_Ad Antiquarium_: P. 146.
This is Wood's disinterested helper, John Aubrey, F.R.S.,
1626-1697. Never was a truer lover of what he calls "that
most ingeniose Place!"
_Martyrs' Memorial_: P. 147.
The only monument in the streets of Oxford was put up by
the local Low Church party in 1841, not really so much to
commemorate Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, all Cambridge
men, as to register a protest against Hurrell Froude (then
dead), Newman, and Keble, who all showed frank disrespect
to the heroes of the Reformation in England. The reference
in the sestet is of course to Cardinal Newman, and was
written barely a month before his rather sudden death on
August 11, 1890.
_Tom_: P. 149.
The College is a century and a half older than the upper
part of its chief entrance gate, and the once monastic bell
is much older than either. "The Tom Tower [was] finished
in November, 1682. In this was hung the bell called Great
Tom of Christ Church, which had originally belonged to
Osney Abbey.... From that time to this, it has rung its one
hundred and one strokes every night at nine, as a signal
that all students should be within their College walls. It
need hardly be said that the signal is not obeyed!"
J. WELLS, M.A., 1901. _Oxford and its Colleges_:
Christ Church, pp. 205-206.
_The Old Dial of Corpus_: P. 153.
The great Dial in the quadrangle of Corpus Christi
College was not put up until 1605,--too late to have been
contemporary with either Erasmus or Pole. The author
discovered the error several years ago, but has never known
how to correct it except by this caution. "Osney Bell"
is Great Tom (see just above): Christ Church being next
neighbour to Corpus; but Tom may or may not have been in
place and condition to ring for curfew in the second year
of Queen Elizabeth's reign. The closing line is meant to
refer to the motto of the University, _Dominus illuminatio
mea_, taken from the opening of Psalm XXVII.
_Undertones at Magdalen_: P. 156.
"The priestless Pulpit" was an accurate description when
this sonnet was written (1895), though it is so no longer.
From the open-air Pulpit of Magdalen, disused since the
Reformation, a Sermon is once again delivered annually on
St. John Baptist's Day.