He wrote accordingly, offering (1597-8) to restore the place at his own charge. The offer was gratefully accepted. Bodley had married a rich widow, and his “purse-ability” was such that he was able to bear the expense of repairing the room, collecting books and endowing the library: a work, says Casaubon, rather for a king than a private man. Two years were spent in fitting up the room and erecting its superb heraldic roof. The ceiling is divided into square compartments, on each of which are painted the arms of the University, the open Bible with seven seals (I Rev. v. I) between three ducal crowns, on the open pages of which are the words, so truly fitting for a Christian school: “Dominus Illuminatio mea.”

Cooks Buildings S. John’s
Cooks Buildings S. John’s

On bosses which intervene between each compartment are painted the arms of Bodley himself.

Bodley now began to solicit his great store of honourable friends to present books to the library. His proposal was warmly supported by his countrymen in Devonshire, where, as a contemporary records, “every man bethought himself now how by some good book or other he might be written in the scroll of benefactors.”

This scroll was the register which Bodley had provided for the enrolment of the names of all benefactors, with particulars of their gifts. It consists of two large folios, ornamented with silver-gilt bosses on their massy covers, which lie on a table of the great room.

Bodley’s own donations were large, and he employed a London bookseller to travel on the Continent and collect books for the library. Besides numerous private benefactors like Lord Buckhurst and the Earl of Essex in the early years, the Stationers Company agreed to give Bodley a copy of every book which they published on condition that they might borrow the books thus given if needed for reprinting. This arrangement, in making which Bodley said he met with many rubs and delays, was the precursor of the obligation of the Copyright Acts, by which a copy of every book published has to be presented to the Bodleian and the British Museum. In 1603 Sir Walter Raleigh made a donation of fifty pounds, and he no doubt had some share in influencing the bestowal of many of the books which had once belonged to the library of Bishop Hieron. Ossorius, and were carried off from Faro in Portugal, when that town was captured by the English fleet under Essex. Raleigh, an Oriel man, was a captain in the squadron. The library was opened with full solemnity in 1603, and in the following year King James granted letters patent naming the library after its founder. That was an honour most richly deserved, for Bodley was “the first practically public library in Europe; the second, that of Angelo Rocca at Rome, being opened only in this same year.”

To this library, two years later, James, the pedant, who seemed determined to prove that a learned king, too, could be a crowned ass, paid a visit. After making an excessively feeble pun anent the bust of the founder in the large room, which had been sent there by the Earl of Dorset, Chancellor of the University, he looked at the book shelves, and remarked that he had often had proof from the University of the fruits of talent and ability, but had never before seen the garden where those fruits grew, and whence they were gathered. He examined various MSS. and discoursed wisely on them; took up the treatise by Gaguinus entitled “De puritate conceptionis Virginis Mariæ,” and remarked that the author had so written about purity, as if he wished that it should only be found on the title of his book. The opportunity of thus displaying his learning was so grateful to the King, that he was moved to an astonishing act of generosity. He offered to present from all the libraries of the royal palaces whatever precious and rare books Sir T. Bodley might choose to carry away. It does not appear that the number or importance of books so granted was in the event very great. Upon leaving the room the King exclaimed, probably with sincerity, that were he not King James he would be a University man; and that were it his fate at any time to be a captive, he would wish to be shut up, could he but have the choice, in this place as his prison, to be bound with its chains, and to consume his days among its books as his fellows in captivity.

To this library came James’ ill-starred son, and here, it is said, he was tempted by Lord Falkland to consult the “Sortes Virgilianæ.” The passage which first met his eye runs thus in Dryden’s translation:

Lord Falkland then opened the Virgil in his turn, hoping that his “lot” might remove the gloomy impression of this bad omen.

The Gardens Exeter College
The Gardens Exeter College

But the passage on which he lit dealt with the untimely death of Pallas:

To this library Bacon sent his new book, “The Advancement of Learning,” and here Milton, leaving the allegro of Horton or Forest Hill for the penseroso of Oxford’s cloisters, made friends with the librarian, and added his own poems to those treasures which were soon to be defended by the “unshaken virtue” of his friend, Fairfax, and increased by the Chancellor, Oliver Cromwell. This is not the place to catalogue the list of those treasures, the wealth of European literature and the MSS. of the nearer and the farther East; the great collections which immortalise the names of the donors, like Laud and Selden, Rawlinson, Gough, Douce and Sutherland; the books which belonged to Queen Elizabeth and Queen Margaret, to Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Addison and Shelley; the curios and objets-d’art, princely gifts, like the Arundel and Selden marbles, coins and portraits, minor curiosities, like stuffed alligators and dried negro boys, or the lantern of Guy Fawkes, which have all found a resting-place in

In such a place, with such a history, it would be strange indeed if we did not feel something of the charm that breathes from the very stones of Bodley.

From the hot and noisy street you pass into the peaceful Schools’ quadrangle, lying beneath the shade of that curious tower, which, as it were an academic conceit in stone, blends the five orders of classic architecture with Gothic turret and pinnacle. Architecturally the “Schools” are plain and poor, but you remember that Bodley conceived the idea of rebuilding them, and that it was the day after his body had been put to rest in Merton Chapel (29th March 1613) that the first stone was laid. The Bodleian forms the west side of this quadrangle. The east wing of the great library, built (1610-1613) by Bodley when already there was “more need of a library for the books than of books for the library,” is panelled like the Divinity School, and stretches over the entrance to it, the Proscholium or “Pig Market,” where candidates for degrees were obliged to wait. The west wing extends over Laud’s late Gothic Convocation House (1634-1640); the books have usurped the third story of the Schools and the Clarendon building; they are filling the mighty camera beyond and overflowing into the Ashmolean. But the entrance to the heart of this grand collection is a modest portal. It opens on a long winding stair, so long and so wearisome that you seem to have trodden the very path by which true knowledge is gained ere you pass through a simple green baize door and see the panorama of all learning, lit by the glass of the east window, outspread before your eyes.

So to approach it, and passing by the outer library through the yielding wicket, into Duke Humphrey’s gallery, there to turn into one of the quiet recesses, and calling for book after book, to summon spirits from the deep of the past, to hold quiet converse with them, while the breeze and sunlight flow gently in across Wren’s huge buttresses from the green garden of Exeter, till Bodley’s own solemn bell calls them back to their resting-place; this, as has been well said, is the very luxury, or rather the very poetry of study. “What a place,” exclaimed Elia, “What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odour of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.”

The growth of the Puritan feeling in Oxford is shown by the formation of the first Baptist society under Vavasour Powell of Jesus College, whom John Bunyan once accompanied to this city. The growth of the Puritan tendency to preach is also indicated by the strange case of Richard Haydock, a physician of New College, who obtained some notoriety about this time by preaching at night in his bed. Sermons, he said, came to him by revelation in his sleep, and he would take a text in his slumbers and preach on it, “and though his auditory were willing to silence him by pulling, haling and pinching, yet would he pertinaciously persist to the end and sleep still.” He was not a married fellow evidently. King James sent for him, and he preached to the monarch in his sleep, but James made him confess that he was a fraud, who had adopted this curious means of advertising himself.

The King and Queen and Prince Henry visited Oxford in 1605, and were welcomed very much as Elizabeth had been. The King, we are told, showed himself to be of an admirable wit and judgment. The scholars welcomed him by clapping their hands and humming, which, it was explained to him, signified applause.

The presence of King James’ court, however, was responsible, if we may believe Wood, for a serious change in manners. For he traces the rise of that “damnable sin of drunkenness” to this time.

The vice in fact grew so prevalent in Oxford, as in the rest of England, that a statute was passed forbidding members of the University to visit any tavern and there “sit idly, drink, or use any unlawful play.” The use of the Latin tongue, attendance at lectures and the wearing of academical dress was also insisted on by the new Chancellor, Archbishop Bancroft, who added an injunction that long hair was not to be worn: long hair in those days being accounted a sign not of a poet but of a swaggerer and ruffian. A few years later it was provided, as a measure directed against the still increasing vice of drunkenness, that no scholar should lodge without his college or hall, and that no citizen should entertain a scholar in his house.

The Gunpowder Plot led to more stringent measures being taken to root out the Roman Catholics from the University. It is possibly to the deep impression made by that event that the foundation of Wadham College is due. The founder of that college (1609), Nicholas Wadham, is said to have intended to endow a Roman Catholic college at Venice, but to have decided to endow a number of non-clerical and terminable fellowships at Oxford instead. His widow, Dorothy, carried out his plans, and, after Gloucester Hall had refused the benefaction, purchased the site of the suppressed settlement of Augustinian Friars and built the front quadrangle with hall and chapel as, externally, we have them to-day. For the interior of the chapel was dealt with by the Gothic revivalists (1834). The Wadhams were West Country folk, and the majority of workmen engaged were Somersetshire men. It is suggested that the extraordinarily fine Perpendicular character of the chapel choir is due to this fact; and that the masons reproduced, in the seventeenth century, the style of their county churches. The choir is a copy of fifteenth-century work; the ante-chapel and the rest of the quadrangle, so charming in its unadorned simplicity, are beautiful examples of the survival in Oxford of the Gothic tradition. Quadrangles at Merton and Wadham are the most notable examples of this debased and nondescript style, redeemed by most excellent composition, proportioned like some Elizabethan manor.

James had been inclined at first to favour the Puritans, but when he finally cast in his lot with the High Church party, the University, which he, like Elizabeth, had done his best to conciliate as the educational centre of the national clergy, supported him loyally. In the year of his accession he had granted letters patent to both Universities, empowering them each to choose two grave and learned men, professing the civil law, to serve as burgesses in the House of Parliament; and the Universities were again indebted to him when they were called upon to furnish scholars for the great task of preparing the Authorised Version of the Bible.

Thus Oxford had its share in giving the Book to the people. From this time forward every Englishman was more than ever a theologian, and at the Universities, as at Westminster, theological controversy absorbed all energies. Literature, says Grotius (1613), has little reward. “Theologians rule, lawyers find profit, Casaubon alone has a fair success, but he himself thinks it uncertain, and not even he would have had any place as a literary man—he had to turn theologian.”

Oxford, in return, declared itself on the side of passive obedience. The Church embraced the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings; the University burned the books of Paræus in S. Mary’s Churchyard, and solemnly decreed that it was not lawful for the subject to resist his sovereign by force of arms, or to make war against him, either offensive or defensive (1622). Thus it is evident that the influence of Calvin had died away at Oxford, and that the University had adopted, by the end of James’ reign, the reactionary creed of Laud, and was ready to support the Stuart claim to absolutism. The Divine Right of Kings and the Divine Right of Bishops, as it was indicated by James’ own phrase, “No Bishop, no King,” was to be for more than a generation the official creed of Oxford schooled by Laud. For meanwhile one William Laud, B.D. of S. John’s College, had filled the office of proctor and had been censured by the Vice-Chancellor for letting fall in a sermon at S. Mary’s divers passages savouring of Popery. But he survived the reproof. President of S. John’s from 1611-1621, he set himself to reform the discipline of the University and to undo the work of Leicester.

In 1630 he was elected Chancellor in opposition to the younger brother of the late Chancellor, Lord Pembroke, who was supported by the Calvinists. Preaching on the points in dispute between Calvin and Arminius was at once forbidden. This, with Laud as Chancellor, meant that the Puritans, who regarded Laud’s “High Church” views as little better than Popery in disguise and as exposing the country to a danger which was too near and too deadly to be trifled with, were muzzled or driven from the country; but their opponents, if they preached against the practices of Geneva, met only with the mildest kind of rebuke. Laud’s experience of the University had convinced him of the necessity of revising and codifying the statutes “which had long lain in a confused heap.” As Chancellor he at once set about that difficult task. The Caroline or Laudian Statutes were based on the old statutes and customs as collected, transcribed and drawn up by the antiquarian, Brian Twyne, fellow of C.C.C. Laud rewarded him with the office of Custos Archivorum. It was from the vast and scholarly collections of Brian Twyne that Wood quarried freely, and, it must be said, without due acknowledgment. But Wood succeeded in a task beyond Twyne’s powers. He achieved immortality by clothing the dry bones of antiquarian fact or fancy in prose at times so racy and at times so musical.

Already (1629) Laud had been responsible for the introduction of the cycle, which put an end to the riots that had hitherto attended the election of proctors. Free election by the academical democracy had resulted in frequent abuses. The cycle invented

Oriel Window S. John’s College
Oriel Window S. John’s College

by Peter Turner of Merton assigned to each college in turn, and in proportion to its size and dignity, the right of nominating proctors. The system, modified in 1856 and 1887, still obtains. His care for discipline led the Chancellor to make some much-needed reforms in the direction of diminishing the number of ale-houses and enforcing a proper system of licensing in the town. By his own proclamation he named a toll-gatherer for the market; he obtained an order from Council for the destruction of cottages which the townsmen had erected round about the wall and ditch; and, in spite of a protest from the citizens, the Caroline Charter was obtained, confirming the rights of the University over the town.

When the labours of Twyne were finished and the Delegacy had at last succeeded in codifying the laws and customs, the code was placed in the hands of Laud. He corrected the draft, and in 1636 the Corpus Statutorum was promulgated, confirmed by the King and gratefully accepted by the University. The new code was destined to govern it for two hundred years and more. Though to a great extent a digest of statutes already in force, the Laudian Statutes completed and stereotyped the changes which had long been taking place. The old order changes; the academic commonwealth becomes an oligarchy; the University is henceforth to be governed by a “Hebdomadal Board,” and all power is definitely concentrated in the hands of the colleges and the Heads of Houses.

The old scholastic disputations were superseded by a system of public examinations; the studies required for a degree were organised and defined; the tutorial system was emphasised by the regulation which required the student to enter under a tutor resident in the same college. The code was received with effusive gratitude. The popularity of Laud was not merely due to the vigour with which he had been enforcing his views of orthodoxy, and compelling all, whether Roman Catholics or Puritans, to recant if ever in their sermons they controverted the Arminian doctrines, which the Stuarts had adopted as the fundamental principles of their policy in Church and State. For apart from his narrow Church policy Laud was, in University matters, both an earnest reformer and a great benefactor. He presented the library with a magnificent collection of Oriental MSS.; he founded and endowed the Professorship of Arabic, and, most valuable of all, he obtained for the University the right of printing Bibles, which is one of the most valuable endowments of that insufficiently endowed institution to-day. Besides his buildings at S. John’s College, the building of the Convocation House, adjoining the Divinity School (1634-1638), with the extension of the Bodleian above it, mark the chancellorship of Laud, and as the seat of Oxford’s government fitly recall the age of its great lawgiver. The Botanic Gardens were also founded at this period, and the porch of S. Mary’s was erected in 1637 by the Archbishop’s chaplain, Dr Owen. The beautiful twisted columns of this, the south-west porch, are surmounted by a fine statue of the Virgin, crowned, with the Child in her arms. This statue gave such offence to the Puritans, that it actually figured in the articles of impeachment against the Archbishop.

Under Laud the University had quite recovered its popularity. There were no less than four thousand students; many men of learning and piety were numbered among its alumni; discipline was to a great extent established. But the coming struggle soon began to upset the new régime. For the Civil War was inevitably approaching. The chancellorship of Laud was crowned by a visit from the King and Queen in 1636. But though the University and town went out, as was their custom, towards Woodstock to meet their royal visitors, and though speeches and ceremonies were performed as usual, Wood notes that in the streets “neither scholars nor citizens made any expressions of joy or uttered as the manner is, Vivat Rex!” The visit lasted three days. The Elector Palatine and Prince Rupert received honorary M.A. degrees. Charles paid special attention to S. John’s College, out of compliment to Laud, who entertained the royal party there, and drew attention to the library he had enlarged and the quadrangle he had built, mainly out of the stones obtained from the old Carmelite Convent in Beaumont Palace—once the Palace of Kings. From that time forward S. John’s was the most royalist of colleges. One of its most treasured possessions was the portrait of the Royal Martyr, “which has the whole of the book of Psalms written in the lines of the face and the hair of the head.” Of this picture, as of other things, the story is told that Charles II. begged it of the college, and promised in return to grant them any request they might make. They gave the picture, and requested His Majesty to give them—the picture back again. Comedies were performed at S. John’s and Christ Church. The play at S. John’s, “The Hospital of Lovers” was “merry and without offence,” but that at Christ Church, by William Strode, the public orator, called the “Floating Island,” had more of the moralist than poet in it. The scenery was realistic, but Lord Carnarvon declared the piece to be the worst he ever saw, except one at Cambridge. Another play at Christ Church, “The Royal Slave,” by William Cartwright, was more successful. The scenery of the interludes was arranged by Inigo Jones. The Queen was so pleased with this piece, that she borrowed the Persian dresses and the scenery of the piece and had it repeated at Hampton Court, but “by all men’s confession, the players came short of the University actors.”

Charles, in this matter at least, was more fortunate than his father. For James had suffered much boredom from a play called “Technogamia, or the Marriage of the Arts,” in which “there was no point and no sense but non-sense.” He was with difficulty induced to stay to the end.

CHAPTER IX

THE ROYALIST CAPITAL

Prynne’s ears had been cut off, but the Puritans multiplied their conventicles in Oxford. But it was not till after Laud’s impeachment, and his short pathetic resignation of his chancellorship, dated from the Tower, 1641, that they grew so bold as to preach and discourse as they listed. Then the Puritan feeling grew rapidly not only among the townsmen but also in the colleges. A maypole set up in Holywell in derision of a certain Puritan musician was pulled down by the scholars of New Inn and Magdalen Hall. The report that the Mitre Inn was a meeting-place for recusants, gave occasion for the enemies of Laud to allege in the House of Commons that through his influence the University was infected with Popery. A certificate was accordingly drawn up by the Heads of Houses to the effect that “they knew not any one member of this University guilty of or addicted to Popery.” Parliament, however, requisitioned the records of the University in order to obtain evidence against Laud. Some of his regulations, such as the encouraging of the use of copes and of Latin prayers in Lent, were indeed used to support the charge of high treason against him.

The Puritans, however, remained in the minority at Oxford. The part which she would take in the Civil War was never doubtful. Laud had filled the chief posts of the University with carefully chosen High Churchmen of great ability. Oxford was committed to the doctrines of passive obedience, and fast rooted in the tenets of the Anglican Church. The University pressed upon Parliament the duty of maintaining Episcopacy and the Cathedrals. The contemptuous treatment their arguments met with was contrasted with the reply of Charles, that “he would rather feed on bread and water than mingle any part of God’s patrimony with his own revenues.” Learning and studies, he maintained, must needs perish if the honours and rewards of learning were destroyed; nor would the monarchy itself stand long if the hierarchy perished. “No Bishop, no King!”

Parliament, it was felt, had shown unfriendly feeling towards the University. The town, headed by Alderman John Nixon, had most unmistakably shown that its sympathies were with the Parliament. It is not surprising therefore to find that in the coming struggle the University is always unreservedly on the side of the King. Royalist colleges like New College and Christ Church took the lead, and Puritan establishments like Lincoln and Magdalen followed unprotestingly.

When (1642) a letter from the King at York, asking for contributions to his necessary defence, was laid before Convocation, it was unanimously resolved that whatever money the University was possessed of, should be lent to the King. The colleges and private persons were equally loyal. University College set an example which was freely followed. The bulk of the college plate was pawned, and the sum advanced on it was immediately dispatched to the King.

The Parliament retorted in vain with prohibitory letters, and demanded the surrender of the chief champions of the King—Prideaux, Rector of Exeter; Fell, Dean of Christ Church; Frewen, President of Magdalen; and Potter, Provost of Queen’s.

Since there was a strong report that divers troops of soldiers were constantly passing hard by the city on their march to secure Banbury and Warwick for the Parliament, the University began to put itself in a posture of defence. Masters and scholars rallied together on 18th August to drill in Christ Church Quadrangle, and marched from the Schools up the High Street to the number of three hundred and thirty or more, making ready to defend the city.

Among the array are mentioned some divines and a Doctor of Civil Law from New College, who served with a pike. As for drums and colours, those belonging to the Cooks’ Corporation served their turn for the present. Meantime the highway “at the hither end of East Bridge, just at the corner of the Chaplain’s Quadrangle of Magdalen College,” was blocked up with long timber logs to keep out horsemen, and a timber gate was also erected there and chained at night. Some loads of stones were carried up to the top of Magdalen Tower, to be flung down on the enemy at their entrance. Two posts were set up at Smith Gate, with a chain to run through them to bar the way; a crooked trench in the form of a bow was made across the highway at the end of S. John’s College walks; and measures were taken to provide the scholars with barbed arrows. A strict watch was kept at nights.

Charles raised his standard at Nottingham, and on 28th August Sir John Byron rode in at the head of one or two hundred troopers to secure Oxford for the King. The scholars “closed with them and were joyful for their coming. Yet some Puritanical townsmen out of guilt fled to Abingdon, fearing they should be ill-used and imprisoned.”

On 1st September twenty-seven senior members of the University, with the Vice-Chancellor, Prideaux, and the proctors, formed themselves into what the scholars nicknamed a Council of War, to arrange with Byron for the safety of the University. Drilling went on steadily in the quadrangles of Christ Church and Corpus Christi, of New College and Magdalen. Attempts were also made to take up Osney Bridge and to substitute a drawbridge. But the townsmen and their train-bands, which had assembled in Broken Hayes, objected, and the scholars and troopers were forced to desist.

But a strong Parliamentary force lay at Aylesbury. It was evident that, with the best will in the world, a few hundred troopers and enthusiastic scholars could not hold the city, which lay at present so far from the King’s quarters. The townsmen were by no means eager Royalists. They made fair pretences of joining with the University and King’s troops, but they informed Parliament that all they had done for the King was at the instigation of the University. The University accordingly sent to Aylesbury to inform the threatening Parliamentarians there that they would lay down their arms and dismiss the troopers. Dr Pink, however, Warden of New College and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, who had gone to make his peace at Aylesbury, was seized and committed to prison in the gate-house at Westminster. On 10th September Byron rode away. About a hundred volunteers from the University accompanied him, and most of them made their way to Worcester before the siege.

Two days later Colonel Arthur Goodwin rode into the city with a troop of Parliamentarians. Goodwin was lodged at Merton, and his troopers picketed their horses in Christ Church meadows. The college gates were kept open, and the soldiers wandered in to see the cathedral and painted windows, “and much admired at the idolatry of them.” Lord Say, the Parliamentarian Lord Lieutenant of Oxford, a New College man, arrived on 14th September, and immediately ordered that the works and trenches of the scholars should be demolished. The colleges were searched for arms and plate. The Christ Church plate was hidden by the staunch Dr Fell. It was found hidden in the walls behind the wainscot and in the cellar. The plate of University College was found in the house of Mr Thomas Smith. This Say adjudged to be lawful prize, but he told the fellows that as long as they kept their plate in places fit for plate, the treasury or buttery, it should remain untouched.

The city was mustered at Broken Hayes, and the arms of the train-bands were shown to Lord Say, who shortly afterwards left the place with his men, for both sides were now massing their forces. Little damage had been done, but “his Lordship caused divers Popish books and pictures, as he called them, which he had taken out of churches, and especially the houses of Papists here in Oxford and in the country, to be burned in the street, against the Star Inn,” where he had lodged. And as they were leaving the town, one of the London troopers, when passing S. Mary’s Church, discharged a brace of bullets at the “very scandalous image” of Our Lady over the porch, striking off her head and the head of the Child, which she held in her right arm. Another fired at the image of Our Saviour over All Souls’ gate, and would have defaced all the work there, if he had not been remonstrated with by the citizens. He retorted that they had not been so well entertained at Oxford as they expected.

Say made a disastrous miscalculation in thus evacuating Oxford. For within a few weeks it was destined to become and to remain the headquarters of the King.

Many Royalists who had been wounded at Edgehill were brought into Oxford. On 29th October the King, with the Duke of York, Prince Charles and Rupert, rode in with the army at the North Gate. The colours taken from the enemy were carried in triumph; the King was received by the mayor with a present of money at Pennilesse Bench, and the heavy ordnance, twenty-seven pieces in all, were driven into Magdalen College Grove. The princes and many of the court took their degrees. Charles stayed but a short while, for, after having recruited his army and having been presented by the colleges with all the money they had in their treasuries, he presently left the city to make an advance on London. For Reading had surrendered to the Royalists, and Rupert’s daring capture of Brentford now threatened the capital. But the junction of the train-bands of London with the army of Essex forced Charles to fall back on his old quarters at Oxford. There the fortification of the town was giving him a firm hold on the Midland counties.

A plan of fortifications had been prepared by one Rallingson, a B.A. of Queen’s College. A series of earthworks, with sharp angles flanking each other, was to be thrown up outside the town. On 5th December 1642 the University bellman had gone about the city warning all privileged persons that were householders to send some of their families next day to dig at the works. The citizens, however, who were set to work north of S. Giles’, were not enthusiastic. The King found only twelve of them working where there should have been one hundred and twenty-two, “of which neglect his majesty took notice and told them in the field.”

The trench and rampart thus begun by the privileged men and workmen paid by the colleges, ran from the Cherwell at Holywell Mill, passing by Wadham and S. John’s gardens and S. Giles’ Church up to the branch of the Thames at Walton Bridge. Next, similar earthworks were made to cover S. Clement’s, the east suburb. As time was pressing, and the city and county were not eager workers, the King called upon the University to help in February. The members of the various colleges were set to work on the line which ran from Folly Bridge across Christ Church meadow in front of Merton. (The bastion traceable in Merton Gardens dates from this time.) In the following June every person resident in a college or hall between sixteen and sixty was required to give a day’s work a week with pick and spade, or to pay for a substitute, if unable or unwilling to anticipate the labours of Mr Ruskin. Finally (January 1644), the colleges were commanded to raise the sum of forty pounds a week for twenty weeks to complete the works.

Before leaving for Reading, the King had reviewed the regiment of scholars in Christ Church meadows. They were armed with helmets and back and breast pieces. The regiment, which consisted at first of four companies only, soon grew, as enthusiasm waxed, to eight or nine companies. The gown was exchanged for the military coat, and square caps for the helmet. Meanwhile arms and provisions had been accumulated, and ammunition, “the want wherof all men looked upon with great horror,” had been thrown into the town.

The New College cloister and tower were converted into a magazine for muskets, bullets and gunpowder; corn was stored in the Law and Logic School, and victuals in the Guildhall. Clothes for the army were stowed in the Music and Astronomy Schools. The mill at Osney was used as a powder factory.

The King now established his court at Christ Church. Never perhaps has there existed so curious a spectacle as Oxford presented in these days. A city unique in itself, so the author of “John Inglesant” has described it, became the resort of a court under unique circumstances, and of an innumerable throng of people of every rank, disposition and taste, under circumstances the most extraordinary and romantic.

The ancient colleges and halls were thronged with ladies and gentlemen of the court, some of whom found themselves like fishes out of water (as one of them expressed it), when they were obliged to be content with “a very bad bed in a garret of a baker’s house in an obscure street, and one dish of meat a day, and that not the best ordered, no money and no clothes.” Soldiers were quartered in the college gates and the kitchens. Yet, amidst all this confusion, there was maintained both something of a courtly pomp and something of a learned and religious society. The King dined and supped in public, and walked in state in Christ Church meadow and Merton Gardens and the Grove of Trinity, which the wits called Daphne. A parliament sat from day to day. For (1644) the members of both Houses who had withdrawn from Westminster were summoned to meet at Oxford. The King received them very graciously in Christ Church Hall, made them a speech, and asked them to consult together in the Divinity Schools and to advise him for the good of the kingdom. About three hundred commons and sixty peers thus sat at Oxford, and a hundred commons and ten or a dozen peers at Westminster, so that the country enjoyed the felicity of two parliaments at once, each denying the right of the other to exist. The branch at Westminster rejected overtures of peace from the branch at Oxford. The latter devoted themselves to finding funds for the war. Contributions were called for, and the members themselves headed the list. A mint was established at New Inn Hall, and all plate that was brought in was coined.[37] At Westminster, on the other hand, the system of an excise upon beer, wine and spirits was invented.

And whilst Parliament sat in the Divinity Schools, service was sung daily in all the chapels; books both of learning and poetry were printed in the city, and the distinctions which the colleges had to offer were conferred with pomp on the royal followers, as almost the only rewards the King had to bestow. Men of every opinion flocked to Oxford, and many foreigners came to visit the King. Christmas interludes were enacted in hall, and Shakespeare’s plays performed; the groves and walks of the colleges, and especially Christ Church meadow and the Grove at Trinity, were the resort of a brilliant throng of gay courtiers and gayer ladies; the woods were vocal with song and music; love and gallantry sported themselves along the pleasant river banks.

Courtyard to Palace
Courtyard to Palace

“Many times,” Aubrey of Trinity tells us, “my lady Isabella Thynne would make her entry into our grove with a lute or theorbo played before her. I have heard her play on it in the grove myself; for which Mr Edmund Waller hath in his poems for ever made her famous.” But old Dr Kettell of Trinity had no feeling for this sort of thing. He lectured Lady Isabella and her friend Mrs Fanshawe in no mincing terms when they attended chapel one morning “half dressed, like angels.” “Madam,” he cried by way of peroration, “get you gone for a very woman!” The poets and wits vied with each other in classic conceits and parodies, wherein the events of the day and every individual incident were portrayed and satirised. Wit, learning and religion, joined hand in hand, as in some grotesque and brilliant masque. The most admired poets and players and the most profound mathematicians became “Romancists” and monks, and exhausted all their wit and poetry and learning in furthering their divine mission, and finally, as the last scenes of this strange drama came on, fell fighting on some hardly-contested grassy slope, and were buried on the spot, or in the next village churchyard, in the dress in which they played Philaster, or the court garb in which they wooed their mistress, or the doctor’s gown in which they preached before the King, or read Greek in the schools.

This gaiety was much increased when the Queen joined Charles on 14th July 1643. Two thousand foot, one thousand horse, six pieces of cannon and two mortars, which formed her escort, proved a welcome addition to the cause. The Queen, who had entered the city in great state and had been loyally welcomed, held her court at Merton, where, ever since, the room over the archway into the Fellows’ Quadrangle has been known as the Queen’s Chamber. From it a passage was constructed through Merton Hall and its vestibule, crossing the archway over Patey’s Quadrangle, and descending to the sacristy, thence by a door into the chapel, and so to the grove and the gardens of Corpus. Hence a door, still traceable, was opened in the garden wall, and the private way was continued till it reached the royal apartments in Christ Church.

Well might the classic wits compare the scene to the marriage of Jupiter and Juno of old, for here indeed wisdom and folly, vice and piety, learning and gaiety, terrible earnest even unto death and light frivolity jostled each other in the stately precincts of Parnassus and Olympus.

Meantime, the war was going more and more in favour of the King. Parliament redoubled its endeavours. Essex, whose army had been freshly equipped, was ordered to advance upon Oxford. But he did not care to risk his raw forces, and contented himself with recapturing Reading. The King was ready to “give him battle about Oxford if he advanced; and in the meantime, encamped his foot upon the downs, about a mile from Abingdon, which was the head-quarters for his horse.” At Westminster it was believed that Charles could not withstand a resolute attack on Oxford. Disease, however, thinned the ranks of Essex, and his inaction gave the Queen an opportunity of dispatching to Oxford a much-needed convoy of arms and ammunition. Charles now felt that he could resist any attack, and even afford to send part of his small force from Oxford to aid the rising in the west. At last, to quiet his supporters in London, Essex advanced towards Thame. His presence there, and the information given him by Colonel Hurry, a Scottish deserter, provided Rupert with an opportunity for making one of those daring raids which have immortalised the name of that dashing cavalry leader. Essex had made a futile endeavour to capture Islip. The same afternoon, with a force of about a thousand men, Rupert sallied out, hoping to cut off a convoy which was bringing £21,000 from London to Essex’s army. An hour after midnight the tramp of his band was heard by the sentinels at Tetsworth; two hours later, as the sky was whitening before the dawn, he surprised a party of the enemy at Postcombe. He then proceeded to Chinnor, within two miles of Thame, and again successfully surprised a force of the enemy. It was now time to look out for the convoy. The alarm, however, had been given. The drivers were warned by a countryman, and they turned the heads of their team into the woods, which clothed the sides of the Chiltern Hills. Rupert could not venture to follow. Laden with prisoners and booty the Royalists were returning to Oxford, when, about eight o’clock in the morning, they found themselves cut off by the cavalry who had been dispatched by Essex. Rupert had just passed Chalgrove Field and was entering the lane which led to Chiselhampton Bridge, where a regiment of foot had been ordered to come out to support his return, when the enemy’s horse was found to be overtaking him. He immediately ordered the guard with the prisoners to make their way to the bridge, whilst he with his tired troopers drew up on Chalgrove Field. The Parliamentarians hoped to hold him till succour arrived from headquarters. It was a dangerous game to play with Rupert. “This insolence,” he cried, “is not to be borne.” He was the first to leap the hedge behind which the enemy was drawn up. The Roundheads fought that day as they had never fought before. They were put to flight at last, but not before Hampden himself, who had slept that night at Wallington and had ridden out as a volunteer at the sound of the alarm, had been seen “to ride off the field before the action was done, which he never used to do, with his head hanging down, and resting his hands upon the neck of his horse.” He was indeed mortally wounded, and his death seemed an omen of the ruin of the cause he loved. Disaster followed disaster. Essex fell back towards London; Bristol was surrendered into Rupert’s hands, and the flight of six of the few peers who remained at Westminster to the camp at Oxford proved the general despair of the Parliament’s success.

But the discontent and jealousy which were always rife among the soldiers and courtiers in Charles’ camp, broke out afresh when the King returned to Oxford after his failure to take Gloucester. From this moment, indeed, the firmness of Parliament and the factiousness and foolishness of the King’s party began slowly to reverse the fortunes of the war. Parliament obtained the assistance of Scotland, and Charles negotiated with the Irish Catholics. The alliance was fatal to his cause. Many of Charles’ supporters left him; the six peers fled back to Westminster. The covenant was concluded. A Scotch army crossed the border and co-operated with Fairfax and Leven in the north; Essex watched the King at Oxford, and was presently supported by Waller, who had been holding Prince Maurice in check in the west. The Queen, who was enceinte, and afraid of being besieged, now insisted on leaving Oxford (April 1644). She made her way safely to Exeter.

The Royalists abandoned Reading and fell back on Oxford, where measures were being taken for defence. Regiments were enlisted; trees were felled in Magdalen walks, and means were provided for flooding the meadows beyond. Batteries were erected at suitable points. One of these, at the north-east corner of the walks, was called Dover Pier (Dover’s Peer?), probably after the Earl of Dover, who commanded the new University Regiment. This regiment mustered for the first time on 14th May 1644 in Magdalen College Grove, and, along with the City Regiment, was reviewed on Bullingdon Green a few days later. The rise in the ground at the end of Addison’s Walk, which is still noticeable, is probably due to the high and strong causeway which we know led from the walks to the battery in the river.

The Parliamentarians advanced, Abingdon was evacuated by the Royalist army under Wilmot, and occupied by Essex. Charles was forced to withdraw all his forces to the north of Oxford. The King’s position was now so serious, that it was confidently reported in London that Oxford was taken and the King a prisoner. Another rumour ran that the King had decided to come to London, or what Parliament chiefly feared, to surrender himself to Essex. Presently, indeed, his own supporters advised this course, but His Majesty indignantly rejected the suggestion, saying that possibly he might be found in the hands of Essex, but he would be dead first.

As no help could be looked for from north or west, he determined to stay in Oxford and watch for an opportunity of fighting Waller or Essex separately. With this object in view he disposed his army so as to prevent the rebels from crossing the Cherwell or Isis, the foot holding the former and the horse and dragoons the latter. A series of smart skirmishes ensued. Some of Waller’s forces attempted to pass the Isis at Newbridge, but were repulsed. The next day (29th May), however, Essex crossed the Thames at Sandford Ferry with his whole army and quartered himself at Islip. On his way thither he halted on Bullingdon Green, “that the city might take a full view of his army and he of it.” He himself rode up within cannon shot, whilst parties of his horse skirmished about the gates, and gave the scholars and citizens an opportunity of trying their prowess. “It gave some terror to Oxon,” says Wood, “and therefore two prayers by his Majesty’s appointment were made and published, one for the safety of his Majesty’s person and the other for the preservation of the University and City, to be used in all the churches.” But there was no intention of making an assault upon the town. Essex was merely covering the passage of his baggage train. Whilst he was thus occupied and the scholars were making a sortie, Charles and Rupert ascended Magdalen Tower and watched the movements of the enemy. Next morning a determined effort was made by Essex to pass over the Cherwell at Gosworth Bridge, but he was repulsed by the musketeers with considerable loss. Essex being now on the east side of the river and cut off from communication with Waller, the King strove to avail himself of the opportunity of retaking Abingdon and engaging Waller singly.

But after an unsuccessful move against Abingdon, the design was abandoned, and the Royalist forces were once more concentrated on the north side of Oxford. Sir Jacob Ashley, Major-General of the Foot, himself took command at Gosworth Bridge, where, he perceived, Essex intended to force a passage. There he threw up breastworks and a redoubt, and succeeded in repulsing the enemy, who renewed their attacks from day to day and even brought up cannon to their support without avail. Meanwhile, however, Waller effected the passage of the Isis at Newbridge, quartered his van at Eynsham, and threatened the rear of the King’s army. Ashley was compelled to retire. Essex immediately threw his men across the Cherwell, and quartered them that night at Bletchington. His horse advanced to Woodstock. The King seemed to be enveloped by the opposing armies. But after making a demonstration against Abingdon, Charles slipped out of Oxford on the night of 3rd June. Marching out with six thousand men by S. John’s Road, he made his way along a rough crooked lane and got clear away to the north of the city. He left the Duke of York in the town, and promised, if the place was besieged, to do all he could to relieve it before it was reduced to extremity. But the town had scarcely enough provisions to stand a month’s siege.

A series of brilliant successes rewarded the perseverance of the King, for he now waited till Essex marched to attack Prince Maurice at Lyme, then turning on Waller, crushed his army at Copredy Bridge on the Cherwell, fourteen miles north of Oxford. After two days’ rest at Oxford, he followed up his success by pursuing Essex into Cornwall and gaining a complete victory over him there. But in the midst of these successes came the news of the disaster in the north. The star of Cromwell had risen where Rupert’s had begun to set, at Marston Moor. The battle of Newbury checked the King’s advance on London, and he withdrew once more to winter at Oxford (27th October 1644). He was much pleased with the progress that had been made with the fortifications. In order to carry on his operations against Waller and Essex, he had been obliged to denude Oxford of troops. But before leaving it he had provided for its safety. For Parliament had a strong garrison at Reading and another at Abingdon, and the danger of a siege seemed imminent. The inhabitants were therefore commanded to provide themselves with corn and victuals for three months, or to leave the town “as persons insensible of their own dangers and the safety of the place.” The safety of the place having been secured, the garrison had felt themselves strong enough to send out a force to the relief of Basing-House. The objections of the governor, Sir Arthur Aston, who had succeeded Sir William Pennyman in that office, were overruled. Colonel Gage made a dash from Oxford, relieved the Marquis of Winchester and returned safely to Oxford after having performed one of the most brilliant of the minor feats of arms that occurred during the war. Charles, on his return, appointed him Governor of Oxford, in place of Sir Arthur Aston, who had broken his leg. Gage, who is buried in the Cathedral, was killed shortly afterwards at Culham Bridge in an attempt to surprise Abingdon.

In the spring of 1645 Oliver Cromwell appeared in the parts about Oxford. He was in command of some cavalry, and the object of his movements, in conjunction with those of Sir Thomas Fairfax, was to prevent Prince Maurice from removing heavy guns from Oxford to Hereford, and thereby to disarrange Charles’ plan for an early campaign. Cromwell routed Northampton at Islip. A party of the defeated Cavaliers took refuge at Bletchington House. Cromwell called upon the governor, Windebanke, to surrender. Deceived by the sheer audacity of the demand, and moved, it is said, by the timorous entreaties of a party of ladies from Oxford whom he was entertaining at Bletchington, he yielded. Windebanke paid dearly for his weakness. He was shot in the Castle garden on his return to Oxford. Cromwell swept round the city and defeated Sir Henry Vaughan at Bampton. The Parliamentarians had now achieved their object. They moved away from Oxford. In a few weeks they were back again, and the new fortifications of the city were at length put to the test. The siege was heralded by the appearance of some scattered horse near Cowley on 19th May. Thence they, with other horse and foot, passed over Bullingdon Green to Marston, and showed themselves on Headington Hill. On the 22nd Fairfax sat down before Oxford. He threw up a breastwork on the east side of Cherwell, and constructed a bridge near Marston, across which he passed some regiments. Cromwell was commanding at Wytham and Major Browne at Wolvercote. The most considerable incident that occurred during the fifteen days’ siege was a successful sortie in the direction of Headington Hill, which was made by Colonel William Legge, the governor of the town. Then Fairfax raised the siege and moved north; a few weeks later the fateful battle of Naseby was fought. Thereafter the King finally made his way to Oxford from Newark. Here for a while he was safe; but in the spring Fairfax marched upon Oxford. The King was driven from his last refuge. At three in the morning of 27th April, disguised as a servant, with his beard and hair closely trimmed, he passed over Magdalen Bridge in apparent attendance upon John Ashburnham and a scholar, one Hudson, “who understood the byeways as well as the common, and was indeed a very skilful guide.” “Farewell, Harry,” Glenham called out to his sovereign, as he performed the governor’s duty of closing the gates behind him. Charles’ departure was kept so secret that Fairfax, who arrived before Oxford on the fifth day after, sat down before the city, and made his circumvallation before he knew of it.

The Duke of York and all the King’s Council remained shut up in Oxford. Fairfax found the city well prepared for a siege.