FINDS AT OXFORD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22256, 8 May 1934, Page 14

FINDS AT OXFORD

LINKS WITH TUDOR PERIOD Links with four centuries, possibly five, have come to light in Merton College, Oxford, with the renewal of a floor in the famous Mob Quad —No. 2 room on No. 1 staircase. The room, which is on the first floor, had beneath the boards a quantity of straw and earth, placed there probably to deaden sound, and it was in this that the relics were found. They include the lower half of a fourteenth or fifteenth-century Service-book page, with gold border and fine lettering on vellum, the colours perfectly preserved. This was possibly torn out of a Missal during the despoliation of Oxford l churches and libraries under- the commissioners of Edward VI. This page, however, although it was torn from the book, was cut, not torn, in half, and on the white margin is writing in faded black ink. One of the words is the name Jessop, and it- is thought to be the trial signature of the Dr Jessop, a doctor of medicine, who was a contemporary of Sir Thomas Bodley, with whom he had a violent quarrel. He was a man of quarrels, and was

deprived of his fellowship at Merton by order of the Visitor, the Archbishop of Canterbury, but did not bear the college any ill-will, tor be left a sum of money which augmented its scholarships, and he is still mentioned in the commemoration prayers. A little earlier than Jessop was the Bursar, whose rough draft of accounts slipped through the boards early in Elizabeth’s reign. Several items in (his draft concern the purchase of lutestrings. Alongside one item is the comment; “James Birtwissel is a knave,” and another whose name appears “is an ass.” The date of this draft is 1561. There are a silver penny of Elizabeth, a dozen pennies of George 11, an early eighteenth century playing card, a small die (painted wood), and a Cromwellian clay pipe.