Part 9

Below here, two or three miles off, stands Tamese, now Tame, upon the side of a meadow; a pleasant town, consisting of one long and broad street, running north-east and south-west: behind lie the smiling arable fields: it is almost encompassed with rivulets. This was called a _burg_ in the time of Edward the elder, anno 921, who besieged the Danes here, and took the burg, or castle. I saw infinite quantities of the _cornu ammonis_, a foot and half or two foot diameter, laid in the roads among rubble stone to mend them: all the quarries hereabouts abound with them of all dimensions. Here is a fine large church in form of a cross: in it many brasses and old monuments: some I transcribed.

_Thome de Grey filii Roberti dni. de Grey Retherfeld militis obiit anno dni. millesimo_ ccc. Another thus.

O certyn deth that now hast overthrowe Richard Quatremayns squier and Sibil his wyf that ly her now full lowe That with rial prinses of councel was true and wise famed To Richard duke of Yorke and after with his sone king Edward IIII named That founded in the chyrche of Tame a chantrye six pore men and a fraternity In the worship of St. Christofere to be relieved in perpetuitye They that of their almys for their sowles a _pater noster_ and _ave_ devoutly wul seye Of holy fadurs is granted them pardun of days xl alway.

Which Richard and Sibil out of this world passed in the yer of our lord M. cccclx. upon their sowles jhu have mercy amen. Another thus.

_Orate pro animabus Galfredi Dormer mercatoris Stapile ville Calis & Margere & Alicie uxoris ejus qui quidem Galfridus ob. 9 Mar. 1502. quorum_ _animabus propicietur deus amen._ There are the images of twenty-five children upon this stone.

John lord Williams of Tame baronet, baron of Tame, ob. 14 Oct. 1559.

Here lyeth Sir John Clerk of Northweston knight which tuke Lovys of Orleance duke of Longuevill and marquis of Rotelin prysoner at the journy of Bomy by Tyrvain the xvi day of August in the v yer of the reign of the noble and victorious king Henry viii. which John decesed the v day of April 1539.

There is an abbot (I suppose) in stone in the church wall of the south transept within side: near the church are the ruins of a priory built by Alexander bishop of Lincoln. At Notely, not far off, is another. A pot of Roman money was found at Sherburn in this neighbourhood last year.

[Sidenote: +Islip.+]

Islip is memorable for the birth of Edward the Confessor. The font which stood in the king’s chapel, as still called, where he was baptised, is removed: but that font in Dr. Plot seems not of such antiquity. There are some remains of an ancient palace.

[Sidenote: +Oxford.+]

Oxford requires a more elaborate description than a stranger can possibly give; and indeed so numerous are the colleges and halls, that one can scarce get a tolerable idea of them in the three days I staid here. The prospect of this place from Shotover hill is very inviting, nor is our expectation frustrated when in the place. The bridge over the Cherwel is a stately work, twice as broad as London bridge. Magdalen college, the legacy of our countryman, William of Wainflet, which he endowed with a princely hand, deservedly is thought one of the noblest foundations in Europe: the old oak is still left, nigh which he ordered it to be built. A vast tract of ground is inclosed with a castellated wall for gardens. On the other side the river is a park too, with long shady walks, but too near the water, wherein likewise more resembling those of Academus by Athens. The chapel is large and magnificent: the tower is a lofty strong work, in it a fine ring of bells: the whimsical figures in the quadrangle, over the buttresses, amuse the vulgar; they are the licentious inventions of the mason. Over-against this is the physic garden, whose curiosities Mr. Bobart showed us, and his own: since his death, its purpose is not so well executed. Here are remarkably fine greens in all the gardens at Oxford, especially in yew: the two piers here, with flower-pots on them, are thought to exceed; but the two yew men (as one waggishly called them) that guard the door, are ridiculous; the architecture of these gates is, I suppose, of Inigo Jones: two _sphynges_ at the entrance are properly placed: these are without the city walls. University college has a new quadrangle built by legacy of Dr. Radcliffe; but I think uniformity, in this and other structures in the university, no sufficient reason for using the old manner of building. Queen’s college over-against it is of a good taste, improved to its present splendor under the auspices, and in great degree at the charge, of the late Dr. Lancaster. The library, the hall, and chapel, are beautiful. The old gatehouse has a pretty cieling over it of stone; they say it was the chamber of Harry the Vth’s uncle and tutor. Behind it is New college; a large chapel, a good visto to the garden, in which is a pleasant mount: this was the foundation of William of Wickham, bishop of Winchester: it stands in an angle of the old city walls. At All Souls a new court is building, but in the anachronism of the Gothic degenerate taste: the new library is a spacious room, the legacy of colonel Coddrington: the chapel is very elegant; the altar, entirely of marble, was made at the charge of George Clark, esq. one of the fellows. Christ church, the magnificent work of cardinal Wolsey: the stone cieling over the entrance to the hall is very pretty; the new quadrangle, designed by the learned Dr. Aldrich, is beautiful. St. John’s college has two handsome quadrangles, the portico’s built by archbishop Laud: two fine statues, in brass, of king Charles I. and his queen, probably designed by Inigo Jones. But it is impossible for me to run through the whole of this splendid university, which I leave as a fitter task for some of her own learned sons. The school is a large building: the Bodleian library, an immense store-house of most valuable books and manuscripts, the donation of archbishop Laud, the earl of Pembroke, O. Cromwell, Selden, Digby, Bodley, and other great names: over it is a spacious gallery, adorned with pictures of founders, benefactors, and others, and with the antique marbles which were the learned part of the inexhaustible collection of the earl of Arundel: these have been illustrated with the accurate comments of Selden and Prideaux. Here are some of the most valuable Greek monuments now in the world. Over the porch, upon a handsome pedestal of black marble, stands the brass effigies of the earl of Pembroke, their noble and generous chancellor, given by the present earl: this was moulded by Rubens. Here is likewise a very large collection of Greek, Roman, British, Saxon, English, and other coins, presented by several hands. The divinity schools, finished by Humphry the good duke of Gloucester, have a very curious stone roof. The Ashmolean repository, beside some good books, papers and MSS. of the founder, has a large collection of rarities in antiquity, nature and art, &c. such as original pictures of famous men, marbles of old Egyptian carving in figures and hieroglyphics, a fine marble inscription in Arabic, which was over the door of a school at Tangier; an Egyptian mummy, being a man dressed like _orus Apollo_; the cradle of Henry VI. the hat of Bradshaw plaited with steel within, under which he sat in judgment upon king Charles I. a vast fund of precious and other stones, &c. which it is impossible to enumerate. Here is, beside, a choice apparatus of instruments for chymistry and experimental philosophy under the direction of Mr. Whiteside. The printing-house is a good building with a bold portico, but next the schools disgraced with a wretched statue of my lord Clarendon. Between these two last and the schools stands the Sheldonian theatre, the first piece of architecture of Sir Christopher Wren, a spacious and well-proportioned room: it is worth while to go upon the top of it, to see the carpentry of the roof, and the fine prospect of the city and country thence. Before Baliol college they showed us the stone in the street which marks the place of the barbarous martyrdom of the venerable archbishop Cranmer and bishop Ridley, then upon the banks of the ditch without the walls of the city, which went along where the theatre now stands. Beyond the river, amongst meadows encompassed with rivulets, stood Oseney abbey, founded by Robert D’oyley 1129.[37] upon the bridge is a tower called Friar Bacon’s Study, from that famous and learned monk, who in dark ages had penetrated so far into the secrets of nature. Oxford, no doubt, means no more than the passage over the river Ox, Ouse, or Isis, which are equivalents. Over another bridge of the Isis we went to see Ruleigh abbey, where some ruins and parcels still remain, turned to a common brew-house: a disjointed stone in a partition wall preserves this monumental inscription, *Elae de Warwik comitissae viscera sunt hic*. This Ela was daughter of Wil. Longspee earl of Salisbury, and wife of Thomas de Newburgh the last earl of Warwick of that name: she died on Sunday the fifth of the ides of February, 26 Ed. I. 1297. she gave lands to this abbey, and founded a chapel here, as appears by an inscription dug up 1705. her body was buried before the high altar at Oseney, her heart in this place. Of the castle there is a square high tower remaining by the river side, and a lofty mount or keep walled at top, with a stair-case going downward: this seems to have been a very strong place, built by Robert de Oili in the time of William the Conqueror. If there was a town here in Roman times, it seems to have been in this quarter. The White-friars was a royal palace; and near a green called Beaumonds, they showed us the bottom of a tower upon the ground where the valiant Richard I. _Cœur de lion_, was born. Without the town on all sides may be seen the remains of the fortifications raised in the time of the civil wars. It is in vain to pretend in this paper to enumerate the particular remarkables of every college, which are eighteen in number, and seven halls: these for beauty, grandeur, and endowment, no doubt, exceed any thing: their chapels, halls, libraries, quadrangles, piazzas; their gardens, walks, groves, and every thing, contribute to make the first university in the world. As to the city, though the colleges make up two thirds of it, and are continually eating it away, in buying whole streets for enlargement; yet it is large, regular, and crouds itself out proportionably: the streets are spacious, handsome, clean, and strait; the whole place pleasant and healthful; the inhabitants genteel and courteous: the churches are many and elegant enough, especially Allhallows, a neat fabric of modern architecture, with a very handsome spire. St. Peter’s in the east is venerable for its antiquity: the east end by its fabric appears prior to the time of the Conquest.

Leaving this famous repository of learning, we saw on our left hand, on the other side of the river, the last ruins of Godstow nunnery, placed among the sweet meadows: here fair Rosamond, the beloved mistress of Henry II. had a tomb remarkably fine; but before the dissolution, scarce could her ashes rest, whose beauty was thought guilty even after death.

[Sidenote: +Woodstock.+]

At Woodstock we saw part of the old palace, and her famous labyrinth, which is since destroyed: her bathing-place, or well (as called) is left, a quadrangular receptacle of most pure water, immediately flowing from a little spring under the hill, and over-shadowed with trees: near it some few ruins of walls and arches. King Ethelred called a parliament here; it has been a royal seat from most ancient times: Henry I. inclosed the park. A-cross this valley was a remarkably fine echo, that would repeat a whole hexameter, but impaired by the removal of these buildings. A stately bridge from hence now leads along the grand approach to the present castle: one arch is above a hundred foot diameter: a cascade of water falls from a great lake down some stone steps into the canal that runs under it.

The new palace is a vast and magnificent pile of building; a royal gift to the high merit of the invincible duke of Marlborough; the lofty hall is painted by Sir James Thornhill; the salon by la Guerre: the rooms are finely enriched with marble chimney-pieces and furniture, but more by the incomparable paintings: many of Rubens’s best and largest pieces; that celebrated one of himself, his wife, and child, among others; Vandyke’s king Charles I. upon a dun horse, of great value; and the famous loves of the Gods, by Titian, a present from the king of Sardinia. The gallery I admired beyond any thing I have seen, lined with marble pilasters and whole pillars of one piece, supporting a most costly and beautiful entablature, excellent for matter and workmanship: the window frames of the same, and a basement of black marble quite round. Before it is stretched out a most agreeable prospect of the fine woods beyond the great valley: it is indeed of an admirable model: this, and what is of the most elegant taste in the whole house, is of the duchess’s own designing. The chapel is not yet finished, and which I doubt not will be equal to the rest. The garden is a large plot of ground taken out of the park, and may still be said to be part of it; well contrived by sinking the outer wall into a foss, to give one a view quite round, and take off the odious appearance of confinement and limitation to the eye, and which quite spoils the pleasure and intention of a garden: within, it is well adorned with walks, greens, espaliers, and visto’s to diverse remarkable objects that offer themselves in the circumjacent country. Over the pediment of this front of the house is a curious busto in marble of the French king, bigger than life, taken from the gate of the citadel of Tournay. The orangery is a pretty room. At the entrance hither from the town, her grace has erected a noble triumphal arch to the memory of the duke, and has projected a vast obelisk to be set in the principal avenue in the park, whereon is to be inscribed an account of his great actions and ability in council, and in war. Near the gate is the house where our famous Chaucer was born: methinks there was somewhat poetical in the ground that first gave him birth, and produced these verses, which I ask pardon for inserting, upon a subject which his genius only could be equal to:

_Fame, like the optic artist, wont to swell The object larger to the armed eye, Sing on, and mighty Marlborough’s actions tell: Secure from flattery in words abound, And let thy trumpet diapasons sound; Speak but enough of him, ’tis all reality._

[Sidenote: +Stunsfield+, Ro. _town_.]

Through the park we crossed again the Akeman-street, which runs all along with a perfect ridge made of stone, dug every where near the surface: it bears between north-east and east: it is a foot-path still through the park with a stile, and a road beyond it by which it passes to Stunsfield, where are marks of an intrenched work, once a Roman station: and in the place they found (the 25th Jan. 1712.) a most curious tesselated pavement, for bulk and beauty the most considerable one we know of: it was a parallelogram of thirty-five foot long and twenty foot wide, a noble room, and no doubt designed for feasting and jollity: in one of the circular works was Bacchus represented in stones properly coloured, with a tiger, a _thyrsus_ in his hand enwrapped with vine leaves. This admirable curiosity deserved a better owner; for the landlord and tenant quarreling about sharing the profits of showing it, the latter maliciously tore it in pieces. When the earth was first laid open upon its discovery, they found it covered a foot thick with burnt wheat, barley and pease: so that we may guess upon some enemy’s approach it was covered with those matters to prevent its being injured, or was turned into a barn and burnt.

We crossed a foss called Grimesditch, the _vallum_ eastward: it goes by Ditchley wood and house, which takes its name from it. Dr. Plot does not sufficiently distinguish this from a Roman road: it was doubtless some division of the ancient Britons: the country is all a rock of rag-stone. Many good seats of the nobility hereabouts; Cornbury lord Clarendon’s, Ditchley lord Litchfield’s, duke of Shrewsbury’s at Hathorp, new built of stone very beautiful. Juniper grows plentifully hereabouts. At Chadlington is a square Roman camp. At Enston is a pretty curiosity in water-works, cascades falling down artificial rocks overgrown with waterplants, chirping of birds imitated, many pipes of water, secretly to dash the spectators, and fancies of that kind.

[Sidenote: +Chipping-norton.+]

Chipping-Norton must have been a great trading town by the number of merchants, as they are there called, buried in the church under brasses and inscriptions: others of alabaster: and the name of the place signifies it, as our Cheapside, equivalent to market, to buying or cheapening. There are marks of a castle by the church, which probably was demolished in the time of king Stephen. Lord Arundel, beheaded in the barons wars, lived in it: a place called the Vineyards near it. Roman coins are frequently found here. The church is a good building of a curious model, the south porch hexagonal, and a little roof over it supported by a stone arch: under the choir is a charnel-house full of the ruined rafters of mortality. A priory was here near Chapel on the heath: the Talbot inn was religious: stories of subterraneous passages thence to the priory. A well lately found in the ploughed fields at Woodstock hill, a mile south of this place, and more such like in the fields. Hereabouts they call camps _barrows_, meaning boroughs.

[Sidenote: +Rowldrich.+ Br. _temple_.]

Hence we rode to see Rowldrich stones, a very noble monument; the first antiquity of this sort that I had seen, and from which I concluded these works to be temples of the ancient Britons. I crave leave to reserve its description for another work. In the clay upon these hills they dig out _cornua ammonis_, small, but very prettily notched: they are nothing but clay hardened in the shell. Further on, in Tadmerton parish, we rode through a large round camp on the top of a hill doubly intrenched, able to contain a great army. Bloxham has a very fine church, the steeple of an odd make, but pretty enough. At Broughton near Banbury is the seat of the lord Say and Seal.

[Sidenote: +Branavis.+]

[Sidenote: TAB. VIII. 2d Vol.]

Banbury was a Roman station, called _Branavis_. That master builder the bishop of Lincoln, Alexander, built the castle anno 1125, I doubt not but upon the Roman fortification: he enlarged it and built it after the mode of those times, taking in a huge space of ground with a wall, towers and ditch: within he made another work upon one side, where were the lodgings, chapel, &c. A small part of the wall of this is only now left, of good hewn stone; but the ditch went along the middle of the adjacent street, and houses are built by the side of it, out of its ruins, as people now alive remember: in the civil wars it received new additional works, for there are plain remains of four bastions; a brook running without them. Many Roman coins and antiquities have been found here. There is an inn called the Altarstone inn, from an altar which stood in a nich under the sign: this had a ram and fire carved on it, as they say: part of the stone is still left: I imagine this was originally a Roman altar: they tell us William the Conqueror lay at this inn. The town is a large straggling place and dirty, though on a rock with sufficient descent: one would think it was walled about in most ancient times. Here are three gates, though of later make. The tower of the church, they say, was much higher than at present: the church is of great compass: three rows of pillars, but of too slender a manner, which makes them all lean awry, and different ways: many additions have been made to it: a touch-stone monument of the family of Cope: other old monuments ruined. The bridge is long, consisting of many arches. _Branau supercilium aquæ_ seems well to answer the etymology of the Roman name, as Mr. Baxter has it: The stone of this country is mixed with sand. Black gloves is a great manufacture here. Kenric the West-Saxon king, anno 540, routed the Britons at this place.

We went over the vale of Red-horse and Edghill, which presents us with a most extensive prospect, steep to the north: on the top of it, at Warmleighton, is a large and strong intrenchment of a circular but irregular form, said to be Danish by the inhabitants, but seemingly more ancient and British. Descending the hill for a mile, we rode through Radway, and over the field between it and Kyneton, where the famous battle of Edghill was fought: we were shown some of the graves of the slain. At Tellisford we crossed the Foss-way.

[Sidenote: +Præsidium.+ Warwick.]

[Sidenote: TAB. IX. 2d Vol.]

Warwick is situate on a rock, a fine new-built town, having been almost wholly burnt down in 1694. The church and lofty tower is new built, except the east end, which is old and very good work: there are a many fine brass monuments of the earls of Warwick and others, as the earl of Essex; many chapels and confessionaries, with other remains of ancient superstition: in the chapter-house on the north side is a tomb of the lord Brook. The castle stands upon the river Avon, over which is a stone bridge with a dozen arches: across is a large stone-work dam, where the water falls over it as a cascade, under the castle wall, which is built on a rock forty foot above the water. It overlooks the whole town and country, being delicately situate for pleasure and strength, fenced with a deep mound and strong embattled double walls and lofty towers: there are good apartments and lodgings next the river, the residence of the lord Brook: on one side of the area is a very high mount: we were shown the sword and other gigantic reliques of Guy the famous earl of Warwick. The priory on the north-east side of the town overlooks a pleasant woody vale: there are a great many curious original pictures, by Vandike and other good hands, of kings, queens, famous statesmen, persons of learning both at home and abroad. A mile out of town, on the side of a hill, is a pretty retired cell, called Guy-cliffe: in an old chapel there is a statue of Guy eight foot high: the fence of the court is intire rock, in which are cut stables and out-houses. We saw the rough cave where they say Guy died a hermit.

[Sidenote: +Coventry+.]

Coventry is a large old city: it was walled about: the gates are yet standing. It is adorned with a fine and very large church and beautiful spire a hundred yards high. There is another good church in the same yard. The cross is a beautiful Gothic work, sixty six foot high: in niches are the statues of the English kings. At the south end of the town stands a tall spire by itself, part of the Grey Friers’ conventual church. The town-house is worth seeing: the windows filled with painted glass of the images of the old earls, kings, &c. who have been benefactors to the town. Here the famous lady Godiva redeemed the privileges thereof almost at the expence of her modesty, the memory whereof is preserved by an annual cavalcade. These verses are wrote in the town-house.