“And this indeed I will maintain Unto my dying day, sir, Whatever King in England reign, I’m to be Vicar of Bray, sir,” as the ballad has it.[5] In approaching such a county as Oxford, the difficulty is to deal with subjects that are not already too familiar. The city of Oxford has been described a hundred times, and Pugin and Le Keux have almost exhausted its picturesque colleges and halls in their woodcuts and steel engravings. Woodstock is one of the first places an Oxford student or his friends visit, and great as the attractions of its park or palace may be, there is little in it that comes within the scope of the present work. Banbury, in the northern part of the county, is an admirable example of a fine old English town. Its noble church was, it is said, destroyed by an alderman who was also a builder, and who erected the present unsightly edifice in its place. The Castle of Banbury, which was built by the Bishop of Lincoln in the twelfth century, stood a long siege during the wars of Charles I., and the Parliamentarians ordered its demolition when they obtained possession of it. The bars, five in number, were standing until the present century, but now they are destroyed. The names are peculiar, and differ considerably from those we commonly find applied to city gates: St. John’s Bar, Sugar Bar, North Bar, Cole Bar, and Bridge Gate. The old Banbury cross, familiar in nursery rhymes, has lately been destroyed. [Illustration: BANBURY: CROMWELL’S PARLIAMENT HOUSE.] The Roebuck Inn is an extremely fine piece of architecture. The great window on the left lights a still finer room. Indeed this chamber, with which the low door communicates, is one of the most beautiful apartments of the early part of Queen Elizabeth’s reign in England. It is exceedingly rich in ornament, and all the ornaments are in excellent taste. It is now used as a club room, or for any large gathering that the inn--which is a very unassuming hostelry--may have to accommodate. The inn faces the street, and the beam on the upper part of the picture is the end of the passage leading to the courtyard in which this room is situated. The room was the council-chamber of Oliver Cromwell after the taking of Banbury Castle. The quaint gables that form the subject of the next illustration are very characteristic of the town. There seems to be no particular history connected with them, but they were not very new at the siege of Banbury. There is one rather singular house here with three even gables in the front, which project into the street to an enormous distance, and are enriched in parquetry. Three circular bow windows, also projecting into the street, are exactly under them, and stop on their soffits, but the gables project considerably beyond the bow windows. [Illustration: OLD GABLES, BANBURY.]