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 For (1644) the members of both Houses who had withdrawn from Westminster were summoned to meet at Oxford.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.
“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.