historic shrine of Saint
Frideswide, which afterwards developed into the College of
Christchurch, and later still furnished the Cathedral of the
diocese.

Around lay a wild land of heath and forest, with cultivated fields
very infrequently interspersed; the moors of Cowley, the woods of
Shotover and Bagley; and farther still, the forests of Nuneham,
inhabited even then by the Harcourts, who still hold the ancestral
demesne. Descending, he made his way to Greyfriars, as the
Franciscan house was called, encountering many groups who were
already wending their way to lecture room, or, like Martin,
returning to break their fast after morning chapel, which then
meant early mass at one of the many churches, for only in three or
four instances had corporate bodies chapels of their own.

These groups were very unlike modern undergraduates; as a rule they
were much younger people, of the same ages as the upper forms in
our public schools, from fourteen or fifteen years upwards; mere
boys, living in crowded hostels, fighting and quarrelling with all
the sweet "abandon" of early youth, sometimes begging masterfully,
for licenses to beg were granted to poor students, living, it might
be, in the greatest poverty, but still devoted to learning.

At length Martin arrived at the house of the Franciscans, where he
was eventually to lodge, but they had no room for him at this
moment, hence he had been sent to a hostelry, licensed to take
lodgers; much to the regret of Adam de Maresco. But he could not
show partiality. Each newcomer must take his turn, according to the
date of the entry of his name. The friary was on the marshy ground
between the walls and the Isis, on land bestowed upon them in
charity, amongst the huts of the poor whom they loved. At first
huts of mud and timber, as rough and rude as those around, arose
within the fence and ditch which they drew and dug around their
habitations, but the necessities of the climate had driven them to
build in stone, for the damp climate, the mists and fogs from the
Isis, soon rotted away their woodwork. And so Martin found a very
simple, but very substantial building in the Norman architecture of
the period. The first "Provincial" of the Greyfriars had persuaded
Robert Grosseteste, afterwards the great Bishop of Lincoln, to
lecture at the school they founded in their Oxford house, and all
his powerful influence was exercised to gain them a sound footing
in the University. They deserve