CONTENTS. Oxford under Henry I., Stephen, and Henry II.-The Guilds- Origin of the University-The Religious Orders-Hostels- PAGE James I.-The Laudian Statutes-Fresh Disputes with the City The Restoration-James II.-Anne-Musical Entertainments OXFORD. CHAPTER I. EARLY OXFORD. The year 912-The Castle-hill-St. Frides wide- Mercian Influence -Coinage-Domesday-Robert d'Oilgi-The Jewry. IN the year 912, says the English Chronicle, ‘died Æthelred, ealdorman of the Mercians, and King Eadweard took to himself Lundenbyrg and Oxnaford and all the lands that were obedient thereto.' Eadweard thus held the valley of the Thames; for it was not only the cities, but their lands that he had taken, and these could hardly have been much other in extent than the present Middlesex and Oxfordshire. The Thames was already a waterway by which London could communicate with the heart of England, and towns such as Reading, Wallingford, Abingdon, and Oxford had arisen along its banks. The beech woods of the Chilterns might prevent much traffic by land, but boats passed easily along the river. It was while keeping watch over this frontier that Eadweard died in 925 at Farndon in Northants, and his son Ælfweard died soon after at Oxford. The name of Oxford tells the story of its birth. B At a point where the Thames bends to the south, round the headland of Wytham, and just before its waters are swollen by those of the Cherwell, a wide reach of the river offered a ford where cattle-drovers could cross the stream, and traversing the marshy fields which edged it, mount the low slope of a gravel spit between the two rivers, that formed the site of the later city. In the windings of the streams that form the Thames the channels often pass through marshy and reedy clays, with failing banks and no secure bottom. For the wain bearing salt, for horses and men, for sheep and oxen, these were no fit passing places, however small the stream. Fords then had to be sought where firm rock made a solid floor, or hard gravel offered equal security. Thus at Oxford the gravelly bed of the valley, not culy at Folly Bridge, but also near Hincksey and Binsey, presented the natural condition which was desired. A ford did not imply merely a place where the water was shallow, but where there was a firm road through the stream, by which men might fare across safely. A name of exactly similar meaning-Hrythera ford, that is, cattle-ford-occurs in an Abingdon charter; names with rother such as Rotherhithe are still common. It is near Oxford too that the upland streams of the Thames converge. In its course across England the river receives many tributaries, such as the Evenlode, the Windrush, the Lech, the Colne, and the Churn; while the Cherwell opens up a large district to the north, as it descends from the high lands which send off the Avon to the west, the Nene, Welland, and Ouse to the east. That Oxford was already important before 912 is shown by its being coupled with London as necessary to secure the obedience of Mercia or Middle England. It was probably one of the places fortified by the English about this time, in order to guard the rivers by which the Danes so often made their way into the heart of the country. The Danes had burnt Abingdon, and much fighting had taken place in Alfred's days on the Ashdown ridge of Berkshire, opposite Oxford. This view is confirmed by our finding that in the next year, 913, Alfred's daughter, Æthelflæd, the Lady of the Mercians, timbered Tameweorthe and eke Staffordaburh. King Eadweard bade to timber the north burh at Heortford between the Maran and the Beane and the Lea.' The ford of oxen and the ford of hurts both marked important passages across the rivers. The Castle hill on the west side of Oxford probably dates from this period; for, if we compare the other places fortified at the time, most of them at or near the frontier of Mercia, the one common feature is a conical mound of earth. The castles nearest to Oxford, such as Tamworth and Warwick, overlooking the Tame and Avon, have mounds very similar to that at Oxford. Probably a wooden fortress, guarded by palisades, was erected on the mound. The very situation of Oxford too made it almost a natural stronghold, since it only needed to dig out a ditch on the northern side, somewhere near the line afterwards occupied by the northern wall of the city, to make the gravel ridge between the Thames and Cherwell into an island, protected by the many streams. into which the rivers divide; while the earth thrown up from the ditch would provide material for the mound. The gravel island among the swamps was just the place where the English would cluster together in the |