I8Q 



OXFORD 



now shamefully included in the precincU of the 

 county g.iol, was liea|>efl up at tin- p.-ii..l. U ing 

 port of the (pent system of fortifications which 

 were then raised against tin- Dane-. Mining the 

 troubled year* which follow ( Ixlonl is freqaeBti* 

 mentioned, itft position just Ix-tween Meu-ia ami 

 \\ , ,,.-\ i.-ii.l. i iiu - i' iiii]Hiii;iiit MftdtaU MBiMl 

 invasion, and as a place of parley l'twccn I 

 and Saxons. It may IK; inferred tliat at thr Nor- 

 iiiaii Coni|ucst Oxford offered a stubWn resist- 

 ance to thr invader ( I ) from the great nuinlwr of 

 ' waste' houses mentioned in (In- I >oun-sua\ SIIMCN ; 

 (2) from the vastnesa of the work erected liy the 

 conqueror's governor, Itolierl Doyley, to overawe 

 the city an<l district. Two |>ortions of this work 

 remain, the tower (now of St Michael's Church) 

 which commanded the approach to the assailable 

 Noith l.'atc i if tin- city, and the great keep of the 

 Castle (now in the precincts of the poll. In the 

 contest for the crown lietwccn the Kinpres-s Maud 

 and Stephen (1142) Oxford was again a place of 

 capital importance, Maud taking refuse in Oxford 

 when driven from I^ondon, aihl escaping over the 

 frozen Thames when the ensile was about to snr- 

 render to Stephen after ten weeks' siege. Here 

 in 1258 the ' mad parliament' enforced on Henry 

 III. the scheme of reform known as the Provisions 

 of Oxford (see MONTFOKT ). From this date Oxford 

 as a town ceases to be of national importance, 

 except for a few yearn in the heat of the peat 

 Civil \Var, when Charles I. made it the centre of 

 his operations, the station of hig court, and the 

 meeting- place of the ' parliament ' which he had 

 brought together in opposition to that 'Long 'one 

 at ^estinin-ter. 



But at the very- time when Oxford, as a city, 

 was losing its ]>olitical and strategical importance 

 there was growing up within it a distinct, and 

 destined often to he a hostile, corporation which 

 wax to make it for centuries the intellectual capital 

 of England. The word ' university ' implies now a 

 corporate body of teachers and student*, estab- 

 lished fen the pursuit of the higher branches of 

 learning, endowed with privileges and protected by 

 charters granted by sovereign )M>wers ; and we I'M id 

 by the end of the 12th century and the beginning 

 0} the 13th a corporation of tliis kind established 

 in Oxford. Itnt this corporation must have been 

 onlv the official recognition of a guild of teachers 

 with their pupils which was already in existence 

 in the city : and a guild of this kind must, in its 

 turn, have l>een the development of accidental, and 

 perhaps temporary, assemblages of teachers and 

 students. The beginning of the university of 

 Oxforil is therefore to be carried as far hack as 

 tli- earlier third of the 12th century; Tliihaul 

 d'Estampea (Thcohaldut BtunpeMb) M0t 1120, 

 and Knlx-rt 1'iillein in ll.'i.'i, liciug recorded to have 

 taught in Oxford. The university, thus begun 

 under Henry I. (who in ll.'to built ux a royal 

 resilience lieanmont Palace in the north suburb 

 of Oxford, in which palace Kichard Co-ur do Lion 

 was Uirn in ll.">7), rapidly grew in numliers ami in 

 prestige ; and by the beginning of the l.'ith century 



id i)|ies and kings interested in iU fortunes, 

 its scholars numbered perhaps by thousands and 

 not by hundreds, and the fends bttWMB it anil the 

 town occasional I v event* of almost national im- 



ince. Teachers and scholars in this early 

 university were of the secular clergy ; they lived 

 ami taught in houses ('balls') and 'lecture-rooms 



i' nils' i hired from the townsmen; and dis- 

 cipline was practically non-existent. 



The fame of the university attracted to Oxford 

 the four great orders of mendicant friar* imme- 

 diately after their arrival in Kngiand, the Domini- 

 can (IllacU) Friars coming in 1221, the Franciscan 

 (Grey) Friars in 1224, the Carmolite( White) Friars 



in I'-'.'i.'l. and the Austin Friars in 1208. The friars, 

 unlike the older orders of monkx, who bad itood 

 aloof from secular learning, threw themselves with 

 enthusiasm into the studies of the university : and 

 the 'schools ' in their convents and their Icclmci.s 

 soon eclipsed the fame of the secular schools and 

 teachers. That Oxford can boost the J.K. 

 names in mcdi:eval learning and legend, linger 

 llacon ami Friar liungiiy, is due to these com cm 

 ual schools. So threatening did the supremacy 

 of the friars become that the university in the 

 early 14th century had a hard light v, ilh them to 

 retain the control of its own education (see the 

 Hev. H. Kashdall's pajier on ' The Friars Preachers 

 versus the University' in the Oxford Historical 

 Society's ( V/..7,,,i(.'vol. ii. 1890). 



The intellectual triumphs of the friars kindled the 

 spark of emulation in the older monastic orders, 

 and they in their turn began to found conventual 

 schools at Oxford for students of their own liody. 

 The Benedictines had four colleges in Oxford : 

 Gloucester College, founded in 12S3. part of whose 

 buildings are now in Worcester College ; Durham 

 College, perhaps begun in 1290, partly now in 

 Trinity College: Canterbury College, founded in 

 1363, now taken into the site of Christ Chinch; 

 and St Mary's College, founded in 1435, now a 

 dwelling-house belonging to lirasenose. For the 

 Cistercians 8t Bernard's College was founded in 

 1437, and parts of this building are still found in 

 St John's College. 



The introduction into the university of the con- 

 ventual system, with the severity of its discipline, 

 the interpenetrating stimulus of its common life, and 

 the efficiency of its personal tuition, suggested a 

 change hi the university of secular students which 

 was to eflect in time an entire revolution in its 

 form. In 1204 Walter de Merton conceived the 

 plan of bringing together into a common home a 

 number of secular students, engaged in academic 

 studies but subject to something like conventual 

 discipline. In 1274 he moved his college (which he 

 had established at Maiden in Surrey) to Oxford. 

 Two other institutions, which had been founded in 

 Oxford at a slightly earlier date, soon, under the 

 influence of the new idea, took the shape of lialliol 

 and University Colleges. I'.y l.VJ/i ten other col- 

 had been instituted, among them such great 

 designs as New College, Magdalen College, and 

 Wolsey's Cardinal College (afterwards reconstituted 

 bv Henry VIII. as Christ Church, with a fraction 

 of its former endowment). 



The Itefornialion of religion, and the dissolu- 

 tion of the monasteries which it carried with it, 

 destroyed half the glory of Oxford. Two abbess. 

 five friaries, and five monastic colleges ceased to 

 exist; and the western and south western i|iiarteis, 

 which had contained the lines! buildings of the 

 city, became heaps of stones out of which the 

 citizens of Oxford quarried building material. 

 During the Homanist icaction under Queen Mary 

 some! hing was done to repair the loss thus inflicted : 

 Trinity College in l, r >.">4 and St Johns in l.V>.~> re- 

 stoiing to Oxford Durham College and St Iternard's 

 College. Jesus College', founded nearly twenty 

 vcars later, in Elizalicth's reign, was the lust of 

 Protestant colleges. The more settled times of the 

 early Stuarts patronised the gown more liberally ; 

 Wadham College coining in 161.'), Pembroke in 1624. 

 Then came the great catastrophe of the Civil War, 

 and learning and the encouragement of learning 

 ceased. The years passed to 1714 liefore a new 

 foundation aiose in Oxford, in Sir Thomas Cookcs' 

 Worcester College; and, except for the abortive 

 attempt (1740-1818) to erect Hart Hall into a 

 college, that example found no imitator till our 

 own times, when tin- foundations of Keble College 

 in 1870 and of Hertford College in 1874, followed 



