THE PROVINCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

03LFORDSHIRE, AND BUCKINGHAM- SHIRE :-THE CITIES AND BOROUGHS.

WE have spoken of the origin of the Saxon town of Oxeneford, or Oxford. In the time of King Edward the Confessor " the burgesses, in the room of toll, gable, and all other customary rents, paid the King 201. and six sextaries of honey ; and to Earl Alger 101., besides the mill which he had within the city. When the King went on an expedition twenty of the burgesses went with him for the rest, or they paid 201. that all might be free. At the time of forming the Domesday Survey the city paid 601. in tale, every ora of the value of 20d. Within and without the walls of the city 243 houses paid geld, and besides these, 478 were so desolated that they could not pay geld. The King held 20 mural mansions, which in the time of the Confessor had been Earl Alger's, paying 13s. 10d. They were called mural mansions, because, if need required and the King commanded, the tenants were bound to repair the city wall. 191 mansions belonging to individuals, 'tilrerie proper reparationem muri,' are also enumerated, of which 80 are stated to have been vastm.' " Robert de Oilgi or D'Oyley is mentioned in the Record as the owner of many houses in the town. This Robert D'Oyley built or fortified a castle at Oxford, on a site now partly occupied by the county gaol and the house of correction. It is evident from the Domesday Record that some great calamity had befallen the town, which had led to the ruin of a large part of the houses. If Matthew Paris and the MS. of William of Malmesbury, which he follows in his account, are correct, we may explain this desolation by a siege and storm which the town underwent in 1067 from the Conqueror. It is said that the contempt and hatred of the citizens with respect to him, represented by one of them on the wall in a very indecent symbolical act, brought down on them the wrath of the Norman Prince. Some of the MSS. of William of Malmesbury, however, exhibit in this passage the word Exoniam (Exeter) instead of Oxoniam (Ox- ford), and as the siege of Exeter by William took place the same year, it is not improbable that this is the correct read- ing, though Oxford may have experienced the wrath of the Norman invaders on some similar occasion. Stephen held a great Council there in 1139, when the Bishops of Lincoln and Salisbury were arrested and committed to confinement. Robert D'Oyley'a nephew and successor of the same name held Oxford Castle for Matilda against Stephen in 1141. The Empress-Queen herself was in the castle, and escaped out of it to Abingdon and Wallingford the day before its surrender. Edith, wife of this second Robert D'Oyley, founded a magnificent abbey at Oseney, on an island in the Isis, to the west of the city. Henry I. (who received part of his education at Oxford) built the palace or hall of Beaumont, in Magdalen parish, in 1132, and there Henry H. resided for a considerable part of his reign, and his son Richard I. was there born. A great and most destructive fire in 1190 led to the erection of the first stone houses here. The increase in the numbers and prosperity of the University naturally led to an in- creased wealth and prosperity of the city, but was attended by con- siderable drawbacks, in the constant quarrels of the students and townsmen, especially during the reigns of Henry III. and Edward III. These led to the secession of the Oxford students on one occasion to Northampton, and also to the town being placed under an interdict, on account of the violent death which had befallen some " Clerks of Oxford." To free themselves from this ban, the town consented to the following annual penance. The Commonalty of Oxford every year were to celebrate an anni- versaryof the riot on St. Scholiastica's Day in St. Marfe Church, for the souls of the clerks and others killed in the conflict; and the mayor for the time being, the two bailiffs, and threescore of the chief burghers werepersonally to appear at the mass, and offer atthe great altar a penny each. At thesame time, the mayor and commonalty gave a bond to pay in default of this personal penance a hundred marks yearly to the University, as compensation for the losses caused by the fray. The penance was mitigated in the reign of Elizabeth, and still more subsequently, but the citizens were not wholly absolved froai it till the year 1825. King John held many a feast at Oxford, and there the celebrated " Provisions " were enacted in the reign of Henry III. Parliaments were frequently held in this town in succeeding reigns. Wycliffe's doctrines met with much acceptance at Oxford, and during the reigns of Richard II., Henry IV., and Henry V. Lollardism caused considerable dis- turbance in both town and university. The Civil War of the Roses also interfered not a little with the attendance of students, on which the prosperity of the town so much rested, and soon after the accession of Henry VII. a dreadful pestilence nearly de- populated the town and colleges. In the reign of Henry VIII., in 1542, the see of Oxford was founded, the seat of it being at first fixed in the Abbey Church of Oseney, but removed in 1546 to Christ Church, in Oxford, where Wolsey's splendid munificence had endowed a college. The cathedral is the chapel of the college, the old church of St. Frideawide, mostly of Norman date. The

number of religious houses in Oxford prior to the Reformation was of Gray Friars at the south end of the town, founded by James, nineteen. In Mary's reign Oxford was the scene of the martyrdom of Archbishop Cranmer and Bishops Ridley and Latimer, and a memorial was erected to their memory near the spot in 1841. In the Civil War of Charles I.'s reign Oxford changed hands once or twice, and at last became the head-quarters of the King, who held here his anti-Parliament of seceders from Westminster in January, 1644. The city surrendered to the Parliamentary forces under Fair-

fax in 1646, after the King had escaped iu disguise from its walls on his ill advised expedition to the Scotch Covenanters' camp. Two

Parliaments were held at Oxford in the reign of Charles II. The proceedings at Magdaleu College iu opposition to the designs of the Roman Catholic James II. are a matter of well known history. It has returned two representatives to the House of Commons since the year 1295.

Banbury, situated in the most fertile part of Oxfordshire—the rich red land—has long been a thriving place of trade. It

existed in Saxon times, having then, according to Camden, the name of I3anesbyrig, and in Domesday Book it appears as Banes- berie. A Roman altar, which has been discovered here, seems to push the origin of the place back to a still earlier period, but it has not been successfully identified with any of the stations of the Itineraries. In 1125, or soon after, Alexander de Blois, the well

known Bishop of Lincoln, to whom the -manor belonged, built a castle here. In 1469 two engagemeuts were fought in the neigh- bourhood of the town between the parties of the two Roses, after which the Earl of Pembroke and his brother, who had been taken prisoners, were executed at Banbury. Its considerable trade is mentioned by Leland in the reign of Henry VIII. In the reign of Edward VI. the manor was resigned by the 'Bishop to the Crown. The town was a borough by prescription, but in

the first year of Queen Mary a charter was conferred on it as a reward for the support given by the inhabitants to that Queen against the party of Lady Jane Grey. It was not, however, as a Roman Catholic, but as the true heir to the Crown that the men of Banbury rallied round Mary, for in the next reign we find them- strong Protestants of the l'uritan stamp. The celebrated Cross of nursery rhymes is said to have then fallen a victim to their reforming zeal. The reference in the rhyme is said to be to an " old woman of Banbury," known as the " Witch of the White Horse." There is an old saying, " Banbury zeal, cakes, and ale," and cakes and ale, as well as cheese, are still among its special products. The power-

ful family of the Copes are said to have been the great patrons of this religious zeal. Ben Jonson makes his Puritan in Bartholomew Fair " a Banbury man," and Drunken Barnaby has his gibe at the place :—

Where I saw a Puritans one Hanging of his cat on Monday

For killing of a mouse on Sunday.

The inhabitants were among the earliest and warmest supporters of the Parliament in the Civil War of the reign of Charles I., and were garrisoned by 800 infantry and a troop of horse ; but the

castle was taken by the Cavaliers after the battle of Edgehill, and held by them obstinately till the year 1646. It was then dismantled, and now scarcely a fragment remains. Two miles and a half from the town is Broughton Castle, the old seat of the Puritan Fiennes, Lords Saye and Sele, to whom Elizabeth had given the Castle of Banbury, and one of whom, Colonel John Fieunes, besieged it as an officer of the Parliament. Banbury is still a stronghold of Nonconformity. Its old manufactures of plush and horse-girths have declined, but it has still a flourishing trade, a weekly market, and nine annual fairs. A canal connecting it with Oxford and Birmingham is a considerable element in its prosperity, and it has now also a railway station.

We have alluded to the Saxon origin of Buckingham. It ap- pears in Domesday -Book as Bochingeham, and twenty-six burgesses

are there enumerated, the whole of whom appear to have be- longed to certain barons. It is described then as an ancient burgh. Edward III. made it one of the staples for wool, but it did not return members to Parliament till the year 1542. A charter was granted it by Mary in 1554, which was surrendered in 1684, but restored a few years later. It was for a few days in 1644 the head-quarters of Charles I. No trade of any conse- quence is carried ea, and lace-making with bobbins is its only trifling manufacture. In the old church, which has disappeared, was discovered the coffin of St. Rumbald, who had a shrine here. He was a very renowned saint in those parts, as well as in Kent. Queen Catherine of Arragon once resided on the site of a mansion now called Lambards, and the present house was occupied by Prince Rupert in 1642. Buckingham, however, is called by topographers " the most uninteresting town in England."

Aylesbury is the rEgelsbyrig of Saxon times. There was a house

Earl of Ormonde, in 1387. This was granted by Henry VIII., after the confiscation of the monasteries, to Sir Janies Ba

Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, who built a town hall and market-place at his own expense. The town was made a borough by charter, and empowered to send members to Parliament in ,January, 1554 The government was then vested in a bailiff, nine aldermen, and twelve burgesses, who were to elect the repre- sentatives ; but this corporation being dissolved from neglect, the police was thenceforth maintained by constables, and the right of election vested in the householders not receiving alms. But if a letter preserved in the Rolls Chapel among the returns of Parlia- ment writs in the 14th of Elizabeth is to be relied upon, the power of election was really then in the Packington family, to whom the manor had passed from the Fitz-Piers, Earls of Essex, the Butlers, Earls of Wilts and Ormonde, and the Baldwyns. "'1'o all Chris- tian people to whom this present writing shall come," runs the docu- ment, "I,Dame Dorothy Packington, late wife of Sir Thomas Pack- ington, Knight, lord and owner of the town of Aylesbury, send greeting. Know ye me, the said Dorothy Packington, to have chosen, named, and appointed my trusty and well beloved Thomas Lich- field and George Boredon, Esquires, to be my burgesses of my said town of Aylesbury. And whatsoever the said Thomas and George, burgesses, shall do in the service of the Queen's Highness, in the present Parliament, to be holden at Westminster, on the 8th of May next ensuing the date hereof, I, the same Dorothy Pack- ington, do ratify and approve to be of my own act, as fully and wholly as if I were witness or present there. In witness thereof to these presents I have set my seal, this 4th day of May, in the 14th year of the reign of my Sovereign Lady Elizabeth, by the grace of God of England, France, and Ireland Queen." Here is a precedent for Mr. Mill and the advocates of women's rights ! This political lady was the daughter of Sir Thomas Kitson, of Suffolk, and married, secondly, Thomas Tasburgh, Esq. Her descendant, Sir John Packiugton, Baronet, was chosen member both for the County of Worcester and for Aylesbury in 1640, but espousing the Royal cause, and executing the Commission of Array in Worces- tershire, be was taken prisoner, committed to the Tower, fined 5,0001., and his estates sequestered. His mansion here was de- stroyed, and 20,0001. of damage done to his estates in Bucks and Worcestershire. In 1651, however, he raised a troop of horse at Worcester, joined Charles, King of Scots, and was captured at the battle of Worcester. He was brought to trial, but escaped with a fine of 7,6701., to satisfy which he was compelled to resign his estate at Aylesbury to Thomas Scott and Richard Salwey, the inhabitants of Aylesbury petitioning Parliament for a reward for their attachment to that cause out of the confiscated Packington property. Sir John petitioned for a mitigation of his fine, and was met by a counter-petition from the townspeople, in which they denied that they had demolished his house, and all combination with Scott or Salwey. At last, as a sort of compromise, Sir John was let off with a- payment of 5,0001., and his Aylesbury estate was settled on the inhabitants of Aylesbury. At the Restoration the manor and estate were restored to Sir John, who had survived his troubles. The town was an important garrison for Parliament during the Civil War. It is now chiefly an agricul- tural town, the lace manufacture, once prosperous here, having greatly declined. There is, however, a straw-plait manufac- ture of some extent. It is the assize and quarter-sessions town for the county, and, as we have already said, its real capital. There are several other smaller market towns in Buckinghamshire, which were once of importance, but are now comparatively decayed. Such are Newport-Papal (a garrison for the Par liament during the reign of Charles I.) ; Wendover, which was first represented in Parliament in the 20th of Edward I.—for which John Hampden sat in five Parliaments, but which was disfran- chised by the Reform Act; and Amersham, formerly Agmandesham (which returned Edmund Waller the poet and Algernon Sydney to Parliament, but which shared the same fate). It was the old borough of the Drake family, of Shardeloes, and an early seat of Protestantism, where John Knox preached, and several early Pro- testant martyrs suffered. High or Chipping Wycombe, which es- caped the first Reform Bill, and for which Mr. Disraeli was once an unsuccessful candidate in the Radical interest, is semi-disfran- chised by the present one. But our limited space forbids us to dwell on these and several similar places, rich in historical remi- niscences, but little heard of, and still less influential, in the present dity.