Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/35

 io". B. iv. JULY s, 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES. it may be seen in the bird's-eye view of Oxford drawn by Ralph Agas in 1578. From the building accounts it appears to have been furnished with a " vyse," or winding staircase, and to have had two moulded windows. It stood just by the Cherwell end of the present "New Buildings," and was destroyed to make room for them in February, 1733/4. In 1487 the " house of the school of the choristers " was finished. This may have been some building in connexion with the "Songe Schoole," which included, in the eighteenth century, certain rooms occupied by the organist. Thomas Hearne, indeed, " with learned dust besprent," noting its demolition in his diary, speaks of " the organist's house, commonly called the music-school-house" (Wilson, pp. 24, 48 ; Bloxam, vol. i. p. iii). Waynflete appears, like his master Henry VI., to have delighted in newel stair- cases. The beautiful " vyse," crowned by a little spire, of his "great tower" (Founder's Tower at Magdalen)—in autumn incarnadine with Virginia creeper—is beloved by artists; and he is credited with the design of Tat- tershall Castle, Lincolnshire, for Ralph, Lord Cromwell (Lord Treasurer of England 1433- 1443). Here the grand staircase of 175 steps is in the south-eastern turret, and gives access to forty-eight separate chambers, four of which are very large. The stone handrail, sunk into the brickwork, and beautifully moulded to afford a firm hand-grasp, is original in conception, and probably unique in design. This is the only staircase in a building 87ft. long, 69ft. wide, and 112ft. high, which is almost entirely constructed of small bricks, brilliantly coloured, and of Flemish or Dutch make. The curve of this splendid staircase is of the rare sinistral formation, and is contained within a shaft 22 ft. in diameter, built of enormously thick walls. Many of the fireplaces in the present Palace of Westminster were modelled after the magnificent specimens at Tattershall (T. A. Cook's 'Spirals in Nature and Art,' p. 140). In 1512-13 certain buildings near the Cherwell seem to have been repaired, and mention is made of a wall "between the kitchen and the music school." This has been supposed (Bloxam, vol. i. p. iii) to refer to a wall separating the two buildings, on account of " the peculiar attractions" of the former for the youthful stomach. But they were in fact divided, not only by a con- siderable space, but also by a block of build- ings, the old stable, shown in Loggan's print of 1674, standing midway between them (Wilson, p. 64). We find in the account-books from 1481 down to the Reformation frequent charges for gloves for the Boy-Bishop on the feast of St. Nicholas (6 December), by which it appears- that this custom—regulated by the Use of Sarum—was sanctioned by the founder in his lifetime. Of old, too, the President used- to wash the feet of seven choristers on Maundy Thursday (Bloxam, vol. i. pp. vi, vii). But one time-honoured and popular relic of the past yet survives : the custom of singing, on the great tower (the building of which a venerable but untrustworthy tradition ha* ascribed to Wolsey) at five o'clock in the- morning of May Day, the festival of SS. Philip and James :— Do you remember how, upon May-morninjt, We climbed the tower?—first the broad wooden- flights, And then the spiral steps ; and last the ladder That led us out into the welcome air ? The origin of this rite is veiled in obscurity. It lias been asserted that it represents a former custom of saying an annual requiem- mass for Henry VII. on the top of the tower. That mass was ever said there is extremely unlikely ; and the hymn now sung ("Te Deum Patrera colimus," <ic.) is not part of the service of the requiem mass according to any use. In fact, the so-called " sweet Latin hymn for Henry's soul" was written in the seventeenth century by the non-juring Dr.. Thomas Smith, sometime master of M.C.S., and set to the music to which it is still sung' as part of the College "grace," by Benjamin Rogers, organist 1664-86. It is true, how- ever, that the annual "obit" of Henry VII. who died -21 April, originally fixed for 2 or 3 October, has been held on 1 May certainly since the early part of the sixteenth century. Rut originally the ceremony upon the tower appears to have been of a purely secular nature. Anthony Wood says: "The choral ministers of this house do, according to an ancient custom, salute Flora every year on the first of May at four in the morning with vocal music of several parts." And in the middle of the eighteenth century the per- formance was " a merry concert of both vocal and instrumental music, consisting of several merry ketches, and lasting almost two hours " (Wilson, p. 50; Wood's 'Colleges and Halls,' p. 350; John Pointer's 'Oxoniensis Academia,' pp. 66, 68). Since 1849 the choristers have been boarded at the expense of the College in the master's house. In 1515 Richard Foxe, third bishop after Waynflete of the richest see in England, founded in Oxford Corpus Christi —the college of the Renaissance, Educated, in all