Bloody British History: Oxford E-Book

Paul Sullivan

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

This is the history of Oxford as you have never encountered it before. The first historical record of Oxford laments that the city has been burnt to the ground by Vikings. Its religious houses were founded by a woman who blinded her would-be attacker. Its students were poverty-stricken desperados in perpetual armed conflict with the townsmen. One of its principal colleges, meanwhile, doubled as a slaughterhouse — and its richest streets and university edifices backed on to some of the most pestilential slums in England. With a mangled skeleton in every cupboard, this is the real story of the Oxford. Read it if you dare!

Leseprobe

For Jay, Jan and Theo.

Thanks to:

My parents Marlene and Terry Sullivan, who once again provided the space, food and tea that enabled me to finish the book.

Magda Bezdekova, who provided fruit and veg, transport and countless back issues of Oxford Today.

Oxford residents and great pals Geoff Morgan and Sarah Day for their generosity of spirit, praise and hospitality.

Cate Ludlow at The History Press for being so Bloody minded, and Declan Flynn for proof reading.

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

1009 BC-AD 912

The Darkest of Dark Ages

AD 665-735

The Curse of Saint Frideswide

AD 900-1000

The Vikings Are Coming!

AD 1066-1086

Oxford in Ruins

AD 1135

All War and No Peace

AD 1238

Kill the Pope’s Ambassador!

AD 1318

The Real Edward II

AD 1355

Wining and Dying in Oxford

AD 1535-81

Religion: A Martyr of Life and Death

AD 1577

Black Assize and Black Death

AD 1643-5

The Sieges of Oxford

AD 1642-5

Anthony Wood: Eye-Witness to War

AD 1645-6

We Surrender!

AD 1736

Oxford’s First Whodunnit

AD 1714-1748

Riot at the King’s Head Tavern!

AD 1791

Condemned to Hang – Forever!

AD 1832-1854

Death in Victorian Oxford!

AD 1867

Death to Mayor Grubb!

AD 1827-1893

Death and Disorder at St Giles’ Fair

AD 1878-1910

Minor Misdemeanours at the OED

AD 1917-1945

Oxford in Shock: The War Years

Bibliography

Plates

Copyright

1009 BC-AD 912

THE DARKEST OF DARK AGES

AD 912 – ‘This year died Æthered ealdorman of the Mercians, and King Edward took possession of London and Oxford and of all the lands which owed obedience thereto.’

This is the earliest appearance of the name ‘Oxford’, although the very fact that it was worth mentioning/capturing reveals that it was an established town well before this incident.

There seems little doubt that the city was around in the ninth century, during the reign of King Alfred (founding father of the University, according to apocrypha, although hard facts have remained frustratingly elusive). The closest we come to ‘evidence’ is the existence of Alfred-era coins bearing the name Orsnaford, which is tantalisingly close to the Saxon Oxnaford, but not close enough to convince most modern historians. Alfred’s founding of University College is an interesting tale, but there is simply no historical evidence to back it up.

So it is that the early years of Oxford – doubtless coloured by the bloody turmoil of the Saxon-versus-Dane warfare that tore the land apart several times from the eighth to the tenth centuries – are a kind of Dark-Age theme park: no written records, and just a handful of suitably vague legends.

At a crossing point on a major river, the boundary between the two mighty kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia, it stands to reason that there should have been an important settlement. The very fact that King Edward ‘the Elder’ (son of Alfred) took control of the town after the death of Æthered indicates that Oxford was of strategic importance. That year 912 marks the fortification of the city and the building of its walls – a true origin, of sorts.

King Alfred.

Legend, undeterred by the absence of hard fact, takes Oxford much further into the past. According to the stories that used to pass for history before people started taking the subject seriously, when Alfred revivified the city in the ninth century he was building on truly ancient foundations. Under the British language name Caer Memphric, and later Rydychen or Bos Vadum (in Latin), both meaning ‘oxen ford’, the settlement was founded in 1009 BC by King Memphric (aka Mempricius). This was according to the wild imagination of Geoffrey of Monmouth, an early Oxford scholar most famous for his invention of various fundamental bits of the King Arthur legends. His invented Memphric wasn’t a very good patron to have: he raped and pillaged his own country, causing it to melt down in civil war. He was eventually eaten by wolves during a hunting trip near Caer Memphric.

Julius Caesar: relics from his era may still be found in Oxford.

This foundation was confirmed by later historians, right through to William Stukeley in the eighteenth century, and half-heartedly allowed to pass through the gates of reason by some early nineteenth-century writers. Nathanial Whittock, writing in 1828, acknowledges John Ross (most famous for his 1607 book Britannica, which was no more than a poetical rendering of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s work) for ‘penetrating the thick clouds of ages past, and proving the founding of Oxford to have taken place before the erection of Solomon’s Temple … it is quite certain that a town was built on this spot in the time of the aboriginal Britons’. The castle was said to be the site of the original city.

In spite of these ancient mythical beginnings, the city played little part in the legends that plug the gap between 1009 BC and recorded history. According to Geoffrey, King Arthur was on the verge of conquering Rome in the fifth century when another outbreak of civil war back home brought him to his muddy death in the Battle of Camlann. This led to decades of weak leadership and rudderless squabbling, opening the gates to the Anglo-Saxon invaders whose descendant Alfred eventually rebuilt the faded glories of Oxford.

Disreputable origins, glorious heydays, decline and fall, death and rebirth – it’s no wonder this version of Oxford’s history has had such appeal over the years.

WHAT DID THE ROMANS DO FOR US?

The oddest thing about Oxford history is its lack of Romans. But, once again, this did not trouble the pseudo-historians, who invented a spot of Armageddon to set the scene for Alfred’s renaissance. According to Whittock, ‘in the year 50 this town suffered its most terrible downfall, being reduced to ashes by the Roman general Plautus, in the reign of Julius Caesar, and only retained its original name from its still continuing a Ford for Oxen.’

KING ALFRED IN OXFORD

King Alfred the Great was born in Wantage and, whether he founded the city of Oxford or not (endowing the University in 872, according to legend), he was certainly familiar with the area. He spent much of his reign at war with the Danish Vikings, a campaign culminating in the Battle of Ashdown on 8 January 871, close to Oxford in a part of the county which, before 1974, was in Berkshire.

The Danes, under King Bagsecg, fresh from victory against the Saxons at Reading, marched to Ashdown to meet Wessex King Ethelred and his brother Alfred’s armies. The Danes had the advantage of arms and tactics, but the Saxons had potentially more men – as long as they could summon them in the first place.

According to the legend, the young prince rode to Blowingstone Hill at Kingston Lisle and put his lips to the Blowing Stone. Only a skilled player could get a note out of this unpromising sarsen stone instrument, and only a man born to be King could make that note heard across the surrounding downs as far as White Horse Hill (a legend that still holds, if anyone fancies having a go).

He hit the right note, and the army came racing to his side. The Battle of Ashdown was a victory for Alfred, and King Bacsecg and his chief earls were slain. Alfred became King in March 871, after Ethelred was killed in battle. But the wars only ceased when Alfred beat Danish King Guthrum to a standstill at the Battle of Ethandun in Wiltshire, 878, paving the way for the treaty of partition that created the Danelaw in the north of the island.

This appears to be a garbled reference to the attempts of Aulus Plautus to conquer Britain during the reign of Emperor Claudius in AD 43. Plautus occupied the south of the island and received the surrender of eleven British Kings, bringing Britain under the Roman yoke over the next four years, but there is no mention in the records of Bos Vadum.

It is more historically accurate to state that the Romans had small settlements in the immediate vicinity, north and east of the present city centre. A dog’s bones were discovered in the foundations of a first-century AD wall at the site of the Churchill kilns, on the site of the Churchill Hospital. The remains were found alongside human bones – both had been placed at the foundations as sacrificial offerings. The Romano-British residents believed that the spirit of the dog would protect the wall from being overthrown. The spirit of the man was probably there to throw a few sticks during history’s quieter periods.

The same Churchill site, in addition to this earliest known Oxford dog, also yielded the earliest named human in these parts: Tamesibugus. A fragment of pottery found here, and now on display in the Museum of Oxford, bears the legend ‘TAMESIBUGUS FECIT’, translating as ‘Thames-dweller made it’.

THE EMERGENCE OF OXFORD

After the withdrawal of the Romans and the invasion of the proto-English, the old area of pre-Saxon settlements, based around modern Headington, seems to have been encompassed by a royal estate. A mere 8 miles south, St Birinus was installed as Bishop of Dorchester in the 630s, the small town being one of the most important Christian HQs in the island. St Frideswide was a living legend in these parts later in the century, and local history was in full swing. All it lacked was that all-important ‘Oxford’ tag.

Beaumont Palace.

The first death in Oxford is recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year AD 924: ‘This year King Edward died among the Mercians at Farndon; and very shortly, about sixteen days after this, Elward his son died at Oxford; and their bodies lie at Winchester.’

This was the beginning of a long association between Oxford and royalty, based for many centuries on the twelfth century royal palace at Beaumont (source of the name of modern Beaumont Street). Its site is marked with a plaque recording the birth here of Richard the Lionheart and King John; by which time Oxford had been baptised in blood several times over.

AD 665-735

THE CURSE OF SAINT FRIDESWIDE

PRINCESS FRIDESWIDE (MORE properly, but less pronounceably, Fritheswithe) was born in around 665 AD, the daughter of King Didan and Queen Sefrida, who ruled a region equivalent to modern-day Berkshire and a big chunk of south-west Oxfordshire. The royal family were Christians, in an era when many of the neighbours were still invoking Germanic pagan deities Woden, Thunor and Freya rather than Father, Son and Holy Ghost. So keen were Didan and Sefrida on the newly imported religion that they put Frideswide under the tutelage of local holy woman Ælfgith, where she became enlightened both academically and spiritually. It was a case of brains and beauty, as Frideswide was said to be in the Helen of Troy league when it came to good looks.

After Ælfgith’s death Frideswide returned to the palace, and for an unorthodox birthday present asked her father to build a church on the edge of Oxford (a few centuries before the city appears in any historical document). He complied, and Frideswide took twelve likeminded girls and fitted the place out as a convent. The proto-nuns didn’t opt for the cloistered life; but remaining visible to the wicked world was nearly Frideswide’s downfall.

Anglo-Saxon King, from a contemporary engraving.

Pagan lust is not an emotion to be trifled with. When Algar, the heathen King of neighbouring Mercia, heard of the royal nun’s beauty he took his pagan posse over the border to seek her hand, and all the other bits, in marriage. King Didan didn’t do much to stop him, Algar being lord of a sizeable kingdom, and a definite ‘catch’. But Frideswide announced that her holy vow of chastity removed her permanently from the matrimonial market. In response, Algar announced that if she would not marry him willingly he would throw her over the back of his horse, carry her to said market and marry her at sword-point.

Frideswide hiding from Algar: a stained-glass window in Christ Church, Oxford.

Recognising a violent sexual metaphor when she saw one, Frideswide decided it was time to flee. Algar’s men made a rush to capture her, but were struck blind by divine intervention. The princess then put on her running shoes, and reaching the Thames she hijacked a boat and disappeared into the night. The place is most commonly given as Frilsham in Berkshire, but some say she ended up at Bampton in Oxfordshire; others cite the location as Binsey (now part of Oxford).

Here Frideswide hid in a pig shed in the middle of an oak wood. The swineherd allowed her to look after his animals, a novel way for a holy woman to bring home the bacon, and she made the best of a bad job by praying to God for a clean water supply. A well obligingly sprang up, and she fed and watered herself here for three years.

When this time had elapsed, Frideswide thought it safe to tiptoe back to the nunnery. But her twelve acolytes had hardly had time to uncork a celebratory bottle of communion wine before Algar stormed back to the city, his spies having revealed that the beautiful princess had returned. King Didan risked everything by sending an army to thwart the merciless Mercian, but Algar’s host was too strong. The battered Berkshire men retreated, and the Mercians prepared to burn Oxford to the ground. Furthermore, Algar announced, he would not only ravish the unfortunate Frideswide in revenge for her disobedience, but would allow his men to have their extremely wicked ways with her too. Torches were lit, the pre-Oxford Oxford cursed itself for being made of wood and thatch, and all hope fled. But Frideswide directed some well-chosen prayers at Saints Catherine and Cecilia – both of whom had chosen death over ravishment – and they swiftly intervened. There was a flash of lightning, and this time it was Algar who was struck blind.

HENRY THE FATE

Frideswide’s curse kept troublesome royalty away for the best part of 900 years. The first monarch to dismiss the legend was Henry VIII, who allowed St Frideswide’s Priory to be dissolved and converted into a University College by Cardinal Wolsey. Some people put Henry’s subsequent problems and deathbed agonies (he died with the words ‘All is lost! Monks, monks, monks!’, according to legend), down to his cavalier approach to this curse.

Dismayed at this second show of divine long-sightedness, the Mercians called a halt to their attack. Frideswide made Algar swear that he would pursue her no longer; and receiving his promise she returned to her holy life, giving warning that henceforth any King who attempted to enter the city with violent intent would suffer the same fate as Algar. For complying with these terms, Algar was given back his sight.

Frideswide lived out her remaining years in peace, her fame and holiness acting as a magnet for donations to the priory, which soon became rich. It also became a bit big and bustling for Frideswide, who ended her days in a smaller nunnery at Binsey, where she caused a second magical holy well to spring forth - the still-flowing Treacle Well. The sticky name simply means ‘medicinal‘, ‘treacle’ being a word for a healing balm. Pilgrims with all manner of ailments would visit the spot to seek a cure. Local wag Lewis Carroll found the name irresistible, using it as the basis for the genuinely sticky Treacle Well in Alice in Wonderland.

She died there in AD 735, becoming a saint some 400 years later.

St Margaret’s Well. (Steve Roberts)

RELICS OF ST FRIDESWIDE

Christ Church Cathedral is believed to stand on the foundations of Frideswide’s original church. Seventh-century graves on the site corroborate the theory.

The original church was burnt down during a massacre of Oxford’s Danish residents in 1002, but in 1122 St Frideswide’s Priory was erected on the same spot.

In 1180 the prior disinterred some bones alleged to be Frideswide’s and placed them in a reliquary at her shrine inside the church. Pilgrims loved it, and the church in turn loved all the money they dropped in the donation boxes. That, after all, is what relics were all about.

A new shrine was built in 1289, but was smashed to bits by the bully boys of the Protestant Reformation in the 1530s. The bits have since been glued back together, and the results can be seen in Christ Church’s Latin Chapel, coloured by a Frideswide-themed 1850s stained glass window by Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones.

Oxford Cathedral is the former St Frideswide’s priory church, surviving intact as part of Cardinal Wolsey’s Cardinal College. This short-lived institution was renamed King Henry VIII’s College when it was commandeered by Henry in 1532, and refounded as Christ Church in 1546, at which point the cathedral had been partially demolished.

Frideswide’s restless bones, scattered by the Reformation, were relocated by Catholic Mary Tudor a few decades later and placed in two silk bags.

Under Mary’s successor Elizabeth, relics were outlawed. Frideswide’s bits and bobs were mingled with the bones of another woman. In some versions of the story this other woman was Catherine Cathie, a runaway nun who had married an ex-friar. She was buried in the vicinity of the modern-day shrine. In another version of this tale the second set of bones belong to the wife of Peter Martyr, Protestant canon of Christ Church: they had been thrown on a dunghill in Mary’s reign, before being rescued again by Elizabeth.

Christ Church (from Carfax tower), site of Frideswide’s priory.