In some respects he dealt harshly with the English clergy, and connived at their wholesale deprivation.  We must own, in extenuation, that their lives and conduct had not been such as to do honour to God, that they were said to be the most ignorant clergy in Europe; and that the sins of the nation under their guidance were owned, even by the English, to have brought the heavy judgment of the Conquest upon them.  Otherwise, Lanfranc was a protector of the oppressed, in which character he is introduced in the tale.

If Englishmen can only forgive him his share in the Conquest, few Archbishops of Canterbury can be named more worthy of our respect.

xxiv It must be remembered that Lanfranc was a firm believer in the right of King William, in the supposed testament of Edward the Confessor; and in the right of Rome to dispose of disputed thrones.  Good man though he was, he believed in all this rubbish, as true Englishmen must ever deem it.

xxv Oxford in the Olden Time.

The earliest authentic record in which Oxford finds a place is of the year 912, when we read in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that King Edward took possession of the city, when he took upon himself the responsibility of defending the valley of the Thames against Danish incursions, upon the death of his sister’s husband, Aethelred, Ealdorman of the Mercians, to whom the city had formerly belonged.

Then, probably, was that mound thrown up which still exists opposite the old Norman tower of Robert D’Oyly; and from that period the city gradually grew into importance, until it quite superseded the more ancient city, Dorchester. which was situated at the angle formed by the tributary river Tame, fifteen miles lower down the stream, even as Oxford occupied the similar angle formed by the Cherwell.

The charge of Oxford, and the district around, was committed to Robert D’Oyly, afore-mentioned, who built the lofty tower opposite the mound, deepened the ditches, enlarged the fortifications he found already there; and, about the date of our tale, founded the Church of St. George in the Castle.

He had a ruinous city to preside over.  Before the Conquest it contained about three thousand inhabitants; but the number was greatly diminished, for out of seven hundred and twenty-one houses formerly inhabited, four hundred and seventy-eight were now lying waste.

The University was yet a thing of the future.  Mr. James Parker (in his pamphlet, on the history of Oxford during the tenth and eleventh centuries, which he kindly presented to the writer.) has clearly shown that its supposed foundation by Alfred is a myth.  The passage in Asser, commonly quoted in support of the statement, is an interpolation not older, perhaps, than the days of Edward iii.  During the twelfth century the town appears, from whatever causes, to have recovered from the effects of the Conquest, and from that period its growth was rapid, until circumstances brought about the growth of a University honoured throughout the civilised world.