Charles 1 held court and summoned Parliament in Oxford

Protestant and Divine king

The Oxford silver crown, minted from the silver of Oxford’s college’s showing a portrait of Charles and the city of Oxford (Ashmolean Museum)

I recently spent a spell in Oxford giving tours of its historic centre. I was amazed that I did not know (or had forgotten) that Charles 1st had made Oxford the Royalist capital of the Country in the English civil war of the seventeenth century.