Oxford | Page 7

Meanwhile, some of the practical citizens of Oxford wish to level the
Jews' Mound, and to "utilise" the gravel of which it is largely composed.
There is nothing to be said against this economic project which could
interest or affect the persons who entertain it. M. Brunet-Debaines'
illustration shows the mill on a site which must be as old as the tower.
Did the citizens bring their corn to be tolled and ground at the lord's
mill?
Though Robert was bent on works of war, he had a nature inclined to
piety, and, his piety beginning at home, he founded the church of St.

George within the castle. The crypt of the church still remains, and is
not without interest for persons who like to trace the changing fortunes
of old buildings. The site of Robert's Castle is at present occupied by
the County Gaol. When you have inspected the tower (which does not
do service as a dungeon) you are taken, by the courtesy of the Governor,
to the crypt, and satisfy your archaeological curiosity. The place is
much lower, and worse lighted, than the contemporary crypt of St.
Peter's-in-the-East, but not, perhaps, less interesting. The
square-headed capitals have not been touched, like some of those in St.
Peter's, by a later chisel. The place is dank and earthy, but otherwise
much as Robert D'Oily left it. There is an odd-looking arrangement of
planks on the floor. It is THE NEW DROP, which is found to work
very well, and gives satisfaction to the persons who have to employ it.
Sinister the Norman castle was in its beginning, "it was from the castle
that men did wrong to the poor around them; it was from the castle that
they bade defiance to the king, who, stranger and tyrant as he might be,
was still a protector against smaller tyrants." Sinister the castle remains;
you enter it through ironed and bolted doors, you note the prisoners at
their dreary exercises, and, when you have seen the engines of the law
lying in the old crypt you pass out into the place of execution. Here, in
a corner made by Robert's tower and by the wall of the prison, is a dank
little quadrangle. The ground is of the yellow clay and gravel which
floors most Oxford quadrangles. A few letters are scratched on the soft
stone of the wall--the letters "H. R." are the freshest. These are the
initials of the last man who suffered death in this corner--a young rustic
who had murdered his sweetheart. "H. R." on the prison wall is all his
record, and his body lies under your feet, and the feet of the men who
are to die here in after days pass over his tomb. It is thus that
malefactors are buried, "within the walls of the gaol."
One is glad enough to leave the remains of Robert's place of arms--as
glad as Matilda may have been when "they let her down at night from
the tower with ropes, and she stole out, and went on foot to
Wallingford." Robert seems at first to have made the natural use of his
strength. "Rich he was, and spared not rich or poor, to take their
livelihood away, and to lay up treasures for himself." He stole the lands
of the monks of Abingdon, but of what service were moats, and walls,
and dungeons, and instruments of torture, against the powers that side

with monks?
The Chronicle of Abingdon has a very diverting account of Robert's
punishment and conversion. "He filched a certain field without the
walls of Oxford that of right belonged to the monastery, and gave it
over to the soldiers in the castle. For which loss the brethren were
greatly grieved--the brethren of Abingdon. Therefore, they gathered in
a body before the altar of St. Michael--the very altar that St. Dunstan
the archbishop dedicated--and cast themselves weeping on the ground,
accusing Robert D'Oily, and praying that his robbery of the monastery
might be avenged, or that he might be led to make atonement." So, in a
dream, Robert saw himself taken before Our Lady by two brethren of
Abingdon, and thence carried into the very meadow he had coveted,
where "most nasty little boys," turpissimi pueri, worked their will on
him. Thereon Robert was terrified and cried out, and wakened his wife,
who took advantage of his fears, and compelled him to make restitution
to the brethren.
After this vision, Robert gave himself up to pampering the monastery
and performing other good works. He it was who built a bridge over the
Isis, and he restored the many ruined parish churches in Oxford--
churches which, perhaps, he and his men had helped to ruin. The tower
of St. Michael's, in "the Corn," is said to