The bells themselves are, with Great Tom, the only relics left of the glorious Abbey of Oseney. They were considered the finest in England, and were after their removal to the cathedral made famous again as "The merry Christ Church bells" of Dean Aldrich's catch. Their names are contained in the following line, which professes to be a hexameter—
Hautclerc, Douce, Clement, Austin, Marie, Gabriel et John.
Tom Tower, over the entrance to Tom Quad from St. Aldate's, is one of the characteristic features of the city. The lower story was built by Wolsey, but the cupola which gives it so uncommon an appearance was added by Sir Christopher Wren in 1682. On the side facing St. Aldate's is a statue of the great Cardinal, in a very dramatic attitude, and on the quadrangle face a statue of Queen Anne, placed there by her minister Harley, with this inscription,—Annae Principi Optimae Secretarius ipsius principalis Robertus Harley hac in sede posuit
quod illam coleret et hanc amaret. The vault of the archway under Tom Tower is decorated with the arms of those who helped towards the completion of the quadrangle. "Tom," the great bell which gives its name to the quadrangle, and its orders to the whole University, came, with the cathedral bells, from Oseney Abbey; and twenty shillings were paid in 1545 for the conveyance of Tom and his satellites from the Abbey to Christ Church. It weighed 17,000 pounds, and bore the inscription,—In Thomae laude resono Bim Bom sine fraude; but it was recast in 1680, and its present inscription is Magnus Thomas Clusius Oxoniensis renatus Apr. 8, 1680. It will have to be recast again some day, for it is sadly out of tune; its note ought to be B flat, but is not, and the bell itself is cracked.
Perhaps the other college buildings are sufficiently connected with the history of the cathedral to allow of our mentioning them. For Wolsey built the kitchen, which is a remarkably fine specimen of the peculiar architecture necessitated for such a building, and also the magnificent hall, the finest perhaps in England, and interesting to us also as containing the portraits of many of the men referred to in this book. Wolsey also built three sides of Tom Quad. Though the bases of the buttresses for its cloister invite the enterprising builder, the Quad is probably best left as it is; for a projecting cloister is not anything the architectural success that a cloister is which forms the ground story of a building continued over it, and the Quad is besides so large as to be unmanageable in the matter of cloisters. The fountain in the middle is called "Mercury," because Dr. Anthony Radcliffe set up a statue there of the nimble god in 1695. Frank Buckland, by the way, about five years before his death, put into Mercury several golden carp; there was also added an Aurea Tinca from Austria, a superb creature, popularly called "The Dean." The surface of the Quad was in 1665 lowered three feet, so as to give a greater appearance of height to the surrounding buildings. Bishop John Fell finished the quadrangle, and his father, Dean Samuel Fell, built the vaulted staircase of the Hall (1640), which is one of the instances of the curious survival of Gothic in Oxford, that home of "lost causes," which need never have been lost, and of "impossible ideals," which ought to be made possible. Late as it is, and open to the structural criticism of all Perpendicular work, it is most deservedly admired. The staircase itself must not be laid to Fell's charge; it is the work of the James Wyatt. Dean Aldrich built Peckwater Quad, which is a decent work of its kind, too grim and gloomy to be as attractive as All Saints Church, and dreadfully disfigured by the strange tendency to moulder away that besets Headington stone, from which Oxford as a whole has suffered so much.