It was a lovely morning in the Eastertide of 1256 when young Martin looked forth from the window of his hostel at Oxford on the quaint streets, the stately towers of the semi-monastic city. He was bound, of course, as a dutiful son of Mother Church, to attend the early service at one of the thirteen churches, after which, still at a very early hour, he was invited to break his fast with the great Franciscan, Adam de Maresco, to whom his friend the chaplain had strongly commended him. So he put on his scholar’s gown, and went to the finest church then existing in Oxford, the Abbey Church of Oseney.
This magnificent abbey had been endowed by Robert D’Oyley, nephew of the Norman Conqueror, mentioned in another of our Chronicles {12}. It was situated on an island, formed by various branches of the Isis, in the western suburbs of the city, and extended as far as from the present Oseney Mill to St. Thomas’ Church. The abbey church, long since destroyed, was lofty and magnificent, containing twenty-four altars, a central tower of great height, and a western tower. Here King Henry III passed a Christmas with “reverent mirth.”
There was a large gathering of monks, friars, and students; the quiet sober side of Oxford predominated in the early dawn, and Martin thought he had never seen so orderly a city. He was destined to change his ideas, or at least modify them, before he laid his head on his pillow that night.
Before leaving the church Martin ascended to the summit of the abbey tower, the wicket gate of which stood invitingly open, in order to survey the city and country, and gain a general idea of his future home. Below him, in the sweet freshness of the early morn, the branches of the Isis surrounded the abbey precincts, the river being well guarded by stone work and terraces, so that it could not at flood time encroach upon the abbey. Neither before the days of locks could or did such floods occur as we have now, the water got away more readily, and the students could not sail upon “Port Meadow” as upon a lake, in the winter and spring, as they do at the present day.
Beyond the abbey rose the church and college of “Saint George in the Castle,” that is within the precincts of the fortress, and the great mound thrown up by Queen Ethelflaed, a sister of Alfred, now called the Jew’s Mount {13}, and the two towers of the Norman Castle seemed to make one group with church and college. The town church of Saint Martin rose from a thickly-built group of houses, at a spot called Quatre Voies, where the principal streets crossed, which name we corrupt into Carfax. He counted the towers of thirteen churches, including the historic shrine of Saint Frideswide, which afterwards developed into the College of Christchurch, and later still furnished the Cathedral of the diocese.
Around lay a wild land of heath and forest, with cultivated fields very infrequently interspersed; the moors of Cowley, the woods of Shotover and Bagley; and farther still, the forests of Nuneham, inhabited even then by the Harcourts, who still hold the ancestral demesne. Descending, he made his way to Greyfriars, as the Franciscan house was called, encountering many groups who were already wending their way to lecture room, or, like Martin, returning to break their fast after morning chapel, which then meant early mass at one of the many churches, for only in three or four instances had corporate bodies chapels of their own.
These groups were very unlike modern undergraduates; as a rule they were much younger people, of the same ages as the upper forms in our public schools, from fourteen or fifteen years upwards; mere boys, living in crowded hostels, fighting and quarrelling with all the sweet “abandon” of early youth, sometimes begging masterfully, for licenses to beg were granted to poor students, living, it might be, in the greatest poverty, but still devoted to learning.
At length Martin arrived at the house of the Franciscans, where he was eventually to lodge, but they had no room for him at this moment, hence he had been sent to a hostelry, licensed to take lodgers; much to the regret of Adam de Maresco. But he could not show partiality. Each newcomer must take his turn, according to the date of the entry of his name. The friary was on the marshy ground between the walls and the Isis, on land bestowed upon them in charity, amongst the huts of the poor whom they loved. At first huts of mud and timber, as rough and rude as those around, arose within the fence and ditch which they drew and dug around their habitations, but the necessities of the climate had driven them to build in stone, for the damp climate, the mists and fogs from the Isis, soon rotted away their woodwork. And so Martin found a very simple, but very substantial building in the Norman architecture of the period. The first “Provincial” of the Greyfriars had persuaded Robert Grosseteste, afterwards the great Bishop of Lincoln, to lecture at the school they founded in their Oxford house, and all his powerful influence was exercised to gain them a sound footing in the University. They deserved it, for their schools attained a reputation throughout Christendom, so nobly was the work, which Grosseteste began, carried on by his scholar and successor, Adam de Maresco.
And they had helped to make Oxford, as it was then, the second city of importance in England, and only second to Paris amongst the learned cities of the world.
Martin was shown along a cloister looking through the most sombre of Norman arches, upon a greensward. The doors of many cells opened upon it. He was told to knock at one of them, and a deep voice replied, “Enter in the name of the Lord.”
It was a large, plain room, with a vaulted ceiling lighted by lancet windows and scantily furnished; rough oaken benches, a plain heavy table, covered with parchments and manuscripts: in one recess a Prie-Dieu beneath a crucifix, and under the fald stool a skull, with the words “memento mori,” three or four chairs with painfully straight backs, a cupboard for books (manuscripts) and parchments, another for vestments ecclesiastical or collegiate. This was all which cumbered the bare floor. At the corner of the room a spiral stone staircase led to the bed chamber.
Before the table stood an aged and venerable man, in the gray clothing of the Franciscans, sweet in face, pleasant in manner, dignified in hearing, in reputation without a stain, in learning unsurpassed.
Martin bowed reverently before him, and gave him the chaplain’s letter.
“I had heard of thy arrival, my son. I trust thou hast found comfortable lodgings at the hostel I recommended?”
“I have slept well, my father.”
“And hast not forgotten thy duty to God?”
“I should do discredit to my teacher at Kenilworth if I did. I have been to the abbey church.”
“He is a man of God, and I doubt not thou art worthy of his love, for he writes of thee as a father might of a much-loved son. But now, my son, we must break our fast. Come to the refectorium with me.”
Passing into the cloister they came to the dining hall or “refectorium.” Three long tables, a fourth where the elders and professors sat, on a raised platform at right angles to the others. A hundred men and boys had already assembled, and after a Latin grace, breakfast began. It was not a fast day, so the fare was substantial, although quite plain—porridge, pease soup, bread, meat, cheese, and ale. The most sober youth of the university were there, men who meant eventually to assume the gray habit, and carry the Gospel over wilderness and forest, in the slums of towns, or amongst the heathen, counting peril as nought. There was no buzz of conversation, only from a stone pulpit the reader read a chapter from the Gospels.
After this was done, grace after meat was said, and the elders first departed, the great master taking Martin back with him into his cell.
“And now, my son, what dost thou come to Oxford for?”
“To learn that I may afterwards teach.”
“And what dost thou desire to become?”
“One of your holy brotherhood, a brother of Saint Francis.”
“Dost thou know what that means, my son? Scanty clothing, hard fare, the absence of all that men most value, the welcoming of perils and hardships as thy daily companions, that thou mayst take thy life in thy hand, and find the sheep of Christ amongst the wolves.”
“All this I have been told.”
“Well, my son, thou art yet new to the world. At Oxford thou will see it, and will make thy choice better when thou knowest both what thou rejectest and what thou seekest. Meanwhile, guard thy youthful steps; avoid quarrelling, fighting, drinking, dicing; mortify thine own flesh—”
“Do these temptations await me in Oxford?”
“The air has been full of them, since Henry brought the thousand students from the gay university of Paris hither. Thou wilt soon see, and gauge thy power of resisting temptation. I would not say, stay indoors. The virtue which has never been tested is nought.”
“Where do the brethren chiefly work for God?”
“In the noisome lazar houses, amongst the lepers, in the shambles of Newgate, here on the swamps between the walls and the Thames, where men live and suffer. We do not enter the brotherhood to build grand buildings. We sleep on bare pallets without pillows.”
“Why without pillows?” asked Martin, wondering.
“We need no little mountains to lift our heads to heaven. None but the sick go shod.”
“Is it not dangerous to health to go without shoes in the winter?”
“God protects us,” said the master, smiling sweetly. “One of our friars found a pair of shoes last winter on a frosty morning, and wore them to matins. At night he had a dream. He dreamt that he was travelling on the work of God, and that at a dangerous pass in the forest of the Cotswolds, robbers leapt out upon him, crying, ‘Kill, kill.’
“‘I am a friar,’ he shrieked.
“‘You lie,’ they replied, ‘for you go shod.’
“He awoke and threw the shoes out of the window.”
“And did he catch cold afterwards?”
Another smile.
“No, my son, all these things go by habit.”
“Shall I begin to leave off my shoes?”
“Not yet, your vocation is not settled. You may yet choose the world.”
“I never shall.”
“Poor boy, you are young and cannot tell. Perhaps before nightfall a different light may be thrown upon your good resolutions.”
A pause ensued. At length Martin went on, “At least you have books. I love books.”
“At first we had not even them, but later on the Holy Father thought that those who contend with the unbelieving learned should be learned themselves. They who pour forth must suck in.”
“When did the Order come to Oxford?”
“Thirty years agone. When we first landed at Dover we made our way to London, the home of commerce, and Oxford, the home of learning. The two first gray brethren lost their way in the woods of Nuneham, on their road to the city, and afraid of the floods, which were out, and of the dark night, which made it difficult to avoid the water, took refuge in a grange, which belonged to the Abbey of Abingdon, where dwelt a small branch of the great Benedictine Brotherhood. Their clothes were ragged and torn with thorns, and they only spoke broken English, so the monks took them for the travelling jugglers of the day, and welcomed them with great hospitality. But after supper they all assembled in the common room, and bade the supposed jugglers show their craft.
“‘We be not jugglers, we be poor brethren of our Lord and Saint Francis.’
“Now the monks were very jealous of the new Order, so unlike themselves, in its renunciation of ease and luxury, and in very spite they called them knaves and impostors, and kicked them out of doors.”
“What did they do?”
“They slept under a tree, and the angels comforted them. The next day they got to Oxford and began their work. The plague had been raging in the poorer quarters of the city, and they brought the joy of the Gospel to those miserable people. At length their numbers increased, and they built this house wherein we dwell.”
In such conversation as this Martin passed a happy hour, then went to the first lecture he attended, in the schools attached to the friary, where the great works of Augustine and Aquinas formed the text books; no Creek as yet. He passed from Latin to Logic, as the handmaid of theology. The great thinker Aristotle supplied the method, not the language or matter, and became the ally of Christianity, under the rendering of a learned brother.
Then followed the noontide meal, a stroll with some younger companions of his own age, to whom he had been specially introduced, which led them so far afield that they only returned in time for the vesper service, at the friary.
After the service Martin should have returned to his lodgings at once, but, tempted by the novelty of all he saw about him, he lingered in the streets, and saw cause to alter his opinion of the extreme propriety of the students. Some of them were playing at pitch and toss in the thievish corners. At least half a dozen pairs of antagonists were settling their quarrels with their fists or with quarterstaves, in various secluded nooks. Songs, gay rather than grave, not to say a trifle licentious, resounded; while once or twice he was asked: “Are you North or South?”—a query to which he hardly knew how to reply, Kenilworth being north and Sussex south of Oxford.
But the penalty of not answering was a rude jostling, which tried his temper sadly, and awoke the old Adam within him, which our readers remember only slumbered. He looked through the open door of a tavern. It was full of the young reprobates, and the noise and turmoil was deafening.
As he stood by the door, three or four grave-looking men came along.
“We must get them all home, or there will be bloodshed tonight,” Martin heard one say.
“It will be difficult,” replied the other.
Into the tavern they turned, and the noise suddenly subsided.
“What do ye here, ye reprobates, that ye stand drinking, dicing, quarrelling? To your hostels, every one of you,” said the first.
Martin expected scornful resistance, and was surprised to see that instead, all the rapscallions evacuated the place, and the “proctors,” as we should now call them, remained to remonstrate with the host, whose license they threatened to withdraw.
“How can I help it?” he said. “They be too many for me.”
“If you cannot keep order, seek another trade,” was the stern response. “We cannot have the morals of our scholars corrupted.”
“Bless you, sirs, it is they who corrupt me. I don’t know half the wickedness they do.”
Our readers need not believe him, the proctors did not.
But Martin took the warning, and was bent on getting home, only he lost his way, and could not find it again. It was not for want of asking; but the young scholars he met preferred lies to truth, in the mere frolic of puzzling a newcomer, and sent him first to Frideswide’s, thence to the East Gate, near Saint Clement’s Chapel, and he was making his way back with difficulty along the High Street when he heard an awful confusion and uproar about the “Quatre Voies” (Carfax) Conduit.
“Down with the lubberly North men!”
“Split their skulls, though they be like those of the bullocks their sires drive!”
“Down with the moss troopers!”
“Boves boreales!”
And answering cries:
“Down with the lisping, smooth-tongued Southerners!”
“Australes asini!”
“Eheu!”
“Slay me every one with a burr in his mouth.” (An allusion to the Northumbrian accent.)
“Down with the mincing fools who have got no r.r.r’s”
“Burrrrn them, you should say.”
“Frangite capita.”
“Percutite porcos boreales.”
“Vim inferre australibus asinis.”
“Sternite omnes Gallos.”
So they shouted imprecations in Latin and English, and eke in French, for there were many Gauls about.
What chance of getting through the fighting, drunken, riotous mobs? Quarterstaves were rising and falling upon heads and shoulders. No deadlier weapons were used, but showers of missiles from time to time descended, unsavoury or otherwise.
At length the superior force of the Northern men prevailed, and Martin, whose blood was strangely stirred, saw a slim and delicate youth fighting so bravely with a huge Northern ox (“bos borealis,” he called him) that for a time he stayed the rush, until the whole Southern line gave way and Martin, entangled with the rout, got driven down Saint Mary’s Lane, opposite the church of that name, an earlier building on the site of the present University church.
At an angle of the street, where another lane entered in, the young Southerner before mentioned turned to bay, and with three or four more of his countryfolk kept the narrow way against scores of pursuers.
Martin could not restrain himself any longer. He saw three or four men pressed by dozens, and rushed with all the fire of his generous and impetuous nature to their aid, in time to intercept a blow aimed at the young leader.
Well could he brandish such weapons, and he stood side by side and settled many a “bos borealis,” or northern bullock, with as much zest as ever a southern butcher. But at length his leader fell, and Martin stood diverting the strokes aimed at his fallen companion, who was stunned for the moment, until a rough hearty voice cried out:
“Let them alone, they have had enough. ’Tis cowardly to fight a dozen to one. Listen, the row is on in the Quatre Voies again. We shall find more there.”
The two were left alone.
Martin raised his wounded companion, whose head was bleeding profusely.
“Art thou hurt much?”
“Not so very much, only dazed. I shall soon be better. I am close home.”
“Let me support you. Lean on me, I will see you safe.”
“You came just in time. Where did you come from? I never saw you before—and where did you learn to handle the cudgel so well?”
“From the woods of merry Sussex, and later on, the tilt yard of Kenilworth.”
“Oh, you are a true Southerner, then. So am I, the second son of Waleran de Monceux of Herst, in the Andredsweald.
“Here we are at home—come in to Saint Dymas’ Hall.”