Oxford and Its Story

turgy was enforced by imprisonment, and the subscription to the Articles of Faith was demanded by royal authorit

d. Ridley and the others who had displaced the deposed bishops were expelled; Latimer and Cranmer were sent to the Tower. After th

Henry VIII. the country was satisfied.

d a half years England experienced a persecution which was insignificant if judged by continental standards, but which has left an indelible impressio

o Magdalen annulling the ordinances made contrary to the statutes since the death of Henry VIII. Prudent Protestants who had made themselves prominent in their colleges now wisely took leave of absence from Oxford. Peter Martyr left the country; and his place was soon afterwards taken by a Spanish friar from the court of Philip an

ustody of the mayor and bailiffs of Oxford. For preparations had been made to examine them before a commission appointed from both the Universities. They were lodged at first in Bocardo, the town prison, n

ssion to Carfax and thence to Christ Church, where they heard Divine service, and so they went to dinner;[33] afterwards they with some others, in number thirty-three, that were t

elled. "Soon after was brought in Cranmer (with a great number of rusty billmen), then Ridley,

sided in his lofty chair. Cranmer was brought in and set opposite to the latter in the respondent's place. By his side was the mayor of the city, in whose charge he was. Next day it was Ridley's turn, and on the third Latimer's. So the solemn farce of the disputations, punctu

it every day or hour. It was now come. Ridley was urged to recant, but this he firmly refused to do or to acknowledge by word or gesture "the usurped supremacy of Rome."

on under the chin, wearing an old threadbare Bristol frieze gown, girded to his body with a penny leather girdle, at the which

s on transubstantiation, and wine was wine; there was a change in the Sa

ck in S. Mary's Church. There, after further examination, the sentence of condemnation was pronou

uired the sanction of Rome, remained in Bocardo, and ascending to the top of the prison house, or, as an ol

wife, Ridley's sister. Even the hard eyes of Mrs Irish softened to tears as she listened and thought of what was coming. The brother-in-law offered to sit up through the night, but Ridley said there was no occasion; he "minded to go to bed and sleep as quietly as ever he did in his life." In the morning he wrote a letter to the Queen. As Bishop of London he had granted renewals

ns and principal pillars of Christ's church" were now led. The frontage of Balliol was then much further back than it is now; beyond it lay open country, before it, under the town wall, ran the water of the tower-ditch. Some y

en's order; and the city guard was under arms to

ishop, and a tippet of velvet furs likewise about his neck, a velvet nightcap upon

that which he had worn on the occasion of his examination. As they passed towards Bocardo they looked u

f Bocardo He

alais." Cranmer's attention at this moment was engrossed by a Spanish friar, who was busy improving the occasion, and the martyr could not see him. But Ridley spied Latimer hobbling after him. "Oh, be ye there?" he exclaimed. "Yea," answered the old man. "Have after as fast as I can follow!" When he reached the stake Ridley ran to Latimer, "and with

ellor ran up to Ridley and stopped his mouth with their hands. The martyrs now commended their souls and their cause to God, and stripped themselves for the stake, Ridley giving away to the eager crowd his garments, dials, napkins and nutmegs, whilst some plucked the points off his hose; "happy wa

. We shall this day light such a candle, by God's gr

eneath and the faggots heaped above, the flames burnt his legs slowly away, and did not ignite the gunpowder round his neck. Amid cries to heaven of "Lord, Lord, receive my soul," and "Lord have mercy upon me," he screamed in his agony to the bystanders to let the f

od on his shoulders, such as Doctors of Divinity used to wear, and in his hand was a white staff. The aged Archbishop confronted there the Pope's Legate, who sat on a raised dais ten feet high, with cloth of state, very richly a

the King is chief and no foreign person in his own realm above him. The Pope is contrary to the Crown. I cannot obey both, for

been tried at Rome, where, according to the preamble of the Papal sentence, he had been allowed every opportunity to answer for himself. "O Lord!" commented Cranmer, "what lies be these!" They were directed, the commissioners continued, to degrade him, excommunicate him and deliver him up to the secular power. The form of degradation was be

emony was finished. "All this needed not," the Archbish

mer a Catholic or else no Cranmer at all. He was taken back to his cell that night, and there his constancy at last gave way. He signed a series of recantations. But the Queen refused to relent; she had humiliated her enemy, and now he must die. She fixed the 25th of March for the day of his execution. But first he was called upon to make a public confession of his recantation. It was a foul and rainy day when he was brought out of Bocardo to S. Mary's Church. Peers, knights, doctors, students, priests, men-at-arms and citizens thronged the narrow aisles, and through their m

ch in Oxford. Finally, he called upon the whole congregation to kneel where they were and to pray for him. When the prayer was finished the preacher called upon the Archbishop to make the public confession of his faith. "Brethren," cried he, "lest any man should doubt of this man's ear

gues of

tion, like de

ds marked than th

efore the congregation, and chanted the palinode of his forsworn

t's Lodge Tr

ly striven to avoid, he made the declaration of

my hand, contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death, and to save my life if it might be;... And forasmuch as my hand offended, writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished therefore; for, ma

dding of Spanish priests and "bloody" Bonnor. He approached the stake with a cheerful countenance, we are told, undressed in haste and stood upright in his shirt. The Spanish friars finding they could do nothing with him, exclaimed the one to the other, "Let us go from him, for the devil is in him." "Make short," cried Lord Williams, and "Recant, recant," c

west front of Balliol College, was happily designed by Sir Gilbert Scott in imitation of the beautiful crosses which Edward I. raised in memory of Queen Eleanor. T

ss of the man and the pathos of the humiliation of one so highly placed, appealed to the crowd who could not rise to heights of unshaken constancy. More easily understood by the people than the triumphant cry of heroic sufferers like Latimer, the dramatic end of the Archbishop filled every independent mind with sympathetic dread. In vain did Mary heap rewards on the University. In vain did Cardinal Pole institute a fresh visitation, hunt all her

S. Bernard's College to Christ Church. Here he founded the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, consisting of a president, twelve fellows and eight scholars. And in drawing up his statutes he availed himself of the advice both of Elizabeth and Cardinal Pole. The hall was completed in 1620. In 1665 the decay of the old Durham buildings made reconstruction imperative. Wren was the architect. He wished to build a long range in the upper part of the grove, but the quadrangular form was preferred; and he designed the garden quadr

that between Winchester and New College. The treasure of ecclesiastical vestments preserved in the library, and the fact that Edmund Campion, the Jesuit poet and conspirator, after whom the new Jesuit Hall in Oxford is called, was the fellow chosen to preach the founder's funeral sermon, indicate the Roman Catholic sympathies of the institution. Yet it was an alumnus of this college, William Laud, whose body was laid in the chapel (1530), and whose