Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/442

 364 NOTES AND QUERIES, no* s. iv. NOV. *, MB. MAGDALEN COLLEGE SCHOOL AND THE 'D.N.B.' (See ante, pp. 21,101,182, 244.) WHEN Oxford became, and continued for nearly four years, not only an armed camp but also the headquarters of an intriguing »nd dissatisfied Court, it will readily be supposed that the ordinary life of scholars •citizens, and schoolboys must have been liable to frequent interruptions. Anthoin Wood, then at New College School, has him self 11>liI us how in August, 1642, the scholars and privileged persons of the University sometimes trained in New College quad- rangle, and how, " it being a novel matter there was no holding of the school-boyes it their school in the cloyster from seeing anc following them. " And he remembered wel! that •' some of them were so besotted with the training •and activitie and gayitie therein of some yonj scholars, as being in a longing condition to be one of the traine, that they could never be brought to their books againe." We can well believe that the constant alarums and excursions of those exciting years were "a great disturbance to the youth of the citie," and when, in November, the king turned cloister and tower into his magazine, " i lie master of the school, with his scholars •(among whome A. Wood was one), were removed to the choristers' chamber at the east end of the common hall of the said Coll. It was then a dark nasty room, and very unfit for such a purpose, which made the scholars often complaine, but in •vaine." In the middle of August the highway near Magdalen Bridge had been blocked up with <llong timber logs," the barricade being by the corner of the chaplain's quadrangle. And when, on 29 October, the king entered •Oxford, after the drawn battle of Edgehill or Keinton, his "ordnance and great guns" •were "driven into Magdalen College grove." Later in the year the Magdalen barricade was strengthened, a mound of earth being thrown up to join the wall of the Physic •Garden, and guns mounted upon it. During the royal occupation the trees in the walks •were felled, means provided for flooding the meadows beyond the walks, and batteries •erected. On 14 May 1644, the University regiment, formed for the defence of the city, under the command of the Earl of Dover, mustered for the first time in Magdalen •Grove. Wood declares in his ' History '— •under date 19 April, 1643—that the fortifica- tions on the east side of the city about that •time begun were, with other fortifications, " mostly contrived by one Richard Rallingwn,!' '.. of Queen's College, who had also drawn a mathe- matical scheme or plot of the garrison. Hit endeavours in this nature gave so great satisfaction to the King, that he forthwith sent letters in his behalf to the University to confer the Degree of M.A. upon him." In both the Latin and the English editions of the ' History and Antiquities of the University,' Rallingson is mentioned as the engineer, but in the Latin edition it M further stated that Beckman, a Swede (brother of Sir Martin Beckman. chief engineer and master - gunner of England under James II. and after), constructed works about the city. It has been supposed, therefore, that the original enceinte is to be ascribed to Rallingson, but the additional envelope or counterguards to Beckman. The plan of the works at Oxford, as shown in the Latin edition of the ' History,' betrays the influence of the Dutch (or German) school in a greater degree than, perhaps, any other example of fortification of the Ci?il Wars. The works consisted of a first line of large bastions, enveloped by a continuous counter- guard, beyond which again were a ditch and a covered-way. The ditches, except the graffe on the north side, were wet, and could be filled by the employment of water manoeuvres (v. Lieut.-Col. W. G. Ross. R.E., on « Military Engineering during the Great Civil War' in ' Professional Papers of Corps of R.E.,' 1887). These lines encased both the ancient city, surrounded by its decaying mediaeval wall, and the suburbs which had grown up with- out it. On the east they enclosed the churches of St. Cross, Holywell, and old St. Clement over Magdalen Bridge : ou the west St. Thomas of Canterbury; on the north 3t. Giles ; while the southern angle of the 'ortifications guarded Grandpont or Folly Bridge. " In a word, as Wood says, what- sver art or industry could do to make a place mpregnable, was very liberally bestowed icre." The famous pattern crown-piece of Thomas Rawlins, struck in 1644, and known .o collectors as the Oxford crown, gives on jack, with a beautiful view of the most loyal >f cities in the distance. Taken, apparently, rom a spot outside the northern lines of defence, it shows several of the bastion!) -ogether with their connecting curtain and he outer line of palisadoes. Within may be listinguished Magdalen tower and the spires if Christ Church and St. Mary's. A tradi- ion declares that during the royalist occu- '.'i! ['.in Prince Rupert was quartered in tf agdalen; and, although the College records are silent upon the subject, this is not un-
 * he obverse a portrait of the king on horse-