Thus then Oxford had attained to complete municipal self-government. She stood now in the first rank of municipalities. Her political importance is indicated by the many great assemblies that were held there. The great assembly under Cnut had closed the struggle between Englishman and Dane; that under Stephen ended the conquest of the Norman, whilst that under Henry III. begins the regular progress of constitutional liberty. In 1265, Simon de Montfort issued writs from Woodstock summoning the famous parliament to which towns sent members for the first time. Oxford no doubt was among the number, but the sheriff's returns are lost and it is not till 1295 that the names of two burgesses elected to represent her in the national council are recorded. The University did not obtain members until the first Parliament of James I. (1609), although her advice had often been consulted by kings and parliaments before.[12] So far, then, we have followed the growth of a town of increasing political and commercial importance. We have now to trace the growth within its borders of a new and rival body, which was destined, after a century or more of faction and disorder, to humble her municipal freedom to the dust. CHAPTER III THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY The chroniclers of every mediæval town like to begin from Jove--or Genesis. The Oxford historians are no exception. Famous antiquaries of ancient days carried back the date of the city to fabulous years. Wood gives the year 1009 B.C. as the authentic date, when Memphric, King of the Britons, built it and called it Caer Memphric. But these famous antiquaries, as we shall see, had an axe to grind. Whatever the origin of Oxford may have been, a few bronze weapons and some pottery, preserved in the Museum, are the only remains of the British period that have been discovered. Great as were the natural advantages of the place, lying as it does on the banks of the chief river of the country at a point where a tributary opens up a district to the north, it would yet seem that there was no British settlement of importance at Oxford, for it was dangerous borderland between the provinces into which Britain was divided, liable to frequent hostile incursions, and therefore left uninhabited. And this would seem to be the reason why, when the road-making Romans were driving their great streets through the neighbourhood, they left this seductive ford severely alone. The first chronicler to associate Oxford with the name of King Memphric was John Rous, an imaginative historian, no respecter of facts, who died, full of years and inventions, in 1491. Hear him discourse in his fluent, pleasantly circumstantial style: