88th Annual NYC Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race Dinner (Virtual), Today 2 PM EST

December 27, 2020—Lest 2020 pass us by without a New York City Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race Dinner, please join us for a Virtual Dinner featuring delights of many kinds. 

Today, Sunday, 2 pm, Eastern Standard Time. Zoom link below.

The 88th Annual Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race Dinner

VIRTUAL Gathering | TODAY 2 PM EST | Sunday, December 27, 2020

JOIN: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/79455328883?pwd=Z0tlMEFrUGxCMEFXUy9uQitJL1Y3dz09 Zoom Meeting ID: 794 5532 8883 Zoom Passcode: ca2Q4f Black Tie / Boat Club Blazer Optional Christmas Sweaters Acceptable

Join us for a humorous look at: OXBRIDGE GOES TO WASHINGTON (again and again) Trump, Biden, Oxbridge, and the District of Columbia with Sean C. Denniston OXBRIDGE COMES TO AMERICA (shovels in hand) Harvard, Pennsylvania, and the Founding of America with John Tepper Marlin With performances from: The Choir of The Queen’s College, Oxford The Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge

While we cannot meet in person this year, we invite you to join us virtually for our 88th consecutive annual celebration of Oxford and Cambridge scholarship, sport, and camaraderie. Consider our invitation a Boxing Day surprise present during this holiday season, because we all deserve a pleasant surprise in 2020.

Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race Dinner of New York 500 5th Ave Fl 32 New York, NY  10110-3299

OXBRIDGE MUSIC | Advent and Christmas Choruses

Broad Street, Oxford

YouTube clips of Advent and Christmas choruses (which is your favorite?)

Christmas Choruses Kings, Cambridge (much-awaited Christmas Eve service).  Preview ("Once in David's Royal City," from the 100th Anniversary chorus in 2018) 👍 Oxford Advent Christ Church (59 minutes, 2020, startling cinematography)👍 Corpus Christi Magdalen (56 minutes, 2020) Merton New College Pembroke St. Peter’s Cambridge Advent Clare Downing Jesus Trinity (2019 service) (Hat tip to New England Branch of the Oxford University Society for the Advent links.) Oxford University Press book

OXFORD & CAMBRIDGE ARMS: Martlets

L to R: Your blogger (Trinity, Oxon.) and Cheryl-Lisa Hearne-
McGuiness, Hon. Sec. of the Oxford University Society's London
Branch. Photo by branding expert Paul C. Walton (BNC, Oxon.).

Oxford, U.K., Wednesday, April 18, 2018 – Yesterday, and the day before, Alice and I stayed at the fine Oxford and Cambridge Club in London.

On Monday I spoke there to 70 members of the Oxford University Society, London Branch, about the 38 coats of arms of the Oxford colleges and the six coats of the Permanent Private Halls.

On Tuesday I was speaker at a "Discussion Supper" of the Oxford and Cambridge Club and I added in most of the 31 Cambridge colleges.

My objective was to make the college coats of arms more accessible to students, alumni, tourists and anyone else curious about Oxford and Cambridge.

Dropping the usual baggage of lists of tinctures, furs, metals, ordinaries, subordinaries and so forth, I also skipped past explanation of the history of coats of arms, how they were brought over by the Normans with William the Conqueror and became widespread through the growth of tournaments among the knights in the 12th century, etc.

Instead, I dove right in to the Oxford (and Cambridge) coats of arms by selecting two or more college shields at a time that have a device in common, such as a form of cross or a species of bird (big or small), and focusing on the meaning of the device and of significant differences.

I used each set of shields as a prompt to tell stories about how the devices relate to the history of the colleges, and inevitably the history of England. Along the way I slipped in a few comments about relevant heraldic conventions.

To illustrate my approach, consider a little footless bird on the arms of three colleges and one permanent private hall – three of them at Oxford and one at Cambridge.

The bird is the MARTLET, which is important in heraldry because it is a brisure, a mark of cadency on a coat of arms indicating that it is being carried by a fourth son of the owner of the arms. The discussion below is amplified, and a few references added, from my remarks yesterday.

The perfect venue was the Oxford and Cambridge 

Club room named after Queen Victoria's grand-

daughter, Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-

Holstein, Germany's northernmost state.

University College's shield shows four (on its website) or often five golden martlets around a cross on a blue (azure) field. The St Benet's shield includes an almost identical coat of arms on its top right (the sinister side in chief). The difference between the two crosses (Univ's is a cross patonce, while St Benet's is a cross fleury) is not significant, as both crosses have been used interchangeably in the posthumously attributed arms of Edward the Confessor. Edward was of course the last of the great Anglo-Saxon kings, whose death in 1066 precipitated a nine-month succession battle that culminated in the death of Harold Godwinson and victory of William, Duke of Normandy at Hastings. With the accession of William I, Norman nobles arrived with their knights and heraldry. Univ has claimed the arms attributed to Edward the Confessor, although the founding in 1249 was by William of Durham, long after Edward the Confessor. As the Univ website explains, "a legend grew up in the 1380s that we were actually founded even earlier, by King Alfred in 872, and, understandably enough, this became widely accepted as the truth." (The Univ martlets are a possible origin of the four martlets in the St Peter's College coat of arms.)

St Benet’s Hall seems to have more claim to the arms of Edward the Confessor than Univ because the Hall is a foundation of Ampleforth College [full disclosure: I was a pupil there in 1952-55], which was created by the same English Benedictines who occupied Westminster Abbey at its inception. When Edward the Confessor built the original Benedictine Abbey and Church, he decided that English monarchs should be crowned there [all but two subsequent monarchs have been]. The other half of the top of the shield (the chief) shows the imputed coat of arms of St Peter, to whom Westminster Abbey is dedicated; the bottom of the shield is from the original Abbey. Henry III built the Gothic Abbey Church in honor of Edward, who by then had been canonized.

Pembroke College, Cambridge is the owner of the third shield. The five red (gules) martlets look dissimilar from the martlets in the previous two shields, but they are meant to be the same bird, in that they have no feet. Pembroke was founded by Aylmer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, a man of importance in the reigns of Edwards I and II. The left side (dexter to the bearer) of the shield is half of his arms, which are split (impaled or dimidiated) with his wife Mary de St Pol, who came from Brittany.

Worcester College, represented by the fourth shield, has two chevrons and six martlets, which are blazoned as black (sable) or sometimes red (gules). The coat of arms is that of Sir Thomas Cookes [someone at the meeting at the Oxford and Cambridge Club said it should be Crookes, but he was being funny, I think], a Worcestershire baronet, whose bequest of £10,000 back in 1698, when a pound sterling was really worth something, founded the college. The Worcester College shield is almost always shown, as here, with black (sable) martlets, but the blazon often calls for red (gules) as in the Pembroke arms. [Sir Thomas also founded Bromsgrove School, which uses the arms with red (gules) martlets, corresponding to its blazon.] 

MEANING: So what does the martlet signify? All sources I have consulted agree that the lack of feet means that they can't land, so they are always aloft. This suggests that the martlets are always searching and is a good symbol for the search for knowledge. A lovely idea – although when you think about it, it makes the intellectual life sound tiring. (Tiring, but surely not as discouraging as the fates of Sisyphus or Tantalus.)

Another interpretation is that the martlet is a symbol of the self-made man, someone without foundation. But to impute such arms to a King like Edward the Confessor would hardly be appropriate with that interpretation, unless one was imputing modesty.

Links to Further Reading: Use of Star-Like Devices in the Oxford Colleges . Creation of Arms in the Newer Colleges at Oxford (Oxford Today, Michaelmas 2015)

Set of 46 Newly Design Coats of Arms: Oxford City and Oxford University coats of arms, 38 colleges, and six Permanent Private Halls. Below is a low-resolution version of an original set of shields drawn for me by heraldic artist Lee Lumbley. I plan to be at the 2018 BookExpo America at the Javits Center in New York City, May 31-June 2 and will be looking for appointments to talk with publishers at this event. My email address is teppermarlin at aol dot com.

NEWARK BOYS CHORUS | Will Sing on April 5

Newark Boys Chorus, 2018

The Newark Boys Chorus (NBC) will sing at the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race Dinner in New York City on April 5.

Here is a YouTube sample of their singing back in 2009. The Chorus is trained at its School (NBCS).

The tradition of starting a Boat Race Dinner with the American and British national anthems was begun at the Washington, D.C. dinner (the only one that competes in size with that of the New York City dinner), and is now a fixture. 

The NBC team will sing one other song besides the two anthems.

More details on the dinner, including a link to registration, are here.

VIEWS: 220K. Top 10 Most-Read Posts

Keep calm and read my blog.

Thank you for reading my Oxford blog. 

As of June 25, 2017 it has had more than 220,000 page views (two million views for all my blogs).

More than 10% of the Oxford blog views were directed at one post, which seeks answers to the question: "Why Didn't Hitler Bomb Oxford?"

The subjects of the other nine posts were: boat races, heraldry, biographies/obits and Oxford colleges in fiction. Please keep reading and send comments to john@cityeconomist.com.

1 HITLER: Why Didn't He Bomb Oxford? (23K Views, Jun... Jun 8, 2013, 3 comments

2 OXFORD IN FICTION: Top Six Fictional Colleges (Upd... Jul 2, 2016

3 SUMMER EIGHTS: May 19-27, 2017 Jan 31, 2017

4 HERALDRY: Oxford Stars (Updated Feb. 24, 2017) Nov 21, 2014, 2 comments

5 BOAT RACE: Dinners 2015 Mar 1, 2015

6 THERESA MAY: Time at Oxford (Updated Oct. 29, 2016... Jul 27, 2016

7 R.I.P.: July 11–Oxonian John Brademas, NYU Preside... Jul 25, 2016

8 BRITISH PMs: Universities Attended (Updated Aug. 1... Jul 14, 2016

9 HERALDRY: Douglas, Moray, de Vere (Updated Mar 24,... Nov 23, 2014, 2 comments

10 R.I.P.: Geoffrey Hill, Oxford Poet Jul 2, 2016

BLOG VIEWS: Oct. 26, 150K Views, Top Posts

Cantabridgia Fools the Waves. Cambridge women's blue
boat appears to sinking under water. What seems to be a
periscope behind the cox is actually a movie camera.

This blog just passed 150,000 page views! 

Thank you for reading. 

Comments are welcomed.

See 2016 Men's Race and Women's Race tapes here.

Most-Read Posts in October
WW2: Why Wasn't Oxford Bombed? (Oct 11, 2016–18.5K...
Jun 8, 2013, 2 comments
COLLEGE ARMS: Oxford Shop (Updated Sept. 24, 2016)...
May 13, 2016, 1 comment
HERALDRY: Oxford Stars (Updated Sep 29, 2016)
Nov 21, 2014, 2 comments
OXFORD COLLEGES: Top Six Fictional Sites (Updated ...
Jul 2, 2016
HEAD OF THE CHARLES: Alumni Tent
Oct 17, 2016
R.I.P.: Oxonian Geoffrey Hill, Poet
Jul 2, 2016
RELIGION: Oxford v. Cambridge (Updated Dec. 6, 201...
Jun 24, 2014
BRITISH PMs: Universities Attended (Updated Aug. 1...
Jul 14, 2016
HERALDRY: Douglas, Moray, de Vere (Updated Sep. 16...
Nov 23, 2014, 2 comments
R.I.P.: July 11–Oxonian John Brademas, NYU Preside...
Jul 25, 2016, 1 comment

BOAT RACE DINNER: NYC 2016

Tickets for the 83rd Annual New York City Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race Dinner  on April 12 are now available.  Tickets are $200 each Young alumni tickets (matriculants since 2009) $150. The Oxford website announcement is here.  Or go direct to the Cambridge site to register. . Tuesday, April 12, 2016 The Downtown Association 60 Pine Street New York, NY Cocktails at 6:30  p.m., Dinner at 7:30 p.m. Dress code is black tie or boat club blazer  $150 young alumni ticket (matric. 2009-2016) $200 standard ticket $2,500 College table sponsorship, 10 seats at a table

Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race Dinner Committee of New York City

Hervé Gouraige (Chairman), Merton College, Oxford Stephen Dudek, St Edmunds College, Cambridge Sally Fan, Green Templeton College, Oxford Seth Lesser, Magdalen College, Oxford Cassie Llewellyn-Smith, Pembroke College, Cambridge John Tepper Marlin, Trinity College, Oxford Dhaval J. Patel, St Hugh's College, Oxford Peter Sealy, Pembroke College, Cambridge  For other dinners and other events go here.

BLOG READS: 100K, Dec. 2015–Top 16

Thank you for reading.
We have passed the 100K page view mark.
Here are the top 16 posts in December:

WW2: Why Didn't Hitler Bomb Oxford? (Updated Dec. ... Jun 8, 2013, 2 comments

HERALDRY: Beer, Branding and Paul Walton (Updated ... Nov 29, 2015

HERALDRY: Oxford Stars (Updated Dec. 17, 2015) Nov 21, 2014

HERALDRY: St Cross College, Oxford (Updated Dec. 1... Dec 3, 2015

BOAT RACE: Dinners, 2016 (Updated Dec. 7) Dec 4, 2015

HERALDRY: Trinity College, Oxford Dec 7, 2015

HERALDRY: Oxford's Rapid Expansion (Updated Dec. 1... Dec 15, 2015

HERALDRY: Regent's Park College, an Oxford PPH Dec 8, 2015

HERALDRY: St Benet's Hall, Oxford (Updated Dec. 7)... Dec 5, 2015

HERALDRY: St Catherine's College, Oxford (Updated ... Dec 16, 2015

RHODES: Monument-Trashing at Oxford (Comment) Dec 25, 2015

YOUNG AMERICA: Dec. 20–Virginia Cedes Land to Feds... Dec 20, 2015

HERALDRY: Douglas, Moray and de Vere Coats of Arms... Nov 23, 2014

AMERICAN OXONIAN: 2014, Spring–Swan Song (Updated ... Oct 22, 2014

HERALDRY: The College of Arms and Windsor Herald Aug 15, 2015

HERALDRY: Links to Heraldry, Oxford, Geo Wash Nov 22, 2015

POETS: Oct. 21–Birthday, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

This day in 1772 was born the Romantic poet-critic-philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire, England. Like many others, he learned to be a dissenter at Cambridge.

His father was a C of E parish vicar and master of a grammar school who struggled to take care of 14 children from two marriages. Samuel Coleridge was child #14. He liked reading - his favorite book was The Arabian Nights - and was a good student in his father's school. But papa was done in by his multiple responsibilities and died when Samuel was only ten.

Samuel was packed off to board at Christ’s Hospital in London, the "blue-coat school," where the boys wore a blue gown and cap with yellow stockings. Coleridge hated it, but thrived under an English teacher who introduced him to great poetry. He also met Charles Lamb, who became a lifelong friend, and Tom Evans, who had an older sister (Mary) with whom Samuel fell in love.

Since Samuel's late father had wanted his son to be a clergyman, in 1791 Coleridge entered Jesus College, Cambridge to study for holy orders in the C of E. However, during his first year he came under the influence of William Frend, a Fellow at Jesus with Unitarian beliefs and Coleridge's life goals came into question. Perhaps not coincidentally, Coleridge accumulated debt for his brothers to pay off - by no means the last time that Coleridge relied on others to pay off his debts (nobody's perfect).

In June 1794, traveling to Wales, Coleridge met another student, Robert Southey. He  broke his trip to spend time with his new friend talking about implementing Plato’s aristocracy-free Republic. They envisioned joining with ten other families to form a commune on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania in the newly independent colonies, sharing work and beliefs in a free-thinking environment, supported by a great library. (With hindsight, an ideal location would have been Berwick, Pa. - safely above the river and right between rich veins of coal and iron.)

Coleridge dropped out of Cambridge to join the army. He called himself Silas Tomkyn Comberbache. But he wasn't much of a soldier.

Instead of going to war, or to Pennsylvania, Coleridge married Sara Fricker and in 1797 moved to a small house in the country with a vegetable garden. That year he made friends with William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. The three went walking in nearby hills called the Quantocks. As the sun went down and the moon rose over the sea. Coleridge came up with the idea for a poem about a sailor who kills an albatross and brings a curse upon his ship. It became The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in a 1798 collection of ballads he published with Wordsworth that was to be the starting gun in the Romantic era of poetry.

Coleridge was physically unhealthy, which may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated with laudanum, which fostered a recurring opium addiction, anxiety and periods of depression.  In today's language he may have had bipolar disorder. He quarreled with his wife and fell in love with Wordsworth's sister-in-law. He wrote a poem, Dejection: An Ode, and sailed to Malta to improve his health. Coleridge said:

I could inform the dullest author how he might write an interesting book - let him relate the events of his own Life with honesty, not disguising the feelings that accompanied them.

Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan, Christabel, and Frost at Midnight and a prose tome Biographia Literaria. His critical work on Shakespeare and German idealist philosophy was influential. He coined the idea of "suspension of disbelief" in drama. He was a major influence on Emerson and American transcendentalism.

BLOG VIEWS: 70K–May 25, 2015

May 25, 2015–This blog has had 70,000 Pageviews.

The top ten posts in the last month, rated based on number of Pageviews, are shown below.

Thank you for reading!

  

Entry		Rating
Why Did Hitler Not Bomb Oxford? Jun 8, 2013
Boat Race Dinners 2015 Mar 1, 2015, 1 comment
Oxford College Clues to the Stars and Stripes Nov 21, 2014
Douglas, Moray and de Vere (Oxford) Coats of Arms ... Nov 23, 2014
Early Reads on the British Election May 8, 2015
May 20 - W. H. Auden Becomes an American Oxonian May 20, 2015
Rowing Blazers - Ralph Lauren's Launch of Carlson'... Sep 24, 2014
82nd NYC Boat Race Dinner 2015 Apr 23, 2015
Wannabe American Oxonians - Raleeigh, Gilbert and H... May 20, 2015, 1 comment