ist Church was significant. Men felt that the
days of monasteries were past, and the Church was ready to welcome
and to extend the New Learning. But his changes were a dangerous
precedent; as Fuller says with his usual quaintness: "All the forest
of religious foundations in England did shake, justly fearing the
King would finish to fell the oaks, seeing the Cardinal began to cut
the underwood." Henry, however, when he swept away the monasteries,
spared his great minister's work; modifying it, however, as has just
been said, by associating the newly-founded college with the diocese
of Oxford, now formed out of the unwieldy See of Lincoln.

The cathedral is the smallest in England, but contains many features
of special interest; its most marked peculiarity is the great breadth
of the choir, due to the addition of two aisles on the north side;
these were built to gain more room for the worshippers at the shrine
of St. Frideswyde. Another feature of architectural interest is the
spire, which is one of the earliest in England. But perhaps even more
interesting is the wonderful series of glass windows, which give good
examples of almost every English style from the fourteenth to the
nineteenth century. And for once the moderns can hold their own; the
Burne-Jones windows of the choir (not, however, the Frideswyde
window, already mentioned) are particularly beautiful.

The hand of the "restorer" has been active at Christ Church, as
elsewhere in Oxford; Gilbert Scott took on himself to remove a fine
fourteenth-century window from the east end of the choir, and to
substitute the Norman work shown in Plate I. The effect is admittedly
good, but it may be questioned whether it be right to falsify
architectural history in this way.

Oxford Cathedral has great associations apart from the college to
which it belongs. It was to it that Cranmer was brought to receive
the Pope's sentence of condemnation, and in the cloisters the
ceremony of his degradation from the archbishopric was carried out.
Almost a century later the Cathedral was the centre of the religious
life of the Royalist party; when Charles I made his capital in Oxford
and his home in Christ Church, and when the Cavaliers fought to the
war-cry of "Church and King." It is not surprising that, when the
Parliamentarians entered Oxford, the windows of the Cathedral were
much "abused"; that so much old glass was spared was probably due to
the local patriotism of old Oxford men.