Oxford Cathedral Chapter

The Church's governing chapter as seated at Oxford, which has held the island-wide ordering of rite since the Canterbury Obedience War. Its doctrine treats spirits as remnants of the fall and every pact as a temporary expedient in an unfinished Reclamation, with eventual extermination of spirit standing as the stated end.

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

• 3942–3949 · The Canterbury Obedience War
• 4006–4014 · The Stairs Wars
• 4015 · The Cold Quay Accord
• 4590 · The Burning of the Sarrum Dead
• Date unknown · Oxford North Gate Hanging
• Date unknown · The Candle Marches
• Date unknown · The Machine-Stone Tithe

At the table

Oxford can keep an old valley pact with exact scruple while condemning it in principle. It opposes Cambridge's preservation of spirit traces, bans the Afflicted except under extraordinary ecclesiastical custody, and does not approve the cult of Saint Alwin. House Halden is deeply connected to it. It is very reluctant to make a formal demon finding, detests pact-making, and regards Cambridge's study of spirits as the more dangerous error. Oxford is deadly to the Afflicted ('Oxford sees the mark before the soul'). It does not want the Netherlode procedure begun; its proctor there serves what Oxford regards as a punishment. A company carrying an Oxford warrant against a loved guardian spirit may find a district united against it. Precedence is unwritten and iron and prebends are the money and the politics; its three factions (house, chapter and schools interests) fight over appointments, the order of business, wording and fabric money. Its arm stops at the layman (reachable only through his parish), the chartered town, the Woodmote, custom and the Ladies, which is why it employs so many unofficial intermediaries. It keeps the Writ excluding the visibly Afflicted from Oxford's ring. Simony is the city's worst-kept secret.