IV THOMAS LYDYAT To buried merit raise the tardy bust. Hear Lydyat's life, and Galileo's end." 83 In fact he had at one time generously pledged himself as security for a brother's debts, and being unable to find the money he was imprisoned, first in Bocardo at Oxford, and afterwards in the King's Bench, till the Warden of New College, and other influential friends subscribed for his release. Nor was this his only experience of duress; a staunch Royalist, he suffered plunder and imprisonment at the hands of the Roundheads, and returned to Alkerton so "infamously used " by the soldiers, that his health was seriously affected. He died at Alkerton in April, 1646, and was buried in the chancel of the church. A considerable portion of the county is owned by the Colleges of Oxford: the traveller will notice how often his inquiries as to the ownership of a farm are met by the answer that it belongs to such and such a college. College property it is true is scattered throughout the length and breadth of England, but, it is naturally more frequent in the parts adjacent to the University. Much of it came from founders and benefactors, but much was also bought by the colleges themselves in the days when land was a profitable investment. Things are otherwise now, but the farmer will still tell you that he would rather hold under a college than under a private landowner; the reason I fear often being that he manages to get more out of the college in the way of improvements. It has been said that the modern bursar is not such a good business man as his predecessor, who himself often belonged to the landed interest, but it is only natural that a corporation should keep a less jealous eye on the margin of profit than the individual landlord, whose rents are already too reduced for him to exist upon. The Head of the House or the Bursar still pays occasional visits to the farms, but much of the inspection is now left in the hands of professional agents. 84 WROXTON ABBEY CH. IV Formerly a college would make a solemn progress at stated periods through its estates: and in one of the Magdalen common-rooms still hang the horse-pistols and blunderbusses which it was prudent to carry on these occasions, while among the most interesting of the muniments of Merton are the accounts of the expenses incurred by the Warden and Fellows on a business journey down to Northumberland in the fourteenth century. At some colleges the annual rent dinner is still kept up; on these festive occasions the farmers gather together from a score or more of miles round the University town, and from early afternoon to late at eve the common-rooms steam with long churchwarden pipes and jorums of whisky punch. wonder these hospitable societies make popular landlords ! No But College tenants are not always farmers; Magdalen, for instance, has a considerable amount of valuable property in London, and I have been tempted into this digression because I am now approaching a kind of college property which I believe to be unique as such. At any rate I know of no other country mansion of the first rank belonging to an Oxford or Cambridge foundation; yet such is Wroxton. Wroxton Abbey, the home of the North family for seven generations, is the property of Trinity College, Oxford. I will explain how this came about directly; I first have to get there. From Alkerton to Wroxton is an easy ride of not more than three miles, and just before I enter the village I pass a venerable guide post, perhaps the oldest in the Midlands; it consists of a stone pillar with the names of the towns to which the divergent roads lead carved upon three of its sides, while on the fourth is an inscription recording the gift of this "handpost" by Mr. Fr. White in 1686. Turning to the right in the village I descend the hill, and reach the entrance to the Abbey. From the road you will see nothing of the house, but go a short distance up the drive and the fine gabled seventeenth century mansion stands facing you. Should you have permission to enter the house, the hall, the chapel, the library, the very remarkable collection of portraits and the 86 SIR THOMAS POPE CHAP. relics of the Stuarts and their times are enough to occupy you for many hours, and you may then wander through the grounds and look at the other side of the house across the long sweep of shaven lawn on the east. The Abbey the house is called, and has been so-called ever since it was built in 1618 by Sir William Pope, nephew of the founder of Trinity, and afterwards Earl of Downe; but in point of fact, the religious house which stood upon its site never ranked higher than a Priory. The distinction however, was generally forgotten after the Reformation, and Wroxton is by no means the only instance of the confusion. Wroxton Priory was founded in the reign of John for a prior and regular Augustinian canons by one Michael Belet, whose family was connected with the neighbouring hamlet of Balscot. In 1534, the last prior surrendered to Henry VIII., and subscribed to the Royal supremacy. A few years later the site and demesnes of the Priory passed into the hands of Sir Thomas Pope, a native of Deddington, who rose to a position of great wealth and influence under Henry VIII. and his successors. He acquired vast estates in his native country as well as elsewhere, and Aubrey mentions that "he could have rode in his owne lands from Cogges (by Witney) to Banbury, about 18 miles." He is best known to posterity as the munificent founder of Trinity College, and the chief demesne with which he endowed his new foundation was the manor of Wroxton, subject however to a long lease, which was then (1555) held by his brother John Pope, and has been renewed by the College from time to time to John's descendants up to the present day. It was John's son William Pope, who, as already mentioned, built the existing mansion on the site of the Priory. William's grand-daughter, after the death of her brother, the last Earl of Downe, without issue, carried the lease into the family of the present lessees, by her marriage with Francis North, first Lord Guilford and Keeper of the Great Seal under Charles the Second. The Lord Keeper and his great IV THE NORTHIS 87 grandson, George the Third's Prime Minister, are the two most famous members of the North family; the former is perhaps best known to the general reader by his brother Roger's racy Lives of the Norths. The said Roger gives an amusing account of the way in which he and another brother, Dudley North, used to spend the summer time at Wroxton after the Lord Keeper's death. Under their brother's will they had been appointed trustees to his children, and they "thought it no disservice to our trust to reside upon the spot some time in summer; which we did and had therein our own convenience and charged ourselves in the accounts to the full value of ourselves and the diet for our horses." They turned an old building which had formerly served as mews for hawks (there must have been fine sport on the broad Oxfordshire uplands in old days) into a forge and carpenter's shop, and there they worked away till they were as black as tinkers. Indeed, the neighbours began to surmise that there was something uncanny about the whole proceeding: Dudley "coming out sometimes with a red short waistcoat, red cap, and black face, the country people began to talk as if we used some unlawful trades there, clipping at least; and it might be coining of money. Upon this we were forced to call in the blacksmith and some of the neighbours, that it might be known there was neither danger nor damage to the state by our operations." One of the toys they devised was a "way-wiser," which they fixed upon a chaise for the purpose of measuring the distances they travelled. It was a contrivance of wheels within wheels, and was fondly christened by its inventors "Sir Theophilus Gimcrack": then, as always, the rustic notions of distance were as vague as they are various, and the two brothers experienced. "no small entertainment" in comparing their own measurements with "the unaccountable variety of vulgar estimates." Had the motor-car been invented in those days, we may be sure they would have delighted in it but they had to be contented with the "calash" and the "chaise." Since their time we |