ay; they were great at interpreting dreams, and dearly loved
flowers. The gentlemen looked upon reading as an occupation quite as
effeminate as sewing, war and hunting being the two main employments of
the lords of creation, and gambling the chief amusement. Priests and
monks were the exceptions to this rule, until Henry First introduced a
taste for somewhat more liberal education. Even more respectful to
letters was his grandson Henry Second, who had a fancy for resembling
his grandfather in every thing; yet he allowed the education of his sons
to be thoroughly neglected.

The popular idea that the University of Oxford is older than King Alfred
is scarcely borne out by modern research. That there was some kind of
school there in Alfred's day is certain: but nothing like a university
arose before the time of Henry First, and the impetus which founded it
came from outside. A Frenchman with a Scotch education, and a Jewish
Rabbi, are the two men to whom more than any others must be traced the
existence of the University of Oxford.

Theodore d'Etampes, a secular priest, and apparently a chaplain of Queen
Margaret of Scotland, arrived at Oxford about the year 1116, where he
taught classes of scholars from sixty to a hundred in number. But every
thing which we call science came there with the Jews, who settled under
the shadow of Saint Frideswide shortly after the Conquest. Hebrew,
astronomy, astrology, geometry, and mathematics, were taught by them, at
their hostels of Lombard Hall, Moses Hall, and Jacob Hall; while law,
theology, and the "humanities," engaged the attention of the Christian
lecturers. Cardinal Pullus, Robert de Cricklade, and the Lombard jurist
Vacario, each in his turn made Oxford famous, until King Stephen closed
the mouth of "the Master" of civil law, and burned at once the law-books
and the Jews. Henry Second revived and protected the schools, in the
churchyard outside the west door of Saint Mary's Church; the scriveners,
binders, illuminators, and parchmenters, occupying Schools Street, which
ran thence towards the city wall.

The special glory of Oxford, at that time, was not the University, but
the shrine of Saint Frideswide. This had existed from the eighth
century, when the royal maiden whom it celebrated, after declining to
fulfil a contract of matrimony which her father had made for her (as she
was much too holy to be married), had added insult to injury by
miraculously inflicting bli