FROM ST CLEMENT’S TO MANCHESTER COLLEGE

Just before Magdalen Bridge, there is a cul-de-sac on the left, called Cowley Place. In it stands St Hilda’s College for women, founded in 1893. As the coach crosses Magdalen Bridge, there is a fine view of the college after which it is named and also of the famous High with its long line of colleges – the Queen’s College, All Souls’ College, the university church and Brasenose College on the right; the Examination Schools and University College on the left. Past Magdalen, we turn into Long Wall Street which runs outside the town walls, remnants of which are visible through gaps in the houses on the left. Immediately before we reach St Cross Road, we pass the site of the town gallows.

Before crossing Magdalen Bridge, on the left, is Magdalen College School. During the improved conditions for Catholicism under King Charles II, a Catholic master of the school was said to have made more than 60 converts; this so enraged the Protestant locals that he was driven from the city.

This town gallows is where four Catholic martyrs were hanged, drawn and quartered on the 5th July 1589. They were George Nichols and Richard Yaxely (priests), and Thomas Belson and Humphrey Pritchard (laymen). They were executed for being, or harbouring, a Catholic priest. Thomas Belson was a local gentleman who had been acting as the priests’ guide; Humphrey Pritchard was an inn servant who worked in The Catherine Wheel, the inn where the men were seized (for which see under Balliol, below). The landlady of The Catherine Wheel, whose name is not recorded, suffered life imprisonment. After being seized in Oxford, the men were tortured in London, without result, and taken back to Oxford for execution. The four named were beatified on 22nd November 1987. Orate pro nobis.

The site of execution is now a place of pilgrimage: the first procession to it, organised by the Latin Mass Society, from the Oxford Oratory, took place in 2005. See the local LMS site.