this original Castle is verified, as Hearne justly remarks, by the original arms of Oxford, which have a castle represented with a large ditch and bridge. This ancient Castle was named Mota; whence it may be inferred, that, whatever additional ditches D'Oiley might make for perfecting the works, and conveying the river round the whole, yet there must have been a great surrounding ditch and wall long before, formed by King Offa, who is well known to have raised many great earth-works elsewhere, and to have built great edifices of stone at St. Alban's, and other places, and who, we are positively told, built walls at Oxford, where also he fought with the Kentish men'. That both Offa, and Alfred, and his sons, and Harold Harefoot, actually resided within the Castle itself, and not, as some of the Norman Kings afterwards did, in any adjoining palace, is most evident, because, in the survey taken just after the Conquest, no mention is made of the remains of any other palace, or place of royal residence at all, that they could possibly have dwelt in at Oxford; but only 750 houses, and those common houses, within and without the walls, are described, besides 24 mansions on the walls. Considerable Saxon remains have lately been discovered, by digging within the Castle area; and plain common sense alone might easily lead us to conclude, that there must have been in the Saxon times some kind of buildings of stone, fit for the purpose of royal residence, within the walls of this Castle, when it is actually ascertained by ancient records, that, even beyond the walls, a Saxon tower of stone was

r Preface to Hearne's Coll.

$ Domesday Book, 154. Gough's Camden, i. 218.

really standing in the time of King Ethelred, at a distance far on the outside, on the bridge called Grandpont, in the very place where, in subsequent ages, the Norman tower, called Friar Bacon's Study, was built. The most remarkable of the remains above alluded to was 66 a most curious little Saxon crypt, discovered by Mr. Harris ", at the distance of seventy feet from the tower of St. George. This crypt was no more than 20 feet long, and the same wide; supported by four pillars, which appear to be decidedly Saxon; and of an age even prior to that of Grymbald :—having a sort of odd disproportion, and neatness of work, almost peculiar to the early Saxon ages, about the year 700 and having also, as a part of the ornaments of the capitals, heads carved, on the sides, with what seem manifestly designed to represent Saxon crowns, upon them. This crypt, therefore, from its small dimensions, shews itself clearly to have been a crypt under an original Saxon chapel of no larger dimensions .. Whilst the church of St. George, erected afterwards, plainly appears in this instance, just as in that of St. Peter's at Oxford, (where Grymbald's small crypt is still found,) to have been of much larger dimensions, and to have had no vault under it; but had a vast number of human skeletons forud buried there;

King's Vestiges of Oxford Castle, p. 2, 3.

u Mr. King acknowledges having been greatly assisted in his researches by this gentleman, who had then the custody of the Castle.

x These pillars, the crypt having been of necessity disturbed in laying the foundation of the County Gaol, were placed by Mr. Harris in a modern cellar adjoining, and as nearly as possible in the same relative situations.

y Over the crypt was built in latter ages a more modern and larger Chapel, for the use of the Castle.

z See our account of Oxford churches destroyed.

and many fragments of pavement of different coloured tiles, with armorial bearings, that plainly proved its later and truly Norman foundation a

The tower of St. George itself, which still raises its dark and massive head in sullen dignity above the other buildings within the Castle area, is also on good grounds assigned by the same able antiquary to the Saxon ages. A singularity of structure which marks this tower, and though quite conformable to the mode of finishing the summits of old Saxon fortresses, altogether different from that employed in the same part of Norman ones, may even be mentioned here. The walls, which are exceedingly thick below, and taper as they ascend, are carried up much higher than the original roof, and evidently in their pristine state formed on the top of the tower an inclosed area, in which were two large semicircularly arched openings, with straight sides, through which missiles from catapultas, balistas, or other great engines of war, might be discharged, and sundry smaller openings, with sides sloping inwards, for the secure standing of archers. A third curious Saxon remain was a vaulted wall-room, in the centre of the high mount on the northern side of the castle area. The chief buildings of the Castle in its early Norman state appear to have been, 1. a large decagon Keep, standing on the high mount just mentioned d. 2. St.

a King, ut sup.

In the reign of Henry III. permission was given to the Chancellor to imprison his rebellious clerks in the Castle; the dungeons were also granted as prisons to the county.

This tower was subsequently used as a campanile to St. George's church; at one corner of it is a projecting turret, that incloses a winding staircase.

d This mount being covered with verdure, and planted with trees, forms an agreeable object in the north-eastern prospect of the Cas

FP