Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/463

Rh hundred dried fish to be provided for the castle. The Fine Roll of the same year confirms the annual allowance to the said warden of 100 shillings out of the issues of his bailiwick, to be expended yearly in repairs.

The Patent Rolls of the fifth of Edward the Third contain a petition from the Chancellor of the University, stating, that they, by charters of the King's progenitors (which would be those granted, 15, Hen. III.), had the power, if a layman committed any great damage on a clerk, or a clerk on a layman, or a clerk on a clerk, of sending the malefactor to the Castle, but that the sheriffs of the county and wardens of the castle had frequently refused to receive them. The King therefore commands the present and future sheriffs and wardens to receive the malefactors whom the Chancellor may send to be incarcerated in the Castle, and to keep them safely till the Chancellor demand them. But a multitude of scholars or laymen shall not be admitted into the Castle to visit the malefactors.

During the absence of the Court, it was left in the custody of the sheriff, who superintended all the necessary works, and so slightly were parts of it built, that there are precepts almost annually recurring which show that repairs were essential very soon after the buildings themselves were first raised. This slight and defective mode of construction was not, however, peculiar to Oxford, but must be rather regarded as a characteristic of the military buildings of the period; all of them exhibit sufficient evidence of the negligent way in which castles were built. And if the proof were not too frequently before the eyes, a glance over some of the Rotulets of the Great Roll of the Pipe would confirm the assertion, since it tells us that even the Castle of Oxford, which was commenced in 1166 (12, Hen. II.), and finished in 1173, substantial and perfect as it now looks, wanted reparation within the first fifteen years. Yet, notwithstanding the decay to which the sheriff's attention had been directed, when an inquisition was taken (51, Hen. III.), it was sworn before a jury, that during the whole of the thirty-seven previous years, the whole fortress had been gradually getting more dilapidated; the gaol had fallen down, as well as the brewhouse, and all the rest of the buildings threatened ruin. The three bridges, which had been repaired little more than twenty years before, had deteriorated under every