The Cathedral Church of Oxford. Percy Dearmer
St. Frideswide were translated "from an obscure to a more noted place in the church," by the new prior Philip, who himself wrote a book, "De Miraculis S. Frideswydæ." The "obscure" place was doubtless the southernmost of the three early Saxon apses, recently discovered outside the east wall of the north choir aisle (see p. 37). So important a ceremony could not have taken place till the church was fit for the great company that assembled there; for the translation was regarded as an event of national interest—King Henry II. possibly, and the Archbishop of Canterbury certainly, being present, with many other prelates and nobles. This occasion may have also been the inauguration of Oxford University, since seven years afterwards we come upon the first mention of regular students.
Here is Wood's account of this the first translation:—
"After they were meet, and injoyned fasting and prayers were past, as also those ceremonies that are used at such times was with all decency performed, then those bishops that were appointed, accompanied with Alexio, the pope's legat for Scotland, went to the place where she was buried, and opening the sepulchre, took out with great devotion the remainder of her body that was left after it had rested there 480 yeares, and with all the sweet odours and spices imaginable to the great rejoycing of the multitude then present mingled them amongst her bones and laid them up in a rich gilt coffer made and consecrated for that purpose, and placed it on the north side of the quire, somewhat distant from the ground, and inclosed it with a partition from the sight hereafter of the vulgar."
The fame of her miracles spread over all England, and multitudes came to be healed, many of whom went away whole and rejoicing.
But the troubles of the Priory were not yet over. During the priorate of Philip in 1190, a great fire broke out in Oxford, which destroyed a large part of the city. St. Frideswide's did not escape, and, though the church itself does not seem to have suffered materially, it is probable that the monastic buildings were much injured, the chapter-house and cloisters among them; for the old Norman doorway has, through all the changes of seven centuries, borne the red marks of the fire, and bears them as unmistakably to-day.
This mishap did not mark an era in the architecture of the church; for nothing can with certainty be pointed to as the work of the last decade of the twelfth century; nor indeed do we find that any important work was undertaken till, well into the thirteenth century, the spire was added. The monks seem to have patched up the ruined chapter-house as best they could, for it was not till about the middle of the thirteenth century that the present beautiful room was built. About this time the second bay of what is now the Latin Chapel was also added.
It seems certain now that the Lady Chapel, though it was undoubtedly vaulted, and its pillars cut into Early English shafts, was not built for the first time at this period. Part of the wall between it and the Latin Chapel remains in all its primitive roughness, while there is no sign of a wall between it and the north choir aisle. Its east wall is even older, for it contains one of the eighth century arches already alluded to.
In 1289, Robert de Ewelme being prior, the relics of St. Frideswide were again translated. "The old coffer," says the Oseney Chronicle, "of St. Fritheswyda was translated, and placed in a new and more precious one in the same church, and near the place where the old one had stood." Its marble base has recently been discovered, and replaced in what seems to have been its old position. The beautiful northernmost chapel, called the Latin Chapel, was added in the fourteenth century, the single Early English bay being incorporated, and the north wall of the Lady Chapel further opened out, for this purpose. Some of the Norman windows were also altered to Decorated. The Norman windows at the east end were replaced by a large five-light window, which was spoilt in the seventeenth century, and ultimately removed by Sir Gilbert Scott. Decorated windows of three lights were also placed at the east ends of the choir aisles, and a four-light window in the Lady Chapel. These all went in the seventeenth century, but the beautiful window in St. Lucy's Chapel survived. All the fourteenth century work belongs to a rather late division of the Decorated style.
Towards the end of the fifteenth century the Perpendicular style began to spread over the church. Besides the windows of the nave and north transept aisles, the clerestory of the choir was remodelled to carry the elaborate vaulting, which was probably also added in this century, and not by Wolsey as has been supposed, though the work may have been completed in his time. The similarity of the vaulting to that of the Divinity School in Oxford enables us to fix the date pretty accurately at 1480.
Another characteristic feature of the church was made at this time, to wit, the fine chantrey tomb, called the Watching Chamber, but very probably the third and last "shrine" of the patron saint. The cloisters were also reconstructed, and, in order to make room for their eastern side, the western aisle of the south transept was destroyed.
We are able to fix the date of the great north window of the north transept, and of the commencement of vaulting in its northern bay, because they were paid for out of a bequest of a monk, James Zouch, who died in 1503, and is buried under the window. One may conjecture that the whole of the church would have been vaulted in a style similar to that of the choir, if the dissolution of the priory had not come, and left this one bay as a pathetic little protest against the sweeping reconstructions of Cardinal Wolsey.
Indeed Wolsey, who in 1524 created Christ Church as a college, did nothing but harm to Christ Church as a church. It used to be thought that he had thrown the vault over the choir, and even that he had built the palpably early English spire!—an idea which throws a curious light upon the architectural knowledge of our grandfathers. But, alas for his reputation, the only work connected with the church that can with certainty be attributed to him is the destruction of one half of the nave. For, in order to build the great quadrangle now known as "Tom Quad," he demolished its three western bays, and was apparently only prevented from carting away the whole church by his sudden fall from the royal favour in 1529. His scheme for "Cardinal College," as Christ Church was at first called, was one of extreme magnificence; and he began—much to the amusement of Oxford—with the splendid kitchen, still in daily use. Tom Quad gives one some idea of the scale on which he formed his plans: it, however, has never been properly finished, as it is too large and too much inhabited to be fit to receive the cloister for which it was designed. The real cloisters are of much more modest dimensions. Wolsey destroyed one side of them in order to build the college Hall.
In justice, however, to Wolsey it must be stated that he commenced to build a new chapel along the north side of Tom Quad, which, judging by the foundations that some draining operations in the canon's gardens have recently disclosed, would have rivalled the chapel of King's College, Cambridge, in size, and have been about 100 feet longer than the actual length of the cathedral. To this the Aubrey MSS. (written about 1670) refer:—"Ye foundations of that famous begun Chapel or Cathedral of Cardinal Wolsey which went towards the blue Boare in Oxford and pulled down by Dean Fell about 1671." Aubrey also mentions that the height of the walls of this chapel was seven feet at the time of Wolsey's disgrace. The west end ran in a line with the front of the octagonal turrets in St. Aldate's Street, and the walls reached nearly to Fell's passage into Peckwater.
To the sixteenth century belong also the flat wooden roofs of the nave and transepts, and perhaps the concealment of the lantern story of the tower.
The Reformation, apart from the usual destruction of altars, furniture, plate, and ornamental work generally, is chiefly remembered in the history of the church by the demolition of St. Frideswide's shrine. Anthony à Wood says of the third shrine that, "being adored till the dissolution of the religious houses, it was then, 30 Henry VIII. [A.D. 1538], amongst others, taken down, and all the offerings conveyed into the King's Treasury." We give an account of the curious incidents connected with the demolition in our description of the shrine itself.
An inventory taken in the last year of Henry VIII.'s reign is interesting for the glimpse it gives us of the rich ornaments which even then survived, and must have made so vast a difference in the appearance of the church. They were confiscated, no doubt, as being "monuments tending to idolatrie and popish or devill's service, crosses, censars, and such lyke fylthie stuffe," to quote the curious phrases used by Bishop Horne of the plate of Trinity College.
There were eight altars in the aisles and body of the church, in addition to the high altar.