PARLIAMENT WINS | Cromwell Captures Charles I

Oliver Cromwell (L) and King Charles I (R).

November 30, 2018–On this day in 1648, Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army, led by Yorkshireman Sir Thomas Lord Fairfax, captured Charles I in Oxford.

Two months later, the King was beheaded.

King Charles had retreated to loyalist Oxford University after the Parliamentarians defeated Royalist troops at Naseby three years earlier, and Marston Moor before that.

While all the Oxford University colleges except Merton were loyal to the King, and donated their silver plate to help pay for the King's troops, the Oxford townspeople were Parliamentarians.

Charles I was put on trial for high treason. He vociferously claimed the monarch's divine right to rule, which he had been coached to uphold by his father James I. Charles was sentenced to death and was beheaded on January 30.

Charles I was the last reigning English monarch to be executed. After him, Britain's royals have soft-pedaled their divine right to rule. More in Oxford College Arms (Boissevain Books, 2018), p 11.

HERALDRY: Oriel~ (Updated May 15, 2018)

Oriel College, Oxford
arms.

Blazon: Gules three Lions passant guardant in pale Or a bordure engrailed Argent. (A lion is passant if viewed from the side with his head facing the viewer. A lion is guardant or gardant if his front right leg is raised, although the passant lions tend to have only three feet on the ground. In pale means the lions are lined up in a column, one above the other.)

Authority: These Royal Arms of England were used by the Plantagenet kings, from Richard I ("Lionheart") to Henry III and Edwards I, II and III. We could find no evidence that the college's differencing by a bordure engrailed argent has been granted, but the arms have been used for so long that they are now "ancient".

Nominee: The College was founded in 1324 by Adam de Brome during the reign of Edward II (ruled 1307-1377). Edward is the titular founder of the college, which is why the Royal Arms are used.  The Bordure may have been informed by de Brome's coat of arms, which includes the rare bordure engrailed argent.

College History. The College was once known as King's Hall and has absorbed both St. Mary's Hall and Bedel Hall Soon after the foundation in 1326 as the College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it was given a property called La Oriole, on the site of the present Front Quadrangle, and gradually the college came to be called by that name. Oriel was Oxford's fifth college, and the first to be royally founded. It began with a Provost and 10 Fellows. Students could pursue Theology, Law and Medicine. Three Provosts went on to become Bishops. It was the college of Walter Raleigh and Thomas More. In the early 1500s the first undergraduates arrived. Oriel survived the turbulence of the religious Reformation. By the end of the century more space was needed. Between 1620 and 1642 the medieval buildings were replaced by the present front quadrangle, which housed some of the court of King Charles I while Oxford was briefly his capital before he was defeated and beheaded by Cromwell. In the 1700s Oriel attracted its first transatlantic students, sons of planters in Virginia, one of whom later regretted employing a young surveyor, George Washington. Oriel expanded into a second quadrangle and built its Senior Library to house a large gift of books. Oriel in the 18th century  produced famed parson-naturalist Gilbert White. From 1780 to 1830 Oriel led the way in reforming academic standards, the brilliant Noetic era and then the Oxford Movement to revitalize the Church of England. The Oriel Fellowships were opened up to competitive examination and many of those who arrived, like Dr Thomas Arnold and John Henry Newman, made their mark.

Recent History. From the 1980s on Oriel College has grown rapidly, like the rest of Oxford, as graduate professional and specialty studies flourished and women were admitted in 1985. Oriel now has about 50 Fellows, 300 undergraduates and 200 graduate students. In recent weeks Ntokozo Qwabe, a 24-year-old Rhodes scholar from South Africa, has led a campaign to remove an Oriel College plaque to Cecil Rhodes and also a statue of Rhodes. Oriel College has started a process for removing the plaque. Qwabe was reported two days ago by the British Daily Telegraph as claiming that:

• Students at Oxford endure “systemic racism, patriarchy and other oppressions” on a daily basis.
• The university’s admissions and staff recruitment systems systematically exclude certain groups of people.
• Oxford’s architecture is laid out in a “racist and violent” way. 
• The British media treat him and his supporters like “terrorists” for challenging the establishment.

Other Posts on Heraldry at Oxford etc.:  HERALDRY SUPERLINK.

RELIGION: Oxford v. Cambridge (Updated Dec. 6, 2015)

Martyrs' Memorial from the Randolph Hotel.
Balliol, and Back Entrance of Trinity, behind.
Oxford photos by JTMarlin, September 2012.

America's bloody Civil War was fought over states' rights and slavery. Britain's Civil War (1642-51) was primarily about religion.

However, there is an interesting connection between the two civil wars. The religious wars in England in the 16th and 17th centuries continued to be played out in the American colonies and then the United States because:

• The settlers approved by the Crown were more likely to be in the southern colonies. 
• The dissidents went to the northeast.
• The Revolution originated in the northeast and the southern states were convinced to join. 
• After the United States was established, the differences among the two regions became more prominent.

A monument at the heart of Oxford is a reminder of how much Oxford and Cambridge were at the center of Britain's religious battles, and had an influence on the way the Revolution and Civil War played out in America.

The history takes us to Cambridge to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

Catholic Persecution of Protestants, Oxford v. Cambridge

The east-facing view in Oxford from the Randolph Hotel's "Presidential Suite", where President Clinton once stayed, is of the Martyrs' Memorial. Behind it in grey stone is Balliol College, then the back entrance to Trinity College, and then St. John's.

The Memorial was erected to the memory of two Church of England archbishops and one bishop who were burned in 1555-56 at the behest of the ruling Catholic clergy - during the reign of Catholic Queen "Bloody" Mary I (1553-1558). Mary Tudor was the daughter of Henry VIII, who created the Church of England, and Roman Catholic Catherine of Aragon. Mary remained loyal to Roman Catholicism. She was preceded and succeeded by Protestants, Edward VI and Queen Elizabeth I.

Martyrs' Memorial from the Randolph.
Detail of statue by Henry Weekes.

The three martyrs, ironically known as "Oxford Martyrs" although they were all Cambridge men, were Thomas Cranmer (Jesus College), Nicholas Ridley (Pembroke College) and Hugh Latimer (Clare College).

A friend from Cambridge, David River, told me there is a saying at Cambridge: "Cambridge makes martyrs. Oxford burns them."

Of the three martyrs, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, was the most important, since he served as Henry VIII's adviser on obtaining an annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon and he was the architect of the Reformation.

Martyrs' Memorial from
Ground. Balliol Behind.

The martyrdoms of the Protestant bishops - whose offense was being unwilling to profess faith in the transubstantiation of the Eucharist - occurred in front of Balliol on Broad Street, and is marked by a cross in the middle of the street and a plaque on the Balliol wall nearby referring to it. The Memorial replaced a house, creating a space that allows this part of Oxford to include a bus stop and bicycle park.

The Protestant reign of Elizabeth I was benign after that of Mary. But during the reign of Charles I,  dissident Protestants became restless about the privileges of the established church, and Parliament responded by building up its army, which was used by Oliver Cromwell to seize power.  

The Civil War (1642-1651) - Cambridge Pilgrims vs. Oxford Orthodoxy

At Sidney Sussex College at Cambridge earlier this month, I visited the gravesite, since 1960, of Oliver Cromwell's head.

Oliver Cromwell was born in Huntington, near Cambridge, in 1599. He began his studies at Sidney Sussex on the day that Shakespeare died, April 23, 1616. Oliver's father died that year and Cromwell left the University after one year to support his family. He married and had many children.

He had a religious conversion to Puritanism in the 1630s, and rallied support from Protestants who dissented from the Church of England. The different sides of the Civil War were therefore complex, with the addition of Irish and Scottish nationalist concerns.

Portrait of Oliver Cromwell (1599-
1658) hanging in Hall at Sidney
Sussex College, Cambridge.
Photo by JT Marlin, June 2014.

Cromwell was elected to Parliament from Huntington in 1628 and then represented Cambridge in the Short Parliament of 1640 and the Long Parliament of 1640-49. In the meantime he advanced in the Parliamentary Army, from cavalry leader to a commander of the New Model Army created in 1645-46. He made Cambridge the military HQ of the Eastern Association of Counties. The country was divided into 11 military areas, each commanded by a major-general picked by Cromwell.

Cromwell almost single-handedly caused a break in the British monarchy. He led troops reporting to Parliament and tracked Charles I down in Oxford, defeating loyalist troops and putting Cromwell at the head of the government.

Although Cambridge was the center of the Roundheads and Oxford of the Cavaliers, many of the Cambridge colleges were pro-Royalist and gave much of their silver plate to help Charles I. Sidney Sussex sent £100 to help King Charles. When this later came to light, the Master of the College was put in prison.

After Charles was defeated, Cromwell urged Parliament to execute him, to reduce the likelihood of a rescue invasion by troops representing Roman Catholics from Ireland and the Continent.  Cromwell was the third person on the list of those who signed the death warrant for the king.  Charles I was beheaded in 1649. The Queen's website suggests that Charles I was a martyr. On the other hand, future royals tended to be more respectful of Parliament. Charles I was the only monarch in British history to have been executed.

From 1649 to 1653, the Rump Parliament ran England under Cromwell's leadership. Cromwell properly feared a counter-attack from Catholics. Charles I's Queen was a Roman Catholic from France, Henrietta Maria, after whom Maryland is named. Charles II was in France to obtain the support of the Catholic monarch.

Cromwell's Irish Campaign, 1649-1650

Cromwell decided to address first a possible attack from the west, with Royalists in Ireland joining up with Irish Catholic confederates, and he decided to protect his back with a crushing campaign. Cromwell went to Ireland in August 1649 with an army of 6,000 troops to suppress an alliance that threatened to turn into a significant rebellion.

I spent my 10th year of life at Blackrock College in Dublin, Ireland, and one of my most vivid memories was hearing from the Holy Ghost Fathers how brutal Cromwell was to the Irish Catholics on this pre-emptive strike.

Sign in a Cambridge restaurant. It
would be funnier if a Cambridge man
hadn't done just that to Irish children.

Cromwell raised his large army by promising those who put up money for the expedition that their security would be Irish land.  So from the beginning he intended to seize much Irish land and leave it in the hands of his supporters.

The Roundhead army met and overcame resistance in Drogheda, killed the garrison, and then moved on to Wexford, impatient to settle a score from 1641, when many Protestants drowned after defeat by the Catholic Confederates. The Wexford defenders were prepared to surrender and Cromwell sent a message suggesting he would be conciliatory. However, an estimated 2,000 defending soldiers and another 1,500 civilians were slaughtered, a massacre that Irish Catholics do not forget. Cromwell moved on to other Irish towns until Galway fell and the rebellion was declared ended in May 1650.

The aftermath of Cromwell's devastating march around Ireland was a complete change in power.  Penal Laws were instituted to keep the population from organizing any resistance. Cromwell's armed agents rounded up Irish beggars, widows and orphans to be sold as slaves or indentured servants to the sugar plantations of the West Indies. The reprisals were directed not only at Roman Catholics but at Ulster Presbyterians, Church of Ireland members and other minority religions. Priests were hanged, exiled or transported to the West Indies. Puritan preachers were brought over from England to replace them.

Cromwell's Scottish Campaign, Victory over Charles II and His Regime

After leaving Ireland, Cromwell's troops moved on to a 1650-1651 campaign in Scotland, with similarly ruthless treatment of Royalists and other potential rebels. The much-feared invasion from France did occur in 1651, but Cromwell by now had a large, seasoned and trained army ready for the invasion. He prevailed at the Battle of Worcester, bringing the Civil War formally to a close.

From 1653 until his death in 1658, Cromwell dissolved Parliament and ruled as Lord Protector as long as he lived. However, even the English came to dislike living under Cromwell's Puritanical regime. His religious conversion in the 1930s led him to dissent from the Church of England, on the basis that the official church had departed from strict adherence to the Ten Commandments and other rules gleaned from the Bible. The Puritans believed that enjoying too many pleasures meant yielding to the Devil and would lead to damnation.

Cromwell essentially ran a Christian caliphate. He shut down many drinking places and sports events. Swearing was punished by a fine, even imprisonment. On Sundays, work was banned and even going for a walk, if not to an approved church, could lead to a fine. Feast days were replaced by a monthly fast day. Cromwell banned feasting or caroling at Christmas, insisting it be celebrated only as a religious event; for example, in London, soldiers confiscated food being cooked for a Christmas dinner and Christmas decorations were banned.

(Later, the Oxford Movement resurrected Christmas carols and Oxford's Charles Wesley wrote "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and with his brother earned points for Methodism by championing the revival of caroling. The most popular early carol in America was "Joy to the World", written by English hymn-writer Isaac Watts based on Psalm 98.)

Women were forbidden by the Puritans from wearing makeup or overly colorful dresses. They were required to wear a long black dress that covered them to their shoes, with a white apron and headdress. Puritan men wore black clothes and short hair.  However, Cromwell himself enjoyed hunting, music and games and allowed ample entertainment at his daughter’s wedding.

Cromwell died in September 1658. His coffin was escorted by more than 30,000 soldiers to Westminster Abbey to be buried. His son, Richard Cromwell, took over as the Second Lord Protector in 1658 but lasted only nine months. The nickname the Royalists gave him was "Queen Dick".  In 1659 he quit (or perhaps more likely was encouraged by the army to leave) and exiled himself overseas.

The Restoration of Charles II and the Saga of Cromwell's Head

A 1960 plaque noting that Cromwell's head is buried nearby in
Sidney Sussex College. 

Charles II was invited to return from exile to become king of England. His return was enthusiastically welcomed by a nation tired of the religious wars.

After the Restoration of the monarchy, Charles II ordered Cromwell’s body, along with two co-conspirators, to be dug up and put on "trial" as traitors and regicides. Cromwell's body and those of his colleagues were found guilty and were hanged from the gallows at Tyburn. Cromwell's head was put on display on a 20-foot pike over Westminster Hall until in 1685 wind from a storm outside broke the pike. Cromwell's head was in private hands from 1685 until 1960.

In 1960, Cromwell's head was given to Sidney Sussex, and it was buried there secretly in an undisclosed location somewhere in the ante-chapel of the College. The strange story is told authoritatively on the Westminster Abbey and Sidney Sussex websites.

HITLER: Why Didn't He Bomb Oxford? (27K Views, Aug 2020)

Felicity Tholstrup, our guide, tells Oxford alums in New College that Hitler gave orders
 not to bomb Oxford. (Alice Tepper Marlin is 4th from right.) Photo by JTMarlin, 2012.

June 8, 2013–As the anniversary of D-Day approaches, I have been thinking over a tour of New College that my wife Alice Tepper Marlin and I took during the Oxford Alumni Weekend last year.

Our knowledgable tour guide, Felicity Tholstrup, noted that not one Oxford building was damaged in World War II. Hitler did not bomb Oxford.

I have been wondering–why not? Why didn't Hitler bomb Oxford? Historians don't credit him with much empathy for British civilians or cultural centers.

For Eight Months Hitler Bombed British Cities, But Not Oxford

After Hitler won the Battle of France on June 17, 1940, he attempted to invade Britain on July 10, 1940. The effort was repelled during the next three months by the Royal Air Force, at great cost. Both the RAF and the Luftwaffe lost approximately one-fifth of their planes every month for three months. Hitler gave up the idea of an invasion. The "Battle of Britain" was won.

Instead, Hitler sought to break British morale by ordering the Luftwaffe to engage in savage bombing of British cities (the "Blitz"), starting on September 7, 1940. During the first ten weeks, attacks were directed at London. Only one night was free of bombing, with an average of 160 bombers flying over England each night.

Thereafter, London was attacked less intensely while the Luftwaffe spread out to other British cities. The bombing continued for eight months, until May 10, 1941, when planes were diverted to the European Continent for an attack on the Soviet Union.

German maps for the invasion of many British cities were recovered in Berlin after the war. A copy is at the Bodleian Library. Another is at the New York Public Library. The city maps included a map of Oxford. The postcards of targets included ones of Oxford's railway bridges and of a factory in nearby Abingdon.

Oxford suffered little damage. Unlike the other maps, the Oxford map did not include any military targets other than bridges.

Little Damage to the City of Oxford

Oxfordshire was hit many times, but not the City of Oxford.

• In Oxfordshire county, 3,831 German bombs were dropped, killing 20 people, injuring 60 others, and killing 65 head of cattle. The bombs also killed 65 head of cattle and damaged more than 300 houses as well as other buildings and utilities (http://www.sofo.org.uk/files/bombtotals.pdf). Witney was bombed early on, in November 1940, but it is 12 miles west of Oxford
• One unexploded bomb was found in the Cowley area, on the outskirts of Oxford, where the important Morris Motors factory is located–a valid military target, but quite a distance from the university.
• A six year-old boy who had been evacuated from London's East End was killed in bed when a dummy bomb fell from an RAF plane and crashed through the roof of his temporary home in Stanway Road, Oxford.

Was there a reason Oxford was spared? The Luftwaffe does appear to have been ordered to avoid the City of Oxford. Was this based on some agreement?

Did Hitler Agree to Avoid Oxford?

Could there have been an agreement—explicit or implied—that the Allies and Axis would not bomb some university towns with cultural treasures of international significance?

If so, the Allies did not honor it in the case of the ancient Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy, even though as we now know it was not being used at all as a military center when the Allies started bombing on January 17, 1944.

The German university city of Heidelberg was spared by the Allies; possibly this was part of an agreement, but more likely Heidelberg just did not have any military significance. Oxford did—starting in 1937, the Morris Motors factory produced the de Havilland Tiger Moth training airplane. The factory also repaired damaged aircraft, using salvage including the remains of crashed Luftwaffe planes.

There could not have been a general agreement to avoid university towns because the Nazis bombed many UK cities with major universities in them, including Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Coventry, Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Sheffield and Southampton.

The Allies, for their part, bombed Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin and other cities with universities.

So the exemption from Nazi bombing, if there was one, was restricted to Oxford and perhaps one or two other university towns. Oxford-born Cambridge don Stephen Hawking in Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (New York: Bantam, 1993, 1-2) says that being a child in Oxford during World War II was to be in a safe place because:

The Germans had an agreement that they would not bomb Oxford and Cambridge, in return for the British not bombing Heidelberg and Göttingen.

Snopes finds no evidence for such an agreement and classifies Hawking's statement as an "urban legend". However, the legend has had a leg among the military. A 2015 commentator on this 2013 post (scroll down below), an American who was at a U.S. Army base in Germany in the 1960s, said his fellow soldiers believed Allied bombers avoided Heidelberg and Wiesbaden as a trade for the Nazis not bombing Oxford and Cambridge. Another former soldier has suggested it was Göttingen, as Hawking states, rather than Wiesbaden.

Was Hitler Planning to Make Oxford His British Capital?

However, no agreement was necessary for Hitler to decide to spare Oxford. He could well have decided to spare Oxford because he intended to use it for his own purposes after the war, assuming he was victorious:

• The City of Oxford website lists as Fun Fact #4 that Hitler intended to use Oxford as the capital of a subjugated Britain. That would suffice as Hitler's reason for not bombing the city. The reference originally given by the City of Oxford (it has been removed since I first posted this) was James Morris, Oxford (London: Faber and Faber, 1965). When I looked for the book I found it under the same title with the author Jan Morris (Oxford University Press paperback, 1978). The OUP book (p. 7) cites the story prefaced by "It is said that...". The explanation of the name change is that James Morris pioneered in 1972 having surgery to enhance his feminine side.
• The Bodleian has published a translation of, Hitler's plans for the invasion of Britain. I have seen some of the German maps at the Bodleian and at the New York Public Library. Most show targets of military significance. (The David Rumsey Map Collection at the Bodleian has now made the Oxford map available online; thanks to Nicola O'Toole at the Bodleian's Weston Library for this tip.) This suggests to me that Hitler planned to move troops into Oxford and that the purpose might have been as a seat of government in Britain, going back to the days when Charles I ruled from Christ Church, Oxford.
• Another possibility is that Hitler thought of Oxford as a possible communications center for controlling a conquered Britain.

Why would Hitler want to use Oxford as his UK capital or communictaions center?

I claim no special insight into the mind of the mad Führer. However, I can think of three reasons for Hitler wanting to locate in the Oxford area:

1. Hitler deeply admired England and especially Oxford.  Hitler's second book, written in 1928, was My New Order. According to his first wife Ivana, Donald Trump had a copy of this book by his bed, given to him by a friend. Chapter 3 includes this tribute by Hitler to England in the context of the need of Germany's Volk for military training to stiffen its spine:

[O]ur Folk ... in its racial fragmentation so very much lacks qualities which, for example, characterize the English–a determined sticking together in time of danger. 

Hitler was impressed with the British Empire and with the vision that Cecil Rhodes had of an Oxford as a school for world leaders. Rhodes included Germans in his design for the Rhodes Scholarships to Oxford. He envisioned Oxford as a world-wide educational center for future world leaders from the British Commonwealth, the United States and Germany. Hitler may have taken from this a special relationship between Oxford and the Third Reich. He took a personal interest in the Rhodes Scholarships.

At New College, Magdalen College and other colleges at Oxford, memorials to alumni and staff who died in World War I even-handedly include German alumni who fought for the Kaiser. Germans were included among the Rhodes Scholars:

• Germans were included starting in 1903, until 1913, when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia and therefore Britain. 
• No Rhodes Scholarships were given to Germans during the years 1914-29.
• During the years 1930-38, Germans were again awarded Rhodes Scholarships. 
• In 1938, Hitler gave a personal order to Erich Vermehren, who had been selected for a Rhodes, not to accept it, on the grounds that Vermehren had refused to join Hitler Youth. This might have been sufficient reason to end the Rhodes Scholarships to Germans in 1939. An even stronger reason for ending them was that meanwhile Hitler had invaded Poland. 
• It would be another 31 years before Rhodes Scholars again included Germans. As of 2014, 180 Rhodes Scholarships have been awarded to German students.

2. Hitler took heart from the Oxford Oath, the Union's "King and Country" vote. The Oxford Union in 1933 passed the motion that "This House would not in any circumstances fight for King and Country". Winston Churchill, an alumnus of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, dissed the vote, calling it "abject, squalid, shameless" and "nauseating". Joseph Alsop, in a syndicated column, "Blundering in to War–By Being Anti-War," St. Petersburg Times (May 11, 1970), said that Hitler referred often to the Oxford Oath and Union vote. Hitler may have been forgiven for concluding that Britain's young men had no stomach for another war. When Hitler spoke of "wringing the neck of the English chicken" in May 1941, he may have been thinking of the outcome of the 1933 debate. The Oxford Oath was imitated in thousands of American colleges.

3. He imagined parading into Oxford like William the Conqueror to spite Churchill. Hitler might have looked forward to riding into Oxford to rule Britain, just as William the Conqueror in 1066 rode to Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire to accept the fealty of Saxon nobles. There is not much left today of Berkhamsted Castle, viewable from trains on the Euston lines to Tring and Northampton–not because it was bombed, but because it crumbled from age and is being restored at a snail's pace. Hitler would doubtless have relished moving his Reichskommissar for Britain into a Nazi HQ in Blenheim Palace, a 30-minute ride from Oxford, throwing out Malvern College boys that first used the building, or the War Office, which then took it over. That would have been a poke in the eye to Hitler's arch-enemy Winston Churchill, who was born in Blenheim.

How Did Hitler Get It Wrong? Count the Ways 

Hitler's faith that he would be riding into Oxford victorious was based on at least three misconceptions about Oxford (as well as failing to understand the vulnerability of the German military's supply chain and the impact of U.S. entry into the war):

1. Hitler was misled by the Oxford Union vote as an indicator of likely behavior in wartime. A writer for Churchill College, Cambridge notes that the thinking of Oxford undergraduates would hardly be representative of the nation.

The debate cannot be taken as evidence of what people of all classes were thinking. Oxford undergraduates were hardly typical... They came largely from wealthy upper- or middle-class families ... [Y]oung people often like to take stand or an extreme position precisely because they know it will provoke a strong reaction... 

The Trinity College war memorial. Each 
Oxford college lost dozens or even hundreds of 
alumni to the wars. Photo by JTMarlin.

The Oxford Union vote is based on both the content of the motion and the quality of the arguments. The vote therefore may reflect less the views of the audience and more their appreciation of the debaters. In fact, from the moment war broke out, Britain's youth turned out in force. As Winston Churchill said in Ottawa in 1942:  "Some chicken. Some neck." Again, a generation of young men,  including many Oxford alumni,  died in battle.

2. Hitler didn't understand how little support the Nazis would get globally.  The extent of Hitler's evil was not widely understood in 1933. Although Hitler had published his views in Mein Kampf, his book was not immediately translated into English. Whatever public opinion in Britain was in 1933, it was radically changed when Hitler started invading other European countries and the extent of the Holocaust began to be revealed. He did not expect the Dutch to be so opposed to German rule; he had little resistance from the Austrians.

With the possible exception of senior officers thought to be hostile to Hitler, like "Desert Fox" Erwin Rommel, Hitler's Wehrmacht did not get the same respect after  World War II that the Kaiser's Army did in the Great War. Whereas German alumni are listed in Memorials to Oxford dead in the Great War, I could find only one German alumnus listed for World War II, on a Magdalen College board, identified as "W'cht" [Wehrmacht]. It took another 25 years after World War II for Rhodes Scholarships to be resumed for German students.

3. Several prominent German Rhodes Scholars sought to overthrow Hitler. Hitler's overthrow was sought by at least three aristocratic Germans named as Rhodes Scholars. An alumnus of Trinity, Oxford was one. He selected another German who attended Balliol. Both gave their lives to resisting Hitler.

Albrecht von Bernstorff,
Germany and Trinity, 1909.

Count Albrecht von Bernstorff (Germany and Trinity, 1909) was the nephew of Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, who served as German Ambassador to the United States during the First World War. He was a close friend of Otto Kiep and Hannah Solf, who were at the center of a German conspiracy to overthrow Hitler. Unfortunately, a member of the circle was a Gestapo informer. Albrecht von Bernstorff was arrested and imprisoned in Ravensbrück together with Frau Solf. They were tortured and shot in April 1945 on orders of Nazi Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop.

Adam von Trott zu Solz,
Germany and Balliol, 1931.

Adam von Trott zu Solz (Germany and Balliol, 1931) was picked by a Rhodes selection committee that included Albrecht von Bernstorff, and the two remained friends for their brief lives. At Balliol, von Trott was a close friend of David Astor and visited the United States, where he had a connection as the great-great-grandson of John Jay, the first U.S. Chief Justice. He became a member of the Kreisau Circle and was a leader of the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler. Trott was hanged a month later. His wife Clarita lived on, dying in Berlin at 95 in 2013. The story of von Trott (or perhaps a composite of him and the other two German Rhodes Scholars) is told fictionally in a highly praised novel that I have been reading, The Song Before It Is Sung, by Justin Cartwright (Bloomsbury, 2007).

Dr Erich Vermehren de Saventhem and his wife,
Elisabeth, Countess von Plettenburg, in the 1940s.

Erich Vermehren (Germany, 1938) was a Hamburg lawyer, elected to a Rhodes Scholarship in 1938. He received a personal order from Hitler not to accept the scholarship because Vermehren had refused to join Hitler Youth, and was therefore never assigned a college at Oxford. Rejected for military service because of an injury from his childhood, he was sent to the Istanbul branch of the Abwehr (military intelligence), where he became a part of a wide network of anti-Nazi dissidents that included his cousin Adam von Trott. When Otto Kiep was arrested, the Vermehrens were ordered to Berlin for interrogation by the Gestapo. Despite dogged pursuit, they escaped to England in February 1944 with British help. In England, they stayed, ironically, with the mother of double-agent Kim Philby, who would later defect to the Soviet Union. Vermehren's cousin, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, was dismissed by Hitler, and the Abwehr was placed under Himmler and the SS, who were apparently less effective than Canaris at using military intelligence right before D-Day. Vermehren, who after the war was known as Erich Vermehren de Saventhem, died in 2005.

Conclusion

My take on the story is that Hitler spared Oxford because in his mind he believed that Britain would fall as easily as other countries had before and that he would set up his government there like Charles I, probably in Blenheim Palace to spite Churchill. He overestimated the reluctance of British young men to fight. He underestimated the ability of the British to sustain the bombs of the Luftwaffe on the ground and oppose it in the air. The stories of the attempts of Oxford-educated Germans to resist Hitler are worth revisiting in the context of new demagogues in several countries seeking political dominance.

Personal Note

I have a personal interest in D-Day. In the early morning of June 10, 1944 my bomber-pilot uncle Willem van Stockum was shot down over Laval, France on his sixth mission from the RAF 10th Squadron base at Melbourne, Yorks. during the 10-day period around D-Day. The town of Laval has honored both the graves and crash sites of the 7-man crews on the two planes downed that cloudy moonlit night. The French noted gratefully that both pilots steered their plunging planes away from the farmers' houses, toward the fields. My uncle's flaming Handley Halifax crashed in a pear orchard. Robert Wack has written a gripping book about him. I have met the relatives of some of the crews on the two planes–including two sons of airmen and a great-niece of another who is now with the Canadian Air Force–as well as elderly French farmers who were children at the time.

This post, like others on this blog site, is © 2013-2017 by John Tepper Marlin. Permission to reprint? Send to jtmarlin@post.harvard.edu. The above post has been viewed 24,000 times as of Sept. 2017. Thank you for reading!

Sources: 

Cartwright, Justin, The Song Before It Is Sung (Bloomsbury, 2007).

Graham, Malcolm, Oxfordshire at War 1939-1945 (Sutton, 1994).

Hawking, Stephen. Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (New York: Bantam, 1993).

Library of Congress, World War II Military Intelligence Maps—American, British and German.

Oxfordshire County, Bomb Totals, 1940-45.

Rumsey, David, Map Collection at the Bodleian: City of Oxford. Original copies of the German invasion maps are available in Oxford at the Bodleian, and at the New York Public Library (since 1951). Nicola O'Toole was extremely helpful at the Weston Library of the Bodleian.

Wack, Robert, Time Bomber (New York: Boissevain Books, 2014).

Also See My Book on Oxford College Arms: https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-College-Arms-Intriguing-Stories/dp/0984523235

...And these Posts on the Arms of Oxford Colleges & PPHs: Original Article in Oxford Today . Heraldry as Branding . Heraldry as Fun .  Coat of Arms vs. Crest . Sinister Questions . Visit to the College of Arms . Windsor Herald Talks to New Yorkers . Shaming of Harvard Law Crest . Coats of Arms in the Oxford Shop :: Rapid Expansion of Oxford's Colleges and Halls . Oxford Stars

Related Posts: Oxford Birthdays . Baedeker Bombing of Britain . Election of Nazi Party . Woodstock, Home of Blenheim Palace . Why Didn't Hitler Invade Britain after Dunkirk?

OXFORD IN USA 1: Peaceful Evolution–The Calverts

Maryland came into being as a result of a grant of land to the Catholic Calvert family. The grant was originally requested by Sir George Calvert (1578-1632), the 1st Baron Baltimore, and was implemented by two of his sons. All three of these men were graduates of Trinity College, Oxford. 

The Calverts are credited with two important developments in the American colonies: (1) They founded the entire state of Maryland. (2) They pre-empted an area that was in the path of an expanding Virginia, which would not permit Catholics to settle. They thereby created a haven for Roman Catholicism in the colonies and played a huge role in ensuring religious liberty in the American colonies and then in the United States. They encouraged nonviolent growth of the colonies and thereby laid the groundwork for their independence.

The Land Grant on Chesapeake Bay

Charles I (1600-1649, reigned 1625-1649) made a major grant of land on Chesapeake Bay in 1632 to George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore, who unfortunately died before the seal was affixed to the charter. So Cecil Calvert, 2nd Lord Baltimore, is credited with the grant and is the person the City of Baltimore is named after. President Michael Beloff of Trinity College, Oxford called on the Mayor of Baltimore a few years ago (I planted the idea when he was first elected President) and the favor was recently returned by the Mayor.

Henrietta Maria, Queen Consort of Charles I,
after whom Maryland is named.

Maryland is named after Charles I's consort, Queen Henrietta Maria. The Catholic daughter of France's King Henri IV (Henry of Navarre, Henry the Great), she became a major problem for Charles I because Parliament voted to send military support to the Protestant Huguenots in France against Henry IV's successor, the Catholic Louis XIII. 

During the waning days of the Charles I's reign, Henrietta Maria occupied Merton College, Oxford - the only Oxford college that did not support the king against Parliament - when Charles I was attempting to run the country from Oxford and Oliver Cromwell's Parliament was seeking to oust him. Charles I was beheaded in 1649. I read somewhere that Charles I was the only British monarch whose reign was terminated by execution.

Here's an excerpt from a reference selected by the State of Maryland and posted on the history page of its website:

In 1632, Charles I granted a charter to George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, yielding him feudal rights to the region between lat. 40°N and the Potomac River. Disagreement over the boundaries of the grant led to a long series of border disputes with Virginia that were not resolved until 1930. The states still dispute the use of the Potomac River. The territory was named Maryland in honor of Henrietta Maria, queen consort of Charles I. Before the great seal was affixed to the charter, George Calvert died, but his son Cecilius [Cecil] Calvert, 2d Baron Baltimore, undertook development of the colony as a haven for his persecuted fellow Catholics and also as a source of income. In 1634 the ships Ark and Dove brought settlers (both Catholic and Protestant) to the Western Shore, and a settlement called St. Mary's was set up. During the colonial period the Algonquian-speaking Native Americans withdrew from the area gradually and for the most part peacefully, sparing Maryland the conflicts other colonies experienced. [For more on the Native Americans, see my post to come on Pitt the Elder, Lord Chatham and his role in making possible the independence of the United States possible.]

The original grant is said to have included land from the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay south to the Potomac River as well as all of the eastern shore. But Virginian settlers had already crossed the bay to settle the southern tip of the eastern shore, so the King revised the grant to include the eastern shore only to a line drawn east from the Potomac River. The charter confirmed on June 20, 1632 charged Baltimore a rental of  one-fifth of all gold or silver found, plus delivery to the King every Easter of two Native American arrows.

The charter established Maryland as a feudal palatinate, giving Baltimore and his descendants rights nearly equal to those of an independent state, including rights to wage war, collect taxes, and establish a colonial nobility. The charter was heavily weighted toward the proprietor. However, supporters in England of the Virginia colony opposed the charter, as they had little interest in conceding the land to religious followers that they would not admit. A crucial feature of the success of the Calverts in holding on to their huge land grant is that they were able as a family to keep the Virginians at bay both in England and in the colonies.

George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore,
true founder of Maryland

George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore

George Calvert graduated with a BA at 19 from Trinity College, Oxford in 1597. He married Anne Mynne (also spelled Mayne). His first job was serving as secretary to Robert Cecil, later Earl of Salisbury, doubtless determining the name of his first son. Calvert was elected to the House of Commons  in 1609-1611. He became Sir George Calvert in 1617, then secretary of state in 1619. He was given a pension in 1620 and returned to the House of Commons the following year. The Protestant Parliament distrusted him for supporting Catholic King James I and his Spanish wife. In 1625, the year Charles I succeeded to the throne, Calvert decided to give up his office and declared himself a Roman Catholic. For his loyalty, the King made him the 1st Baron Baltimore in the Irish peerage, which means he did not vote in the House of Lords. 

(The town of Baltimore that gives the name to his title is a fishing village on the southern Irish shore near Cork. I have been there several times during the course of a couple of summers in nearby Skibbereen.) 

Lord Baltimore received a grant of large estates in Ireland. On his own, he established a small settlement called Avalon in fish-wealthy Newfoundland. He visited Avalon briefly in 1627 and brought his family for a longer visit the following year. During the second visit, conflict arose over his Roman Catholicism. For that reason - and the cold climate! - Lady Baltimore left for Virginia in 1628. Baltimore petitioned Charles I for a land grant in the warmer Chesapeake Bay area. As a Catholic, he was not allowed to settle in Virginia. He returned to England to plead his case for the Maryland charter but died in 1621 while changes were being made in the charter and before it was official. 

Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore,
after whom the City of Baltimore is named.
George founded Maryland; Cecil kept it;
Leonard ran it.

Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore

Although George Calvert did almost all the work, his son Cecil Calvert gets most of the credit. He is the person usually referred to as Lord Baltimore in U.S. history books. Cecilius Calvert was born August 8, 1605, in Kent, England. At the time, his father was under pressure to conform to the Church of England, so all ten children were baptized Anglican. Calvert entered Trinity College, Oxford  in 1621. His mother died the following year. As noted above, George Calvert converted to Catholicism in 1625, and his sons followed him.  In 1633, Cecil Calvert was admitted to Gray's Inn as a barrister, a training in the law that would be of crucial importance in retaining rights to the Maryland land grant. He married Anne Arundell, daughter of the 1st Baron Arundell of Wardour, in 1627 or 1628. They had nine children, of whom  three, including Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, survived to adulthood. 

Rather than going to the Maryland colony, Baltimore stayed behind in England to deal with the political threat to the charter and sent his next younger brother Leonard in his stead. He never actually visited Maryland! - because he was busy defending the charter from advocates from the Virginia Company, who were trying to regain their charter, including all of Maryland. Their formal complaint with the Lords of Foreign Plantations in July 1633 had two arguments: (1) Maryland was not unsettled, as stated in its charter, because William Claiborne had run a trading station on Kent Island. (2) The breadth of the powers of the charter violated the liberties of existing settlers. 

Leonard Calvert, the first to run
Maryland. No title for him.

Leonard Calvert

Leonard (1606–1647), younger brother of Cecil, also attended Trinity College, Oxford. Ironically, he tends to be skipped over because he did not inherit the Barony, which passed to his nephew and because history at that point was being written in England where Cecil was defending the charter. 

However, Leonard is crucial in establishing the family's unequivocal right to be called founders of Maryland.  

Unlike Cecil, Leonard actually went to Maryland! He actually did the work of running the place! He was the first Governor of the Province of Maryland!

The Calvert family figures prominently in subsequent Maryland and Baltimore history, to this day.