford at
this period, from a town of wooden houses, in
great part uninhabited, to a town of stone
houses, with a castle and many churches of
Gables in St Aldate’s stone, is an indication of wealth. And that
wealth was a product not only of the new régime
of order and security, but also of the new policy of the foreign kings.
The erection of stately castles and yet statelier Abbeys which followed
the Conquest, says Mr Green, the rebuilding of almost every cathedral and
conventual church, mark the advent of the Jewish capitalist. From this time
forward till 1289 the Jew was protected in England and his commercial
enterprise fostered. He was introduced and protected as a chattel of the
King, and as such exempt from the common law and common taxation of
Englishmen. In Oxford, as elsewhere, the Jews lived apart, using their own
language, their own religion and laws, their own peculiar commerce and
peculiar dress. Here the Great and Little Jewries extended along Fish Street
(S. Old’s) to the present Great Gate of Christ Church, and embraced a
square of little streets, behind this line, which was isolated and exempt from
the common responsibilities and obligations of the town. The church itself
was powerless against the Synagogue, which rose in haughty rivalry beside
the cloister of S. Frideswide. Little wonder if the Priory and Jewry were
soon at deadly feud. In 1185 we find Prior Phillip complaining of a certain
Deus-cum-crescat (Gedaliah) son of Mossey, who, presuming upon his
exemption from the jurisdiction of any but the King, had dared to mock at
the Procession of S. Frideswide. Standing at his door as the procession of
the saint passed by, the mocking Jew halted and then walked firmly on his
feet, showed his hands clenched as if with palsy and then flung open his
fingers. Then he claimed gifts and oblations from the crowd who flocked to
S. Frideswide’s, on the ground that such recoveries of limb and strength

were quite as real as any Frideswide had wrought. But no earthly power,
ecclesiastic or civil, ventured to meddle with Deus-cum-crescat.
The feud between Jewry and Priory lasted long. It culminated in 1268 in
a daring act of fanaticism, which incidentally provides a curious proof of
the strong protection which the Jews enjoyed, and of the boldness with
which they showed their contempt for the superstitions around them.
As the customary procession of scholars and citizens was returning on
Ascension Day from S. Frideswide’s, a Jew suddenly burst from the group
of his friends in front of the synagogue, and snatching the crucifix from its
bearer, trod it underfoot. But even in presence of such an outrage, the terror
of the Crown shielded the Jewry from any burst of popular indignation. The
King condemned the Jews of Oxford to make a heavy silver crucifix for the
University to carry in the processions, and to erect a cross of marble where
the crime was committed; but even this punishment was in part remitted,
and a less offensive place was allotted for the cross in an open plot by
Merton College.
But the time of the Jews had almost come. Their wealth and growing
insolence had fanned the flames of popular prejudice against them.
Protected by the kings whose policy it was to allow none to plunder them
but their royal selves, they reaped a harvest greater than even the royal
greed could reap.[10]
Their position as chattels of the King, outside the power of clergy or
barons, and as citizens of little towns within towns in whose life they took
no part except to profit by it, stirred the jealousy of the various classes.
Wild stories were circulated then, as on the Continent still, of children
carried off to be circumcised or crucified. The sack of Jewry after Jewry
was the sign of popular hatred and envy during the Barons’ war. Soon the
persecution of the law fell upon these unhappy people. Statute after statute
hemmed them in. They were forbidden to hold real property, to employ
Christian servants, and to move through the streets without two tell-tale
white tablets of wool on their breasts. Their trade, already crippled by the
competition of bankers, was annihilated by the royal order which bade them
renounce usury, under the pain of death. At last Edward, eager to obtain
funds for his struggle with Scotland, yielded to the fanaticism of his
subjects and bought the grant of a fifteenth from the clergy and laity at the

price of driving the Jews from his realm. From the time of Edward to that of
Cromwell no Jew touched English soil.
There is no reason to suppose with many historians that the Jews of
Oxford contributed through their books, seized at this time, to the
cultivation of physical and medical science, or that it was through the books
of the Rabbis that Roger Bacon was enabled to penetrate to the older world
of research. The traces which they have left in Oxford, save in the indirect
manner I have suggested, are not many. The rising ground, now almost
levelled, between the Castle and Broken Hayes, on the outer edge of the
Castle ditch on the north side, was long known as the Mont de Juis, but
being the place of execution, the name may more likely be derived from
justice than from Jews. A more interesting reminiscence is provided by the
Physic Garden opposite Magdalen College.
Henry II. had granted the Jews the right of burial outside of every city in
which they dwelt. At Oxford their burial place was on the site where S.
John’s hospital was afterwards built, and was then transferred to the place
where the Physic Garden now stands.
This garden, the first land publicly set apart for the scientific study of
plants, was founded by Henry, Earl of Danby (1632), who gave the land for
this purpose. Mr John Evelyn visiting it a few years later was shown the
Sensitive Plant there for a great wonder. There also grew, he tells us, canes,
olive trees, rhubarb, but no extraordinary curiosities, besides very good
fruit. Curious, however, the shapes of the clipped trees were, if we may
believe Tickell, who writes enthusiastically:
“How sweet the landskip! where in living trees,
Here frowns a vegetable Hercules;
There famed Achilles learns to live again
And looks yet angry in the mimic scene;
Here artful birds, which blooming arbours shew,
Seem to fly higher whilst they upwards grow.”

The gateway was designed by Inigo Jones, and the figures of Charles I.
and II. were added later, the expense being defrayed out of the fine levied
upon Anthony Wood for his libel upon Clarendon.
About the same time that Osney Abbey was finished the palace which
Henry Beauclerk had been building at Beaumont, outside the north gate of
the city, was finished also. To satisfy his love of hunting he had already

(1114) constructed a palace and park at Woodstock. Within the stone walls
of the enclosure there he nourished and maintained, says John Rous, lions,
leopards, strange spotted beasts, porcupines, camels, and such like animals,
sent to him by divers outlandish lords.
The old palace at Beaumont lay to the north-east of Worcester College.
Its site, chosen by the King “for the great pleasure of the seat and the
sweetness and delectableness of the air,” is indicated by Beaumont Street, a
modern street which has revived the name of the palace on the hill,—Bellus
mons.
When not occupied with his books or his menagerie, the Scholar-King
found time to grant charters to the town, and he let to the city the collective
dues or fee-farm rent of the place.
Henry II. held important councils at Beaumont. The one romance of his
life is connected with Woodstock and Godstow.
One of the most charming of the many beautiful excursions by road or
river from Oxford takes you to the little village of Godstow,

“Through those wide fields of breezy grass
Where black-winged swallows haunt the glittering Thames.”

To sail here from Folly Bridge or the Upper River, to fish here, to play
bowls or skittles here, to eat strawberries and cream here, has for centuries
been the delight of Oxford students.
“So on thy banks, too, Isis, have I strayed
A tasselled student, witness you who shared
My morning walk, my ramble at high noon,
My evening voyage, an unskilful sail,
To Godstow bound, or some inferior port,
For strawberries and cream. What have we found
In life’s austerer hours delectable
As the long day so loitered?”

Just opposite the picturesque old Trout Inn and the bridge which spans
the river here you may see an old boundary wall, enclosing a paradise of
ducks and geese, at one corner of which is a ruined chapel with a three-light
perpendicular window. These are the only remaining fragments of the once
flourishing Nunnery, which was the last home of Rosamund, Rosa Mundi,
the Rose of the World.
During his residence at Oxford, Henry granted the growing city an
important charter, confirming the liberties they had enjoyed under Henry I.,
“and specially their guild merchant, with all liberties and customs, in lands and in goods, pastures
and other accessories, so that any one who is not of the guildhall shall not traffic in city or suburbs,
except as he was wont at the time of King Henry, my grandfather. Besides I have granted them to be
quit of toll and passenger tax, and every custom through all England and Normandy, by land, by
water, by sea-coast, by land and by strand. And they are to have all other customs and liberties and
laws of their own, which they have in common with my citizens of London. And that they serve me
at my feast with those of my Butlery, and do their traffic with them, within London and without, and
everywhere.”

Oxford then (1161) enjoyed customs and liberties in common with
London; her charter was copied from that of the Londoners, and on any
doubtful matter she was bound to consult the parent town. She was soon
provided with aldermen, bailiffs, and chamberlains, whose titles were
borrowed from the merchant guild, and with councilmen who were elected
from the citizens at large. The Mayor was formally admitted to his office by
the Barons of the Exchequer at Westminster, and on his return thence, he
was met always by the citizens in their liveries at Trinity Chapel, without

Eastgate, where he stayed to return thanks to God for his safe return, and
left an alms upon the altar.
The merchant guild was originally distinct from the municipal
government, though finally the Guildhall became the common hall of the
city. In practice the chief members of the merchant guild would usually be
also the chief members of the Court-leet. The business of the merchant
guild was to regulate trade. Its relation to the craft guilds is analogous to
that which exists between the University and the Colleges.
The Crafts, to which, as to the freedom of the city, men obtained
admission by birth, apprenticeship, or purchase, were numerous, flourishing
and highly organised. Every trade from cordwainers to cooks, from tailors,
weavers, and glovers to butchers and bakers, was a brotherhood, with arms
and a warden, beadle, and steward of its own, and an annually elected
headmaster.
The various Guilds had special chapels in the different churches where
they burnt candles and celebrated mass, on particular days. The glovers held
mass on Trinity Monday in All Saints’ Church; the tailors in the same
church, and they also founded a chantrey in S. Martin’s. “A token of this
foundation is a pair of tailor’s shears painted in the upper south window of
the south aisle” (Wood). The cooks celebrated their chief holiday in
Whitsun week, when they showed themselves in their bravery on
horseback.
The tailors had their shops in Wincheles Row, and they had a custom of
revelling on the vigil of S. John the Baptist.
“Caressing themselves with all joviality in meats and drinks they would in the midst of the night
dance and take a circuit throughout all the streets, accompanied by divers musical instruments, and
using some certain sonnets in praise of their profession and patron.”

But such customs led to disturbances and were finally prohibited. The
barbers, a company which existed till fifty years ago, maintained a light in
Our Lady’s Chapel at S. Frideswide’s. Some of the regulations by which
they bound themselves when they were incorporated by order of the
Chancellor in 1348 are typical. The barbers, it should be added, were the
mediæval physicians too.
Their ordinances provided that no person of that craft should work on a
Sunday or shave any but such as were to preach or do a religious act on
Sundays. No servant or man of the craft should reveal any infirmity or

secret disease he had to his customers or patients. A master of the craft was
to be chosen every year, to whom every one of his craft should be obedient
during his year of office. Every apprentice that was to set up shop after his
time was expired should first give the master and wardens with the rest of
the society a dinner and pay for one pound of wax, and that being done, the
said master and wardens with three other seniors of the craft should bring
him to the chancellor upon their shoulders, before whom he was to take his
oath to keep all the ordinations and statutes of the craft, and pay to Our
Lady’s box eightpence and the like sum to the chancellor. The same
procedure must be observed by any foreigner that had not been prenticed in
Oxford but desired to set up a shop to occupy as barber, surgeon, or waferer
or maker of singing bread. All such as were of the craft were to receive at
least sixpence a quarter of each customer that desired to be shaved every
week in his chamber or house. If any member of the craft should take upon
him to teach any person not an apprentice, he should pay 6s. 8d., whereof
3s. 4d. should go to the craft, 1s. 8d. to the chancellor, and 1s. 8d. to the
proctors. Rules are also given for the observance of the barbers’ annual
holiday and the election of their master.
Stimulated by the presence of the kings without its walls and the growth
of the university within, trade flourished so greatly that it was soon
necessary to regulate it by minute provisions. In the reign of Edward II.
(1319) the mayor and bailiffs were commanded to “prevent confusion in the
merchandising of strangers, and those who were not free of any guild from
thrusting out those who were.” All traders and sellers who came to Oxford
on market days—Wednesdays and Saturdays—were to know each one their
places.
“The sellers of straw, with their horses and cattle that bring it,” so ran the regulation, “shall stand
between East Gate and All Saints’ Church, in the middle of the King’s Highway. The sellers of wood
in carts shall stand between Shidyard (Oriel) Street and the tenement of John Maidstone and the
tenement on the east side of the Swan Inn (now King Edward’s Street, the ugly row of smug,
commonplace houses which has been erected on the site of Swan Yard). The sellers of bark shall
stand between S. Thomas’ Hall (Swan Inn) and S. Edward’s Lane (Alfred Street). The sellers of hogs
and pigs shall stand between the churches of S. Mary and All Saints; the ale sellers between S.
Edward’s Lane and the Chequer Inn; the sellers of earthen-pots and coals by the said lane of S.
Edward on the north side of the High Street. The sellers of gloves and whitawyers (dresses of white
leather) shall stand between All Saints’ Church and the house on the west side of the Mitre Inn; the
furriers, linen and woollen drapers by the two-faced pump (which perhaps stood on the site of the
later conduit at Carfax. This conduit was erected in 1616 and water brought to it from the hill springs
above North Hincksey. It was removed in 1787 and presented to Earl Harcourt, who re-erected it at

Nuneham Park some five miles from Oxford, where it may still be seen, on a slope commanding an
extensive view of the Thames Valley between Abingdon and Oxford.)
“The bakers,” the regulation continued, “shall stand between Carfax and North Gate, and behind
them the foreign sellers of fish and those that are not free or of the guild. The tanners shall stand
between Somner’s Inn and Carfax; the sellers of cheese, milk, eggs, beans, new peas and butter from
the corner of Carfax towards the Bailly; the sellers of hay and grass at the Pillory; the cornsellers
between North Gate and Mauger Hall (the Cross Inn).”

Besides these market-stands the permanent trades and resident guilds
had distinct spheres allotted to them. The cutlers, drapers, cooks and
cordwainers had their special districts; the goldsmiths had their shops in All
Saints’ parish, the Spicery and Vintnery[11] lay to the south of S. Martin’s;
Fish Street extended to Folly Bridge, the Corn Market stretched away to
North Gate, the stalls of the butchers ranged in their Butchers’ Row along
the road to the Castle (Queen’s Street). As for the great guild of weavers,
there was a wool market in Holywell Green. Part of the ground since
included in Magdalen College Grove was known as Parry’s Mead, and here
twenty-three looms were working at once, and barges came up to it on the
Cherwell.
Thus then Oxford had attained to complete municipal self-government.
She stood now in the first rank of municipalities. Her political importance is
indicated by the many great assemblies that were held there. The great
assembly under Cnut had closed the struggle between Englishman and
Dane; that under Stephen ended the conquest of the Norman, whilst that
under Henry III. begins the regular progress of constitutional liberty. In
1265, Simon de Montfort issued writs from Woodstock summoning the
famous parliament to which towns sent members for the first time. Oxford
no doubt was among the number, but the sheriff’s returns are lost and it is
not till 1295 that the names of two burgesses elected to represent her in the
national council are recorded. The University did not obtain members until
the first Parliament of James I. (1609), although her advice had often been
consulted by kings and parliaments before.[12] So far, then, we have
followed the growth of a town of increasing political and commercial
importance. We have now to trace the growth within its borders of a new
and rival body, which was destined, after a century or more of faction and
disorder, to humble her municipal freedom to the dust.

CHAPTER III

THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY

T HE chroniclers of every mediæval town like to begin from Jove—or
Genesis. The Oxford historians are no exception.
Famous antiquaries of ancient days carried back the date of the city
to fabulous years. Wood gives the year 1009 B.C. as the authentic date,
when Memphric, King of the Britons, built it and called it Caer Memphric.
But these famous antiquaries, as we shall see, had an axe to grind.
Whatever the origin of Oxford may have been, a few bronze weapons
and some pottery, preserved in the Museum, are the only remains of the
British period that have been discovered. Great as were the natural
advantages of the place, lying as it does on the banks of the chief river of
the country at a point where a tributary opens up a district to the north, it
would yet seem that there was no British settlement of importance at
Oxford, for it was dangerous borderland between the provinces into which
Britain was divided, liable to frequent hostile incursions, and therefore left
uninhabited. And this would seem to be the reason why, when the road-
making Romans were driving their great streets through the neighbourhood,
they left this seductive ford severely alone.
The first chronicler to associate Oxford with the name of King
Memphric was John Rous, an imaginative historian, no respecter of facts,
who died, full of years and inventions, in 1491. Hear him discourse in his
fluent, pleasantly circumstantial style:
“About this time Samuel the servant of God was Judge in Judea, and King Magdan had two sons,
that is to say Mempricius and Malun. The younger of the two having been treacherously slain by the
elder, the fratricide inherited the kingdom. In the twentieth year of his reign, he was surrounded by a
large pack of very savage wolves, and being torn and devoured by them, ended his existence in a
horrible manner. Nothing good is related of him except that he begot an honest son and heir,
Ebrancus by name, and built one noble city which he called from his own name Caer-Memre, but
which afterwards in course of time was called Bellisitum, then Caerbossa, at length Ridohen, and last
of all Oxonia, or by the Saxons Oxenfordia, from a certain egress out of a neighbouring ford. There
arose here in after years an universal and noble seat of learning, derived from the renowned
University of Grek-lade.
“It is situated between the rivers Thames and Cherwell which meet there. The city, just as
Jerusalem, has to all appearance been changed; for as Mount Calvary, when Christ was crucified, was

just outside the walls of the city, and now is contained within the circuit of the walls, so also there is
now a large level space outside Oxford, contiguous to the walls of the town, which is called
Belmount, which means beautiful mount, and this in a certain way agrees with one of the older
names of the city before named and recited; that is to say Bellisitum; whence many are of opinion
that the University from Greklade was transferred to this very Bellus Mons or Bellesitum before the
coming of the Saxons and while the Britons ruled the island, and the Church of S. Giles, which was
dedicated under the name of some other saint, was the place for the creation of graduates, as now is
the Church of S. Mary, which is within the walls....”

The origin of the city is, of course, not the same thing as the origin of the
University, and John Rous, it will be observed, has adopted the story
according to which the University was said to have been transplanted to
Oxford from “Grekelade.” This story is found in its earliest form in the
Oxford Historiola, the account of the University prefixed to the official
registers of the chancellor and proctors. It was probably written towards the
end of the reign of Edward III., somewhere in the third quarter of the
fourteenth century. The sound of Greek in the name Cricklade is quite

The Turret Quad Merton College

enough, in the minds of those who have studied mediæval chronicles—
histories “farct with merry tales and frivolous poetry”—to account for the
origin of the myth as to the Greek philosophers. Do you not find for
instance, the name of Lechelade suggesting Latin schools (Latinelade) at
that place by an analogous etymological conceit?
Saith the Historiola, then, after premising that the University is the most
ancient, the most comprehensive, the most orthodox and the most richly
endowed with privileges:—
“Very ancient British histories imply the priority of its foundation, for it is related that amongst
the warlike Trojans, when with their leader Brutus they triumphantly seized the island, then called
Albion, next Britain, and lastly England, certain philosophers came and chose a suitable place of
habitation upon this island, on which the philosophers who had been Greek bestowed the name which
they have left behind them as a record of their presence, and which exists to the present day, that is to
say Grekelade....”

The grounds of the other statements quoted from John Rous are yet more
fanciful. The assertion that the University was transferred from without to
within the city walls is a vague echo of a worthless story, and the name
given to the town Bellesitum is obviously a confusion arising from the
latinised form of Beaumont, the palace which Henry I. built on the slope
towards S. Giles. The names of Caer-bossa and Ridochen (Rhyd-y-chen)
are equally unhistorical, and are based upon the fantastic Welsh equivalents
of Oxenford, invented by the fertile genius of Geoffrey of Monmouth for
the purposes of his romance (twelfth century).
It would scarcely have been worth while to mention even so briefly the
ingenious myths of the early chroniclers if it had not been for the fact that
they have swamped more scientific history and that they were used with
immense gusto by the champions in that extraordinary controversy which
broke out in the days of Elizabeth, and lasted, an inky warfare of wordy
combatants, almost for centuries. It was a controversy in which
innumerable authorities were quoted, and resort was had even to the
desperate device of forgery.
It arose from the boast of the Cambridge orator, who on the occasion of a
visit of Elizabeth to Cambridge, declared:
“To our great glory all histories with one voice testify that the Oxford University borrowed from
Cambridge its most learned men, who in its schools provided the earliest cradle of the ingenuæ artes,
and that Paris also and Cologne were derived from our University.”

With that assertion the fat was in the fire. Assertions were issued, and
counter-assertions, commentaries and counter-commentaries.
It is impossible to follow the course of the controversy here. Suffice it to
say that when the war had been waged for some years, it seemed evident
that the victory would lie with the Oxonians, who claimed Alfred as their
founder, if they could prove their claim. And the claim appeared to be
proved by a passage attributed to Asser, the contemporary historian of
Alfred’s deeds, and surreptitiously inserted into his edition of that author by
the great Camden. But that passage occurs in none of the manuscripts of
Asser, and certainly not in the one which Camden copied. It was probably
adopted by him on the authority of an unscrupulous but interested partisan
who, having invented it, attributed it to a “superior manuscript of Asser.”
The University cannot, then, claim Alfred the Great either as her founder
or restorer. All the known facts and indications point the other way. It was

not till 912, some years after Alfred’s death, that Edward the Elder obtained
possession of Oxford, which was outside Alfred’s kingdom; Asser knew
nothing of this foundation. It was not till the days of Edward III., that Ralph
Higden’s Polychronicon apparently gave birth to the myth with the
statement that Alfred—
“By the counsel of S. Neot the Abbot, was the first to establish schools for the various arts at
Oxford; to which city he granted privileges of many kinds.”

And from that time the myth was repeated and grew.
But if King Alfred did not found the University who did? or how did it
come into existence?
Briefly the case stands thus. Before the second half of the twelfth
century—the age of Universities—there are no discoverable traces of such a
thing at Oxford, but in the last twenty years of that century references to it
are frequent and decided. The University was evidently established, and its
reputation was widely spread.
There abounded there, contemporaries inform us, “men skilled in mystic
eloquence, weighing the words of the law, bringing forth from their
treasures things new and old.” And the University was dubbed by the proud
title “The Second School of the Church.”
She was second, that is, to Paris, as a school of Theology, and to Paris,
the researches of modern experts like Dr Rashdall lead us to believe, she
owed her origin.
The Universities, the greatest and perhaps the most permanent of
Mediæval Institutions, were a gradual and almost secret growth. For long
centuries Europe had been sunk in the gloom of the Dark Ages. The light of
learning shone in the cloister alone, and there burned with but a dim and
flickering flame. In Spain not one priest in a thousand about the age of
Charlemagne could address a common letter of salutation to another.
Scarcely a single person could be found in Rome who knew the first
elements of letters; in England, Alfred declared that he could not recollect
one priest at the time of his accession who understood the ordinary prayers.
Learning lay buried in the grave of Bede. At Court, emperors could not
write, and in the country contracts were made verbally for lack of notaries
who could draw up charters.

But towards the end of the eleventh century Europe began to recover
from this state of poverty and degradation. Christendom had gained a new
impulse from the Crusades. Trade revived and began to develop, some
degree of tranquillity was restored, and the growing wealth of the world
soon found expression in an increasing refinement of manners, in the
sublime and beautiful buildings of the age of Cathedrals, and in a greater
ardour for intellectual pursuits.
A new fervour of study arose in the West from its contact with the more
cultured East. Everywhere throughout Europe great schools which bore the
name of Universities were established.
The long mental inactivity of Europe broke up like ice before a
summer’s sun. Wandering teachers, such as Lanfranc or Anselm, crossed
sea and land to spread the new power of knowledge. The same spirit of
restlessness, of inquiry, of impatience with the older traditions of mankind,
either local or intellectual, that had hurried half Christendom to the tomb of
its Lord, crowded the roads with thousands of young scholars, hurrying to
the chosen seats where teachers were gathered together. A new power, says
an eloquent historian, had sprung up in the midst of a world as yet under the
rule of sheer brute force. Poor as they were, sometimes even of a servile
race, the wandering scholars, who lectured in every cloister, were hailed as
“Masters” by the crowds at their feet.
This title of “Master” suggests, of course, the nomenclature of the
Guilds. A University, in fact, was a Guild of Study. The word implies[13] a
community of individuals bound together for any purpose, in this case for
the purpose of teaching. It was applied to the whole body of students
frequenting the “studium,” and hence the term came to be used as
synonymous with “studium” to denote the institution itself. The system of
academical degrees dates from the second half of the twelfth century. After
the manner of mediæval craftsmen in other trades, the profession of
teaching was limited to those who had served an apprenticeship in a
University or Guild of Study and were qualified as Masters of their Art.
Nobody was allowed to teach without a licence from such a Guild, just as
no butcher or tailor was allowed to ply his trade without having served his
proper term and having been approved by the Masters of his Guild. A
University degree, therefore, was originally simply a diploma of teaching,
which afterwards came to be regarded as a title, when retained by men who
had ceased to lecture or teach. “Bachelor” was the term applied to students

who had ceased to be pupils but had not yet become teachers. The word was
generally used to denote an apprentice or aspirant to Knighthood, but in the
Universities came to have this technical signification. The degree of
Bachelor was in fact an important step on the way to the higher degree of
Master or Doctor.
One of the first symptoms of the twelfth century renaissance may be
traced in the revival in Italy of the study of jurisprudence as derived from
the laws of Justinian. For early in the twelfth century a professor named
Irnerius opened a school of civil law at Bologna, and Lombardy was soon
full of lawyers. Teachers of that profitable art soon spread from Bologna
throughout Europe, and their University was the first to receive from
Frederic Barbarossa the privileges of legal incorporation. It presently
became known as the special University of young archdeacons, whose
mode of life gave rise to the favourite subject of debate “Can an archdeacon
be saved?” But it was the school of philosophy at Paris which chiefly
attracted the newly-kindled enthusiasm of the studious. The tradition of the
schools of Charlemagne may have lingered there, although no direct
connection between them and the University which now sprang into being
can be proved. As early as 1109 William of Champeaux opened a school of
logic, and it was to his brilliant and combative pupil, Peter Abelard, that the
University owed its rapid advancement in the estimation of mankind. The
multitude of disciples who flocked to his lectures, and listened with delight
to his bold theories and his assertion of the rights of reason against
authority, showed that a new spirit of enquiry and speculation was abroad.
The poets and orators of antiquity were, indeed, beginning to be studied
with genuine admiration, and the introduction into Europe of some of the
Arabian writings on geometry and physics was opening the door to the
development of mathematical science. But the flower of intellectual and
scientific enquiry was destined to be nipped in the bud by the blighting
influence of scholasticism. Already among the pupils of Abelard was
numbered Peter Lombard, the future author of “The Sentences,” a system of
the doctrines of the Church, round which the dogmatic theology of the
schoolmen, trammelled by a rigid network of dialectics, was to grow up.
It was the light before a dawn which never broke into day. But as yet the
period was one of awakening and promise. Students from all parts crowded
to Paris, and the Faculty[14] of Arts in the University was divided into four
“nations”—those of France, Picardy, Normandy and England. John of

Salisbury became famous as one of the Parisian teachers. Becket wandered
to Paris from his school at Merton. After spending twelve years at Paris,
John of Salisbury, the central figure of English learning in his time, finally
returned to England. S. Bernard recommended him to Archbishop
Theobald, and in the archbishop’s household at Canterbury he found in
existence a very School of Literature, where scholars like Vacarius came to
lecture on civil law, where lectures and disputations were regularly held,
and men like Becket and John of Poictiers were trained.
“In the house of my Lord the Archbishop,” writes Peter of Blois, “are most scholarly men, with
whom is found all the uprightness of justice, all the caution of providence, every form of learning.
They after prayers and before meals, in reading, in disputing, in the decision of causes constantly
exercise themselves. All the knotty questions of the realms are referred to us....”

This archiepiscopal school was in fact a substitute for the as yet
undeveloped Universities. Besides this school there were, in England,
schools in connection with all the great Cathedral establishments and with
many of the monasteries as well as the houses of the nobles. There were, for
instance, great schools at S. Alban’s and at Oxford. But these studia were
not studia generalia; they were schools merely, not Universities. It was
perhaps to the school which had sprung up in connection with S.
Frideswide’s monastery that Vacarius lectured, if he lectured at Oxford at
all.
It was in such a monastic school, in connection with S. Frideswide’s,
Osney, or S. George’s in the Castle, that Robert Pullen of Paris lectured on
the Bible for five years (1133), and Theobaldus Stampensis taught. Henry
Beauclerc endeavoured to retain the services of the former by offering him
a bishopric, but he refused it and left England; Stephen, on the other hand,
bade Vacarius cease from lecturing, since the new system of law, which he
taught and which had converted the Continent, was inconsistent with the
old laws of the English realm. As to Theobaldus Stampensis, he styles
himself Magister Oxenefordiæ, and letters from him exist which show that
he, a Norman ecclesiastic who had taught at Caen, taught at Oxford before
1117. An anonymous reply to a tractate in which he attacked the monks, is
responsible for the statement that this former Doctor of Caen had at Oxford
“sixty or a hundred clerks, more or less.” But one school or one lecturer
does not make a University.
It has, however, been held, that just as the University of Paris developed
from the schools of Notre Dame, so the University of Oxford grew out of

the monastic schools of S. Frideswide’s. Such a growth would have been
natural. But if this had been the real origin of the University, it may be
regarded as certain that the members of it would have been subjected to
some such authority as that exercised by the Chancellor of Notre Dame
over the masters and scholars of Paris. But at Oxford, the masters and
scholars were never under the jurisdiction of the Prior or Abbot of S.
Frideswide’s or Osney. If they had been, some trace or record of their
struggle for emancipation must have survived. The Chancellor, moreover,
when he is first mentioned, proves to be elected by the masters and scholars
and to derive his authority, not from any capitular or monastic body in
Oxford, but from the Bishop of Lincoln. And the University buildings
themselves, in their primitive form, bear silent witness to the same fact, that
the schools or studium in connection with which the University grew up
were in no way connected with conventual churches and monasteries. For
the schools were not near S. Frideswide’s but S. Mary’s.
The independence of the Oxford masters from any local ecclesiastical
authority is a significant fact. Combined with another it seems to admit of
but one explanation. That other fact is the suddenness with which the
reputation of Oxford sprang up. Before 1167 there is, as we have shown, no
evidence of the existence of a studium generale there, but there are
indications enough that in the next few years students began to come, clerks
from all parts of England.
The account of the visit of Giraldus Cambrensis (1184-5) reveals the
existence of a Studium on a large scale, with a number of Masters and
Faculties. It is a Studium Generale by that time without a doubt. And in
1192 Richard of Devizes speaks of the clerks of Oxford as so numerous that
the city could hardly feed them.
What, then, is the explanation of this so sudden development? Probably
it lies in a migration of scholars to Oxford at this time. The migratory habits
of mediæval masters and scholars are familiar to everyone who has the
smallest acquaintance with the history of the Universities. The Universities
of Leipzig, Reggio, Vicenza, Vercelli, and Padua, for instance, were
founded by migrations from one University or another. The story of Oxford
itself will furnish instances in plenty of the readiness of the University to
threaten to migrate and, when hard pressed, to fulfil their threat. Migrations
to Cambridge, Stamford, and Northampton are among the undoubted facts
of our history. Such a migration then would be in the natural course of

things, though it would not satisfy the pride of the inventors of the Alfred
myth. But a migration of this kind did not take place without a cause. A
cause however is not to seek. At this very period the quarrel of Henry II.
with Thomas a Becket was the occasion for a migration from Paris, the
ordinary seat of higher education for English ecclesiastics.
A letter from John of Salisbury to Peter the Writer in 1167 contains this
remark: “France, the most polite and civilised of all nations, has expelled
the foreign students from her borders.”
This, as Dr Rashdall suggests, may possibly have been a measure of
hostility aimed by the French King against the oppressor of Holy Church
and against the English ecclesiastics, who as a body sided with their King
against their not yet canonised primate.
Henry II., on the other hand, took the same measures to punish the
partisans of Becket. All clerks were forbidden to go to or from the
Continent without leave of the King, and all clerks who possessed revenues
in England were summoned to return to England within three months, “as
they love their revenues.” This would produce an exodus from Paris. A
large number of English masters and scholars must have been compelled to
return home. According to the usual procedure of mediæval students they
were likely to collect in some one town and set up under their old masters
something of their old organisation. These ordinances were promulgated
between the years 1165 and 1169. The ports were strictly watched in order
to enforce this edict.
The migrating scholars would land at Dover and lodge, perhaps, for a
night or two at the Benedictine Priory there, before going on to Canterbury.
Here, if they had been so minded, they might have stayed, and swelled the
great literary circle, with its teachers and libraries, which had been formed
there. But they left Gervase at Canterbury to write his history, and Nigel to
compose his verses and polish his satires. Passing northwards, they might,
had they come a little later, have been absorbed at Lambeth, and the scheme
of Archbishop Baldwin for setting up a College there, which should be a
centre of ecclesiastical learning, emancipated from monastic restrictions,
might then have been realised. Or, if they had wished to attach themselves
to any existing establishment, the monastic schools of St Alban’s might
have welcomed them.

But they chose otherwise. It may be that their experience of Paris led
them to choose a place which was neither a capital nor a See-town. At any
rate the peculiar position of Oxford, which was neither of these and yet an
important commercial and political centre, made it admirably suited for the
free development of a University, unharassed by bishops and unmolested by
lord mayors.
At Oxford, too, was the Palace of the King, and Henry II. was a
champion of literary culture by his very descent. His grandfather had earned
the title of Henry Beauclerk, the scholar King; and Fulk the Good, who had
told King Lothar that an unlearned king is a crowned ass, was a lineal
ancestor of his. And apart from his own hereditary tastes, the position of
Henry as the most powerful king of the West, and the international
correspondence which that position involved, tended to make the Court a
centre of literary activity. Learning was sought not for itself only, but as a
part of the equipment of a man of the world. For whatever reason, whether
they were influenced by a desire, springing from experience of Paris, to
establish themselves where they might be most independent, or by the
physical advantages of Oxford, or the hope of favour from the King who
had recalled them, and who at his Court and about his Palace of Beaumont
had gathered round him all that was enlightened and refined in English and
Norman society, or whether they were directed by mere chance, settling for
a session and staying for centuries, it was to Oxford they came.
Here ready to receive them they would find a town which stood in the
front rank of municipalities, commanding the river valley along which the
commerce of Southern England mainly flowed. The mitred Abbey of Austin
Canons, the Priory of S. Frideswide, the Castle of the D’Oiglis, and the
Royal Palace without the Vallum marked the ecclesiastical and political
importance of the place; the settlement of one of the wealthiest of the
English Jewries in the very heart of the town indicated, as it promoted, the
activity of its trade. It was still surrounded on all sides by a wild forest
country. The moors of Cowley and Bullingdon fringed the course of the
Thames; the great woods of Shotover and Bagley closed the horizon on
south and east. But Oxford was easy of access, for there were the great
roads that crossed at Carfax and there was the thoroughfare of the Thames.
And facility of communication meant regularity of supplies, a matter of
great importance to a floating population of poor students.

Here, then, the migrating masters and scholars set up their schools, and
within a very short time the reputation of the University was established
throughout the length and breadth of the land.
Giraldus Cambrensis, a Welshman, who had achieved fame as a lecturer
at Paris, has given us an interesting account of his visit to Oxford in 1187.
He came there with the purpose of reading aloud portions of his new work,
as Herodotus read his history at the Panathenaic festival at Athens or at the
National Games of Greece. Giraldus had written a book on Ireland—
Topographia—and he chose this method of publishing and advertising it.
He writes of himself in the third person, without any excessive modesty.
You might almost think he was a modern author, asking his critics to dinner
and writing his own “Press notices.”
“In course of time, when the work was finished and revised, not wishing to hide his candle under
a bushel, but wishing to place it in a candlestick so that it might give light, he resolved to read it
before a vast audience at Oxford, where the clergy in England chiefly flourished and excelled in
clerkly lore. And as there were three distinctions or divisions in the work, and each division occupied
a day, the readings lasted three successive days. On the first day he received and entertained at his
lodgings all the poor people of the whole town; on the second all the doctors of the different
faculties, and such of their pupils as were of fame and note; on the third the rest of the scholars with
the milites of the town, and many burghers. It was a costly and noble act, for the authentic and
ancient times of the poets were thus in some measure renewed; and neither present nor past time can
furnish any record of such a solemnity having ever taken place in England.”

It is evident from this passage that the Schools at Oxford were by this
time of considerable note and size. There was a University here now in fact
if not in name or by charter. A few years later the records reveal to us the
first known student in it. He was a clerk from Hungary named Nicholas, to
whom Richard I. who had been born in the Palace of Beaumont, made an
allowance of half a mark weekly for his support during his stay at Oxford
for the purpose of study.
Thus, then, by the beginning of the reign of King John, we may be sure
that there was established at Oxford a University, or place of general study,
and this University had attracted to itself an academic population, which
was estimated by contemporaries at no less than three thousand souls. And
now, just as the country won its Great Charter of Liberties from that
oppressive and intolerable Angevin monarch, so documentary evidence of
the independent powers of the University was first obtained, as the result of
a series of events, in which the citizens of Oxford had been encouraged to
commit an act of unjust revenge by their reliance on John’s quarrel with the

pope and the clergy. The pope had laid the whole country under an interdict;
the people were forbidden to worship their God and the priests to
administer the sacraments; the church-bells were silent and the dead lay
unburied on the ground. The King retaliated by confiscating the land of the
clergy who observed the interdict, by subjecting them in spite of their
privileges to the Royal Courts, and often by leaving outrages on them
unpunished. “Let him go,” he said, when a Welshman was brought before
him for the murder of a priest, “he has killed my enemy.” Such were the
political conditions, when at Oxford a woman of the town was found
murdered in circumstances which pointed to the guilt of a student. The
citizens were eager for vengeance, and they took the matter into their own
hands (1209).
The offender had fled, but the mayor and burgesses invading his hostel
arrested two innocent students who lodged in the same house. They hurried
them outside the walls of Oxford, and, with the ready assent of John, who
was then at Woodstock, hung them forthwith. This was a defiance of
ecclesiastical liberty. For it was a chief principle of the Church that all
clerks and scholars, as well as all higher officials in the hierarchy, should be
subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction alone. For this principle Becket had
died, and in defence of this principle a quarrel now arose between the
University and the town which bade fair to end in the withdrawal of the
former altogether from Oxford. In protest the masters and scholars migrated
from the town, and transferred their schools to Paris, to Reading and to
Cambridge. It is, indeed, to this migration that the Studium Generale on the
banks of the Cam may owe its existence.
The halls of Oxford were now deserted, the schools were empty. So they
remained as long as John’s quarrel with the pope endured. But when the
King had knelt before the Papal Legate, Pandulf (1213), and sworn fealty to
the pope, the Church succeeded in bringing the citizens, who had no doubt
found their pockets severely affected in the meantime, to their senses. A
Legatine ordinance of the following year is the University’s first charter of
privilege. The citizens performed public penance; stripped and barefooted
they went daily to the churches, carrying scourges in their hands and
chaunting penitential psalms. When they had thus obtained absolution, and
the University had returned, the Legate issued a decree by which the
townsmen were bound in future, if they arrested a clerk, to deliver him up
on demand to the Bishop of Lincoln, the Archdeacon of Oxford or his

official, to the Chancellor set over the scholars by the bishop, or some other
authorised representative of the episcopal power. And thus was established
that immunity from lay jurisdiction which, under slightly different
conditions, is still enjoyed by every resident member of the University.
This is the first allusion in any authentic document to the existence of the
chancellorship.
Among the minor penalities to which the townsmen were now subjected
was the provision that for ten years one-half the rent of existing hostels and
schools was to be altogether remitted, and for ten years more rents were to
remain as already taxed before the secession by the joint authority of the
town and the masters. Further, the town was forever to pay an annual sum
of fifty-two shillings to be distributed among poor scholars on the feast of
S. Nicholas, the patron of scholars, and at the same time to feast a hundred
poor scholars on bread and beer, pottage and flesh or fish. Victuals were to
be sold at a reasonable rate, and an oath to the observance of these
provisions was to be taken by fifty of the chief burgesses, and to be
annually renewed at the discretion of the bishop. The payment of the fine
was transferred by an agreement with the town to the Abbey of Eynsham in
1219, and by an ordinance of Bishop Grossetete the money was applied to
the foundation of a “chest.”
The size and importance of the University was shortly afterwards
increased by a somewhat similar disturbance which took place in Paris
(1229). A brawl developed into a serious riot, in which several scholars,
innocent or otherwise, were killed by the Provost of Paris and his archers.
The masters and students failing to obtain redress departed from Paris in
anger. Henry seized this opportunity of humiliating the French Monarchy
by fomenting the quarrel and at the same time inviting “the masters and the
University of scholars at Paris” to come to study in England, where they
should receive ample liberty and privileges. A migration to Oxford was the
result of this royal invitation, which was highly appreciated not only by the
English students at Paris but also by many foreigners. Two years later the
King was able to boast that Oxford was frequented by a vast number of
students, coming from various places over the sea, as well as from all parts
of Britain.
The University remained till well towards the end of the thirteenth
century a customary rather than a legal or statutory corporation. And in its

customs it was a reproduction of the Society of Masters at Paris.
The privileges and customs of Paris were, in fact, the type from which
the customs and privileges of all the Universities which were now being
founded in Europe were reproduced, and according to which they were
confirmed by bulls and charters. Thus in 1246 Innocent V. enjoined
Grossetete to see that in Oxford nobody exercised the office of teaching
except after he had qualified according to the custom of the Parisians.
Whilst then the idea of a University was undoubtedly borrowed from the
Continent, and Oxford, so far as her organisation was concerned, was
framed on the Continental models, yet the establishment of a University in
England was an event of no small importance. Teaching was thereby
centralised, competition promoted, and intellectual speculation stimulated.
At a University there was more chance of intellectual freedom than in a
monastic school.
If such was the origin of the University, Alfred did not found it, still less
did he found University College.
University College, “the Hall of the University,” may undoubtedly claim
with justice to be the earliest University endowment. But it was at one time
convenient to that College, in the course of a lawsuit in which their case
was a losing one, to claim, when forgeries failed them, to be a royal
foundation. The Alfred myth was to hand, and they used it with unblushing
effrontery and a confident disregard of historical facts and dates. Their
impudence for the time being fulfilled its purpose, and it also left its mark
on the minds of men. The tradition still lingers. The College Chapel was
dedicated at the end of the fourteenth century to S. Cuthbert, Durham’s
Saint, but the seventeenth-century Bidding Prayer still perpetuates the
venerable fiction, and first among the benefactors of the “College of the
great Hall of the University,” the name of King Alfred is cited. In 1872 the
College even celebrated, by the English method of a dinner, the supposed
thousandth anniversary of its existence. At that dinner the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Robert Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke), wittily upheld the tradition of
his College. For, he argued, if Oxford was in the hands of the Danes at the
time when Alfred founded the University, that fact only strengthened their
case. For King Alfred was a man so much in advance of his age that it is not
surprising to find that he had anticipated the modern political doctrine,
which teaches us that the surest way to earn popularity, is to give away the
property of our opponents.

University College

The story of the lawsuit will be found to be instructive if discreditable.
In 1363 the College by two purchases obtained possession of
considerable property in land and houses which had been the estate of
Philip Gonwardy and Joan his wife. After the College had been in
possession some fourteen years, however, a certain Edmund Francis and
Idonea his wife came forward to dispute the right to it. They maintained that
Philip Gonwardy and his wife had had no true title to the estate, for it, or
part of it, had been bequeathed to them by one John Goldsmith in 1307.
And he, they asserted, had by a later document settled the same property
upon them. The case was tried at Westminster; transferred to Oxford, where
the College obtained a verdict in their favour, and then taken back on appeal
to Westminster.

It was at this point that the document known as the French petition—it is
written in the Court French of the day—was filed. Finding, apparently, that
the case was going against them, the College determined to use the myth
about Alfred, claim to be a royal foundation and thus throw the matter, and
their liberties along with it, into the King’s hands, leaving the case to be
decided by the Privy Council.
“To their most excellent and most dread and most sovereign Lord the King,” so ran the petition,
“and to his most sage council, shew his poor orators, the master and scholars of his College, called
Mickle University Hall in Oxenford, which College was first founded by your noble progenitor, King
Alfred, whom may God assoil, for the maintenance of twenty-six divines for ever; that whereas one
Edmund Francis, citizen of London, hath in virtue of his great power commenced a suit in the King’s
Bench, against some of the tenants of the said masters and scholars, for certain lands and tenements,
with which the College was endowed ... and from time to time doth endeavour to destroy and utterly
disinherit your said College of the rest of its endowment.... That it may please your most sovereign
and gracious Lord King, since you are our true founder and advocate, to make the aforesaid parties
appear before your very sage council, to show in evidences upon the rights of the aforesaid matter, so
that upon account of the poverty of your said orators your said College be not disinherited, having
regard, most gracious Lord, that the noble saints, John of Beverley, Bede, and Richard Armacan
(Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh), and many other famous doctors and clerks, were formerly
scholars in your said College, and commenced divines therein, and this for God’s sake, and as a deed
of charity.”

This deed, then, and others, these mere children in litigation did
deliberately forge, attaching the Chancellor’s seal thereto, in order to
substantiate their absurd, but profitable, pretension.
The device was successful for a time, although the very petition contains
within itself glaring historical contradictions, which either show supreme
ignorance on the part of the masters and scholars or a cynical assumption of
the historical ignorance of lawyers. If the College was founded by King
Alfred who came to the throne in 872, it would seem a little unwise to
instance as famous scholars of that foundation “noble Saints” like John of
Beverley, who was Archbishop of York in 705, and the venerable Bede who
died in 735.
As to the real founder of University College all the evidence points to
William, Archdeacon of Durham, who is mentioned as one of the five
distinguished English scholars who left Paris in 1229, in consequence of the
riots between the townsfolk and the University. Henry’s invitation to the
Paris masters to come and settle at Oxford was immediately accepted by the
other four. Their example was probably soon followed by William, after a
sojourn at Angers. He was appointed Rector of Wearmouth, and is said to
have “abounded in great revenues, but was gaping after greater.” Some

litigation with the Bishop of Durham led him to appeal to the Papal Court.
His appeal was successful, but it availed him little, for on his journey home
he died at Rouen (1249). His bones are said by Skelton to lie in the Chapel
of the Virgin in the Cathedral there. He left 310 marks in trust to the
University to invest for the benefit and support of a certain number of
masters. It was actually the first endowment of its kind, but it is to Alan
Basset, who died about 1243, that the credit of providing the first
permanent endowment for an Oxford scholar is due. For he conceived the
idea of combining a scholarship with a Chantry. He left instructions in his
will in accordance with which his executors arranged with the Convent of
Bicester for the payment of eight marks a year to two chaplains, who should
say mass daily for the souls of the founder and his wife, and at the same
time study in the schools of Oxford or elsewhere.
This was a step in the direction of founding a College, and indeed the
original plan of William was hardly more imposing.
The University placed Durham’s money in a “Chest,” and used it partly
on their own business and partly in loans to others, barons in the Barons’
War for instance. Such loans were seldom repaid, and only 210 marks
remained. This sum was expended in purchasing houses. The first house
bought (1253) by the University was at the corner of School Street and St
Mildred’s Lane (tenementum angulare in vico scholarum).
The site of this the first property held by the University for educational
purposes[15] is now included in the front, the noisy, over-decorated front, of
Brasenose College. It was called, naturally enough, first the Hall of the
University and afterwards the little Hall of the University. A second
purchase was made in 1255, when a tenement called Drogheda Hall, the
then first house in the High Street on the north side, was bought. It stands
almost opposite to the present Western Gate of the College. Brasenose Hall
was the next purchase under William’s bequest (1262), and (1270) a quit
rent of fifteen shillings, charged on two houses in S. Peter’s parish, was the
last. William of Durham had not founded a College. There is nothing to
show that the purchase of houses by the University was originally made
with any other object than that of securing a sound investment of the trust
money. There is nothing to show, that is, either that the houses were bought
originally and specifically as habitations for the pensioned masters (though
they may have lodged there), or that it was originally intended, either by the
University or the founder, that they should form a community.

Statutes were not granted to the masters admitted to the benefits of this
foundation until the year 1280, and by that time a precedent had been
created. From the year 1280, then, may be dated the incorporation of what
is now known as University College. A very small society of poor masters
were, according to the revised plan, to live together on the bounty of
William of Durham and devote themselves to the study of theology. And
this idea of association was evidently adopted from the rule for Merton Hall
laid down by Merton six years before. The revenue from the fund increased
rapidly, so that by 1292, the society was increased from “four poor masters”
to one consisting of two classes of scholars, the seniors receiving six and
eightpence a year more than the juniors, and having authority over them.
Other clerks of good character, not on the foundation, were permitted to
hire lodgings in the Hall, prototypes of the modern commoner. Funds and
benefactions accrued to the Hall. A library was built, and the society
gradually enlarged. Members of it were enjoined to live like Saints and to
speak Latin. In the election of new Fellows a preference was given to those
“born nearest to the parts of Durham.” And a graduated fine was imposed,
according to which a scholar who insulted another in private was to pay a
shilling, before his fellows two shillings, and if in the street, in church or
recreation ground, six and eightpence. For the administration of the College
funds a bursar was annually appointed, whose accounts were subsequently
approved and signed by the Chancellor. This practice of University
supervision was maintained till 1722.
Yet another body of statutes was promulgated in 1311. The study of
theology and the preference given to those who hailed from Durham were
emphasised in accordance with the founder’s wishes. The Senior Fellow
was required to be ordained, but any Fellow who was appointed to a
benefice of five marks a year now forfeited his election. This latter
regulation, which occurs in substance in most of the fourteenth century
foundations—by the Statutes of Queens, indeed, a Fellow who refused a
benefice forfeited his fellowship—shows that fellowships were intended not
as mere endowments of learning but as stepping-stones to preferment. It
does not, on the other hand, show that the founders did not contemplate the
existence of life-fellows. I think that it is tolerably clear Walter de Merton
did. The office of Master of the College grew out of the position of the
Senior Fellow; his authority was asserted by new statutes given in 1476.

It was in 1332 that the scholars of William of Durham moved from the
corner house on the north side of the High Street, if that was where they
abode, to the site of their present College, bounded by Logic Lane and
Grove Street, and forming in the southern curve of the High Street, one of
the most effective and noble features in that splendid sweep which
embraces, on the other side, Queen’s, All Souls’, St Mary’s, Brasenose, and
All Saints’.
The society had received large benefactions from a generous donor,
Philip Ingleberd of Beverley, and they now purchased Spicer’s (formerly
Durham’s) Hall, the first house in St Mary’s parish, which stood near the
present western gateway of University College. Further benefactions made
further purchases possible. White Hall and Rose Hall in Kybald Street were
bought, and Lodelowe Hall, on the east of Spicer’s Hall (1336). Spicer’s
Hall soon came to be known as the University Hall; the hall next to it, when
acquired, was distinguished as Great University Hall. The reversion to the
remainder of the High Street frontage, between Lodelowe Hall and the
present Logic Lane, was not secured till 1402, when the munificence of
Walter Skirlaw, Bishop of Durham, enabled the society to extend their
property and their numbers. The tenements thus acquired were called Little
University Hall and the Cock on the Hoop. The next purchase of the
College involved them in that lawsuit which has had so curious a result
upon the imaginations of its subsequent members.
Thus, then, the foundation of William had become a College, “the first
daughter of Alma Mater.” Being the first “Hall” acquired by the University
it came to be spoken of as “The Hall of the University,” and the members of
the foundation, as “Scholars of University Hall.” Their proper title,
“Scholars of the Hall of William of Durham,” gradually fell out of use.
Strangers to the University system usually find themselves confused by the
relations of the University and the Colleges. The University, then, let it be
said, is a corporation existing apart from the Colleges; the Colleges are
separate incorporated foundations, independent though practically
subordinate to it.
The old thatched halls of wood and clay were used till it became
necessary to rebuild in 1632. A smaller version of the seventeenth century
quadrangle then constructed was finished in 1719.

For in 1714 had died Dr John Radcliffe, a famous and witty doctor,
whose skill had secured him the post of court physician and whose wit had
deprived him of it. For he offended William III. by remarking to that
dropsical monarch, that he would not have his two legs for his two
kingdoms. It had long been known that the worthy doctor intended to make
his College and his University his heirs. His munificence was rewarded by a
public funeral of unexampled splendour and a grave in the nave of St
Mary’s. The bulk of his fortune he devoted to specific purposes benefiting
the University, but he left a large sum to University College “for the

Radcliffe Library from Brasenose Quad.

building of the front down to Logic Lane, answerable to the front already
built, and for building the master’s lodging therein, and chambers for his
two travelling Fellows,” whom he endowed. The Radcliffe Quadrangle
commemorates his benefaction to his College; the Radcliffe Infirmary

(Woodstock Road, 1770), the Radcliffe Observatory, built 1772-1795, on a
site given by George, Duke of Marlborough; and last, but not least the
Radcliffe Library, or as it is more usually termed the Camera Bodleiana
(James Gibbs, architect, 1737-1749) stand forth in the city as the noble
monuments of his intelligent munificence.
The magnificent dome of the latter forms one of the most striking
features among Oxford buildings.[16]

Neither the University of Oxford nor University College can justly claim
to be connected with the name of Alfred the Great. But there are relics of
Alfred and Alfred’s time preserved at Oxford which should be of interest to
the visitor. In the Bodleian may be seen certain coins which have led
historians to assume that Alfred set up a mint at Oxford, and to argue from
this supposed fact that his rule was firmly established over Mercia. The
coins in question, which were all found in Lancashire, are variations of the
type bearing these letters;—
Obverse. ORSNA, then in another line ELFRED, and in the third line FORDA. Reverse BERNV + +
+ ALDNo

It is assumed that these words indicate that Bernwald was a moneyer
who was authorised by Alfred to strike coins at Oxford. But why Oxford
should be written Orsnaforda and why, instead of the usual practice of
abbreviation, the name of the place of the mint should have been written
wrongly and at excessive length is not explained. I do not think there is any
sufficient reason to connect the Orsnaforda coins with Oxford at all.
Whether Alfred’s sceptre held sway over Mercia so that it can be stated
definitely that “Wessex and Mercia were now united as Wessex and Kent
had long been united by their allegiance to the same ruler” (Green) or not,
the fact is not to be deduced from an imaginary mint at Oxford, any more
than from the forged documents in the archives of University College or
from the presence of what is known as King Alfred’s jewel in the University
galleries, (Beaumont Street).
This beautiful specimen of gold enamelled work was found in
Somersetshire in 1693 and added to the Ashmolean collections a little later.
The inscription “Aelfred mee heht gevvrcan” (Alfred ordered me to be
made) which it bears has earned it its title.

The promotion of Edmund Rich, the Abingdon lad who was first made
an archbishop and then a saint, to the degree of Master of Arts, is the
earliest mention of that degree in Oxford. The story of his life there gives
the best illustration we have of the early years and growth of the University.
In the ardour of knowledge and the passionate purity of youth he vowed
himself to a life of study and chastity. In the spirit of mystical piety which
was ever characteristic of him, secretly as a boy he took Mary for his bride.
Perhaps at eventide, when the shadows were gathering in the Church of S.
Mary and the crowd of teachers and students were breaking up from the
rough schools which stood near the western doors of the church in the
cemetery without, he approached the image of the Virgin and slipped on
Mary’s finger a gold ring. On that ring was engraved “that sweet Ave with
which the Angel at the Annunciation had hailed the Virgin.” Devout and
studious, the future saint was not without boyish tastes. He paid more
attention to the music and singing at S. Mary’s, we are told, than to the
prayers. On one occasion he was slipping out of the church before the
service was finished in order to join the other students at their games. But at
the north door a divine apparition bade him return, and from that time his
devotion grew more fervent. It is recorded with astonishment by his
biographers as a mark of his singular piety, that when he had taken his
degree as Master he would attend mass each day before lecturing, contrary
to the custom of the scholars of that time, and although he was not yet in
orders. For this purpose he built a chapel to the Virgin in the parish where
he then lived. His example was followed by his pupils. “So study,” such
was the maxim he loved to impress upon them, “as if you were to live for
ever; so live as if you were to die to-morrow.” How little the young scholar,
to whom Oxford owes her first introduction to the Logic of Aristotle, cared
for the things of this world is shown by his contemptuous treatment of the
fees which the students paid to the most popular of their teachers. He would
throw down the money on the window-sill, and there burying it in the dust
which had accumulated, “dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” he would cry,
celebrating its obsequies. And there the fee would lie till a student in joke or
earnest theft ran off with it. So for six years he lectured in Arts. But even
knowledge brought its troubles. The Old Testament, which with the copy of
the Decretals long formed his sole library, frowned down upon a love of
secular learning, from which Edmund found it hard to wean himself. The

call came at last. He was lecturing one day in Mathematics, when the form
of his dead mother appeared to him. “My son,” she seemed to say, “what art
thou studying? What are these strange diagrams over which thou porest so
intently?”
She seized Edmund’s right hand, and in the palm drew three circles,
within which she wrote the names of the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost.
“Be these thy diagrams henceforth, my son,” she cried. And so directed, the
student devoted himself henceforth to Theology.
This story, Green observes, admirably illustrates the latent opposition
between the spirit of the University and the spirit of the Church. The feudal
and ecclesiastical order of the old mediæval world were both alike
threatened by the new training. Feudalism rested on local isolation. The
University was a protest against this isolation of man from man. What the
Church and Empire had both aimed at and both failed in, the knitting of
Christian nations together into a vast commonwealth, the Universities of the
time actually did.
On the other hand, the spirit of intellectual inquiry promoted by the
Universities, ecclesiastical bodies though they were, threatened the
supremacy of the Church. The sudden expansion of the field of education
diminished the importance of those purely ecclesiastical and theological
studies, which had hitherto absorbed the whole intellectual energies of
mankind. For, according to the monastic ideal, theology was confined to
mere interpretation of the text of Scripture and the dicta of the Fathers or
Church. To this narrow science all the sciences were the handmaids. They
were regarded as permissible only so far as they contributed to this end. But
the great outburst of intellectual enthusiasm in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries created a momentary revolution in these matters. The whole range
of science as revealed by the newly discovered treasures of Greek thinkers
and Roman Jurists was now thrown open to the student. And this faint
revival of physical science, this temporary restoration of classical literature,
a re-discovery as it were of an older and a greater world, and contact with a
larger, freer life, whether in mind, in society or politics, introduced a spirit
of scepticism, of doubt, of denial, into the realms of unquestionable belief.
But the Church was alive to the danger. Fiercely she fought

Garden Front S John’s College

the tide of opposition, and at last won back the allegiance of the
Universities. Through the Schoolmen ecclesiasticism once more triumphed,
and the reign of Theology was resumed. Soon scholasticism absorbed the
whole mental energy of the student world. The old enthusiasm for
knowledge died down; science was discredited, and literature in its purer
forms became extinct.
The scholastic philosophy, so famous for several ages, has passed away
and been forgotten. We cannot deny that Roscelin, Anselm, Abelard, Peter
Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Ockham
were men of acute and even profound understanding, the giants of their own
generation. But all their inquiries after truth were vitiated by two
insurmountable obstacles—the authority of Aristotle and the authority of
the Church. For Aristotle, whom the scholastics did not understand, and
who had been so long held at bay as the most dangerous foe of mediæval
faith, whom none but Anti-Christ could comprehend, was now turned, by

the adoption of his logical method in the discussion and definition of
theological dogma, into its unexpected ally. It was this very method which
led to that “unprofitable subtlety and curiosity” which Lord Bacon notes as
the vice of the scholastic philosophy.
Yet the scholastic mode of dispute, admitting of no termination and
producing no conviction, was sure in the end to cause scepticism, just as the
triviality of the questions on which the schoolmen wasted their amazing
ingenuity was sure at last to produce disgust. What could be more trifling
than a disquisition about the nature of angels, their means of conversing,
and the morning and evening states of their understanding, unless perhaps it
were a subtle and learned dispute as to whether a chimæra, buzzing in a
vacuum, can devour second intentions? John of Salisbury observed of the
Parisian dialecticians in his own time, that after several years absence he
found them not a step advanced, and still employed in urging and parrying
the same arguments. His observation was applicable to the succeeding
centuries. After three or four hundred years the scholastics had not untied a
single knot or added one equivocal truth to the domain of philosophy. Then
men discovered at last that they had given their time for the promise of
wisdom, and had been cheated in the bargain. At the revival of letters the
pretended science had few advocates left, save among the prejudiced or
ignorant adherents of established systems.
And yet, in the history of education and of the historical events which
education directs, the discussions of the schoolmen hold a place not
altogether contemptible. Their disputes did at least teach men to discuss and
to define, to reason and to inquire. And thus was promoted the critical spirit
which was boldly to challenge the rights of the Pope, and to receive and
profit by the great disclosures of knowledge in a future age.
Of the early schools and the buildings which sprang into existence to
mark the first beginnings of the University, no trace remains.
The church of S. Giles in north Oxford, which, as we have seen, is the
church claimed by Rous as the S. Mary’s of his imaginary University in
Beaumont Fields, is the only architectural illustration of this period. It was
consecrated by S. Hugh, the great Bishop of Lincoln, and is of interest as
affording one of the earliest examples of lancet work in England (1180-
1210?). The high placed windows in the north wall of the nave are Norman;
the tower is in the Transition style.

CHAPTER IV

THE COMING OF THE FRIARS

S CARCELY had the University established itself in Oxford, when an
immigration into that city took place, which was destined to have no
inconsiderable influence on its history. Bands of men began to arrive
and to settle there, members of new orders vowed to poverty and ignorance,
whose luxury in after years was to prove a scandal, and whose learning was
to control the whole development of thought.
In the thirteenth century the power of the priesthood over Christendom
was at its height, but it was losing its religious hold over the people. The
whole energy of the Church seemed to be absorbed in politics; spiritually
the disuse of preaching, the decline of the monastic orders into rich
landowners, the non-residence and ignorance of parish priests combined to
rob her of her proper influence. Grossetete issued ordinances which
exhorted the clergy, but in vain, not to haunt taverns, gamble or share in
drinking bouts, and in the rioting and debauchery of the barons.
It was in these circumstances that Dominic and Francis, men so
strangely different in other ways, were moved to found orders of New
Brethren, who should meet false sanctity by real sanctity; preaching friars
who should subsist on the alms of the poor and carry the Gospel to them.
The older monasticism was reversed; the solitary of the cloister was
exchanged for the preacher, the monk for the friar. Everywhere the itinerant
preachers, whose fervid appeal, coarse wit and familiar stories brought
religion into the market-place, were met with an outburst of enthusiasm. On
their first coming to Oxford, the Dominicans or Black Friars were received
with no less enthusiasm than elsewhere.
Lands were given to them in Jewry; buildings and a large school were
erected for them by benefactors like Walter Malclerk, Bishop of Carlisle,
and Isabel de Boulbec, Countess of Oxford, or the friendly Canons of St
Frideswide. So greatly did they flourish that they soon outgrew their
accommodation. They sold their land and buildings, and with the proceeds
built themselves a house and schools and church “on a pleasant isle in the

south suburbs,” which was granted them by Henry III. (1259). The site of
their new habitation at the end of Speedwell Street (Preachers’ Lane) is
indicated by the Blackfriars Road and Blackfriars Street in the parish of St
Ebbe. Their library was large and full of books; the church was dedicated to
S. Nicholas. It was situated near Preachers’ Bridge, which spanned the Trill
Mill Stream.
The Grey Friars followed hard on the heels of the Black. For in the year
1224 nine Franciscans arrived at Dover. Five of them went to Canterbury,
four to London, whence two of them made their way to Oxford—Richard of
Ingeworth and Richard of Devon. Their journey was eventful. Night drew
on as they approached Oxford. The waters were high and they were fain to
seek shelter in a grange belonging to the monks of Abingdon “in a most
vast and solitary wood” (Culham?).
“Humbly knocking at the door, they desired the monks for God’s love to give them entertainment
for that night. The porter who came to the door looked upon them (having dirty faces, ragged
vestments, and uncouth speech) to be a couple of jesters or counterfeits. The Prior caused them to be
brought in that they might quaff it and show sport to the monks. But the friars said they were
mistaken in them; for they were not such kind of people, but the servants of God, and the professors
of an apostolic life. Whereupon the expectation of the monks being thus frustrated, they vilely
spurned at them and caused them to be thrust out of the gate. But one of the young monks had
compassion on them and said to the porter: ‘I desire thee for the love thou bearest me that when the
Prior and monks are gone to rest thou wouldest conduct those poor people into the hayloft, and there
I shall administer to them food.’ Which being according to his desire performed, he carried to them
bread and drink, and remaining some time with them, bade them at length a good night, and devoutly
commended himself to their prayers.
“No sooner had he left them, solacing their raging stomachs with refreshment, but he retired to
his rest. But no sooner had sleep seized on him, than he had a dreadful dream which troubled him
much. He saw in his sleep Christ sitting upon His throne calling all to judgment; at length with a
terrible voice He said: ‘Let the patrons of this place be called to me.’ When they and their monks
appeared, came a despised poor man in the habit of a minor friar, and stood opposite them saying to
Christ these words: ‘O just Judge, the blood of the minor friars cryeth to thee, which was the last
night by those monks standing there endangered to be spilt; for they, when they were in great fear of
perishing by the fury of hunger and wild beasts, did deny them lodging and sustenance—those, O
Lord, who have leaved all for thy sake and are come hither to win souls for which thou dying hast
redeemed—have denied that which they would not to jesters.’ These words being delivered, Christ
with a dreadful voice said to the Prior: ‘Of what order art thou?’ He answered that he was of the order
of S. Benedict. Then Christ, turning to S. Benedict said, ‘Is it true that he speaks?’ S. Benedict
answered, ‘Lord, he and his companions are overthrowers of my religion, for I have given charge in
my rule that the Abbot’s table should be free for guests, and now these have denied those things that
were but necessary for them.’ Then Christ, upon this complaint, commanded that the Prior before
mentioned should immediately be hanged on the elm-tree before the cloister. Afterwards the sacrist
and cellarer being examined did undergo the same death also. These things being done, Christ turned
Himself to the young monk that had compassion on the said friars, asking him of what order he was.
Who thereupon, making a pause and considering how his brethren were handled, said at length, ‘I am
of the order that this poor man is.’ Then Christ said to the poor man, whose name was as yet

concealed, ‘Francis, is it true that he saith, that he is of your order?’ Francis answered, ‘He is mine, O
Lord, he is mine; and from henceforth I receive him as one of my order.’ At which very time as those
words were speaking, Francis embraced the young monk so close that, being thereupon awakened
from his sleep, he suddenly rose up as an amazed man; and running with his garments loose about
him to the Prior to tell him all the passages of his dream found him in his chamber almost suffocated
in his sleep. To whom crying out with fear, and finding no answer from him, ran to the other monks,
whom also he found in the same case. Afterwards the said young monk thought to have gone to the
friars in the hayloft; but they fearing the Prior should discover them, had departed thence very early.
Then speeding to the Abbot of Abingdon, told him all whatsoever had happened. Which story
possessing him for a long time after with no small horror, as the aforesaid dream did the said young
monk, did both (I am sure the last) with great humility and condescension come afterwards to Oxon,
when the said friars had got a mansion there, and took upon them the habit of S. Francis.”

This quaint story of the first coming of the Grey Friars to Oxford
illustrates very plainly the hostility between the old orders of the friars and
the new; the opposition of the parochial priesthood to the spiritual energy of
the mendicant preachers, who, clad in their coarse frock of grey serge, with
a girdle of rope round their waist, wandered barefooted as missionaries over
Asia, battled with heresies in Italy and Gaul, lectured in the Universities
and preached and toiled among the poor.
The Grey Friars were hospitably received by the Black, till Richard le
Mercer, a wealthy burgess, let them a house in St Ebbe’s parish, “between
the church and water-gate (South-gate), in which many honest bachelors
and noble persons entered and lived with them.” Perhaps it was this
increase in their numbers which compelled them to leave their first abode
somewhere by the east end of Beef Lane, and to hire a house with ground
attached from Richard the Miller. This house lay between the wall and
Freren Street (Church Street). All sorts and conditions of men flocked to
hear them. Being well satisfied, it is said, as to their honest and simple
carriage and well-meaning as also with their doctrine, they began to load
them with gifts and to make donations to the city for their use. One of their
benefactors, Agnes, the wife of Guy, for instance, gave them “most part of
that ground which was afterwards called Paradise” (cf. Paradise Square). A
small church was built, and bishops and abbots relinquishing their dignities
and preferments became Minorites. They scorned not “the roughness of the
penance and the robe,” but “did with incomparable humility carry upon
their shoulders the coul and the hod, for the speedier finishing this
structure.” The site chosen by the Grey Friars for their settlement is not
without significance. The work of the friars was physical as well as moral.
Rapid increase of the population huddled within the narrow circle of the

walls had resulted here as elsewhere in overcrowding, which accentuated
the insanitary conditions of life. A gutter running down the centre of
unpaved streets was supposed to drain the mess of the town as well as the
slops thrown from the windows of the houses. Garbage of all sorts collected
and rotted there. Within the houses the rush-strewn floors collected a foul
heritage of scraps and droppings. Personal uncleanliness, encouraged by the
ascetic prohibitions and directions of a morbid monasticism, which,
revolting from the luxury of the Roman baths and much believing in the
necessity of mortifying the flesh, regarded washing as a vice and held that a
dirty shirt might cover a multitude of sins, was accentuated by errors of
diet, and had become the habit of high and low. Little wonder that fever or
plague, or the more terrible scourge of leprosy, festered in the wretched
hovels of the suburbs of Oxford as of every town. Well, it was to haunts
such as these that S. Francis had pointed his disciples. At London they
settled in the shambles of Newgate; at Oxford they chose the swampy
suburb of S. Ebbe’s. Huts of mud and timber, as mean as the huts around
them, rose within the rough fence and ditch that bounded the Friary; for the
Order of St Francis fought hard, at first, against the desire for fine buildings
and the craving for knowledge which were the natural tendencies of many
of the brethren. In neither case did the will of their founder finally carry the
day.
“Three things,” said Friar Albert, Minister General, “tended to the
exaltation of the Order—bare feet, coarse garments, and the rejecting of
money.” At first the Oxford Franciscans were zealous in all those respects.
We hear of Adam Marsh refusing bags of gold that were sent him; we hear
of two of the brethren returning from a Chapter held at Oxford at
Christmas-time, singing as they picked their way along the rugged path,
over the frozen mud and rigid snow, whilst the blood lay in the track of
their naked feet, without their being conscious of it. Even from the robbers
and murderers who infested the woods near Oxford the barefoot friars were
safe.
But it was not long before they began to fall away from “the Rule,” and
to accumulate both wealth and learning. Under the ministry of Agnellus and
his successor the tendency to acquire property was rigorously suppressed,
but under Haymo of Faversham (1238) a different spirit began to prevail.
Haymo preferred that “the friars should have ample areas and should
cultivate them, that they might have the fruits of the earth at home, rather

than beg them from others.” And under his successor they gained a large
increase of territory. By a deed dated Nov. 22, 1244, Henry III. granted
them
“that they might enclose the street that lies under the wall from the Watergate in S. Ebbe’s to the
little postern in the wall towards the castle, but so that a wall with battlements, like to the rest of the
wall of Oxford, be made about the dwelling, beginning at the west side of Watergate, and reaching
southward to the bank of the Thames, and extending along the bank westward as far as the land of the
Abbot of Bec in the parish of S. Bodhoc, and then turning again to the northward till it joins with the
old wall of the borough, by the east side of the small postern.” In 1245 he made a further grant. “We
have given the Friars Minor our island in the Thames, which we bought of Henry, son of Henry
Simeon, granting them power to build a bridge over the arm of the Thames (Trill stream) which runs
between the island and their houses, and enclose the island with a wall.”

When it was completed, then, the Convent of the Grey Friars could
compare favourably with any convent or college in Oxford, except perhaps
S. Frideswide’s or Osney. On the east side of it, where the main entrance
lay, at the junction of the present Littlegate Street and Charles Street, was
the road leading from Watergate to Preacher’s Bridge; on the South side,
Trill Mill stream; on the West, the groves and gardens of Paradise; on the
North, as far as West-gate, ran the City wall.
“Their buildings were stately and magnificent; their church large and decent; and their refectory,
cloister and libraries all proportionable thereunto.”

The traditional site of this church is indicated by Church Place as it is
called to-day. The cloisters probably lay to the south of the church, round
“Penson’s Gardens.”
As the Franciscans fell away by degrees from the ideal of poverty, so
also they succumbed to the desire of knowledge. “I am your breviary, I am
your breviary,” S. Francis had cried to a novice who had asked for a Psalter.
The true Doctors, he held, were those who with the meekness of wisdom
show forth good works for the edification of their neighbours. But the very
popularity of their preaching drove his disciples to the study of theology.
Their desire not only to obtain converts but also to gain a hold on the
thought of the age had led the friars to fasten on the Universities. The same
purpose soon led them to establish at Oxford a centre of learning and
teaching.
Their first school at Oxford was built by Agnellus of Pisa, and there he
persuaded Robert Grossetete, the great reforming bishop of Lincoln, to
lecture. Agnellus himself was a true follower of S. Francis and no great

scholar. “He never smelt of an Academy or scarce tasted of humane
learning.” He was indeed much concerned at the results of Grossetete’s
lectures. For one day when he entered this school to see what progress his
scholars were making in literature, he found them disputing eagerly and
making enquiries whether there was a God. The scandalised Provincial
cried out aloud in anger, “Hei mihi! Hei mihi! Fratres! Simplices cœlos
penetrant, et literati disputant utrum sit Deus!” The miracles which were
afterwards reputed to be performed at the grave of this same excellent friar
caused the church of the Grey Friars to be much frequented.
The friars now began to accumulate books and we soon find mention of
two libraries belonging to them. The nucleus of them was formed by the
books and writings of Grossetete, which he bequeathed to the brethren. And
they collected with great industry from abroad Greek, Hebrew and
mathematical writings, at that time unknown in England. The fate of this
priceless collection of books was enough to make Wood “burst out with
grief.” For, when the monasteries had begun to decay, and the monks had
fallen into ways of sloth and ignorance and were become “no better than a
gang of lazy, fat-headed friars,” they began to sell their books for what they
would fetch and allowed the remainder to rot in neglect.
Meanwhile the teaching of such scholars as Grossetete and Adam Marsh
(de Marisco), the first of the Order to lecture at Oxford, was not without
result. From the school of the Franciscans came forth men who earned for
the University great fame throughout Europe. Friars were sent thither to
study, not only from Scotland and Ireland, but from France and Acquitaine,
Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Germany; while many of the Franciscan schools
on the Continent drew their teachers from Oxford. Duns Scotus and
William Ockham were trained by these teachers; Roger Bacon, the founder
of modern scientific enquiry, ended his days as one of the Order. His life,
which stretched over the greater portion of the thirteenth century, was
passed for the most part at Oxford; his aspirations and difficulties, his
failures and achievements form an epitome, as it were, of the mental history
of his age.
It was only when he had spent forty years and all his fortune in teaching
and scientific research that, having gained the usual reward of scholarship,
and being bankrupt in purse, bankrupt in hope, he took the advice of
Grossetete, and became a Friar of the Order of S. Francis. “Unheard, buried
and forgotten,” as a member of an Order which looked askance on all

intellectual labour not theological, he was forbidden to publish any work
under pain of forfeiture, and the penance of bread and water. Even when he
was commanded by the Pope to write, the friars were so much afraid of the
purport of his researches that they kept him in solitude on bread and water,
and would not allow him to have access even to the few books and writings
available in those days. Science, they maintained, had already reached its
perfection; the world enjoyed too much light; why should he trouble
himself about matters of which enough was known already? For as an
enquirer Bacon was as solitary as that lone sentinel of science, the Tuscan
artist in Valdarno. From the moment that the friars settled on the
Universities, scholasticism had absorbed the whole mental energy of the
student world. Theology found her only efficient rivals in practical studies
such as medicine and law.
Yet, in spite of all difficulties and hindrances, so superhuman was
Bacon’s energy, and so undaunted his courage, that within fifteen months
the three great works, the Opus Majus, the Opus Minus, and the Opus
Tertium were written. If this had been true of the Opus Majus alone, and if
that work had not been remarkable for the boldness and originality of its
views, yet as a mere feat of industry and application it would have stood
almost if not quite unparalleled. For the Opus Majus was at once the
Encyclopædia and the Novum Organum of the thirteenth century.
Of the Opus Minus the only MS. of the work yet known is a fragment
preserved in the Bodleian Library (Digby, No. 218).
The amazing friar met with no reward for his labours. According to one
story, indeed, his writings only gained for him a prison from his Order. His
works were sold, allowed to rot, or nailed to the desks that they might do no
harm. For Bacon’s method of study exposed him to the charge of magic. It
was said that he was in alliance with the Evil One, and the tradition arose
that through spiritual agency he made a brazen head and imparted to it the
gift of speech, and that these magical operations were wrought by him
while he was a student at Brazen Nose Hall.
Necromancy, you see, was practised by the more daring students, for
was there not a certain clerk in Billyng Hall who, when he had summoned
the Devil into his presence by his art, observed with astonishment that he
did reverence when a priest carrying the sacrament passed without.

“Thereupon the student was much disturbed and came to the conclusion that
God was much the greater and that Christ should be his Lord....”
And later, was not Dr Thomas Allen of Gloucester Hall, the astrologer
and mathematician to whom Bodley left his second best gown and cloak—a
common sort of bequest in those days—suspected by reason of his figuring
and conjuring, so that his servitor found a ready audience when, wishing to
impose upon Freshmen and simple people, he used to say that sometimes he
would meet the spirits coming up his master’s stairs like bees?
Apart from the tradition of the Brazen Nose, Bacon’s long residence in
Oxford left other marks on the nomenclature of the place. Wood tells us that
in his day a fragment of the ruined Friary was pointed out as the room
where the great wizard had been wont to pursue his studies. And at a later
time tradition said that Friar Bacon was wont to use as an observatory the
story built over the semi-circular archway of the gate on the south bridge,
and it was therefore known as Friar Bacon’s Study. The little “gate-house”
must have resembled Bocardo. It was leased to a citizen named Welcome,
who added a story to it, which earned it the name of “Welcome’s Folly.” So
the bridge came to be called Folly Bridge, and though gate and house have
disappeared, the new bridge still retains the name.
The Black and the Grey Friars were followed
to Oxford some years later by the White or
Carmelite Friars. Nicholas de Meules or Molis,
sometime governor of the castle, gave them a
house on the west side of Stockwell Street,[17]
now part of Worcester College. They would seem,
like the other Orders, soon to have forgotten their
traditional austerity. Lands accrued to them; they
erected suitable buildings with planted groves and
walks upon a large and pleasant site. But not
content with this, they presently obtained from
Edward II. the royal Palace of Beaumont. Thus
they presented the curious paradox of an Order of Gables in Worcester College
monks who derived their pedigree in regular
succession from Elijah, and trod in theory in the footsteps of the prophets
who had retired into the desert, living at Oxford in the palace of a king.
“When King Edward I. waged war with the Scots (1304) he took with him out of England a
Carmelite friar, named Robert Baston, accounted in his time the most famous poet of this nation,

purposely that he should write poetically of his victories. Again, when King Edward II. maintained
the same war after the death of his father, he entertained the same Baston for the same purpose. At
length the said king encountering Robert Bruce, was forced with his bishops to fly. In which flight
Baston telling the king that if he would call upon the Mother of God for mercy he should find favour,
he did so accordingly, with a promise then made to her that if he should get from the hands of his
enemies and find safety, he would erect some house in England to receive the poor Carmelites....
Soon after, Baston and some others were not wanting to persuade him to give to the Carmelites his
palace at Oxford” (1317),

where Richard Cœur de Lion had been born. Beaumont Palace, whilst it
remained in the hands of the Carmelites, was used not merely as a convent
for the habitation of twenty-four monks, but also as a place of education for
members of this Order throughout England; as well as for seculars who
lived there as “commoners.” Cardinal Pole is said to have been educated in
this seminary.
The library and the church of the White Friars were unusually fine.
The Austin Friars (or Friars eremite of S. Augustine) came also to
Oxford and gradually acquired property and settled “without Smith Gate,
having Holywell Street on the south side of it and the chief part of the
ground on which Wadham College now stands on the north.”
The Austin Friars were famous for their disputations in grammar, and
soon drew to themselves much of the grammatical training of the place.
They engaged also in violent philosophical controversies with the other
Orders, so that at last they were even threatened with excommunication if
they did not desist from their quarrelling. It was in their convent that the
weekly general disputations of Bachelors, known for centuries after as
“Austins,” were held.

Wadham College, from the Gardens

In 1262 the Penitentiarian Friars or Brothers of the Sack, so called
because they wore sackcloth, obtained from Henry III. a grant of land
which formed the parish of S. Budoc and lay to the west of the property of
the Franciscans. The Order was soon afterwards suppressed and the
Franciscans acquired their house and lands.
The brethren of the Holy Trinity also made a settlement in Oxford
(1291). Their house, afterwards known as Trinity Hall, was situated outside
the East Gate (opposite Magdalen Hall). They also acquired the old Trinity
Chapel adjoining and the surrounding land.
The Trinitarians had, besides, a chapel within the East Gate, which was
purchased by Wykeham to make room for New College.
The Crossed or Cruched Friars, after one or two moves, settled
themselves in the parish of S. Peter’s in the East.
The older religious Orders were presently stimulated by the example and
the success of the friars to make some provision for the education of their
monks. But they never aimed at producing great scholars or learned
theologians. Historians of their Order and canonists who could transact their
legal business were the products which the monastic houses desired.

A Chapter-General held at Abingdon in 1279 imposed a tax on the
revenues of all the Benedictine monasteries in the province of Canterbury
with a view to establishing a house at Oxford where students of their Order
might live and study together. John Giffard, Lord of Brimsfield, helped
them to achieve their object.
Gloucester Hall, adjoining the Palace of Beaumont, had been the private
house of Gilbert Clare, Earl of Gloucester, who built it in the year 1260. It
passed to Sir John Giffard, who instituted it a “nursery and mansion-place
solely for the Benedictines of S. Peter’s Abbey at Gloucester.” The
buildings were afterwards enlarged to provide room for student-monks from
other Benedictine abbeys. Of the lodgings thus erected by the various
abbeys for their novices, indications may still be traced in the old monastic
buildings which form the picturesque south side of the large quadrangle of
Worcester College. For over the doorways of these hostels the half-defaced
arms of different monasteries, the griffin of Malmesbury or the Cross of
Norwich, still denote their original purpose.
At the dissolution, the college was for a short
while made the residence of the first bishop of
Oxford. After his death it was purchased by Sir
Thomas White, and by him converted into a hall for
the use of his College of S. John. Gloucester Hall,
now become S. John Baptist Hall, after a chequered
career, was refounded and endowed in 1714 as
Worcester College out of the benefaction of Sir
Thomas Cookes. In the latter half of the eighteenth
century the hall, library and chapel were built and
the beautiful gardens of “Botany Bay” were
acquired.
The Benedictines also held Durham Hall, on the
Gateway, Worcester site of the present Trinity College, having secured a
Gardens property of about ten acres with a frontage of about
50 feet (including Kettell Hall) on Broad Street, and
500 feet on the “Kingis hye waye of Bewmounte.” It was here that Richard
de Bury, Bishop of Durham, founded the first public library in Oxford. Bury
had studied at Oxford and was the tutor of Edward III.; statesman and
churchman, he was above all

Gateway in Garden of Worcester College things a book-lover. He had
more books, it is recorded, than all the other bishops put together and,
wherever he was residing, so many books lay about his bed-chamber that it
was hardly possible to stand or move without treading upon them. In the
Philobiblon the bishop describes his means and methods of collecting
books. In the course of his visitations he dug into the disused treasures of
the monasteries, and his agents scoured the Continent for those “sacred
vessels of learning.” The collection of books so made he intended for the
use of scholars, not merely for himself alone.
“We have long cherished in our heart of hearts,” he writes, “the fixed resolve to found in
perpetual charity a hall in the reverend University of Oxford, and to endow it with the necessary
revenues, for the maintenance of a number of scholars; and, moreover, to enrich the hall with the
treasures of our books, that all and every one of them should be in common as regards their use and
study, not only to the scholars of the said hall, but by their means to all the students of the aforesaid
University for ever.”

And he proceeds to lay down strict regulations based on those of the
Sorbonne, for the use and preservation of his beloved books and the
catalogue he had made of them.
Richard of Hoton, prior of Durham Monastery, had begun in 1289 the
erection of a college building to receive the young brethren from that
monastery, whom his predecessor, Hugh of Darlington, had already begun
to send to Oxford to be educated. This colony of Durham students it was
apparently Richard de Bury’s intention to convert into a body corporate,
consisting of a prior and twelve brethren. And in gratitude for the signal
defeat of the Scots at Halidon Hill, Edward III. took the proposed college
under his special protection. Bury, however, died, and died in debt, so that
he himself never succeeded in founding the hall he intended. His successor,
Bishop Hatfield, took up the scheme, and entered into an agreement with
the prior and convent of Durham for the joint endowment of a college for
eight monks and eight secular scholars. This project was completed, by
agreement with his executors, after his death (1381).
But what became of the books of the bishop and bibliophile, Richard de
Bury? Some of them, indeed, his executors were obliged to sell, but we
need not distrust the tradition which asserts that some of them at least did
come to Oxford. There, it is supposed, they remained till Durham Hall was
dissolved by Henry VIII., when they were dispersed, some going to Duke
Humphrey’s library, others to Balliol College, and the remainder passing

into the hands of Dr George Owen, who purchased the site of the dissolved
college.
Whatever happened to Bury’s books, it is certain that the room which
still serves as a library was built in 1417, and it may be taken to form,
happily enough, the connecting link between the old monastic house and
the modern Trinity College. Some fragments of the original “Domus et
clausura” may also survive in the Old Bursary and Common Room.
The stimulating effect of the friars upon the old Orders is shown also by
the foundation of Rewley Abbey, of which the main entrance was once
north-west of Hythe Bridge Street. Rewley (Locus Regalis in North Osney)
was built for the Cistercians.
Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III., who like the King had
often been at Oxford, directed in his will that a foundation should be
endowed for three secular priests to pray for his soul. His son Edmund,
however, founded an Abbey of regulars instead, Cistercian monks from
Thame. He gave sixteen acres to the west of the Abbey for walks and for
private use. To represent the twenty-one monks of the foundation, twenty-
one elm-trees were planted within the gates, and at the upper end a tree by
itself to represent the abbot. It was to this Abbey, then, that the Cistercian
monks came up to study, till Archbishop Chichele founded S. Bernard’s for
them (1437). The college which Chichele founded for the Bernardines, the
“Black” Cistercians who followed the reformed rule of S. Bernard, was
built on the east side of S. Giles’, “after the same

Oriel College

mode and fashion for matters of workmanship as his college of All Souls.”
It is the modern college of S. John Baptist. But a large part of the buildings
date from Chichele’s foundation, and the statue of S. Bernard still stands in
its original niche to recall to the modern student the Bernardines whom he
has succeeded.
The Abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII., who gave the site to the
Cathedral of Christ Church. The ruins were still standing in Wood’s day,
“seated within pleasant groves and environed with clear streams.” Only a
fragment of a wall and doorway now remain. A memorial stone, purchased
from the site of Rewley by Hearne the Antiquarian for half a crown, is
preserved in the Ashmolean. It bears the name of Ella Longepée, the
benevolent Countess of Warwick, “who made this chapel.”
In addition to the numerous parish churches and convents and colleges,
there were now innumerable smaller religious foundations in Oxford. There
was the House of Converts; there were several hospitals and hermitages and

“Ancherholds”—solitary little cells and cabins standing in the fields and
adjoining abbeys or parish churches.
The House of Converts was founded by Henry III.
(1234), and here “all Jews and infidels converted to the
Christian faith were ordained to have sufficient
maintenance.” After the expulsion of the Jews and when
the number of converts began to fail, it was used as a
Hall for scholars and known as Cary’s Inn. Later it was
the magnificent old Inn, the Blue Boar, which spanned
the old south boundary of Little Jewry, Blue Boar, Bear
or Tresham Lane. The whole of its site is occupied by
the modern Town Hall.
The hospital of S. Bartholomew, which lay about half
Doorway, Rewley
a mile to the east of the city, was founded by Henry I.
Abbey
for leprous folk. It consisted of one master, two healthful
brethren, six lepers and a clerk. The chapel and
buildings were given in 1328 by Edward III. to Oriel College. In the
fourteenth century forty days’ indulgence or pardon of sins was granted by
the Bishop of Lincoln to all who would pay their devotions at the chapel of
S. Bartholomew, on the feast of that saint, and give of their charity to the
leprous alms-folk. The result was that multitudes resorted there, and the
priests and poor people benefited considerably. But after the Reformation
the custom died out. Later, it was revived, for charitable reasons, by the
Fellows of New College. They changed the day to May-day, and then
“after their grave and wonted manner, early in the morning, they used to walk towards this place.
They entered the chapel, which was ready decked and adorned with the seasonable fruits of the year.
A lesson was read, and then the fellows sung a hymn or anthem of five or six parts. Thereafter one by
one they went up to the altar where stood a certain vessel decked with Tuttyes, and therein offered a
piece of silver; which was afterwards divided among the poor men. After leaving the chapel by paths
strewn with flowers, they in the open space, like the ancient Druids, the Apollinian offspring, echoed
and warbled out from the shady arbours harmonious melody, consisting of several parts then most in
fashion.” And Wood adds that “the youth of the city would come here every May-day with their lords
and ladies, garlands, fifes, flutes, and drums, to acknowledge the coming in of the fruits of the year,
or, as we may say, to salute the great goddess Flora, and to attribute her all praise with dancing and
music.”

The income of the hospital had previously been much augmented by the
relics which it was fortunate enough to possess. S. Edmund the Confessor’s
comb, S. Bartholomew’s skin, as well as his much revered image, the bones
of S. Stephen and one of the ribs of S. Andrew the apostle, all helped to

draw to this shrine without the walls the worship and the offerings of the
sick and the devout. It is difficult to realise with what reverential awe men
regarded the jaw-bone of an ancient cenobite, the tooth or even the toe-nail
of a saint or martyr. Charms, in those days, were considered more
efficacious than drugs, and the bones of saints were the favourite remedies
prescribed by the monkish physicians. Comb your hair with this comb of
Saint Edmund, then, and you would surely be cured of frenzy or headache;
apply the bones of S. Stephen to your rheumatic joints, and your pains
would disappear. So it was most firmly believed; and faith will remove
mountains. There was a saint for every disease. To touch the keys of S.
Peter or to handle a relic of S. Hubert was deemed an effectual mode of
curing madness. S. Clare, according to monkish leechcraft, cured sore eyes;
S. Sebastian the plague, and S. Apollonia the toothache. The teeth of S.
Apollonia, by the way, were by a fortunate dispensation almost as numerous
as the complaint which she took under her charge was common.
It is said that Henry VI., disgusted at the excess of this superstition,
ordered all who possessed teeth of that illustrious saint to deliver them to an
officer appointed to receive them. Obedient crowds came to display their
saintly treasures, and lo! a ton of the veritable teeth of S. Apollonia were
thus collected together. Were her stomach, says Fuller, proportionate to her
teeth, a country would scarce afford her a meal.
The relics at S. Bartholomew’s were so highly prized that Oriel College
thought it desirable to remove them to their church of S. Mary—where
more people might have the benefit of them. S. Bartholomew’s hospital was
used as a common pest-house for the plague in 1643, and shortly after was
completely demolished. The chapel fared no better, for it was put to base
uses by the Parliamentarians, and the roof, which was of lead, was melted
down to provide bullets for “the true Church Militant.”
The buildings and chapel were, however, restored by the patrons, Oriel
College. If you follow the Cowley Road towards Cowley Marsh, you will
find on your left, opposite the College cricket grounds, and just short of the
Military College and barracks, a ruined building which is the old chapel of
S. Bartholomew, and contains the screen put up in the time of the
Commonwealth. The letters O. C., 1651, mark it. They stand for Oriel
College, not Oliver Cromwell, we must suppose.

There was a hospital in Stockwell Street, at the back of Beaumont
Palace; there was a hospital of Bethlehem at the north end of S. Giles’
Church and Alms-house Place in Holywell. Of hermitages we may mention
that known as S. Nicholas Chapel on the west side of South Bridge. The
hermits who lived there successively were called the hermits of Grand Pont.
They passed their lives, we are told, in continual prayer and bodily labour
—“in prayer against the vanities of the world, for poor pilgrims and
passengers that steered their course that way, receiving of them something
of benevolence for that purpose; in bodily labour by digging their own
graves and filling them up again, as also in delving and making highways
and bridges.”
“Our Lady in the wall” was the name of another hermitage near S.
Frideswide’s Grange, which was in great repute at one time for the
entertainment of poor pilgrims who came to be cured by the waters of S.
Edmund’s well (Cowley Place).
The hospital of S. John Baptist was founded some time before the end of
the thirteenth century for the relief of poor scholars and other miserable
persons. Among the property granted or confirmed to it by Henry III. in a
very liberal charter, was the mill known as King’s Mill at the Headington
end of the path now called Mesopotamia, because it runs between the two
branches of the river.
As a site for rebuilding the hospital the brethren were given (1231) the
Jews’ Garden, outside the East Gate of Oxford, but it was provided that a
space should be reserved for a burial-ground for the Jews. This ground
formed part of the present site of Magdalen College, and part of the site of
the Physic Garden, which lies on the other side of the High Street, facing
the modern entrance to that college. The latter site was that reserved for the
Jews’ cemetery; the hospital buildings were erected on the other portion.
When Waynflete began to enlarge and remodel his foundation of Magdalen
Hall (1456), he obtained a grant from the king whereby the hospital (which
had ceased to fulfil its purpose) and its possessions were assigned to the
President and Fellows of the Hall.
Two years later a commission was appointed by the Pope, which
confirmed the suppression of the hospital and its incorporation in the
college which Waynflete had been licensed to found,

“whereby he proposed to change earthly things to heavenly, and things transitory to things
eternal, by providing in place of the Hospital a College of a President, secular scholars and other
ministers for the service of God and the study of theology and philosophy; of whom some are to
teach these sciences without fee at the cost of the College.”

Of the buildings which were once part of the old hospital very little
remains. In the line of the present college, facing the street, a blocked-up
doorway to the west of the tower marks one of the entrances to the hospital.
And Wood was probably correct in saying that the college kitchen was also
part of the original fabric. There is a little statue of a saint over a doorway
inside the kitchen which appears to bear out this statement.

The various religious Orders were, then, well represented at Oxford.
Their influence on the University was considerable; their relations with it
not always amicable. At first, doubtless, they did much to stimulate mental
activity, whilst the friendship which Grossetete, who as Bishop of Lincoln
exercised a sort of paternal authority over the University, manifested
towards his “faithful counsellor,” Adam Marsh, and the Franciscans in
general, helped to reconcile their claims with the interests of the University.
But the University was always inclined to be jealous of them; to regard
them bitterly, and not without reason, as grasping bodies, who were never
tired of seeking for peculiar favours and privileges and always ready to
appeal to the Pope on the least provocation. Before long, indeed, it became
evident that their object was to gain control of the University altogether.
And this endeavour was met by a very strenuous and bitter campaign
against them. For, as at Paris, the friars soon outlived their welcome, and as
at Paris, it was deemed advisable to set a limit to the number of friar doctors
and to secure the control of the University to the regular graduates.[18]
The friars who were sent up to Oxford had usually completed their eight
years’ study of Arts in the Friars’ schools, and were probably chosen for the
promise they had shown in the course of their earlier studies. Their
academic studies were confined to the Faculty of Theology, in its wide
mediæval sense, and of Canon Law, the hand-maid of theology. But though
the regulars were for the most part subject to the same regulations as the
secular students in these faculties, yet the Orders were bound before long to
find themselves in antagonism with the customs of the University. The rules
of the Preaching Friars forbade them to take a degree in Arts; the University
required that the student of theology should have graduated in Arts. The

issue was definitely raised in 1253, and became the occasion of a statute,
providing that for the future no one should incept in Theology unless he had
previously ruled in Arts in some University and read one book of the
Canon, or of the Sentences, and publicly preached in the University. This
statute was challenged some fifty years later by the Dominicans, and gave
rise to a bitter controversy which involved the Mendicant Orders in much
odium. The Dominicans appealed first to the King and then to the Pope, but
the award of the arbitrators appointed upheld the statute. The right of
granting dispensations, however, or graces to incept in Theology, to those
who had not ruled in Arts, was reserved to the Chancellor and Masters. A
clause which prohibited the extortion of such “graces” by means of the
letters of influential persons was inserted, but was not altogether effective.
Certain friars who had used letters of this kind are named in a proclamation
of the year 1358. “These are the names of the wax-doctors who seek to
extort graces from the University by means of letters of lords sealed with
wax, or because they run from hard study as wax runs from the face of fire.
Be it known that such wax-doctors are always of the Mendicant Orders, the
cause whereof we have found; for by apples and drink, as the people fables,
they draw boys to their religion, and do not instruct them after their
profession, as their age demands, but let them wander about begging, and
waste the time when they could learn in currying favour with lords and
ladies.”
From an educational point of view no doubt the University was right in
insisting on the preliminary training in Arts.
Roger Bacon speaks with contempt of the class that was springing up in
his day—people who studied theology and nothing but theology, “and had
never learnt anything of real value. Ignorant of all parts and sciences of
mundane philosophy, they venture on the study of philosophy which
demands all human wisdom. So they have become masters in theology and
philosophy before they were disciples.”
The tendency and the danger of our modern educational system is to
specialise, not in theology but in science, without any proper previous
training in the humanities.
Whilst the University was engaged in desperate combat with the friars in
defence of its system, the regulars had succeeded in securing almost a
monopoly of learning. The same fight and the same state of affairs

prevailed at Paris. And just as at Paris in order to save the class of secular
theologians from extinction, Robert de Sorbonne established his college
(1257) for secular clerks, so now at Oxford, Walter de Merton took the most
momentous step in the history of our national education by founding a
college for twenty students of Theology or Canon Law, who not only were
not friars or monks, but who forfeited their claims to his bounty if they
entered any of the regular Orders. And that his object was achieved the
names of Walter Burley, the Doctor Perspicuus, Thomas Bradwardine, the
profound doctor, and perhaps John Wycliffe stand forth to prove.
As an institution for the promotion of academical education under a
collegiate discipline but secular guidance, the foundation of Merton College
was the expression of a conception entirely new in England. It deserves
special consideration, for it became the model of all other collegiate
foundations, and determined the future constitution of both the English
Universities.
Walter de Merton was born at Merton in Surrey. He studied at Oxford
and won such high honour with the King that he was made Chancellor of
the kingdom. Ranged on the side opposite to that of Simon de Montford, he
was enabled perhaps by the very success of his opponent and the leisure
that so came to him, to perfect the scheme which he had early begun to
develop. At first he set aside his estates of Malden, Farleigh and
Chessington to support eight of his young kinsmen in study at the
University.
But in 1263 he made over his manor-house and estate of Malden to a
“house of Scholars of Merton,” with the object of supporting twenty
students preferably at Oxford.
The first statutes were granted in the following year. The scholars in
whom the property of this house was vested were not allowed to reside
within its walls for more than one week in the year, at the annual audit. The
house was to be occupied by a Warden and certain brethren or Stewards. It
was their business to

Old Gateway, Merton College Herbert Railton Oxford

administer the estate and pay their allowances to the scholars. The scholars
themselves were all originally nephews of the founder. Their number was to
be filled up from the descendants of his parents, or failing them, other
honest and capable young men, with a preference for the diocese of
Winchester. They were to study in some University where they were to hire
a hall and live together as a community. It was in the very year of the
secession to Northampton that the statutes were issued, and it would have
been obviously inexpedient to bind the students to one University or one
town. The Studium might be removed from Oxford or the scholar might
find it desirable to migrate from that University, to Stamford, Cambridge, or
even Paris. The founder, indeed, in view of such a possibility did acquire a
house at Cambridge for his college (Pythagoras Hall).
The little community thus established at Oxford was to live simply and
frugally, without murmuring, satisfied with bread and beer, and with one
course of flesh or fish a day.

A second body of statutes given to the community in 1270 fixed their
abode definitely at Oxford and regulated their corporate life more in detail.
A sub-warden was now appointed to preside over the students in Oxford, as
well as one to administer at Malden.
Strict rules of discipline were laid down. At meals all scholars were to
keep silence save one, who was to read aloud some edifying work. All noisy
study was forbidden. If a student had need to talk, he must use Latin. In
every room one Socius, older and wiser than the others, was to act as
Præpositus, control the manners and studies of the rest and report on them.
To every twenty scholars a monitor was chosen to enforce discipline. One
among so many was not found to suffice, and by the final statutes of Merton
one monitor to ten was appointed. Thus originated the office of Decanus
(Dean).
A new class of poor students—“secondary scholars”—was also now
provided for. They were to receive sixpence a week each from Michaelmas
to Midsummer, and live with the rest at Oxford. In these secondary scholars
may be seen the germ of the distinction, so characteristic of English
colleges, between the full members of the society, afterwards known as
Fellows or Socii, and the scholars or temporary foundationers. Socii
originally meant those who boarded together in the same hall. It was the
founder of Queen’s who first used the word to distinguish full members of
the society from foundationers, who were still later distinguished as
“scholares.” Wykeham followed his example, distinguishing the verus et
perpetuus socius from the probationer.
And from these secondary scholars it is probable that a century later
Willyot derived his idea of the institution of a separate class of Portionistae,
the Merton Postmasters. They originally received a “stinted portion,”
compared with the scholars.
Merton became Chancellor once more on the death of Henry. He was
practically Regent of the Kingdom till the return of Edward from the
Crusades. As soon as he resigned the seals of office in 1274, he set himself
to revise the statutes of his college at Oxford, before taking up his duties as
Bishop of Rochester.
The wardens, bailiffs and ministers of the altar were now transferred
from Malden to Oxford, which was designated as the exclusive and

permanent home of the scholars. The statutes now given remained in force
till 1856, and are, to quote the verdict of the late warden,

“a marvellous repertory of minute and elaborate provisions governing every detail of college life.
The number and allowances of the scholars; their studies, diet, costume, and discipline; the
qualifications, election and functions of the warden; the distribution of powers among various college
officers; the management of the college estates and the conduct of the college business are here
regulated with remarkable sagacity. The policy which dictates and underlies them is easy to discern.
Fully appreciating the intellectual movement of his age, and unwilling to see the paramount control
of it in the hands of the religious Orders—the zealous apostles of papal supremacy—Walter de
Merton resolved to establish within the precincts of the University a great seminary of secular clergy,
which should educate a succession of men capable of doing good service in Church and State.
“The employment of his scholars was to be study—not the claustralis religio of the older
religious Orders, nor the more practical and more popular self-devotion of the Dominicans and
Franciscans. He forbade them ever to take vows; he enjoined them to maintain their corporate
independence against foreign encroachments; he ordained that all should apply themselves to
studying the liberal arts and philosophy before entering on a course of theology; and he provided
special chaplains to relieve them of ritual and ceremonial duties. He contemplated and even
encouraged their going forth into the great world. No ascetic obligations were laid on them, but
residence and continual study were strictly prescribed, and if any scholar retired from the college
with the intention of giving up study, or even ceased to study diligently, his salary was no longer to
be paid. If the scale of these salaries and statutable allowances was humble, it was chiefly because
the founder intended the number of scholars to be constantly increased as the revenues of the house
might be enlarged.”

In this foundation Walter De Merton was the first to express the only true
idea of a college. Once expressed, it was followed by every succeeding
founder. The collegiate system revolutionised University life in England.
Merton was never tired of insisting upon the one great claim which his
community should have to the loyalty, affection and service of its members.
It was this idea which has produced all that is good in the system. To
individual study in the University schools was added common life; to
private aims the idea of a common good. “The individual is called to other
activities besides those of his own sole gain. Diversities of thought and
training, of taste, ability, strength and character, brought into daily contact,
bound fast together by ties of common interest, give birth to sympathy,
broaden thought, and force enquiry, that haply in the issue may be formed
that reasoned conviction and knowledge, that power of independent
thought, to produce which is the great primary aim of our English
University education” (Henderson).
The founder, who had long been busy acquiring property in Oxford, had
impropriated the Church of S. John the Baptist for the benefit of the college,
and several houses in its immediate neighbourhood were made over to the
scholars. The site thus acquired (1265-8) became their permanent home and
was known henceforth as Merton Hall.

Of the buildings which were now erected and on which the eyes of the
founder may have rested in pride and hope, little now remains. The antique
stone carving over the college gate, the great north door of the vestibule of
the Hall, with its fantastic tracery of iron, perhaps the Treasury and Outer
Sacristy are relics of the earliest past. But Chapel, Hall, Library and
Quadrangle are later than the Founder.
As if to emphasise the ecclesiastical character of the English college, he
had begun at once to rebuild the parish church as a collegiate church. The
high altar was dedicated in the year of his death, 1277; the rest of the chapel
is of later dates.
The choir belongs to the end of the thirteenth century (1297), (Pure
Decorated); the transepts (Early Decorated, with later Perpendicular
windows and doors) were finished in 1424, but begun perhaps as early as
the choir; and the massive tower, with its soaring pinnacles, a fine specimen
of Perpendicular work, was completed in 1451.
It will be noticed that the chapel has no nave, but that, probably in
imitation of William of Wykeham’s then recently finished naveless chapel
at New College, the nave which had evidently been intended was omitted at
Merton (after 1386). Two arches blocked with masonry in the western wall
and the construction of the west window indicate this original intention of
adding a nave.
The old thirteenth century glass in the Geometrical windows of the
chancel is of great interest. The arms of Castile and the portrait

Oriel College

of Elinor of Castile (d. 1290) will be noticed. Merton Chapel is very rich
both in glass and brasses.
On entering the college you are struck at once by the fact that Merton is
not as other colleges arranged on a preconceived plan. But the irregular and
disconnected arrangement of the buildings of the quadrangle are themselves
suggestive of the fact that it was from Merton and the plans of its founder
that the college quadrangles may trace their origin; as it is from Merton that
they derive their constitution. The hall, the chapel, the libraries and the
living rooms, as essentials for college life, were first adopted here, and
these buildings were disposed in an unconnected manner about a
quadrangular court after the fashion of the outer Curia of a monastery. The
regular disposition of college quadrangles was first completed by
Wykeham, and whilst other colleges have conformed to the perfected shape,

Merton remains in its very irregularity proudly the prototype, the mother of
colleges.
Of the college buildings the most noteworthy is the library, the oldest
example of the mediæval library in England. It was the gift of William
Rede, Bishop of Chichester (1377). The dormer and east windows and the
ceiling are later, but the library as it is, though enriched by the
improvements of succeeding centuries, beautiful plaster-work and
panelling, noble glass and a sixteenth century ceiling, is not very different
from that in which the mediæval student pored over the precious
manuscripts chained to the rough sloping oaken desks which project from
the bookcases. These bookcases stand out towards the centre of the room
and form, with a reader’s bench opposite to each of the narrow lancet
windows, a series of reader’s compartments. How the books were fastened
and used in those days, you may gain a good idea by examining the half
case numbered forty-five.
It was in this library that the visitors of Edward VI. took their revenge on
the schoolmen and the popish commentators by destroying in their stupid
fanaticism not only innumerable works of theology, but also of astronomy
and mathematical science. “A cart-load,” says Thomas Allen, an eye-
witness, “of such books were sold or given away, if not burnt, for
inconsiderable nothings.” In this library Anthony Wood was employed in
the congenial occupation of “setting the books to rights,” and here is
preserved, according to tradition, the very astrolabe which Chaucer studied.
And, for a fact, a beautiful copy of the first Caxton edition of his works is
stored in the sacristy—a building which up till 1878 was used as a brew-
house.
The charming inner quadrangle, in which the library is, rejoices in the
name “Mob” Quad—a name of which the derivation has been lost. Like the
Treasury, it probably dates from about 1300. The high-pitched roof of the
latter, made of solid blocks of ashlar, is one of the most remarkable features
of Merton. The outer sacristy is on the right of the main entrance passage to
Mob Quad, and thence an old stone staircase leads to the Treasury or
Muniment room. Another passage from the front quadrangle leads to
Patey’s Quad. The Fellows’ Quadrangle was begun in 1608, and the large
gateway with columns of the four orders (Roman-Doric, Ionic, Corinthian,
and Composite) is typical of the architectural taste of the times. The
quadrangle itself, very similar to that of Wadham, is one of the most

beautiful and charming examples of late Gothic imaginable. It would have
been a fortunate thing if this had been the last building added to Merton.
But it was destined that the taste of the Victorian era should be painfully
illustrated by the new buildings which were erected in 1864 by Mr
Butterfield. The architect was eager and the college not disinclined at that
time to destroy part of the library and the Mob Quad. The abominable
building which replaced the beautiful enclosure known as the Grove,
combines with the new buildings of Christ Church to spoil what might have
been one of the most beautiful effects of water, wood and architecture in the
world—the view of Oxford from the Christ Church and Broad Walks.
Inspired by the example of Merton and a similar dislike of monks and
friars, Walter de Stapeldon, the great Bishop of Exeter, ordained that the
twelve scholars whom he originally endowed (1314) should not study
theology or be in orders. The society, afterwards known as Exeter College,
was housed at first in Hart Hall and Arthur Hall, in the parish of S. Peter in
the East, and was intended by the founder to be called Stapeldon Hall. In
the following year he moved his scholars, eight of whom, he stipulated,
must be drawn from Devonshire and four from Cornwall, to tenements
which he had bought between the Turl and Smith Gate, just within the
walls. The founder added a rector to their number and gave them statutes,
based on those of Merton, which clearly indicated that his object was to
give a good education to young laymen. The college was practically
refounded in 1566 by Sir William Petre, a successful servant of the Tudors.
Of the pre-reformation buildings, nothing unhappily remains save a
fragment of the tower. The rest is seventeenth century or nineteenth, the
front on Turl Street dating from 1834, and the unlovely “modern Gothic”
front on Broad Street from 1854. Sir Gilbert Scott, who designed the latter,
destroyed the old chapel and replaced it with a copy of the Sainte Chapelle.
Ten years later another daughter of Merton was born. For in 1324 Adam
de Brome, Almoner of Edward II. and Rector of S. Mary’s, obtained the
royal licence to found a college of scholars, Bachelor Fellows, who should
study theology and the Ars Dialectica. The statutes of this “Hall of the
Blessed Mary at Oxford,” afterwards known as King’s Hall and Oriel
College, were copied almost verbatim from those of Merton. Tackley’s Inn,
on the south side of High Street (No. 106), and Perilous Hall, on the north
side of Horsemonger, now Broad Street, were purchased for the College.
But in 1326 it was refounded by the King, endowed with the advowson and

rectory of the Church of S. Mary, and ordered to be governed by a Provost,
chosen by the scholars from their own number. The first Provost was the
founder, who was also Rector of S. Mary’s, and the society now established
itself in the Rectory House on the south side of the High Street (St Mary
Hall), at the north end of Schidyard (Oriel) Street. The college gradually
acquired property stretching up to St John’s (now Merton) Street, and in so
doing became possessed of the tenement at the angle of Merton and Oriel
Street called /p, or, for some uncertain reason, but probably on account of
its possessing one of the architectural features indicated by that word, La
Oriole. It was here, then, that the society fixed its abode and from this hall it
took its name. The present front quadrangle, resembling the contemporary
front quadrangles of Wadham and University, and endowed with a peculiar
charm by the weather-stained and crumbling stone, stands on the site of La
Oriole and other tenements. It was completed in the year of the outbreak of
the Civil War, Regnante Carolo, as the legend on the parapet between the
hall and chapel records, and the statue of Charles I. above it indicates. The
Garden Quadrangle was added in the eighteenth century.
The monks and friars have gone their way and the place of their
habitation knows them no more. But they have left their mark upon Oxford
in many ways. Though their brotherhoods were disbanded by Henry VIII.
and most of their buildings demolished, the quadrangles and cloisters of
many colleges recall directly the monastic habit, and the college halls the
refectory of a convent. Whilst the College of S. John dates back from the
scholastic needs of the Cistercians, and the Canterbury Quad and gate at
Christ Church keep alive by their names the recollection of the Canterbury
college founded by Archbishop Islip (1363) for the Benedictines of
Canterbury, the old hostels, which were once erected to receive the
Benedictine students from other convents, survive in those old parts of
Worcester which lie on your left as you approach the famous gardens of that
college. Trinity College occupies the place of Durham, and Wadham has
risen amid the ruins of a foundation of Augustines, whose disputative
powers were kept in memory in the exercises of the University schools
down to 1800. The monks of S. Frideswide’s Priory, S. George’s Church,
the Abbey of Osney, have all disappeared with the friaries. But Christ
Church is a magnificent monument to the memory of the abbots and canons
regular whom it has succeeded. The very conception of an academical
college was no doubt largely drawn from the colleges of the regular

religious Orders, which, unlike those of the Mendicants, were entirely
designed as places of study.
We have seen how the foundation of Merton,
and therefore of Exeter and Oriel, was directly due
to the coming of the friars. And it is to their
influence that yet another great and once beautiful
college, beautiful no longer, but greater now and
more famous than ever by virtue of the services in
politics and letters of its successful alumni, owes
its origin. For it was under the guidance of a
Franciscan friar, one Richard de Slikeburne, that
the widow of Sir John de Balliol carried out her
husband’s intention of placing upon a thoroughly
organised footing his house for poor scholars.
He, the Lord of Barnard Castle, father of the
illustrious rival of the Bruce, having about the Monastic Buildings,
year 1260 “unjustly vexed and enormously Worcester College
damnified” the Church of Tynemouth and the
Church of Durham, was compelled by the militant
bishop whose hard task it was to keep peace on the Border, to do penance.
He knelt, in expiation of his crime, at the door of Durham Abbey, and was
there publicly scourged by the bishop. He also undertook to provide a
perpetual maintenance for certain poor scholars in the University.
Balliol’s original scheme of benefaction had little in common with the
peculiarly English college-system inaugurated by Walter de Merton. It was
drawn up on the lines of the earlier foundations of Paris.
For the Hall of Balliol was originally a college for Artists only who lost
their places when they took a degree in Arts. Their scholarships meanwhile
supplied them only with food and lodging of a moderate quality. But these
youthful students, according to the democratic principles on which the halls
were carried on, made their own statutes and customs, and it was in
accordance with this code that the Principal was required to govern them.
Balliol’s scholars were established in Oxford by June 1266, and were at
first supported by an annual allowance from him. He granted them a
commons of eightpence a week. The hostel in which he lodged them was a
house he hired in Horsemonger Street (Broad Street), facing the moat and

city wall. But before he had made any provision for the permanent
endowment of his scholars Balliol died. A close connection had apparently
from the first been established between the hall and the Franciscans. One of
the agents by whom Balliol’s dole had been distributed was a Franciscan
friar. Now, under the guidance and probably at the instigation of the friar
Richard of Slikeburne, whom she appointed her attorney in the business,
Lady Dervorguilla of Galloway, the widow of John of Balliol, set herself to
secure the welfare of her husband’s scholars. Since his death the very
existence of the newly formed society had been in jeopardy. The Lady
Dervorguilla, then, addressed a letter to the procurators or agents of
Balliol’s dole, instructing them to put in force a code of statutes which was
no doubt in great part merely a formal statement of customs already
established at the Old Balliol Hall. She next fitted up the north aisle of the
parish church (S. Mary Magdalen) for the use of her scholars; she endowed
them with lands in Northumberland, and purchased for their dwelling-place
three tenements east of Old Balliol Hall. These tenements, which were
south-west of the present front quadrangle, and faced the street, were soon
known as New Balliol Hall or Mary Hall. The whole of the site of the front
quadrangle was acquired by the Society as early as 1310.
A few years later (1327) the scholars built themselves a chapel, part of
which, said to be preserved in the dining-room of the Master’s House,
forms an interesting link between the original scholars of Balliol and the
modern Society which is connected with the name of Dr Jowett. The
statutes, which had been much tinkered by subsequent benefactors and
bishops, were finally revised by Bishop Fox, the enlightened and broad-
minded founder of C.C.C.
Fox gave Balliol a constitution, not altogether in harmony with his own
ideals as expressed in the statutes of Corpus, but such as he thought best
fitted to fulfil the intentions of the founders. He divided the Society into
two halves:—ten juniors, Scholastici, and ten Fellows, Socii, each of whom
had a definite duty. In their hands the whole government of the College was
placed.
According to the new regulations the scholars or servitors of Balliol
were to occupy a position humbler than that of the younger students at any
other College. They were to wait upon the Master and the graduate Fellows
and to be fed with the crumbs that should fall from the table of their
superiors. They were to be nominated by the Fellow whom they were to

serve, to be from eighteen to twenty-two years of age, and if they proved
themselves industrious and well-behaved they were to be eligible to
Fellowships even though they had not taken the degree of B.A.
Commoners, as in most other Colleges, were to be allowed to lodge within
the walls of the College, and to take their meals with the members of the
Society.
The Fellowships, which entitled the holder to a “commons” of 1s. 8d. a
week, were thrown open to competition, candidates being required,
however, to be Bachelors of Arts, of legitimate birth, good character,
proficient in their studies, and in need of assistance, for any cure of souls, or
a private income of more than 40s. a year, was accounted a reason for
disqualification.
Fox had a weakness for metaphors. In the statutes of Corpus he “spoke
horticulturally; his metaphor was drawn from bees.” On the present
occasion he uses a metaphor as elaborate and appropriate. The College is
described as a human body. The Master was the head, endued with the five
senses of seeing clearly, hearing discreetly, smelling sagaciously, tasting
moderately, and touching fitly; the senior Fellow was the neck; the Deans
were the shoulders; the two priests the sides; the Bursars the arms and
hands; the Fellows the stomach; the scholars the legs; and the servants the
feet, whose function it is to go whithersoever they are bidden. Just as the
body when sick would require a physician, so it was said would the College
sometimes require a visitor. The Master and Fellows were given the unusual
privilege of choosing their own visitor.
In the fifteenth century the whole quadrangle was rebuilt; the Old Hall,
the Old Library, the Master’s House, and the block of buildings and
gateway facing Broad Street being then erected. Of these the shell of the
Master’s House, the Old Hall, now converted into an undergraduates’
library, and the Old Library, much defaced by Wyatt, survive. The east wall
of the library was used to form the west end of the chapel, which was built
in 1529 to replace the old oratory. The sixteenth century chapel was
removed and the present building erected as a memorial to Dr Jenkins,
under whom Balliol had begun to develop into a College of almost national
importance. Mr Butterfield, the architect who had done his best to ruin
Merton, and who perpetrated Keble, was entrusted with this unfortunate
method of perpetuating the worthy Master’s memory.

Balliol College

Mr Waterhouse is responsible for the present front of the College, the
east side of the first quadrangle, the north side of the Garden Quadrangle
and the new Hall therein (1867-1877).
Not content with fighting the University, the Oxford Friars soon began to
fight each other. Rivalries sprang up between the Orders; enormous
scandals of discord, as Matthew Paris phrases it. Jealousy found its natural
vent in politics as in the schools. Politically, the Oxford Franciscans
supported Simon de Montfort; the Dominicans sided with the King. The
Mad Parliament met in the Convent of the Black Friars. In philosophy the
Franciscans attacked the doctrine of the Dominican, S. Thomas Aquinas,
who had made an elaborate attempt to show that natural and revealed truth
were complementary the one of the other. In order to establish this thesis
and to reconcile human philosophy and the Christian faith, the Angelic
Doctor, for so he was commonly termed, had written an encyclopædia of
philosophy and theology, in which he advanced arguments on both sides of
every question and decided judicially on each in strict accordance with the
tenets of the Church.
The light of this “sparkling jewel of the clergy, this very clear mirror of
the University of Paris, this noble and illuminating candlestick,” was
somewhat dimmed, however, when the great Franciscan hero, the “subtle

doctor,” Duns Scotus, took up the argument, and clearly proved that the
reasoning of this champion of orthodoxy was itself unorthodox. The world
of letters was divided for generations into the rival camps of Scotists and
Thomists. But the two doctors have fared very differently at the hands of
posterity. Thomas was made a Saint, judged to be a “candlestick,” and
awarded by Dante a place high in the realms of Paradise. Duns Scotus, on
the other hand, whose learning and industry were as great and his merit
probably not much inferior, survives chiefly in the English language as a
“dunce.” The name of the great Oxford scholar stands to the world chiefly
as a synonym for a fool and a blockhead. For when the Humanists, and
afterwards the Reformers, attacked his system as a farrago of needless
entities and useless distinctions, the Duns men, or Dunses, on their side
railed against the new learning. The name of Dunce, therefore, already
synonymous with cavilling sophist or hair-splitter, soon passed into the
sense of dull, obstinate person, impervious to the new learning, and of
blockhead, incapable of learning or scholarship. Such is the justice of
history.
Duns Scotus had carried the day and the Church rallied to the side of the
Franciscans. But such a successful attack involved the Orders in extreme
bitterness. The Dominicans retorted that these Franciscans, who claimed
and received such credit throughout Europe for humility and Christlike
poverty, were really accumulating wealth by alms or bequests. The charge
was true enough.
The pride and luxury of the Friars, their splendid buildings, their laxity
in the Confessional, their artifices for securing proselytes, their continual
strife with the University and their endeavours to obtain peculiar privileges
therein had long undermined their popularity. They were regarded as
“locusts” who had settled on the land and stripped the trees of learning and
of life.
Duns Scotus held almost undisputed sway for a while. His works on
logic, theology and philosophy were text-books in the University. But
presently there arose a new light, a pupil of his own, to supplant him.
William of Ockham, the “singular” or “invincible” doctor, revived the
doctrine of Nominalism. At once the glory and reproach of his Order, he
used the weapons of Scholasticism to destroy it.

But if in Philosophy the “invincible doctor” was a sceptic, in Theology
he was a fanatical supporter of the extreme Franciscan view that the
ministers of Christ were bound to follow the example of their Master, and to
impose upon themselves absolute poverty. It was a view which found no
favour with popes or councils. But undeterred by the thunders of the
Church, Ockham did not shrink from thus attacking the foundations of the
papal supremacy or from asserting the rights of the civil power.
Paris had been, as we have seen, the first home of Scholasticism, but
with the beginning of the fourteenth century, Oxford had taken its place as
the centre of intellectual activity in Europe. The most important schoolmen
of the age were all Oxonians, and nearly all the later schoolmen of note
were Englishmen or Germans educated in the traditions of the English
“nation” at Paris.
And when the old battle between Nominalism and Realism was renewed,
it was fought with more unphilosophical virulence than before. “It was at
this time that Philosophy literally descended from the schools into the
street, and that the odium metaphysicum gave fresh zest to the unending
faction fight between north and south at Oxford, between Czech and
German at Prague” (Rashdall).
Yet this was not without good results. For Scholasticism began now to
come in contact with practical life. The disputants were led on to deal with
the burning questions of the day, the questions, that is, as to the foundations
of property, the respective rights of king and pope, of king and subject, of
priest and people.
The day was now at hand when the trend of political events, stimulated
by the influence of the daring philosophical speculations of the Oxford
schoolmen, was to issue in a crisis. The crisis was a conflict between the
claims of papal supremacy and the rights of the civil power, and for this
crisis Oxford produced the man—John Wycliffe.
Born on the banks of the Tees, he, the last of the great schoolmen, was
educated at Balliol, where he probably resided till he was elected master of
that College in 1356. In 1361 he accepted a College living and left Oxford
for a while, but was back again in 1363, and resided in Queen’s College. He
combined his residence there and his studies for a degree in theology with
the holding of a living at Ludgershall in Bucks. Some suppose that he was
then appointed Warden of Canterbury Hall,[19] but this supposition is

probably incorrect. At any rate he was already a person of importance, not
only at Oxford, but at the Court.
When Parliament decided to repudiate the annual tribute to the Pope
which John had undertaken to pay, Wycliffe officially defended this
repudiation. He continued to study at Oxford, developing his views. That he
was in high favour at Court is shown by the fact that he was nominated
(1374) by the Crown to the Rectory of Lutterworth and appointed one of the
Royal Commissioners to confer with the papal representatives at Bruges.
But he continued lecturing at Oxford and preaching in London.
Politically he threw in his lot with the Lancastrian party. For he had been
led in the footsteps of his Italian and English predecessors, Marsiglio and
Ockham, to proclaim that the Church suffered by being involved in secular
affairs, and that endowments were a hindrance to the proper spiritual
purpose of the Church. So it came about that the “Flower of Oxford,” as he
was called, the priest who desired to reform the clergy, found himself in
alliance with John of Gaunt, the worldly statesman, who merely desired to
rob them. He soon found himself in need of the Duke’s protection. The
wealthy and worldly churchmen of the day were not likely to listen tamely
to his lectures. He was summoned before Bishop Courtenay of London to
answer charges of erroneous teaching concerning the wealth of the Church
(1377). The Duke of Lancaster accepted the challenge as given to himself.
He stood by Wycliffe in the Consistory Court at S. Paul’s, and a rude brawl
between his supporters and those of Courtenay, in which the Duke himself
is said to have threatened to drag the Bishop out of the church by the hair of
his head, put an end to the trial. Papal bulls were now promulgated against
Wycliffe. The University was directed to condemn and arrest him, if he
were found guilty of maintaining certain “conclusions” extracted from his
writings. The Oxford masters, however, were annoyed at the attack made
upon a distinguished member of their body, and they resented, as a
threatened infringement of their privileges, the order of the Archbishop and
Bishop of London, which commanded the Oxford divines to hold an
enquiry and to send Wycliffe to London to be heard in person. What they
did, therefore, was simply to enjoin Wycliffe to remain within the walls of
Black Hall, whilst they, after considering his opinions, declared them
orthodox, but liable to misinterpretation. But Wycliffe could not disobey the
Archbishop’s summons to appear at Lambeth. There he proved the value of

a Schoolman’s training. The subtlety of “the most learned clerk of his time”
reduced his opponents to silence.
The prelates were at a loss how to proceed. They were relieved from
their dilemma by the arrival of a Knight from the Court, who brought a
peremptory message from the Princess of Wales, mother of Richard II.,
forbidding them to issue any decree against Wycliffe.
The session was dissolved by an invasion of the London crowd. Wycliffe
escaped scot-free. Then followed the scandal of the Great Schism, when
two, or even three, candidates each claimed to be the one and only Vicar of
Christ.
It is the Great Schism which would appear to have converted Wycliffe
into a declared opponent of the papacy. Pondering on the problems of
Church and State which had hitherto occupied his energies, he was now
forced to the conclusion that the papal, and therefore the sacerdotal power
in general must be assailed. It was a logical deduction from his central
thesis, the doctrine of “dominion founded on grace.” He organised a band of
preachers who should instruct the laity in the mother tongue and supply
them with a Bible translated into English. Thus under his auspices Oxford
became the centre of a widespread religious movement. There the poor or
simple priests, as they were called, had a common abode, whence,
barefooted and clad in russet or grey gowns which reached to their ankles,
they went forth to propagate his doctrines. And since the Friars, who owed
their independence of the bishops and clergy to the privilege conferred upon
them by the popes, were strong supporters of the papal autocracy, Wycliffe
attacked them, by his own eloquence and that of his preachers, and that at a
time when their luxurious and degenerate lives laid them open to popular
resentment.
Already (1356) Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh, who like
Wycliffe had been a scholar of Balliol and in 1333 had held the office of
Vice-Chancellor, had attacked the Friars for their encroachments upon the
domain of the parish priests; their power, their wealth, their mendicancy, he
maintained, were all contrary to the example and precepts of Christ and
therefore of their founder. He charged them also with encroaching upon the
rights of parents by making use of the confessional to induce children to
enter their convents and become Friars. This was the reason, he asserted,
why the University had fallen to one-fifth of its former numbers, for parents

were unwilling to send their sons thither and preferred to bring them up as
farmers.
This attack furnished Wycliffe with a model for his onslaught. In his
earlier days he had treated the Friars with respect and even as allies—“a
Franciscan” he had said, “is very near to God”—for then he had been
attacking the endowments of the Church, and it was the monks or
“possessioners” and the rich secular clergy to whom he was opposed. In
theory the Mendicant Orders were opposed to these by their poverty and in
practice by their interests.
But the Friars were the close allies and chief defenders of the Pope.
Now, therefore, when Wycliffe passed from political to doctrinal reform, his
attitude towards the Mendicant Orders becomes one of uncompromising
hostility.
He and his followers denounced them with all the vehemence of
religious partisanship and all the vigour of the vernacular. Iscariot’s
children, they called them, and irregular Procurators of the Fiend,
adversaries of Christ and Disciples of Satan.
Wycliffe indeed went so far as to attribute an outbreak of disease in
Oxford to the idleness and intellectual stagnation of the Friars.
“Being inordinately idle and commonly gathered together in towns they cause a whole sublunary
unseasonableness.”

Finally, Wycliffe aimed at undermining the power of the priesthood by
challenging the doctrine of Transubstantiation. According to this doctrine
the priest had the power of working a daily miracle by “making the body of
Christ.” Wycliffe, in the summer of 1381, first publicly denied that the
elements of the sacrament underwent any material change by virtue of the
words uttered by the priest. The real presence of the body and blood of
Christ he maintained, but that there was any change of substance he denied.
The heresy was promulgated at Oxford. An enquiry was immediately
held by the Chancellor (William Berton) and twelve doctors, half of them
Friars, and the new “pestiferous” doctrines were condemned. The
condemnation and injunction forbidding any man in future to teach or
defend them in the University was announced to Wycliffe as he was sitting
in the Augustinian Schools, disputing the subject. He was taken aback, but
at once challenged chancellor or doctor to disprove his conclusions. The
“pertinacious heretic,” in fact, continued to maintain his thesis, and made a

direct appeal, not to the Pope, but to the King. The University rallied to his
side and tacitly supported his cause by replacing Berton with Robert Rygge
in the office of Vice-Chancellor. Rygge was more than a little inclined to be
a Wycliffite. And Wycliffe meanwhile appealed also to the people by means
of those innumerable tracts in the English tongue, which make the last of
the schoolmen the first of the English pamphleteers. Whilst he was thus
entering on his most serious encounter with the Church, suddenly there
broke out the Peasant Revolt. The insurrection blazed forth suddenly,
furiously, simultaneously and died away, having spent its force in a
fortnight. It was a sporadic revolt with no unity of purpose or action except
to express the general social discontent. But the upper classes were
seriously frightened and some of the odium was reflected on the subversive
doctrines of Wycliffe, whose Lollard preachers had doubtless dabbled not a
little in the socialism which honey-combed the Middle Ages.
When order was again restored, Courtenay, now become Archbishop,
began to take active measures to repress the opinions of Wycliffe. He
summoned a synod at the Blackfriars in London to examine them. The first
session was interrupted by an earthquake, which was differently interpreted
as a sign of the divine approval or anger. The Earthquake Council had no
choice but to condemn such doctrines as those they were asked to consider,
that God ought to obey the devil, for instance, or that no one ought to be
recognised as Pope after Urban VI.
When these doctrines were condemned, Wycliffe does not appear to have
been present, nor was any action at all taken against him personally. It is
supposed that his popularity at Oxford rendered him too formidable a
person to attack. He was left at peace and the storm fell upon his disciples.
The attack was made on “certain children of perdition,” who had publicly
taught the condemned doctrines, and “who went about the country
preaching to the people, without proper authority.” All such preachers were
to be visited with the greater excommunication.
As Oxford, however, was the centre of the movement a separate mandate
was sent thither.
The Archbishop sent down a commissary, Peter Stokes, a Carmelite friar,
to Oxford, to prohibit the teaching of incorrect doctrines, but avoiding any
mention of the teacher’s name. The University authorities were by no
means pleased at this invasion, so they held it, of their ancient privileges.

The Chancellor Rygge had just appointed Nicholas Hereford, a devoted
follower of Wycliffe, to preach before the University; he now appointed a
no less loyal follower, Philip Repyngdon to the same office. His sermon
was an outspoken defence of the Lollards. Stokes reported that he dared not
publish the Archbishop’s mandate, that he went about in the fear of his life;
for scholars with arms concealed beneath their gowns accompanied the
preachers and it appeared that not the Chancellor only, but both the Proctors
were Wycliffites, or at least preferred to support the Wycliffites to abating
one jot of what they considered the privileges of the University. And for
once the Mayor was of the same opinion as the rulers of the University.
Still, when the Chancellor was summoned before the Archbishop in
London, he did not venture to disobey, and promptly cleared himself of any
suspicion of heresy. The council met again at the Blackfriars, and Rygge
submissively took his seat in it. On his bended knees he apologised for his
disobedience to the Archbishop’s orders, and only obtained pardon through
the influence of William of Wykeham. Short work was made of the Oxford
Wycliffites; they were generally, and four of them by name, suspended from
all academical functions. Rygge returned to Oxford, with a letter from
Courtenay which repeated the condemnation of the four preachers, adding
to their names the name of Wycliffe himself. The latter was likened by the
Archbishop to a serpent which emits noxious poison. But the Chancellor
protested he dared not execute this mandate, and a royal warrant had to be
issued to compel him. Meanwhile he showed his real feeling in the matter
by suspending a prominent opponent of the Wycliffites who had called them
by the offensive name of Lollards (“idle babblers”). But the council in
London went on to overpower the party by stronger measures.[20] Wycliffe
had apparently retired before the storm burst upon Oxford. John of Gaunt
was appealed to by the preachers named. But the great Duke of Lancaster
had no desire to incur the charge of encouraging heresy. He pronounced the
opinions of Hereford and Repyngdon on the nature of the eucharist utterly
detestable. The last hope of Lollardism was gone. Wycliffe himself retired
unmolested to Lutterworth, where he died and was buried. “Admirable,”
says Fuller “that a hare so often hunted with so many packs of dogs should
die at last quietly sitting in his form.” Just as he owed his influence as a
Reformer to the skill and fame as a schoolman which he had acquired at
Oxford, so now his immunity was due to his reputation as the greatest
scholastic doctor in the “second school of the Church.”

The statute “De haeretico Comburendo” did its work quickly in
stamping out Lollardy in the country. The tares were weeded out. In Oxford
alone the tradition of Wycliffe died hard. A remarkable testimonial was
issued in October 1406 by the Chancellor and Masters, sealed with the
University seal. Some have thought it a forgery, and at the best it probably
only represented, as Maxwell Lyte suggests, the verdict of a minority of the
Masters snatched in the Long Vacation. But it is in any case of considerable
significance. It extols the character of John Wycliffe, and his exemplary
performances as a son of the University; it extols his truly Catholic zeal
against all who blasphemed Christ’s religion by voluntary begging, and
asserts that he was neither convicted of heretical pravity during his life, nor
exhumed and burned after death. He had no equal, it maintains, in the
University as a writer on logic, philosophy, theology or ethics.
Here then, Archbishop Arundel (1407) an Oriel man, who with his father
had built for that College her first chapel, found it necessary to take strong
steps. He held a provincial council at Oxford and ordered that all books
written in Wycliffe’s time should pass through the censorship, first of the
University of Oxford or Cambridge, and secondly of the Archbishop
himself, before they might be used in the schools. The establishment of
such a censorship was equivalent to a fatal muzzling of genius. If it silenced
the Wycliffite teaching, it silenced also the enunciation of any original
opinion or truth. Two years later Arundel risked a serious quarrel with the
University in order to secure the appointment of a committee to make a list
of heresies and errors to be found in Wycliffe’s writings. He announced his
intention of holding a visitation of the University with that object. He met
with violent opposition. The opponents of the Archbishop were not all
enthusiastic supporters of Wycliffe’s views. Not all masters and scholars
were moved by pure zeal either for freedom of speculation or for
evangelical truth. The local patriotism of the north countryman reinforced
the religious zeal of the Lollard. The chronic antipathy of the secular
scholars to the friars, of the realists to the nominalists, of the artists to the
higher faculties, and the academic pride of the loyal Oxonians—these were
all motives which fought for Wycliffe and his doctrines. Least tangible but
not least powerful among them was the last, for when civil or ecclesiastical
authority endeavoured to assert itself over corporate privileges in the
Middle Ages, a very hornet’s nest of local patriotism and personal
resentment was quickly roused.

The Oxford masters were impatient of all interference ecclesiastical as
well as civil. They had thrown off the yoke of the Bishop of Lincoln and the
Archdeacon of Oxford. And, with a view to asserting their independence of
the Primate, they had succeeded in obtaining a bull from Boniface IX. in
which he specifically confirmed the sole jurisdiction of the Chancellor over
all members of the University whatever, Priests and Monks and Friars
included. The University, however, was compelled to renounce the bull, and
to submit to the visitation of the Archbishop. But the submission was not
made without much disturbance and bitterness of feeling. The Lollards, the
younger scholars and the northerners, with their lawless allies the Irish,
were in favour of active resistance.
The behaviour of three Fellows of Oriel will show how the University
was divided against itself. These men, so runs the complaint against them,
“are notorious fomenters of discord.”
“They lead a band of ruffians by night, who beat, wound, and spoil men and cause murder. They
haunt taverns day and night, and do not enter college before ten or eleven or twelve o’clock, and even
scale the walls to the disturbance of quiet students, and bring in armed strangers to spend the night.
Thomas Wilton came in over the wall at ten and knocked at the Provost’s chamber, and woke up and
abused him as a liar, and challenged him to get up and come out to fight him. Against the Provost’s
express orders, on the vigil of S. Peter, these three had gone out of college, broken the Chancellor’s
door and killed a student of law. The Chancellor could neither sleep in his house by night nor walk in
the High Street by day for fear of these men.”

The arrival of the Archbishop at Oxford then, to hold a visitation at S.
Mary’s was a signal for an outbreak. S. Mary’s was barricaded and a band
of scholars armed with bows, swords and bucklers awaited the Primate.
Notwithstanding the interdict laid on the Church, John Birch of Oriel, one
of the Proctors, took the keys, opened the doors, had the bell rung as usual,
and even celebrated High Mass there. S. Mary’s, it will be remembered,
belonged to Oriel. Hence, perhaps, the active resistance of these Oriel
Fellows and of the Dean of Oriel, John Rote, who asked “why should we be
punished by an interdict on our church for other people’s faults?” And he
elegantly added, “The Devil go with the Archbishop and break his neck.”
The controversy was at last referred to the king. The Chancellors and
Proctors resigned their office. The younger students who had opposed the
Archbishop were soundly whipped, much to the delight of Henry IV. The
bull of exemption was declared invalid; the University acknowledged itself
subject to the See of Canterbury, thanks to the mediation of the Prince of

Wales, mad-cap Harry, and the Archbishop Arundel made a handsome
present of books to the public library of Oxford.
The committee desired by Arundel was eventually constituted. Two
hundred and sixty-seven propositions were condemned and the obnoxious
books solemnly burnt at Carfax. Not long after, a copy of the list of
condemned articles was ordered to be preserved in the public libraries, and
oaths against their maintenance were enjoined upon all members of the
University on graduation.
The methods of the Archbishop met with the success which usually
attends a well-conducted persecution. History notices the few martyrs who
from time to time have laid down their lives for their principles, but it often
fails to notice the millions of men who have discarded their principles
rather than lay down their lives.
So the Wycliffite heresy was at length dead and buried. But the
ecclesiastical repression which succeeded in bringing this about succeeded
also in destroying all vigour and life in the thought of the University.
Henceforth the Schoolmen refrained from touching on the practical
questions of their day. They struck out no new paths of thought, but
revolved on curves of subtle and profitless speculation, reproducing and
exaggerating in their logical hair-splitting all the faults without any of the
intellectual virtues of the great thinkers of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. It was against these degenerate dullards that the human mind at
last rebelled, when intellect was born again in the New Birth of letters.
What wonder then if, suddenly freed from the dead weight of their
demoralising stupidities, men broke out in the exuberance of their spirits
into childish excesses, confused the master with his foolish and depressing
pupils, strewed the quadrangle of New College with the leaves of Dunce,
and put them to the least noble of uses, as though they had been the
Chronicles of Volusius.
The Archbishop’s right of Visitation was confirmed in Parliament and
with it the suppression of Lollardy, of free speech and thought, in the
schools and pulpits of Oxford.
The issue of the struggle practically closes the history of Lollardism as a
recognised force in English politics, and with it the intellectual history of
mediæval Oxford.

Up to that time the University had shown itself decidedly eager for
reform, and for a few years the same spirit survived. Oxford had
consistently advocated the summoning of a General Council to settle the
claims of the rival popes and to put an end to the schism which was the
scandal of Christendom. But for fifteen years such pacific designs were
eluded by the arts of the ambitious pontiffs, and the scruples or passions of
their adherents. At length the Council of Pisa deposed, with equal justice,
the Popes of Rome and Avignon. In their stead, as they intended, but in
addition to them as events were to prove, the conclave, at which the
representatives of Oxford and Cambridge were present, unanimously
elected Peter Philargi. This Franciscan friar from Crete, who had taken his
degree of Bachelor of Theology at Oxford, assumed the title of Alexander
V., and remains the only wearer of the tiara who has graduated at Oxford or
Cambridge. He was shortly afterwards succeeded by John XXIII., the most
profligate of mankind. It remained for the Council of Constance to correct
the rash proceedings of Pisa, and to substitute one head of the Church in
place of the three rival popes (1414).
But before the opening of this Council the University of Oxford had
drawn up and presented to the King a document of a very remarkable
character. It consisted of forty-six articles for the reformation of the Church.
The Oxford masters suggested that the three rival popes should all resign
their claims; they complained of the simoniacal and extortionate
proceedings of the Roman Court, and of the appointment of foreigners to
benefices in England; they accused the Archbishops of encroaching on the
rights of their suffragans, and charged the whole Order of prelates with
nepotism and avarice. Abbots, they contended, should not be allowed to
wear mitres and sandals as if they were bishops, and monks should hot be
exempt from ordinary episcopal jurisdiction. Friars should be restrained
from granting absolution on easy terms, from stealing children, and from
begging for alms in the house of God. Secular canons should be made to
abandon their luxurious style of living, and masters of hospitals to pay more
regard to the wants of the poor. Parish priests, who neglected the flocks
committed to their care, are described as ravening wolves. The Masters also
complained of the non-observance of the Sabbath and of the iniquitous
system of Indulgences.
Shades of the founder of Lincoln College, what a document is this! It is
Wycliffism alive, rampant and unashamed. Not perhaps altogether

unashamed or at least not indiscreet, for the Masters go out of their way to
call for active measures against the Lollards. But the whole of this
manifesto is a cry from Oxford, in 1414, for reformation; it is a direct echo
of the teaching and declamation of Wycliffe, and an appeal for reformation
as deliberate and less veiled than “the vision of William Langland
concerning Piers Plowman,” that sad, serious satirist of those times, who, in
his contemplation of the corruption he saw around him in the nobility, the
Government, the Church and the Friars, “all the wealth of the world and the
woe too,” saw no hope at all save in a new order of things.
Oxford’s zeal for reformation at this time was made very clear also by
her representatives at Constance, where a former Chancellor, Robert Halam,
Bishop of Salisbury, and Henry Abingdon, a future Warden of Merton, very
greatly distinguished themselves. Yet it was by a decree of this very Council
of Constance (1415) that the remains of Wycliffe were ordered to be taken
up and cast out far from those of any orthodox Christian. This order was not
executed till twelve years later, when Bishop Fleming, having received
direct instructions from the Pope, saw to it.
Wycliffe’s remains were dug up, burnt and cast into the Swift, but, as it
has been said, the Swift bore them to the Avon, the Avon to the Severn, and
the Severn to the sea to be dispersed unto all lands: which things are an
allegory. For though in England the repression of his teaching deferred the
reformation, which theologically as well as politically Wycliffe had begun,
for more than a hundred years, yet abroad, in Bohemia, the movement
which he had commenced grew into a genuine national force, destined to
react upon the world.
Bishop Fleming, who had been proctor in 1407, seems to have thought
that the snake was scotched but not killed. For though he had been a
sympathiser with the Lollards in his youth, in his old age he thought it
worth while to found a “little college of theologians,” who should defend
the mysteries of the sacred page “against these ignorant laics, who profaned
with swinish snout its most holy pearls.” The students in this stronghold of
orthodox divinity were to proceed to the degree of B.D. within a stated
period; they must swear not to favour the pestilent sect of Wycliffites, and if
they persisted in heresy were to be cast out of the College “as diseased
sheep.” It was in 1427 that Fleming obtained a charter permitting him to
unite the three parish churches of All Saints’, S. Michael’s, and S. Mildred’s
into a collegiate church, and there to establish a “collegiolum,” consisting

of a rector and seven students of Theology, endowed with the revenue of
those churches. No sooner had he appointed the first rector, purchased a site
and begun to erect the buildings just south of the tower, than he died. The
energy of the second rector, however, Dr John Beke, secured the firmer
foundation of the College. He completed the purchase of the original site,
which is represented by the front quadrangle and about half the grove; and
thereon John Forest, Dean of Wells, completed (1437) the buildings as
Fleming had planned them, including a chapel and library, hall and kitchen,
and rooms. Modern Lincoln is bounded by Brasenose College and
Brasenose Lane, the High Street and the Turl,[21] the additional property
between All Saints’ Church and the front quadrangle having been bestowed
upon the College during the period 1435-1700. Of Forest’s buildings the
kitchen alone remains untouched, and a very charming fragment of the old
structure it is.
The foundation of Lincoln was remodelled and developed by Thomas
Rotherham, Chancellor of Cambridge, and afterwards Archbishop of York.
His benefactions to the cause of learning were munificent and unceasing,
and, so far as Lincoln is concerned, he may fairly be called the College’s
second founder. The origin of his interest in the College arose from a
picturesque incident. When he visited the College as bishop of the diocese
in 1474, the rector, John Tristrope, urged its claims in the course of a
sermon. He took for his text the words from the psalm, “Behold and visit
this vine, and the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted,” and he
earnestly exhorted the bishop to complete the work begun by his
predecessor. For the College was poor, and what property it had was at this
time threatened. So powerful and convincing was his appeal that, at the end
of the sermon, the bishop stood up and announced that he would grant the
request. He was as good as his word. He gave the College a new charter and
new statutes (1480)—a code which served it till the Commission of 1854;
he increased its revenues and completed the quadrangle on the south side.
There is a vine which still grows in Lincoln, on the north side of the chapel
quadrangle, and this is the successor of a vine which was either planted
alongside the hall in allusion to the successful text, or, being already there,
suggested it.

Oriel Window,
Lincoln College

CHAPTER V

THE MEDIÆVAL STUDENT

“A clerk ther was of Oxenford also,
That unto logik hadde longe ygo....
For him was lever have at his beddes heed
Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophye
Than robes riche, or fithele or gay sautrye.
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre;
But al that he mighte of his freendes hente,
On bokes and on lerninge he it spente,
And bisily gan for the soules preye
Of hem that yaf him wherwith to scoleye.
Of studie took he most cure and most hede.
Noght o word spak he more than was nede,
And that was seyd in forme and reverence,
And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence.
Souninge in moral vertu was his speche,
And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.”

A S you drive into Oxford from the railway station, you pass, as we have
seen, monuments which may recall to mind the leading features of her
history and the part which she took in the life of the country. The
Castle Mound takes us back to the time when Saxon was struggling against
Dane; the Castle itself is the sign manual of the Norman conquerors; the
Cathedral spire marks the site upon which S. Frideswide and her “she-
monastics” built their Saxon church upon the virgin banks of the river.
Carfax, with the Church of S. Martin, was the centre

The Porch & Gate S. Mary the Virgins.

of the city’s life and represents the spirit of municipal liberty which
animated her citizens, and the progress of their municipal freedom.
The bell which swung in Carfax Tower summoned the common
assembly to discuss and to decide their own public affairs and to elect their
own mayor. And this town-mote of burghers, freemen within the walls, who
held their rights as burghers by virtue of their tenure of ground on which
their tenement stood, met in Carfax Churchyard. Justice was administered
by mayor and bailiff sitting beneath the low shed, the “penniless bench”[22]
of later times, without its eastern wall. And around the church lay the trade
guilds, ranged as in some vast encampment.
Carfax Church, with all its significance of municipal life, stands at the
top of High Street, the most beautiful street in the world. Still, by virtue of
the splendid sweep of its curve comparable only to the Grand Canal of
Venice or the bend of Windermere, and by virtue of the noble grouping of
its varied buildings, the most beautiful street in the world; in spite of
modern tramways and the ludicrous dome of the Shelley Memorial, “a thing
resembling a goose pye,” as Swift wrote of Sir John Vanburgh’s house in

Whitehall; in spite of the disquieting ornamentation of Brasenose new
buildings and the new schools; in spite even of the unspeakably vulgar and
pretentious façade of Lloyd’s Bank, a gross, advertising abomination of
unexampled ugliness and impertinence, which has done all that was
possible to ruin the first view of this street of streets. Let us leave it behind
us with a shudder and pass down the High till we find on our left, at what
was once the end of “Schools Street,” the lovely twisted columns of the
porch which forms the modern entrance to S. Mary’s Church.
What Carfax was to the municipal life of Oxford, S. Mary’s was to the
University. It was the centre of the academical and ecclesiastical life of the
place. And the bell which swung in S. Mary’s tower summoned the students
of the University sometimes to take part in learned disputations among
themselves, sometimes to fight the citizens of the town.
Here then, between the Churches of S. Martin and S. Mary, the life of
this mediæval University town ebbed and flowed. In the narrow, ill-paved,
dirty streets, streets that were mere winding passages, from which the light
of day was almost excluded by the overhanging tops of the irregular houses,
crowded a motley throng. The country folks filled the centre of the streets
with their carts and strings of pack-horses; at the sides, standing beneath the
signs of their calling, which projected from their houses, citizens in varied
garb plied their trades, chaffering with the manciples, but always keeping
their bow-strings taut, ready to promote a riot by pelting a scholar with offal
from the butchers’ stall, and prompt to draw their knives at a moment’s
notice. To and fro among the stalls moved Jews in their yellow gaberdines;
black Benedictines and white Cistercians; Friars black, white and grey;
men-at-arms from the Castle, and flocks of lads who had entered some
grammar school or religious house to pass the first stage of the University
course. Here passed a group of ragged, gaunt, yellow-visaged sophisters,
returning peacefully from lectures to their inns, but with their “bastards” or
daggers, as well as their leather pouches, at their waists. Here a knot of
students, fantastically attired in many-coloured garments, whose tonsure
was the only sign of their clerkly character, wearing beards, long hair,
furred cloaks, and shoes chequered with red and green, paraded the
thoroughfare, heated with wine from the feast of some determining
bachelor. Here a line of servants, carrying the books of scholars or doctors
to the schools, or there a procession of colleagues escorting to the grave the

body of some master, and bearing before the corpse a silver cross, threaded
the throng. Here hurried a bachelor in his cape, a new master in

The High Street
On the left University College. On the right All Saints’ Church, Brasenose College, Church of S.
Mary the Virgin, All Souls’ & Queen’s Colleges.

his “pynsons” or heelless shoes, a scholar of Exeter in his black boots, a
full-fledged master with his tunic closely fastened about the middle by a
belt and wearing round his shoulders a black, sleeveless, close gown. Here
gleamed a mantle of crimson cloth, or the budge-edged hood of a doctor of
law or of theology. And in the hubbub of voices which proceeded from this
miscellaneous, parti-coloured mob, might be distinguished every accent,
every language, and every dialect.[23] For French, German and Spanish
students jostled in these streets against English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh;
Kentish students mingled with students from Somersetshire or Yorkshire,
and the speech of each was quite unintelligible to the other.
S. Mary’s Church was the only formal meeting place of these students,
thus drawn together in the pursuit of knowledge from various parts of
Europe. It was here that all University business, secular and religious, was
transacted, till the building of the Divinity school and the Sheldonian

theatre allowed the church to be reserved for sacred purposes. Then at last it
ceased to be the scene of violent altercations between Heads of Houses or
the stage where the Terræ Filius of the year should utter his scurrilous
banalities.[24]
But still every Sunday morning during term the great bell of S. Mary’s
rings out and summons the University to assemble in formal session there
to hear a sermon. The bedels of the four faculties with their silver staves
lead the way; and the Vice-chancellor is conducted to his throne, the
preacher to his pulpit; the doctors of the several faculties in their rich robes
follow and range themselves on either side of their official head; below
them the proctors, representatives of the Masters of Arts, wearing the white
hoods of their office, take their seats. The masters and bachelors fill the
body of the church, the undergraduates are crowded into the galleries.
We must not think of S. Mary’s as merely a meeting-house for
University business or as merely a parish church. For centuries it has been
the centre of Christian Oxford; where each successive movement in English
theology has been expounded and discussed. From the old stone pulpit, of
which a fragment is fixed over the southern archway of the tower, Peter
Martyr delivered his testimony and Cole sent Cranmer to the stake; from its
nineteenth century successor, John Keble began the Oxford movement; Dr
Pusey preached a sermon for which he was suspended, and Newman (vicar
1831) entered on the path to Rome.
The church is mentioned in Domesday Book, and the north wall of the
Lady Chapel, commonly known as Adam de Brome’s Chapel because the
tomb of the founder of Oriel is therein, may have been part of the church as
it stood at the time of the Domesday survey. The tower and the spire date
from the early fourteenth century.
S. Mary’s as we have it now is very much a Tudor building. When
William of Wykeham built New College Chapel he set a fashion which
soon converted Oxford into a city of pinnacles.[25] In the perpendicular style
pinnacles were erected on Merton tower and transept, on All Souls’ Chapel,
on Magdalen Chapel, hall and tower; nearly a hundred pinnacles decorated
the Schools and Library; the nave, aisles and chancel of S. Mary’s received
the same ornaments, and pinnacles in the same style were added to the
clusters of the fourteenth century tower and spire. These were not high but
observed a true proportion.

It was the grave fault of the excessively lofty pinnacles (beautiful no
doubt in themselves) which were added in 1848,[26] that they destroyed the
true beauty of proportion and the effect of gradual transition which the
fourteenth century builders had succeeded in giving to the tower and spire,
and with which the ancient statues in

S. Mary’s Spire from Grove Lane

their canopied niches were in perfect harmony. For the massive tower-
buttresses are crowned with turrets, showing canopied niches containing
twelve over-life-size statues and decorated with ball-flower ornament. Two
of the statues on the buttresses facing south are modern; nine others are
copies (1895) of the old statues, stored now in the ancient Congregation
House, which still exhibit the carefully calculated gestures and the studied
designs of the original fourteenth century workers. They form a series
which recalls that on the west front of Wells Cathedral, a rare example of

English sculpture in a genre which is so plentifully and superbly illustrated
by the French cathedrals.
On the face of the south buttress of the west front stood the statue,
beautifully posed, of the Virgin with the Infant Christ, the Lady of the
Church thus occupying the most important angle of the tower; on the left, S.
John the Evangelist with the cup. Between the Evangelist and S. John the
Baptist, patron saint of the Chapel of Merton, Walter of Merton looks out
towards the College he founded. These three are from new designs by Mr
Frampton.
On the N.W. angle of the tower is S. Cuthbert of Durham, facing
northwards. He holds in his hand the head of S. Oswald, the Christian King
slain by Penda, and looks towards his own north country and Durham, the
great diocese so intimately connected through its bishops and monastery
with the early collegiate foundations of the Universities. Northwards, too,
towards his cathedral church of Lincoln, faces S. Hugh, with the wild swan
of Stowe nestling to him as was his wont, with its neck buried in the folds
of his sleeve. This statue is on the eastern buttress at the N.E. angle, and on
the eastern face of the same buttress is an equally noble statue of Edward
the Confessor. On the S.E. angle stands, it may be, the murdered Becket,
and among the other figures Edmund Rich may perhaps be counted.
The chancel and nave are, it will be seen, splendid examples of late
perpendicular. The chancel, in fact, began to be rebuilt in 1462 and the nave
1487-1498. For the church “was so ruinated in Henry VII. reign that it
could scarce stand,” and though it was and is really a parish church, yet so
closely was it bound up with the life and procedure of the University that
the University at length took measures to collect money for its repair.
They begged, after the approved manner of the great church-builders of
the Middle Ages, from the archbishop downwards, and their begging was so
successful that they built the nave, as we now have it, and the chancel. In
order to secure an appearance of uniformity, the architect unfortunately
altered Adam de Brome’s chapel, encasing the outer walls in the new style,
and inserting larger windows. Not content with this, he likewise converted
the old House of Congregation by substituting a row of large for two rows
of small windows, giving thereby a false impression from the outside, as if
the upper and lower stories were one.

The University had no right to the use of S. Mary’s. The church was
merely borrowed for sermons and meetings of Congregation, just as S.
Peter’s in the East was borrowed for English sermons and S. Mildred’s for
meetings of the Faculty of Arts. For the University in its infancy had little
or no property of its own. It could not afford to erect buildings for its own
use. The parish churches, therefore, were used by favour of the clergy, and
lectures were delivered in hired schools.
The need for some University building was, however, severely felt. At
last it was provided for in a small way. “That memorable fabric, the old
Congregation House,” and the room above it were begun in 1320 by the
above-mentioned Adam de Brome, at the expense of Thomas Cobham,
Bishop of Worcester. The latter had undertaken to enlarge the old fabric of
S. Mary’s Church by erecting a building two stories high immediately to the
east of the tower, on the very site, that is, on which the University had
previously endeavoured to found a chantry. He intended that the lower
room should serve primarily as a meeting-place for the Congregations of
regent-masters, and at other times for parochial purposes. The upper room
was to be used partly as an oratory, and partly as a general library. But the
good bishop’s books, which were to form the nucleus of this library, met
with the same fate as Richard de Bury’s. His executors pawned them to
defray the expenses of his funeral, and to pay his debts. Oriel College at
their suggestion redeemed the books, and being also the impropriating
rectors of the church, they claimed to treat both building and library as their
own property. But the masters presently asserted their supposed rights by
coming “with a great multitude” and forcibly carrying away the books from
Oriel, “in autumn, when the fellows were mostly away.” They lodged the
books in the upper chamber, and Oriel presently acknowledged the
University’s proprietary rights.
The old University library, then, found its home in the upper room of the
old Congregation House, and there remained until the books were moved to
Duke Humphrey’s library (1480). From that time till the erection of Laud’s
Convocation House, the upper room was used as a school of law, and also
as another Congregation House, distinguished by the name of “Upper.”
Meantime a salary was provided for a librarian, who, besides taking care of
the books in the upper chamber, was to pray for the soul of the donors.
Other books were acquired by the University, either by purchase, bequest,
or as unredeemed pledges. Some of these were kept in chests, and loaned

out on security like cash from the other chests, whilst others were books
given or bequeathed to the University, which were kept chained in the
chancel of the church, where the students might read them. Others, in the
upper room, were secured to shelves by chains that ran on iron bars. These
shelves, with desks alongside, would run out from the walls, between the
seven windows, in a manner clearly shown by such survivals of mediæval
libraries as exist at the Bodleian, Merton and Corpus. The catalogue was in
the form of a large board suspended in the room. At first these books were
open for the use of all students at the specified times, but by later statutes
(1412), made when the library had been increased by further donations and
time had brought bitter experience, the use of them was stringently limited
to graduates or religious of eight years’ standing in Philosophia. These
regulations were intended to provide against the overcrowding of the small
library, the disturbance of readers and the destruction of books by careless,
idle and not over-clean boy students. With the object of preserving the
books, a solemn oath was also exacted from all graduates on admission to
their degree, that they would use them well and carefully. The lower room
fulfilled its founder’s intention, and here the Congregation of regents met,
whilst the Convocation, or Great Congregation of regents and non-regents,
was held in the chancel of the church.
Here, then, we may imagine the Chancellor sitting, surrounded by
doctors and masters of the Great Congregation as the scene was formerly
depicted in the great west window of S. Mary’s, and is still represented on
the University seal.
I have referred to the “chests” which were kept in the upper chamber.
This was in fact the treasure-house of the University, and here were stored
in great chests doubly and trebly locked, like the “Bodley” chest in the
Bodleian, the books and money with which the University had been
endowed for the benefit of her scholars.
Mr Anstey (Munimenta Academica) has given a brilliant little sketch of
the scene which the fancy may conjure up when the new guardians of the
chests were appointed and the chests opened in their presence.
It is the eve of the Festival of S. John at the Latin Gate, in the year of
Grace 1457. To-morrow is the commemoration day of W. de Seltone,
founder of the chest known by his name. Master T. Parys, Principal of S.
Mary Hall, and Master Lowson are the new guardians, the latter the north

countryman of the two. High mass has just been sung with commemoration
collects, and solemn prayers for the repose of the souls of W. de Seltone and
all the faithful departed. It is not a reading (legible) day, so the church is
full. But now all have left, except a few ragged-looking lads, who still kneel
towards the altar, and seem to be saying their Pater Nosters and Ave Marias,
according to their vow, for their benefactor. Master Parys and Master
Lowson, however, have left earlier; they have passed out of the chancel and
made their way into the old Congregation House for their first inspection of
the Seltone Chest. Each of the guardians draws from beneath his cape a
huge key, which he applies to the locks. At the top lies the register of the
contents, in which is recorded particulars, dates, names and amounts of the
loans granted. The money remaining in one corner of the chest is carefully
counted and compared with the account in the register. Here and there
among valuable MSS. lie other pledges of less peaceful sort but no less
characteristic of a mediæval student’s valuable possessions. Here perhaps
are two or three daggers of more than ordinary workmanship, and there a
silver cup or a hood lined with minever. That man in an ordinary civilian’s
dress, who stands beside Master Parys, is John More, the University
stationer, and it is his office to fix the value of the pledges offered, and to
take care that none are sold at less than their real value. It is a motley group
that stands around; there are several masters and bachelors, but more boys
and young men in every variety of coloured dress, blue, red, medley or
green. Many of these lads are but scantily clothed, and all have their
attention riveted on the chest, each with curious eye watching for his
pledge, his book or his cup, brought from some country village, perhaps an
old treasure of his family, and now pledged in his extremity. For last term
he could not pay the principal of his hall seven and sixpence due for the rent
of his miserable garret, or the manciple for his battels, but now he is in
funds again. The remittance, long delayed on the road, has arrived, or
perhaps he has succeeded in earning or begging a sufficient sum to redeem
his pledge. He pulls out the coin from the leathern money-pouch at his
girdle. But among the group you may see one master, whose bearing and
dress plainly denote superior comfort and position. He is wearing the
academical costume of a master, cincture and biretta, gown and hood of
minever. Can it be that he too has been in difficulties? He might easily have
been, for the post was irregular, and rents were not always punctual in those
days. But in this case it is Master Henry Sever, Warden of Merton, who has

lately been making some repairs in the College, and he has borrowed from
the Seltone Chest the extreme sum permitted by the ordinance, sixty
shillings, for that purpose. The scholars plainly disapprove of his action.
They are jealous of his using the funds of the chest which, they think, were
not intended for the convenience of such as he. Master Sever, however, is
filled with anxiety at the present moment. He has pledged an illuminated
missal which far exceeds in value the sum he has borrowed, and this he
omitted to redeem at the proper time. It is not in the chest. He inquires, and
is told that it has been borrowed for inspection by an intending purchaser,
who has left a silver cup in its place, of more intrinsic value by the
stationer’s decision, but not in Mr Sever’s opinion. Satisfied that he will be
able to effect an exchange, he departs with the cup in search of the owner.
Other cases are now considered. Some redeem their pledges, some borrow
more monies, some are new customers, and they sorrowfully deposit their
treasures and slink sadly away, not without a titter from the more hardened
bystanders. But before the iron lid closes again, and the bolts slide back,
“Ye shall pray,” says Master Parys, addressing the borrowers, “for the soul
of W. de Seltone and all the faithful departed.”
We may pass from this scene in the old Convocation House to another
not less typical of the mediæval University. The Chancellor’s court is being
held, and the Chancellor himself is sitting there, or, in his absence, his
commissary. The two proctors are present as assessors, and these three
constitute the court. It is before this tribunal that every member of the
“Privilege” must be tried. For it was only in a University court that they
could be sued in the first instance. Here then, if we attend this court and
glance through the records of ages, we shall find the Chancellor
administering justice, exercising the extensive powers which he holds as a
Justice of the Peace and as almost the supreme authority over members of
the University. True, he had not the power of life and death, but he could
fine or banish, imprison and excommunicate. And as to the townsmen, he
exercised over them a joint jurisdiction with the mayor and civic
authorities. The accused was entitled to have an advocate to defend him,
and he could appeal to the Congregation of Masters, and thereafter to the
Pope. No spiritual cause terminable within the University could be carried
out of it. But in all temporal cases the ultimate appeal was to the King.
The truculent student, however, was often inclined to appeal to force.
Master John Hodilbeston, it is recorded in the Acts of the Chancellor’s

Court (1434), when accused of a certain offence, was observed to have
brought a dagger into the very presence of the Chancellor, contrary to the
statutes, “wherefore he lost his arms to the University and was put in
Bocardo.” The next case on the list of this mediæval police court is that of
Thomas Skibbo. He is not a clerk, but he too finds his way to Bocardo, for
he has committed many crimes of violence. Highway robbery and threats of
murder were nothing to him, as a scholar of Bekis-Inn comes forward to
depose, and, besides, he has stolen a serving boy. After the scholar and the
ruffian, the Warden of Canterbury College steps forward. He has come to
make his submission to the commissary, whom he had declared to be a
partial judge, and whose summons he had refused to obey. Also, he has
added injury to insult by encouraging his scholars to take beer by violence
in the streets. The commissary graciously accepts his apology and his
undertaking to keep the peace in future. The Master of the Great Hall of the
University now comes forward. Evil rumours have been rife, and he wishes
to clear his character of vile slanders that have connected his name with
those of certain women. He brings no charge of slander, but claims the right
of clearing himself by making an affidavit. This was the system of
compurgation, by which a man swore that he was innocent of a crime, and
twelve good friends of his swore that he was speaking the truth. In this case
the Master was permitted to clear himself by oath before the commissary in
Merton College Chapel, and Mistress Agnes Bablake and divers women
appeared and swore with him that rumour was a lying jade. On another
occasion the Principal of White Hall wished to prove his descent from true
English stock. He insisted on being allowed to swear that he was not a
Scotsman. A discreditable rumour to that effect had doubtless got abroad,
without taking tangible form. But he was, he maintained, a loyal
Englishman. “It was greatly to his credit” doubtless. Qui s’excuse, s’accuse,
we are inclined to think in such cases. The appalling penalties which
awaited the perjurer probably gave the ceremony some force at one time.
But Dr Gascoigne enters his protest in the Chancellor’s book (1443) against
the indiscriminate admission of parties to compurgation. National feeling
and clan feeling ran high. Gascoigne says that he has known many cases in
which people have privately admitted that they have perjured themselves in
public. Moreover, he added, no townsman ventures to object to a person
being admitted to compurgation, for fear of being murdered or at least
maimed. No good end, therefore, can be answered by it.

But what is the cause of Robert Wright, Esquire-Bedel? He has some
complaint against the master and fellows of Great University Hall (1456).
The Chancellor listens for a moment, and then suggests, like a modern
London police magistrate, that they should settle their quarrel out of court.
They decide to appoint arbitrators, and bind themselves to abide by their
award. The commissary is frequently appointed arbitrator himself, and his
award is usually to the effect that one party shall humbly ask pardon of the
other, pay a sum of money and swear to keep the peace. Other awards are
more picturesque. Thus, when Broadgates and Pauline Halls decided to
settle their quarrel in this way, the arbitrators ordered the principals
mutually to beg reconciliation from each other for themselves and their
parties, and to give either to the other the kiss of peace and swear upon the
Bible to have brotherly love to each other, under a bond of a hundred
shillings. David Phillipe, who struck John Olney, must kneel to him and ask
and receive pardon.
As an earnest of their future good-will, it is often decreed that the two
parties shall entertain their neighbours. Two gallons of ale are mentioned
sometimes as suitable for this purpose; a feast is recommended at others,
and the dishes are specified. As thus:—(1465) The arbiter decides that
neither party in a quarrel which he has been appointed to settle, shall in
future abuse, slander, threaten or make faces at the other. As a guarantee of
their mutual forgiveness and reconciliation, they are commanded to provide
at their joint charges an entertainment in S. Mary’s College. The arbiter
orders the dinner; one party is to supply a goose and a measure of wine, the
other bread and beer.
Many and minute are the affairs of the Chancellor. At one time he is
concerned with the taverners. He summons them all before him, and makes
them swear that in future they will brew wholesome beer, and that they will
supply the students with enough of it; at another he imprisons a butcher
who has been selling “putrid and fetid” meat, or a baker who has been using
false weights; at another banishes a carpenter for shooting at the proctors, or
sends a woman to the pillory for being an incorrigible prostitute or to
Bocardo for the mediæval fault of being a common and intolerable scold.
Next he fines the vicar of S. Giles’ for breaking the peace, and confiscates
his club. Then he dispatches the organist of All Souls’ to Bocardo, for
Thomas Bentlee has committed adultery. But the poor man weeps so
bitterly, that the Warden of that college is moved to have good hope of the

said Thomas, and goes surety for him, and the “organ-player” is released
after three hours of incarceration. The punishment of a friar who is charged
with having uttered a gross libel in a sermon, and has refused to appear
when cited before the Chancellor’s court, is more severe. He is degraded in
congregation and banished.
The jurisdiction which we have seen the Chancellor wielding in this
court had not been always his, and it was acquired not without dust and
heat. At the beginning of the thirteenth century he was both in fact and in
theory the delegate of the bishop of the diocese; not the presiding head, but
an external authority who might be invoked to enforce the decrees of the
Masters’ Guild.
Before that time the organisation of the University extended at least so
far as to boast of a “Master of the Schools,” who was probably elected by
the masters themselves, and whose office was very likely merged into that
of the Chancellor.
As an ecclesiastical judge, deriving his authority from the Bishop of
Lincoln, the Chancellor exercised jurisdiction over students by virtue of
their being “clerks,” not members of the University. Over laymen he
exercised jurisdiction only so far as they were subject to the authority of the
ordinary ecclesiastical courts. At Oxford he had no prison or Cathedral
dungeon to which he could commit delinquents. He was obliged to send
them either to the King’s prison in the Castle, or to the town prison over the
Bocardo Gate.
But from this time forward by a series of steps, prepared as a rule by
conflicts between town and gown, the office of Chancellor was gradually
raised. First it encroached on the liberties of the town, and then shook itself
free of its dependence on the See of Lincoln.
The protection of the great, learned and powerful Bishop of Lincoln and
the fact that, in the last resort, the masters were always ready to stop
lecturing and withdraw with all the students to another town, for the
University, as such, had not yet acquired any property to tie them to Oxford,
were weapons which proved of overwhelming advantage to the University
at this early stage of its existence. Again and again we find that, when a
dispute as to police jurisdiction or authority arose between the University
and the town, pressure was brought to bear in this way. The masters ceased
to lecture; the students threatened to shake the dust of Oxford off their feet;

the enthusiastic Grossetete, throwing aside the cares of State, the business
of his bishopric, and the task of translating the Ethics of Aristotle, came
forward to intervene on behalf of his darling University and to use his
influence with the King. The Pope, Innocent IV. (1254), was also induced to
take the University under his protection. He confirmed its “immunities and
liberties and laudable, ancient and rational customs from whomsoever
received,” and called upon the Bishops of London and Salisbury to guard it
from evil. Against the combined forces of the Church, the Crown, and the
evident interests of their own pockets, it was a foregone conclusion that the
citizens would not be able to maintain the full exercise of their municipal
liberty.
It was in 1244 that the first important extension of the Chancellor’s
jurisdiction was made. Some students had made a raid upon Jewry and
sacked the houses of their creditors. They were committed to prison by the
civil authorities. Grossetete insisted on their being handed over to the
ecclesiastical jurisdiction. As the outcome of this riot Henry III. presently
issued a decree of great importance. By it all disputes concerning debts,
rents and prices, and all other “contracts of moveables,” in which one party
was an Oxford clerk, were referred to the Chancellor for trial. This new
power raised him at once to a position very different from that which he had
hitherto enjoyed as the mere representative of the Bishop of Lincoln. “He
was invested henceforth with a jurisdiction which no Legate or Bishop
could confer and no civil judge could annul.” A charter followed in 1248,
which authorised the Chancellor and proctors to assist at the assaying of
bread and beer by the mayor and bailiffs. On admission to office the latter
were required to swear to respect the liberties and customs of the
University, and the town, in its corporate capacity, was made responsible for
injuries inflicted on scholars. The Chancellor’s jurisdiction was still further
extended in 1255. To his spiritual power, which he held according to the
ordinary ecclesiastical law and to the civil jurisdiction conferred upon him
in 1244, a new charter now added the criminal jurisdiction even over
laymen, for breach of the peace. By this charter Henry III. provided that,
“for the peace, tranquillity and advantage of the University of scholars of Oxford, there be
chosen four aldermen and eight discreet and legal burghers associated with them, to assist the Mayors
and Bailiffs to keep the peace and hold the Assizes and to seek out malefactors and disturbers of the
peace and night-vagabonds, and harbourers of robbers. Two officers shall also be elected in each
parish to make diligent search for persons of suspicious character, and every one who takes a stranger
in under his roof for more than three nights must be held responsible for him. No retail dealer may

buy victuals on their way to market or buy anything with the view of selling again before nine in the
morning, under penalty of forfeit and fine. If a layman assault a clerk, let him be immediately
arrested, and if the assault prove serious, let him be imprisoned in the Castle and detained there untill
he give satisfaction to the clerk in accordance with the judgment of the Chancellor and the
University. If a clerk shall make a grave or outrageous assault upon a layman, let him be imprisoned
in the aforesaid Castle untill the Chancellor demand his surrender; if the offence be a light one, let
him be confined in the town prison untill he be set free by the Chancellor.
“Brewers and bakers are not to be punished for the first offence (of adulteration or other
tradesman’s tricks); but shall forfeit their stock on the second occasion, and for the third offence be
put in the pillory.” (One of these “hieroglyphic State machines” stood opposite the Cross Inn at
Carfax; another, with stocks and gallows, at the corner of Longwall and Holywell Streets. In the
former one Tubb was the last man to stand (1810), for perjury, though not the last to deserve it.)
“Every baker,” the charter continues, “must have his own stamp and stamp his own bread so that it
may be known whose bread it is; every one who brews for sale must show his sign, or forfeit his
beer. Wine must be sold to laymen and clerks on the same terms. The assay of bread and ale is to be
made half yearly, and at the assay the Chancellor or his deputy appointed for that purpose must be
present; otherwise the assay shall be invalid.”

A few years later a Royal Writ of Edward I. (1275) conferred on the
Chancellor the cognizance of all personal actions whatever wherein either
party was a scholar, be he prosecutor or defendant. And in 1290, by
judgment of King and Parliament, after a conflict between the town and
University, when a bailiff had resisted the authority of the Chancellor in the
students’ playground, Beaumont Fields, which embraced the University
Park and S. Giles’, the Chancellor obtained jurisdiction in case of all crimes
committed in Oxford, where one of the parties was a scholar, except pleas
of homicide and mayhem. His jurisdiction over the King’s bailiffs was
affirmed, but leave was granted them to apply to the King’s court if
aggrieved by the Chancellor’s proceedings.
From this time forward the authority of the Chancellor was gradually
increased and extended. It was, indeed, not long before the office shook
itself free from its historical subordination to the Bishop of Lincoln. After a
considerable struggle over the point, the bishop was worsted by a Papal
Bull (1368), which entirely abrogated his claim to confirm the Chancellor
elect. Since that time the University has enjoyed the right of electing and
admitting its highest officer without reference to any superior authority
whatever (Maxwell Lyte).
The precinct of the University was defined in the reign of Henry IV. as
extending to the Hospital of S. Bartholomew on the east, to Botley on the
west, to Godstow on the north, and to Bagley Wood on the south.

These were the geographical limits of the University, and within them
the following classes of people were held (1459) to be “of the privilege of
the University”:—The Chancellor, all doctors, masters and other graduates,
and all students, scholars and clerks of every order and degree. These
constituted a formidable number in themselves when arrayed against the
town, for there were probably at least 3000 of them at the most flourishing
periods. The Archbishop of Armagh indeed stated confidently at Avignon
(1357) that there had once been 30,000, but that must have been a rhetorical
exaggeration. There can never have been more than 4000. But in addition to
this army of scholars, all their “daily continual servants,” all “barbers,
manciples, spencers, cokes, lavenders,” and all the numerous persons who
were engaged in trades ancillary to study, such as the preparation,
engrossing, illumination and binding of parchment, were “of the privilege”
and directly controlled by the University. In what was afterwards known as
Schools Street all these trades were represented as early as 1190. Over these
classes, and within the limits defined, the jurisdiction of the Chancellor was
by the end of the fifteenth century established supreme.
Citizens and scholars alike had now to be careful how they lived. The
stocks, the pillory and the cucking stool awaited offenders among the
townsmen, fines or banishment the students who transgressed. Local
governments in the Middle Ages were excessively paternal. They inquired
closely into the ways of their people and dealt firmly with their
peccadilloes. Did a man brew or sell bad beer he was burnt alive at
Nürnberg; at Oxford he was condemned to the pillory; if a manciple was
too fond of cards he was also punished by the Chancellor’s court. A regular
tariff was framed of penalties for those breaches of the peace and street
brawls, in which not freshmen only but heads of houses and vicars of
parishes were so frequently involved.
Endeavours were made to promote a proper standard of life by holding
“General Inquisitions” at regular intervals. The town was divided into
sections, and a Doctor of Theology and two Masters of Arts were told off to
inquire into the morals of the inhabitants of each division. Juries of citizens
were summoned, and gave evidence on oath to these delegate judges who
sat in the parish churches. The characters of their fellow-townsmen were
critically discussed. Reports were made to the Chancellor, who corrected
the offenders. Excommunication, penance or the cucking stool were meted

out to “no common” scolds, notorious evil-livers and those who kept late
hours.
It had formerly been enacted (1333) that since the absence of the
Chancellor was the cause of many perils, his office should become vacant if
he were to absent himself from the University for a month during full term.
But in the course of the fifteenth century the Chancellor changed from a
biennial and resident official to a permanent and non-resident one. He was
chosen now for his power as a friend at court, and by the court, as it grew
more despotic and ecclesiastically minded, he was used as an agent for
coercing the University.
To-day the Chancellorship is a merely honorary office, usually bestowed
on successful politicians. The Chancellor appoints a Vice-Chancellor, but
usage compels him to appoint heads of houses in order of seniority. This
right of appointment dates from the time when the Duke of Wellington, as
Chancellor, dispensed with the formality of asking convocation for its
assent to the appointment of his nominee.
Having sketched thus far the development of the office which represents
the power and dignity of the University, we may now turn to consider the
position of the young apprentices from their earliest initiation into this guild
of learning.
The scholars of mediæval Universities were your true cosmopolitans.
They passed freely from the University of one country to that of another by
virtue of the freemasonry of knowledge. Despising the dangers of the sea,
the knight-errants of learning went from country to country, like the bee, to
use the metaphor applied by S. Athanasius to S. Anthony, in order to obtain
the best instruction in every school. They went without let or hindrance,
with no passport but the desire to learn, to Paris, like John of Salisbury,
Stephen Langton or Thomas Becket, if they were attracted by the reputation
of that University in Theology; to Bologna, if they wished to sit at the feet
of some famous lecturer in Civil Law. Emperors issued edicts for their safe
conduct and protection when travelling in their dominions—even when
warring against the Scots, Edward III. issued general letters of protection
for all Scottish scholars who desired to repair to Oxford or Cambridge—and
when they arrived at their destination, of whatever nationality they might
be, they found there as a rule little colonies of their own countrymen
already established and ready to receive them. Dante was as much at home

in the straw-strewn Schools Street in Paris as he would have found himself
at Padua or at Oxford, had he chanced to study there.
It has indeed been suggested that he did study there in the year 1313.
Like Chaucer, he may have done so, but probably did not. There is certainly
a reference to Westminster in the “Inferno” (xii. 119); but it is not necessary
to go to Oxford in order to learn that London and Westminster are on the
banks of the Thames.
In attending lectures at a strange University the mediæval students had
no difficulty in understanding the language of their teachers. For all the
learned world spoke Latin. Latin was the Volapuk of the Middle Ages.
Mediæval Latin, with all its faults and failing sense of style, is a language
not dead, but living in a green old age, written by men who on literary
matters talked and thought in a speech that is lively and free and fertile in
vocabulary. The common use of it among all educated men gave authors
like Erasmus a public which consisted of the whole civilised world, and it
rendered scholars cosmopolitan in a sense almost inconceivable to the
student of to-day. That was chiefly in the earlier days of Universities.
Gradually, with the growth of national feeling and the more definite
demarcation of nations and the ever-increasing sense of patriotism, that
higher form of selfishness, cosmopolitanism went out of fashion. Nowadays
only two classes of cosmopolitans survive—in theory, free traders, and in
practice, thieves.
I have spoken of the dangers of the sea; they were very great in those
days of open sailing boats, when the compass was unknown; but the
dangers of land-travelling were hardly less. The roads through the forests
that lay around Oxford were notoriously unsafe, not only in mediæval days
but even a hundred years ago. Armed therefore, and if possible in
companies, the students would ride on their Oxford pilgrimage. If they
could not afford to ride, the mediæval pedagogue, the common carrier,
would take them to their destination for a charge of fivepence a day. For
there were carriers who took a regular route at the beginning of every
University year for the purpose of bringing students up from the country.
They would have a mixed company of all ages in their care. For though
students went up to Oxford as a rule between the ages of thirteen and
sixteen, many doubtless were younger and many older. It was indeed a
common thing for ecclesiastics of all ages to obtain leave of absence from
their benefices in order to go up to the University and study Canon Law or

Theology there. You can fancy, then, this motley assembly of pack-horses
and parish priests, of clever lads chosen from the monasteries or grammar
schools, and ambitious lads from the plough, all very genuine philosophers,
lovers of learning for its own sake or its advantages, working their way
through the miry roads, passed occasionally by some nobleman’s son with
his imposing train of followers, and passing others yet more lowly, who
were just trudging it on foot, begging their way, their bundles on their
shoulders.
You can fancy them at last coming over Shotover Hill, down the “horse
path” past S. Clement’s, and so reaching safely their journey’s end. Once in
Oxford, they would take up their abode in a monastery to which they had an
introduction; in a college, if, thanks to the fortune of birth or education,
they had been elected to share in the benefits of a foundation; as menials
attached to the household of some wealthier student, if they were hard put
to it; in a hall or house licensed to take in lodgers, if they were foreigners or
independent youths. On taking up his residence in one of these halls, the
mediæval student would find that Alma Mater, in her struggles with the
townsmen, had been fighting his battles. Lest he should fall among thieves,
it had been provided that the rents charged should be fixed by a board of
assessors; lest the sudden influx of this floating population should produce
scarcity, and therefore starvation prices, the transactions of the retailers
were carefully regulated. They were forbidden to buy up provisions from
the farmers outside the city, and so establish a “corner”; they were
forbidden even to buy in Oxford market till a certain hour in the morning.
The prices of vendibles were fixed in the interests of the poor students.
Thus in 1315 the King ordained that “a good living ox, stalled or corn-fed,
should be sold for 16s., and no higher; if fatted with grass for 14s. A fat
cow, 12s. A fat hog of two years old, 3s. 4d. A fat mutton, corn-fed or
whose wool is not grown, 1s. 8d. A fat mutton shorn, 1s. 2d. A fat goose,
2d. A fat hen or two chickens, one penny. Four pigeons or twenty-four eggs,
one penny.”
The halls were, at any rate originally, merely private houses adapted to
the use of students. A common room for meals, a kitchen and a few
bedrooms were all they had to boast. Many of them had once belonged to
Jews, for they were large and built of stone. And the Jews, being wealthy,
had introduced a higher standard of comfort into Oxford, and at the same
time, being a common sort of prey, they probably found that stone houses

were safer as well as more luxurious. Moysey’s Hall and Lombard’s Hall
bore in their names evident traces of their origin. Other halls derived their
names from other causes. After the great fire in 1190 the citizens, in
imitation of the Londoners, and the Jews, had rebuilt their houses of stone.

S. Alban’s Hall Merton College

“Such tenements,” says Wood, “were for the better distinction from others called Stone or Tiled
halls. Some of those halls that were not slated were, if standing near those that were, stiled Thatched
halls. Likewise when glass came into fashion, for before that time our windows were only latticed,
that hall that had its windows first glazed was stiled, for difference sake, Glazen hall. In like manner
‘tis probable that those that had leaden gutters, or any part of their roofs of lead were stiled Leaden
hall, or in one instance Leaden porch. Those halls also that had staples to their doors, for our
predecessors used only latch and catch, were written Staple halls.”

Other halls were called after their owners (Peckwater’s Inn, Alban Hall,
etc.), or from their position in the street or town, or the patron Saint of a
neighbouring church (S. Edward’s Hall, S. Mary’s Entry); many from other

physical peculiarities besides those we have mentioned. Angle Hall,
Broadgates Hall, White Hall and Black Hall explain themselves easily
enough, whilst Chimney Hall is a name which recalls the days when a large
chimney was a rarity, a louvre above a charcoal fire in the middle of the
room being sufficient to carry off the smoke. Other halls, again, were
named after signs that hung outside them, or over their gateways, like
ordinary inns or shops. The towering and barbaric inn-signs always struck
foreigners, when first visiting England, with astonishment not unmingled
with dismay. They were thus probably thrown into a proper state of mind to
receive their bills.
The Eagle, the Lion, the Elephant, the Saracen’s Head, the Brazen Nose
and the Swan were some of the signs in Oxford. There are a few survivals
from this menagerie.
The Star Inn, now the Clarendon, was built on the site of one of these old
Halls, and the richly-carved wooden gables were visible in the house next to
it. The Roebuck was once Coventry Hall. The Mitre preserved traces of
Burwaldscote Hall. The Angel had similar traces, but the Angel itself has
now given place to the New Schools. Many students, however, lodged
singly in private houses. Chaucer’s poor scholar lodged with a carpenter
who worked for the Abbot of Osney.
“A chamber had he in that hostelrie,
Alone, withouten any compagnie,
Ful fetisly ydight with herbes sote.”...

Halls, it will have been observed, were known also by the name of
entries and inns or (deriving from the French) hostels. And that in fact is
what they were. The principal, who might originally have been the senior
student of a party who had taken a house in which to study, or the owner of
the house himself, derived a good income from keeping a boarding-house
of this kind. He was responsible to the University for the good conduct of
his men, and to his men, one must suppose, for their comfort. The position
of principal was soon much sought after, and the ownership of a good
hostel, with a good connection, would fetch a price like a public-house to-
day.
It was found necessary, however, to decree that the principal of a hall
should be a master, and should not cater for the other inmates. Payments for
food were therefore made by the students to an upper servant, known as a

manciple, whose duty it was to go to market in the morning and there buy
provisions for the day, before the admission of the retail-dealers at nine
o’clock. The amount which each student contributed to the common purse
for the purchase of provisions was known as “Commons.” It varied from
eight to eighteen pence a week. Extra food obtained from the manciple to
be eaten in private was called “Battels.”
The principal could only maintain his position and fill his hall if he
satisfied the students. The government of these halls was therefore highly
democratic. A new principal could only succeed if he was accepted by the
general opinion of the inmates and received their voluntary allegiance.
On coming up to Oxford the student, however little he might intend to
devote his life to the Church, adopted, if he had not done so before, clerical
tonsure and clerical garb. By so doing he became entitled to all the
immunities and privileges of the clerical order. He was, now, so long as he
did not marry, exempt from the secular courts, and his person was
inviolable.
No examination or ceremony of any kind seems to have been required in
order to become a member of the University. Attendance at lectures, after a
declaration made to a resident master to the effect that the student purposed
to attend them, was enough to entitle him to the privileges of that
corporation.
The germ of the modern system of matriculation may perhaps be traced
in the statute (1420), which required that all scholars and scholars’ servants,
who had attained years of discretion, should swear before the Chancellor
that they would observe the statutes for the repression of riots and disorders.
Among the students themselves, however, some form of initiation
probably took place, comparable to that of the Bejaunus, or Yellow-bill, in
Germany, or of the young soldier, the young Freemason, or the newcomer at
an atelier in Paris to-day. Horseplay at the expense of the raw youth, and
much chaff and tomfoolery, would be followed in good time by a supper for
which the freshman would obligingly pay. Initiation of this kind is a
universal taste, and, if kept within bounds, is not a bad custom for testing
the temper and grit of the new members of a community. At Oxford, then,
freshmen were subject to certain customs at the hands of the senior
scholars, or sophisters, on their first coming. So Wood tells us, but he
cannot give details. He compares the ceremony, however, to the “salting”

which obtained in his own day. Of this salting, as it was practised at
Merton, he gives the following account:—
“On Feast days charcoal fires were lit in the Hall of Merton, and between five and six in the
afternoon the senior undergraduates would bring in the Freshmen, and make them sit down on a form
in the middle of the Hall. Which done, everyone in order was to speak some pretty apothegm or make
a jest or bull or speak some eloquent nonsense, to make the company laugh. But if any of the
Freshmen came off dull, or not cleverly, some of the forward or pragmatical seniors would tuck them,
that is, set the nail of their thumb to their chin just under the lower lip, and by the help of their other
fingers under the chin, would give him a mark which would sometimes produce blood.” On Shrove
Tuesday a brass pot was set before the fire filled with cawdle by the College Cook at the Freshmen’s
expense. Then each of them had to pluck off his gown and band and if possible make himself look
like a scoundrel. ‘Which done they were conducted each after the other to the High Table, made to
stand upon a form and to deliver a speech.’ Wood gives us the speech he himself made on this
occasion, a dreary piece of facetiousness. As a ‘kitten of the Muses and meer frog of Helicon he
croaked cataracts of plumbeous cerebrosity.’
“The reward for a good speech was a cup of cawdle and no salted drink, for an indifferent one
some cawdle and some salted drink, and for a bad one, besides the tucks, nothing but College beer
and salt.
“When these ceremonies were over the senior cook administered an oath over an old shoe to
those about to be admitted into the fraternity. The Freshman repeated the oath, kissed the shoe, put on
his gown and band and took his place among the seniors.”

When the freshmen of the past year were solemnly made seniors, and
probationers were admitted fellows, similar ceremonies took place. At All
Souls’, for instance, on 14th January, those who were to be admitted fellows
were brought from their chambers in the middle of the night, sometimes in
a bucket slung on a pole, and so led about the college and into the hall,
whilst some of the junior fellows, disguised perhaps, would sing a song in
praise of the mallard, some verses of which I give:

“The griffin, bustard, turkey and capon,
Let other hungry mortals gape on,
And on their bones with stomachs fall hard,
But let All Souls’ men have the mallard.

Hough the blood of King Edward, by the blood of
King Edward,
It was a swapping, swapping mallard.

“The Romans once admired a gander
More than they did their best commander,
Because he saved, if some don’t fool us,
The place that’s named from the scull of Tolus.

Hough the blood of King Edward, by the blood of
King Edward,
It was a swapping, swapping mallard.

“Then let us drink and dance a galliard
In the remembrance of the mallard,
And as the mallard doth in the pool,
Let’s dabble, dive and duck in bowle.[27]

Hough, etc.”

In any attempt to appreciate the kind and character of the mediæval
students and the life which they led, it is necessary first of all to realise that
the keynote of the early student life was poverty. It was partly for the
benefit of poor scholars and partly for the benefit of their founders’ souls,
for which these scholars should pray, that the early colleges and chantries
were founded. Morals, learning and poverty were the qualifications for a
fellowship on Durham’s foundation. Poverty, “the stepmother of learning,”
it is which the University in its letters and petitions always and truly
represents as the great hindrance to the student “seeking in the vineyard of
the Lord the pearl of knowledge.” Books these poor seekers could not
afford to buy, fees they could scarce afford to pay, food itself was none too
plentiful.
But the pearl for which the young student as he sat, pinched and blue, at
the feet of his teacher in the schools, and the Masters of Arts,
“When, in forlorn and naked chambers cooped
And crowded, o’er the ponderous books they hung,”

alike were searching, was a pearl of great price. For learning spelt success.
There was through learning a career open to the talents. The lowliest and
neediest might rise, by means of a University education, to the highest
dignity which the Church, and that was also the world, could offer.
For all great civilians were ecclesiastics. The Church embraced all the
professions; and the professors of all arts, of medicine, statesmanship or
architecture, of diplomacy and even of law, embraced the Church. And the
reward of success in any of them was ecclesiastical promotion and a fat
benefice. The University opened the door to the Church, with all its
dazzling possibilities of preferment, and the University itself was thrown
open to the poorest by the system of the monastic houses and charitable
foundations.
Promising lads, too, of humble origin were often maintained at the
schools by wealthy patrons. From a villein one might rise to be a clerk,
from a clerk become a master of the University—a fellow, a bursar, a
bishop and a chancellor, first of Oxford, then of England.
At the University, of course, the students were not treated with the same
absolute equality that they are now, regardless of birth or wealth. Sons of
noblemen did not study there, unless they had a strong bent in that
direction. The days were not yet come when a University training was
valuable as a social and moral as well as an intellectual education: when
noblemen, therefore, did attend the schools, more was made of them. They
wore hoods lined with rich fur, and enjoyed certain privileges with regard to
the taking of degrees.
Like those idyllic islanders who lived by taking in each other’s washing,
the masters supported themselves on the fees paid by the students who
attended their lectures, whilst the poorest students earned a livelihood by
waiting on the masters, or wealthier students. Servitors, who thus combined
the careers of undergraduates with those of “scouts,” continued in existence
till the end of the eighteenth century. They were sent on the most menial
errands or employed to transcribe manuscripts, and five shillings was
deemed an ample allowance for their services. Whitfield was a servitor, and
the father of the Wesleys also. Such students, lads of low extraction, drawn
from the tap-room or the plough, but of promising parts, would be helped
by the chests which we have described, and which were founded for their
benefit. When Long Vacation came, they would turn again from intellectual

to manual labour. For Long Vacation meant for them, not reading-parties,
but the harvest, and in the harvest they could earn wages. But there was
another method of obtaining the means to attend lectures at the University
which was popularised in the Middle Ages by the Mendicants, by the theory
of the poverty of Christ and by the insistence of the Church on the duty of
charity. This was begging on the highway. “Pain por Dieu aus escoliers”
was a well-known “street cry” in mediæval Paris, and in England during
vacations the wandering scholar,
“Often, starting from some covert place,
Saluted the chance comer on the road,
Crying, ‘An obolus, a penny give
To a poor scholar.’”

And as they made their way along the high-road a party of such begging
scholars would come perhaps to a rich man’s house, and ask for aid by
prayer and song. Sometimes they would be put to the test as to their
scholarship by being commanded to make a couplet of Latin verses on
some topic. They would scratch their heads, look wistfully at one another
and produce a passable verse or two. Then they would receive their reward
and pass on. So popular, indeed, did this system become, that begging
students had to be restricted. Only those licensed by the Chancellor and
certified as deserving cases, like the scholars of Aristotle’s Hall in 1461,
were presently permitted to beg.
Where poverty was so prevalent, the standard of comfort was not likely
to be high. The enormous advance in the general level of material comfort,
and even luxury, which has taken place in this country during the last
hundred years, makes it difficult to describe the comfortless lives of these
early students without giving an exaggerated idea of the sacrifices they
were making and the hardships they were enduring for the sake of setting
their feet on the first rung of this great ladder of learning. But it should be
remembered that, as far as the ordinary appliances of decency and comfort,
as we understand them, are concerned, the labourer’s cottage in these days
is better supplied than was a palace in those when princes
“At matins froze and couched at curfew time,”

and when

“Lovers of truth, by penury constrained
Bucer, Erasmus or Melancthon, read
Before the doors or windows of their cells
By moonshine, through mere lack of taper light.”

If we realise that this was the case, we shall not be surprised to find that
the rooms in which these students and masters lived, so far from being
spacious and luxurious, were small, dingy, overcrowded and excessively
uncomfortable. It was rare for a student to have a room to himself—“alone,
withouten any compagnie.” The usual arrangement in halls and colleges
would seem to have been that two or more scholars shared a room, and slept
in that part of it which was not occupied by the “studies” of the inhabitants.
For each scholar would have a “study” of his own adjoining the windows,
where he might strain to catch the last ray of daylight. A “study” was a
movable piece of furniture, a sort of combination of book-shelf and desk,
which probably survives in the Winchester “toys.” The students shared a
room, and they frequently shared a bed too. The founder of Magdalen
provided that in his college Demies under the age of fifteen should sleep
two in a bed. And in addition to their beds and lodgings, the poorest
students were obliged to share an academical gown also. Friends who had
all things in common, might sleep at the same time, but could only attend
lectures one by one, for lack of more than one gown amongst them. To
these straits, it is said, S. Richard was reduced. But such deprivation
accentuates rather than spoils the happiness of student life, as anyone who
is acquainted with the Quartier Latin will agree. When the heart is young
and generous, when the spirit is free and the blood is hot, what matters
hardship when there are comrades bright and brave to share it; what matters
poverty when the riches of art and love and learning are being outspread
before your eyes; what matters the misery of circumstance, when daily the
young traveller can wander forth, silent, amazed, into “the realms of gold?”
During the many centuries that the mansions of the wealthy and the
palaces of princes were totally unprovided with the most indispensable
appliances of domestic decency, it is not to be expected that the rooms of
students should prove to be plentifully or luxuriously furnished. We know
the stock-in-trade of Chaucer’s poor student:

“His Almageste and bokes grete and smale
His astrelabie, longinge for his art,
His augrim-stones layen faire apart
On shelves couched at his beddes heed;
His presse y-covered with a falding reed.
And al above ther lay a gay sautrye
On which he made a nightes melodye
So swetely, that all the chambre rong;
And Angelus ad virginem he song.”

We can supplement Chaucer’s inventory of a poor student’s furniture by
an examination of old indentures. Therein we find specified among the
goods of such an one just such a fithele or “gay sautrye” as Chaucer noted,
an old cithara or a broken lute, a desk, a stool, a chair, a mattress, a coffer, a
tripod table, a mortar and pestle, a sword and an old gown. Another student
might boast the possession of a hatchet, a table “quinque pedum cum uno
legge,” some old wooden dishes, a pitcher and a bowl, an iron twister, a
brass pot with a broken leg, a pair of knives, and, most prized of all, a bow
and twenty arrows. Few could boast of so many “bokes at his beddes heed”
as Chaucer’s clerk of Oxenford. Manuscripts were of immense value in
those days, and we need hardly be surprised if that worthy philosopher,
seeing that he had invested his money in twenty volumes clad in black and
red, had but little gold remaining in his coffer. The books that we find
mentioned in such indentures, are those which formed the common stock of
mediæval learning, volumes of homilies, the works of Boethius, Ovid’s De
remedio amoris and a book of geometry. These and other books, as articles
of the highest intrinsic value, were always mentioned in detail in the last
will and testament of a dying scholar. But, as the modern artist, on his
death-bed in the Quartier Latin, summoned his dearest friend to his side and
exclaimed, “My friend, I leave you my wife and my pipe. Take care of my
pipe”; so the mediæval student would often feel that though his books
might be his most valuable legacy in some eyes, his bow and arrows, his
cap and gown or his mantle, “blodii coloris,” these were the truest pledges
of affection that he could bequeath to the comrade of his heart. Only the
wealthier students, or the higher officials of the University, rejoiced in such
luxuries as a change of clothes, or could reckon among their furniture
several forms or chairs, a pair of snuffers and bellows. For of what use to
the ordinary student were candlesticks and snuffers, when candles cost the
prohibitive price of twopence a pound; or what should he do with bellows

and tongs when a stove or fire was out of the question, save in the case of a
Principal? To run about in order not to go to bed with cold feet was the plan
of the mediæval student, unless he anticipated the advice of Mr Jorrocks
and thought of ginger.
From his slumbers on a flock bed, in such quarters as I have described,
the mediæval student roused him with the dawn. For lectures began with the
hour of prime, soon after daybreak. He was soon dressed, for men seldom
changed their clothes in those days, and in the centuries when the manuals
of gallantry recommended the nobleman to wash his hands once a day and
his face almost as often, when a charming queen like Margaret of Navarre,
could remark without shame that she had not washed her hands for eight
days, it is not to be expected that the ablutions of a mere student should be
frequent or extensive. Washing is a modern habit, and not widespread. To
attend a “chapel” or a “roll-call” is the first duty of the modern
undergraduate, but a daily attendance at mass was not required till the
college system had taken shape; the statutes of New College, in fact, are the
first to enforce it. All therefore that the yawning student had to do, before
making his way to the lecture-room in the hall of his inn or college, or in
the long low buildings of Schools Street, was to break his fast, if he could
afford to do so, with a piece of bread and a pot o’ the smallest ale from the
“Buttery.” As a lecture lasted, not the one hour of a “Stunde,” but for two or
three hours, some such support would be highly desirable, but not
necessary. Our forefathers were one-meal men, like the Germans of to-day.
Civilisation is an advance from breakfast to dinner, from one meal a day to
several. Late dinner is the goal towards which all humanity presses. For
dinner-time, as De Quincey observed, has little connection with the idea of
dinner. It has travelled through every hour, like the hand of a clock, from
nine or ten in the morning till ten at night. But at Oxford it travelled slowly.
Hearne growls at the colleges which, in 1723, altered their dinner hour from
eleven to twelve, “from people’s lying in bed longer than they used to do.”
Happily for him he did not live to see the beginning of the nineteenth
century, when those colleges which had dined at three advanced to four, and
those that had dined at four to five; or the close of it, when the hour of
seven became the accepted time.
The mediæval student took his one meal at ten or eleven in the morning.
Soup thickened with oatmeal, baked meat and bread was his diet, varied by
unwholesome salt fish in Lent. These viands were served in hall on wooden

trenches and washed down by a tankard of college beer. During the meal a
chapter of the Bible or of some improving work in Latin was read aloud,
and at its conclusion the founder’s prayer and a Latin grace would be said.
Conversation, it was usually ordained, might only be carried on in Latin;
the modern student, on the contrary, is “sconced” (fined a tankard of beer) if
he speaks three words of “shop” in hall. After dinner perhaps some
disputations or exercises, some repetition and discussion of the morning’s
lecture would be held in hall, or the students would take the air, walking out
two and two, as the founders directed, if they were good; going off singly,
or in parties to poach or hawk or spoil for a row, if they were not. Lectures
or disputations were resumed about noon.
Seated on benches, or more usually and properly, according to the
command of Urban V., sitting on the rush-strewn floors of the school-room,
the young seekers after knowledge listened to the words of wisdom that
flowed from the regent master, who sat above them at a raised desk, dressed
in full academical costume. Literally, they sat at the feet of their Gamaliels.
In the schools they were enjoined to “sit as quiet as a girl,” but they were
far from observing this injunction. Old and young were only too ready to
quarrel or to play during lectures, to shout and interrupt whilst the master
was reading the Sentences of Peter Lombard, and bang the benches with
their books to express their approval or disapproval of his comments
thereon.
Supper came at five, and after that perhaps a visit to the playing fields of
Beaumont or a tavern, where wine would be mingled with song, and across
the oaken tables would thunder those rousing choruses that students ever
love:

“Mihi est propositum in taberna mori
Vinum sit appositum morientis ori,
Ut dicant, quum venerint, angelorum chori,
‘Deus sit propitius huic potatori.’”

When curfew rang at length, all the students would assemble in hall and
have a “drinking” or “collation.” Then, before going to bed, they would
sing the Antiphon of the Virgin (Salve Regina), and so the day was finished.
A dull, monotonous day it seems to us, varied only by sermons—and there
was no lack of them—at S. Mary’s or S. Peter’s in the East, with the chance
excitement of hearing a friar recant the unorthodox views he had expressed
the previous Sunday; but it was a day that was bright and social compared
with the ordinary conditions of the time.
In this daily round, so far as one has been able to reconstruct it, the
absence of any provision for physical recreation is a noticeable thing to us,
who have exchanged the mediæval enthusiasm for learning for an
enthusiasm for athletics. Both are excellent things in their way, but as the
governor of an American State remarked when defending the practice of
smoking over wine, both together are better than either separate. And
nowadays in some cases the combination is happily attained. But in an age
which inherited the monkish tradition of the vileness of the body and the
need of mortifying it, games of all sorts were regarded as a weakness of the
flesh. So far were founders from making any provision for recreation, that
they usually went out of their way to prohibit it. Games with bat and ball,
and tennis, that is, or fives, were strictly forbidden as indecent, though in
some cases students were permitted to play with a soft ball in the college
courts. But “deambulation in the College Grove” was the monastic ideal.
Nor did the founders frown only on exercise; amusements of the most
harmless sort were also under their ban. On the long, cold, dark winter
evenings the students were naturally tempted to linger in the hall after
supper, to gather round the fire, if there was one, in the middle of the room,
beneath the louvre, to tell tales there and sing carols, to read poems,
chronicles of the realm or wonders of the world. But it was only on the eve
of a festival that William of Wykeham would allow this relaxation in his
foundation. The members of Trinity College were allowed to play cards in
hall on holidays only, “but on no account for money.” Mummers, the chief
source of amusement among the mediævals, were only permitted to enter

New College once a year, on Twelfth Night. It was not till the dawn of the
Renaissance that plays began to be acted in the colleges and halls, and to
bring the academic intellect into touch with the views and literature of the
people.
Not only was it forbidden to play marbles on the college steps, but even
the hard exercise of chess was prohibited as a “noxious, inordinate and
unhonest game.” And the keeping of dogs and hawks was anathema.
By a survival of this mediæval view, the undergraduate is still solemnly
warned by the statute book against playing any game which may cause
injury to others; he is urged to refrain from hunting wild beasts with ferrets,
nets or hounds, from hawking, “necnon ab omni apparatu et gestatione
bombardarum et arcubalistarum.” In the same way he is forbidden still to
carry arms of any sort by day or night, unless it be bows and arrows for
purposes of honest amusement. But to these injunctions, I fear, as to the
accompanying threat of punishment at the discretion of the Vice-
Chancellor, he does not pay over much attention. He does not consider them
very seriously when he plays football or hunts with the “Bicester,” takes a
day’s shooting or runs with the Christ Church beagles.
The restrictions which I have quoted above were mostly introduced by
the founders of colleges. So far as the University was concerned, the private
life of the student was hardly interfered with at all.
The offence of night-walking, indeed, was repressed by the proctor who
patrolled the streets with a pole-axe and bulldogs (armed attendants), but
the student might frequent the taverns and drink as he pleased. His liberty
was almost completely unrestricted, except as to the wearing of academic
dress, the attendance of lectures and the observance of the curfew bell.
Offences against morality and order were treated as a rule, when they were
dealt with at all, with amazing leniency. Murder was regarded as a very
venial crime; drunkenness and loose-living as hardly matters for University
police. A student who committed murder was usually banished, and
banishment after all meant to him little more than changing his seat of
learning. The punishment, though it might cause inconvenience, did not
amount to more than being compelled to go to Cambridge. Fines,
excommunication and imprisonment were the other punishments inflicted
for offences; corporal punishment was but seldom imposed by the
University. But with the growth of the college system the bonds of

discipline were tightened. Not only did the statutes provide in the greatest
detail for the punishment of undergraduate offences, stating the amount of
the fine to be exacted for throwing a missile at a master and missing, and
the larger amount for aiming true, but also the endowment of the scholar
made it easy to collect the fine. The wardens and fellows, too, were in a
stronger position than the principal of a hall, who owed his place to his
popularity with the students, who, if he ceased to please them, might leave
his hall and remove to another house where the principal was more lenient
and could be relied upon to wink at their follies and their vices, even if he
did not share them. Thus the founders of the early colleges were enabled to
enforce upon the recipients of their bounty something of the rigour and
decency of monastic discipline. As the system grew the authority entrusted
to the heads of colleges was increased, and the position of the
undergraduate was reduced to that of the earlier grammar-school boy. The
statutes of B.N.C. (1509) rendered the undergraduate liable to be birched at
the discretion of the college lecturer. He might now be flogged if he had not
prepared his lessons; if he played, laughed or talked in lecture; if he made
odious comparisons, or spoke English; if he were unpunctual, disobedient
or did not attend chapel. Wolsey allowed the students of Cardinal College to
be flogged up to the age of twenty.
Impositions by a dean were apparently a sixteenth-century invention.
Then we find offending fellows who had played inordinately at hazard or
cards, or earned a reputation for being notorious fighters or great
frequenters of taverns, being ordered to read in their college libraries for a
fortnight from 6 to 7 A.M. And the loss of a month’s commons occasionally
rewarded the insolence of undergraduates who did not duly cap and give
way to their seniors, or who, yielding to that desire to adorn their persons
which the mediæval student shared with his gaudy-waistcoated successors,
wore “long undecent[28] hair,” and cloth of no clerical hue, slashed doublets
and boots and spurs beneath their gowns.
As to the academic career of the mediæval student; the course of his
studies and “disputations” in the schools; the steps by which the “general
sophister” became a “determining bachelor” and the bachelor, if he wished
to teach, took a master’s degree, first obtaining the Chancellor’s licence to
lecture, and then, on the occasion of his “inception,” when he “commenced
master” and first undertook his duty of teaching in the schools, being
received into the fraternity of teaching masters by the presiding master of

his faculty—of these ceremonies and their significance and the traces of
them which survive in modern academic life, as of the high feastings and
banquetings with which, as in the trade guilds, the new apprentices and
masters entertained their faculties, I have no space here to treat.
The inceptor besides undertaking not to lecture at Stamford, recognise
any University but Oxford and Cambridge, or maintain Lollard opinions,
was also required to swear to wear a habit suitable to his degree. As an
undergraduate he had had no academical dress, except that, as every
member of the University was supposed to be a clerk, he was expected to
wear the tonsure and clerical habit. The characteristic of this was that the
outer garment must be of a certain length and closed in front. It was the cut
and not the colour of the “cloth” which was at first considered important.
But later regulations restricted the colour to black, and insisted that this
garment must reach to the knees. In the colleges, however, it was only parti-
coloured garments that were regarded as secular, and the “liveries”
mentioned by the founders were usually clothes of the clerical cut but of
uniform colour. The fellows of Queen’s, for instance, were required to wear
blood-red. The colour of the liveries was not usually prescribed by statute,
but differences of colour and ornament still survive at Cambridge as badges
of different colleges.
The masters at first wore the cappa, which was the ordinary out-door
full-dress of the secular clergy. And this “cope,” with a border and hood of
minever, came to be the official academical costume. The shape of the
masters’ cappa soon became stereotyped and distinctive; then a cappa with
sleeves was adopted as the uniform of bachelors. As to the hood, it was the
material of which it was made—minever—which distinguished the master,
not the hood itself; for a hood was part of the ordinary clerical attire.
Bachelors of all faculties wore hoods of lamb’s-wool or rabbit’s-fur, but
undergraduates were deprived of the right of wearing a hood in 1489—nisi
liripipium consuetum ... et non contextum—the little black stuff hood, worn
by sophisters in the schools till within living memory.
The cappa went out of use amongst the Oxford M.A.’s during the
sixteenth century. The regents granted themselves wholesale dispensations
from its use. Stripped of this formal, outer robe, the toga was revealed, the
unofficial cassock or under-garment, which now gradually usurped the
place of the cappa and became the distinctively academical dress of the
Masters of Arts. But it was not at first the dull prosaic robe that we know.

The mediæval master was clad in bright colours, red or green or blue, and
rejoiced in them until the rising flood of prejudice in favour of all that is
dull and sombre and austere washed away these together with almost all
other touches of colour from the landscape of our grey island.
The distinctive badge of mastership handed to the inceptor by the father
of his faculty, was the biretta, a square cap with a tuft on the top, from
which is descended our cap with its tassel. Doctors of the superior faculties
differentiated themselves by wearing a biretta (square cap) or pilea (round)
as well as cappas, of bright hues, red, purple or violet. Gascoigne, indeed, in
his theological dictionary, declares that this head-dress was bestowed by
God himself on the Doctors of the Mosaic Law. Whatever its origin, the
round velvet cap with coloured silk ribbon, came to be, and still is, the
peculiar property of the Doctors of Law and Medicine.
The Oxford gowns of the present day have little resemblance to their
mediæval prototypes. For the ordinary undergraduate or “commoner” to-
day, academical dress, which must be worn at lectures, in chapel, in the
streets at night, and on all official occasions, consists of his cap, a tattered
“mortar-board,” and a gown which seems a very poor relation of the
original clerical garb. The sleeves have gone, and the length; only two
bands survive, and a little gathering on the shoulders, and this apology for a
gown is worn as often as not round the throat as a scarf, or carried under the
arm.
Some years ago it was a point of honour with every undergraduate to
wear a cap which was as battered and disreputable as possible. Every
freshman seized the first opportunity to break the corners of his “mortar-
board” and to cut and unravel the tassel. Yet once the tufted biretta, when it
was the badge of mastership, was much coveted by undergraduates. First,
they obtained the right of wearing a square cap without a tassel, like those
still worn by the choristers of Oxford colleges, and then they were granted
the use of a tassel. The tuft in the case of the gentlemen commoners took
the form of a golden tassel. Snobs who cultivated the society of these gilded
youths for the sake of their titles or their cash, or tutors,
“Rough to common men,
But honeying at the whisper of a Lord,”

gained from this fact the nick-name of tuft-hunters.

The commoner, it should be explained, is one who pays for his
commons, a student not on the foundation. The colleges were, in most
cases, intended originally only for the fellows and scholars on the
foundation. The admission of other students as commoners or boarders was
a subsequent development, and various ranks of students came to be
recognised—noblemen, gentlemen commoners, commoners, fellow-
commoners, battelers, or servitors. These grades are now practically
obsolete, the only distinction drawn among the undergraduates being
between the scholars or students on the foundation and commoners, the
ordinary undergraduates, who do not enjoy any scholarship or exhibition.
The scholar, who must wear a larger gown with wide sleeves, is known
by various names at various colleges. At Merton he is a post-master, at
Magdalen a demy, so-called because he was entitled to half the commons of
a fellow.
The history of the commoner, the growth of an accretion that now forms
the greater part of a college, may be illustrated by the records of the latter
foundation.
The statutes of New College had not made any provision for the
admission of commensales, but William of Waynflete, in drawing up the
statutes of Magdalen, was the first definitely to recognise the system that
had grown up by which men who were not on the foundation lived as
members of the college. Waynflete limited the number of non-foundationers
to twenty. They were to live at the charges of their own kindred; they were
to be vouched for by “creancers”; and the privilege of admission was to be
reserved for the sons of noble and powerful friends of the college.
But within a hundred years the number of the commoners or battelers
increased far beyond that allowed by the statutes. The position of these
commoners was anomalous and led to “disorder and confusion,” as certain
fellows did most bitterly complain to the Visitor. No provision, it appears,
was made either for the instruction or the discipline of these
supernumeraries. They were, in fact, regarded as the private pupils of the
President or of one of the fellows. In attendance upon the wealthier of them
or upon other members of the college came numerous “poore scholars,”
acting as their servants and profiting in their turn from such free teaching as
the Grammar School and the college lecturers might afford.

The system, however, was already justified to some extent by the fact
that among the pupils of the President were numbered Bodley, Camden,
Lyly and Florio. The Visitor, therefore, contented himself with enforcing the
observation of the limits imposed by the statutes. The poor scholars were in
future not to be more than thirteen in number, and were to be attached to the
thirteen senior fellows. Before long, however, the matriculations of non-
foundationers began to increase very rapidly. A new block of buildings even
was erected near the Cherwell for their accommodation by 1636. This is
that picturesque group of gables which nestles under the great tower and
forms so distinct a feature of the view from Magdalen Bridge. The number
of “poore scholars” had also increased—servitors whose office forestalled
that of the college “scout.” They bridged the days when the junior members
of a foundation “did” for themselves and the modern days of an

Gables and Tower Magdalen College.

organised college service. It was decided, and this is where the scout has the
advantage of his forerunners, that they should be required to attend the
Grammar School, and afterwards to perform all disputations and exercises
required of members of the foundation. All commoners, also, “the sonnes of

Noblemen and such as are of great quality only excepted” were to be “tyed
to the same rules.”
Little more than a hundred years later Edward Gibbon matriculated at
Magdalen (1752) as a “gentleman commoner,” and as a youth of fifteen
commenced those fourteen months which he has told us were the most idle
and unprofitable of his whole life. There are prigs of all ages. Gibbon must
have been intolerable in a common room. One can forgive the “Monks of
Magdalen” for not discussing the Early Fathers with him after dinner, but
one has no inclination on the other hand to revere the men who had already
(1733), in their enthusiasm for the Italian style, begun the “New Buildings,”
and were still threatening to pull down the cloisters and to complete a large
quadrangle in the same style, of which the New Buildings were to form one
end. The damage done by the succeeding generation was directed chiefly
against the chapel and the hall, where under the guidance of the outrageous
James Wyatt, plaster ceilings were substituted for the old woodwork. The
generosity of a late fellow has enabled Mr Bodley, with the aid of Professor
Case, to repair this error by an extraordinarily interesting and successful
restoration (1903). Magdalen Hall is now worthy of its pictures, its “linen-
fold” panelling and splendid screen. Bitter as is the account which Gibbon
has left us, it cannot be denied that there was much reason in his quarrel
with the Oxford of his day. I say Oxford, for the state of Magdalen was
better rather than worse than that of the University at large. It should,
however, in fairness be pointed out that as a gentleman commoner in those
days he was one of a class which was very small and far from anxious to
avail itself of the intellectual advantages of a University training. The
commoners at Magdalen were now very few in number. The founder’s
limitation was now so interpreted as to restrict them to the particular class
of gentlemen commoners, sons of wealthy men, at liberty to study, but
expected to prefer, and as a matter of fact usually preferring, to enjoy
themselves.
But the efforts of the more liberal-minded fellows were at length
crowned with success. By the first University Commission the college was
allowed to admit as many non-foundationers as it could provide with
rooms. The last gentleman commoner had ceased to figure in the Calendar
by 1860. The system of licensed lodgings introduced by the University soon
caused the numbers of the ordinary commoners to increase, so that in 1875
one-third of the resident undergraduates were living in lodgings outside the

college. It was clearly time for the college to provide accommodation for as
many of these as possible within its own walls. The change which took
place in Magdalen during the last century, a change “from a small society,
made up almost wholly of foundation-members and to a great extent of
graduates, to a society of considerable numbers, made up of the same
elements, in about the same proportion as most of the other Colleges,” is
recorded therefore in the architecture of Oxford. For it was to lodge the
commoners that the buildings which are known as S. Swithun’s (so-called
from the statue in a niche on the west side of the tower which is placed at
the entrance of these buildings, and which reminds one that S. Swithun was
buried in Winchester Cathedral close to the beautiful shrine of William of
Waynflete) were designed by Messrs Bodley & Garner and completed in
1884. They face the High Street, and you will pass them on your left as you
come down to the new entrance gateway, which is in the line of the outer
wall, parallel to the High. The old gateway, which was designed by Inigo
Jones, stood almost at right angles to the site of the present gateway and
lodge, looking west. It was removed in 1844, and a new one designed by A.
W. Pugin erected in its stead. The present gateway (1885) follows the lines
of the old design of Pugin, and the niches are filled with statues of S. John
the Baptist, S. Mary Magdalen and of the founder, William of Waynflete. S.
John the Baptist was the patron Saint of the old hospital, and after S. John
the quadrangle into which you now enter is called. Opposite to you are the
President’s lodgings, built by Messrs Bodley & Garner in 1887 on the site
of the old President’s lodgings. With the exquisite architecture of the chapel
and cloisters on the right to guide them, these famous architects have not
failed to build here something that harmonises in style and treatment with
the rest. One might wish that S. Swithun’s were a little quieter. There is a
slight yielding to the clamorous desire for fussy ornamentation which is so
typical of this noisy age. But the President’s lodgings are perfect in their
kind. As you stand, then, in S. John’s Quadrangle you have, in the chapel
and founder’s tower, and the cloisters on your right, and in the picturesque
old fragment of the Grammar School, known as the Grammar Hall, facing
you on your left, an epitome, as it were, of the old college foundations of
Oxford; and in those buildings of S. Swithun and the gateway, which faces
in a new direction, an epitome of the new Oxford that has been grafted on
the old. On the extreme right you see a curious open-air pulpit of stone,
from which the University sermon used to be preached on S. John the

Baptist’s Day. On that occasion the pulpit, as well as the surrounding
buildings, was strewn with rushes and boughs in token of S. John’s
preaching in the wilderness.
In the Middle Ages the chief executive officers of the
University were the Proctors, who are first mentioned in
1248. The origin of their office is obscure. They were
responsible for the collection and expenditure of the
common funds of the University, and as a record of this
function they still retain in their robes a purse, a
rudimentary organ, as it were, atrophied by disuse, but
traceable in a triangular bunch of stuff at the back of the
shoulder. Apart from this duty and that of regulating the
system of lectures and disputations, their chief business
was to keep order. One can imagine that a Proctor’s life
was not a happy one. He had to endeavour not only to
keep the peace between the students and the townsmen, Open Air Pulpit
but also between the numerous factions among the Magdalen
scholars themselves. The Friars and the secular clergy, the
Artists and the Jurists, the Nominalists and the Realists, and, above all, the
Northerners and Southerners were always ready to quarrel, and quarrels
quickly led to blows, and blows to a general riot. For the rivalry of the
nations was a peculiar feature of mediæval Universities. At Bologna and
Paris the Masters of Arts divided themselves into “Four Nations,” with
elective officers at their head. At Oxford the main division was between
Northerners and Southerners, between students, that is, who came from the
north or the south of the Trent. Welshmen and Irishmen were included
among the Southerners. And over the northern and southern Masters of Arts
presided northern and southern Proctors respectively, chosen by a process
of indirect election, like the rectors of Bologna and Paris. Contests and
continual riots arising out of the rivalry of these factions took the place of
modern football matches or struggles on the river.
In 1273, for instance, we read of an encounter between the Northerners
and the Irish, which resulted in the death of several Irishmen. So alarming,
apparently, was this outbreak that many of the leading members of the
University departed in fear, and only returned at the stern command of the
King. The bishops, too, issued a notice, in which they earnestly exhorted the
clerks in their dioceses to “repair to the schools, not armed for the fight, but

rather prepared for study.” But the episcopal exhortation had about as much
effect as a meeting of the Peace League in Exeter Hall would have now.
Quarrel after quarrel broke out between the rival nations. They plundered
each others’ goods and broke each others’ heads with a zest worthy of an
Irish wake.
In spite of their reputation for riotousness, however, the Irish students
were specially exempted by royal writ from the operation of the statute
passed by Parliament in 1413, which ordered that all Irishmen and Irish
clerks, beggars called Chamberdekens, should quit the realm. Graduates in
the schools had been exempted in the statute. This exemption does not
appear to have conduced to the state of law and order painfully toiled after
by the mere Saxon. For a few years later, in the first Parliament of Henry
VI., the Commons sent up a petition complaining of the numerous outrages
committed near Oxford by “Wylde Irishmen.” These turbulent persons, it
was alleged, living under the jurisdiction of the Chancellor, set the King’s
officers at defiance, and used such threatening language, that the bailiffs of
the town did not dare to stir out of their houses for fear of death. The
Commons therefore prayed that all Irishmen, except graduates in the
schools, beneficed clergy, professed monks, landowners, merchants and
members of civic corporations, should be compelled to quit the realm. It
was also demanded that graduates of Irish extraction should be required to
find security for their good behaviour, and that they should not be allowed
to act as principals of halls. This petition received the royal assent. But it
was stipulated that Irish clerks might freely resort to Oxford and
Cambridge, if they could show that they were subjects of the English king.
It was in vain that students were compelled to swear that they would not
carry arms; in vain were seditious gatherings and leagues for the espousal
of private quarrels forbidden.
In vain, after one great outbreak in 1252, were formal articles of peace
drawn up; in vain were the combatants bound over to keep the peace, and to
give secret information to the Chancellor if they heard of others who were
preparing to break it. In vain was the celebration of the national festivals
forbidden, and the masters and scholars prohibited, under pain of the greater
excommunication, from “going about dancing in the churches or open
places, wearing masks or wreathed and garlanded with flowers” (1250). In
vain was it decreed that the two nations should become one and cease,
officially, to have a separate existence (1274). Though the Faculty of Arts

might vote from this time forward as a single body, yet one Proctor was
always a Borealis and the other an Australis; and when, in 1320, it was
decreed that one of the three guardians of the Rothbury Chest should
always be a Southerner and another a Northerner, the University admitted
the existence of the two rival nations within its borders once more. Only a
few years after this, in fact (1334), its very existence was threatened by the
violence of the factions. The Northerners gave battle to the Southerners, and
so many rioters were arrested that the Castle was filled to overflowing.
Many of the more studious clerks resolved to quit this riotous University for
ever, and betook themselves to Stamford, where there were already some
flourishing schools.
They were compelled at last to disperse or to return by the King, who
refused to listen to their plea, that their right to study in peace at Stamford
was as good as that of any other person whatever who chose to live there.
So serious was this secession, and so much was the rivalry of Stamford
feared, that all candidates for a degree were henceforth (till 1827) required
to swear that they would not give or attend lectures there “as in a
University.”
It was on the occasion of this migration that the members of Brasenose
Hall, which adjoined S. Mary’s Entry, Salesbury Hall, Little University Hall
and Jussel’s Tenement, carried with them, as a symbol of their continuity,
the famous Brazen Nose Knocker to Stamford. There the little society
settled; an archway of the hall they occupied there still exists, and now
belongs to Brasenose College. The knocker itself was brought back in 1890
to a place

Quadrangle Brasenose

of honour in the college hall. For in the meantime the old hall, after a career
of over two hundred years, had been converted into a college, founded by
William Smyth, Bishop of Lincoln, and Master Sotton, very much as a
protest against the new learning which was then being encouraged at
Corpus Christi. The continuity of the society is indicated by the fact that the
first Principal of the college was the last Principal of the old “Aula Regia de
Brasinnose.” The foundation stone was laid in 1509, as the inscription in the
old quadrangle, to which a story was added in the time of James I., records.
They were a turbulent crew, these Oxonian forbears of ours. Dearly they
loved a fight, and they rose in rebellion against the masters when they were
bringing in new statutes for the preservation of the peace. Several were
slain on both sides. Nor was it easy to punish the unruly students.
Sometimes, after a brawl in which they were clearly in the wrong, the

delinquents would flee to Shotover, and there maintain themselves in the
forest. At other times, when they had gone too far, and the thunder of the
Chancellor’s sentence of excommunication had fallen on their heads as a
punishment for attempting to sack the Abbey of Abingdon, or defiling the
Church of S. Mary with bloodshed, for sleeping in a tavern, or fighting with
the King’s foresters, they would simply leave the University altogether and
get away scathless. For the Chancellor’s jurisdiction did not extend beyond
Oxford.
A joust or tourney was a certain cause of riot. The passions are easily
roused after any athletic contest, whether it be a football match or a bull-
fight. Remembering this, we shall best be able to understand why the King
found it necessary to forbid any joust or tournament to be held in the
vicinity of Oxford or Cambridge (1305).
“Yea, such was the clashing of swords,” says Fuller, “the rattling of arms, the sounding of
trumpets, the neighing of horses, the shouting of men all day time with the roaring of riotous
revellers all the night, that the scholars’ studies were disturbed, safety endangered, lodging straitened,
charges enlarged. In a word, so many war-horses were brought thither that Pegasus was himself
likely to be shut out; for where Mars keeps his terms, there the Muses may even make their
vacation.”

Any excuse, indeed, was good enough to set the whole town in an
uproar. A bailiff would hustle a student; a tradesman would “forestall” and
retail provisions at a higher price than the regulations allowed; a rowdy
student would compel a common bedesman to pray for the souls of certain
unpopular living townsmen on the score that they would soon be dead. The
bailiffs would arrest a clerk and refuse to give him up at the request of the
Chancellor; the Chancellor, when appealed to by the townsmen to punish
some offending students, would unsoothingly retort: “Chastise your laymen
and we will chastise our clerks.” The records of town and University are
full of the riots which arose from such ebullitions of the ever-present ill-
feeling; of the appeals made by either party; and of the awards given by the
King, who might be some English Justinian, like Edward I., or might not.
The answer of the townsmen (1298) to the Chancellor’s retort quoted
above was distinctly vigorous. They seized and imprisoned all scholars on
whom they could lay hands, invaded their inns, made havoc of their goods
and trampled their books under foot. In the face of such provocation the
Proctors sent their bedels about the town, forbidding the students to leave
their inns. But all commands and exhortations were in vain. By nine o’clock

next morning, bands of scholars were parading the streets in martial array.
If the Proctors failed to restrain them, the mayor was equally powerless to
restrain his townsmen. The great bell of S. Martin’s rang out an alarm; ox-
horns were sounded in the streets; messengers were sent into the country to
collect rustic allies. The clerks, who numbered three thousand in all, began
their attack simultaneously in various quarters. They broke open
warehouses in the Spicery, the Cutlery and elsewhere. Armed with bows
and arrows, swords and bucklers, slings and stones, they fell upon their
opponents. Three they slew, and wounded fifty or more. One band, led by
Fulk de Neyrmit, Rector of Piglesthorne, and his brother, took up a position
in High Street between the Churches of S. Mary and All Saints, and
attacked the house of a certain Edward Hales. This Hales was a long-
standing enemy of the clerks. There were no half measures with him. He
seized his crossbow, and from an upper chamber sent an unerring shaft into
the eye of the pugnacious rector. The death of their valiant leader caused the
clerks to lose heart. They fled, closely pursued by the townsmen and
country-folk. Some were struck down in the streets, and others who had
taken refuge in the churches were dragged out and driven mercilessly to
prison, lashed with thongs and goaded with iron spikes.
Complaints of murder, violence and robbery were lodged straightway
with the King by both parties. The townsmen claimed three thousand
pounds’ damage. The commissioners, however, appointed to decide the
matter, condemned them to pay two hundred marks, removed the bailiffs,
and banished twelve of the most turbulent citizens from Oxford. Then the
terms of peace were formally ratified.
Following the example of their Chancellor, who was gradually asserting
his authority more and more in secular matters, and thought little of
excommunicating a mayor for removing a pillory without his leave (1325),
the clerks became continually more aggressive. Quarrels with the townsmen
were succeeded by quarrels with the Bishop of Lincoln, when the latter, in
his turn, tried to encroach upon the jurisdiction of the Chancellor. Peace,
perfect peace, it will be seen, had not yet descended upon the University.
The triumph of Dulness had not arrived, when the enraptured monarch
should behold:
“Isis’ elders reel, their pupils sport,
And Alma Mater lie dissolved in port.”

Certainly the elders gave their pupils sport enough after their kind, but the
intellectual quarrels of the schoolmen, the furious controversies of the
Dominicans and the Franciscans, the Scotists and the Thomists, the
Nominalists and the Realists, were a part of it. When the excitement of local
riots, theological disputes and political dissension failed, there were the
exactions of a Papal representative to be resisted. And when such resistance
led to the citation of the Chancellor and Proctors and certain masters to
appear within sixty days before the Cardinal appointed by the Pope to hear
the case at Avignon, there was the whole principle that no Englishman
should be dragged across the seas to judgment to be fought for (circa 1330).
For every man was a politician in those days, and the scholars of Oxford not
least. Their quarrels and riotings were therefore not without political
significance. Thus when the Mad Parliament met in the “new house of the
Black Friars at Oxford,” the behaviour of the barons was reflected by that
of students. The “nations” pitched their field in “Beaumont,” and after a
fierce fight in battle array, divers on both sides were slain and pitifully
wounded. The Northerners and Welshmen were at last acknowledged to be
conquerors.
The position of the students with regard to the country, is indicated by
the old rhyme:
“Mark the Chronicles aright
When Oxford scholars fall to fight
Before many months expired
England will with war be fired.”

It was Oxford, the centre of English ecclesiasticism, which, by the riot
that hounded the Papal Legate out of the city, gave the signal for a
widespread outbreak of resistance to the wholesale pillage of excessive
Papal taxation.
Regardless of the gathering storm, the Legate Cardinal Otho had arrived
at Oxford with his retinue of Italians, and taken up his abode at Osney.
Some members of the University, having sent him some delicacies for
his table, went to pay their respects in person, and to ask of him a favour in
return. The doorkeeper, however, a suspicious Italian, absolutely refused to
admit them to the guests’ hall. Irritated by this unexpected rebuff, they
collected a great number of their comrades, and made a determined attack
on the foreigners, who defended themselves with sticks, swords and

flaming brands plucked from the fire. The fury of the clerks reached its
height when the Legate’s chief cook took up a cauldron full of boiling
broth, and threw its contents in the face of a poor Irish chaplain, who had
been begging for food at the kitchen door. A student thereupon drew his
bow, and shot the cook dead on the spot, whilst others tried to set fire to the
massive gates which had been closed against them. The terrified Legate,
hastily putting on a canonical cope, fled for refuge to the belfry of the
abbey, and there lay hid for several hours, while the clerks assailed the
building with bows and catapults.
News of the fray soon reached Henry III., who happened to be staying at
Abingdon, and he lost no time in despatching some soldiers to the rescue.
Under their powerful escort the Legate managed to ford the river by night,
accompanied by the members of his suite. Still as he galloped away, he
seemed to hear the shouts of his adversaries ringing in his ears, “Where is
that usurer, that simoniac, that spoiler of revenues, and thirster after money,
who perverts the King, overthrows the realm, and enriches strangers with
plunder taken from us?”
It was not long before the Papal Legate was forbidden the English
shores, and his bulls of excommunication were flung into the sea.
Simon de Montfort was the friend of Adam Marsh, and the confidant of
Grossetete, and it was appropriately enough at Oxford that the great
champion of English freedom secured the appointment of a council of
twenty-four to draw up terms for the reform of the State. Parliament met at
Oxford; the barons presented a long petition of grievances, the council was
elected, and a body of preliminary articles known as the Provisions of
Oxford was agreed upon. In the following year Henry repudiated the
Provisions; civil war ensued, and ended by placing the country in the hands
of Simon de Montfort.
The struggle between Henry and the barons then did not leave Oxford
unaffected. For any disturbance without was sure to be reflected in a
conflict between clerks and laymen, in a town and gown row, of some
magnitude. In the present case the appearance of Prince Edward with an
armed force—he took up his quarters at the King’s Hall—in the northern
suburb gave occasion for an outbreak. The municipal authorities closed the
gates against him, and he resumed his march towards Wales.

The scholars now thought it was time that they should be allowed to go
out of the city, and finding themselves prevented by the closed wooden
doors of Smith Gate, they hewed these down and carried them away, like
Samson, into the fields, chanting over them the office of the dead:
“A Subvenite Sancti fast began to sing
As man doth when a dead man men will to pit bring.”

The mayor retorted by throwing some of them into prison, in spite of the
Chancellor’s protest. Further arrests were about to be made by the irate
townsmen, but a clerk saw them advancing in a body down the High Street,
and gave the alarm by ringing the bell of S. Mary’s. The clerks were at
dinner, but hearing the well-known summons they sprang to arms and
rushed out into the street to give battle. Many of the foe were wounded; the
rest were put to flight. Their banners were torn to pieces, and several shops
were sacked by the victorious students, who, flushed with victory, marched
to the houses of the bailiffs and set them on fire.
“In the South half of the town, and afterwards the Spicery
They brake from end to other, and did all to robberie.”

The mayor, they then remembered, was a vintner. Accordingly a rush was
made for the vintnery; all the taps were drawn, and the wine flowed out like
water into the streets.
Their success for a moment was complete, but retribution awaited them.
The King was appealed to, and refused to countenance so uproarious a
vindication of their rights. When they saw how the wind blew, they
determined to leave Oxford. It was a question whither they should go and
where pitch their scholastic tents. Now it happened that at Cambridge, a
town which had ceased to be famous only for eels and could boast a
flourishing University of its own, similar disturbances had recently
occurred with similar results. Many masters and scholars had removed to
Northampton, and to Northampton accordingly, to aid them in their avowed
intention of founding a third University, the disconsolate Oxford scholars
departed. The situation was evidently serious. But the King induced the
Oxonians to return by promising that they should not be molested if they
would only keep the peace.

They returned, but almost immediately all scholars were commanded by
a writ from the King to quit the town and stay at home until he should recall
them after the session of Parliament then about to be held at Oxford. The
King, it was officially explained, could not be responsible for the conduct of
the fierce and untamed lords who would be assembled together there and
would be sure to come into conflict with the students. Perhaps the more
urgent motive was fear lest the students should openly and actively side
with the barons, with whom, it was known, the majority of them were in
sympathy.
The fact was that in the great struggle against the Crown in which
England was now involved, the clergy and the Universities ranged
themselves with the towns on the side of Simon de Montfort. Ejected from
Oxford, many of the students openly joined his cause and repaired at once
to Northampton.
For a time all went well with the King. As if to demonstrate his faith in
the justice of his cause, he braved popular superstition and passing within
the walls of Oxford paid his devotions at the shrine of S. Frideswide. The
meeting of Parliament failed to bring about any reconciliation. Reinforced
by a detachment of Scottish allies—“untamed and fierce” enough, no doubt
—Henry left Oxford and marched on Northampton. Foremost in its defence
was a band of Oxford students, who so enraged the King by the effective
use they made of their bows and slings and catapults, that he swore to hang
them all when he had taken the town. Take the town he did, and he would
have kept his oath had he not been deterred by the reminder that he would
by such an act lose the support of all those nobles and followers whose sons
and kinsmen were students. But the victorious career of the King was
almost at an end. The vengeance of S. Frideswide was wrought at the battle
of Lewes. Simon de Montfort found himself head of the State, and one of
his first acts was to order the scholars to return to their University.
Such keen, occasionally violent, interest in politics seems, in these days,
characteristic of the German or Russian rather than the English University
student. Nowadays the political enthusiasm of the undergraduate is mild,
and his discussion of politics is academic. In the debating hall of the Union,
or in the more retired meeting-places of the smaller political clubs, like the
Canning, the Chatham, the Palmerston or the Russell, he discusses the
questions of the day. But his discussions lack as a rule the sense of reality,
and they suffer accordingly. Occasionally, when a Cabinet Minister has

been persuaded to dine and talk with one or other of these clubs, or when
the speaker is one who is deliberately practising for the part he means to
take in after-life, the debates are neither uninteresting nor entirely valueless.
And at the worst they give those who take part in them a facility of speech
and some knowledge of political questions. But it is not so that the
University exercises any influence on current events. Nor, except in so far
as they warn practical men to vote the other way, are those

Magdalen College.

occasional manifestoes, which a few professors sign and publish, of any
great importance. But it is through the press and through Parliament that the
voice of young Oxford is heard. It is through the minds and the examples of
those statesmen and administrators, who have imbibed their principles of
life and action within her precincts, and have been trained in her schools
and on her river or playing-fields, that the influence of the University is

reflected on the outer world. Nor is it only the men like Lord Salisbury,
Lord Rosebery and Mr Gladstone, who guide the country at home, or like
Lord Milner and Lord Curzon, who give their best work to Greater Britain,
that are the true sons of the University; it is the plain, hard-working
clergymen and civilians, also, who, by their lives of honest and unselfish
toil, hand on the torch of good conduct and high ideals which has been
entrusted to them.
Oxford had some share in the events which led to the deposition of
Edward II. The King wrote to the Chancellor, masters and scholars calling
upon them to resist his enemies. On the approach of Roger de Mortimer, a
supporter of the Queen, he wrote again enjoining them not to allow him to
enter the city, but to keep Smith Gate shut, lest he should enter by that way.
But when the King was a refugee in Wales, the Queen came to Islip. She
would not come to Oxford till “she saw it secure.” But when the burghers
came to her with presents she was satisfied. She took up her residence at the
White Friars, and the Mortimers theirs at Osney. And a sermon was
preached by the Bishop of Hereford, who demonstrated from his text, “My
head grieveth me,” that an evil head, meaning the King, not otherwise to be
cured, must be taken away. The majority of scholars apparently agreed with
him.
The terrible scourge of the Black Death, which carried off half the
population of England, fell hardly on Oxford. Those who had places in the
country fled to them; those who remained behind were almost totally swept
away. The schools were shut, the colleges and halls closed, and there were
scarcely men enough to bury the dead. The effect upon learning was
disastrous. There were not enough students forthcoming to fill the
benefices, and the scarcity of students affected the citizens severely.
The disorder of the time, which was to issue in Wat Tyler’s Rebellion,
was shadowed forth at Oxford by the extraordinary riot of S. Scholastica’s
Day (1355). The story of this riot, which was to bear fruit in further
privileges being vouchsafed to the University at the expense of the town,
has been recorded with infinite spirit by Wood.
“On Tuesday, February 10, being the feast of S. Scholastica the Virgin, came Walter de
Springheuse, Roger de Chesterfield, and other clerks to the Tavern called Swyndlestock (the
Mermaid Tavern at Quatervoix), and there calling for wine, John de Croydon, the vintner, brought
them some, but they disliking it, as it should seem, and he avouching it to be good, several snappish
words passed between them. At length the vintner giving them stubborn and saucy language, they
threw the wine and vessel at his head. The vintner therefore receding with great passion, and

aggravating the abuse to those of his family and neighbourhood, several came in, who out of
propensed malice seeking all occasions of conflict with the scholars, and taking this abuse for a
ground to proceed upon, caused the town bell at S. Martin’s to be rung, that the commonalty might be
summoned together in a body. Which being begun, they in an instant were in arms, some with bows
and arrows, others with divers sorts of weapons. And then they, without any more ado, did in a
furious and hostile manner suddenly set upon divers scholars, who at that time had not any offensive
arms, no, not so much as anything to defend themselves. They shot also at the Chancellor of the
University, and would have killed him, though he endeavoured to pacify them and appease the
tumult. Further, also, though the scholars at the command of the Chancellor did presently withdraw
themselves from the fray, yet the townsmen thereupon did more fiercely pursue him and the scholars,
and would by no means desist from the conflict. The Chancellor, perceiving what great danger they
were in, caused the University bell at S. Mary’s to be rung out, whereupon the scholars got bows and
arrows, and maintained the fight with the townsmen till dark night, at which time the fray ceased, no
one scholar or townsman being killed, or mortally wounded, or maimed.
“On the next day albeit the Chancellor of the University caused public proclamation to be made
in the morning both at S. Mary’s church in the presence of the scholars there assembled in a great
multitude, and also at Quatervois among the townsmen, that no scholar or townsman should wear or
bear any offensive weapons, or assault any man, or otherwise disturb the peace (upon which the
scholars, in humble obedience to that proclamation, repaired to the Schools, and demeaned
themselves peaceably till after dinner) yet the very same morning the townsmen came with their
bows and arrows, and drove away a certain Master in Divinity and his auditors, who were then
determining in the Augustine Schools. The Baillives of the town also had given particular warning to
every townsman, at his respective house, in the morning, that they should make themselves ready to
fight with the scholars against the time when the town bell should ring out, and also given notice
before to the country round about, and had hired people to come in and assist the townsmen in their
intended conflict with the scholars. In dinner time the townsmen subtily and secretly sent about
fourscore men armed with bows and arrows, and other manner of weapons into the parish of S. Giles
in the north suburb; who, after a little expectation, having discovered certain scholars walking after
dinner in Beaumont, issued out of S. Giles’s church, shooting at the same scholars for the space of
three furlongs: some of them they drove into the Augustine Priory, and others into the town. One
scholar they killed without the walls, some they wounded mortally, others grievously, and used the
rest basely. All which being done without any mercy, caused an horrible outcry in the town:
whereupon the town bell being rung out first, and after that the University bell, divers scholars issued
out armed with bows and arrows in their own defence and of their companions, and having first shut
and blocked up some of the gates of the town (lest the country people, who were then gathered in
innumerable multitudes, might suddenly break in upon their rear in an hostile manner and assist the
townsmen who were now ready prepared in battle array, and armed with their targets also) they
fought with them and defended themselves till after Vesper tide; a little after which time, entered into
the town by the west gate about two thousand countrymen, with a black dismal flag, erect and
displayed. Of which the scholars having notice, and being unable to resist so great and fierce a
company, they withdrew themselves to their lodgings: but the townsmen finding no scholars in the
streets to make any opposition, pursued them, and that day they broke open five inns or hostels of
scholars with fire and sword. Such scholars as they found in the said halls or inns they killed or
maimed, or grievously wounded. Their books and all their goods which they could find, they spoiled,
plundered and carried away. All their victuals, wine and other drink they poured out; their bread, fish,
&c. they trod under foot. After this the night came on and the conflict ceased for that day, and the
same even public proclamation was made in Oxen, in the King’s name, ‘that no man should injure
the scholars or their goods under pain of forfeiture.’
“The next day being Thursday (after the Chancellor and some principal persons of the University
were set out towards Woodstock to the King, who had sent for them thither) no one scholar or

scholar’s servant so much as appearing out of their houses with any intention to harm the townsmen,
or offer any injury to them (as they themselves confessed) yet the said townsmen about sun rising,
having rung out their bell, assembled themselves together in a numberless multitude, desiring to heap
mischief upon mischief, and to perfect by a more terrible conclusion that wicked enterprize which
they had begun. This being done, they with hideous noises and clamours came and invaded the
scholars’ houses in a wretchless sort, which they forced open with iron bars and other engines; and
entering into them, those that resisted and stood upon their defence (particularly some chaplains) they
killed or else in a grievous sort maimed. Some innocent wretches, after they had killed, they
scornfully cast into houses of easement, others they buried in dunghills, and some they let lie above
ground. The crowns of some chaplains, viz. all the skin so far as the tonsure went, these diabolical
imps flayed off in scorn of their clergy. Divers others whom they had mortally wounded, they haled
to prison, carrying their entrails in their hands in a most lamentable manner. They plundered and
carried away all the goods out of fourteen inns or halls, which they spoiled that Thursday. They broke
open and dashed to pieces the scholars’ chests and left not any moveable thing which might stand
them in any stead; and which was yet more horrid, some poor innocents that were flying with all
speed to the body of Christ for succour (then honourably carried in procession by the brethren
through the town for the appeasing of this slaughter) and striving to embrace and come as near as
they could to the repository wherein the glorious Body was with great devotion put, these
confounded sons of Satan knocked them down, beat and most cruelly wounded. The Crosses also of
certain brethren (the friers) which were erected on the ground for the present time with a ‘procul hinc
ite profani,’ they overthrew and laid flat with the cheynell. This wickedness and outrage continuing
the said day from the rising of the sun till noon tide and a little after without any ceasing, and
thereupon all the scholars (besides those of the Colleges) being fled divers ways, our mother the
University of Oxon, which had but two days before many sons, is now almost forsaken and left
forlorn.”

The casualty list was heavy. Six members of the University were killed
outright in the fray; twenty-one others, chiefly Irishmen, were dangerously
wounded, and a large number was missing. The Bishop of Lincoln
immediately placed the town under an interdict. The King sent a
commission to inquire into the cause of the riot. The sheriff was summarily
dismissed from his office, two hundred of the townsmen were arrested, and
the mayor and bailiffs committed to the Tower. With a view to settling the
deep-rooted differences, which, it was perceived, were the origin of this
bloody combat, the University and the city were advised to surrender their
privileges into the King’s hands. Edward III. restored those of the
University in a few days. The town was kept some time in suspense, whilst
the King and the Archbishop were striving to induce the scholars to return
to Oxford. In the end all their ancient rights were restored to the citizens,
with the exception of those which had been transferred to the University.
For by the new charter the King granted to the latter some of the old
liberties of the town.
This charter (27th June 1355) granted a free pardon to all masters and
scholars and their servants who had taken part in the great riot. The

University, the King declared, was the main source and channel of learning
in all England, more precious to him than gold or topaz. To the Chancellor,
then, or his deputy, was granted the assay of bread and ale, the supervision
of weights and measures, the sole cognisance of forestallers, retailers and
sellers of putrid meat and fish; the power of excommunicating any person
who polluted or obstructed the streets, and of assessing the tax to be paid by
scholars’ servants. It was also decreed that the sheriff and under-sheriff of
the county should henceforth swear, on taking office, to uphold the
privileges of the University. In compensation for the damage done in the
recent riot, the city had to restore the goods and books of all scholars
wherever found, and to pay down £250 in cash. Such was the price, in
money and rights, that the commonalty had to pay before they could satisfy
the civil authorities. From that time forth the University practically
governed the town. The wrath of the Church was not so soon appeased. It
was not till 1357 that the interdict was removed, nor were the offences of
the citizens against the Holy Church forgiven even then, except at the price
of further humiliation. The mayor and bailiffs, and sixty of the chiefest
burghers, such were the conditions, were to appear personally, and defray
the expenses of a mass to be celebrated every year in S. Mary’s on S.
Scholastica’s Day, when prayers should be said for the souls of the clerks
and others slain in that conflict. The mayor and these sixty substantial
burghers were also to offer on that occasion one penny each at the great
altar. Forty pence out of this offering were to be given by the proctors to
forty poor scholars, and the remainder to the curate.
So humiliating did this condition appear, that it gave rise to the popular
saying and, perhaps, belief that the mayor was obliged, on the anniversary
of the riot, to wear round his neck a halter or, at best, a silken cord. It may
well be imagined that the procession, as it took its way to S. Mary’s, did not
escape the taunts and jeers of the jubilant clerks. Under Elizabeth, when
prayer for the dead had been forbidden, this function was changed for a
sermon, with the old offering of a penny. The service was retained in a
modified form down to the time of Charles II.
The political and religious divisions introduced by the Lollard doctrines
found their expression, of course, in students’ riots. For the Northerners
sided with Wycliffe, himself a Yorkshireman, and the Southerners,
supported by the Welsh, professed themselves loyal children of the Church.
A general encounter took place in 1388; several persons were killed, and

many Northerners left Oxford. The Chancellor was deposed by Parliament
for failing to do his duty in the matter. The strife was renewed at the
beginning of Lent next year. A pitched battle was arranged to be fought
between the contending parties in the open country. This was only
prevented by the active interference of the Duke of Gloucester. Some
turbulent Welshmen were expelled. But this banishment only gave rise to a
fresh outbreak. For as the Welshmen knelt down to kiss the gates of the
town, they were subjected to gross indignities by their exultant adversaries.
And a party of Northerners, headed by a chaplain named Speeke, paraded
the streets in military array, threatening to kill anyone who looked out of the
window, and shouting, “War, war. Slay the Welsh dogs and their whelps.”
Halls were broken open, and the goods of Welsh scholars who lodged there
were plundered. The Welshmen retaliated, and the University only obtained
peace, when, on the outbreak of Owen Glendower’s rebellion, the Welsh
scholars returned to Wales.
The effect of the lawlessness of these mediæval students upon the
history of the University was considerable. It is reflected in the statute
book. It came to be recognised that their riotous behaviour was not only
scandalous but also a veritable danger, which threatened the very existence
of Oxford as a seat of learning. Politically, too, their behaviour was
intolerable. Each outbreak, therefore, and each revelation of the licence of
unattached students, who were credited with the chief share in these brawls,
were arguments in favour of the college system inaugurated by the founder
of Merton College.
As early as 1250 it had been found necessary to provide that every
scholar should have his own master, on whose roll his name should be
entered, and from whom he should hear at least one lecture daily. And in
1420 Henry V. issued some ordinances for academical reform, with the
object of tightening the bonds of discipline. They were reduced to a statute
of the University immediately. Fines were imposed for threats of personal
violence, carrying weapons, pushing with the shoulder or striking with the
fist, striking with a stone or club, striking with a knife, dagger, sword-axe or
other warlike weapon, carrying bows and arrows, gathering armed men, and
resisting the execution of justice, especially by night.
All scholars and scholars’ servants, it was enacted, were, on first coming
to Oxford, to take the oath for keeping the peace, which had hitherto been
taken by graduates only; they were no longer to lodge in the houses of

laymen, but must place themselves under the government of some discreet
principal, approved by the Chancellor and regents. Chamberdekens were to
lodge at a hall where some common table was kept. Thus the “unattached
student,” who has been recently revived, was legislated out of existence.
It is not, then, surprising to find that, whilst the thirteenth century saw
the beginning of the college system, the fourteenth was the era which saw
its great development. Already, sixteen years after the foundation of Oriel, a
North Country priest, Robert Eglesfield, chaplain of Queen Philippa, had
anticipated in conception the achievement of William of Wykeham by
proposing to establish a college which should be a Merton on a larger scale.
But the ideas of the founder of Queen’s were greater than his resources. In
the hope of assistance, therefore, and not in vain, he commended his
foundation to the Queen and all future Queens-consort of England. He
himself devoted his closing years and all his fortune to the infant society,
for whose guidance he drew up statutes of an original character. His aim
seems to have been to endow a number of students of Theology or Canon
Law; to provide for the elementary education of many poor boys, and for
the distribution of alms to the poor of the city. The ecclesiastical character
of the college was marked by the endowment of several chaplains, and by
precise directions for the celebration of masses, at which the “poor boys”
were to assist as choristers, besides being trained in Grammar and
afterwards in Logic or Philosophy. The bent of Eglesfield’s mind is further
indicated by the symbolism which pervades his ordinances. The
fellowships, which were tenable for life and intended to be well endowed,
were practically restricted to natives of the North Country. And as there had
been twelve apostles, so it was ordained that there should be twelve fellows,
who should sit in hall on one side of the High Table, with the provost in
their centre, even as Christ and His apostles, according to tradition, sat at
the Last Supper. And, as a symbol of the Saviour’s blood, they were
required to wear mantles of crimson cloth. The “poor boys,” who were to sit
at a side-table clad in a distinctive dress, from which they derived their
name of tabarders, and who were to be “opposed” or examined by one of
the fellows at the beginning of every meal, symbolised the Seventy
Disciples.
Some traces of the symbolism which pleased the founder still survive at
Queen’s. The students are still summoned to hall, as the founder directs, by
the blasts of a trumpet; still on Christmas Day the college celebrates the

“Boar’s Head” dinner (see p. 23); still on 1st January the bursar presents to
each guest at the Gaudy a needle and thread (aiguille et fil = Eglesfield),
saying, “Take this and be thrifty.” And the magnificent wassail cup given to
the college by the founder is still in use. But of the original buildings
scarcely anything remains. The old entrance in Queen’s Lane has been
supplanted by the front quadrangle opening on the High (1710-1730), in
which Hawksmoor, Wren’s pupil, achieved a fine example of the Italian
style. Wren himself designed the chapel. The magnificent library in the
back quadrangle (late seventeenth century) is housed in a room, which, with
its rich plaster ceiling and carving by Grinling Gibbons, is a remarkable
specimen of the ornate classical style.
Eglesfield had attempted a task beyond his means. Forty years later
William of Wykeham adopted his ideas, developed them and carried them
out. It is the scale on which he founded S. Mary College, or New College,
as it has been called for five hundred years to distinguish it from Oriel, the
other S. Mary College, and the completeness of its arrangements that mark
an era in the history of college foundations. Son of a carpenter at Wickham,
William had picked up the rudiments of education at a grammar school and
in a notary’s office. Presently he entered the King’s service. He was
promoted to be Supervisor of the Works at Windsor; and made the most of
his opportunity. Hoc fecit Wykeham were the words he inscribed, according
to the legend, on the walls of the castle at Windsor; and it is equally true
that he made it and that it made him, for so, to stop the mouths of his
calumniators, he chose to translate the phrase. The King marked the
admirable man of affairs; and rewarded him, according to custom, with
innumerable benefices. Wykeham became the greatest pluralist of his age.
He grew in favour at court, until soon “everything was done by him and
nothing was done without him.” He was “so wise of building castles,” as
Wycliffe sarcastically hinted, that he was appointed Bishop of Winchester
and Chancellor of England. Yet in the midst of the cares of these offices he
found time (1370) to set about establishing his college. His great genius as
an architect, and his astonishing powers of administration under two kings,
point him out as one of the greatest Englishmen of the Middle Ages. He has
left his mark on his country, not only in such architectural achievements as
Windsor and Queenborough Castles, the reconstruction of the nave of
Winchester Cathedral (where is his altar tomb) or the

The Bell Tower & Cloisters New College.

original plan of his Collegiate Buildings, but also as the founder of the
public school system and the new type of college.
It was as a lawyer-ecclesiastic that he had succeeded. But it was against
the administration of ecclesiastical statesmen that the discontent of the time
was being directed by the Wycliffites and John of Gaunt. Himself a staunch
supporter of the old régime in Church and State, Wykeham set himself to
remedy its defects and to provide for its maintenance as well as for his own
soul’s health after death.
Oxford had reached the height of its prosperity in the fourteenth century.
Then the Black Death, the decadence of the Friars, the French Wars, the
withdrawal of foreign students and the severance of the ties between
English and foreign Universities, commenced a decay which was

accelerated by the decline of the ecclesiastical monopoly of learning, by the
Wycliffite movement and, later, by the Wars of the Roses.
Wykeham marked some of these causes and their effect. He believed in
himself, and therefore in the Canon Law and lawyer-ecclesiastics; he noted
the falling off in the number of the students, and therefore of the clergy,
caused by the Black Death; he knew the poverty of those who wished to
study, and the weak points in the system of elementary education. He
wished to encourage a secular clergy who should fight the Wycliffites and
reform the Church. Therefore he determined to found a system by which
they might be trained, and by which the road to success might be opened to
the humblest youths—a system which should pay him in return the duty of
perpetual prayers for his soul.[29]
As early as 1370, then, he began to buy land about the north-eastern
corner of the city wall; and ten years later, having obtained licence from
Richard II., he enclosed a filthy lane that ran alongside the north wall and
began to build a home for the warden, seventy scholars, ten stipendiary
priests or chaplains, three stipendiary clerks and sixteen chorister boys of
whom his college was to be composed. Eglesfield had proposed to establish
seventy-two young scholars on his foundation. Wykeham borrowed and
improved upon the idea. He provided a separate college for them at
Winchester, and in so doing he took a step which has proved to be of quite
incalculable consequence in the history of the moral and intellectual
development of this country. For he founded the first English public school.
From the scholars of Winchester, when they had reached at least the age
of fifteen years, and from them only the seventy scholars of “S. Marie
College” were to be chosen by examination. A preference was given to the
founder’s kin and the natives of certain dioceses. These young scholars, if
they were not disqualified by an income of over five marks or by bodily
deformity, entered at once upon the course in Arts, and, after two years of
probation and if approved by examination, might be admitted true and
perpetual fellows. Small wonder if golden scholars became sometimes
silver bachelors and leaden masters!
A fellow’s allowance was a shilling a week for commons and an annual
“livery.” But it was provided that each young scholar should study for his
first three years under the supervision of one of the fellows, who was to
receive for each pupil five shillings. This was a new step in the

development of the college system. Though designed merely to supplement
the lectures of the regents in the schools, the new provision of tutors was
destined to supplant them. Another step of far-reaching consequence taken
by Wykeham was the acquisition of benefices in the country, college livings
to which a fellow could retire when he had resided long enough or failed to
obtain other preferment.
The government of the college was not entrusted to the young fellows,
but to the warden, sub-warden, five deans, three bursars and a few senior
fellows. But even the youngest of the fellows was entitled to vote on the
election of a warden.
The warden of this new foundation was to be a
person of no small importance. Wykeham
intended him to live in a separate house, with a
separate establishment and an income (£40) far
more splendid than the pittance assigned to the
Master of Balliol or even the Warden of Merton.
The buildings of Merton had been kept separate;
only by degrees, and as if by accident, had they
assumed the familiar and charming form of a
quadrangle. The genius of Wykeham adopted and
adapted the fortuitous plan of Merton. At New
College we have for the first time a group of
collegiate buildings, tower-gateway (the tower
assuredly of one “wise of building castles!”) In New College
chapel, hall, library, treasury, warden’s lodgings,
chambers, cloister-cemetery, kitchen and
domestics offices, designed and comprised in one self-sufficing quadrangle
(1380-1400). Just as the statutes of New College are the rule of Merton
enormously elaborated, so the plan of the buildings is that of Merton
modified and systematised. The type of New College served as a model for
all subsequent foundations. The most noticeable features in this
arrangement are that the hall and chapel are under one roof, and that the
chapel consists of a choir, suitable to the needs of a small congregation, and
of a nave of two bays, stopping short at the transepts, and forming an ante-
chapel which might serve both as a vestibule and as a room for lectures and
disputations. The chapel, which contains much very beautiful glass and the
lovely if inappropriate window-pictures of Sir Joshua Reynolds, must have

been in Wykeham’s day, when it was adorned with a magnificent reredos
and “works of many colours,” a thing of even greater beauty than it now is.
The chapels of Magdalen, All Souls’ and Wadham were directly imitated
from it. But, with the hall, it suffered much at the hands of Wyatt and Sir
Gilbert Scott. The latter was also responsible for the atrocious New
Buildings. The proportions of the front quadrangle were spoilt by the
addition of a third story and the insertion of square windows in the
seventeenth century.
The importance of the chapel architecturally, dominating the quadrangle
as it does and absorbing the admiration of the visitor or the dweller in those
courts, is indicative of the ecclesiastical aspect of the new foundation,
which the great opponent of Wycliffe intended to revivify the Church by
training secular priests of ability. This ecclesiastical aspect is still more
prominent in the case of All Souls’, which, like Magdalen, may fitly be
described as a daughter of New College, so much do they both owe, as
regards their rule and their architectural design, to the great foundation of
Wykeham. The deterioration and ignorance of the parochial clergy were
amongst the most serious symptoms of the decadence of the fifteenth
century. Himself a Wykehamist and a successful ecclesiastical lawyer, the
great Archbishop Chichele therefore followed Wykeham’s example and
founded a college which might help to educate and to increase the secular
clergy. Out of the revenues of the suppressed alien priories he endowed a
society consisting of a warden and forty fellows, of doctors and masters
who were to study Philosophy, Theology and Law. His college was not,
therefore, and happily is not (though now it takes its full share of
educational work), a mere body of teachers, but of graduate students. The
prominence given to the study of Law and Divinity resulted in a close
connection with the public services which has always been maintained. But
“All Souls’” was a chantry as well as a college. As head of the English
Church and a responsible administrator of the Crown, Chichele had devoted
all his powers to the prosecution of that war with France, for which
Shakespeare, following Hall, has represented him as being responsible. The
college is said to have been the Archbishop’s expiation for the blood so
shed. Whatever his motive, his object is stated clearly enough. It was to
found a
“College of poor and indigent clerks bounden with all devotion to pray for the Souls of the
glorious memory of Henry V., lately King of England and France, the Duke of Clarence and the other

lords and lieges of the realm of England, whom the havoc of that warfare between the two realms
hath drenched with the bowl of bitter death, and also for the souls of all the faithful departed.”

Chichele had already undertaken the foundation of S. Bernard’s College.
He now (September 1437) purchased Bedford Hall, or Charleton’s Inn, at
the corner of Cat Street,[30] directly opposite the eastern end of S. Mary’s
Church. On this site, in the following February, was laid the foundation
stone of the college afterwards incorporated under the title of “The Warden
and All Soulen College,” or “The Warden and College of All Faithful Souls
deceased at Oxford.” As Adam de Brome had persuaded Edward II. to be
the foster-founder of Oriel, so Chichele asked Henry VI. to be the nominal
founder of his college. The royal patronage proved advantageous in neither
case.
The front quadrangle of All Souls’ remains very much as the founder left
it; the hall and the noble Codrington Library in the Italian style, the cloister
of the great quadrangle and the odd twin towers belong to the first half of
the eighteenth century. The latter are curious specimens of that mixture of
the Gothic and Renaissance styles (Nicholas Hawksmoor), of which the
best that can be said is that “the architect has blundered into a picturesque
scenery not devoid of grandeur” (Walpole).
The political and social troubles of the fifteenth century brought about a
period of darkness and stagnation in the University. The spirit of
independence and reform had been crushed by the ecclesiastics. Oxford had
learnt her lesson. She took little part in politics, but played the time-server,
and was always loyal—to one party or the other. She neglected her duties;
she neither taught nor thought, but devoted all her energies and resources to
adorning herself with beautiful colleges and buildings. And for us the result
of this meretricious policy is the possession of those glorious buildings
which mark the interval between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. For
the University now built herself schools that were worthy of her dower of
knowledge.
There was a vacant spot at the end of Schools Street belonging to Balliol
College, lying between the town wall on the north and Exeter College on
the west. On this site it was determined to erect a School of Divinity (1424).
Donations flowed in from the bishops and monasteries.
But in spite of all economy funds ran short. The building had to be
discontinued for a while (1444). The gift of 500 marks from the executors

of Cardinal Beaufort, a former Chancellor, enabled the graduates to proceed
with their work. They made strenuous efforts to raise money. They put a tax
on all non-resident masters and bachelors; they offered “graces” for sale;
they applied to the Pope and bishops for saleable indulgences. In return for
a contribution of one hundred pounds from the old religious orders, they
agreed to modify the ancient statutes concerning the admission of monks to
academical degrees. Some of these methods of raising the necessary monies
are doubtless open to criticism, but we cannot cavil when we look upon the
noble building which the graduates were thus enabled to raise. The Divinity
School, to which, Casaubon declared, nothing in Europe was comparable,
was, with its “vaulting of peculiar skill,” used, though not completed, in
1466.
It remained to construct an upper story where the books belonging to the
University might be kept and used. For generous gifts of books (1439-1446)
by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, uncle of Henry VI., had greatly
increased the University Library. The fashion of large and gorgeous
libraries was borrowed by the English from the French princes. The duke
had taken his opportunity during his campaigns in France. He seized the
valuable collection of books at the Louvre, and many of them had now
found their way to Oxford. They were stored at first in the Cobham Library,
but more room was needed. Accordingly, in 1444, the University addressed
a letter to the duke in which they informed him of their intention to erect a
new building suitable to contain his magnificent gift, and on a site far
removed from the hum of men. Of this building, with that gratitude which is
in part at least a lively sense of favours to come, they asked permission of
the very learned and accomplished duke to inscribe his name as founder.
The Duke Humphrey Library forms now the central portion of the great
Reading Room of the Bodleian Library. It still answers, by virtue of its
position and the arrangement of its cubicles, to the description and intention
of the promotors—to build a room where scholars might study far removed
a strepitu sæculari, from the noise of the world.
The three wheat-sheaves of the Kempe shield, repeated again and again
on the elaborate groined roof of the Divinity School, commemorate the
bounty of Thomas Kempe, Bishop of London, who (1478) promised to give
1000 marks for the completion of the school and the library. A grateful
University rewarded him with anniversary services; his name is still
mentioned in the “bidding prayer” on solemn occasions. Nor was Duke

Humphrey forgotten. His name still heads the list of benefactors recited
from time to time in S. Mary’s. Religious services were instituted also for
his benefit. He was more in need of them, perhaps, than the bishop. For the
“Good Duke Humphrey” was good only so far as his love of learning and
his generosity to scholars may entitle him to be considered so. The patron of
Lydgate and Occleve, and the donor of hundreds of rare and polite books to
the University was as unscrupulous in his political intrigues as immoral in
his private life. But in his case the good he did lived after him.
The “Good Duke” was a reader as well as a collector. It was not merely
the outsides of books or the title-pages which attracted him.
“His courage never doth appal
To study in books of antiquity.”

So wrote Lydgate, who knew. Even when he presented his books to the
University, he took care to reserve the right of borrowing them, for were
they not, according to the inscription which he was wont to insert lovingly
in them, all his worldly wealth (mon bien mondain)? It is perhaps not
surprising to find from the list of books which he gave to the University,
that the duke’s taste in literature was for the Classics, for the works of Ovid,
Cato, Aulus Gellius and Quintilian, for the speeches of Cicero, the plays of
Terence and Seneca, the works of Aristotle and Plato, the histories of
Suetonius and Josephus, of Beda and Eusebius, Higden and Vincent of
Beauvais. A fancy for medical treatises and a pretty taste in Italian literature
are betrayed by the titles of other books, for the duke gave seven volumes
of Boccaccio, five of Petrarch and two of Dante to the University.
Duke Humphrey promised to give the whole of his collection to the
University, together with a hundred pounds to go towards the

Kemp Hall

building of the library. But he died suddenly, and the University never, as it
appears, received full advantage of his generosity. It was not till 1488 that
the books were removed from S. Mary’s. For the completion of the library
was delayed by an order from Edward IV. The workmen employed upon the
building were summoned by him to Windsor, where he had need of them, to
work at S. George’s Chapel. Those who were not employed on the chapel
were handed over to William of Waynflete, who restored them to the
University along with some scaffolding which had been used in the building
of Magdalen. William Patten or Barbour of Waynflete, an Oxford man, who
had been master of the school at Winchester, had been appointed first
master and then Provost of Eton by the founder, Henry VI., and was
rewarded for his success there by the Bishopric of Winchester. In 1448 he
had founded a hall for the study of Theology and Philosophy, situated
between the present schools and Logic Lane, and called it, probably after
the almshouse at Winchester, of which he had been master, the Hall of S.

Mary Magdalen. When he became Lord Chancellor he immediately took
steps to enlarge this foundation, transferred it to the site of the Hospital of
S. John, and styled it the College of S. Mary Magdalen (September 1457).
Waynflete resigned the Chancellorship just before the battle of
Northampton. After some years, during which he was “in great dedignation
with Edward IV.,” he received full pardon from his late master’s conqueror.
The Yorkist monarch (whose fine statue is over the west doorway of the
chapel) also confirmed the grants made to Waynflete’s College in the last
reign. After an interval, then, the foundation stone of the most beautiful
college in the world, “the most absolute building in Oxford,” as James I.
called it when his son matriculated there, was laid “in the midst of the High
Altar” (5th May 1474).
Already enclosing walls had been built about the property, which was
bounded on the east by the Cherwell, on the south by the High Street, on the
west by what is now Long Wall Street, and on the north by the lands of
Holywell. The “Long Wall” bounded the “Grove,” famous, since the
beginning of the eighteenth century, for its noble timber and herd of deer.
Most of the trees in the present grove are elms planted in the seventeenth
century, but there are two enormous wych elms, measured by Oliver
Wendell Holmes in 1886, which would have dwarfed that venerable oak
which stood near the entrance into the water-walk, and was blown down
“into the meadow” in 1789. It was over seven hundred years old (girth 21
ft. 9 in., height 71 ft. 8 in.), and thought to be the same as that named by the
founder for a northern boundary.
In the arrangement of his buildings Waynflete followed Wykeham.
Chapel, hall and library were designed on the same plan. But the beautiful
“Founder’s Tower,” rendered now still more lovely by the drapery of
creepers which hangs about it, formed the principal entrance into cloisters,
which were part of the buildings of the main quadrangle, carried an upper
story of chambers, and were adorned with grotesques symbolical of the
Vices and Virtues. The entrance now used was originally meant to serve
only as the entrance from the cloister to the chapel. It was adorned (circa
1630) with a gateway similar to that designed by Inigo Jones for the main
entrance to the college.
The statutes were based on those of New College, but, in addition to
those of which we have already had occasion to speak, there were certain

notable improvements. The society was to consist of a President and
seventy scholars besides four chaplains, eight clerks and sixteen choristers.
Forty of these scholars were fellows forming one class, and thirty were
demies, forming another, whose tenure was limited and who were given
half the allowance of the fellows. They had no special claim to promotion to
fellowships. For their instruction a Grammar Master and an usher were
provided; when they were well skilled in Grammar, they were to

The Founder’s Tower Magdalen College

be taught Logic and Sophistry by the college lecturers, whilst three
“Readers,” in Natural and Moral Philosophy and Theology, chosen out of
the University, were to provide the higher teaching in Arts and Theology.

And all this teaching, in Theology and Philosophy and also in Grammar,
was to be given free to all comers at the expense of the college.
In 1481 Waynflete, full of pride in his new foundation, “the most noble
and rich structure in the learned world,” persuaded Edward IV. to come over
from Woodstock and see it. The King came at a few hours’ notice. But as
the royal cavalcade drew near the North Gate of the town, a little after
sunset, it was met by the Chancellor and the masters of the University and a
great number of persons carrying lighted torches. The King and his
courtiers were hospitably received at Magdalen. On the morrow the
President delivered a congratulatory address, and the King made a gracious
reply; then he and his followers joined in a solemn procession round the
precincts and the cloisters of the college.
Two years later Richard III. was very similarly welcomed by the
University and entertained at Magdalen. On this occasion the King was
regaled with two disputations in the hall. Richard declared himself very
well pleased; and it is just possible that he was. For one of the disputants
was William Grocyn, who was rewarded with a buck and three marks for
his pains.
The University continued its policy of political time-serving, and, after
the battle of Bosworth Field, congratulated Henry VII. as fulsomely as it
had congratulated Richard III. a few months before. Henry retorted by
demanding the surrender of Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells,
who was staying within the limits of the University. This prelate was
accused of “damnable conjuracies and conspiracies,” which may have
included complicity in the rebellion of Lambert Simnel. For the future
scullion was a native of Oxford. The University prevaricated for a while;
and at last, when hard pressed, they explained that they would incur the
sentence of excommunication if they used force against a prelate of the
Catholic Church. The King then took the matter into his own hands, and
committed the offender to prison at Windsor for the remainder of his life.
He soon afterwards visited Oxford, offered a noble in the chapel of
Magdalen College, and, by way of marking his approval of the University,
undertook the maintenance of two students at Oxford. In 1493 he
established at University College an obit for the widow of Warwick the
king-maker.

Some years later, in 1504, he endowed the University with ten pounds a
year in perpetuity for a religious service to be held in memory of him and
his wife and of his parents. On the anniversary of his burial a hearse,
covered with rich stuff, was to be set up in the middle of S. Mary’s Church
before the great crucifix, and there the Chancellor, the masters and the
scholars were to recite certain specified prayers. Among the articles in the
custody of the verger of the University is a very fine ancient pall of rich
cloth of gold, embroidered with the arms and badges of Henry VII., the
Tudor rose and the portcullis, that typify the union of the houses of York
and Lancaster. Penurious in most matters, Henry VII. showed magnificence
in building and in works of piety. In Westminster Abbey he erected one of
the grandest chantries in Christendom; and it was for the exclusive benefit
of the monks of Westminster that he established at Oxford three
scholarships in Divinity, called after his name, and each endowed with a
yearly income of ten pounds (Maxwell Lyte).
Of Henry’s parents, his mother, the Lady Margaret, Countess of
Richmond,[31] took a warm interest in Oxford as in Cambridge, where she
founded two colleges. It was she who founded the

Magdalen Bridge & Tower

two Readerships in Divinity at Oxford (1497) and Cambridge, the oldest
professorial chairs that exist in either University.
His characteristically frugal offering was not the only sign of his favour
which Henry vouchsafed to Magdalen. He sent his eldest son, Prince
Arthur, frequently to Oxford. When there the boy stayed in the President’s
lodgings and the purchase of two marmosets for his amusement is recorded
in the college accounts. One of the old pieces of tapestry preserved in the
President’s lodgings represents the marriage of the prince with Catherine of
Aragon. It was probably presented to the President (Mayhew) by him.
It is possible that Henry VII. also contributed to the cost of building that
bell tower, which is the pride of Magdalen and the chief ornament of
Oxford.
The tower was built between the years 1492 and 1505. Wolsey was a
junior fellow when the tower was begun, and though popular tradition
ascribes to him the credit of the idea and even the design of that exquisite
campanile, the fact that not he, but another senior fellow (Gosmore by
name) was appointed to superintend the work, is evidence, so far as there is
any evidence, that Wolsey had no particular share in the design. He was,
however, senior bursar in 1499. But the story that he left the college
because he had wrongly applied some of its funds to the building of the
tower, is not borne out by any evidence in the college records. He ceased to
be a fellow of Magdalen about 1501, having been instituted to the Rectory
of Lymington. But he had filled the office of Dean of Divinity after his term
as senior bursar was over.
We have referred to the close connection of the house of Lancaster with
Waynflete’s foundation. By a curious freak of popular imagination the name
of Henry VII. as well as that of the future cardinal has been intimately
connected with this tower. Besides other benefactions, he granted a licence
for the conveyance to the college of the advowsons of Slymbridge and of
Findon.
In return the college undertook to keep an obit for him every year. This
celebration was originally fixed on the 2nd or 3rd of October, but it has
been held on the 1st of May since the sixteenth century. The coincidence of
this ceremony with the most interesting and picturesque custom of singing
on Magdalen Tower has given rise to the fable that a payment made to the
college by the Rectory of Slymbridge was intended to maintain the

celebration of a requiem mass for the soul of Henry VII. And the hymn that
is now sung is the survival, says the popular myth, of that requiem.
For in the early morning of May Day all the members of Waynflete’s
foundation, the President and fellows and demies with the organist and
choir, clad in white surplices ascend the tall tower that stands sombre, grey
and silent in the half-light of the coming day. There are a few moments of
quiet watching, and the eye gazes at the distant hills, as the white mists far
below are rolled away by the rising sun. The clock strikes five, and as the
sound of the strokes floats about the tower, suddenly from the throats of the
well-trained choir on the morning air rises the May Day hymn.
The hymn is finished, and a merry peal of bells rings out. The tower
rocks and seems to swing to the sound of the bells as a well made bell tower
should. And the members of the college having thus commemorated the
completion of their campanile, descend once more to earth, to bathe in the
Cherwell, or to return to bed.
For a repetition of an inaugural ceremony is what this function probably
is, and it has nothing to do, so much can almost certainly be said, with any
requiem mass. The hymn itself is no part of any use. It was written by a
fellow of the college, Thomas Smith, and set to music as part of the college
“grace” by Benjamin Rogers, the college organist, towards the end of the
seventeenth century.
Whether or no the origin and meaning of the singing was to
commemorate the completion of the tower, the singing itself would appear
to have borne originally a secular character.
“The choral ministers of this house,” says Wood, “do, according to an ancient custom, salute
Flora every year on the First of May, at four in the morning, with vocal music of several parts. Which
having been sometimes well performed, hath given great content to the neighbourhood, and auditors
underneath.”

The substitution of a hymn from the college grace for the “merry concert
of both vocal and instrumental music, consisting of several merry ketches,
and lasting almost two hours,” which was the form the performance took in
the middle of the eighteenth century, was made on one occasion when the
weather was very inclement. Once made it was found easier and more
suitable to continue it, and the observance came to be religious.[32]
Magdalen Tower is one of those rarely beautiful buildings, which strike
you with a silent awe of admiration when first you behold them, and ever

afterwards reveal to your admiring gaze new aspects and unsuspected
charms. It is changeable as a woman, but its changes are all good and there
is nothing else about it that is feminine. It conveys the impression that it is
at once massive and slender, and its very slenderness is male.
The chaste simplicity of the lower stories carries the eye up unchecked
to the ornamented belfry windows, the parapet and surmounting pinnacles,
and thus enhances the impression of perfect and reposeful proportion.
The growth of the colleges had influenced the halls. Statutes imposed by
the authority of the University, began to take the place of the private rule of
custom and tradition approved and enforced by the authority of the self-
governing scholars. The students quickly ceased to be autonomous scholars
and became disciplined schoolboys. The division between don and
undergraduate began to be formed and was rapidly accentuated. Thus, at the
close of the mediæval period, a change had been wrought in the character of
the University, which rendered it an institution very different from that
which it had been in the beginning. The growth of Nationalism, the
separation of languages and the establishment of the collegiate system—
these and similar causes tended to give the Universities a local and
aristocratic character. The order introduced by the colleges was
accompanied by the introduction of rank, and of academical power and
influence stored in the older, permanent members of the University.
Learning, too, had ceased to be thought unworthy of a gentleman; it became
a matter of custom for young men of rank to have a University education.
Thus, in the charter of Edward III., we even read that “to the University a
multitude of nobles, gentry, strangers and others continually flock”; and
towards the end of the century we find Henry of Monmouth, afterwards
Henry V., as a young man, a sojourner at Queen’s College. But it was in the
next century that colleges were provided, not for the poor, but for the noble.
Many colleges, too, which had been originally intended for the poor,
opened their gates to the rich, not as fellows or foundation students, but as
simple lodgers, such as monasteries might have received in a former age.
This change has continued to be remarkably impressed upon Oxford and
Cambridge even down to this day.
The influence of other political classes was now also introduced. Never,
as Newman said, has a learned institution been more directly political and
national than the University of Oxford. Some of its colleges came to
represent the talent of the nation, others its rank and fashion, others its

wealth; others have been the organs of the Government of the day; while
others, and the majority, represented one or other division, chiefly local, of
opinion in the country. The local limitation of the members of many
colleges, the West Country character of Exeter, the North Country character
of Queen’s or University, the South Country character of New College, the
Welsh character of Jesus College, for instance, tended to accentuate this
peculiarity. The whole nation was thus brought into the University by
means of the colleges, which fortunately were sufficiently numerous, and
no one of them overwhelmingly important. A vigour and a stability were
thus imparted to the University such as the abundant influx of foreigners
had not been able to secure. As in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
French, German and Italian students had flocked to Oxford, and made its
name famous in distant lands; so in the fifteenth all ranks and classes of the
land furnished it with pupils, and what was wanting in their number or
variety, compared with the former era, was made up by their splendour or
political importance. The sons of the nobles came up to the University, each
accompanied by an ample retinue; the towns were kept in touch with the
University by means of the numerous members of it who belonged to the
clerical order. Town and country, high and low, north and south, had a
common stake in the academical institutions, and took a personal interest in
the academical proceedings. The degree possessed a sort of indelible
character which all classes understood; and the people at large were more or
less partakers of a cultivation which the aristocracy were beginning to
appreciate. Oxford, in fact, became the centre of national and political
thought. Not only in vacations and term time was there a stated ebbing and
flowing of the academical youth, but messengers posted to and fro between
Oxford and all parts of the country in all seasons of the year. So intimate
was this connection, that Oxford became, as it were, the selected arena for
the conflicts of the various interests of the nation.

CHAPTER VI

OXFORD AND THE REFORMATION

I N 1453 Christendom was shocked by the news that the Turks had taken
Constantinople. The home of learning and the citadel of philosophy was
no more. The wisdom of Hellas, so it seemed to contemporary scholars
like Æneas Sylvius, was destined likewise to perish. In fact, it was but
beginning to be diffused. Scholars fled with what MSS. they could save to
the hospitable shores of Italy. And at the very time that these fugitives were
hastening across the Adriatic, it is probable that the sheets of the Mazarin
Bible were issuing from the press at Maintz. Thus whilst Italy was rescuing
from destruction the most valuable thought of the ancient world, Germany
was devising the means for its diffusion in lands of which Strabo never
heard, and to an extent of which the Sosii never dreamed. The Italians
acquired the Greek language with rapidity and ardour. The student flung
aside his scholastic culture; cast away the study of an Aristotle that had
been conformed to Christian Theology, and the Sentences in which that
theology was enshrined, and tried to identify himself in feeling with the
spirit of cultivated paganism. The cowl and the gown were discarded for the
tunic and the toga.
But the New Learning did not make its way at once to England. And
when at length the Englishmen who had travelled and studied in Italy
brought back with them something of the generous enthusiasm with which
they had been fired, their ideas were but coldly welcomed by the followers
of Thomas or the disciples of Duns. At Oxford the New Movement took but
a momentary hold of only a small part of the University, and then was
shaken off by the massive inertness of the intellectual stagnation
characteristic of the country. “They prefer their horses and their dogs to
poets,” wrote Poggio; “and like their horses and their dogs they shall perish
and be forgotten.”
The majority of Englishmen are always slow to accept new ideas. They
move ponderously and protestingly in the wake of the Continent. The New
Learning was as unwelcome at Oxford as if it had been a motor car. The
schoolmen were still busily chopping their logic, when the Medicis were

ransacking the world for a new play, when Poggio was writing his
“Facetiæ” or editing Tacitus, and Pope Nicholas was founding the Vatican
Library at Rome. And the Renaissance, when it did begin to work in
England, took the form of a religious reformation; the religious genius of
the nation led it to the worship, not of Beauty, but of Truth.
The English were equally late in adopting the new German art of
printing. When Caxton introduced it, it had almost reached its perfection
abroad. Block books—books printed wholly from carved blocks of wood—
had come in and gone out. Arising out of them, the idea of movable types
had long been invented and developed on the Continent.
The Bamberg and Mazarin Bibles, the first two books to be printed from
movable type, had been produced by Gutenberg, Fust and Schöffer as early
as 1453. But it was not till 1477 that Caxton set up his press at Westminster.
A year later the first book was issued from an Oxford press. This was the
famous small quarto of forty-two leaves, “Exposicio sancti Jeronimi in
simbolum apostolorum,” written by Tyrannius Rufinus of Aquileia. The
colophon of this book, however, distinctly states that it was printed in 1468:
“Impressa Oxonie et ibi finita anno domini M.CCCC.LXVIIJ, XVIJ die
decembris.” But there is every reason to suppose that an X has been omitted
from this date and that the true year was 1478. Such a misprint is not
uncommon. Exactly the same error occurs in books published at Venice, at
Barcelona and at Augsburg. The workmanship is very much the same as,
but slightly inferior to, that of the next two books which came from the
Oxford Press in 1479. And in the library of All Souls’ there is a copy of
each of these, which were originally bound up together. A break of eleven
years between the production of the first and subsequent books is both
inconceivable and inexplicable.
The press from which these books and twelve others were issued at
Oxford during the eight years, 1478-1486, was apparently set up by one
Theodore Rood of Cologne. The first three books, however, namely the
“Exposicio” mentioned, the “Ægidius de originali peccato,” and “Textus
Ethicorum Aristotelis per Leonardum Aretinum translatus,” bear no
printer’s name, but the type was either brought from Cologne or directly
copied from Cologne examples. It strongly resembles that used by Gerard
ten Raem de Berka or Guldenschaff. Still, it cannot be proved that Rood
printed these first three books, or that he ever used the type in which they
alone are printed. The colophon of the fourth book, a Latin commentary on

the “De Anima” of Aristotle by Alexander de Hales, a folio printed from
new type, gives the name of the printer, Theodore Rood, and bears the date
1481. A copy of it was bought in the year of publication for the library of
Magdalen, where it still remains. The price paid was thirty-three shillings
and fourpence. A very beautiful copy of the next book, “Commentary on the
Lamentation of Jeremiah,” by John Lattebury, 1482, is in the library of All
Souls’. Four leaves survive in the Bodleian and four in the Merton Library,
of the “Cicero pro Milone,” the first edition of a classic printed in England.
Two leaves of a Latin grammar are to be found in the British Museum.
Rood went into partnership with an Oxford stationer named Thomas
Hunt, and together they produced eight other books with a type more
English in character than the preceding ones. One of these books,
“Phalaris,” 1485 (Wadham and Corpus Libraries), has a curious colophon in
verse, which describes the printers and their ambition to surpass the
Venetians in their work. The partners ceased to produce books after 1486.
Rood probably returned to Cologne, and the German art found no
exponents in Oxford for the remainder of the century. Subsequently we find
Leicester advancing money to set up Joseph Barnes with a new press. Laud
and Fell were other great patrons of the University Press.
Meantime the return of the Pope to Rome had attracted many foreign
travellers and students to Italy, who could not fail to be impressed by the
new birth of art and intellectual life that was taking place in that country.
Among the pupils of Guarino of Verona at Ferrara the names of at least
five students from Oxford occur. Of these, Robert Fleming, a relative of the
founder of Lincoln College, was an author of some distinction, and he
compiled a Græco-Latin dictionary at a time when Greek was almost
unknown in England. He brought back from his travels in Italy many
precious books, which he gave to the library of Lincoln College. William
Grey, another of Guarino’s pupils, enriched the library of Balliol with many
fine manuscripts redolent of the New Learning. John Tiptoft, Earl of
Worcester, was another scholar who, before paying for his share in politics
with his head, presented to the University the valuable collection of
manuscripts, which he had made in the course of his travels.
William Selling, a member of the recent foundation of All Souls’, was
perhaps the earliest Englishman of influence to catch from Italy the
inspiration of the Greek muse. On his return from that country, he was

appointed to the conventual school at Canterbury. His knowledge of Greek,
and his enthusiasm for Greek literature, became the germ of the study in
England. Thomas Linacre was one of his pupils, who, after studying at
Oxford under Vitelli, journeyed to Italy with Selling. He was introduced to
Politian at Florence. Thence he proceeded to Rome, and there perhaps
formed his taste for the scientific writings of Aristotle and his devotion to
the study of medicine, which afterwards found expression in the foundation
of the College of Physicians and of the two lectureships at Merton, now
merged into the chair which bears his name. Linacre returned to Oxford and
lectured there awhile before being appointed Physician to Henry VIII. His
translation of five medical treatises of Galen was, Erasmus declared, more
valuable than the original Greek.
We have said that he studied under Vitelli. It was Cornelio Vitelli who,
some time before 1475, first “introduced polite literature to the schools of
Oxford,” by a lecture as prelector of New College, upon which the warden,
Thomas Chandler, complimented him in a set Latin speech. This was
probably that Cornelius who, in company with two other Italians, Cyprian
and Nicholas by name, dined with the President of Magdalen on Christmas
Day, 1488. And from the lips of this pioneer William Grocyn himself
learned Greek. Grocyn was a fellow of New College (1467-1481), but he
afterwards removed to Magdalen as Reader in Theology. He completed his
study of Greek and Latin by a sojourn of two years (1488) at Florence,
under Demetrius Chalcondylas and Politian. On his return to Oxford he
took rooms in Exeter College (1491), and gave a course of lectures on
Greek.
A few years later (1496-7) the first step in the revolution against the
system under which the study of the Bible had been ousted by the study of
the Sentences was taken. A course of lectures by John Colet on the Epistles
of S. Paul was the first overt act in a movement towards practical Christian
reform.
It was from Grocyn and Linacre that Thomas More and Erasmus learnt
Greek. For Gibbon’s epigram that Erasmus learned Greek at Oxford and
taught it at Cambridge is true, if we qualify it by the reminder that he knew
a little before he came to England and learned more in the years which
intervened between the time when, much to the chagrin of Colet, he left
Oxford and went to Cambridge as an instructor in that language.

Erasmus had taught at Paris. He went to Oxford (1498) to learn and to
observe. His return home from London had been delayed unexpectedly. He
determined to use the opportunity of paying a visit to Oxford. The
reputation of the learned men there attracted him more than the company of
“the gold-chained courtiers” of the capital. He was received as an inmate of
S. Mary’s College, which had been built as a house for students of his own
Augustinian order (1435). This house, when it was dissolved (1541), was
converted into a hall for students, and then into a charitable institution
(Bridewell). The site, on the east side of New Inn Hall Street, is occupied
by a house and garden, now called Frewen Hall, which was chosen in 1859
as the residence of the Prince of Wales during his studies at Oxford. The
west gateway, a few remains of groining and the wall facing the street north
of the gate are practically all that remains of the building as Erasmus saw it,
unless we reckon the roof of the chapel of B.N.C., which is said to have
been taken from the chapel of S. Mary’s College. Erasmus had nothing to
complain of in his welcome to Oxford. He found the prior of his college,
Richard Charnock, an intelligent companion and useful friend. Colet,
having heard from Charnock of his arrival, addressed to him a letter of
welcome, which in the midst of its formal civility has a characteristic touch
of Puritan sincerity. To this Erasmus replied in his own rhetorical fashion
with a letter of elaborate compliment.
His wit, his learning and the charm of his brilliant conversation soon
won him friends. Delightful himself, he found everybody delightful. The
English girls were divinely pretty, and he admired their custom of kissing
visitors. Erasmus made a fair show in the hunting-field, and was charmed
with everything, even with our English climate.
“The air,” he wrote from Oxford, “is soft and delicious. The men are sensible and intelligent.
Many of them are even learned, and not superficially either. They know their classics and so
accurately that I seem to have lost little in not going to Italy. When Colet speaks I might be listening
to Plato. Linacre is as deep and acute a thinker as I have ever met. Grocyn is a mine of knowledge,
and Nature never formed a sweeter and happier disposition than that of Thomas More. The number of
young men who are studying ancient literature here is astonishing.”

In one of his letters he gives a very lively picture of a gathering of witty
divines at the house of his “sweet and amiable friend” Colet, when the latter
“spoke with a sacred fury” and Erasmus himself, finding the conversation
growing too serious for a social gathering, entertained the company with a
happily invented tale.

At Oxford, then, the great centre of theological study, he was learning
something of the methods of the theologians. They were not strange to him,
for he knew Paris. But the Oxford school was in his mind when he poured
forth his shafts of ridicule upon scholastic divines in his brilliant satire,
“The Praise of Folly.” Yet it was at Oxford that Colet had taught him to
detest the authority of Thomas Aquinas, and to apply to the study of the
New Testament the knowledge and methods indicated by the study of Greek
literature. His “Moria” and his “Novum Instrumentum,” therefore, the
books which prepared the way for the Reformation, were his protest, and
the protest of the Christian laity along with him, against the authority of the
clergy and against the popular theology which was based on the errors of
the Vulgate. Erasmus laid the egg and Luther hatched it—a very different
bird, as the former declared. The fact was that throughout Europe the
growing intelligence of the educated class was slowly but surely developing
in antagonism, not merely to specific doctrines, but to the whole spirit of
mediæval theology.
The Old Learning was threatened with destruction. It rose in arms
against Greek and heresy. Bishops fulminated. The clergy cried Antichrist,
and clamoured for sword and faggot. The Universities forbade the sale of
Erasmus’s writings, and, seeing what came of the study of Greek, declared
that they would have no more of it. Oxford divided itself into two bodies,
who called themselves Greeks and Trojans, the Trojans enormously
preponderating. The “Greeks,” the adherents of the New Learning, were
assailed with every kind of ridicule. They were openly derided in the streets
and abused from the pulpit. In after years Tyndale, who had been a student
at Magdalen Hall, could recall how
“The old barking curs, Duns’ disciples and like draff called Scotists, the children of darkness,
raged in every pulpit against Greek, Latin and Hebrew, and what sorrow the schoolmasters that
taught the true Latin tongue had with them, some beating the pulpit with their fists for madness, and
roaring out with open and foaming mouth, that if there were but one Terence or Vergil in the world,
and that same in their sleeve, and a fire before them, they would burn them therin, though it should
cost them their lives.”

News of what was going on reached the court at Abingdon. At the King’s
command, More wrote to the governing body of the University to rebuke
the intemperance of the Trojan clique. But the Heads of Houses were
sleeping over a volcano, and More’s letter could not rouse them from their

slumber. For the present the result was that the little band of pioneers in the
New Learning one by one departed out of their coasts.
“The Cardinal of York,” More writes, “will not permit these studies to be
meddled with.” Wolsey, of course, as well as the King, More and
Archbishop Warham, the Chancellor, was on the side of the New Learning.
He defrayed the expenses of many lectures, for which the University
repeatedly thanked him. He engaged a famous Spanish scholar, Juan Luis
Vives, to occupy his new Chair of Rhetoric; and he sent a rising English
scholar, Thomas Lupset, from Paris to lecture on the Classics at Oxford.
Vives was the first Professor of Humanity (or Latin) at Corpus Christi,
the first of the Renaissance colleges. His special function it was to banish
all “barbarism” from the “bee-hive,” as the founder fondly called his
college, by lecturing daily on the Classics. Tradition says that the professor
was welcomed to his new home by a swarm of bees, which, to signify the
incomparable sweetness of his eloquence, settled under the leads of his
chambers.
The founder of C.C.C., Richard Foxe, Bishop of
Winchester, was a prelate, statesman, architect, soldier,
herald and diplomatist, who, in the very encyclopædic
nature of his talents, was a typical product of the
Renaissance. He had been Bishop of Exeter, of Bath and
Wells and of Durham before he was translated to
Winchester; he had been Keeper of the Privy Seal and
Secretary of State, and had played an important part in the
history of his country; he had been Chancellor of
Cambridge and Master of Pembroke College there; but it
was chiefly upon Oxford that he lavished the wealth he
had acquired.
Niche & Sundial, Having bought some land between Merton and S.
Corpus Christi Frideswide’s, he proposed at first to establish a college,
College after the manner of Durham College, directly in
connection with the Monastery of S. Swithun at
Winchester. But before the building was completed, he determined to make
it a college for secular students. Holinshed gives us the words in which
Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, who was intimately associated with him in

the work—his arms are to be seen in various places in the existing buildings
—persuaded him to this course.
“What, my Lord, shall we build houses and provide livelihood for a company of bussing monks,
whose end and fall we ourselves may live to see? No, no. It is more meet a great deal that we should
have care to provide for the increase of learning, and for such as by their learning shall do good in the
Church and Commonwealth.”

The broad-minded founder accepted this view. He drew up statutes, by
means of which he hoped to train men who should help the Church to
recognise, to lead and to control the New Movement. The verdict of his
contemporaries with regard to his work and intentions is expressed by
Erasmus, who wrote that “Just as Rhodes was once famous for the
Colossus, and Caria for the tomb of Mausolus, so the new College at
Oxford dedicated to the most profitable literature would be recognised
throughout the civilised world as one of the chief ornaments of Britain.”
The influence of the Renaissance is writ large over Foxe’s statutes. What
is remarkable in them is the provision he made for the teaching of the New
Learning. As he furnished his students with a library, rich in classical MSS.
and books in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, a “Bibliotheca trilinguis” which
Erasmus declared would attract more students than Rome had done
hitherto; so also, in addition to the twenty fellows and twenty scholars of
his college, he endowed three Readers, in Greek, in Latin, and in Theology.
Natives of Greece and Italy were to be specially eligible for these offices;
Greek as well as Latin might be spoken in hall, and some acquaintance with
the works of Roman poets, orators and historians, no less than with Logic
and Philosophy, was to be required of candidates for scholarships, who
must also prove their fitness by ability to compose verses and write letters
in Latin.
Cicero, Sallust, Valerius Maximus, Suetonius, Pliny, Livy and Quintilian
are enumerated in the statutes as the prose writers, and Vergil, Ovid, Lucan,
Juvenal, Terence and Plautus as the poets to be expounded by the Professor
of Humanity. The works of Lorenzo Valla, Aulus Gellius and Politian are
recommended as suitable subjects of study during the three vacations. The
Professor of Greek, an officer unknown in any earlier college, was required
to lecture, and to lecture to the whole University, not only on Grammar, but
also on the works of Isocrates, Lucian, Philostratus, Aristophanes,
Theocritus, Euripides, Sophocles, Pindar, Hesiod, Demosthenes,
Thucydides, Aristotle and Plutarch.

The third “Reader” appointed by Foxe was to expound the Old
Testament and the New in alternate years. He was not, however, to be
content with the comments of the schoolmen, but was “to follow so far as
possible the ancient and holy doctors both Latin and Greek.”
It will be seen that these statutes form, as it were, at once a charter and a
corpus of the New Learning. Patristic theology was to be restored to the
place of honour whence the quibbles of the schoolmen had banished it; the
masterpieces of the ancient world were, in future, to be studied instead of
the second-rate philosophers and slovenly writers of the Dark Ages.
Apart from the fascinating hall and library, the buildings of Corpus are
less distinguished than her history. The curious sundial, surmounted by a
pelican vulning herself in piety, which stands in the centre of the front
quadrangle, was erected by a fellow in 1581. As at All Souls’ and
elsewhere, the name of the college is indicated by sculpture over the
gateway—a group of angels bearing a pyx, the receptacle of the
sacramental host, the body of Christ (Corpus Christi). The pastoral staff, a
chalice and paten, which belonged to the founder, are still preserved. They
rank among the finest examples of the work of English mediæval
silversmiths.
The connection between Magdalen and C.C.C. was always close. Foxe,
indeed, is said to have been at Magdalen, and to have

First Quadrangle Corpus Christi College.

left Oxford on account of a pestilence. It is at any rate noteworthy that he
makes special provision against plagues in his statutes. The severity and
frequency of plagues of one sort or another were a serious obstacle to the
prosperity of the University, and therefore of the city, throughout this
century. The causes are not far to seek. For centuries filth and garbage had
been allowed to accumulate in the ill-made, unswept streets. And though the
King might write to the burghers and command them to remove the
nuisances of this sort from before their doors, the efforts to deal with them
were only spasmodic. Brewers and bakers, again, were forbidden by the
King’s edict (1293) to make use of the foul waters of Trill Mill Stream for
the making of their bread and ale. But police was inefficient, and the health
of the scholars frequently suffered from a renewal of this insanitary
practice. Regrators, who burned before their doors stinking fat and suet,
were also forbidden by Edward III. to pursue their habits, and the citizens
were enjoined to repair the pavements in front of their houses.
But in spite of regulations and restrictions butchers persisted in
slaughtering their beasts in their homes and fouling the Trill Mill Stream
with offal. Inundations from the Cherwell and the Thames, not yet regulated

and confined by the Conservancy Board, occasionally swamped even the
cloisters of Magdalen and left behind a legacy of mud, damp and malaria.
Sweating sickness—a kind of rheumatic fever—struck Oxford hard in
1517. In the following years other loathsome diseases, attributed to the
noisome smells which arose from the marshy grounds around the city and
the obstructed state of the Thames, manifested themselves and caused the
students to fly. Frequent instances are recorded of fellows obtaining
permission to leave Oxford on account of the pestilence. In 1513 most of
the members of Oriel removed to a farm at Dean; in 1522 the inmates of
New College fled on the outbreak of some illness, and the fellows of
University College dispersed on the same account in 1525. From Magdalen,
in unhealthy seasons, there were frequent migrations of a large portion of
the society to Witney or to Brackley, where the hospital had been indicated
by the founder as a place to which such migrations might be made. But it
was in 1528 that the sweating sickness broke out in its severest form. Many
persons died within a few hours of being attacked by the disease; public
business was postponed, and the lecture rooms were closed. The Festival of
S. John was stopped. It was decreed that all clerks who thought themselves
in danger might be absent until October. It might almost have been the
influenza (1894).
The plague broke out in 1571, so that the University term had to be
deferred. It broke out again in the following years, and culminated, in 1577,
in the “Black Assizes.” Rowland Jencks, a bookbinder, had been seized and
sent to London for railing against the Commonwealth and the established
religion. His house was searched for “bulls, libels, and suchlike things
against the Queen and religion.” He was returned to Oxford to be
committed to prison. At the Assizes, held in the Court House at the Castle-
yard, he was condemned to lose his ears. No sooner was the prisoner
removed from the crowded court than, as Wood tells us,

“there arose such an infectious damp or breath among the people, that many there present, to the
apprehensions of most men, were then smothered and others so deeply infected that they lived not
many hours after. Above 600 sickened in one night; and the day after, the infectious air being carried
into the next villages, sickened there an hundred more. The number of persons that died in five
weeks’ space were 300 in Oxford, and 200 and odd in other places; so that the whole number that
died in that time were 510 persons, of whom many bled till they expired.”

The description of the disease given by Wood reminds one of
Thucydides’ account of the plague at Athens. The outbreak was attributed
by some to the Roman Catholics, who were said to have used magic to
revenge themselves for the cropping of Jencks’ ears, but the explanation
suggested by a remark of Bacon is more probable. “The most pernicious
infection next to the plague,” he says, “is the smell of the Jail, when
prisoners have been long and close nastily kept.”
In 1582 the plague again threatened. This time measures were taken to
improve the sanitary conditions of the place. Regulations were introduced,
which do not greatly differ from the precautions of modern legislation. It
was, for instance, ordained that—
“No person shall cast or lay any donge, dust, ordure, rubbish, carreyne or any other thing noyant
into any the waters ryvers or streams or any the streets, wayes or lanes. But every person shall swepe
together & take up the said things noyant out of the channel of the street so far as their ground
reacheth and cause the same to be carried away twice every week. All privies & hogsties set or made
over upon or adjoining to any the waters or streames leading to any brew-house shall be removed &
taken away. No person shall keep any hogs or swine within the said City but only within their own
several backsides; no butcher shall keep any slaughter house or kill any oxen kyne shepe or calves
within the walls. All pavements shall be made and amended in places defective and all chimneys
occupied with fire shall from henceforth be swept four times every year.”

These ordinances, it will be seen, provided against the customary crying
evils of a mediæval town. Similar provisions against similar evils are to be
found in the archives of most cities in England or France in the sixteenth
century. But ordinances are one thing and effective street-police is another.
A hundred years later S. James’s Square was still the receptacle for all offal
and cinders, for all the dead cats and dead dogs of Westminster, whilst
Voltaire’s scathing description of the streets of Paris was no exaggeration. It
was a state of affairs on which the Plague of London was the grimmest of
all possible commentaries.
Another outbreak of plague in 1593 produced an order against plays,
which were said to bring too many people, and the plague with them, from
London. Regulations were also passed against overcrowding in the houses.
At the beginning of the reign of James I., however, the infection spread

once more from London to Oxford. Term was prorogued; the colleges broke
up; and the citizens were so hard hit that they petitioned the University for
aid. A weekly contribution from the colleges alleviated the distress that
arose from this doleful sickness. The town was almost deserted; the shops
were closed; and only the keepers of the sick or the collectors of relief
appeared in the streets—“no not so much as dog or cat.” The churches were
seldom opened, and grass grew in the common market-place. Next year and
the next plague broke out again, by which time some arrangements had
been made for a system of isolation. Yet the mediæval attitude of mind
towards medicine and sanitation would seem to have lasted on through the
Age of Reason. For in 1774, when small-pox had many times scourged the
town, all attempts at inoculation were formally forbidden by the Vice-
Chancellor and Mayor.
Foxe had aided the rise and rejoiced in the success of Wolsey. But that
success was not universally popular. In spite of his benefactions to learning,
and the University, it was an Oxford Laureate, one of our earliest satirists,
who, when the Cardinal was at the height of his power, more monarch than
the King himself, attacked him with the most outspoken virulence.
A crown of laurel would seem to have been the outward sign and symbol
of a degree in Rhetoric, and rhetoricians were occasionally styled Poets
Laureate. John Skelton, who was perhaps Court Poet to Henry VIII., was
certainly tutor to Prince Henry and Laureate of both Universities. He was
very proud of this distinction, and, not being troubled by any excess of
modesty, he wrote a poem of 1600 lines in praise of himself:
“A Kynge to me myn habite gave;
At Oxforth the Universyte,
Auvaunsed to that degre
By hole consent of theyr Senate,
I was made Poete Laureate.”

So he says; and Cambridge apparently followed suit and admitted him
(1493) to a corresponding degree, and likewise encircled his brows with a
wreath of laurel.
Skelton jeered at the Cardinal’s pride and pomp; at his low birth (his
“greasy original”) and his lack of scholarship. There was more truth in
Shakespeare’s description of him as a “scholar and a right good one,” for
the “Boy Bachelor” had taken his degree of B.A. at fifteen years of age, “a

rare thing and seldom seen.” He held a fellowship at Magdalen, and was
bursar for a short while, as we have seen; for six months he acted as master
of Magdalen School, and in 1500 he was instituted to the Rectory of
Lymington, thanks to the favour of the Marquis of Dorset, whose three sons
had been his pupils at the school. It is not every man who is given even one
chance in life, but at last to Wolsey, as to Wykeham, the opportunity came.
He pleased the King by the speed with which he performed the first errand
on which he was dispatched; and from that time he never ceased to advance
in power and the confidence of his sovereign. The account of that episode,
which he gave after his fall to George Cavendish, is one of the most
profitable lessons in history. It is the secret of success as recorded by a
bankrupt millionaire.
Wolsey never allowed his ecclesiastical and political work and honours
to make him forget the University which had given him his start in life. In
1510 he took his degree of Bachelor of Divinity.
By the University the need for the codification of its statutes, and the
unification of the mass of obscure customs and contradictory ordinances of
which they were by this time composed, had long been felt. Some efforts
had indeed already (1518) been made in this direction, but they had come to
nothing. Graduates who swore to obey the statutes now found themselves in
the awkward position of being really unable to find their way through the
labyrinth of confused and contradictory enactments.
Now it happened that an outbreak of the sweating sickness in 1517 drove
the King and his court from London to Abingdon. Queen Catherine availed
herself of the opportunity to pay a visit to Oxford, to dine at Merton and to
worship at the shrine of S. Frideswide, whilst Wolsey, who escorted her
from Abingdon, attended a solemn meeting of the graduates at S. Mary’s
and informed them of his design to establish certain daily lectures for the
benefit of the University at large. For this purpose it was necessary to alter
existing regulations. The graduates seized the opportunity of inviting the
Cardinal, their “Mæcenas,” whom they even came to address as “His
Majesty,” to undertake a complete revision of their statutes. In so doing
they disregarded the wishes of their Chancellor, the Archbishop Warham.
But their action was fruitless, for the Cardinal had no time to examine and
codify the chaotic enactments of the mediæval academicians.

It was at Wolsey’s request that a charter was granted to the University
(1523) which placed the greater part of the city at its mercy. It was now
empowered to incorporate any trade, whilst all “members of the privilege”
were exempted from having to apply to the city for permission to carry on
business. Many minor rights and immunities were granted to the
Chancellor, and no appeal was allowed from his court. “Any sentence, just
or unjust, by the Chancellor against any person, shall be holden good, and
for the same sentence, so just or unjust, the Chancellor or his deputy shall
not be drawn out of the University for false judgment, or for the same vexed
or troubled by any written commandment of the King.”
Prior to the issue of this charter there had been grievances arising from
the favour shown by the Crown to the University, as, for instance, when, a
few years back, the colleges and other places of the University had been
exempted from the subsidies charged upon the town. The jealousy which
had been slumbering now burst into flames. The bailiffs flatly refused to
summon a jury under the new terms. They were imprisoned. A writ was
issued to enforce the University charter and for the appearance of the mayor
and corporation to answer a suit in chancery.
The same year (1529) the University, not being able to obtain the
assistance of the bailiffs, ordered the bedels to summon a jury for their leet.
The city bailiffs closed the door of the Guildhall, so that the court thus
summoned could not be held. This device they adopted repeatedly. On one
occasion Wolsey proposed to submit the question to the arbitration of More.
But the city perceived their danger and unanimously refused,
“for,” they remarked, “by such arbitrements in time past, the Commissary & procters & their officers
of the University hath usurped & daily usurpeth upon the town of divers matters contrary to their
compositions.”

The struggle passed through several stages. The mayor, one Michael
Hethe by name, refused to take the customary oath at S. Mary’s to maintain
the privileges of the University. Proceedings were instituted against him.
His answer, when he was summoned to appear at S. Mary’s Church and
show cause why he should not be declared perjured and excommunicate,
was couched in very spirited terms:
“Recommend me unto your master and shew him, I am here in this town the King’s Grace’s
lieutenant for lack of a better, and I know no cause why I should appear before him. I know him not
for my ordinary.”

The court pronounced him contumacious, and sentenced him to be
excommunicated. He was obliged to demand absolution, but he did not
abate the firmness of his attitude when he obtained it, for he flatly refused
to promise “to stand to the law and to obey the commands of the Church,”
though that promise was proposed as a necessary condition of absolution
being granted.
Before the end of this year (1530) the town made a direct petition to the
King against the University, in which the chief incidents in the hard-fought
battle are recounted in detail. Complaint is made, for instance, that the
commissary
“Doth take fourpence for the sale of every horse-lode of fresh salmon, & one penny of every
seme of fresshe herrings, which is extorcyon”: and again “Another time he sent for one William
Falofelde & demanded of him a duty that he should give him a pint of wine of every hogshead that he
did set a-broach, for his taste. And the said William answered and said that he knew no such duty to
be had, if he knew it he would gladly give it. And thereupon the said Commissary said he would
make him know that it was his duty & so sent him to prison: and so ever since, for fear of
imprisonment, the said William Falofelde hath sent him wine when he sent for it, which is to the
great losse and hindrance of the said William Falofelde.”

In order to compel submission on the part of the city, the mayor and
twenty of the citizens were discommoned in 1533, so that
“no schollar nor none of their servants, should buy nor sell with none of them, neither eat nor drink in
their houses, under pain of for every time of so doing to forfeit to the Commissary of 6s. and 8d.”

For twenty years the quarrel dragged on, till at last both parties grew
weary. In 1542 arbitrators were called in, and Wolsey’s charter was
repealed. But under Elizabeth, when in Leicester they had elected a
Chancellor of sufficient power to represent their interests, the University
began to endeavour to regain the privileges and franchises which, as they
maintained, had only been in abeyance. An Act of Parliament was procured
which confirmed the old obnoxious charter of 1523, but with a clause of all
the liberties of the mayor and town. This clause led the way to fresh acts of
aggression on either side, and renewed recriminations and disputes until, on
the report of two judges, a series of orders was promulgated by the Privy
Council (1575), intended to set at rest the differences between the two
bodies for ever. But the result fell short of the intention. The opposition at
this time had been led by one William Noble, who lived in the old house
known as Le Swynstock. Smarting under the sting of false imprisonment,
Noble commenced suits in the Star Chamber against the University, and

presented petitions both against that body and the mayor and citizens. His
popularity was such that he was elected Member of Parliament for the city.
Wolsey, as we have seen, had taken some steps towards establishing
public lectureships in the University. But he provided no permanent
endowment for these chairs. His designs developed into a grander scheme.
He determined to found a college which, in splendour and resources, should
eclipse even the noble foundations of Wykeham and Waynflete, a college
where the secular clergy should study the New Learning and use it as a
handmaid of Theology and in the service of the old Church. And as
Wykeham had established in connection with his college a school at
Winchester, so Wolsey proposed to found at his birth-place, Ipswich, and at
Oxford, two sister-seats of learning and religion.
Through the darkness and stagnation of the fifteenth century a few great
men had handed on the torch of learning and of educational ideals. The
pedigree of Christ Church is clearly traceable through Magdalen and New
College back to Merton. Wolsey at Magdalen had learnt to appreciate, in the
most beautiful of all the homes of learning, something of the aims of the
great school-master bishop, Waynflete. And Waynflete himself, can we
doubt? had caught from Wykeham the enthusiasm for producing “rightly
and nobly ordered minds and characters.” At Oxford, at Winchester and at
Windsor he had lived under the shadow of the great monuments of
Wykeham’s genius, and learned to discern “the true nature of the beautiful
and graceful, the simplicity of beauty in style, harmony and grace.” So that
in the architecture of his college—and Architecture, as Plato tells us, as all
the other Arts, is full of grace and harmony, which are the two sisters of
goodness and virtue—he was enabled to fulfil the Platonic ideal and to
provide the youth whom he desired to benefit with a home where they
might dwell “in a land of health and fair sights and sounds, and receive the
good in everything, and where beauty, the effluence of fair works, might
flow into the eye and ear like a health-giving breeze from a purer region,
and insensibly draw the soul from earliest years into likeness and sympathy
with the beauty of reason.” Inspired by such examples, Wolsey set himself
to build a college which should eclipse them,
“Though unfinished, yet so famous,
So excellent in art and yet so rising,
That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue.”

Indeed, says Fuller, nothing mean could enter into this man’s mind.
Immense as were his private resources, they could not bear the strain of
his magnificent plans. He therefore seized upon the idea of appropriating
the property of the regular clergy and applying it to the foundation and
endowment of Cardinal’s College. The time was ripe for some such
conversion. Monasticism was outworn. Whatever the merits of some few
monasteries might be, whatever the piety of an occasional Abbot Samson,
or the popularity of a monkish institution which did its duty of charity and
instruction in this or that part of the country, the monks as a rule had ceased
to live up to their original standard. They had accumulated wealth and lost
their hold on the people. And where they were popular, it was in many cases
with the people they had pauperised. To a statesman with so keen an insight
and so broad a mind as Wolsey, it must have seemed both wise and safe to
take this opportunity of suppressing some of the English priories. Had not
Chicheley, when the alien priories had been suppressed on political
grounds, secured some of their lands for the endowment of his foundation,
All Souls’ College?
His first step was to obtain a bull from the Pope and the assent of the
King, authorising him (1524) to suppress the Priory of S. Frideswide and
transfer the canons to other houses of the Augustinian order. Their house
and revenues, amounting to nearly £300, were assigned to the proposed
college of secular clerks. The scale of that college is indicated by the fact
that it was to consist of a dean and sixty canons, forty canons of inferior
rank, besides thirteen chaplains, twelve lay clerks, sixteen choristers and a
teacher of music, for the service of the Church. Six public professors were
to be appointed in connection with the college.
A few months later another bull, which premised that divine service
could not be properly maintained in monasteries which contained less than
seven professed members, empowered Wolsey to suppress any number of
such small religious houses all over the country. This he proceeded to do,
and to transfer the inmates to other monasteries. Their revenues, to an
amount not exceeding 3000 golden ducats, were to be devoted to the new
college.
The plan of thus concentrating the resources of the small and scattered
religious houses was both economical and statesmanlike. But, in its
execution, it gave rise to fear and irritation, of which Wolsey’s political

enemies were quick to avail themselves. The perturbation of the monks is
well expressed in Fuller’s happy metaphor:
“His proceedings made all the forest of religious foundations in England to shake, justly fearing
the King would finish to fell the oaks, seeing the Cardinal began to cut the underwood.”

Wolsey found it necessary to write to his royal master more than once to
contradict the mis-representations of his opponents. The King had been
informed that monks and abbots had been turned out to starve. Wolsey
declared that what he had done was “to the full satisfaction, recompense
and joyous contentation” of all concerned. The King complained that some
of the monasteries would not contribute to his necessities as much as they
had contributed to the Cardinal’s scheme. Wolsey replied that he had indeed
received “from divers mine old lovers and friends right loving and
favourable aids towards the edifying of my said College,” but added that
these had been justly obtained and exaggerated in amount. But he promised
in future to take nothing from any religious person.
Meantime he had set about building Cardinal’s College with
extraordinary energy and on an enormous scale. The foundation stone was
laid on 15th July 1525. Whilst the Chapter-house and refectory of the old
monastery were kept, the western bays of the church were removed to make
way for the great quadrangle. The Chapel of S. Michael at South Gate was
demolished, and part of the old town wall was thrown down. Room was
thus made for the buildings on the south side of the quadrangle. These, the
first portion of the college to be finished, were the kitchen and that hall
which, in its practical and stately magnificence, can scarcely be equalled in
England or surpassed in Europe. But the fact that it was the kitchen and
dining-room which first reached completion gave an opportunity to the
wits.
“Egregium opus. Cardinalis iste instituit Collegium, et absolvit popinam.”

So runs one epigram, which being freely translated is:
“The Mountains were in labour once, and forth there came a mouse;—
Your Cardinal a College planned, and built an eating-house!”

It was part of Wolsey’s design to gather into his college all the rising
intellect of Europe. In pursuance of this plan, he induced certain scholars
from Cambridge to migrate thither. But they it was, so men afterwards

complained, who first introduced the taint of heresy into Oxford. For at first
the University was as strictly orthodox as her powerful patron, who hated
“the Hellish Lutherans,” could wish. When Martin Luther (1517) nailed his
ninety-five theses on the church door of Wittenberg, in protest against what
Erasmus had called “the crime of false pardons,” the

Cloisters, Christ Church

sale of indulgences, his protest found no echo here. On the contrary, the
masters in convocation gladly elected three representative theologians who
attended Wolsey’s conference in London, and condemned the noxious
doctrines of the German reformer. A committee of theologians was also
held at Oxford, and their condemnation of Luther’s teaching won the warm
approval of the University. But the leaven of Lutheranism had already been

introduced. The Cambridge students whom Wolsey had brought to be
canons of Cardinal College, began to hold secret meetings and to
disseminate Lutheran treatises. They made proselytes; they grew bolder,
and nailed upon the church doors at nights some famous “libels and bills.”
Archbishop Warham presently found himself obliged to take notice of
the growing sect. He wrote to Wolsey invoking his aid,
“that the captains of the said erroneous doctrines be punished to the fearful example of all other. One
or two cankered members,” he explains, “have induced no small number of young and incircumspect
fools to give ear unto them,” and he proposes that the Cardinal should give “in commission to some
sad father which was brought up in the University to sit and examine them.”

Active measures were now taken to stamp out the heresy in Oxford.
Wolsey ordered the arrest of a certain Thomas Garret of Magdalen, a
pernicious heretic who had been busy selling Tyndale’s Bible and the
German reformer’s treatises, not only to Oxford students, but even to the
Abbot of Reading. His friends managed to get him safely out of Oxford, but
for some reason or other he returned after three days. The same night he
was arrested in bed in the house of one Radley, a singing-man, where it was
well known that the little Lutheran community was wont to meet. Garret
was not detained in Bocardo, but in a cellar underneath the lodgings of the
commissary, Dr Cottisford, Rector of Lincoln. Whilst the commissary was
at evensong he managed to escape, and made his way to the rooms of
Anthony Dalaber, one of the “brotherhood,” at Gloucester College. Dalaber
has left an account—it is a most tearful tale—of the events which ensued.
He had previously had some share in getting Garret away from Oxford, and
was greatly surprised to see him back. He provided him with a coat in place
of his tell-tale gown and hood, and sent him off with tears and prayers to
Wales, whence he hoped to escape to Germany. After reading the tenth
chapter of S. Matthew’s Gospel with many a deep sigh and salt tear,
Dalaber went to Cardinal College to give Master Clarke, a leading brother,
notice of what had occurred. On his way he met William Eden, a fellow of
Magdalen, who with a pitiful countenance explained to him that they were
all undone. Dalaber was able to give him the joyful news of Garret’s escape,
and proceeded to S. Frideswide’s.
“Evensong,” he says, “was begun, and the Dean and the other Canons
were there in their grey amices; they were almost at Magnificat before I
came thither. I stood at the Choir door and heard Master Taverner play, and
others of the Chapel there sing, with and among whom I myself was wont

to sing also. But now my singing and music were turned into sighing and
musing. As I thus and there stood, in cometh Dr Cottysford, as fast as ever
he could go, bareheaded, as pale as ashes—I knew his grief well enough,
and to the Dean he goeth into the Choir, where he was sitting in his stall,
and talked with him very sorrowfully.” Dalaber describes the interview
which followed, outside the choir, between these two and Dr London, the
Warden of New College, “puffing, blustering and blowing, like a hungry
and greedy lion seeking his prey.” The commissary was so much blamed,
that he wept for sorrow. Spies were sent out in every direction; and when
Dalaber returned to his rooms next morning, he found that they had been
thoroughly searched. He had spent the night with the “brethren,” supping at
Corpus (“at which supper we were not very merry”), sleeping at S. Alban
Hall, consulting together and praying for the wisdom of the serpent, and the
harmlessness of the dove. This request would appear to have been in some
measure vouchsafed to him, for, when he was interrogated by the prior as to
his own movements and those of Garret, he was enabled to furnish forth a
tale full of circumstantial detail but wholly untrue. “This tale,” he observes,
“I thought meetest, but it was nothing so.” Although it were nothing so, he
repeated his convincing narrative on oath, when he was examined at
Lincoln College by Cottisford, Higdon (Dean of Cardinal’s College) and
London. He had sworn on a great Mass book laid before him to answer
truly, but, as he complacently observes, “in my heart nothing so meant to
do.” Nor, perhaps, did he mean to betray twenty-two of his associates, and
the storehouse of Garret’s books, when examined by Dr London, whom he
calls the “rankest, papistical Pharisee of them all”—at any rate he omits to
mention the fact in his narrative.
Of Garret himself, however, no trace could be found; and the
commissary, being “in extreme pensyfness,” consulted an astrologer, who
made a figure for him, and told him, with all the cheerful certainty of an
eastern astrologer in these days, that Garret, having fled south-eastward in a
tawny coat, was at that time in London, on his way to the sea-side.
Consulting the stars was strictly forbidden by the Catholic Church, but the
Warden of New College, though a Doctor of Divinity, was not ashamed to
inform the bishop of the astrologer’s saying, or afraid to ask him to inform
the Cardinal, Archbishop of York, concerning it. Luckily for him the
commissary did not rely wholly on the information either of Dalaber or the
astrologer. The more practical method of watching the seaport towns

resulted a few days later in Garret’s recapture near Bristol. Many of the
Oxford brotherhood were also imprisoned and excommunicated. Garret,
who had written a piteous letter to Wolsey, praying for release, not from the
iron bonds which he said he justly deserved, but from the more terrible
bonds of excommunication, and who had also made a formal recantation of
all his heresies, was allowed to escape. But first he took part in a
procession, in which most of the other prisoners also appeared, carrying
faggots from S. Mary’s Church to S. Frideswide’s, and on the way casting
into a bonfire made at Carfax for the purpose certain books which had most
likely formed part of Garret’s stock.
At least three of the prisoners, however, died in prison without having
been readmitted to Communion, either from the sweating sickness then
raging, or, as Foxe asserts, from the hardships they endured. For they were
kept, he says, for nearly six months in a deep cave under the ground, on a
diet of salt fish. By Higdon’s orders they did at least receive a Christian
burial.
The heretics were crushed in Oxford, but elsewhere the movement grew
apace. The printing press scattered wide-cast books and pamphlets which
openly attacked the corruption of the Church and the monastic orders.
Henry determined to proscribe all books that savoured of heresy. A joint
committee of Oxford and Cambridge theologians was summoned to meet in
London. They examined and condemned the suspected books which were
submitted to them. The publication of English treatises upon Holy Scripture
without ecclesiastical sanction was forbidden by royal proclamation.
Versions of the Bible in the vulgar tongue were at the same time proscribed.
Yet this orthodox king, to whom as “Defender of the Faith,” Leo X. had
sent a sword still preserved in the Ashmolean, was on the brink of a breach
with Rome. For Henry, with his curious mania for matrimony, had
determined to marry Anne Boleyn, but he failed to obtain from the Papal
Legates in England a decree for the dissolution of his marriage. It was a
failure fraught with enormous consequences. The fortunes of Oxford were
involved in it. The King gladly availed himself of the suggestion of a
Cambridge scholar, Thomas Cranmer, that the Universities should be called
on for their judgment. They were thus placed in a position analogous to that
of an œcumenical council with power to control a pontifical decree. For the
Pope’s predecessor had granted a dispensation for Henry’s marriage with
Catherine, his brother’s wife. Every learned man in Europe, but for bribery

or threats, would have condemned Henry’s cause on its merits. But it was
evident that the question would not be decided on its merits.
From a packed commission at Cambridge a decision favourable to a
divorce was with difficulty extorted; but even so it was qualified by an
important reservation. The marriage was declared illegal, if it could be
proved that Catherine’s marriage with Prince Arthur had been
consummated. Cambridge was praised by the King for her “wisdom and
good conveyance.” Yet that reservation, if the testimony of the Queen
herself was to go for anything, amounted to a conclusion against the
divorce.
It was not expected that a favourable verdict would be obtained so easily
from Oxford. At the end of his first letter, in which the King called upon the
University to declare their minds “sincerely and truly without any abuse,” a
very plain threat is added, which left no doubt as to the royal view of what
could be considered “sincere and true”:
“And in case ye do not uprightly according to divine learning handle yourselves herein, ye may be
assured that we, not without great cause, shall so quickly and sharply look to your unnatural
misdemeanour therein that it shall not be to your quietness and ease hereafter.”

It was proposed that the question should be referred to a packed
committee. But the Masters of Arts refused to entrust the matter wholly to
the Faculty of Theology. They claimed to nominate a certain number of
delegates. Their attitude provoked sharp reproval and further threats from
the imperious monarch.
The youths of the University were warned not to play masters, or they
would soon learn that “it is not good to stir up a hornets’ nest.”
Persuasion was used by the Archbishop and the Bishop of Lincoln. The
example of Paris and Cambridge was quoted. The aid of Dr Foxe, who had
proved his skill by obtaining the decree at Cambridge, was called in.
Learned arguments were provided by Nicholas de Burgo, an Italian friar.
But there was no doubt about the popular feeling on the question. Pieces of
hemp and rough drawings of gallows were affixed to the gate of the
bishop’s lodging; both he and Father Nicholas were pelted with stones in
the open street; the women of Oxford supported Catherine with such
vehemence, that thirty of them had to be shut up in Bocardo. The King had
dispatched two of his courtiers to Oxford: the Duke of Suffolk and Sir
William Fitzwilliam. The former imprisoned the women; the latter

distributed money to the more venal of the graduates. “No indifferency was
used in the whole matter.”
Threats and bribes at last prevailed. A committee carefully packed was
appointed with power to decide in the name of the University. A verdict was
obtained which corresponded to the Cambridge decree. The important
reservation, “if the marriage had been consummated,” was added to the
decision that marriage with the widow of a deceased brother was contrary
to the divine and human law.
Cranmer, who had succeeded Warham as Archbishop of Canterbury,
pronounced the King’s marriage with Catherine null and void. In the
following year the University was asked to concur in the foregone decision
in favour of separation from Rome. The authority of the Pope in England
was abolished, and the monasteries were rendered liable to visitation by
commission under the Great Seal. The Act of Supremacy followed. Bishop
Fisher and Sir Thomas More were executed for denying the royal
supremacy, and Thomas Cromwell was appointed Vicar-General of
England.
His failure to procure a decree invalidating Henry’s marriage meant the
downfall of Wolsey. His downfall involved the fortunes of his college. It
was rumoured at once that the buildings were to be demolished, because
they bore at every prominent point escutcheons carved with the arms of the
proud Cardinal. Wolsey had “gathered into his College whatsoever
excellent thing there was in the whole realm.” The rich vestments and
ornaments with which he had furnished S. Frideswide’s Church were
quickly “disposed” by the King. The disposal of this and other property,
lands, offices, plate and tapestries forfeited under the statute of Praemunire,
and carefully catalogued for his royal master by the fallen minister, had
obvious pecuniary advantages. And as in London, York Place, the palace
which the Cardinal had occupied and rebuilt as Archbishop of York, was
confiscated and its name changed to Whitehall; so, when “bluff Harry broke
into the spence,” he converted Cardinal’s College into “King Henry VIII.’s
College at Oxford” consisting of a dean and twelve canons only (1532).
Henry had been besought to be gracious to the college; but he replied
that it deserved no favour at his hands, for most of its members had opposed
his wishes in the matter of the divorce. The prospect of the dissolution of
his college at Oxford, foreshadowed by that of his great foundation at

Ipswich, caused Wolsey infinite sorrow. To Thomas Cromwell he wrote that
he could not sleep for the thought of it, and could not write unto him for
weeping and sorrow. He appealed with all the passion of despair to the King
and those in power, that the “sharpness and rigour of the law should not be
visited upon these poor innocents.” In response to a petition from the whole
college, Henry replied that he would not dissolve it entirely. He intended, he
said, to have an honourable college there,
“but not so great or of such magnificence as my Lord Cardinal intended to have, for it is not
thought meet for the common weal of our realm. Yet we will have a College honourably to maintain
the service of God and literature.”

The purely ecclesiastical foundation of 1532 was not calculated to
maintain the service of literature. It was surrendered twelve years
afterwards to the King, whose commissioners received on the same day the
surrender of the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary at
Osney, the new cathedral body formed at the ancient abbey upon the
creation of the see and diocese of Oxford (1542). The way was thus cleared
for the final arrangement by which (4th November 1546) the episcopal see
was transferred from Osney and united with the collegiate corporation
under the title it bears to-day, Ecclesia Christi Cathedralis Oxon; ex
fundatione Regis Henrici Octavi. Thus S. Frideswide’s Church became the
Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford, and also the chapel of the college
now at last called Christ Church. The foundation now consisted of a dean,
eight canons, eight chaplains, sixty scholars and forty children, besides an
organist, singing men, servants and almsmen. It was still, then, a foundation
of extraordinary magnificence.
Yet there were not wanting “greedy wretches to gape after the lands
belonging to the Colleges.” They urged Henry to treat them as he had
treated the monasteries. But the King refused.
“Ah, sirrah,” he replied to one, “I perceive the Abbey lands have fleshed you, and set your teeth
on edge, to ask also those Colleges. And wheras we had a regard only to pull down sin by defacing
the monasteries, you have a desire also to overthrow all goodness by subversion of Colleges. I tell
you, sirs, that I judge no land in England better bestowed than that which is given to our Universities;
for by their maintenance our realm shall be well governed when we be dead and rotten.... I love not
learning so ill that I will impair the revenues of any one house by a penny, wherby it may be
upholden.”

Henry, in fact, may be credited with a genuine desire for the promotion
of learning. He had, besides, no reason to quarrel with the University. It had

proved subservient to his will; the colleges were nurseries of the secular
clergy, who adopted the new order of things. They could not be regarded
like the monks, as mercenaries of a foreign and hostile power.
But academic enthusiasm was not to be promoted by the despotic
methods of Henry. The arbitrary restrictions of the Six Articles, “that sure
touchstone of a man’s conscience,” struck at the root of intellectual liberty.
The revival of academic life which had resulted from the stimulus of the
Catholic Renaissance, was suddenly and severely checked by the early
developments of the Reformation. The monasteries had been dissolved, and
the poor students whom they had supported trudged a-begging. Another
outbreak of plague helped to increase the depopulation of the University.
The town suffered severely from both causes. The halls and hostels stood
empty; very few degrees were taken. Religious controversy usurped the
place of education. The University became a centre of politics and
ecclesiasticism. The schools were deserted or occupied by laundresses; and,
whilst commissioners were busy applying tests, expelling honest fellows,
destroying MSS. and smashing organs, men began to discover that, through
the invention of printing, it had become possible for them to educate
themselves. They no longer needed to go to a monastery or college library
to obtain a book; teaching needed no longer to be merely oral. The
multiplication of books decentralised learning. With the monopoly of
manuscripts and the universality of Latin were taken almost at a moment’s
notice two of the chief assets of mediæval Universities. A man might now
read what he liked, and where he liked, instead of being obliged to listen to
a master in the schools teaching set subjects that did not interest him. And
no “test” was required of the independent reader. No wonder that, as one
preacher dismally exclaimed, the Wells of Learning, Oxford and
Cambridge, were dried up.
The King had taken the charters of both University and town into his
own hands in 1530. He did not restore them till 1543. Two years later
Parliament made over all colleges and chantries to the King, “who gave
them very good counsel.” Meanwhile, in 1535, a Visitation of the
University had been held. Dr London and Richard Layton were the chief
Visitors. Their object was to establish ecclesiastical conformity, to supplant
the old scholastic teaching and to promote classical learning. They
confirmed the public lectures in Greek and Latin which they found, and
established others, at Magdalen, New College, and C.C.C., and they settled

other lectures of the kind at Merton and Queen’s. The other colleges, they
found, could not afford to have such lectures, and accordingly they directed
the students of these to attend the courses at the others daily. The study of
Aristotle and the Holy Scriptures was enjoined, and the King founded
Regius Professorships in Divinity, Hebrew, Greek, Medicine and Civil Law.
The University meantime was rewarded for its compliance by being
exempted from the payment of tithes. At the same time the professors of the
Old Learning were ousted from the academic chairs. Duns Scotus was
dragged from his pedestal with an ignominy which recalled the fate of
Sejanus.
“We have set Duns in Bocardo,” wrote Layton, “and have utterly banished him Oxford for ever
with all his blind glosses.... The second time we came to New College, after we had declared your
injunctions we found all the great Quadrant Court full of the leaves of Dunse, the wind blowing them
into every corner. And there we found one Mr. Greenfield, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire
gathering up part of the same book leaves, as he said, to make him sewells or blawnshers to keep the
deer within his wood, therby to have the better cry with his hounds.”

That day the downfall of scholasticism in England was at last complete.
During the minority of Edward VI. “there was great expectation in the
University what religion would be professed.” It was soon evident which
way the wind was to blow. Young men began to “protest” in Magdalen
Chapel. In 1548 the Protector Somerset and Cranmer determined to reform
the University in the interests of the new Anglican Church. Theologians
were invited from the Continent, and in default of Melancthon, Peter Martyr
arrived and lectured in the Divinity Schools on the Epistles of S. Paul and
the Eucharist. His teaching roused protest from the Roman Catholics, and
polemical divinity, if no other study, flourished for a while in Oxford. But a
commission was now appointed with large powers, which proceeded to
draw up a code of statutes calculated to eliminate all popery from the
constitution of the University. These “Edwardine statutes,” as they were
called, remained nominally in force till the “Laudian” statutes replaced
them.
The commissioners dealt severely with the colleges. Many of the fellows
who had opposed the Reformation fled forthwith; others they ejected and
replaced by rigid Calvinists. “All things,” the Roman Catholics thought,
“were turned topsy turvy.” The disciplinary injunctions and acts of the
commissioners were wholly admirable. Unfortunately their fanaticism in
other directions was of the deplorably iconoclastic sort.