CHAPTER IV.

HISTORY OF THE FOUNDATION.

St. Frideswide (Fritheswithe, "The Bond of Peace"), foundress and patron saint of the church, lived early in the eighth century, when Ethelbald was King of Mercia. Her father Didan was probably the under-king of the little town of Oxford, which was then a frontier city of Mercia. In spite of the legendary atmosphere that has gathered about her memory, there is no reason to doubt the main facts of her life; indeed, the best modern authorities endorse them.

Here is her story, told in the delightful words of Anthony a Wood, who wrote towards the end of the seventeenth century:--

"About the year of our Lord 727, as authors say, lived in the city of Oxford a prince (or as Malmesbury hath, a king) named Didan, one of incomparable honesty and virtues, who, by his wife Safrid, of a Saxon family, had an only daughter called Frideswyde, born at this place, and by her parents brought up in all manner of honest and liberal breeding, befitting her descent." Then is described her early piety, her refusal of marriage, and her refusal also to be a nun. The narrative continues:--

"And furthermore, with great zeale, she added that seeing he had large possessions and inheritances and that she was like to enjoy most of them after his discease, he could not doe better than bestowe them upon some religious fabrick wherein she and her spirituall sisters (votaresses also) might spend their dayes in prayers and singing of psalmes and hymmes to God. To which the father giving an attentive eare and considering withall that his issue was like to be discontinued, took upon him a resolution to performe the same that soe he might leave his child in a comfortable manner and then dye in peace. Wherfore, not long after, the good old man built a church within the præcincts (as 'tis said) of the city of Oxon, and dedicated it to the honour of the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Mary and All Saints, and soe committed it wholy to the use of his daughter Frideswyde purposely to exercise her devotion therin."

Then is told how Frideswide afterwards took the veil, inducing "12 virgins of noble extract to follow her"; how her father "erected other ædifices adjoyning to the church to serve as lodging rooms for the said virgins," settled lands upon the Nunnery, and died. The central story of her life next follows:--

"Frideswyde, continuing most constant in her strict course of life, was not only reputed famous for that particular, but also for those excellent parts that nature had endowed her withall; insomuch that both being conjoined in one body, was accounted the flower of all these parts. Which being quickly rumoured in other countryes, gave occasion to a young spritely prince, named Algar, king of Leycester, to become her adorer in way of marriage. Which she by his proxies and others of his wellwishers understanding, triumphed soe highly in her virginity, that she with an open profession utterly despised both him and his princely bed; neither left the least incouragement for him to proceed in this his designe. The king having such a sudden repulse, and supposing it to be a flashy resolution, encited him the more to goe forward; and sometimes considering her beauty, then her incomparable qualities, and both obscured under a minchon's hood, could not but attempt once more. Which, though he performed with all the intreaties and gifts imaginable, did not in the least disjoynt her purpose, but rather occasioned her to trample upon his accostments and with a coy deportment despise his offers. All it seemes was in vaine: nothing to be heard but nays: nothing to be received but foyles: nothing but what if pursued, usher him to dispaire: and the like. What shall we imagine this yong amoretto now to doe! Noe place is able to containe him, nobody please his curious fancy but deare Frideswyde! Noe note now but '_hei mihi, quod nullis_,' etc.!

"To remedy this, therefore, and attaine his cure, he considered very well from the præmises could not be compassed unless it was by a forced stealth. These were his last thoughts; and this he was resolved to prosecute.

"Wherefore, immediately summoning some of his faithfull servants, sent them as embassadours to prefer (under pretence) his last desires for marriage, with full power, if like to prosper, to complete it. With this speciall and soveiraign caution, if she did not concede, to watch their opportunity and carry her away by force."

Then follows the account of the visit of the ambassadors, their threats of force, and the Saint's undaunted reply. The story proceeds:--

"Well, the night is spent in consultation, and at the dawning of the day they sallied from their lodgings and made their appearance towards the Nunnery, where clambering the fences of the house and by degrees approching her private lodging promised to themselves nothing but surety of their prize. But alas! their purposes came short. What shall we think the event of this designe? Why! their hopes were utterly frustrated. For shee, either by the noise they made at their entrance or else (as 'tis said in another place) by the instinct of some good spirit, awakened and suddenly arose to see what was the matter. And immediately discovering who they were and their intent for what they came, and finding it in vaine to make an escape from them by flight being soe closely beseiged, she (as the best remidy) straightway prostrated her selfe flatt on her face and fervently prayed to the almighty that he would præserve her from the violence of those wicked persons that were now ready to take her away, that he would show some speciall token of reveng upon them for this their bold attempt. Wherefore the embassadors (as 'tis delivered) were miraculously struck blind, and like mad men ran headlong yelling about the city."

The townsmen were much amazed at this strange sight, and this the cheifest of them went straightway to her and--"Upon falling upon their knees, humbly desired her to grant those simple and impertinent people their sights, promising withall that, as sone as they were perfected, would see them out of towne and enjoyne them noe more to returne. Hereupon she commanded them to be brought to her; and after fervent prayers in their behalfe, were as wonderfully restored to their eyes againe, as before they were deprived of them."

On the ambassadors' return to Algar, he was filled with rage against "that witch, hagge, and fury Frideswyde," and planned vengeance:--"The king then gathering a force and intending for Oxon, breathed out nothing but fire and sword to this place. But the night before he came hither, there was an angel (as the story goes) appeared to Frideswyde in a dreame, saying to her these words: '_Ignoras, O Virgo_,' &c.: 'thou art as yet ignorant, O virgin, what will befall you tomorrow: for King Algar with his assistants intend to sett upon you and if it be possible will satisfy his lust upon you and leave you a miserable creature. But doe not feare: there is a safe place provided for you; and he for this his attempt shall be struck blind and never recover his sight. Arise therefore, and make hast to the way that leads to the river Thames, where you shall find a ship boat ready provided for you and one in it to convey you away in safety.' After this was pronounced Frideswyde awakened; and, suddenly arising from her couch, took two of her sisters the nunns named Katherine and Cicely; and walked to the place appointed her by the angell in her dreame. Where according to his admonitions, she found a boat by the river's side and in it the appearance of a yong man with a beautiful countenance and clothed in white: who, mitigating their feare with pleasant speech, placed them in the boat, in which, the space of one hour, shee and her sisters arrived neare the towne called Benton [Bampton or Bensington], ten miles and above distant from Oxon.

"Where after their landing, followed a path adjoyning, which conveyed them into a vast and dismall wood. And wandring therin too and fro, met at length with a kind of hovell or shelter purposely erected to harbour swine and other cattell in times of cold and wett weather; and there taking up a resolution to fix, crossed themselves and retired therin. Which place being quickly overgrowen with ivy and other sprouts, they continued therin a long time, being in fasting and prayers, and utterly unknown to the inhabitants therabouts."

Algar in the meanwhile had gone to Oxford, found Frideswide flown, and in the midst of his fury been smitten with blindness. After living three years in close retirement in the Benton wood, Frideswide, to comfort the nuns whom she had left, came by boat to Binsey near Oxford, and there lived for some time. Soon after she came back into Oxford, and spent her days in the service of the people, working in especial many miracles of healing. The Cottonian MS. relates her first miracle as happening at "Bentonia," when St. Frideswide cured a blind girl of seven through virtue of the water wherein the saint had washed her hands. Shortly after she helped a young man (_infortunatus juvenis_) named Alward, who, while cutting wood on a Sunday (_parvi pendens diem Resurrectionis Dominicæ_), found his hand fixed to the handle of his axe, so that he could not let it go. A beautiful story is told about her entry into Oxford; that a leper met her, and begged her to kiss him, which, after making the sign of the cross, she did, and he was healed of his leprosy.

Of her last sojourn in Oxford, William of Malmesbury says:--"In that place, therefore, this maiden, having gained the triumph of her virginity, established a convent, and when her days were over and her Spouse called her, she there died."

"Some time," says Dugdale, "after the glorious death of St. Frideswide, the nuns having been taken away, Secular Canons were introduced." We cannot fix the date when the community of nuns which the saint had founded was thus removed, but the passage which follows in Dugdale makes it clear that the seculars were in possession in 1004, when Ethelred II. rebuilt the church. It seems strange that the nuns, for whom Frideswide had suffered so much and laboured so successfully, should have been thus early made to give place to a chapter of married priests; but early it must have been, for by the middle of the tenth century Dunstan was busy suppressing the seculars, and enforcing everywhere the stricter monastic rule. Nor did the nuns ever come back; for, when the Secular Canons had finally disappeared, by the time of the Norman Conquest, the priory, after being for a long time in ruins, was made over, first to the great Benedictine monastery of Abingdon, of which it became a "cell" or dependency, shortly afterwards to the warlike Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, "but only for the profits issuing from their lands, which he, after its restoration, returned again with great reluctancy"; and it was finally restored under Henry I. (IIII) as a house of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine, an order holding a position midway between monks and secular canons, in whose hands it continued henceforward.

Guimond was the first prior, and a curious story is told by several old writers as to the manner whereby he won the king's favour:--

"On Rogation Sunday (30th April 1122), when the king was at mass and Guymundus performing divine service before him, did when he came to that parcell of the prophet, 'it did not rain upon the earth for the space of III. years and six months,' read thus, 'it did not rain upon the earth one, one, one years six months.' Which the king observing, and all the clerks marvelling and laughing at, did when mass was ended reprove him for it, and furthermore asked him the reason why he read after that manner. Guymund smilingly answered, 'Because you, my liege, are used to bestow your bishopricks and other church benefices to them that read so; and therefore be it known to you, henceforth I will serve no other master but Christ my King and Sovereign, who knoweth as well how to confer temporal as eternal benefits upon his servants that always obey him.'"

By the eleventh century important national meetings were held in Oxford, as when in 1020, Cnut being then king, the English and Danes were reconciled, and both nations agreed to observe the laws of Edgar. But no king ventured to visit the city, for, after the failure of Algar, there was a tradition that boded misfortune to any king who entered within the city walls. Henry III. was the first to defy it by coming to worship at the shrine of St. Frideswide in 1264; but his example was an unfortunate one, for within six weeks Nemesis came in the Battle of Lewes. Edward I. was less daring than his father, for in 1275, when he reached the gates of Oxford, he turned his horse about, and sought a lodging outside the town. Later in his reign, however, he made the venture, and destroyed the superstition.

St. Frideswide's Priory did not, according to the latest authority on mediæval universities, Mr. Rashdall, create Oxford University,[4] but reasons of convenience of access and other like matter-of-fact causes; for, if the University had needed only a religious house round which to cluster, the neighbouring monastery of Abingdon was far larger and more suitable. Yet there is great probability that the first germs of the University were produced by the Priory. It is said, indeed, that the Mercian kings built inns or halls in the neighbourhood of the convent, but we may suspect this as a legendary statement not more substantiable than the story of King Alfred's founding University College, since the first actual notice of "Oxeneford" does not occur till 912. But it is much more certain that, during the wise rule of Guimond (1122-1141), the first Regular Prior, and of Robert of Cricklade,[5] his successor, there was a school connected with the convent, as indeed was the case with most convents, and probably with St. Frideswide's itself before Guimond's time. This school stood near the west end of the church, about the middle of what is now Tom Quad. Writing of the arrival of Vacarius, in King Stephen's reign, Mr. J.R. Green says:--"We know nothing of the causes which drew students and teachers within the walls of Oxford. It is possible that here, as elsewhere, the new teacher had quickened older educational foundations, and that the cloisters of Osney and St. Frideswide already possessed schools which burst into a larger life under the impulse of Vacarius."

The Priory was also one of the centres of university life in its early days, occupying perhaps in some sort the position held by St. Mary's at the present day. From the time of the Translation of St. Frideswide, the chancellor and scholars of the University used to go in Mid-Lent and on Ascension Day "in a general procession to her church, as the mother-church of the University and town, there to pray, preach, and offer oblations to her shrine." The Civil Law School belonged to St. Frideswide's as well as St. Patrick's Schools, and some others situated near to School Street. Among the Halls that the Priors possessed, Brend Hall was in 1438 made over to Lincoln College; Urban Hall and Bekes Inn were bought by Bishop Fox to procure a site for Corpus Christi College.

Yet St. Frideswide's does not seem to have been so great a power in educational matters as its position would have warranted. In fact, most of the other orders were ahead of the Augustinian Regulars in this matter, for we do not hear of their doing anything much until the fifteenth century, when St. Mary's College near Northgate Street was an Augustinian establishment. It was the new orders, the Black Friars (Dominicans) and the Grey Friars (Franciscans), who did so much for the educational advance of Oxford. The Franciscan schoolmen, especially, gave the University a European reputation, for Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and William Occam were trained by them. Cardinal Wolsey, though he did much harm to St. Frideswide's church, did at least make the place a great educational centre.

In one indirect way we find that the Priory helped to attend to the scholars' interests in the thirteenth century. "Owing to the general poverty," says Mr. Boase, "charitable people founded _chests_, from which loans might be made to poor scholars. Grostête began the system in 1240 by issuing an ordinance regulating St. Frideswide's Chest, which received the fines paid by citizens; and we hear on the whole of about two dozen of these charitable funds, amounting in all to nearly 2000 marks. The money was lent out on security of books, plate, or other property, and it was, in fact, a pawnbroking business which charged no interest." The money accruing to the University was placed in a chest at St. Frideswide's, when the borrower was required to deposit some pledge--a book or a cup, or a piece of clothing. Pledges not redeemed within a year were sold by public auction. As time went on, private bequests were added to the Frideswide chest, to the great relief, no doubt, of the scholars, who were as poor as could be.

The Fair of St. Frideswide was another useful institution connected with the Priory, for in early days the fairs not only afforded much innocent amusement, but they also served to mark the seasons of the year, and were of great practical value in the domestic economy of the people. St. Frideswide's Fair lasted for seven days, and during that time the keys of the city passed from the mayor to the prior, and the town courts were closed in favour of the Piepowder Court, held by the steward of the Priory for the redress of all disorders committed during the fair. By Stuart times the Fair had fallen almost to nothing, but its memory is still kept up by the annual cakestall in St. Aldate's.

One of the strongest Jewries in England existed in Oxford, so the chest was a useful form of charity in the days when Jews were the only money-lenders, and it was found necessary to pass a law preventing the Hebrews of Oxford from charging over 43 per cent, on loans to scholars. In 1268 St. Frideswide's provided a curious proof of the strong protection which the Jews enjoyed till their expulsion from England for four centuries in 1290.

"The feud between the Priory and the Jewry went on for a century more, till it culminated in a daring act of fanaticism on Ascension Day 1268. As the usual procession of scholars and citizens returned from St. Frideswide's, a Jew suddenly burst from the group of his friends in front of the synagogue, and snatching the crucifix from its bearer, trod it underfoot. But even in presence of such an outrage, the terror of the Crown shielded the Jewry from any burst of popular indignation. The king condemned the Jews of Oxford to make a heavy silver crucifix for the University to carry in the processions, and to erect a cross of marble on the spot where the crime was committed; but even this was in part remitted, and a less offensive place was allotted for the cross in an open plot by Merton College." The event which had opened the feud between the Priory and the Jews happened about 1185, when Prior Phillip complained of a certain _Deus-eum-crescat_ (Gedaliah), son of Mossey, who stood at his door as the procession of St. Frideswide passed by, and mocked at her miracles, no one daring to meddle with him.

An instance of the widespread fame of the shrine of St. Frideswide, and the veneration in which it was held even shortly before its destruction, is given in Wood's "Annals." In 1518, "Queen Katherine being desirous to come to Oxford, was attended in her journey by the Cardinal [Wolsey]: and being entered within the limits, was received by the scholars with all demonstrations of love and joy. After she had received their curtesies, she retired to St. Frideswydd Monastery to do her devotions to the sacred reliques of that Virgin Saint, being the chief occasion, it seems, that brought her hither."

But the great change was rapidly approaching. It had indeed been foreshadowed nearly a century and a half before, as when, for instance, on Ascension Day 1382, Wyclif's disciple Nicholas Hereford, preaching in the churchyard of St. Frideswide's, made a violent attack on the Mendicant Friars, and boldly asserted his sympathy with Wyclif.

The suppression of the Priory in 1524 was not, however, a Protestant act; for Wolsey obtained a bull from Pope Clement VII., authorising him, with the royal consent, to suppress the Priory of St. Frideswide, and to transfer the canons to other houses of the Augustinian order, so that their dwelling and revenues might be assigned to the proposed college of secular clerks. Wolsey had magnificent ideas about education,--"indeed," says Fuller, "nothing mean could enter into this man's mind"; he was bent on founding institutions which should surpass even those of William of Wykeham and William Waynflete; and he saw that monasticism had fallen into disrepute, with no prospect of restoration to public favour. He adopted, therefore, the hitherto exceptional method of suppressing certain priories, in order that he might endow with their revenues his new foundation of Cardinal College, as it was first styled. Henry VIII. readily assented to the scheme, and his minister was thus enabled to dissolve the oldest religious establishment within the walls of Oxford, and to dispose of its income of "almost £300 a year." Dr. John Barton, the last Prior of St. Frideswide's, was elected to be Abbot of the neighbouring monastery of Oseney, just as (a little later) Bishop King, the last Abbot of Oseney, was made first Bishop of Oxford.

There was much popular opposition to Wolsey's act in suppressing St. Frideswide's, and (by a second Papal Bull) certain other monasteries. Hall, a chronicler unfriendly to Wolsey, averred that "the poor wretches" ejected from the monasteries received scarcely any compensation. Complaints such as these drew from Wolsey this earnest and redundant contradiction:--

"Almighty God I take to my record, I have not meant, intended, or gone about, ne also have willed mine officers, to do anything concerning the said suppressions, but under such form and manner as is and hath largely been to the full satisfaction, recompense, and joyous contentation of any person which hath had, or could pretend to have, right or interest in the same, in such wise that many of them, giving thanks and laud to God for the good chance succeeded unto them, would for nothing, if they might, return or be restored and put again in their former state, as your Highness shall abundantly and largely perceive at my next repairing unto the same.

"Verily, sir, I would be loth to be noted that I should intend such a virtuous foundation for the increase of your Highness' merit, profit of your subjects, the advancement of good learning, and for the weale of my poor soul, to be established or acquired _ex rapinis_."

It was indeed, says Mr. Maxwell Lyte, part of Wolsey's "grand and statesmanlike scheme of establishing episcopal sees in some of the larger monasteries, and annexing thereto smaller monasteries to provide greater revenues." The graduates of Oxford were very grateful, and promised to remember him in their prayers to the end of time; but great fear came over the monks. His proceedings, says Fuller quaintly but truly, "made all the forest of religious foundations in England to shake, justly fearing the king would finish to fell the oaks, seeing the Cardinal began to cut the underwood."

Thus was Cardinal College founded. Its magnificence certainly made a great impression upon Englishmen, as is shown by the fact that it is the only existing college mentioned by Shakespeare. In _Henry VIII._ Wolsey is praised for his new foundation:--

"though unfinished, yet so famous, So excellent in art, and yet so rising, That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue."

But all Wolsey's great buildings, and projects still greater, were stopped by his sudden fall in 1529. Three years afterwards "bluff Harry broke into the spence," and, placidly transferring the whole credit of the idea to himself, refounded Cardinal College with the title "King Henry VIII. his College." Then he suppressed his own foundation, and, on Nov. 4th, 1546, reconstituted it, adopting the novel and economical expedient of combining a cathedral with an academic college. The new style was _Ecclesia Christi Cathedralis Oxon ex fundatione Regis Henrici octavi_; so St. Frideswide's church, which had for seven years been the chapel of Cardinal College, and of King Henry's College for thirteen years, became at length the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford, and also the chapel of the college now at length called Christ Church, and presided over by the Dean of the cathedral. Ever since, the ancient church has had a two-fold character as cathedral church and college chapel; and "as the Dean of Christ Church is always present, and the Bishop of Oxford very seldom, academic usages and appearances rather prevail over the ecclesiastical, in a way that may have been the reverse of satisfactory to more than one occupant of the see of Oxford."

Wolsey had contemplated establishing a hundred canons; but Henry reduced the number at a stroke to twelve, and then to eight; later they were further reduced to six, which is the present number. Besides the canons, dean, and bishop, Henry's foundation included eight petty canons or chaplains, a gospeller and a postiller or bible-clerk, eight singing clerks, eight choristers and their master, a schoolmaster and an usher, an organist, sixty scholars or students, and forty "children," corresponding no doubt to the scholars of later days. Soon after, however, the whole scholastic part of the establishment was replaced by one hundred students, who (with the one "outcomer" of the Thurston foundation) are still nightly tolled by the hundred and one strokes of great Tom, this being the signal for college-gates to be closed all over Oxford.

Such was the arrangement of the new establishment, which, as the name of _Ecclesia Christi_ was replaced by _Ædes Christi_, came to be called, according to the double use of the word _æedes_, both Christ _Church_ and the _House_. The history of the see of Oxford, which was first set up at Oseney in 1542, will be found in another chapter.

Curiously enough, the suppression of the monasteries, and the new vigorous religious movement, did not benefit the University, in spite of the addition of Wolsey's great college; on the contrary, the Reformation nearly emptied the University, which had already lost much of its old activity during the intellectual stagnation of the fifteenth century, so that, in Edward VI.'s reign, washerwomen took to hanging out their clothes in the schools. Most of the halls disappeared for ever, and from that time Oxford passed out of the hands of the poor man, Christ Church as the royal college becoming the special home of the gilded youth. The first functions of the House seem indeed to have been mainly ornamental: Henry VIII. was entertained there, public declamations were given before the University under Edward VI., Cranmer was unfrocked in the cloister under Mary. In Queen Elizabeth's reign, as well as in the seventeenth century, Christ Church Hall was used for the performance of plays, as when in 1583 _Dido_ was acted, and "there was a pleasant sight of hunters, with a full cry of a kennel of hounds, and Mercury and his descending and ascending from and to a high place. The tempest also, wherein it rained small comfits, rose-water, and snew artificial snow, was very strange to the beholders."

The Deans in Elizabeth's time were undistinguished. There was Martiall, who was appointed by Mary, and deprived in 1559 for his religion, "which though he had two or three times changed, yet having made himself Enemies by his indiscreet Carriage, he was obliged to go into Yorkshire"; and there was Sampson, who was "so professed an enemy of the ceremonies of the Church of England," and of organs and vestments, that he was removed by Archbishop Parker, 1565. But there was no one else of much note till Brian Duppa was installed in 1629. This staunch old man left Christ Church in 1641 for the Bishopric of Salisbury, after having "adorned" the cathedral, with the mixed results we have witnessed. He was extremely generous and unselfish; and he stuck to the king through his evil days, even sharing his imprisonment in Carisbrooke Castle, where he is thought materially to have assisted in writing the "_Eikon Basilike_." Duppa, Mr. Wakeman tells us, "amid many dangers had boldly found means to carry on the torch of apostolic grace, even amid the proscriptions of Cromwell."

During the troubles of the Civil War, Christ Church came in for its share of the work: in 1642 a University regiment of Cavaliers was drilled in Tom Quad, and of the hundred and one students of the House twenty became officers in the king's army. After Edgehill, Charles I. occupied Oxford, and kept his court with Prince Charles in Christ Church. On February 3rd, 1644, the king appointed a thanksgiving to be made at evensong for the taking of Cirencester by Prince Rupert the day before. The doctors were then in their red robes, the officers and men in laced buff coats and polished breastplates. "But there was no new Form of Thanksgiving said, save only that Form for the victory of Edgehill, and a very solemn anthem, with this several times repeated therein--'Thou shalt set a Crown of pure gold upon his Head, and upon his Head shall his Crown flourish.'"

In 1646 Oxford was taken by the Roundheads, and in 1648, at the visitation of the Parliamentary officers (the Dean, Samuel Fell, being in custody), Mrs. Fell, with some other ladies, and her children, refused to walk out of the Deanery, and had to be carried out with her companions, and "deposited in the quadrangle in feminine protest against extrusion." Dean Samuel Fell, who had finished Duppa's wood and glass work in the cathedral, and built the fine staircase into the hall, died heartbroken on February 1st, 1648, "the Day he was acquainted with the murder of his Royal Master King Charles I.": he was buried at Sunningwell, near Abingdon, with this inscription of touching brevity--_Depositum S.F. Februar._ 1648.

The use of the Latin version of the Prayer Book, and the English version as well, had ceased three months before; but it was kept up in a house in Merton Street by three Christ Church men, one of whom was the Dean's son, John Fell, afterwards himself to become Dean and Bishop of Oxford. The intruding Dean and Chapter seem to have behaved villainously; for, in an account given by the Chapter of 1670, it is stated that the entire revenues of the College had been exhausted by the intruders, all the unfinished work on the north side of Tom Quad demolished, and the timbers actually sawn down from the walls and roof to be used as firewood. Almost every part of the College was damaged in this way, and the huge expense of making the destruction good had to be borne by the new Chapter after the Restoration.

Samuel Fell's first Puritan successor in the Deanery was Reynolds, a Presbyterian who, in two years (1650), was turned out "to make room," says Browne Willis, "for that noted, canting, Independent, Time-serving Hypocrite John Owen." This Owen was himself turned out in 1659, and "retired among the Dissenters at London, and there ended his Days (preaching up Sedition in Conventicles)." He was buried in Bunhill Fields, with a portentously long epitaph, whereof one sentence may suffice as a specimen--_In illâ viribus plusquam Herculeis, Serpentibus tribus, Arminio, Socino, Cano, venenosa strinxit guttura_.

Reynolds was restored by the Presbyterians in 1659, but them deserting, he became Bishop of Norwich, and was succeeded at Christ Church in 1660 by Morley, who, in the same year, became a Bishop, and afterwards succeeded the tough old Duppa in the see of Winchester, 1662. John Fell, who had seen so much trouble in his father's old house, was next installed therein, in 1660. His biography will be found among the bishops.

James II. made Massey, an ex-Presbyterian convert to the Roman Church, Dean of Christ Church, and the Holy Communion was celebrated according to the Roman use every day in the House. When the king visited Oxford in 1687, he was lodged in the Deanery, and a chapel fitted up for his use. He summoned the fellows of Magdalen, who had refused to admit Bishop Parker as their president, into Christ Church Hall, and said:--"Is this your Church of England loyalty? Get you gone. Know that I, your King, will be obeyed. Go and admit the Bishop of Oxon. Let those who refuse look to it. They shall feel the whole weight of my hand." They refused, and twenty-five of them were expelled. James, by-the-way, touched for the King's Evil in the cathedral about the same time.

Aldrich, the versatile, followed in the Deanery, nothing being said of Massey in the letters patent which installed him as direct successor to John Fell. We have alluded to him more than once in this book, and his monument in the nave is mentioned in its place.

After Aldrich came Francis Atterbury in 1711, who in 1713 left Oxford to combine the rather dissimilar functions of Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster. He found his way into the Tower of London in 1722, being convicted of correspondence with the Pretender.

By the eighteenth century Oxford had sunk into a state of torpor, from which it began to recover in 1807, when the first honour schools were founded; though from 1783 Dean Cyril Jackson had been doing a great work in the restoration of order and efficiency at the House. Christ Church thus bore an honourable part in the revival of learning, and gradually developed from a rich man's plesaunce into a home of learning: the names of Ruskin, Gladstone, and Pusey are typical of the great men in different walks of life that have belonged to the cathedral college in our own era. Dean Gaisford more than half a century ago did much to help on the progress; and the long rule of his successor, Dean Liddell (1855-91), familiar to every schoolboy through his famous lexicon, covered a period of immense change both in the cathedral and in the college. Dr. Liddell died January 18th, 1898. His successor is Dr. Francis Paget, one of the writers in "_Lux Mundi_," and the author of some well-known volumes of addresses.

Fifty years ago it was said that Christ Church was the only cathedral in Christendom where there were neither services nor sermons for the people of the diocese. But the new life, which has since then wrought such great changes in university, cathedral, and diocese alike, has left Christ Church, if still the smallest, yet not the least important of the great centres of ecclesiastical activity.