place where is now Broad Street, and the road above is dark with a
swaying crowd, out of which rises the vapour of smoke from the
martyrs' pile. At your feet, on the top of Bocardo prison (which
spanned the street at the North Gate), Cranmer stands manacled,
watching the fiery death which is soon to purge away the memory of
his own faults and crimes. He, too, joined that "noble army of
martyrs" who fought all, though they knew it not, for one cause--the
freedom of the human spirit.

It was in a night-battle that they fell, and "confused was the cry of
the paean," but they won the victory, and we have entered into the
land for which they contended. When we think of these martyrdoms,
can we wonder that the Fellows of Lincoln did not spare to ring a
merry peal on their gaudy-day, the day of St. Hugh, even though Mary
the Queen had just left her bitter and weary life?

It would be pleasant to have to say that learning returned to Oxford
on the rising of "that bright Occidental star, Queen Elizabeth." On
the other hand, the University recovered slowly, after being "much
troubled," as Wood says, "AND HURRIED UP AND DOWN by the changes of
religion." We get a glimpse, from Wood, of the Fellows of Merton
singing the psalms of Sternhold and Hopkins round a fire in the
College Hall. We see the sub-warden snatching the book out of the
hands of a junior fellow, and declaring "that he would never dance
after that pipe." We find Oxford so illiterate, that she could not
even provide an University preacher! A country gentleman, Richard
Taverner of Woodeaton, would stroll into St. Mary's, with his sword
and damask gown, and give the Academicians, destitute of academical
advice, a sermon beginning with these words: