Little progress, however, had been made with the siege, though the defence was for a lost cause, when Charles, who had been handed over by the Scots to a Committee of the House, sent orders to the governor to make conditions and surrender the place to Fairfax.
Honourable terms were granted. Fairfax had expressed his earnest desire to preserve a place “so famous for learning from ruin.” His first act, for he was a scholar as well as a soldier, was to protect the Bodleian. A clause to the effect that all churches, colleges and schools should be preserved from harm was inserted in the Articles of Surrender. The liberties and privileges of the city and the University were guaranteed, and on 24th June the garrison, some three thousand strong, marched out in drenching rain over Magdalen Bridge, colours flying and drums beating, between files of Roundhead infantry.
So ended the Great Rebellion. And the history of it remained to be written by Edward Hyde, the Earl of Clarendon, who came to the task equipped with a wisdom that is born of a large experience of men and affairs. A moderate but faithful adherent of the Royalist cause, he could say of himself that he wrote of events “quorum pars magna fui.” He had been one of the King’s most trusted advisers at Oxford. There he lived in All Souls’ College, and the King wished to make him Secretary of State. “I must make Ned Hyde Secretary of State, for the truth is I can trust nobody else,” wrote the harassed monarch to his Queen. In his great history, so lively yet dignified in style, so moderate in tone and penetrating in its portrayal of character, he built for himself a monument more durable than brass. A monument not less noble has been raised for him in Oxford out of the proceeds of that very book. For the copyright of the history was presented to the University by his son, and partly out of the funds thus arising the handsome building north-east of the Sheldonian Theatre was erected, from designs by Sir John Vanbrugh (1713). Here the University Press was transferred from the Sheldonian Theatre, where it had found its first permanent and official home. The “Clarendon” Press was removed in 1830 to the present building in Walton Street, when it had outgrown the accommodation of the Clarendon building.
Like Sir Harry Vane, Clarendon had been educated at Magdalen Hall. The chair in which he wrote his history is preserved at the Bodleian, and there too may be seen many of the notes which his royal master used to throw him across the table at a Council meeting.
There had been another inhabitant of Oxford in these stirring days much affected by these events, a youth endowed with unbounded antiquarian enthusiasm and an excellent gift of observation. This “chiel amang them taking notes” was Anthony Wood, to whose work every writer on Oxford owes a debt unpayable. Born in the Portionists’ Hall, the old house opposite Merton and next door to that fine old house, Beam Hall, where, he says, the first University press was established, Wood was carried at the age of four to see the entry of Charles and Rupert, and was a Royalist ever after. Educated first at a small Grammar School near S. Peter le Bailey and then at New College School, he became familiar
with the aspect of old Oxford as it was before the changes wrought by the siege, and he was able to transcribe into his notebooks many old inscriptions and memorials just before a period of wanton destruction. When the war broke out there was much ado to prevent his eldest brother, a student at Christ Church, from donning the armour with which his father decked out the manservant. The New College boys grew soldier-struck as they gazed from their school in the cloister upon the train-bands drilling in the quadrangle. They were presently turned out of their school to make room for the munitions of war.