[Illustration: BICESTER PRIORY.]
[Illustration: BICESTER MARKET.]
[Illustration: CROSS AT EYNSHAM.]
A pleasant and old-fashioned town, not far away from Oxford, is
Bicester, whereof one part is known as the King's End and the other as
the Market End. Here is the famous Bicester Priory, founded in the
twelfth century through the influence of Thomas a Becket. It was
intended for a prior and eleven canons, in imitation of Christ and his
eleven disciples. The priory buildings remained for some time after the
dissolution of the religious houses, but they gradually disappeared, and
all that now exists is a small farm-house about forty feet long which
formed part of the boundary-wall of the priory, and is supposed to have
been a lodge for the accommodation of travellers. In the garden was a
well of never-failing water held in high repute by pilgrims, and which
now supplies a fish-pond. The priory and its estates have passed in
regular succession through females from its founder, Gilbert Basset, to
the Stanleys, and it is now one of the possessions of the Earl of Derby.
Bicester is an excellent specimen of an ancient English market-town, and
its curious block of market-buildings, occupied by at least twenty-five
tenements, stands alone and clear in the marketplace. There are
antique gables, one of the most youthful of which bears the date of
1698. On the top is a promenade used by the occupants in summer
weather. In the neighboring village of Eynsham is said to be the stone
coffin that once held Fair Rosamond's remains, but it has another
occupant, one Alderman Fletcher having also been buried in it in 1826.
Eynsham once had an abbey, of which still survives the shaft of a stone
cross quaintly carved with the figures of saints. It is a relic probably
of the thirteenth century, but nothing remains of the abbey beyond a few
stones that may have belonged to it. It was near Eynsham, not very long
ago, that a strange dark-green water-plant first made its appearance in
the Thames, and spread so rapidly that it soon quite choked the
navigation of the river, and from there soon extended almost all over
the kingdom. The meadows and the rivers became practically all alike, a
green expanse, in which from an eminence it was difficult to tell where
the water-courses lay. This plant was called the "American weed," the
allegation being that it came over in a cargo of timber from the St.
Lawrence. It caused great consternation, but just when matters looked
almost hopeless it gradually withered and died, bringing the navigation
welcome relief.