Oxford Cathedral Chapter

The governing chapter of the Church as it sits at Oxford, which has held the ordering of rite for the whole island ever since the Canterbury Obedience War. In its doctrine spirits are remnants of the fall, and every pact made with them a temporary expedient in a Reclamation not yet finished; the end it states for itself is the eventual extermination of spirits.

The twenty-four canons under the dean who actually govern the cathedral, its courts and an estate across three counties. Its officers are the precentor, chancellor, treasurer, sub-dean, almoner, sacrist and four yearly-elected proctors who enforce; petitions wait in the archway north of the cloister. The church chapter responsible for Sarrum, which keeps only two incumbents and a proctor there, visits four chalk parishes, and presents four seats on the Sarrum council. It calls corpse eaters 'blighted' and, as its doctrine, holds them cursed out of the apocalyptic age.

Named with it

• Dean Aldous Frere · head
• Canon-Chancellor Peter Aveling · chancellor
• Canon-Precentor Blaise Ottley
• Proctor Hugh Danvers
• Sub-Proctor Ancel Fitch
• Canon Sebastian Hale · 4551
• Almoner Isabel Croke · 4441
• Sub-Almoner Grace Tewe
• Canon-Chancellor Ralph Meakin · 4396
• Precentor Edmund Morley · composer of the present Chapter generation
• Eleanor Cresset, the Deep Bell · contralto of the cathedral foundation

Ties

• closely tied to House Halden
• rival in doctrine to the Collegium
• shares the city with the Oxford Market Council
• part of the Church of Britannia
• the Archbishop of Oxford is the realm's highest sacramental channel
• doctrinal rival of Cambridge and the Collegium
• regards the Concord of Saint Winnow's roll with discomfort
• keeps exclusion officers against the Afflicted
• serves under the Archbishopric of Oxford

In the chronicle

• c. 3716–4088 · The Candle Marches
• 3942–3949 · The Canterbury Obedience War
• 3949 · The signing of the Obedience, 3949
• 3964 · Founding of Saint Bride's Lantern Camp
• 4006–4014 · The Stairs Wars
• 4015 · The Cold Quay Accord
• c. 4441–4481 · The Oxford Writ
• 4519 · The Oxford visitation of 4519
• 4590 · The Burning of the Sarrum Dead
• 4591 · The proctor's report on the Sarrum burnings
• Date unknown · Oxford North Gate Hanging
• Date unknown · The Machine-Stone Tithe

At the table

Oxford can keep an old valley pact with exact scruple and condemn pacts in principle in the same breath. It detests the making of them, and is most reluctant to make a formal finding of demon. Cambridge's preservation of spirit traces it opposes, and it holds Cambridge's study of spirits to be the more dangerous error of the two. It does not approve the cult of Saint Alwin. House Halden is deeply bound up with it. To the Afflicted Oxford is deadly, 'Oxford sees the mark before the soul': it bars them save under extraordinary ecclesiastical custody, and keeps the Writ that shuts the visibly Afflicted out of Oxford's ring. It does not wish the Netherlode procedure begun, and its proctor at Netherlode is serving there what Oxford regards as a punishment. A company carrying an Oxford warrant against a guardian spirit the people love may find a whole district standing as one against it. Within the chapter, precedence is unwritten and iron; the prebends, which is to say the endowed incomes of the canons, are at once the money and the politics; and the three factions, the house, the chapter and the schools interests, contend over appointments, the order of business, wording and the fabric money. Its reach ends at the layman, whom it can touch only through his parish, at the chartered town, at the Woodmote, at custom and at the Ladies; hence the great number of unofficial intermediaries in its employ. Simony is the worst-kept secret in the city.