Oxford | Page 5

in a purple cup of the low hills, he would have
seen little but "the smoke floating up through the oakwood and the
coppice,"
[Greek text which cannot be reproduced]
The low hills were not yet cleared, nor the fens and the wolds trimmed
and enclosed. Centuries later, when the early students came, they had to
ride "through the thick forest and across the moor, to the East Gate of
the city" (Munimenta Academica, Oxon., vol. i. p. 60). In the midst of a
country still wild, Oxford was already no mean city; but the place
where the hostile races of the land met to settle their differences, to
feast together and forget their wrongs over the mead and ale, or to
devise treacherous murder, and close the banquet with fire and sword.
Again and again, after Eadward the Elder took Mercia, the Danes went
about burning and wasting England. The wooden towns were flaming
through the night, and sending up a thick smoke through the day, from
Thamesmouth to Cambridge. "And next was there no headman that
force would gather, and each fled as swift as he might, and soon was
there no shire that would help another." When the first fury of the
plundering invaders was over, when the Northmen had begun to wish
to settle and till the land and have some measure of peace, the early
meetings between them and the English rulers were held in the border-
town, in Oxford. Thus Sigeferth and Morkere, sons of Earngrim, came
to see Eadric in Oxford, and there were slain at a banquet, while their
followers perished in the attempt to avenge them. "Into the tower of St.
Frideswyde they were driven, and as men could not drive them thence,
the tower was fired, and they perished in the burning." So says William
of Malmesbury, who, so many years later, read the story, as he says, in
the records of the Church of St. Frideswyde. There is another version of
the story in the Codex Diplomaticus (DCCIX.). Aethelred is made to
say, in a deed of grant of lands to St. Frideswyde's Church ("mine own
minster"), that the Danes were slain in the massacre of St. Brice. On
that day Aethelred, "by the advice of his satraps, determined to destroy
the tares among the wheat, the Danes in England." Certain of these fled

into the minster, as into a fortress, and therefore it was burned and the
books and monuments destroyed. For this cause Aethelred gives lands
to the minster, "fro Charwell brigge andlong the streame, fro Merewell
to Rugslawe, fro the lawe to the foule putte," and so forth. It is pleasant
to see how old are the familiar names "Cherwell," "Hedington,"
"Couelee" or Cowley, where the college cricket-grounds are. Three
years passed, and the headmen of the English and of the Danes met at
Oxford again, and more peacefully, and agreed to live together,
obedient to the laws of Eadgar; to the law, that is, as it was
administered in older days, that seem happier and better ruled to men
looking back on them from an age of confusion and bloodshed. At
Oxford, too, met the peaceful gathering of 1035, when Danish and
English claims were in some sort reconciled, and at Oxford Harold
Harefoot, the son of Cnut, died in March 1040. The place indeed was
fatal to kings, for St. Frideswyde, in her anger against King Algar, left
her curse on it. Just as the old Irish kings were forbidden by their
customs to do this or that, to cross a certain moor on May morning, or
to listen to the winnowing of the night-fowl's wings in the dusk above
the lake of Tara; so the kings of England shunned to enter Oxford, and
to come within the walls of Frideswyde the maiden. Harold died there,
as we have seen, but there he was not buried. His body was laid at
Westminster, where it could not rest, for his enemies dug it up, and cast
it forth upon the fens, or threw it into the river. Many years later, when
Henry III. entered Oxford, not without fear, the curse of Frideswyde
lighted also upon him. He came in 1263, with Edward the prince, and
misfortune fell upon him, so that his barons defeated and took him
prisoner at the battle of Lewes. The chronicler of Oseney Abbey
mentions his contempt of superstitions, and how he alone of English
kings entered the city: "Quod nullus rex attemptavit a tempore Regis
Algari," an error, for Harold attemptavit, and died. When Edward I.
was king, he was less audacious than his father, and in 1275 he rode up
to the East Gate and turned his horse's head about, and sought a lodging
outside the town, reflexis habenis equitans