With the buildings of Robert D'Oily, a follower of the Conqueror's, and the husband of an English wife, the heiress of Wigod of Wallingford, the new Oxford begins. Robert's work may be divided roughly into two classes. First, there are the strong places he erected to secure his possessions, and, second, the sacred places he erected to secure the pardon of Heaven for his robberies. Of the castle, and its "shining coronal of towers," only one tower remains.
From the vast strength of this picturesque edifice, with the natural moat flowing at its feet, we may guess what the castle must have been in the early days of the Conquest, and during the wars of Stephen and Matilda. We may guess, too, that the burghers of Oxford, and the rustics of the neighbourhood, had no easy life in those days, when, as we have seen, the town was ruined, and when, as the extraordinary thickness of the walls of its remaining tower demonstrates, the castle was built by new lords who did not spare the forced labour of the vanquished. The strength of the position of the castle is best estimated after viewing the surrounding country from the top of the tower. Through the more modern embrasures, or over the low wall round the summit, you look up and down the valley of the Thames, and gaze deep into the folds of the hills. The prospect is pleasant enough, on an autumn morning, with the domes and spires of modern Oxford breaking, like islands, through the sea of mist that sweeps above the roofs of the good town. In the old times, no movement of the people who had their fastnesses in the fens, no approach of an army from any direction could have evaded the watchman. The towers guarded the fords and the bridge and were themselves almost impregnable, except when a hard winter made the Thames, the Cherwell, and the many deep and treacherous streams passable, as happened when Matilda was beleaguered in Oxford. This natural strength of the site is demonstrated by the vast mound within the castle walls, which tradition calls the Jews' Mound, but which is probably earlier than the Norman buildings. Some other race had chosen the castle site for its fortress in times of which we know nothing. 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.
