A Brief Chronology of Catholic Oxford

Early Middle Ages: the beginnings of the University

912 First mention of Oxford, in the Saxon Chronicle, when it is recovered from the Danes by King Ethelred

1120 Theobald of Etampes teaching at a school with '60 or 100 clerks more or less'. Since no foundation of such a school is likely between 1066 and 1120, this school probably dates from before the Norman Conquest. This gives some plausibility to the tradition of a foundation by King Alfred the Great.

1161 English students banned from Paris by Henry II. Many of these congregated in Oxford: this is one explanation of the rise of Oxford as a centre of scholarship.

c.1195 St Edmund of Abingdon studies at Oxford, on the site which developed into St Edmund's Hall.

1221 Party of the newly founded Dominican 'Order of Preachers', the 'Blackfriars', set off to found a house of studies in Oxford. They establish themselves first in Jewish quarter, then move to area around Speedwell Street.

1225 Franciscan friars, the 'Greyfriars', found a house of studies in Oxford, in St Ebbes / Westgate.

1249 University College ('The Great Hall of the University') founded, to support ten masters.

1263 Balliol College founded (by John de Baliol, King of Scotland), as a hall of residence for poor scholars.

1264 Merton College founded, the first college to combine masters and students in one institution.

1281 Benedictine monks of Gloucester Cathedral found a house of studies, Gloucester Hall (where Worcester College now stands). This is soon used by many Benedictine houses of the South and West.

1281 Cistercians found Rewley Abbey as a house of studies. Later, they found St Bernard's College, where St John's now stands.

1286 Durham College (where Trinity College now stands) founded, a house of studies for the Benedictines of Durham Cathedral and the North.

1310 Duke Humphrey's Library founded.

1314 Exeter college founded, to train priests for the diocese of Exeter.

1326 Oriel College founded, for secular clergy of all dioceses.

1340 The Queen's College founded, for the secular clergy of the North.

Reconstruction after the Black Death (1347 - 1350)

1362 Canterbury Hall founded, a house of studies for the Benedictines of Canterbury Cathedral, and the secular clergy of the Province of Canterbury

1379 New College founded, for the secular clergy of the South.

1427 Lincoln College founded, for the secular clergy of the diocese of Lincoln.

1437 All Souls College founded as a community of scholar-priests, to say Masses for the dead of the war with France.

1448 Magdalen College founded

1509 Brasenose College founded, for the secular clergy.

1516 Corpus Christi College founded by Bishop Fox, especially for the study of Greek.

1526 Cardinal College founded by Cardinal Wolsey; refounded as Christ Church in 1546, by Henry VIII.

The Protestant Revolt

1530 Oxford delays its response to King Henry's question about the validity of his marriage to Katharine of Aragon; finally, the theology faculty, not the University, supplies the desired answer.

[1532 St Thomas More resigns as Lord Chancellor over the question of Henry VIII's divorce.]

[1533 Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn and is excommunicated by Pope Clement VII; Cranmer appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.]

[1534 Act of Supremacy: Henry VIII declared Supreme Head of the Church of England.]

1535 College libraries ransaked. St Thomas More and St John, Cardinal Fisher beheaded.

1536 Dissolution of smaller monasteries in England, carried out by Thomas Cromwell. This leads to the Pilgrimage of Grace, centred in Yorkshire.

1538 Suppression of the Friars' houses in Oxford.

1539 Dissolution of the large religious houses. Abbots Blessed Richard Whiting (Glastonbury) and Blessed Hugh Farringdon (Reading), executed. Monastic colleges destroyed.

[1540 Carthusian martyrdoms in London.]

1541 Suppression of Shrines, including the shrine of St Frideswide in Oxford, located in Christ Church cathedral, which had been an important centre of pilgrimage. The valuables were confiscated and the shrine smashed to pieces.

1547 Edward VI, King of England and Supreme Head of the Church of England: Duke of Somerset acts as Protector. Chantries Act destroys the chantries and seizes their assets.

1553 Parish churches stripped of their valuables, as well as of devotional images and objects.

1549 First version of Book of Common Prayer. Royal policy said to be supported by only 2 of the 13 surviving heads of colleges. Riots in Oxford are quashed, and recalcitrant priests are hanged from their church spires in Chipping Norton and Bloxham. Heads of Catholics fastened to Oxford City walls. The Western Rising, in Devon and Cornwall, eventually crushed, leads to the fall of Somerset.

1552 new version of Book of Common Prayer, with unequivocally Protestant teachings on the Sacraments and so on.

Restoration of Catholicism: Mary Tudor: 1553-1558

1555 Trinity College and St John's College founded. The Dominican Peter de Soto teaches in Oxford.

Restoration of Protestantism: Elizabeth Tudor: 1558-1603

[1559 Act of Uniformity, passed by a margin of three votes, reimposes a slightly modified 1552 prayer-book; a wave of vandalism, by Protestant fanatics and royal officials, follows. Elizabeth is made the 'Supreme Governor' of the Church of England by the Act of Supremacy, which made Catholic resistance to Protestantism a capital offence. All but one of the bishops refused to co-operate; those unable to flee ended their days in prison.]

1559 Royal Commissioners visit Oxford; Catholic students imprisoned 'in great numbers.'

1561 William Allen, later Cardinal, resigns as head of St Mary's Hall, Oxford, and leaves the country. He later returns (still a layman) and encourages Catholics in the Oxford area and elsewhere. Six students imprisoned for resisting the removal of a chapel crucifix.

1565 Allen leaves England again, and with many other Oxford scholars he founds a Catholic University and seminary at Douay, in the Spanish Netherlands (1567). The seminary produced more than 160 martyrs for the Catholic faith. Other seminaries, monasteries and convents are founded by English Catholics overseas in the succeeding years.

[1569 Northern Rising, against the imposition of Protestantism.]

[1570 Pope St Pius V excommunicates Queen Elizabeth, and declares her deposed.]

1571 White Hall, an old hall of residence, refounded as Jesus College.

1574 Arrival in England of the first priests ordained at Douay for the English mission, who include a former fellow of St John's.

1577 Rowland Jenkins, an Oxford stationer, condemned to lose his ears for distributing Popish books, at the 'Black Assize'. Arrival in England St Ralph Sherwin, an alumnus of Exeter College. (Sherwin was martyred in 1581.)

1580 Arrival in England of the first Jesuit priests for the English mission, including St Edmund Campion, formerly Fellow of St John's, and Robert Persons, formerly Bursar of Balliol.

1580 Fr William Hartley sent to Oxford (Fr Arthur Pitts to Cambridge) to encourage vocation (Hartley was martyred in 1588).

1581 St Edmund Campion's book Decem Rationes left on the pews of the University Church in Oxford; later the same year he was martyred in London. Executions of Catholic priests, ordained overseas, and those who help them, frequent for the rest of Elizabeth's reign, and into that of James I.

1581 Undergraduates required to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church. This requirement was abolished in 1871.

1587 Execution of the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots by Queen Elizabeth provokes war with Spain. William Allen created Cardinal in preparation for an anticipated Catholic restoration following a Spanish victory. Elizabeth's victory marked by savage persecution of Catholics: in the four months between 22 July and 27 November, of 1588, twenty-one seminary priests, eleven laymen, and one woman were put to death for their Catholic faith.]

1589 Martyrdoms of Blessed Nichols, Yaxley, Belson and Prichard in Oxford.

1602 Bodleian Library founded.

Stuart Dynasty

(James I: 1603-1625; Charles I: 1625-1649; Civil War starts 1642; Cromwell’s ‘Commonwealth’ 1649-1660; Charles II restored 1660-1685; James II 1685, expelled 1688.

1605 ‘Gunpowder Plot’: most famous of many real and imaginary ‘Popish plots’. The plotters had met in the Catherine Wheel Inn, now occupied by Balliol College.

1609 Douay translation of the Bible, prepared mainly by Catholic Oxford scholars working overseas, appears, two years before King James’ ‘Authorized Version’.

1610 Wadham College founded on ruins of the college of the Trinitarian Friars.

1610 Martyrdom of Blessed George Napier (Napper) in Oxford.

1621 Oxford Physic Garden, later called the Botanic Garden, founded.

1624 Broadgate Hall refounded as Pembroke College.

1625 Charles I becomes king; marries the Catholic Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII of France, who prevents him signing the death warrants of captured priests.]

1642 Protestant fervour stirred by the beginning of the Civil War: Catholic books and pictures burned in the streets. Townsmen favour Parliament; the University the King. Oxford becomes the King’s headquarters. The King is forced by the Long Parliament to authorise executions of Catholic priests; a spate of martyrdoms is carried out around the country.

1644 Oxford falls to General Fairfax’s Parliamentarian troops. University and town purged of Royalists; 25 Anglican clergy ejected for their religious views.

1649 Leveller (Protestant extremist) troops of the Parliamentarian garrison of Oxford mutiny; two executed in Gloucester Green. Leveller unrest around the country.

1660 James II returns in triumph to London; Royalists and High Churchmen return from exile, and often to their positions in the University.

[1673 Test Act aims to deprive English Roman Catholics and Nonconformists of public office.]

1678 Titus Oates fabricates a ‘Popish plot’ to assassinate Charles II: anti-Catholic riots in Oxford, in which effigies of the Pope were burned; elsewhere in England the last martyrdoms are suffered as a result, 1679.

685 Charles II received into the Catholic Church on his deathbed. Succeeded by the Catholic James II.]

1687 James II issues Declaration of Liberty of Conscience, extends toleration to all religions.]

1688 James II’s contest with Magdalen College over his proposal for a Catholic Dean; Catholics head University College and Christ Church, and Mass said more openly. More anti-Catholic riots in Oxford precede the expulsion of James II. Test Act reimposed, and Catholic academics are forced to leave.

18th Century

1714 Worcester College founded, on ruins of Gloucester Hall

[1791 Catholic Relief Act legalises Catholic churches, and removes other restrictions on Catholics.]

1795 Chapel of St Ignatius, with a presbytery, was built, the first Catholic church in Oxford since the accession of Queen Elizabeth.

19th -20th Centuries

1817 George Canning rejected as Burgess of Oxford University, for his favouring a Catholic Emancipation Act

[1828 Test Act repealed; 1829 Catholic Emancipation Act removed most remaining legal restrictions on Catholics.]

1833-45 ‘Oxford Movement’ of prominent Anglican theologians, who attempted to reintroduce Catholic elements into their church. Many influenced by this, and some of its leaders, become Catholics, including the Venerable John Henry Newman, formerly Fellow of Oriel College and Vicar of St Mary’s (the University Church). He was received into the Church in 1845 while at Littlemore, outside Oxford.

1871 Thirty-Nine Articles no longer required of Undergraduates.

1875 Building of St Aloysius.

1895 Catholic Bishops allow Catholics to attend the Protestant University.

1895 Benedictines of St Lawrence’s Abbey, Ampleforth, found a house of studies in Oxford; it becomes a Hall of the University, and is known as St Benet’s Hall from 1920. (Halls were called by the name of their Master, e.g. ‘Hunter Blair Hall’, until in 1918 they could be ‘Permanent Private Halls’.)

1895 Jesuits establish a Hall of the University; known as Campion Hall from 1918.

1911 Building of St Edmund and St Frideswide, Iffley Road, and St Gregory and St Augustine, Woodstock Road

1929 Dominicans open Blackfriars as a house of studies; it becomes a Permanent Private Hall in the 1990s.

1931 Capuchin Franciscans take over St Edmund and St Frideswide, Iffley Road, and establish a house of studies; it becomes a Permanent Private Hall of the University in 1957.

(For more on Act of Parliament against Catholics, and the repeal of these, see here.)

  • THE WAY IN
  • THE MODERN GREYFRIARS
  • THE COWLEY FATHERS'€™ CHURCH
  • ST CLEMENTS
  • FROM ST CLEMENTS TO MANCHESTER COLLEGE
  • MANCHESTER COLLEGE
  • ST CROSS
  • HOLYWELL MANOR
  • MANSFIELD COLLEGE
  • KEBLE COLLEGE
  • ST GILES STREET
  • ST GILES€™ CHURCH
  • ST ALOYSIUS' €™CHURCH
  • ST JOHN'S COLLEGE
  • ST MARY MAGDALENE'€™S CHURCH
  • CORNMARKET STREET
  • ST MICHAEL'S CHURCH
  • BROAD STREET
  • BALLIOL COLLEGE
  • TRINITY COLLEGE
  • TURL STREET
  • JESUS COLLEGE
  • ST MILDRED'S CHURCH
  • LINCOLN COLLEGE
  • ALL SAINTS'™ CHURCH
  • EXETER COLLEGE
  • THE UNIVERSITY BUILDINGS
  • THE OLD ASHMOLEAN BUILDING
  • THE SHELDONIAN THEATRE
  • THE OLD CLARENDON BUILDING
  • THE DIVINITY SCHOOL AND CONVOCATION HOUSE
  • DUKE HUMPHREY'€™S LIBRARY AND THE BODLEIAN
  • THE RADCLIFFE CAMERA
  • BRASENOSE COLLEGE
  • ST MARY'S CHURCH
  • ORIEL COLLEGE
  • CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE
  • ST EDWARD THE MARTYR'S CHURCH
  • CANTERBURY HALL
  • ST FRIDESWIDE'€™S PRIORY
  • CHRIST CHURCH
  • MERTON COLLEGE
  • UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
  • THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE
  • ALL SOULS' COLLEGE
  • HERTFORD COLLEGE
  • WADHAM COLLEGE
  • NEW COLLEGE
  • ST PETER'€™S IN THE EAST
  • ST EDMUND HALL
  • FROM ST EDMUND HALL TO MAGDALEN COLLEGE
  • MAGDALEN COLLEGE
  • FROM MAGDALEN TO ST ALDATE'S STREET
  • THE CATHOLIC CHAPLAINCY
  • THE MEDIEVAL BLACKFRIARS
  • THE CRUTCHED FRIARS
  • PEMBROKE COLLEGE
  • CAMPION HALL
  • ST ALDATE'€™S CHURCH
  • ST MARTIN’S, CARFAX
  • FROM ST ALDATE'€™S TO ST EBBE'S
  • ST MARY'€™S COLLEGE
  • ST PETER LE BAILEY
  • ST EBBE'S CHURCH
  • THE OLD GREYFRIARS
  • THE FRIARS OF THE SACK
  • ST BUDOC'€™S CHURCH
  • THE CASTLE
  • ST THOMAS THE MARTYR
  • OSNEY ABBEY
  • REWLEY ABBEY
  • THE CARMELITE PRIORY
  • WORCESTER COLLEGE
  • THE MODERN BLACKFRIARS
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    ST FRIDESWIDE’S PRIORY

    Before the Reformation, the ground on which Christ Church now stands was occupied by the Augustinian Canons’ priory of St Frideswide, and the building which is now the cathedral of the Anglican diocese of Oxford was their church. The roots of the foundation lie deep in history, so deep that we have here the oldest religious institution in the town.

    We are told that, in the reign of that stout pagan Penda[1] of Mercia, a daughter was born to a local ealdorman named Didan and his wife, Saffrida. She was baptized Frideswide and she is the patron saint of Oxford. Her story is typical of many Anglo-Saxon maidens of high rank. Wishing to consecrate her life to God, she avoided a marriage arranged for her by her parents with a Mercian noble named Algar. He did not take his dismissal readily, and Frideswide fled to a remote spot on the upper Thames which was then known as Thornbury but is now called Binsey. The legend has it that he followed her there and laid hands on her. There was a clap of thunder and the lightning flash blinded Algar. The saint was sorry for him and prayed to St Margaret of Antioch[2] and St Catherine of Alexandria.[3] They appeared to her, and told her to strike the ground with her staff. Water flowed and Frideswide’s maidens washed the eyes of the unhappy man.[4] He recovered his sight and returned to Oxford much humbled, and that was the end of him so far as she was concerned. After her mother’s death, her father gave up the idea of forcing her to marry and set her up as the superior of a community of twelve like-minded maidens on the site of the later priory. This first house was dedicated to Our Lady and All Saints. The most probable date for her death is 735, a year which also saw the passing of St Bede the Venerable.[5] Her course had been tranquil and undisturbed after the first battle was won, and her body was laid to rest beneath the tower of the church which she had built.

    After she died, we hear no more of the maidens over whom she had presided. The shrine was tended by secular canons until shortly before the Norman conquest. In 1002, some Danes, trying to escape the massacre of their countrymen ordered by Æthelrede II,[6] took refuge in the tower. Their pursuers set fire to it in an attempt to dislodge them and accidentally burned the whole church to the ground. The king directed it to be rebuilt.

    Sometime between 1111 and 1122, when Henry I[7] granted them their charter, the Canons Regular of St Augustine took charge of the place and, inspired by the reconstruction which was going on everywhere at the time, they put up a larger and finer church in the prevalent Norman style. The eastern part was finished by 1181 and the body of St Frideswide was translated to a new shrine in it. The church had a chancel of five bays, flanked by aisles of four bays each. There was a north transept of three bays, with a small chapel opening out of the northernmost. The south transept was identical, but the cloister occu­pied its western aisle and there was a chapel opening out of the middle bay on the east side. A passage ran across outside its southern end. The central tower was lower than the present one, and there may have been two west towers. The exact length of the nave and its aisles is not known, but there were probably seven bays, that is to say, it was three bays longer than it is now.

    Since that time, there have been the following alterations. In the first quarter of the thirteenth century, another stage and a spire were added to the central tower. About 1250, a Lady Chapel was built alongside the old north aisle and, in 1289, St Frideswide’s relics were moved to a new shrine which had been erected in it. In 1298, a parish church, dedicated also to St Frideswide, which stood somewhere within the precincts of the priory, was pulled down and its parishioners handed over to the priest of St Edward’s Blue Boar Lane. In 1316, or there­abouts,. the chapel at the north end of the north transept was replaced by the existing chapel of St Catherine.[8] About 1330, St Lucy’s Chapel in the south transept was extended a little to the east. The three win­dows at the east end of the presbytery were added during the same period. The remodelling of the clerestory and the vaulting of the chancel roof date from the end of the fifteenth century.

    The church is overcrowded with stalls, because it is now the chapel of the college as well as a Protestant cathedral. The position of St Frideswide’s shrine is clearly marked in the Lady Chapel and there are indications of a richly painted roof above it. Some parts of the feretory[i] have been reassembled in the eastern bay on the south side of the chapel. There is an elaborate chantry with a watching-chamber[9] above it at the east end of the Lady Chapel on the north side. On the same side are three tombs. The eastern-most belongs to Elizabeth Mountford,[10] wife of Thomas,[11] the second Lord Montague, who married Thomas Lord Furnival[12] after her first husband’s death. In the middle is that of Prior Alexander Sutton.[13] The tomb at the west end of the row is probably that of Sir George Nowers who lived in the fifteenth century.

    The church played its part in the tragedy of Cranmer, for it was here that he was degraded from his orders and stripped of his pontificals by Bishop Bonner[14] of London and Bishop Thirlby[15] of Ely. Between the south choir aisle and St Lucy’s Chapel is the tomb of Robert King,[16] the last abbot of Osney and the first bishop of Henry VIII’s new diocese of Oxford.[17] As he retained his see in Queen Mary’s reign and died just before her, he may be claimed as the only Catholic occupant of the bishopric. Dr Pusey,[18] the High Church leader, and his wife are buried in the choir.

    Outside the church, three walks of the old cloister remain. The west cloister was destroyed when Wolsey[19] was trying to adapt the church to the plan of his proposed college. There is also a fine chapter-house off the east walk. It consists mostly of thirteenth-century work, but the doorway is older and dates from the second half of the twelfth century. The dormitory, though much altered, can still be seen over the east cloister and parts of the refectory have survived on the south side of the garth. The rubble foundations in the middle of the cloister are most probably connected with Wolsey’s plans for buildings on the site.

    By 1524, the fortunes of the canons were at a low ebb, and Wolsey obtained permission from Rome to move the few who remained and to suppress the monastery as redundant. In the year before this took place, the net value of the house was £148 16s. 3½d. (From Goulder, Pilgrimage Pamphlets: Oxford & Cambridge, 1963)

    Christ Church Cathedral contains some medieval stained glass which survived the general destruction, in the Latin Chapel and St Lucy’s Chapel, where St Thomas Becket is shown, although his depicted head, like his actual one, has been destroyed by royal command, and replaced by a pane of clear glass.

    [1] King of the Mercians 626-655.
    [2] A virgin martyr who probably suffered death in the persecution under Diocletian (Roman emperor 284-305. Gains Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus).
    [3] A virgin martyr who suffered death in the persecution under Maximinus (Roman emperor 308-313. Galerius Valerius Maximinus).
    [4] The well, which tradition connects with this miracle, is still to be seen in the churchyard of the church at Binsey. It is a charming place well worth a visit. It is reached by way of Walton Street, Walton Well Road and the path along the upper Thames.
    [5] Lived 673-735. A monk of Jarrow and author of some thirty-eight works including the famous Historia Ecclesiastica.
    [6] King of all England 978-1016.
    [7] Reigned 1100-1135.
    [8] Also called the Latin Chapel, because the Anglican communion service is celebrated in Latin on the first Sunday of term.
    [9] A guardian sat here to see that pilgrims behaved themselves and that nothing was stolen from the shrine.
    [10] Died 1354.
    [11] Died 1319.
    [12] Died before April 18th, 1332.
    [13] Prior of St Frideswide's 1294-1316.
    [14] Bishop of Hereford 1538-1539, of London 1539-1569. He was deprived of his see and imprisoned twice-first, under Edward VI, secondly under Elizabeth I. He died in the Marshalsea prison in Southwark.
    [15] Bishop of Westminster 1540-1550, of Norwich 1550-1554, of Ely 1554-1570. Deprived by Elizabeth and imprisoned.
    [16] Bishop of Osney c. 1541-1545, of Oxford 1545-1557.
    [17] Henry VIII established six new sees-Bristol, Chester, Gloucester, Osney (moved to Oxford in 1545), Peterborough and Westminster. The cathedrals for the new dioceses were adapted from existing monastic churches. Bristol and Osney (also Oxford) belonged to the Austin Canons, the rest to the Benedictines.
    [18] Lived 1800-1882. A close associate of Newman and Keble. He remained in the Church of England. Edward Bouverie Pusey.
    [19] Bishop of Lincoln and archbishop of York 1514-1530, bishop of Bath and Wells 1518-1523, of Durham 1524-1529, of Winchester 1529-1530. He was also appointed to the see of Tournai in 1513, but never took possession. Cardinal 1515. Plurality on this scale was considered shocking even in the sixteenth century.
    [i] A (portable) shrine containing the relics of a saint; a small room or chapel in which shrines were deposited (Oxford Shorter English Dictionary).

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