MAGDALEN TOWER AND BRIDGE
The Bridge runs westward across the picture, some buildings of the Botanic Garden appearing on the extreme left.
Over the centre of the Bridge rises the fine tower of the College, while to the right above the north balustrade of the Bridge shows the roof of the Hall and Chapel.
On the ground floor of the gabled buildings are the kitchens, the upper storey being used as sets of rooms for students.
We see part of the river Cherwell.
made what some call a “friendly loan” of all their plate: it was never returned or replaced by the King. Week by week, they furnished him with labour and cash. And when the Parliamentarians entered at last, there were at Merton, for example, “no Bachelors, hardly any Scholars, and few Masters,” and the hall was untenantable. The triumph of Parliament brought with it an inquisition in Oxford, which resulted in the exile, not without force, of the greater number of heads of houses and fellows for refusal to submit. The soldiers broke the Magdalen chapel window-glass; Cromwell himself took away the college organ to Hampton Court. But “the first thing General Fairfax did, was to set a good guard of soldiers to preserve the Bodleian Library. He was a lover of learning, and had he not taken this special care, that noble library had been utterly destroyed.” The chief objection to the intruded fellows and heads of houses seems to have been that they were intruded and were likely to stay. As for their accomplishments, though some lacked humour, they seem to have been respectable. The undergraduates and bachelors were in the main loyal to Cromwell; and when Prince Charles was rumoured to be approaching Oxford, New College tower became a Parliament citadel, and a troop of horse was enlisted from the colleges. The old glory of religion faded; the sound of distant Latin chanted was no longer heard in Christ Church and New College. But in one house, three devoted men preserved the old religion right through the Commonwealth, constantly and without[Pg 152] molestation. Other changes made men more content. Three coffee-houses were opened in Oxford and patronised by royalists and “others who esteemed themselves virtuosi and wits.” Men who would have adorned any age came up. Christopher Wren came to Wadham, and thence to All Souls’. Evelyn revisited Oxford and found no just ground to regret the former times, ... “creation of Doctors, by the cap, ring, kiss, etc., those ancient ceremonies and institutions, as yet not wholly abolished.” At All Souls’ he heard “music, voices, and theorbos, performed by some ingenious scholars.” At New College “the chapel was in its ancient garb, notwithstanding the scrupulosity of the times,” and the chapel at Magdalen was “in pontificial order, the altar only I think turned table-wise.” Then he dined at Wadham, and wrote down an account of what he saw at the Warden’s, “that most obliging and universally curious Dr. Wilkins.” The transparent apiaries, hollow speaking statues, dials, waywisers, and other “artificial mathematical and magical curiosities,” which he saw, well illustrate the activities of the time in the cradle of the Royal Society.
A little after Wren came Thomas Traherne, the poet, to Brasenose, still enjoying that childhood which he praised so adeptly. We may think of him in the peaceful embowered city as having that characteristic ecstasy at the sight of common things which his lyrical prose describes. “The corn was orient and immortal wheat which never should be reaped nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to[Pg 154][Pg 153]