From John O'Groats to Land's End Part 45

"And everybody praised the Duke Who this great fight did win."

"But what good came of it at last?"

Quoth little Peterkin:-- "Why, that I cannot tell," said he, "But 'twas a famous victory."

We found a very comfortable hotel at Woodstock where we got a splendid tea, and stayed some time, with an inward desire to stay longer; but we wanted to reach Oxford that night, and so walked on in the dark and arrived at the Temperance Hotel there at ten o'clock p.m.

We had seen a few bonfires on our way, but when November 5th happened to fall on a Sunday, causing the ceremonies of the "glorious fifth" to be celebrated either a day sooner or a day later, the proceedings invariably fell flat and lost their eclat; but Oxford was notorious on Gunpowder Day for a faction fight known as the Gown and the Town fight, which generally began in front of the church dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin, and on that day more heads were damaged in the city than on any other day in the year, the fight always ending in a number of both parties being taken care of for the night. But the custom was now dying out, and as our entry into the city was on November 4th, probably these festivities had not taken place or we had arrived too late to witness them.

(_Distance walked twenty miles_.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARTYRS' MEMORIAL, OXFORD.]

_Sunday, November 5th._

I was roused in good time this morning by my brother knocking at my door and wishing me many happy returns of my birthday, consequently we were able to go out in the town before breakfast and see how Oxford looked in the daylight. As we walked through the princ.i.p.al streets we were astonished at the number of towers and spires on the churches and colleges, which appeared in every direction, and the number of trees and gardens which surrounded them. We saw the Martyrs' Memorial, which we must have pa.s.sed as we entered the city the previous night, an elaborate and ornate structure, fully seventy feet high, with a cross at the summit. The monument had been erected at a cost of 5,000, to the memory of Bishops Ridley and Latimer, who were burnt to death near the spot, October 16th, 1555, and of Archbishop Cranmer, who followed them on March 21st, 1556; their statues in Caen stone filled three of the niches. The memorial was decorated after the manner of the Eleanor Crosses erected by King Edward I in memory of his wife, the Queen Eleanor, and the inscription on the base was as follows:

_To the Glory of G.o.d and in grateful commemoration of His servants--Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer, prelates of the Church of England; who near this spot yielded their bodies to be burned, bearing witness to the sacred truths which they had affirmed and maintained against the errors of the Church of Rome, and rejoicing that to them it was given not only to believe in Christ, but also to suffer for His sake. This monument was erected by public subscription in the year of our Lord G.o.d MDCCCXLI_.

Ridley and Latimer were burned together on the slope of the city near Balliol College, where stakes had been placed to receive them. On the day of their execution they were brought from their prison and compelled to listen to a sermon full of reproaches and uncharitable insinuations from the preacher, Dr. Smith, who took his text from the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians: "If I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it availeth me nothing."

[Ill.u.s.tration: OXFORD'S TOWERS. "We were astonished at the number of towers and spires on the churches and colleges which appeared in every direction, and the number of trees and gardens which were around them."]

Each of the bishops expressed a desire to reply to the sermon, but neither of them was allowed to do so, and they were led to the place of execution. Ridley was told that if he would recant, his life would be spared, but he replied, "So long as the breath is in my body I will never deny my Lord Christ and His known truth. G.o.d's will be done in me."

His companion, Latimer, before he removed his prison dress, looked like a withered and bent old man, but afterwards appeared quite changed, and stood upright, "as comely a father as one might lightly behold." He distributed several small articles he had about him amongst his friends who stood near him, and said, "Well, there is nothing hid but it shall be opened"--a remark he had often made before--and then he prayed aloud to the Almighty, concluding with the words, "I beseech Thee, Lord G.o.d, take mercy on this realm of England, and deliver the same from all her enemies."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BURNING OF RIDLEY AND LATIMER.]

After embracing each other they were chained to the stakes, and the f.a.ggots of wood piled around them, while a brother-in-law tied a bag of gunpowder round Ridley's neck. As the fires were being lighted, the brave old Latimer uttered these memorable words:

"Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man! We shall this day light such a candle in England as I trust shall never be put out!"

He then received the flame in his hands, as if embracing it, and, stroking his face with it, died apparently without pain.

Ridley lived longer, but when the powder exploded, he fell dead at Latimer's feet. Latimer had often prayed during his imprisonment that he might shed his heart's blood for the truth, and that G.o.d would restore His gospel to England, and preserve the Lady Elizabeth. As his body was consumed, the bystanders were astonished at the quant.i.ty of blood that gushed from his heart. His words proved to be prophetic, for the fires of the martyrs restored the light to their country, and spread like wildfire throughout the land, carrying all before them. How strong must have been their belief when, with the offer of life held out to them, they elected to die for the faith "which is in Christ Jesus."

Cranmer had signed a recantation and was brought to St. Mary's Church to proclaim his adhesion to the Roman faith, but instead of doing so, he created a great sensation by boldly repudiating all he had said in favour of Romish a.s.sumption. He said it was contrary to the truth; and "as for the Pope," he continued. "I refuse him as anti-Christ." A great uproar followed. The preacher shouted, "Stop the heretic's mouth!" and Cranmer was immediately led out to be burnt, suffering death on that same day, March 21, 1556. A portion of the stake to which he was fastened and the band of iron which was placed round his waist were still preserved at Oxford.

Mary, who was Queen of England at that time, was a zealous Roman Catholic, and the Reformers were looked upon as heretics, and punished accordingly. So many of them were executed during her reign, that she became known to history as "b.l.o.o.d.y Mary." Her sister Elizabeth was known to favour the Protestants, and as she would follow as Queen of England, her life was often in danger. It was for her preservation that Latimer so often prayed. Mary's reign was a short one, but Elizabeth was spared to reign over England for the long period of forty-four years. Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_ describes the horrible sufferings of many of these martyrs, and, though an awful book to read, was one of the few books extensively published in our early days, chained copies being placed in many churches, some of which we saw on our journey.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEAUMONT PALACE IN 1832: THE BIRTHPLACE OF RICHARD I.]

A small group of excited people were standing near the Martyrs'

Memorial, and we pa.s.sed several others in the city. On inquiry we were informed that the body of a murdered woman had been found during the night, on the Banbury road. On hearing this news I must confess to feeling some slight apprehension when I considered the strong prima facie case that could have been made against us: our travel-stained appearance, faces bronzed almost to the colour of the red soil we had walked over, beards untrimmed and grown as nature intended them, clothes showing signs of wear and tear, our heavy oaken sticks with worn ferrules, and our suspicious and seedy-looking bags; our late arrival last night, and, above all, the fact that we had entered the town by the very road on which the murder had been committed! What if we were arrested on suspicion! I had been practically arrested under far less suspicious circ.u.mstances the previous year, when we were walking home from London.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE HIGH," WITH QUEEN'S COLLEGE.]

Just before reaching Nottingham we saw a large concourse of people in an open s.p.a.ce some distance away from our road; out of curiosity we went to see what was going on, and found it to be a cricket match just finishing. Two men in the crowd to whom we spoke told us that great interest was being taken in the match, as a man named Grace was taking part in the game. We waited till the end, and came along with the two men towards the town. We had to cross the bridge over the River Trent, and my brother had already crossed when he found I was not following. So he turned back, and saw me talking to a policeman in the centre of the bridge. "What's the matter?" he shouted, and I replied, "He wants to look in my bag." My brother made use of some expression quite unusual to him, and a regular war of words ensued between him and the officer; as we declined to open the bag, he requested us to follow him to a small temporary police office that had been built on the side of the bridge.

Meantime a crowd of men had collected and followed us to the station; every pane of gla.s.s in the office windows was occupied by the faces of curious observers. The officer quite lost his temper, saying that he had had men like us there before. We asked him to break the bag open, but he declined to do so, and made himself very disagreeable, which caused my brother to remark afterwards that we ought to have thrown him over the parapet of the bridge into the river below, if only to cool his temper.

It would have pleased us to stay and fight the matter out, but we had a friend meeting us at Buxton to accompany us on the last day's march home, and were obliged to give in on that account; so we opened the bag, and it was amusing to see the crestfallen appearance of the officer when he saw the contents, and his fiery temperature almost fell below zero when we told him we should report the matter to his chief. We heard in the town that some of the squires on that side of Nottingham had been troubled with poachers on their estates, and the police had orders to examine all persons with suspicious-looking parcels coming into the town by that road, whether by vehicles or on foot. About a fortnight before our adventure the same policeman had stopped a man who was carrying a similar bag to mine, and found in it a complete set of housebreaker's tools. He had been complimented by the magistrates for his smart capture, so possibly our reluctance to open the bag, and its similarity to that carried by the housebreaker, had confirmed him in his opinion that he was about to make a similar capture. Another thought, however, that occurred to me was that the man I was walking with might be "known to the police," as I noticed he disappeared in the crowd immediately the officer approached. But be that as it may, we wrote to the Chief Constable of Police at Nottingham soon after we reached home, who replied very civilly, and said he hoped we would not proceed with the case further, as just then the police in that neighbourhood had very difficult duties to perform, and so the matter ended.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MERTON GARDENS.]

But to return to Oxford. My brother only smiled at my fears, and remarked that being apprehended by the police would only be a small matter compared with being taken to prison and put on the treadmill, a position in which he boasted of having once been placed. When he happened to mention this to a tramp on the road, I was greatly amused to hear the tramp in a significant and confidential tone of voice quietly ask, "What was you in for?"

He was only a small boy at the time, and had gone with our father, who was on the jury, to the county prison. Part of the jury's business in the interval was to inspect the arrangements there, which of course were found in applepie order. My brother was greatly impressed by his own importance when the man in livery at the head of the procession repeatedly called to the crowd, "Make way for the Grand Jury!" He saw the prisoners picking "oak.u.m," or untwisting old ropes that had been used in boats, tearing the strands into loose hemp to be afterwards used in caulking the seams between the wood planks on the decks and sides of ships, so as to make them water-tight; and as it was near the prisoners'

dinner-time, he saw the food that had been prepared for their dinner in a great number of small tin cans with handles attached, each containing two or three small pieces of cooked meat, which he said smelled very savoury.

Finally they came to the treadmill, and as no prisoners were on it, some of the jury expressed a wish to try it; one of the jurymen seeing my brother, who was the only child present, kindly took him on and held him by the hand. When all were in position the wheel was started slowly, and as one step went down they mounted the next, and so on up the stairs, but they never got to the top! The steps creaked under them as the wheel turned slowly round, and a prison officer stood behind them with a big stick, which he was careful not to use on any of the jurymen, though my brother heard him say he had to use it sometimes on the prisoners. As the wheel turned round it moved some kind of machinery which they could not see.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GREAT TOM BELL, OXFORD.]

But to return to Oxford again. We were not suspected of being concerned in the murder, nor did we venture to inquire whether the culprit had been found, for fear that we might be suspected of being concerned in the case; but if a police raid had been made on the Oxford Temperance Hotel--most unlikely thing to happen--we should have been able to produce a good record for that day, at any rate, for we attended four different services in four different places of worship. The first was at Christ Church, whither we had been advised to go to listen to the choir, whose singing at that time was considered to be the best in Oxford.

Certainly the musical part of the service was all that could be desired.

There were more than twenty colleges at Oxford, and we had a busy day, for between the services we looked through the "Quads," with their fine gardens and beautiful lawns, hundreds of years old. In the services, every phase of religious thought in the Church of England seemed to be represented--the High Church, the Low Church, and the Broad Church; and many men in all vocations and professions in life had pa.s.sed through the colleges, while valuable possessions had been bequeathed to them from time to time, until Oxford had become a veritable storehouse of valuable books, pictures, and relics of all kinds, and much of the history of the British Empire seemed to have been made by men who had been educated there. It would have taken us quite a week to see Oxford as it ought to be seen, but we had only this one day, and that a Sunday.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOM TOWER, WITH WOLSEY STATUE.]

Christ Church, where we went to our first service, one of the finest buildings in Oxford, was founded by the great Wolsey in the reign of Henry VIII. It contains the statue and portrait of the Cardinal, and in the Library his Cardinal's Hat, also his Prayer Book--one of its most valued possessions, beautifully illuminated and bound in crimson velvet set with pearls and dated 1599. The famous bell of Christ Church, known as the "Great Tom," weighing about 17,000 lbs., is tolled every night at five minutes past nine o'clock--101 times, that being the original number of the students at the college--and at its solemn sound most of the colleges and halls closed their gates. The students were formerly all supposed to be housed at that hour, but the custom is not now observed--in fact, there was some doubt about it even in the time of Dean Aldrich, the author of the well-known catch, "Hark! the bonny Christ Church bells," published in 1673:

Hark the bonny Christ Church Bells 1 2 3 4 5 6-- They sound so wondrous great, so woundy sweet As they trowl so merrily, merrily.

Oh! the first and second bell.

That every day at four and ten, cry, "Come, come, come, come to prayers!"

And the verger troops before the Dean.

Tinkle, tinkle, ting, goes the small bell at nine.

To call the bearers home; But the devil a man Will leave his can Till he hears the mighty Tom.

The great bell originally belonged to Oseney Abbey, and hung in the fine cupola over the entrance gate, named after it the "Great Tom Gate,"

and had been tolled every night with one exception since May 29, 1684.

The statue of Wolsey, which now stood over the gateway, was carved by an Oxford man named Bird in the year 1719, at the expense of Trelawny, Bishop of Winchester, one of the seven bishops and hero of the famous ballad--

And shall Trelawny die?

At the time of the Restoration Dr. John Fell was appointed Vice-Chancellor, and he not only made the examinations very severe, but he made the examiners keep up to his standard, and was cordially hated by some of the students on that account. An epigram made about him at that time has been handed down to posterity:

I do not like thee, Dr. Fell; The reason why I cannot tell; But this I know, and know full well, I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.

William Penn, the Quaker, the famous founder of the Colony of Pennsylvania, "came up" to Christ Church in 1660, but was "sent down" in 1660 for nonconformity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LEWIS CARROLL.]

But we were more interested in a modern student there, C.L. Dodgson, who was born in 1832 at Daresbury in Cheshire, where his father was rector, and quite near where we were born. There was a wood near his father's rectory where he, the future "Lewis Carroll," rambled when a child, along with other children, and where it was thought he got the first inspirations that matured in his famous book _The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland_, which was published in 1865--one of the most delightful books for children ever written. We were acquainted with a clergyman who told us that it was the greatest pleasure of his life to have known "Lewis Carroll" at Oxford, and that Queen Victoria was so delighted with Dodgson's book _Alice in Wonderland_, that she commanded him if ever he wrote another book to dedicate it to her. Lewis Carroll was at that time engaged on a rather abstruse work on _Conic Sections_, which, when completed and published, duly appeared as "Dedicated by express command to Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria." The appearance of this book caused some surprise and amus.e.m.e.nt, as it was not known that the Queen was particularly interested in _Conic Sections_. No doubt Her Majesty antic.i.p.ated, when she gave him the command personally, that his next book would be a companion to the immortal _Alice_.

Our friend the vicar, who told us this story, rather surprised us when he said that Lewis Carroll did not like the sea, and had written a "Sea Dirge," which, when recited at parochial entertainments, generally brought "down the house" at the conclusion of the ninth verse:

A SEA DIRGE

There are some things like a spider, a ghost.