Henry II. had granted the Jews the right of burial outside of every city in which they dwelt. At Oxford their burial place was on the site where S. John’s hospital was afterwards built, and was then transferred to the place where the Physic Garden now stands.
This garden, the first land publicly set apart for the scientific study of plants, was founded by Henry, Earl of Danby (1632), who gave the land for this purpose. Mr John Evelyn visiting it a few years later was shown the Sensitive Plant there for a great wonder. There also grew, he tells us, canes, olive trees, rhubarb, but no extraordinary curiosities, besides very good fruit. Curious, however, the shapes of the clipped trees were, if we may believe Tickell, who writes enthusiastically:
“How sweet the landskip! where in living trees,
Here frowns a vegetable Hercules;
There famed Achilles learns to live again
And looks yet angry in the mimic scene;
Here artful birds, which blooming arbours shew,
Seem to fly higher whilst they upwards grow.”
The gateway was designed by Inigo Jones, and the figures of Charles I. and II. were added later, the expense being defrayed out of the fine levied upon Anthony Wood for his libel upon Clarendon.
About the same time that Osney Abbey was finished the palace which Henry Beauclerk had been building at Beaumont, outside the north gate of the city, was finished also. To satisfy his love of hunting he had already (1114) constructed a palace and park at Woodstock. Within the stone walls of the enclosure there he nourished and maintained, says John Rous, lions, leopards, strange spotted beasts, porcupines, camels, and such like animals, sent to him by divers outlandish lords.
The old palace at Beaumont lay to the north-east of Worcester College. Its site, chosen by the King “for the great pleasure of the seat and the sweetness and delectableness of the air,” is indicated by Beaumont Street, a modern street which has revived the name of the palace on the hill,—Bellus mons.
When not occupied with his books or his menagerie, the Scholar-King found time to grant charters to the town, and he let to the city the collective dues or fee-farm rent of the place.
Henry II. held important councils at Beaumont. The one romance of his life is connected with Woodstock and Godstow.
One of the most charming of the many beautiful excursions by road or river from Oxford takes you to the little village of Godstow,
“Through those wide fields of breezy grass
Where black-winged swallows haunt the glittering Thames.”