BY CECIL HEADLAM, M.A. AUTHOR OF “NUREMBERG,” “CHARTRES,” ETC. ETC. colophon WITH TWENTY-FOUR LITHOGRAPHS AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS BY HERBERT   RAILTON THE LITHOGRAPHS BEING TINTED BY FANNY   RAILTON 1912 LONDON J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. First Edition , 1904 Second and Cheaper Edition , 1912 All rights reserved  ...

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

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 sigh

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

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

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 wa

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. Car

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

T HE sufferings of the Protestants had failed to teach them the value of religious liberty. The use of the new liturgy was enforced by imprisonment, and the subscription to the Articles of Faith was demanded by royal authority from all the clergy and schoolmasters. The excesses of the Protestants led to a temporary but violent reaction. The married priests were driven from their churches; the images were replaced, the new prayer book was set aside, the mass restored. Ridley and the others who ha

T HE University had declined sadly under Mary. Affairs were not at first greatly improved when Elizabeth ascended the throne. “Two religions,” says Wood, “being now as it were on foot, divers of the chiefest of the University retired and absented themselves till they saw how affairs would proceed.” It was not long, however, before Queen Elizabeth appointed a body of Visitors to “make a mild and gentle, not rigorous reformation.” The Edwardine system was for the most part restored; the ejected fe

C HARLES I. had matriculated at Oxford in 1616; his brother Henry had been a student at Magdalen. On his accession to the throne, an outbreak of plague in London led to the meeting of Parliament at Oxford. For the accommodation of members, the colleges and halls “were ordered to be freed from the Fellows, Masters of Arts and students.” Christ Church was prepared for the reception of the Privy Council by the same process. The Houses sat in the Divinity Schools. And some said that they caught the

A MONG the demies elected at Magdalen the year after the expelled fellows returned was Joseph Addison, whose name is traditionally connected with the northern part of the Magdalen walks, where the kingfisher “flashes adown the river, a flame of blue,” and Henry Sacheverell, his friend and chamber-fellow. The former outlined the pacific policy of the Hanoverians in the Freeholder; for the latter, when he hung out his “bloody flag and banner of defiance” against the existing order, as for Atterbur