Part 13

The river Thames is the largest and most important river in England, and carries the greatest commerce in the world. From the Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire it flows to the eastward past London, and after a course of two hundred and twenty miles empties into the North Sea. The confluence of many small streams draining the Cotswolds makes the Thames, but its traditional source, or "The Thames Head," is in Trewsbury Mead, about three miles from Cirencester, and at an elevation of three hundred and seventy-six feet above the sea-level. The waters of the infant stream are at once pressed into service for pumping into the higher levels of a canal, which pierces the Cotswolds by a long tunnel, and connects the Thames with the Severn River, flowing along their western base. It receives many tiny rivulets that swell its current, until at Cricklade the most ambitious of these affluents joins it, and even lays claim to be the original stream. This is the Churn, rising at the "Seven Springs," about three miles from Cheltenham, and also on the slope of the Cotswolds. The Churn claims the honor because it is twenty miles long, while the Thames down to Cricklade measures only ten miles. But they come together affectionately, and journey on through rich meadows much like other streams, until the clear waters have acquired sufficient dignity to turn a mill. Cirencester (pronounced Cisseter), which thus has the honor of being a near neighbor of the Thames Head, is an ancient town, occupying the site of the Roman city of Corinium, and is known as the "metropolis of the Cotswolds." Here four great Roman roads met, and among the many Roman remains it has is part of the ruins of an amphitheatre. It was a famous stronghold before the Saxons came to England, and Polydorus tells how one Gormund, an African prince, in the dim ages of the past, besieged it for seven long years. Then he bethought him that if he could only set fire to the thatched roofs of the houses he could in the commotion that would follow force an entrance. So he set his troops at work catching sparrows, and when many were caught fastened combustibles under their tails and let them loose. The poor birds flew straight to their nests under the thatches, set them in a blaze, and while the people were busy putting out the fires Gormund got into the town. In memory of this it was afterwards called the "City of Sparrows." The Normans built a strong castle here, and Stephen destroyed it. The castle was rebuilt, and suffered the usual fate in the successive civil wars, and in the Revolution of 1688 the first bloodshed was at Cirencester. It had a magnificent abbey, built for the Black Canons in the twelfth century, and ruled by a mitred abbot who had a seat in Parliament. A fine gateway of this abbey remains, and also the beautiful church with its pretty tower. It is known now as the parish church of St. John, and has been thoroughly restored. Within are the monuments of the Bathurst family, whose seat at Oakley Park, near the town, has some charming scenery. Pope's Seat, a favorite resort of the poet, is also in the park. Cheltenham, near which is the "Seven Springs," the source of the Churn, is a popular watering-place, with the Earl of Eldon's seat at Stowell Park not far away. Here in 1864 a Roman villa was discovered, which has been entirely excavated. It has twenty chambers communicating with a long corridor, and there are several elegant tessellated pavements, while the walls are still standing to a height of four feet. Two temples have also been found in the immediate neighborhood. Substantial buildings have been erected to protect these precious remains from the weather.

SUDELEY CASTLE AND CHAVENAGE.

In the Cotswolds is the castle of Sudeley, its ruins being in rather good preservation. It was an extensive work, built in the reign of Henry VI., and was destroyed in the Civil Wars; it was a famous place in the olden time, and was regarded as one of the most magnificent castles in England when Queen Elizabeth made her celebrated progress thither in 1592. After the death of Henry VIII., his queen, Catharine Parr, married Lord Seymour of Sudeley, and she died and was buried in this castle: it is related that her leaden coffin was exhumed in 1782, two hundred and eighty years after her death, and the remains were found in excellent preservation. Among the records of the castle is a manuscript stating that Catharine Parr was told by an astrologer who calculated her nativity that she was born to sit in the "highest state of imperial majesty," and that she had all the eminent stars and planets in her house: this worked such lofty conceit in the lady that "her mother could never make her sew or do any small work, saying her hands were ordained to touch crowns and sceptres, not needles and thimbles." Near Tatbury, and also in the Cotswolds, is the source of the classic river Avon, and north-west of the town is the fine Elizabethan mansion of Chavenage, with its attractive hall and chapel. The original furniture, armor, and weapons are still preserved. This was the old manor-house of the family of Stephens, and Nathaniel represented Gloucestershire in Parliament at the time of the conviction of Charles I.: it is related that he was only persuaded to agree to the condemnation by the impetuous Ireton, who came there and sat up all night in urgent argument "to whet his almost blunted purpose." Stephens died in May, 1649, expressing regret for having participated in the execution of his sovereign. We are further told in the traditions of the house that when all the relatives were assembled for the funeral, and the courtyard was crowded with equipages, another coach, gorgeously ornamented and drawn by black horses, solemnly approached the porch: when it halted, the door opened, and, clad in his shroud, the shade of Stephens glided into the carriage; the door was closed by an unseen hand, and the coach moved off, the driver being a beheaded man, arrayed in royal vestments and wearing the insignia of the Star and Garter. Passing the gateway of the courtyard, the equipage vanished in flames. Tradition maintains also that every lord of Chavenage dying in the manor-house since has departed in the same awful manner.

The Thames flows on after its junction with the Churn, and receives other pretty streams, all coming out of the Cotswolds. The Coln and the Leche, coming in near Lechlade, swell its waters sufficiently to make it navigable for barges, and the river sets up a towing-path, for here the canal from the Severn joins it. The river passes in solitude out of Gloucestershire, and then for miles becomes the boundary between Oxfordshire on the north and Berkshire on the south. The canal has been almost superseded by the railway, so that passing barges are rare, but the towing-path and the locks remain, with an occasional rustic dam thrown across the gradually widening river. In this almost deserted region is the isolated hamlet of Shifford, where King Alfred held a parliament a thousand years ago. Near it is the New Bridge, a solid structure, but the oldest bridge that crosses the Thames, for it was "new" just six hundred years ago. The Thames then receives the Windrush and the Evenlode, and it passes over frequent weirs that have become miniature rapids, yet not too dangerous for an expert oarsman to guide his boat through safely. Thus the famous river comes to Bablock Hythe Ferry, and at once enters an historic region.

STANTON HARCOURT AND CUMNOR HALL.

A short distance from the ferry in Oxfordshire is Stanton Harcourt, with its three upright sandstones, "the Devil's Coits," supposed to have been put there to commemorate a battle between the Saxons and the Britons more than twelve centuries ago. The village gets its name from the large and ancient mansion of the Harcourts, of which, however, but little remains. Pope passed the greater part of two summers in the deserted house in a tower that bears his name, and where he wrote the fifth volume of his translation of Homer in the topmost room: he recorded the fact on a pane of glass in the window in 1718, and this pane has been carefully preserved. The kitchen of the strange old house still remains, and is a remarkable one, being described as "either a kitchen within a chimney or a kitchen without one." In the lower part this kitchen is a large square room; above it is octangular and ascends like a tower, the fires being made against the walls, and the smoke climbing up them until it reaches the conical apex, where it goes out of loopholes on any side according to the wind. The distance from the floor to the apex is about sixty feet, and the interior is thickly coated with soot. The fireplaces are large enough to roast an ox whole.

Not far from the ferry, in Berkshire, is the ancient manor-house of Cumnor Hall, sacred to the melancholy memory of poor Amy Robsart. She was the wife of Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and when his ambition led him to seek Queen Elizabeth's hand it was necessary to get her out of the way. So he sent Amy to Cumnor, where his servant Anthony Forster lived. At first poison was tried, but she suspected it, and would not take the potion. Then, sending all the people away, Sir Richard Varney and Forster, with another man, strangled her, and afterwards threw her down stairs, breaking her neck. It was at first given out that poor Amy had fallen by accident and killed herself, but people began to suspect differently, and the third party to the murder, being arrested for a felony and threatening to tell, was privately made away with in prison by Leicester's orders. Both Varney and Forster became melancholy before their deaths, and finally a kinswoman of the earl, on her dying bed, told the whole story. The earl had Amy buried with great pomp at Oxford, but it is recorded that the chaplain by accident "tripped once or twice in his speech by recommending to their memories that virtuous lady so pitifully _murdered_, instead of saying pitifully _slain_." Sir Walter Scott has woven her sad yet romantic story into his tale of _Kenilworth_; and to prove how ambition overleaps itself, we find Lord Burghley, among other reasons which he urged upon the queen why she should not marry Leicester, saying that "he is infamed by the murder of his wife." The queen remained a virgin sovereign, and Leicester's crime availed only to blacken his character.

FAIR ROSAMOND.

The Thames flows on past the wooded glades of Wytham Abbey, and then revives the memory of Fair Rosamond as it skirts the scanty ruins of Godstow Nunnery. This religious house upon the river-bank was founded in the reign of Henry I., and the ruins are some remains of the walls and of a small chapter-house in which Rosamond's corpse was deposited. It was at Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, then a royal palace, that in the twelfth century Henry II. built "Fair Rosamond's Bower" for his charmer, who was the daughter of Lord Clifford. This bower was surrounded by a labyrinth. Queen Eleanor, whom the king had married only from ambitious motives, was much older than he, and he had two sons by Rosamond, whom he is said to have first met at Godstow Nunnery. The bower consisted of arched vaults underground. There are various legends of the discovery of Rosamond by Eleanor, the most popular being that the queen discovered the ball of silk the king used to thread the maze of the labyrinth, and following it found the door and entered the bower. She is said to have ill-treated and even poisoned Rosamond, but the belief now is that Rosamond retired to the nunnery from sorrow at the ultimate defection of her royal lover, and did not die for several years. The story has been the favorite theme of the poets, and we are told that her body was buried in the nunnery, and wax lights placed around the tomb and kept continually burning. Subsequently, her remains were reinterred in the chapter-house, with a Latin inscription, which is thus translated:

"This tomb doth here enclose the world's most beauteous rose-- Rose passing sweet erewhile, now naught but odor vile."

OXFORD.

As we float along the quiet Thames the stately towers and domes of the university city of Oxford come in sight, and appear to suddenly rise from behind a green railway embankment. Here the Cherwell flows along the Christ Church meadows to join the great river, and we pause at the ancient Ousenford--or the ford over the Ouse or Water--a name which time has changed to Oxford. The origin of the famous university is involved in obscurity. The city is mentioned as the scene of important political and military events from the time of King Alfred, but the first undisputed evidence that it was a seat of learning dates from the twelfth century. Religious houses existed there in earlier years, and to these schools were attached for the education of the clergy. From these schools sprang the secular institutions that finally developed into colleges, and common interest led to the association from which ultimately came the university. The first known application of the word to this association occurs in a statute of King John. In the thirteenth century there were three thousand students at Oxford, and Henry III. granted the university its first charter. In those early times the university grew in wealth and numbers, and intense hostility was developed between the students and townspeople, leading to the quarrels between "Town and Gown" that existed for centuries, and caused frequent riots and bloodshed. A penance for one of these disturbances, which occurred in 1355 and sacrificed several lives, continued to be kept until 1825. The religious troubles in Henry VIII.'s time reduced the students to barely one thousand, but a small part of whom attended the colleges, so that in 1546 only thirteen degrees were conferred. In 1603 the university was given representation in Parliament; it was loyal to Charles I., and melted its plate to assist him, so that after his downfall it was plundered, and almost ceased to have an existence as an institution of learning; it has since had a quiet and generally prosperous history. The university comprises twenty-one colleges, the oldest being University College, founded in 1249, and the youngest the Keble Memorial College, founded in 1870. University College, according to tradition, represents a school founded by King Alfred in 872, and it celebrated its millennial anniversary in 1872. Balliol College, founded between 1263 and 1268, admits no one who claims any privilege on account of rank or wealth, and is regarded as having perhaps the highest standard of scholarship at Oxford. Christ Church College is the most extensive in buildings, numbers, and endowments, and is a cathedral establishment as well as college. There are now about eighty-five hundred members of the university and twenty-five hundred undergraduates. The wealth of some of the colleges is enormous, and they are said to own altogether nearly two hundred thousand acres of land in different parts of the kingdom, and to have about $2,100,000 annual revenues, of which they expend not over $1,500,000, the remainder accumulating. They also have in their gift four hundred and forty-four benefices, with an annual income of $950,000. It costs a student about $1200 to $1500 a year to live at Oxford, and about $325 in university and college fees from matriculation to graduation, when he gets his degree of B.A., or, if inattentive, fails to pass the examination, and, in Oxford parlance, is said to be "plucked."

THE OXFORD COLLEGES.

The enumeration of the colleges which make up the university will naturally begin with the greatest, Christ Church, founded by Cardinal Wolsey, of which the principal façade extends four hundred feet along St. Aldate's Street, and has a noble gateway in the centre surmounted by a six-sided tower with a dome-like roof. Here hangs the great bell of Oxford, "Old Tom," weighing seventeen thousand pounds, which every night, just after nine o'clock, strikes one hundred and one strokes, said to be in remembrance of the number of members the college had at its foundation. Wolsey's statue stands in the gateway which leads into the great quadrangle, called by the students, for short, "Tom Quad." Here are the lodgings of the dean and canons, and also the Great Hall, the finest in Oxford, and the room where the sovereign is received whenever visiting the city. The ancient kitchen adjoins the hall, and near by is the entrance to the cathedral, which has been restored, and the ancient cloisters. From the buildings a meadow extends down to the rivers, the Cherwell on the left and the Thames (here called the Isis) on the right, which join at the lower part of the meadow. Beautiful walks are laid out upon it, including the famous Oxford promenade, the Broad Walk, a stately avenue of elms bordering one side of the meadow. Here, on the afternoon of Show Sunday, which comes immediately before Commemoration Day, nearly all the members of the university and the students, in academic costume, make a promenade, presenting an animated scene.

Corpus Christi College was founded by Bishop Fox of Winchester in 1516, and its quadrangle, which remains much as at the foundation, contains the founder's statue, and also a remarkable dial, in the centre of which is a perpetual calendar. This college is not very marked in architecture. It stands at the back of Christ Church, and adjoining it is Merton College, founded in 1264 by Walter de Merton. His idea was to forbid the students following in after life any other pursuit than that of parish priest. The chapel of Merton is one of the finest in Oxford, and its massive tower is a city landmark. The entrance-gateway, surmounted by a sculptured representation of St. John the Baptist, is attractive, and the two college quadrangles are picturesque, the "Mob Quad," or library quadrangle, being five hundred years old, with the Treasury and its high-pitched ashlar roof and dormer windows above one of the entrance-passages. St. Alban Hall, built about 1230, adjoins Merton, and is a Gothic structure with a curious old bell-tower. Oriel College stands opposite Corpus Christi, but the ancient buildings of the foundation in 1324-26 have all been superseded by comparatively modern structures of the seventeenth century: though without any striking architectural merits, the hall and chapel of this college are extremely picturesque. Its fame is not so much from its buildings as from some of its fellows, Whately, Keble, Wilberforce, Newman, Pusey, and Arnold having been among them. St. Mary's Hall, an offshoot founded in the fourteenth century, stands near this college. All Souls College is on the High Street, and was founded in 1437, its buildings being, however, modern, excepting one quadrangle. In the chapel is a magnificent reredos, presented by Lord Bathurst, who was a fellow of All Souls, and containing figures representing most of the fellows of his time: in the library are Wren's original designs for building St. Paul's. This college was founded by Archbishop Chichele for "the hele of his soul" and of the souls of all those who perished in the French wars of King Henry V.; hence its name. We are told that the good archbishop was much troubled where to locate his college, and there appeared to him in a dream a "right godly personage," who advised him to build it on the High Street, and at a certain spot where he would be sure in digging to find a "mallard, imprisoned but well fattened, in the sewer." He hesitated, but all whom he consulted advised him to make the trial, and accordingly, on a fixed day after mass, with due solemnity the digging began. They had not dug long, the story relates, before they heard "amid the earth horrid strugglings and flutterings and violent quackings of the distressed mallard." When he was brought out he was as big as an ostrich, and "much wonder was thereat, for the lycke had not been seen in this londe nor in onie odir." The Festival of the Mallard was long held in commemoration of this event, at which was sung the "Merry Song of the All Souls Mallard," beginning--

"Griffin, bustard, turkey, capon, Let other hungry mortals gape on, And on the bones their stomach fill hard; But let All Souls men have their mallard. Oh, by the blood of King Edward, It was a wopping, wopping mallard!"

While the festival has passed away, the song is still sung at Oxford, and the tale has given rise to much literature, there having been vigorous contests waged over the authenticity of the mallard.

University College, also on the High Street, though the earliest founded, now has no building older than the seventeenth century. It has an imposing Gothic front with two tower-gateways, while the recently constructed New Building is an elegant structure erected in 1850. Queen's College, founded in 1341 by Queen Philippa's confessor, and hence its name, is a modern building by Wren and his pupils. St. Edmund Hall, opposite Queen's College, is a plain building, but with magnificent ivy on its walls.

MAGDALEN AND BRASENOSE.

Bishop Patten of Winchester, who was surnamed Waynflete, founded Magdalen College in 1458. It stands by the side of the Cherwell, and its graceful tower, nearly four hundred years old, rises one hundred and forty-five feet--one of the most beautiful constructions in Oxford. Its quadrangles are fine, especially the one known as the Cloisters, which remains much as it was in the time of the founder, and is ornamented with rude sandstone statues erected in honor of a visit from King James I. In accordance with ancient custom, on the morning of the first of May, just as five o'clock strikes, a solemn Te Deum is sung on the top of Magdalen Tower, where the choristers assemble in surplices and with uncovered heads. When it closes the crowd on the ground below give out discordant blasts from myriads of tin horns, but the Magdalen chime of bells, said to be "the most tunable and melodious ring of bells in all these parts and beyond," soon drowns the discord, and gives a glad welcome to the opening of spring. This custom survives from the time of Henry VII., and the produce of two acres of land given to the college by that king is used to pay for a feast for the choristers, spread later in the day in the college hall. The college has a meadow and small deer-park attached, known as the Magdalen Walks, and encircled by the arms of the Cherwell, while avenues of trees along raised dykes intersect it. The avenue on the north side of this meadow is known as "Addison's Walk," and was much frequented by him when at this college. The little deer-park, a secluded spot, abounds with magnificent elms. It was at Magdalen that Wolsey was educated, being known as the "Boy Bachelor," as he got his B.A. degree at the early age of fifteen. The Botanic Garden is opposite Magdalen College, having a fine gateway with statues of Charles I. and II. Magdalen College School, a modern building, but an organization coeval with the college, is a short distance to the westward.