OXFORD CITY.*

TILE story of Oxford could not have fallen into better hands than those of Mr. Bosse. The story is admirably told in the chatty, anecdotic, but " meaty " style which those who have

listened to Mr. Boase at Oxford will know and appreciate. His writing is like his conversation, rather discursive; but the discursions are always illustrative and full of matter. He has produced an eminently readable book, though it is as full of facts as an egg is full of meat. The history of Oxford, like the town itself, in these days is unique. It is admirably typified by the contrast between the crumbling decay of de massive Norman tower and the useless bulk of the Mound which the railway-passenger sees as he drives from the station into the town, and the more modern though still ancient struc- tures of St. Mary's Church and the Colleges, full of life and bearing abundant evidences of use, which greet him in the High Street. Not so typical is the fact that the Municipal Buildings, instead of forming the most prominent feature in the town, as at Manchester, or even at Exeter, have to be sought down a side-street, in an obscure recess, and even there are entirely dominated by the gate of Christ Church ; while even the Municipal Church, St. Martin's, stands only timidly on the entrance to the High Street, not in it, and is completely dwarfed by the rival edifice of the University at St. Mary's. The City of Oxford, indeed, like that of Rome, bears on its face the history of a city in which the spiritual power has overshadowed the civil power under the shadow of which it grew up, and to which, in fact, it owed its existence and its greatness. But though Oxford is like Rome in that its modern history and place in modern history are due to the fame of its spiritual and not of its civil inhabitants, while both cities had a far greater place in the State before the spiritual power even began to exist ; yet they are, of course, unlike in this,—that while Rome was the world before the Papacy was created, Oxford, though perhaps an important pro- vincial town, would probably never have been heard of in the world at large if the City had not been swamped by the University. Yet Oxford differs from Cambridge still, as it has always differed, in the fact that Cambridge was never anything but the seat of a University, while Oxford is, as it has always been, a town of considerable local importance, and with a vigorous local life of its own. In fact, the peculiarity of Oxford history consists in the epigrammatic statement quoted from the historian, J. R. Green, with which Mr. Boase prefaces his preface :—

"Oxford had already seen five centuries of borough life before a student appeared in its streets. The University found it a busy, prosperous borough, and reduced it to a cluster of lodging-houses. It found it among the first of English municipalities, and it so utterly crushed its freedom, that the recovery of some of the com- monest rights of self-government has only been brought about by recent legislation."

The history of the University apart from the City has been so ably told by Mr. Maxwell-Lyte and Mr. Brodrick, in their books reviewed in these columns early in 1887, that we pro- Geed to dwell rather on the history of the City apart from the

University, as told by Mr. Boase.

It is satisfactory to find at the outset that, as Mr. Maxwell- Lyte has restored the obvious derivation of Brasenose to the brazen-nose, instead of the perverted ingenuity of the brasing

* Oxford. By Charles W. Bosse, Fellow of Bieber College. " Historic Towns" Series. London : Longmans. Green, and 00. or brewing-house, so Mr. Boase restores the etymology of Oxford to the good English ford of oxen, instead of the fanciful Celtic tautology of aseford or waterford. He even allows us to believe that there may have been a nunnery here, founded by a Mercian lady named Frideswide in the eighth century, especially as, in digging the foundation for the Martyr's Memorial, a coin was found with the name of Offa. King of Mercia, who in 779 beat Wessex at Bensington, close to Oxford, and took Abingdon. To Oxford and the district, indeed, the English tongue, as distinct from Saxon, is to be attributed. We speak (in prose) Mercian, not Wessex, and "say 'plough,' 'boy,' 'girl,' dog,' where Alfred would have used' sulp," 'knave,' 'maiden,' and ' hound ;' " and use Mercian "I," "she," "they," instead of Southern " ich," " theo," " thi." It was not till 912 that "died Ethelrede, ealdorman of the Mercians, and King Eadward took to himself Lundenbyrg and Oxnaford and all the lands that were obedient thereto," a phrase placing Oxford on a level in importance with London, which it never again approached, except in the period when Oxford was the Royalist capital, in opposition to the Parliamentary capital of London. Oxford was the place where Dane and English were reconciled in 1020; where Canute's son Harold was elected King, through the influence of the North and London against that of Earl Godwin and Wessex, in 1036; and coins of Athelstan, Edmund, Canute, and his son were coined there, and possibly one of Alfred's pennies.

In Domesday, Oxford is described as a city, which shows great relative importance, though the Domesday city is a poor thing to our notions. Chichester, for hilatance, to which the Bishop's See was removed from Selsey, in pursuance of a decree of the Council of London in 1075 ordering the removal of Sees from villages to large towns, had some 600 houses ; and Oxford had "24.3 houses that pay geld, and 478 unoccupied and ruined, so that they can pay no geld," showing a total of 721 houses, and a frightful devastation by the Conquest. York had only 1,036, and Lincoln 1,150 houses.

Robert d'011gi, the Conqueror's brother-in-law, was the chief owner in Oxford, and he built the Norman castle, and his nephew built Oseney Abbey, which was possibly the cradle of the University; its big bell was transferred by WoLsey to Christ Church, and is now "Great Tom." Before it was recast in 1680, it bore the charming inscription, "In Thomw laude resono Bim Born sine fraude." It is disgusting to hear that as late as 1718, the Abbot's chamber and the great staircase of the Abbey were still standing, and have since been (probably) quarried away. Every one has heard of the escape of the Empress Maud in her nightgown over the snow in 1142 from Oxford Castle, where, like Charles I., she took refuge when London would not have her. But an even more striking testi- mony to the early greatness of Oxford City was the number of Jews there :- "The earliest stone houses were due to them, just as at Lincoln; and at Oxford nearly all the larger houses, which were afterwards converted into halls, bore traces of Jewish origin in their names, such as Moysey's, Lombard's, and Jacob's Halls. The Guildhall itself was owned in Henry III.'s time by Moses the son of Isaac, from whom it is supposed to have come to the King by escheat, and he gave it to the citizens by his charter, February 18th, 1228-9. They had a cemetery where the tower and south side of Magdalen now stand. In 1222 a deacon was accused of having circumcised himself for the affection he had to a Jewish woman. He was degraded, committed to the secular power, and burnt ;" — an early instance of religious persecution before the writ De ccnaburendo liaereticos was invented.

"Magdalen still possesses a shtar (or Jewish mortgage-bond) in Hebrew dated 1243, and a deed dated 1252 about property in

Oxford and an acknowledgment by William the Cooper that he owed Isiiac the son of Mossei at Winchester twenty shillings sterling of the new money for which he is to render yearly one mark . . . . . . and he pledges as security all his lands within and without the city of Oxford.' As the mark was two-thirds of a pound, Isaac son of Mossei was receiving over 60 per cent. interest ;"

— showing that the Jew tariff of 5 per cent. per mensem was as well understood then as now. In 1248, Henry III. granted a special charter to protect "poor scholars," limiting the interest to 2d. per pound per week, which, after all, is 40 per cent. per annum.

Another son of Mossey, called Deus eum Crescat, or Dieu le Cresse—a translation of the name Gedaliah—in 1180 was com- plained of to the King by the Prior of St. Frideswide,—.

"For mocking at the miracles wrought at her shrine. Halting and then walking firmly on his feet, showing his hands clenched SS if with palsy, and then flinging open his fingers, he claimed

gifts and obtained from the crowd who flocked to St. Frideswide's, on the ground that such recoveries of limb and strength were quite as real as any Frideswide had wrought. But no earthly power, ecclesiastical or civil, ventured to meddle with Deus eum Crescat."

Though Oxford was an important place in mediTval times, and the seat of many Abbeys, Trade Guilds, Jews, Parliaments, and afterwards of Colleges, it was not a pleasant place :— " If any enthusiastic person could wish himself back in medieval Oxford, he would probably not find it very inviting. The artisan stepped out of his mud hovel into a muddy street, and this at a, time when the Moor at one corner of Europe and the Florentine at the other were enjoying the advantages of a polished capital. The unpaved streets and lanes had a gutter running down the centre into which much was thrown from the windows, and through the narrow lanes came strings of packhorses to make them still more dangerous. There was an absence of all due means of cleanliness

and health In the houses the smoke from the charcoal fire escaped through an opening in the roof, since chimneys for private rooms did not come into use until the fourteenth century, and were not common till Elizabeth's reign Candles were dear, nearly 2d. a pound, that is 28. of our money at least Men could not afford to read in their rooms after dark They rose at five, the dinner-hour was ten : late in the afternoon

they supped, and went to bed early Our enthusiast, too, might come in for an awkward fray : even the revelling tailors were not to be despised, still less the feuds between the Northern and Southern students. The coroners' inquests in the reign of Edward I. show how dangerous the streets were."

Though Mr. Boase consoles his enthusiast by remarking that "a rough age and a rough people did not object to a rough life, and it is not easy to judge of the habits of a distant past," we may perhaps with greater certainty console ourselves that we do not live in times when kings, nobles, and priests hk..-,Tct it all their own way, except on the rare occasions when a blood- thirsty mob of citizens or students have theirs for a few hours ; and that we are not liable to be burnt like the Jewess-loving deacon, or branded and driven out into the forests to die of hunger for opposing the system of the Church, as certain Germans at Oxford were in 1166, or swept off like flies by the black death or the sweating sickness, or burnt up wholesale, as Oxford was in 1190.