Why go
The Civil War gives a different reading of Oxford’s ceremonial buildings: they belonged to a city used by Charles I’s court while many townspeople favoured Parliament. The later visit of Charles II during London’s plague adds another episode to the city’s political story.
The full story
When the English Civil War displaced Charles I from London, his court moved to Oxford in 1642. The university was strongly associated with the Royalist cause, but support in the town for Parliament shows why Oxford’s story cannot be told as one institutional position. The king’s presence turned familiar college and civic surroundings into the setting for wartime government. Parliamentarian forces under Sir Thomas Fairfax besieged Oxford, and the city surrendered in 1646. The episode ended its role as the king’s headquarters, but it left a clear contrast between the scholarly centre and the town around it. Oxford again sheltered a royal court when Charles II left plague-struck London in 1665–66; the court later moved on as the disease approached. Serious fires in 1644 and 1671 were further disruptions. These events are useful context when looking at seventeenth-century Oxford: the city’s older buildings survived through war, disease and fire, rather than standing apart from them. A walk between college precincts and civic streets keeps the two sides of that history in view.