Famous antiquaries of ancient days carried back the date of the city to fabulous years. Wood gives the year 1009 B.C. as the authentic date, when Memphric, King of the Britons, built it and called it Caer Memphric. But these famous antiquaries, as we shall see, had an axe to grind.
Whatever the origin of Oxford may have been, a few bronze weapons and some pottery, preserved in the Museum, are the only remains of the British period that have been discovered. Great as were the natural advantages of the place, lying as it does on the banks of the chief river of the country at a point where a tributary opens up a district to the north, it would yet seem that there was no British settlement of importance at Oxford, for it was dangerous borderland between the provinces into which Britain was divided, liable to frequent hostile incursions, and therefore left uninhabited. And this would seem to be the reason why, when the road-making Romans were driving their great streets through the neighbourhood, they left this seductive ford severely alone.
The first chronicler to associate Oxford with the name of King Memphric was John Rous, an imaginative historian, no respecter of facts, who died, full of years and inventions, in 1491. Hear him discourse in his fluent, pleasantly circumstantial style:
“About this time Samuel the servant of God was Judge in Judea, and King Magdan had two sons, that is to say Mempricius and Malun. The younger of the two having been treacherously slain by the elder, the fratricide inherited the kingdom. In the twentieth year of his reign, he was surrounded by a large pack of very savage wolves, and being torn and devoured by them, ended his existence in a horrible manner. Nothing good is related of him except that he begot an honest son and heir, Ebrancus by name, and built one noble city which he called from his own name Caer-Memre, but which afterwards in course of time was called Bellisitum, then Caerbossa, at length Ridohen, and last of all Oxonia, or by the Saxons Oxenfordia, from a certain egress out of a neighbouring ford. There arose here in after years an universal and noble seat of learning, derived from the renowned University of Grek-lade.
“It is situated between the rivers Thames and Cherwell which meet there. The city, just as Jerusalem, has to all appearance been changed; for as Mount Calvary, when Christ was crucified, was just outside the walls of the city, and now is contained within the circuit of the walls, so also there is now a large level space outside Oxford, contiguous to the walls of the town, which is called Belmount, which means beautiful mount, and this in a certain way agrees with one of the older names of the city before named and recited; that is to say Bellisitum; whence many are of opinion that the University from Greklade was transferred to this very Bellus Mons or Bellesitum before the coming of the Saxons and while the Britons ruled the island, and the Church of S. Giles, which was dedicated under the name of some other saint, was the place for the creation of graduates, as now is the Church of S. Mary, which is within the walls....”
The origin of the city is, of course, not the same thing as the origin of the University, and John Rous, it will be observed, has adopted the story according to which the University was said to have been transplanted to Oxford from “Grekelade.” This story is found in its earliest form in the Oxford Historiola, the account of the University prefixed to the official registers of the chancellor and proctors. It was probably written towards the end of the reign of Edward III., somewhere in the third quarter of the fourteenth century. The sound of Greek in the name Cricklade is quite
