The Bocardo Prison in

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, England existed until 1771. Its origins were medieval, and its most famous prisoners were the Protestant

Oxford martyrs The Oxford Martyrs were Protestants tried for heresy in 1555 and burnt at the stake in Oxford, England, for their religious beliefs and teachings, during the Marian persecution in England. The three martyrs were the Church of England b ...

(

Thomas Cranmer Thomas Cranmer (2 July 1489 – 21 March 1556) was a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and, for a short time, Mary I. He helped build the case for the annulment of Hen ...

Hugh Latimer Hugh Latimer ( – 16 October 1555) was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and Bishop of Worcester during the Reformation, and later Church of England chaplain to King Edward VI. In 1555 under the Catholic Queen Mary I he was burned at the ...

and Nicholas Ridley) in 1555. Other prisoners included a number of

Quakers Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...

, like Elizabeth Fletcher, among the first preachers of the Friends to come to Oxford in 1654. It was located near the church of

St Michael at the North Gate __NOTOC__ St Michael at the North Gate is a church in Cornmarket Street, at the junction with Ship Street, in central Oxford, England. The name derives from the church's location on the site of the north gate of Oxford when it was surrounded ...

; the prison consisted in fact of rooms in a watchtower by Oxford's North Gate, the tower being attributed to

Robert D'Oyly Robert D'Oyly (also spelt Robert D'Oyley de Liseaux, Robert Doyley, Robert de Oiley, Robèrt d'Oilly, Robert D'Oyley and Roberti De Oilgi) was a Norman nobleman who accompanied William the Conqueror on the Norman conquest, his invasion of Engl ...

, a Norman of the eleventh century, though also said to be originally a Saxon construction of c. 1000–50; the gate itself was called also Bocardo Gate. The rooms were over the gate, and there was a box in the church for charitable contributions to the prisoners.

History

John Powderham, who claimed to be the real king in the reign of

Edward II of England Edward II (25 April 1284 – 21 September 1327), also called Edward of Caernarfon, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1307 until he was deposed in January 1327. The fourth son of Edward I, Edward became the heir apparent to t ...

, was imprisoned there in or shortly before 1318, prior to being hanged. The prison was demolished in 1771, for a road construction scheme, following an Act of Parliament in 1770, and as part of the wider city redevelopment in Oxford under John Gwynn.

Name

''Bocardo'' is also a

mnemonic A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding. Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and image ...

for a traditional

syllogism A syllogism ( grc-gre, συλλογισμός, ''syllogismos'', 'conclusion, inference') is a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two propositions that are asserted or assumed to be tru ...

scholastic logic In philosophy, term logic, also known as traditional logic, syllogistic logic or Aristotelian logic, is a loose name for an approach to formal logic that began with Aristotle and was developed further in ancient history mostly by his followers, ...

. An example: Some cats have no tails. All cats are mammals. Some mammals have no tails. There is a folk etymology for the name: because Bocardo was found to be one of the harder forms of valid syllogism for students to learn, it was said to be the name of a prison that was hard to escape from. One of the rooms in

Newgate Prison Newgate Prison was a prison at the corner of Newgate Street and Old Bailey Street just inside the City of London, England, originally at the site of Newgate, a gate in the Roman London Wall. Built in the 12th century and demolished in 1904, t ...

was also named ''bocardo''. An essay presented to the Oxford University Genealogical and Heraldic Society in 1835 suggested that the name was "derived from the

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...

, ''bochord'', a library or archive". It also says that it is "probable" that "the academic prison lent its name to logic".

Notes

{{Prisons in South East England Buildings and structures in Oxford Defunct prisons in Oxfordshire 1771 disestablishments in England Defunct prisons in England

History

Name

See also

Notes