Before leaving for Reading, the King had reviewed the regiment of scholars in Christ Church meadows. They were armed with helmets and back and breast pieces. The regiment, which consisted at first of four companies only, soon grew, as enthusiasm waxed, to eight or nine companies. The gown was exchanged for the military coat, and square caps for the helmet. Meanwhile arms and provisions had been accumulated, and ammunition, "the want wherof all men looked upon with great horror," had been thrown into the town.
The New College cloister and tower were converted into a magazine for muskets, bullets and gunpowder; corn was stored in the Law and Logic School, and victuals in the Guildhall. Clothes for the army were stowed in the Music and Astronomy Schools. The mill at Osney was used as a powder factory.
The King now established his court at Christ Church. Never perhaps has there existed so curious a spectacle as Oxford presented in these days. A city unique in itself, so the author of "John Inglesant" has described it, became the resort of a court under unique circumstances, and of an innumerable throng of people of every rank, disposition and taste, under circumstances the most extraordinary and romantic.
The ancient colleges and halls were thronged with ladies and gentlemen of the court, some of whom found themselves like fishes out of water (as one of them expressed it), when they were obliged to be content with "a very bad bed in a garret of a baker's house in an obscure street, and one dish of meat a day, and that not the best ordered, no money and no clothes." Soldiers were quartered in the college gates and the kitchens. Yet, amidst all this confusion, there was maintained both something of a courtly pomp and something of a learned and religious society. The King dined and supped in public, and walked in state in Christ Church meadow and Merton Gardens and the Grove of Trinity, which the wits called Daphne. A parliament sat from day to day. For (1644) the members of both Houses who had withdrawn from Westminster were summoned to meet at Oxford. The King received them very graciously in Christ Church Hall, made them a speech, and asked them to consult together in the Divinity Schools and to advise him for the good of the kingdom. About three hundred commons and sixty peers thus sat at Oxford, and a hundred commons and ten or a dozen peers at Westminster, so that the country enjoyed the felicity of two parliaments at once, each denying the right of the other to exist. The branch at Westminster rejected overtures of peace from the branch at Oxford. The latter devoted themselves to finding funds for the war. Contributions were called for, and the members themselves headed the list. A mint was established at New Inn Hall, and all plate that was brought in was coined.[37] At Westminster, on the other hand, the system of an excise upon beer, wine and spirits was invented.