[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO ABINGDON ABBEY.]
Crossing over into Berkshire, we find, a short distance south of Oxford,
on the bank of the Thames, the ruins of the once extensive and
magnificent Abingdon Abbey, founded in the seventh century. It was here
that Henry, the son of William the Conqueror, was educated and gained
his appellation of Beauclerc. The gatehouse still remains, and is at
present devoted to the use of fire-engines, but there is not much else
remaining of the abbey save a remarkable chimney and fireplace and some
fragments of walls. We are told that the Saxons founded this abbey, and
that the Danes destroyed it, while King Alfred deprived the monks of
their possessions, but his grandson AEdred restored them. The abbey was
then built, and became afterwards richly endowed. For six centuries it
was one of the great religious houses of this part of England; and the
Benedictines, true to their creed, toiled every day in the fields as
well as prayed in the church. They began the day by religious services;
then assembled in the chapter-house, where each was allotted his task
and tools, and after a brief prayer they silently marched out in double
file to the fields. From Easter until October they were thus occupied
from six in the morning until ten o'clock, and sometimes until noon.
Thus they promoted thrift, and as their settlement extended it became
the centre of a rich agricultural colony, for they often, as their lands
expanded, let them out to farmers. A short distance from Abingdon is
Radley, which was formerly the manor of the abbey, and contains a
beautiful little church, wealthy in its stores of rich woodwork and
stained glass; it stands in the middle of the woods in a charming
situation, with picturesque elm trees overhanging the old Tudor
building. Radley House is now a training-school for Oxford, and it has a
swimming-school attached, in which have been prepared several of the
most famous Oxford oarsmen, swimming being here regarded as a necessary
preliminary to boating. Near by is Bagley Wood, the delicious resort of
the Oxonians which Dr. Arnold loved so well. The village of Sunningwell,
not far from Radley, also has a church, and before its altar is the
grave of Dean Fell, once its rector, who died of grief on hearing of the
execution of Charles I. From the tower of this church Friar Bacon, the
hero of the story of the brazen head, is said to have made astronomical
observations: this renowned friar, Roger Bacon, has come down to us as
the most learned man that Oxford ever produced. Bacon's Study was near
the Folly Bridge, across the Thames on the road to Oxford, and it
survived until 1779, when it was taken down. Among the many legends told
of Bacon is one that he used such skill and magic in building the tower
containing this study that it would have fallen on the head of any one
more learned than himself who might pass under it. Hence, freshmen on
their arrival at Oxford are carefully warned not to walk too near the
Friar's Tower. Bacon overcame the greatest obstacles in the pursuit of
knowledge; he spent all his own money and all that he could borrow in
getting books and instruments, and then, renouncing the world, he became
a mendicant monk of the order of St. Francis. His _Opus Majus_--to
publish which he and his friends pawned their goods--was an epitome of
all the knowledge of his time.
[Illustration: RADLEY CHURCH.]
Other famous men came also from Abingdon. Edmund Rich, who did so much
to raise the character of Oxford in its earlier days, was born there
about the year 1200; his parents were very poor, and his father sought
refuge in Eynsham Abbey. We are told that his mother was too poor to
furnish young Rich "with any other outfit than his horsehair shirt,
which she made him promise to wear every Wednesday, and which probably
had been the cause of his father's retirement from their humble abode."
Rich went from Eynsham to Oxford, and soon became its most conspicuous
scholar; then he steadily advanced until he died the Archbishop of
Canterbury. Chief-Justice Holt, who reformed the legal procedure of
England, was also a native of Abingdon; he admitted prisoners to some
rights, protected defendants in suits, and had the irons stricken off
the accused when brought into court, for in those days of the cruel rule
of Judge Jeffreys the defendant was always considered guilty until
adjudged innocent. Holt originated the aphorism that "slaves cannot
breathe in England:" this was in the famous Somerset case, where a slave
was sold and the vendor sued for his money, laying the issues at
Mary-le-Bow in London, and describing the negro as "there sold and
delivered." The chief-justice said that the action was not maintainable,
as the status of slavery did not exist in England. If, however, the
claim had been laid in Virginia, he said he would have been obliged to
allow it; so that the decision was practically on technical grounds.
Lord Campbell sums up Holt's merits as a judge by saying that he was not
a statesman like Clarendon, or a philosopher like Bacon, or an orator
like Mansfield, yet his name is held in equal veneration with theirs,
and some think him the most venerated judge that ever was chief-justice.
There is a really good story told of him by Lord Campbell. In his
younger days Holt was travelling in Oxfordshire, and stopped at an inn
where the landlady's daughter had an illness inducing fits. She appealed
to him, and he promised to work a cure: which he did by writing some
Greek words on a piece of parchment and telling her to let her daughter
wear the charm around her neck. Partly from the fact that the malady had
spent itself, and possibly also from the effect of her imagination, the
girl entirely recovered. Years rolled on and he became the lord
chief-justice, when one day a withered old woman was brought before the
assizes for being a witch, and it was proven that she pretended to cure
all manner of cattle diseases, and with a charm that she kept carefully
wrapped in a bundle of rags. The woman told how the charm many years
before had cured her daughter, and when it was unfolded and handed to
the judge he remembered the circumstance, recognized his talisman, and
ordered her release.