town, we have seen, had been ruined, and very many of the houses were “waste,” when the Normans conquered England. But in the new era of prosperity and security which their coming gave to the land, in the sudden development of industry and wealth which the rule of the conquerors fostered, Oxford had her full share. The buildings of which remnants or records remain bear witness to the new order of things.
Such works as those which we have described could not then or now be done without money. The transformation of Oxford at this period, from a town of wooden houses, in great part uninhabited, to a town of stone houses, with a castle and many churches of stone, is an indication of wealth. And that wealth was a product not only of the new régime of order and security, but also of the new policy of the foreign kings.
The erection of stately castles and yet statelier Abbeys which followed the Conquest, says Mr Green, the rebuilding of almost every cathedral and conventual church, mark the advent of the Jewish capitalist. From this time forward till 1289 the Jew was protected in England and his commercial enterprise fostered. He was introduced and protected as a chattel of the King, and as such exempt from the common law and common taxation of Englishmen. In Oxford, as elsewhere, the Jews lived apart, using their own language, their own religion and laws, their own peculiar commerce and peculiar dress. Here the Great and Little Jewries extended along Fish Street (S. Old’s) to the present Great Gate of Christ Church, and embraced a square of little streets, behind this line, which was isolated and exempt from the common responsibilities and obligations of the town. The church itself was powerless against the Synagogue, which rose in haughty rivalry beside the cloister of S. Frideswide. Little wonder if the Priory and Jewry were soon at deadly feud. In 1185 we find Prior Phillip complaining of a certain Deus-cum-crescat (Gedaliah) son of Mossey, who, presuming upon his exemption from the jurisdiction of any but the King, had dared to mock at the Procession of S. Frideswide. Standing at his door as the procession of the saint passed by, the mocking Jew halted and then walked firmly on his feet, showed his hands clenched as if with palsy and then flung open his fingers. Then he claimed gifts and oblations from the crowd who flocked to S. Frideswide’s, on the ground that such recoveries of limb and strength were quite as real as any Frideswide had wrought. But no earthly power, ecclesiastic or civil, ventured to meddle with Deus-cum-crescat.
The feud between Jewry and Priory lasted long. It culminated in 1268 in a daring act of fanaticism, which incidentally provides a curious proof of the strong protection which the Jews enjoyed, and of the boldness with which they showed their contempt for the superstitions around them.
As the customary procession of scholars and citizens was returning on Ascension Day from S. 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 where the crime was committed; but even this punishment was in part remitted, and a less offensive place was allotted for the cross in an open plot by Merton College.
But the time of the Jews had almost come. Their wealth and growing insolence had fanned the flames of popular prejudice against them. Protected by the kings whose policy it was to allow none to plunder them but their royal selves, they reaped a harvest greater than even the royal greed could reap.[10]
Their position as chattels of the King, outside the power of clergy or barons, and as citizens of little towns within towns in whose life they took no part except to profit by it, stirred the jealousy of the various classes. Wild stories were circulated then, as on the Continent still, of children carried off to be circumcised or crucified. The sack of Jewry after Jewry was the sign of popular hatred and envy during the Barons’ war. Soon the persecution of the law fell upon these unhappy people. Statute after statute hemmed them in. They were forbidden to hold real property, to employ Christian servants, and to move through the streets without two tell-tale white tablets of wool on their breasts. Their trade, already crippled by the competition of bankers, was annihilated by the royal order which bade them renounce usury, under the pain of death. At last Edward, eager to obtain funds for his struggle with Scotland, yielded to the fanaticism of his subjects and bought the grant of a fifteenth from the clergy and laity at the price of driving the Jews from his realm. From the time of Edward to that of Cromwell no Jew touched English soil.
There is no reason to suppose with many historians that the Jews of Oxford contributed through their books, seized at this time, to the cultivation of physical and medical science, or that it was through the books of the Rabbis that Roger Bacon was enabled to penetrate to the older world of research. The traces which they have left in Oxford, save in the indirect manner I have suggested, are not many. The rising ground, now almost levelled, between the Castle and Broken Hayes, on the outer edge of the Castle ditch on the north side, was long known as the Mont de Juis, but being the place of execution, the name may more likely be derived from justice than from Jews. A more interesting reminiscence is provided by the Physic Garden opposite Magdalen College.
Henry II. had granted the Jews the right of burial outside of every city in which they dwelt. At Oxford their burial place was on the site where S. John’s hospital was afterwards built, and was then transferred to the place where the Physic Garden now stands.
This garden, the first land publicly set apart for the scientific study of plants, was founded by Henry, Earl of Danby (1632), who gave the land for this purpose. Mr John Evelyn visiting it a few years later was shown the Sensitive Plant there for a great wonder. There also grew, he tells us, canes, olive trees, rhubarb, but no extraordinary curiosities, besides very good fruit. Curious, however, the shapes of the clipped trees were, if we may believe Tickell, who writes enthusiastically:
“How sweet the landskip! where in living trees,
Here frowns a vegetable Hercules;
There famed Achilles learns to live again
And looks yet angry in the mimic scene;
Here artful birds, which blooming arbours shew,
Seem to fly higher whilst they upwards grow.”
The gateway was designed by Inigo Jones, and the figures of Charles I. and II. were added later, the expense being defrayed out of the fine levied upon Anthony Wood for his libel upon Clarendon.
About the same time that Osney Abbey was finished the palace which Henry Beauclerk had been building at Beaumont, outside the north gate of the city, was finished also. To satisfy his love of hunting he had already (1114) constructed a palace and park at Woodstock. Within the stone walls of the enclosure there he nourished and maintained, says John Rous, lions, leopards, strange spotted beasts, porcupines, camels, and such like animals, sent to him by divers outlandish lords.
The old palace at Beaumont lay to the north-east of Worcester College. Its site, chosen by the King “for the great pleasure of the seat and the sweetness and delectableness of the air,” is indicated by Beaumont Street, a modern street which has revived the name of the palace on the hill,—Bellus mons.
When not occupied with his books or his menagerie, the Scholar-King found time to grant charters to the town, and he let to the city the collective dues or fee-farm rent of the place.
Henry II. held important councils at Beaumont. The one romance of his life is connected with Woodstock and Godstow.
One of the most charming of the many beautiful excursions by road or river from Oxford takes you to the little village of Godstow,
“Through those wide fields of breezy grass
Where black-winged swallows haunt the glittering Thames.”
To sail here from Folly Bridge or the Upper River, to fish here, to play bowls or skittles here, to eat strawberries and cream here, has for centuries been the delight of Oxford students.
“So on thy banks, too, Isis, have I strayed
A tasselled student, witness you who shared
My morning walk, my ramble at high noon,