One of Oxfordshire’s greatest treasures must be the Juxon Bible on display at Chastleton House, that lovely and unspoiled Jacobean mansion built in 1603, nestling in a fold of the Cotswolds on the Oxfordshire side of the county boundary with Gloucestershire.

How many of us must have felt a tingle down the spine when told by the guide at the house that King Charles I had handed that very volume to his friend, Bishop William Juxon, while awaiting execution on the scaffold on January 30, 1649. Here, after all, is a direct and tangible link to that horrible beheading — just before which Dr Juxon told the king: “You are exchanged from a temporal to an eternal crown, a good exchange”.

Strange how objects, or relics, associated with great events, or saints, or even modern- day celebrities, exercise such a superstitious fascination for many of us (including me, I am afraid).

Dr Juxon (1582-1663) had been appointed President of St John’s College, Oxford, in 1621 on the recommendation of William Laud (1573-1645), who had himself just left that office to become Bishop of St David’s, in Wales. And although Dr Juxon, in turn, relinquished the Presidency in 1632 to become Bishop of London (again in succession to Laud), he continued to take a great interest in the university’s affairs and was present with the King at the opening of the new Laudian Library at St John’s, built between 1631-35.

He became Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1627, and when two years later Laud became chancellor, Juxon became Laud’s right-hand man in drawing up the Laudian Code — which was accepted by Convocation in 1636. This was designed to bring Oxford closer to the Church of England — and further from those Calvinist elements within the University that had so riled Laud before he left St John’s. It also sought to foist an acceptance of the concept of the Divine Right of Kings (as opposed to the notion that kings only governed by the consent of the people they ruled) upon all members of the university.

It shook up university discipline, too, by imposing all sorts of rules — many of them extremely irksome — about academic dress (who should wear what at which ceremony) and even about how long — and indeed how curly — students’ hair could be! Modern undergraduates certainly have a free and easy life compared to that of their 17th-century predecessors!

For instance, the Laudian Code commanded: “Scholars shall keep away from eating-houses and wine shops wherein wine or any other drink, or the Nicotian herb, or tobacco, is commonly sold; also that if any person does otherwise, and is not 18 years old [and many were younger in those days] and not a graduate, he shall be flogged in public.” Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633, the first of three former Oxford dons to hold that position in succession. He was executed in 1645 on a bill of attainder after an impeachment hearing had failed to find him guilty.

Juxon became Bishop of London in 1633, once again in succession to Laud. And in 1636 Charles I also made him Lord High Treasurer of England, as well as First Lord of the Admiralty.

During the Civil War, he managed to live undisturbed at Fulham Palace (since Parliament brought no charges against him). But after accompanying the King on to the scaffold he was forced to give up his bishopric. At the restoration of Charles II, he became Archbishop of Canterbury, in which job he was succeeded by a third Oxford academic, Gilbert Sheldon (1598-1677), Warden of All Souls, after whom, of course, the Sheldonian Theatre is named.

When deprived of his bishopric, Juxon went to live at Little Compton, near Chastleton, where, incidentally he kept a pack of hounds. And how did the Bible come to be at Chastleton? A relative of the bishop gave it to a member of the Jones family, the owners of Chastleton House, after his death — and there it has remained ever since.