The Mitre.

While in Oxford the other week for the annual meeting of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy I managed to see a little bit of old Catholic Oxford.

Above is a photo I took of The Mitre public house. Here, in the late 1500s and early 1600s Catholics would meet and even come to participate in the celebration of illegal Masses. These were celebrated in the second floor rooms which you can see in the photo, but which are now let by the pub. It seemed only fitting to have a pint there in their honour, and it was a delight to find a great Yorkshire beer on tap (Black Sheep).

I had previously read about this pub and its use by Catholics during penal times; I had then, expected to find the pub down a dark alley, or on the outskirts of the town. I was wrong; The Mitre is slap bang in the middle of old Oxford. It made me think of St Justin, who set up his School of Aplologetics right in the centre of ancient Rome.