A Clerk of Oxford, and His Adventures in the Barons' War. Everett-Green Evelyn
with a smile.
"Nay, nay, lads, we are sent here not for our own but for others' good. Ask for the School of the Franciscans, and for Brother Angelus. Most mornings from nine till eleven I am to be found there. You will be welcome. Go in peace."
"We will of a surety go," said Leofric, as they pursued their way. "He had the face of a saint. I trow that this is a right godly place. We get kindness from all we meet."
"Methinks it is thy face that wins it for us," quoth Jack, with a laugh; "thou hast somewhat the face of a saint thyself."
There was some shrewd truth in this remark. Leofric's was a countenance that could not but attract; and at that time there were such numbers of rude, rough, ill-mannered and ill-living clerks in the place, that favourable notice was often bestowed upon such as appeared of gentler nature and manners. All the religious brotherhoods were more or less on the look-out for likely pupils, and though the more enlightened of their members would not put pressure upon lads to make too early a choice of the cloister life, or of that of the friars, they gladly recruited their ranks from such promising students and clerks as they succeeded in drawing beneath their influence.
As the boys stood looking down Milk Street, they continued to see the Black Friars flitting busily to and fro, fetching and carrying their simple goods and chattels; and prompted by curiosity, they turned into the Jewry, and were soon gazing with the greatest interest at the Jewish denizens of that quarter.
The Jews had had a footing in Oxford from the very early days; they had a synagogue in Fish Street, nearly opposite to St. Aldate's Church. (It may be noted that the old Fish Street is the present St. Aldate's.) They were, of course, the most moneyed class in the city, and they had their own code and manner of life, were exempt from the operation of the common law, and were treated as serfs of the King. Had it not been that the Kings protected them from pillage by their neighbours, in order to plunder them themselves, the Jews would scarcely have continued to exist. The people hated and feared them, even whilst they borrowed from them at a rate of usury limited by statute. But they were too valuable to the Crown to be exterminated, and the Black Friars had settled amongst them in the hope of effecting their conversion.
For many years they had considerable success, so much so that the King established a house called the Guild Hall for the reception of the baptized Hebrews. It was not really their lack of success (although fewer conversions had taken place of late) but lack of room which occasioned the flitting of the Black Friars from the Jewry. They were not all of them leaving immediately, even now; but their new building was almost complete, and a number of the brothers were about to take their departure, hence the excitement prevailing in the locality of the Jewry.
When the lads had gazed their fill at the strange dress and dark faces of the Jews, and had listened to their talk, and their covert jests as they secretly derided the Christian brothers who had dwelt so long amongst them, they turned southward down Fish Street, and then by St. Frideswyde's Street to the great group of beautiful and ancient buildings comprising St. Frideswyde's Church and Abbey – the oldest in Oxford – occupying the site where Christ Church now stands.
Grave, stately looking men walked with slow, meditative steps about the enclosure in which stood those buildings. They were habited in a long white coat of cloth down to the heels, girt about with a leather girdle; over this was a short surplice of linen, and over that again a short black cape that reached to the elbows. On their shaven heads they wore a black square steepled cap. These were the Canons Regular of St. Augustine – the same order as those of Osney.
Here again the walls were broken down, and had crumbled to decay, groves and meadows and fish ponds extending southward to Trill Mill Stream. The boys looked about them in silent wonder, but nobody addressed them; and though they would have liked to steal into the church and see St. Frideswyde's shrine, they did not venture to do so, fearing that they would be regarded as intruders in that sacred place.
"Hugh le Barbier was telling me of notable miracles done at yon shrine," said Leofric, as they turned away at length up St. Frideswyde's Lane. "St. Frideswyde was a daughter of an ancient king, and she built a nunnery here, and was herself a nun. Afterwards it became a place for monks, and now it is an Abbey; but the shrine of St. Frideswyde still remains, and great wonders are wrought there."
"Hark!" suddenly cried Jack, whose ears had been more attentive to some sound in the distance than to his companion's words, "I hear the noise of a tumult. There is something stirring not far off. Let us e'en run and see what it be. Methinks I hear the sound of blows and shouts."
Leofric heard the same sound which had attracted Jack's attention. It seemed to proceed from a short distance off, and they hurried along till they reached the corner of Great Jewry Lane where it joins Shydyard Street (now Oriel Street), where the shouting began to take more articulate form, and the boys heard the words, "North, North! – South, South!" bawled and yelled from scores of throats.
"It is some fray betwixt the clerks," said Jack, who had not listened for naught to Gilbert's tales during the night they camped by the fire in the forest. "Did he not tell us that they were banded into two or more great bodies, North and South, and that they were ofttimes coming to blows together? Haply we had better stand close in this doorway, and let the rout go by. Clerks are killed by their fellows in the open streets every year, if what we hear be true, for nothing worse than belonging to the adverse faction."
Leofric, who though no coward was by nature placable, and adverse to blows, was ready enough to take this counsel, and set his back against the door in the little porch which offered shelter to the pair. The fight seemed to be coming their way, and presently a few clerks scudded by, yelling, laughing, cursing; brandishing their clubs and hurling all manner of foul and derisive epithets at those behind them, from whom, however, they evidently thought it well to flee. Others followed, some having cut heads or bleeding noses, dishevelled, out of breath, angry, yet inclined to make game of themselves and others all the while.
"North! North! North!" they shouted, interlarding their words with many an oath and epithet that need not be transcribed. "Ye coward Southerners, ye only dare to attack when ye be ten to one. We will give you back as good as ye gave! North! North!"
Plainly the pursuers were close behind the flying feet of the last fugitive, when suddenly the rout was brought up short by the appearance of a tall man in a long gown, with a weapon at his side, who came round the corner at a quick pace, and confronted the rioters with stern glances.
"How dare you disturb the peace again, you good-for-nothing brawlers?" he cried in ringing accents. "Let me have such another scene within the week, and I will have some of you to answer for it in the Chancellor's Court. As if it were not enough that you must be fighting the burgesses, fighting the citizens, fighting the Jews, but ye must be fighting one another too, and that in broad daylight, when you should be at your studies. To your Halls and lodgings, every man of you; and if I hear of such another brawl as ye come from lecture, I will deal differently with some of you."
The clerks, who had pulled up suddenly at sight of this stalwart functionary, now began to slink away this way and that. Many of them were mere lads, led on by the boyish instinct of fighting; a few were evilly-disposed rogues, who were always to be found in the streets, ready for any brawl; others, again, were scholars who had followed in the wake of the crowd, with an idle interest in anything that savoured of a fight rather than with any particular desire to take part in it.
These sorts of frays were of almost daily occurrence in old Oxford, and only when they became too numerous or too severe was any particular notice taken of them. The students for the most part lived and brawled, studied and played, very much as it pleased them, and a fight, with many or with few, was part of the day's work.
Jack espied Gilbert at the edge of the crowd, and made for him quickly.
"What is the matter? and who is he that stayed the fight?" he asked, with eager curiosity; and Gilbert answered, laughing, —
"There is naught the matter; the fight was but a bit of play as the men came out from lecture. We have such almost every day, and they seldom come to more than a few cracked crowns. Yon man of the gown is the Proctor of the South. There be two such in the University, one for the North and one for the South; and I trow they have their hands full to keep order sometimes! But