PARLIAMENTS AT OXFORD
Sm,—Janus is right in supposing that Parliament met at Oxford in 1665 on account of the Great Plague ; but that was not the last occasion. It met there again in 1681, Charles II wishing to remove it from the influence of Shaftesbury's "brisk boys," the most unruly element of the unruly London mob. Shaftesbury and his supporters lodged at Balliol, the Tories at Christ Church. The House of Lords met in the Geometry School, the House of Commons in the Convocation House. It was in the first of these, an inconvenient room on the first floor of what is now the quadrangle of the Bodleian Library, that Charles, putting on his
robes of state, which had been brought concealed in a sedan chair, dissolved Parliament on Monday, March 28th, 1681. The session had
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