The number of houses marked waste in the survey marks the terrible suffering of Oxford in the Norman Conquest:  but the ruin was soon repaired, and the erection of its castle, the rebuilding of its churches, the planting of a Jewry in the heart of the town, showed in what various ways the energy of its new masters was giving an impulse to its life.  It is a proof of the superiority of the Hebrew dwellings to the Christian houses about them that each of the later town-halls of the borough had, before their expulsion, been houses of Jews.  Nearly all the larger dwelling houses in fact which were subsequently converted into academic halls bore traces of the same origin in names such as Moysey’s Hall, Lombard’s Hall, or Jacob’s Hall.  The Jewish houses were abundant, for besides the greater Jewry in the heart of it, there was a lesser Jewry scattered over its southern quarter, and we can hardly doubt that this abundance of substantial buildings in the town was at least one of the causes which drew teachers and scholars within its walls.  The Jewry, a town within a town, lay here as elsewhere isolated and exempt from the common justice, the common life and self-government of the borough.  On all but its eastern side too the town was hemmed in by jurisdictions independent of its own.  The precincts of the Abbey of Osney, the wide “bailey” of the Castle, bounded it narrowly on the west.  To the north, stretching away beyond the little church of St. Giles, lay the fields of the royal manor of Beaumont.  The Abbot of Abingdon, whose woods of Cumnor and Bagley closed the southern horizon, held his leet-court in the hamlet of Grampound beyond the bridge.  Nor was the whole space within the walls subject to the self-government of the citizens.  The Jewry had a rule and law of its own.  Scores of householders, dotted over street and lane, were tenants of castle or abbey and paid no suit or service at the borough court.

[Sidenote:  Oxford and London]

But within these narrow bounds and amidst these various obstacles the spirit of municipal liberty lived a life the more intense that it was so closely cabined and confined.  Nowhere indeed was the impulse which London was giving likely to tell with greater force.  The “bargemen” of Oxford were connected even before the Conquest with the “boatmen,” or shippers, of the capital.  In both cases it is probable that the bodies bearing these names represented what is known as the merchant-gild of the town.  Royal recognition enables us to trace the merchant-gild of Oxford from the time of Henry the First.  Even then lands, islands, pastures belonged to it, and amongst them the same Port-meadow which is familiar to Oxford men pulling lazily on a summer’s noon to Godstow.  The connexion between the two gilds was primarily one of trade.  “In the time of King Eadward and Abbot Ordric” the channel of the Thames beneath the walls of the Abbey of Abingdon became so blocked up that boats could scarce pass as