“Caressing themselves with all joviality in meats and drinks they would in the midst of the night dance and take a circuit throughout all the streets, accompanied by divers musical instruments, and using some certain sonnets in praise of their profession and patron.”
But such customs led to disturbances and were finally prohibited. The barbers, a company which existed till fifty years ago, maintained a light in Our Lady’s Chapel at S. Frideswide’s. Some of the regulations by which they bound themselves when they were incorporated by order of the Chancellor in 1348 are typical. The barbers, it should be added, were the mediæval physicians too.
Their ordinances provided that no person of that craft should work on a Sunday or shave any but such as were to preach or do a religious act on Sundays. No servant or man of the craft should reveal any infirmity or secret disease he had to his customers or patients. A master of the craft was to be chosen every year, to whom every one of his craft should be obedient during his year of office. Every apprentice that was to set up shop after his time was expired should first give the master and wardens with the rest of the society a dinner and pay for one pound of wax, and that being done, the said master and wardens with three other seniors of the craft should bring him to the chancellor upon their shoulders, before whom he was to take his oath to keep all the ordinations and statutes of the craft, and pay to Our Lady’s box eightpence and the like sum to the chancellor. The same procedure must be observed by any foreigner that had not been prenticed in Oxford but desired to set up a shop to occupy as barber, surgeon, or waferer or maker of singing bread. All such as were of the craft were to receive at least sixpence a quarter of each customer that desired to be shaved every week in his chamber or house. If any member of the craft should take upon him to teach any person not an apprentice, he should pay 6s. 8d., whereof 3s. 4d. should go to the craft, 1s. 8d. to the chancellor, and 1s. 8d. to the proctors. Rules are also given for the observance of the barbers’ annual holiday and the election of their master.
Stimulated by the presence of the kings without its walls and the growth of the university within, trade flourished so greatly that it was soon necessary to regulate it by minute provisions. In the reign of Edward II. (1319) the mayor and bailiffs were commanded to “prevent confusion in the merchandising of strangers, and those who were not free of any guild from thrusting out those who were.” All traders and sellers who came to Oxford on market days—Wednesdays and Saturdays—were to know each one their places.
“The sellers of straw, with their horses and cattle that bring it,” so ran the regulation, “shall stand between East Gate and All Saints’ Church, in the middle of the King’s Highway. The sellers of wood in carts shall stand between Shidyard (Oriel) Street and the tenement of John Maidstone and the tenement on the east side of the Swan Inn (now King Edward’s Street, the ugly row of smug, commonplace houses which has been erected on the site of Swan Yard). The sellers of bark shall stand between S. Thomas’ Hall (Swan Inn) and S. Edward’s Lane (Alfred Street). The sellers of hogs and pigs shall stand between the churches of S. Mary and All Saints; the ale sellers between S. Edward’s Lane and the Chequer Inn; the sellers of earthen-pots and coals by the said lane of S. Edward on the north side of the High Street. The sellers of gloves and whitawyers (dresses of white leather) shall stand between All Saints’ Church and the house on the west side of the Mitre Inn; the furriers, linen and woollen drapers by the two-faced pump (which perhaps stood on the site of the later conduit at Carfax. This conduit was erected in 1616 and water brought to it from the hill springs above North Hincksey. It was removed in 1787 and presented to Earl Harcourt, who re-erected it at Nuneham Park some five miles from Oxford, where it may still be seen, on a slope commanding an extensive view of the Thames Valley between Abingdon and Oxford.)
“The bakers,” the regulation continued, “shall stand between Carfax and North Gate, and behind them the foreign sellers of fish and those that are not free or of the guild. The tanners shall stand between Somner’s Inn and Carfax; the sellers of cheese, milk, eggs, beans, new peas and butter from the corner of Carfax towards the Bailly; the sellers of hay and grass at the Pillory; the cornsellers between North Gate and Mauger Hall (the Cross Inn).”
Besides these market-stands the permanent trades and resident guilds had distinct spheres allotted to them. The cutlers, drapers, cooks and cordwainers had their special districts; the goldsmiths had their shops in All Saints’ parish, the Spicery and Vintnery[11] lay to the south of S. Martin’s; Fish Street extended to Folly Bridge, the Corn Market stretched away to North Gate, the stalls of the butchers ranged in their Butchers’ Row along the road to the Castle (Queen’s Street). As for the great guild of weavers, there was a wool market in Holywell Green. Part of the ground since included in Magdalen College Grove was known as Parry’s Mead, and here twenty-three looms were working at once, and barges came up to it on the Cherwell.
Thus then Oxford had attained to complete municipal self-government. She stood now in the first rank of municipalities. Her political importance is indicated by the many great assemblies that were held there. The great assembly under Cnut had closed the struggle between Englishman and Dane; that under Stephen ended the conquest of the Norman, whilst that under Henry III. begins the regular progress of constitutional liberty. In 1265, Simon de Montfort issued writs from Woodstock summoning the famous parliament to which towns sent members for the first time. Oxford no doubt was among the number, but the sheriff’s returns are lost and it is not till 1295 that the names of two burgesses elected to represent her in the national council are recorded. The University did not obtain members until the first Parliament of James I. (1609), although her advice had often been consulted by kings and parliaments before.[12] So far, then, we have followed the growth of a town of increasing political and commercial importance. We have now to trace the growth within its borders of a new and rival body, which was destined, after a century or more of faction and disorder, to humble her municipal freedom to the dust.
CHAPTER III
THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY
THE chroniclers of every mediæval town like to begin from Jove—or Genesis. The Oxford historians are no exception.