This home of religion and of learning was a
home of religion from the beginning, and her later life is but a
return, after centuries of war and trade, to her earliest purpose.
What manner of village of wooden houses may have surrounded the
earliest rude chapels and places of prayer, we cannot readily guess,
but imagination may look back on Oxford as she was when the English
Chronicle first mentions her. Even then it is not unnatural to think
Oxford might well have been a city of peace. She lies in the very
centre of England, and the Northmen, as they marched inland, burning
church and cloister, must have wandered long before they came to
Oxford. On the other hand, the military importance of the site must
have made it a town that would be eagerly contended for. Any places
of strength in Oxford would command the roads leading to the north
and west, and the secure, raised paths that ran through the flooded
fens to the ford or bridge, if bridge there then was, between
Godstowe and the later Norman grand pont, where Folly Bridge now
spans the Isis. Somewhere near Oxford, the roads that ran towards
Banbury and the north, or towards Bristol and the west, would be
obliged to cross the river. The water-way, too, and the paths by the
Thames' side, were commanded by Oxford. The Danes, as they followed
up the course of the Thames from London, would be drawn thither,
sooner or later, and would covet a place which is surrounded by half
a dozen deep natural moats.
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