The burning of the martyr bishops in the sixteenth century is one of
the greatest tragedies in the story of our Church. The seventeenth
century saw Oxford the capital of Royalist England in the Civil War,
and though there was no actual fighting there, Charles' night march
in 1644 from Oxford to the West, between the two enclosing armies of
Essex and Waller, is one of the most famous military movements ever
carried out in our comparatively peaceful island. The Parliamentary
history, too, of Oxford in the seventeenth century is full of
interest, for it was there that in 1625 Charles' first Parliament met
in the Divinity School. And fifty years later, his son, Charles II,
triumphed over the Whig Parliament at Oxford, which was trying by
factious violence to force the Exclusion Bill on a reluctant king and
nation. Few towns beside London have been the scene of so many great
historical events; yet any one who looks below the surface will
attach less importance to these than to the great changes in thought
which have found in Oxford their inspiration, and which make it a
city of pilgrimage for those interested in the development of
England's real life.
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