By the eleventh century important national meetings were held in Oxford, as when in 1020, Cnut being then king, the English and Danes were reconciled, and both nations agreed to observe the laws of Edgar. But no king ventured to visit the city, for, after the failure of Algar, there was a tradition that boded misfortune to any king who entered within the city walls. Henry III. was the first to defy it by coming to worship at the shrine of St. Frideswide in 1264; but his example was an unfortunate one, for within six weeks Nemesis came in the Battle of Lewes. Edward I. was less daring than his father, for in 1275, when he reached the gates of Oxford, he turned his horse about, and sought a lodging outside the town. Later in his reign, however, he made the venture, and destroyed the superstition.
St. Frideswide's Priory did not, according to the latest authority on mediæval universities, Mr. Rashdall, create Oxford University,[4] but reasons of convenience of access and other like matter-of-fact causes; for, if the University had needed only a religious house round which to cluster, the neighbouring monastery of Abingdon was far larger and more suitable. Yet there is great probability that the first germs of the University were produced by the Priory. It is said, indeed, that the Mercian kings built inns or halls in the neighbourhood of the convent, but we may suspect this as a legendary statement not more substantiable than the story of King Alfred's founding University College, since the first actual notice of "Oxeneford" does not occur till 912. But it is much more certain that, during the wise rule of Guimond (1122-1141), the first Regular Prior, and of Robert of Cricklade,[5] his successor, there was a school connected with the convent, as indeed was the case with most convents, and probably with St. Frideswide's itself before Guimond's time. This school stood near the west end of the church, about the middle of what is now Tom Quad. Writing of the arrival of Vacarius, in King Stephen's reign, Mr. J.R. Green says:--"We know nothing of the causes which drew students and teachers within the walls of Oxford. It is possible that here, as elsewhere, the new teacher had quickened older educational foundations, and that the cloisters of Osney and St. Frideswide already possessed schools which burst into a larger life under the impulse of Vacarius."