Читать книгу Oxford and Its Story - Cecil Headlam - Страница 8

“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.

Gables in St Aldate’s

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 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.