The Joneses of Jesus

However, Rous was a fanciful recorder of history, and Memphric one of his fictions, so the idea that Oxford began life as Caer Memphric is an implausible one.

Yet the theory was still current even towards the end of the 18th century, due less, it would seem, to any rational evidence, and more to Oxford’s enthusiasm to endorse any suggestion of a pedigree more ancient than that of Cambridge!

Equally implausible is the role of Oxford as related in the tale of Lludd and Llevelys in the Mabinogion, a collection of traditional Welsh tales dating from (or rather, existing in written form since) the 14th century.

The story tells of three plagues which afflict Britain, thought to be an allegory for three foreign invasions.

To counter one of them, Lludd, traditionally known as the king of Britain at the time of the Roman invasion, is advised by his brother Llevelys, the king of France, to find the very centre of his kingdom and there to place a cauldron of mead at the bottom of a pit. The location proves to be Oxford (literally in Welsh Rhyd-ychen).

Two dragons — one red, one white — are soon seen fighting in the skies above Oxford, but are lured to drink the mead, rendering them unconscious. In this condition they are then transported in a stone chest to Snowdonia, where they are buried deep under the mountains.

The ending of this plague seems to pay homage to some very early role played by Oxford as a British military stronghold defending its strategically important crossing point of the Thames.

But Oxford’s connection with the Mabinogion is not merely as the abode of dragons.

The original Welsh manuscripts had been collected in two different books — the White Book of Rhydderch (dating from about 1350) and the Red Book of Hergest (about 1400).

It is the latter in which Lludd features, and which is preserved at the Bodleian Library, the property of Jesus College since 1701, when it was donated by the family of the Rev Thomas Wilkins, a former Jesus scholar from Wales.

The tales of the Mabinogion, with their combination of magic and fantasy intermixed with people of probable authenticity, can be thought of as pseudo-historical folk tales.

The works of Geoffrey of Monmouth (c1100-1155) are in much the same genre. Geoffrey lived in Oxford during the most prolific period of his life, from approximately 1129 to 1151, calling himself Galfridus Artur while a canon of St George’s in the castle.

There Geoffrey wrote the History of the Kings of Britain, which exposed the characters of Arthur and Merlin to an international Latin-speaking audience.

Indeed, it is intriguing to note that Geoffrey introduced Merlin in a story which also concerns two fighting dragons, one red and one white, and also in Snowdonia.

This appears to be a kind of sequel to the Lludd story, though it is impossible to say which is the older tale.

Geoffrey claimed to be working from an ancient document in the British language, given to him while in Oxford, and his comingling of the factual British king Vortigern (who is thought to have encouraged the Saxons to our shores, only to discover their warlike motives) with dragons and sorcery has been a factor in the enduring debate over the authenticity of Arthur as a sentient being.

Whatever, the story does provide the basis of the origin of the red dragon as the national symbol of Wales, the red one of Vortigern triumphing over the white, representative of the Saxons, with the boy-wizard Merlin’s help.

William Camden, a 16th-century historian, noted in Britannia, the first topographical survey of the British Isles, that many authorities were of the opinion that Oxford had once been called Caer Vortigern.

Geoffrey of Monmouth’s imaginative take on history is the source for another possible Welsh connection— the origin of the name of St Aldate. Possibly simply a corruption of Old Gate, the more colourful theory is that the name derives from the Welsh saint Eldad.

According to Geoffrey, Eldad, the bishop of Gloucester, was involved in a great battle between Vortigern and Hengest, the perfidious leader of the Saxons, who was ultimately killed by Eldad’s brother. Here it seems Geoffrey is closer to the truth.

Later historians have identified Eldad as the son of Prince Geraint ap Carannog of Ergyng (south west Herefordshire), and with Llantwit Major in South Wales. Certainly, Eldad is claimed as Welsh, and is thought to have died after the battle of Dyrham (near Bristol), a decisive Saxon victory of 577, when Gloucester was sacked and burned. Gloucester and Oxford are the only two places in the country where churches dedicated to Aldate survive.

A near contemporary of Geoffrey’s was Giraldus, better known as Gerald of Wales (c1146-c1223). In 1187 or 1188, he completed a survey of Ireland called Topographica Hibernica.

He selected Oxford for a first public reading because, as Gerald himself tells us, “of all places in England the clergy were most strong and pre-eminent in learning”.

He also stated, in an unorthodox third-person autobiographical style, that as the book was divided into three parts, he had devoted three days to the reading: “On the first day he hospitably entertained the poor of the whole town whom he gathered together for the purpose; on the morrow he entertained all the doctors of the divers Faculties and those of their scholars who were best known and best spoken of; and on the third day he entertained the remainder of the scholars together with the knights of the town and a number of the citizens.”

Gerald summarises his Oxford performance — because that is obviously what it was, a PR exercise designed to gain maximum attention — in typically arrogant fashion: “It was a magnificent and costly achievement, since thereby the ancient and authentic times of the poets were in some manner revived, nor has the present age seen nor does any past age bear record of the like.”

Geoffrey of Monmouth and Gerald of Wales are indicative of the cosmopolitan nature of Norman Oxford, attracting scholars from the rest of Britain and Europe. This is well illustrated by an incident in 1238, when a representative of the Pope was visiting Osney Abbey.

When some scholars went to pay their respects, their intentions were somehow misunderstood to such an extent that boiling water was poured onto a poor Irish scholar who was approaching the door for alms.

The Italian cook responsible was promptly shot with an arrow by a Welsh scholar, and a riot ensued. The result was that Oxford was put under an interdict, and 30 scholars were imprisoned until they had done penance.

This is an early taste of the reputation which the Welsh in Oxford gained for hot-headed pugilism rather than academic prowess.

This thinking was still to the fore in the 19th century, as evinced in the 1825 publication The English Spy, which includes a graphic description of a ‘Town and Gown’ riot.

The ‘Town’s’ forces comprised “the very scum of the city” swelled by “herds of the lowest rabble gathered from the purlieus of their patron saints, St Clement and St Thomas, and the shores of the Charwell — the bargees, and butchers, and labourers, and scum of the suburbians”.

Things are going badly for ‘Gown’ when “the strong arm and still stronger science of the sturdy bachelors of Brazen-nose, and the square-built, athletic sons of Cambria, the Joneses of Jesus, proved themselves of sterling mettle.”

Jesus is the Oxford college with the strongest Welsh associations, founded through the generosity of Hugh Price, treasurer of St David’s Cathedral, in 1571. For much of its history, Jesus College has admitted only students of Welsh origin, though there is nothing specific in its original provisions to insist on this.

One of Jesus’s most famous scholars, Welsh by virtue of being born in Caernarvonshire during his itinerant parents’ brief residence there, is T E Lawrence.

Best known for his exploits as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, an early demonstration of his penchant for adventure was his probably pioneering negotiation by canoe of the subterranean Trill Mill Stream in 1908.

This journey, from near Oxford Castle to Christ Church Meadows became a regular rite of passage for undergraduates for many subsequent decades.

A story circulates that on a subsequent voyage, Lawrence paused to discharge a pistol through a manhole opening on to St Aldates, to the great consternation of the neighbouring populace. It is an embellishment of the truth almost worthy of a modern-day Geoffrey of Monmouth!