The Bocardo Prison in

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

, 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 bishops ...

(

Thomas Cranmer Thomas Cranmer (2 July 1489 – 21 March 1556) was a theologian, 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 is honoured as a Oxford Martyrs, martyr ...

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 the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestantism, Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally ...

, 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 En ...

, 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 known as Edward of Caernarfon or Caernarvon, was King of England from 1307 until he was deposed in January 1327. The fourth son of Edward I, Edward became the heir to the throne follo ...

, 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 ( ), memory trick or memory device is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval in the human memory, often by associating the information with something that is easier to remember. It makes use of e ...

for a traditional

syllogism A syllogism (, ''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 true. In its earliest form (defin ...

in scholastic logic. 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, 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, the pr ...

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, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

, ''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