intellectual and social culture; their houses were the best schools of the time--schools in which the scholars were trained for secular no less than for clerical careers--and their presence at Oseney and S. Frideswide’s was already preparing the intellectual soil of Oxford to receive, at the close of Henry’s reign, the seeds of the first English University in the divinity lectures of Robert Pulein.[121] The burgher-life of the city had long gathered round the church of S. Martin; in its churchyard was held the portmannimot or general assembly of the citizens; they had their merchant-gild and their gild-hall;[122] they had their common pasture-land,[123] the wide green “Port-meadow” beyond the Isis; and we see the growth of a local industry in the appearance of the leather-sellers’ and weavers’ gilds. Shortly before Henry’s death, there were indications that Oxford was soon to regain the political position which it had held under the old English and Danish kings, but had entirely lost since their time. A strange legacy of awe had been left to the city by its virgin patroness. The story went that Fritheswith, flying from the pursuit of her royal lover, sank down exhausted at the gate, and, despairing of further escape, called upon Heaven itself to check him; as he entered the town he was struck blind, and though her prayers afterwards restored his sight, no king after him dared set foot within the boundaries of Oxford for fear of incurring some similar punishment.[124] It must be supposed that the councils held at Oxford under Æthelred and Cnut met outside the walls; we cannot tell whether any countenance was given to the legend by the circumstances of Harald Harefoot’s death; but from that time forth we hear of no more royal visits to Oxford till 1133--the very year of Robert Pulein’s lectures. Then we find that Henry I., whose favourite country residence was at Woodstock, had been so drawn to the neighbouring town as to build himself a “new hall” there,[125] just outside the northern wall, on the ground afterwards known as Beaumont-fields. He held but one festival there, the last Easter which he ever spent in England; but each in turn of the rival candidates for the throne left vacant by his death found Oxford ready to become a political as well as a military centre of scarcely less importance than London itself. [111] Domesday, vol. i. p. 154. Mr. Parker, in his _Early Hist. of Oxford_ (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), pp. 200, 201, suggests that the damage was done by the army of Eadwine and Morkere on their southward march in 1065. [112] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 88. [113] The chief stronghold of the new fortress, however, was not on the mound; it was a lofty tower--still standing--on the western side of the enclosure. It was built by the first Robert of Oilly, in 1071; Ann. Osen. ad ann. See Parker, _Early Hist. Oxf._, pp. 202–204.