The amazing friar met with no reward for his labours. According to one story, indeed, his writings only gained for him a prison from his Order. His works were sold, allowed to rot, or nailed to the desks that they might do no harm. For Bacon's method of study exposed him to the charge of magic. It was said that he was in alliance with the Evil One, and the tradition arose that through spiritual agency he made a brazen head and imparted to it the gift of speech, and that these magical operations were wrought by him while he was a student at Brazen Nose Hall. Necromancy, you see, _was_ practised by the more daring students, for was there not a certain clerk in Billyng Hall who, when he had summoned the Devil into his presence by his art, observed with astonishment that he did reverence when a priest carrying the sacrament passed without. "Thereupon the student was much disturbed and came to the conclusion that God was much the greater and that Christ should be his Lord...." And later, was not Dr Thomas Allen of Gloucester Hall, the astrologer and mathematician to whom Bodley left his second best gown and cloak--a common sort of bequest in those days--suspected by reason of his figuring and conjuring, so that his servitor found a ready audience when, wishing to impose upon Freshmen and simple people, he used to say that sometimes he would meet the spirits coming up his master's stairs like bees? Apart from the tradition of the Brazen Nose, Bacon's long residence in Oxford left other marks on the nomenclature of the place. Wood tells us that in his day a fragment of the ruined Friary was pointed out as the room where the great wizard had been wont to pursue his studies. And at a later time tradition said that Friar Bacon was wont to use as an observatory the story built over the semi-circular archway of the gate on the south bridge, and it was therefore known as Friar Bacon's Study. The little "gate-house" must have resembled Bocardo. It was leased to a citizen named Welcome, who added a story to it, which earned it the name of "Welcome's Folly." So the bridge came to be called Folly Bridge, and though gate and house have disappeared, the new bridge still retains the name. [Illustration: Gables in Worcester College]