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A queen was once besieged in the castle, Matilda, Henry I.'s daughter. When food gave out she made her escape in a romantic manner, so the story tells. The river was frozen and the ground covered with snow. The queen was let down from the tower by night with ropes, clad in white, the better to escape observation. Three knights were with her, clad in white also, under whose guidance she reached Wallingford on foot, and so escaped King Stephen's clutches.
To the period of the Norman Conquest belongs also the tower of St. Michael's Church, in the Cornmarket. It has been usual to describe this edifice as Saxon; but antiquaries incline to think that if Robert D'Oily did not build St. Michael's tower, he at least repaired it. This tower formed a part of the city wall, and from its narrow windows arrows may have rained upon advancing foes. Adjoining it was Bocardo, the old north-gate of the city, whose upper chamber was long used as a prison. Nothing of Bocardo now remains; but Robert D'Oily's handiwork is traceable, as many think, in the crypt and chancel of St. Peter-in-the-East and in the chancel arch at Holywell.
In these buildings, then, the history of Norman Oxford is written, so far as history can be written in stone; yet here and there about the city are to be seen structures which, although two or three centuries younger, have an appearance hardly less venerable. Year after year the aged walls and portals are thronged with fresh generations of the youth of England; and it is in this combination of youth and age that no little of the charm of Oxford lies. We speak within the limitations of mortality: but, could we escape them for a moment, "immortal age beside immortal youth" might be her most appropriate description.
THE UNIVERSITY AND ITS BUILDINGS
WHEN did the University come into existence? That is a question which many people would like to have answered, but which still, like Brutus, "pauses for a reply." It is to the last degree improbable that we shall ever know. There were teachers and learners in Oxford at an early date, but so there were in many other English towns; the plant struck deeper in Oxford than elsewhere, that is all that one can say. There are various indications that in the twelfth century the town had acquired a name for learning. In 1186, Giraldus Cambrensis, who had written a book about Ireland and wanted to get it known, came and read his manuscript aloud at Oxford, where, as he tells us, "the clergy in England chiefly flourished and excelled in clerkly lore." That was fifty years after the death of King Henry the Scholar, who—was it only a coincidence?—had a residence in Oxford. It is pleasant to find Oxford students, even in those early days, with ears attuned to hearing "some new thing."
"Doctors of the different faculties," we are told, were among Giraldus' auditors: a fact which shows that learning was already getting systematised. A little later it has clothed itself in corporate form, and possesses a Chancellor. That official (when, and by whom appointed, is the mystery) is first mentioned in 1214, and we can henceforth look upon the University as a living body. He is named in connection with the first recorded "town and gown" row, when the citizens of Oxford took two clerks and hung them. The papal Legate (this was in the evil days of King John) intervened, and the citizens were very properly rebuked and fined.
A century passed before "The Gown" had a building set specially apart for the transaction of their affairs. Then, in 1322, Bishop Cobham of Worcester added a chapel to the north-east corner of St. Mary's, and gave it to the University as a House of Congregation. The office of Proctor had already been instituted, and that functionary had plenty of students to employ his time—30,000 one writer assures us, but him we cannot credit. A fourth of that number is a liberal estimate. They lived in Halls and lodgings, a hard and an undisciplined life, preyed upon by the townsfolk and biting their thumbs at them in return (whence collisions frequently ensued) until Walter de Merton devised the College system, to the no small advantage of all concerned.