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Their arrow-flight told heavily on the dense masses around the King, and as the sun went down, a shaft pierced Harold's right eye. He fell between the royal ensigns, and the battle closed with a desperate mélée over his corpse.-History of the English People, § 98.

OXFORD IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.

At the opening of the thirteenth century Oxford stood without a rival in its own country, while in European celebrity it took rank with the greatest schools in the western world. But to realize this Oxford of the past we must dismiss from our minds all recollections of the Oxford of the present. In the outer look of the new University there was nothing of the pomp that overawes the freshman as he first paces the "High" or looks down from the gallery of St. Mary's. In the stead of long fronts of venerable colleges, of stately walks beneath immemorial elms, history plunges us into the mean and filthy lanes of the medieval town. Thousands of boys, huddled in bare lodging-houses, clustering round teachers as poor as themselves, in churchporch and house-porch, drinking, quarrelling, dicing, begging at the corners of the streets, take the place of the brightly colored train of Doctors and Heads. Mayor and Chancellor struggled in vain to enforce order or peace in this seething mass of turbulent life. The retainers who followed their young lords to the University fought out the feuds of their houses in the streets. Scholars from Kent and scholars from Scotland waged the bitter struggle of north and south. At nightfall roysterer and reveller roamed with torches through the narrow lanes, defying bailiffs, and cutting down burghers at their doors. Now a mob of clerks plunged into the Jewry and wiped off the memory of bills and bonds by sacking a Hebrew house or two. Now a tavern-squabble between scholar and townsman widened into a general broil, and the academical bell of St. Mary's vied with the town bell of St. Martin's in clanging to arms. Every phase of ecclesiastical controversy or political strife was precluded by some fierce outbreak in this fierce and turbulent mob. When Eng

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land growled at the exactions of the papacy in the years that were to follow, the students besieged a legate in the abbot's house at Osney. A murderous townand-gown row preceded the opening of the Baron's War. "When Oxford draws knife," ran an old rhyme, "England's soon at strife."

But the turbulence and stir was a stir and turbulence of life. A keen thirst for knowledge, a passionate poetry of devotion, gathered thousands round the poorest scholar, and welcomed the barefoot friar. Edmund Rich-Archbishop of Canterbury and Saint in later days-came, about the time we have reached, to Oxford, a boy of twelve years old, from a little lane at Abingdon that still bears his name. He founded his school in an Inn that belonged to the Abbey of Eynsham, where his father had taken refuge from the world. His mother was a pious woman of the day, too poor to give her boy much outfit besides the hair-shirt that he promised to wear every Wednesday; but Edward was no poorer than his neighbors. He plunged at once into. the nobler life of the place: its ardor for knowledge, its mystical piety. Secretly-perhaps at eventide, when the shadows were gathering in the Church of St. Mary, and the crowds of teachers and students had left its aisles-the boy stood before an image of the Virgin, and, placing a ring of gold upon its finger, took Mary for his bride. Years of study, broken by a fever that raged among the crowded noisome streets, brought the time for completing his education at Paris, and Edmund, hand in hand with a brother Robert of his, begged his way, as poor scholars were wont, to the great school of Western Christendom. Here a damsel, heedless of his tonsure, wooed him so pertinaciously that Edmund consented to an assignation; but when he appeared it was in company of grave academical officials who-as the maiden declared in the hour of penitence which followed -"straightway whipped the offending Eve out of her."

Still true to his Virgin bridal, Edmund, on his return from Paris, became the most popular of Oxford teachers. It is to him that Oxford owes her first introduction to the logic of Aristotle. We see him in the little room which he hired, with the Virgin's chapel hard by,

his gray gown reaching to his feet, ascetic in his devotion, falling asleep in lecture-time after a sleepless night of prayer, but gifted with a grace and cheerfulness of manner which told of his French training, and a chivalrous love of knowledge that let his pupils pay what they would. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," the young tutor would say a touch of scholarly pride perhaps mingling with his contempt of worldly things-as he threw down the fee on the dusty window-ledge, whence a thievish student would sometimes run off with it.

But even knowledge brought its troubles the Old Testament, which, with a copy of the Decretals, long formed his sole library, frowned down upon a love of secular learning from which Edmund found it hard to wean himself. At last, in some hour of dream, the form of his dead mother floated into the room where the teacher stood among his mathematical diagrams. "What are these?" she seemed to say; and seizing Edmund's right hand, she drew on the palm three circles interlaced, each of which bore the name of a person of the Christian Trinity. "Be these," she cried as the figure faded away, "thy diagrams henceforth, my son." -History of the English People, §§ 163, 164.

THE REPUBLICANISM OF THE UNIVERSITIES.

The story of Oxford admirably illustrates the real character of the new training, and the latent opposition between the spirit of the Universities and the spirit of the Church. The feudal and ecclesiastical order of the old medieval world were both alike threatened by this power that had so strangely sprung up in the midst of them. Feudalism rested on local isolation, on the severance of kingdom from kingdom and barony from barony; on the distinction of blood and race; on the supremacy of material or brute force; on an allegiance determined by accidents of place and social position. The University, on the other hand, was a protest against this isolation of man from man. The smallest school was European and not local. Not merely every prov ince of France, but every people of Christendom, had its place among the "nations" of Paris or Padua. A common language-the Latin tongue-superseded, with

in academical bounds, the warring tongues of Europe. A common intellectual kinship and rivalry took the place of the petty strifes which parted province from province, or realm from realm. What Church and Empire had both aimed at, and both failed in—the knitting of Christian nations together into a vast Commonwealth -the Universities for a time did. Dante felt himself as little a stranger in the Latin Quarter" round Mont St. Geneviève as under the arches of Bologna; wandering Oxford scholars carried the writings of Wycliffe to the libraries of Prague.

In England the work of provincial fusion was less. difficult or important than elsewhere; but even in England work had to be done. The feuds of Northerner and Southerner which so long disturbed the discipline of Oxford, witnessed, at any rate, to the fact that Northerner and Southerner had at last been brought face to face in its streets. And here, as elsewhere, the spirit of national isolation was held in check by the larger comprehensiveness of the University.

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And within this strangely mingled mass, society and government rested on a purely democratic basis. Among Oxford scholars the son of the noble stood on precisely the same footing with the poorest mendicant. Wealth, physical strength, skill in arms, pride of ancestry and blood-the very grounds on which feudal society rested-went for nothing in the lecture-rooms. The University was a state absolutely self-governed, and whose citizens were admitted by a purely intellectual franchise. Knowledge made the "Master." know more than one's fellows was a man's sole claim to be a "Regent," or ruler in the schools. And within this intellectual aristocracy all were equal. When the Free Commonwealth of the "Masters" gathered in the halls of St. Mary's, all had an equal right to counsel; all had an equal vote in the final decision. Treasury and library were at their complete disposal. It was their voice that named every officer that proposed and sanctioned every statute. Even the Chancellor, their head, who had at first been an officer of the bishop, became an elected officer of their own.-History of the English People, § 165.

THE DEPOSITION OF EDWARD II.

Deserted by all, and repulsed by the citizens of London, whose aid he implored, the King fled hastily to the west, and embarked with the Despensers for Lundy Island, which Despenser had fortified as a possible refuge. But contrary winds flung him again on the Welsh coast, where he fell into the hands of Earl Henry of Lancaster, the brother of the Earl whom they had slain. The younger Despenser, who accompanied Richard, was at once hung on a gibbet fifty feet high, and the King was placed in ward at Kenilworth till his fate could be decided by a Parliament summoned for that purpose at Westminster in January, 1327.

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The peers who assembled fearlessly revived the constitutional usage of the earlier English freedom, and asserted their right to depose a King who had proved himself unworthy to rule. Not a voice was raised in Edward's behalf, and only four prelates protested when the young Prince was proclaimed King by acclamation, and presented as their sovereign to the multitude withThe revolution took legal form in a Bill which charged the captive monarch with indolence, incapacity, the loss of Scotland, the violation of his coronation oath, and oppression of the Church and Baronage; and on the approval of this it was resolved that the reign of Edward of Caernarvon had ceased, and that the crown had passed to his son, Edward of Windsor. A deputation of the Parliament proceeded to Kenilworth to procure the assent of the discrowned King to his own deposition; and Edward, "clad in a plain black gown," bowed quietly to his fate. Sir William Trussel at once addressed him in words which, better than any other, mark the nature of the step which the Parliament had taken : "I, William Trussel, Proctor of the Earls, Barons, and others, having for this full and sufficient power, do render and give back to you, Edward, once King of England, the homage and fealty of the persons named in my Procuracy; and acquit and discharge them thereof in the best manner that the law and custom will give. And I now make protestation in their name that they will no

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