far as Oxford, and it was at the joint prayer of the burgesses of London and Oxford that the abbot dug a new channel through the meadow to the south of his church.  But by the time of Henry the Second closer bonds than this linked the two cities together.  In case of any doubt or contest about judgements in their own court the burgesses of Oxford were empowered to refer the matter to the decision of London, “and whatsoever the citizens of London shall adjudge in such cases shall be deemed right.”  The judicial usages, the municipal rights of each city were assimilated by Henry’s charter.  “Of whatsoever matter the men of Oxford be put in plea, they shall deraign themselves according to the law and custom of the city of London and not otherwise, because they and the citizens of London are of one and the same custom, law, and liberty.”

[Sidenote:  Life of the Town]

A legal connexion such as this could hardly fail to bring with it an identity of municipal rights.  Oxford had already passed through the earlier steps of her advance towards municipal freedom before the conquest of the Norman.  Her burghers assembled in their own Portmannimote, and their dues to the crown were assessed at a fixed sum of honey or coin.  But the formal definition of their rights dates, as in the case of London, from the time of Henry the First.  The customs and exemptions of its townsmen were confirmed by Henry the Second “as ever they enjoyed them in the time of Henry my grandfather, and in like manner as my citizens of London hold them.”  By this date the town had attained entire judicial and commercial freedom, and liberty of external commerce was secured by the exemption of its citizens from toll on the king’s lands.  Complete independence was reached when a charter of John substituted a mayor of the town’s own choosing for the reeve or bailiff of the crown.  But dry details such as these tell little of the quick pulse of popular life that beat in the thirteenth century through such a community as that of Oxford.  The church of St. Martin in the very heart of it, at the “Quatrevoix” or Carfax where its four streets met, was the centre of the city life.  The town-mote was held in its churchyard.  Justice was administered ere yet a townhall housed the infant magistracy by mayor or bailiff sitting beneath a low pent-house, the “penniless bench” of later days, outside its eastern wall.  Its bell summoned the burghers to council or arms.  Around the church the trade-gilds were ranged as in some vast encampment.  To the south of it lay Spicery and Vintnery, the quarter of the richer burgesses.  Fish-street fell noisily down to the bridge and the ford.  The Corn-market occupied then as now the street which led to Northgate.  The stalls of the butchers stretched along the “Butcher-row,” which formed the road to the bailey and the castle.  Close beneath the church lay a nest of huddled lanes, broken by a stately synagogue, and traversed from time to time by the yellow gaberdine of the Jew.