The choicest oaks of a small forest must have
supplied its framework, which stands firm as the day when it was
built. The fine corner-posts (now enclosed) should be exposed to view,
and the mullioned windows which jut out over a narrow passage should
be opened up. If this could be done--and not overdone--the "Bird Cage"
would hardly be surpassed as a miniature specimen of medieval timber
architecture in the county. A stone doorway of Gothic form and a kind
of almery or safe exist in its cellars.
A school was founded at Thame by Lord John Williams, whose recumbent
effigy exists in the church, and amongst the students there during the
second quarter of the seventeenth century was Anthony Wood, the Oxford
antiquary. Thame about this time was the centre of military operations
between the King's forces and the rebels, and was continually being
beaten up by one side or the other. Wood, though but a boy at the
time, has left on record in his narrative some vivid impressions of
the conflicts which he personally witnessed, and which bring the
disjointed times before us in a vision of strange and absolute
reality.
He tells of Colonel Blagge, the Governor of Wallingford Castle, who
was on a marauding expedition, being chased through the streets of
Thame by Colonel Crafford, who commanded the Parliamentary garrison at
Aylesbury, and how one man fell from his horse, and the Colonel "held
a pistol to him, but the trooper cried 'Quarter!' and the rebels came
up and rifled him and took him and his horse away with them.
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