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.
[Illustration: THE EXTERIOR IN 1857.]
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.
[Illustration: THE INTERIOR BEFORE THE RESTORATIONS.]
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.