enough, in the minds of those who have studied mediæval chronicles—histories “farct with merry tales and frivolous poetry”—to account for the origin of the myth as to the Greek philosophers. Do you not find for instance, the name of Lechelade suggesting Latin schools (Latinelade) at that place by an analogous etymological conceit?
Saith the Historiola, then, after premising that the University is the most ancient, the most comprehensive, the most orthodox and the most richly endowed with privileges:—
“Very ancient British histories imply the priority of its foundation, for it is related that amongst the warlike Trojans, when with their leader Brutus they triumphantly seized the island, then called Albion, next Britain, and lastly England, certain philosophers came and chose a suitable place of habitation upon this island, on which the philosophers who had been Greek bestowed the name which they have left behind them as a record of their presence, and which exists to the present day, that is to say Grekelade....”
The grounds of the other statements quoted from John Rous are yet more fanciful. The assertion that the University was transferred from without to within the city walls is a vague echo of a worthless story, and the name given to the town Bellesitum is obviously a confusion arising from the latinised form of Beaumont, the palace which Henry I. built on the slope towards S. Giles. The names of Caer-bossa and Ridochen (Rhyd-y-chen) are equally unhistorical, and are based upon the fantastic Welsh equivalents of Oxenford, invented by the fertile genius of Geoffrey of Monmouth for the purposes of his romance (twelfth century).
It would scarcely have been worth while to mention even so briefly the ingenious myths of the early chroniclers if it had not been for the fact that they have swamped more scientific history and that they were used with immense gusto by the champions in that extraordinary controversy which broke out in the days of Elizabeth, and lasted, an inky warfare of wordy combatants, almost for centuries. It was a controversy in which innumerable authorities were quoted, and resort was had even to the desperate device of forgery.
It arose from the boast of the Cambridge orator, who on the occasion of a visit of Elizabeth to Cambridge, declared:
“To our great glory all histories with one voice testify that the Oxford University borrowed from Cambridge its most learned men, who in its schools provided the earliest cradle of the ingenuæ artes, and that Paris also and Cologne were derived from our University.”
With that assertion the fat was in the fire. Assertions were issued, and counter-assertions, commentaries and counter-commentaries.
It is impossible to follow the course of the controversy here. Suffice it to say that when the war had been waged for some years, it seemed evident that the victory would lie with the Oxonians, who claimed Alfred as their founder, if they could prove their claim. And the claim appeared to be proved by a passage attributed to Asser, the contemporary historian of Alfred’s deeds, and surreptitiously inserted into his edition of that author by the great Camden. But that passage occurs in none of the manuscripts of Asser, and certainly not in the one which Camden copied. It was probably adopted by him on the authority of an unscrupulous but interested partisan who, having invented it, attributed it to a “superior manuscript of Asser.”
The University cannot, then, claim Alfred the Great either as her founder or restorer. All the known facts and indications point the other way. It was not till 912, some years after Alfred’s death, that Edward the Elder obtained possession of Oxford, which was outside Alfred’s kingdom; Asser knew nothing of this foundation. It was not till the days of Edward III., that Ralph Higden’s Polychronicon apparently gave birth to the myth with the statement that Alfred—