Oxford (England) -- History; University of Oxford -- History
And these bells, Hautclerc, Douce, Clement, Austin, Marie, Gabriel et
John, as they are named in the hexameter, are the famous Osney bells,
which were held to be the finest in England in the days when
bell-founding was a serious art and a solemn rite, when bells were
baptized and anointed, exorcised and blessed by the bishop, so that they
might have power to drive the devil out of the air, to calm tempests, to
extinguish fire, and to recreate even the dead. They are hung within the
Bell-Tower (above the hall-staircase of Christ Church), which Mr Bodley
has built about the wooden structure which contains them, and which he
intended to surmount with a lofty and intricate wooden superstructure.
But Tom is placed in his own tower, over the entrance from S. Aldate's
into the great Quad to which he has given his name.
The lower story of Tom Tower was built by Wolsey (the Faire Gate it was
called, and the cardinal's statue is over the gateway), but the
octagonal cupola which gives to it its characteristic appearance was
added by Sir Christopher Wren. Tom weighed 17,000 pounds, and bore the
inscription:--
_In Thomæ laude resono Bim Bom sine fraude_,
but he was re-cast in 1680 (7 ft. 1 in. in diameter, and weighing over 7
tons). The inscription records:--
_Magnus Thomas Clusius Oxoniensis renatus, Ap. 8, 1680._
Translated here, he has rung out, since the anniversary of the
Restoration on the 29th of May 1684, nightly without intermission, save
on that night some years ago when the undergraduates of Christ Church
cut the rope as a protest when they were not allowed to attend the ball
given at Blenheim in honour of the coming of age of the Duke of
Marlborough, and curfew did not ring that night.
There is one other monument in Oxford which is connected by popular
tradition with the last Abbot of Osney, and that is the exceedingly
picturesque old house[9] in S. Aldate's. Richly and quaintly carved,
this old timber mansion is known as the Bishop's Palace, and is said to
have been the residence of Bishop King, after the See was transferred
from Osney to Christ Church.
[Illustration: Gables in St Aldate's]
The town, we have seen, had been ruined, and very many of the houses
were "waste," when the Normans conquered England. But in the new era of
prosperity and security which their coming gave to the land, in the
sudden development of industry and wealth which the rule of the
conquerors fostered, Oxford had her full share. The buildings of which
remnants or records remain bear witness to the new order of things.
Such works as those which we have described could not then or now be
done without money. The transformation of Oxford at this period, from a
town of wooden houses, in great part uninhabited, to a town of stone
houses, with a castle and many churches of stone, is an indication of
wealth. And that wealth was a product not only of the new régime of
order and security, but also of the new policy of the foreign kings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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