Many have been the voices which have sung the praises of the “city of spires,” for many have loved her. None more so perhaps than Matthew Arnold, whose poem “The Scholar Gypsy”—the tale of a University lad who was by poverty forced to leave his studies and join himself to a company of vagabond gipsies, from whom he gained a knowledge beyond that of the scholars—is so well known. Says Arnold of the city: “And yet as she lies, spreading her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Ages, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection—to beauty, in a word?” There are many interesting places within walking distance of Oxford, but perhaps few more delightful to the eye than old Iffley Church. This ancient building with its fine old Norman tower is a landmark of the countryside and well deserves the attention given to it. CHAPTER THREE _Abingdon, Wallingford, and the Goring Gap_ Between Oxford and Reading lies a land of shadows—a district dotted with towns which have shrunk to a mere vestige of their former greatness. To mention three names only—Abingdon, Dorchester, and Wallingford—is to conjure up a picture of departed glory. [Illustration: ABINGDON.] At Abingdon, centuries ago, was one of those great abbeys which stretched in a chain eastwards, and helped to ensure the prosperity of the valley; and the town sprang up and prospered, as was so often the case, under the shadow of the great ecclesiastical foundation. Unfortunately the monks and the citizens were constantly at loggerheads. The wealthy dwellers in the abbey, where the Conqueror’s own son, Henry Beauclerc, had been educated, and where the greatest in the land were wont to come, did not approve of tradesmen and other common folk congregating so near the sacred edifice. Thus in 1327 the proud mitred Abbot refused to allow the citizens to hold a market in the town, and a riot ensued, in which the folk of Abingdon were backed up by the Mayor of Oxford and a considerable crowd of the University students. A great part of the Abbey was burned down, many of its records were destroyed, and the monks were driven out. But the tradesmen’s triumph was short-lived, for the Abbot returned with powerful support, and certain of the ringleaders were hanged for their share in the disturbance. However, the town grew despite the frowns of the Church, and it soon became a considerable centre for the cloth trade. Not only did it make cloth itself, but much of the traffic which there was between London and the western cloth-towns—Gloucester, Stroud, Cirencester, etc.—passed through Abingdon, particularly when its bridge had been built by John Huchyns and Geoffrey Barbur in 1416.