OLD OXFORD.
A.D. 1200 TO 1300.
There are probably few prospects which unite so many forms of beauty and interest as the distant view of a great city; and none in which the reality is more thoroughly idealised in the eye of the spectator. As he gazes at some fair assemblage of ancient towers gleaming aloft through a framework of green boughs, and hears their far-off chimes mingling with the nearer music of the thrush’s note, he forgets “the loud stunning tide of human crime” which surges at their base, and is ready to cheat himself into the pleasant fancy that he beholds a sacred city full of venerable shrines. But if this character of solemn beauty attaches even to our busiest capitals when seen from a distance, much more does it belong to Oxford, the ancient “Bellositum,” which finds no rival to compete with her in the marvellous aspect of her
Majestic towers
Lifting their varied shapes o’er verdant bowers.
Gardens, churches, and palaces shining through a vista of stately forest trees, surrounded by green meadows and reflected in the waters of a noble river, make up a picture which may well arrest the eye of the artist or the poet, and suggest a dream which, if it find no substantial reality, is yet a form of beauty evoked from the ancient worship, carrying our thoughts to days when the sanctuaries of Oxford were first raised for cloistered students, and when St. Edmund and St. Richard were teaching in her schools.
Yet, if we were suddenly transported back to the beginning of the thirteenth century, very little of this architectural beauty would meet our eye. There was the castle indeed, and the spire of St Frideswide’s priory, but they were surrounded, not as now with graceful colleges, but with the humble straw-thatched houses of the citizens, and with those equally humble inns and halls of which we have already spoken. A great oak forest separated the city from the village of Abingdon, and was inhabited by wolves and wild boars; and tradition preserves the story of a certain student who was met in his walk by a ferocious boar, which he overcame by thrusting Aristotle down the beast’s throat. The boar, having no taste for such logic, was choked by it; and his head, borne home in triumph, was no doubt honourably served up at table with a sprig of rosemary in its mouth. The stately abbey of Osney, second to none in the kingdom, would have been seen in those islet meadows, where at present not a stone remains to mark its former site; and its two grand towers rose among the trees, musical with the bells which now ring out their tuneful chimes from the cathedral spire. There were to be seen the stately quadrangle and the abbot’s house, so often the resort of kings and papal legates; and pleasant walks under the elm trees wound along the waterside overlooking the stream which separated the abbey lands from those other islets where the two orders of mendicant friars had just established themselves.
The scholars were fond of such shady walks, and had laid out a certain plot of ground which bore the name of Campus Martius, and was divided into several portions, according to the scholastic degrees. One of the walks was non ultra walk, and led to a little hill called Rome, wherein was a cave and a meander, or winding path, and at the top thereof a cross of stone. Two clear springs were seen at either end of this scholastic garden, appropriately bearing the names of Plato and Aristotle. There were many other such wells in the city, one of which was called Holy Well, over which was raised a stately cross. Its waters were pure and intensely cold, and were esteemed for the many cures which were wrought by them on pious pilgrims. For Oxford drew pilgrims as well as scholars to her holy shrines. Not only was the tomb of St. Frideswide visited by thousands, but also her image in that little country church of Binsey, which she is said to have founded, and which in early days was surrounded by hawthorn woods, and was a place of recreation for the nuns of her convent. There you may still see, not the image, but the empty niche where it formerly stood, and the stone pavement worn away with many feet and many knees, a relic in itself, which we may stoop and reverently kiss; for here St. Edmund was wont to pray; and here on certain festivals the scholars came out with cross and banners, and wound their way among the flowering hawthorn woods to pay their homage to the patron saint of Oxford.
There was another well in St. Clement’s parish, near the old hospital of St. Bartholomew, which claimed to have been founded by Henry the Scholar, which was also held in much esteem. It was one of those spots which our ancestors were wont to designate “Gospel places,” where, on the Rogation Days, it was the custom to read portions of the Gospel, by way of invoking a blessing on the corn-fields, and the streams, and the fountains of water, that they might not be infected by the power of wicked spirits. The well was in a grove hard by St. Bartholomew’s chapel; and here came out the students, young and old, carrying poles adorned with flowers, and singing the canticle Benedicite, wherein they called on the fountains and all the green things of the earth to bless the Lord. The poor folk of the hospital made ready for them by strewing the ground with flowers, and adorning the well itself with green boughs and garlands. Then the Gospel was read, and the well was blessed, and in later times an anthem, in three or more parts, was sung by the scholars.
The meadows that lie around the city, through which, to use the words of brave old Stowe, “the river passeth on to London with a marvellous quiet course,” were then, as now, highly prized by the scholars as places of recreation, and are as frequently alluded to in the university histories, as the famous “Pré aux Clercs” at Paris. But let us enter within the walls, and take a glance at the streets with their quaint designations. “School Street” and “Logic Lane” speak for themselves, but what can have been the origin of the “Street of the seven deadly Sins”? Here is a very important turning which leads to the Schedeyerde, or Vicus schediasticorum. You shudder perhaps, at the sound of such barbarous Latin; yet had you been an Oxford scholar of good King Henry’s days, you would very often have bent your steps hitherward: for here abode the sellers of parchment, the schedes or sheets of which gave their name to the locality, and here the transcribers and book merchants carried on their traffic; and here scholars with long purses obtained their literary wares, and those with empty ones were fain to look and long. You can tell the schools by their pithy inscriptions, Ama scientiam, imposturas fuge, litteras disce, and the like, but you will look in vain for public schools, or congregation house, or library, or observatory, or collegiate piles. Churches, indeed, there are in plenty, and if the tower of St. Martin’s strikes your eye by its strength and height, you may be surprised to learn that the citizens use it as a fortalice, and on occasion of quarrels with the students retire there to shoot at them with stones, and bows, on which account it was afterwards cut down to its present dumpy proportions by Edward III. In truth, it must be confessed, the state of things in old Oxford was anything but orderly. Not only did the northern and southern men embrace different sides both in philosophy and politics, and fight out their differences in the public streets, but the townsmen and the gownsmen stood on much the same terms as those which existed of old time between Athens and Sparta; there might be a truce between them, but there was never a peace. The students lived, as yet subject to no statutes and very little law, and committed many villanies; and, on the other hand, the burghers preyed on them, provoked them, and sometimes burnt their books.