[Original]
THE STREETS OF OXFORD
WHERE is the centre, the ὀμφαλὸς γῆς of Oxford? The average undergraduate will probably place it within the walls of his own College; but we, detached observers whose salad days, presumably, are over, look for a definition worthy of more catholic acceptance. To us Oxford is not a city of Colleges only, but of noble streets and wide spaces. Them it is our purpose to explore, not with the hasty stride of one bound for lecture-room, or cricket-ground, or river, but leisurely and with discrimination; we are ready to be chidden for curiosity, so we incur not the gravamen of indifference. Where, then, shall we start on our pilgrimage, and from what centre? If there be in any city a place where four principal roads meet, as at the Cross in Gloucester, we may listen there for the pulsations of that city's heart.
Such a place there is in Oxford, Carfax,—Quatre voies,—the spot where four ways meet. This, not too arbitrarily, we will name the centre of Oxford, and thence will wend upon our pilgrimage. But let us pause a moment, before we set out, at the parting of the ways.
The old Church of St. Martin's at Carfax was pulled down in 1896, and only the tower left. St. Martin's was the church of the city fathers, as St. Mary's was (and is) the church of the University. Nowadays the civic procession winds its way to All Saints, a nearer neighbour of St. Mary's. Such propinquity would have sorted ill with the manners of mediaeval Oxford, when the enmity of town and gown, at times quiescent, was never wholly quelled. In an age when the clerks, regular and secular, fell out among themselves in the precincts of St. Mary's, even to the shedding of blood, it is idle to look for a more civil temper in the burgesses: and the bells of Carfax and St. Mary's summoned those who frequented them to battle as well as to prayer. They rang out with the former intention on the feast of St. Scholastica in 1354. It is sad to record that the quarrel arose in a tavern, where two gownsmen abused the vintner for serving them with wine of wretched quality. The conflict which ensued was of a very deadly nature. The scholars held their own until evening, when the citizens called the neighbouring villagers of Cowley and Headington to their aid, and the Gown were routed. As many as forty students were slain, and twenty-three townsmen. Then Edward III. took steps to protect the men of learning, lowering, among other measures, the tower of Carfax, because they complained that in times of combat the townsmen retired thither as to a castle, and from its summit grievously annoyed and galled them with arrows and stones. The burgesses also were forced to attend annually at St. Mary's Church, when mass was offered for the souls of the slain, bearing on their persons sundry marks of degradation; and though these were subsequently done away, it was only in 1825 that they were excused the indignity of attending the commemorative service.
