Early in the thirteenth century William of Durham, with a company of others, shook from off their English shoes the dust of Paris University after a "town and gown row" there, and settled at Oxford, and then the University began to take shape. He gave money to the University to found a "Hall" for students. Many other halls were founded (half of the Oxford Inns are, or were, perversion of old "Halls"). William of Wykeham gave a code of rubrics which became a legacy to the whole University. He built a college for the exclusive use of scholars of the foundation. He built also bell-tower, cloisters, kitchen, brewery, and bakehouse for "New" College. New College was the first home for scholars at Oxford. Lincoln College was next founded, after that All Souls, then Magdalen. Duke Humphrey of Gloucester gave the nucleus of the famous Bodleian library to the Benedictine monks. Christ Church was built with the revenues of a suppressed monastery. So every step in English history for ten centuries can be remembered by the stones of Oxford. That fine library building of All Souls, which holds as one of its treasures Wren's original plans for St. Paul's Cathedral, was built out of sugar money from the West Indies, being the gift of a great sugar planter in the early days of the making of the Empire. During the wars of Cavaliers and Roundheads Oxford suffered some shrewd blows. It was for the King always, and after the Restoration the Court recognised its loyalty. Charles II. with his Queen--and eke another lady or so as a rule--was often a visitor, and spent a great part of the Plague Year there, though "the Merry Monarch" showed no want of pluck or loyalty to his sore-stricken people during that time, and did not abandon London altogether. But all who could got out of London for a while to escape the horrors of which Pepys has given so clear a record in his diary and letters, as in the following to Lady Carteret:-- [Illustration: ST. MAGDALEN, TOWER AND COLLEGE, OXFORD]