A history of the University of Oxford

by George C. Brodrick

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Huber’s English Universities, vol. 1, ch. vi., sect. 80.

[10] An instance of this may be found in the care taken by Archbishop Chichele, in 1439, to procure a Bull from Pope Eugenius IV. for the foundation of All Souls’ College.

[11] These statutes were little more than repetitions or confirmations of ordinances made by King Henry V. in 1421.

[12] The meaning of ‘determination’ is still the subject of dispute. Mr. Boase, in the preface to his Register of the University of Oxford, explains it thus: ‘After taking his degree, the bachelor “determined,” that is, instead of disputing himself, he presided over disputations, and gave out his determination or decision on the questions discussed.’

[13] This seems the most probable interpretation of a somewhat obscure passage in the statute, which speaks of octo annorum terminos, and afterwards of tres terminos or duo terminos anni, as if terminus signified a period, and not an academical Term. It would be almost impossible to attend all the lectures here required for thirty reading days in each Term.

[14] It is stated that, so far back as 1268, the inceptors in civil law were numerous enough to overflow the Oxford hostels, and to be quartered in Oseney Abbey. In 1431 the expense to be incurred in scholastic banquets on inception in arts was limited by statute.

CHAPTER VII.
THE RENAISSANCE, THE REFORMATION, AND THE TUDOR PERIOD.

Revival of academical life at the end of the fifteenth century

The reign of Edward IV. may be regarded as a singularly blank period in University annals. The Wars of the Roses, in which feudalism perished by its own hand, but which left so few traces on the national life, hardly disturbed the academical repose; and the obscurity which hangs over the next chapter in the history of the nation rests equally upon that of the University. But a gradual recovery was in progress, and soon yielded visible fruits. The close of the fifteenth century found the University of Oxford far more complete in its outward structure, if somewhat less vigorous in its inward life, than it had been two centuries earlier. It was no longer a loose aggregate of students under the paramount jurisdiction of a bishop resident at Lincoln, but an organised institution, with a government of its own, under the special protection of the Crown, and capable of being used as a powerful engine for effecting or resisting changes in Church or State. While the old order was yielding place to new, and the fountains of scholastic thought were running dry, there had been a marked decay in academical energy, and the declining number of students attested the decreased activity of teaching. But the revival of classical learning, promoted by the dispersion of Greek scholars after the fall of Constantinople, was accompanied or followed by that marvellous series of events which divides modern from mediæval history—the invention of printing, aided by the improvement of paper-making; the discovery of America; the consolidation of the European monarchies; and the Reformation itself. The first effect of the enthusiasm kindled by these new influences was to invigorate the University; it was not until their secondary effects were felt that a reaction manifested itself.

Checked by the Reformation

The great educational movement which sprang from the Reformation was essentially popular rather than academical, and by no means tended to increase the relative importance of the Universities. The cause of this is not difficult to discover. When the only books were manuscripts, the Universities and the very few other institutions which possessed large collections of manuscripts attracted the whole literary class from all parts of the country. When instruction in the sciences was only to be obtained from the lips of a living teacher, and when schools hardly existed elsewhere, except in connection with cathedrals or monasteries, the lecture rooms of Oxford were thronged with students of all ages, and represented almost the entire machinery of national education. When the Church ruled supreme over the wide realm of thought, and learning was the monopoly of ‘clerics,’ the great ecclesiastical stronghold of Oxford far surpassed the metropolis itself as an intellectual centre. When Latin was the one language of scholars, and English literature scarcely existed, the academical masters of Latinity, especially as they were carefully trained in disputation, maintained a peerless supremacy over their less favoured countrymen. In the larger and freer life which took its birth from the Reformation, the exclusive privileges of the Universities became inevitably depreciated, and their degeneracy in the early part of the sixteenth century presents a humiliating contrast with their ascendency in the fourteenth. The dissolution of monasteries, the high-handed visitations of the Tudor Sovereigns, and the diversion of the national energies into new careers, operated concurrently to empty Oxford of students, nor was it until near the end of the century that its tone was gradually restored by the wise policy of Queen Elizabeth.

Pioneers of the new learning at Oxford

During the reign of Henry VII. the University was strongly agitated by the struggle between the old scholastic philosophy and the new learning of the Renaissance. The credit of introducing classical studies, and especially that of Greek literature, has sometimes been claimed for the Reformation, but it is rather due to a liberal spirit then springing up in the Catholic world, and especially to Italian influences. It was from Italy that England caught the new impulse, and that Oxford imported numerous MSS. of classical authors, while printing was still almost a fine art. Perhaps the foundation of grammar schools at Winchester and Eton for the special instruction of boys in Latin may have contributed to pave the way for the classical revival at the Universities. At all events, it was in progress before the Reformation, and was promoted by several enlightened bishops and abbots of the old religion, and may not improperly be regarded as a legacy of Catholic to Protestant England. Writing in 1497, Erasmus, who is sometimes described as the father of classical studies in England, speaks of a ‘rich harvest of classical literature’ as already flourishing at Oxford on every side, and declares that he could well nigh forget Italy in the society of Colet, Grocyn, Lynacre, and More. Indeed, he places England, in respect of culture, above France or Germany, and second to Italy alone. In fact, we soon afterwards find Richard Croke, an Englishman, teaching Greek at Leipsic, whence he migrated, a few years later, to succeed Erasmus himself as Professor at Cambridge.

Erasmus, More, Colet, Grocyn, and Linacre

During his first visit to Oxford, Erasmus lodged in a conventual house of Augustin Canons, known as St. Mary’s College, opposite New Inn Hall. Of the names thus commemorated by him, that of Sir Thomas More belongs to the political history of England, but he also deserves to be remembered as the young student of Canterbury College, among the most ardent disciples and most zealous promoters of classical teaching at Oxford. Colet, who had known More in the house of Cardinal Morton, and who became famous as the founder of St. Paul’s School, was educated at Magdalen College, but afterwards visited France and Italy, whence he returned in 1497, to lecture publicly but gratuitously on St. Paul’s Epistles, and to become a leading pioneer of Latin scholarship in the University. Grocyn had been elected Fellow of New College as far back as 1467, and was Divinity Reader at Magdalen College about 1483. It was not until some years later that he went to Italy for purposes of study, and devoted himself to Greek and Latin. On his return, he resided in Exeter College, and delivered the first public lectures on Greek, which seem to have been attended by Erasmus himself, who speaks of him with unfailing respect. Lynacre was elected Fellow of All Souls in 1484, but, like Colet and Grocyn, owed his erudition chiefly to his residence in Italy, where he became Professor of Medicine at Padua. But his range of studies was so wide that it was doubted of him whether he was ‘a better Latinist or Grecian, a better grammarian or physician.’ In modern times he is chiefly known as among the founders, and as the first President, of the College of Physicians; while his principal claim to gratitude at Oxford consists in his posthumous foundation of two Readerships in Physiology at Merton College, which have since been consolidated into a Professorship of Anatomy. The new studies, however, met with violent opposition, and several University dignitaries publicly lectured against Erasmus. Indeed, if we are to believe Anthony Wood, in spite of all the reformers’ efforts, academical learning was still in a deplorable state in 1508, the last year of Henry VII.’s reign. ‘The schools were much frequented with querks and sophistry. All things, whether taught or written, seemed to be trite or inane. No pleasant streams of humanity or mythology were gliding among us, and the Greek language, from whence the greater part of knowledge is derived, was at a very low ebb, or in a manner forgotten.’

Foundation of Corpus Christi College by Bishop Fox

The first endowed lectureship of the Greek language at Oxford was instituted by Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, in 1516, as part of his new foundation of Corpus Christi College. His original intention had been to found a monastery, and in founding a college instead, with twenty fellows and twenty scholars, he clearly showed his desire to encourage the classics by providing also for Professors of Greek and Latin, as well as of theology, whose lectures should be open to all the University. By virtue of this endowment, Bishop Fox has been regarded as the founder of the professorial system, though he must perhaps share that honour, not only with William of Waynflete, but with Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII., who had already founded the Margaret Professorship of Divinity in 1502. But Fox’s liberal spirit and sympathy with the Renaissance was shown in provisions, hitherto unknown, for instruction in the classical authors, for the colloquial use of Greek as well as Latin, and for the election of lecturers from Greece and Southern Italy. It was upon these grounds that Erasmus predicted a great future for the college as a stronghold of the classical movement.

Greeks and Trojans

That movement had already provoked a strange outbreak of academical barbarism in the University of Oxford. The faction of ‘Trojans,’ as they called themselves, from their enmity to Greek letters, seems to have been partly animated by a popular aversion to change, and partly by a far-sighted appreciation of the anti-Catholic tendencies inherent in the Renaissance. It is said to have originated in hostility to Grocyn’s Greek lectures at Exeter College; but it reached its height in the early part of Henry VIII.’s reign, by which time, however, the classics had won powerful friends at Court, and the ‘Greeks’ were protected by a peremptory Royal order, issued in 1519. It is remarkable that no trace of these fierce controversies between Scholasticism and the New Learning, still less of the impending revolution in the national religion, is to be discerned in the statutes of Brasenose, the latest of the pre-Reformation colleges, issued in 1521, nine years after its foundation. Under these statutes the scholars were bound to study the old subjects of the scholastic curriculum, ‘Sophistry, Logic, and Philosophy, and afterwards Divinity ... for the advancement of Holy Church, and for the support and exaltation of the Christian faith.’ On the other hand, there are ample proofs that long before the Old Learning ceased to rule the University system of disputations and examinations, the Renaissance had already penetrated into the University and College Libraries.

Cardinal Wolsey and the foundation of Christ Church

The great minister of Henry VIII., Cardinal Wolsey, must always be remembered as the most discerning as well as the most generous patron of liberal culture, which he admired for its own sake, though he naturally regarded it as the handmaid of the Church. It was in 1518 that Wolsey came to Oxford, in company with Catharine of Aragon, while the King remained behind at Abingdon. The University, doubtless perceiving the danger of impending spoliation, ‘made a solemn and ample decree, not only of giving up their statutes into the Cardinal’s hands, to be reformed, corrected, renewed, and the like, but also their liberties, indulgences, privileges, nay the whole University (the colleges excepted), to be by him disposed and framed into good order.’ Wolsey did not disappoint their confidence, and some five years later (in 1523) returned the charters, with a new and still more beneficial one procured from the King. At this period he is believed to have contemplated the foundation of more than one University professorship and the erection of University lecture-rooms, but if he ever entertained such an idea, it was abandoned. In the meantime, however, he was projecting the foundation of a college for secular clergy on a scale of grandeur hitherto unknown, for the purpose (as Huber well says) of ‘cultivating the new literature in the service of the old Church.’ In order to endow ‘Cardinal College,’ as it was to be called, twenty-two priories and convents were suppressed, under Papal and Royal authority, and their revenues, amounting to 2,000l., were diverted to the maintenance of ten professorships, as well as of sixty canonists and forty priests. The students were to be trained in a great school founded at Ipswich, as those of New College were trained at Winchester. The first stone of the building was laid in 1525; scholars had been engaged from Cambridge and the Continent to serve on the professorial staff; the abbey church of St. Frideswide’s had been appropriated as the college chapel; and the splendid kitchen, still preserved, was already completed, when the fall of Wolsey in 1529 arrested the execution of this grand design.

Action of the University on the questions of the Divorce and the Royal Supremacy

The King, engrossed with the question of obtaining a divorce from Catharine of Aragon, was in no mood to indulge the sympathy which he really felt towards learned institutions, and was rather bent on obtaining a favourable award from Oxford and the other great Universities of Europe on the legality of his marriage. The compliance of the Oxford Convocation was not extorted without grievous pressure. The younger Masters of Arts, as Wood informs us, stood firm in refusing to sanction the divorce, and, notwithstanding a threatening letter from the King himself, the desired vote was only secured, after repeated failures, by the exclusion of the graduates in Arts from the Convocation. Soon after this memorable but somewhat disgraceful vote, in April 1530, the King again visited Oxford, and took back into his own hands the charters both of the University and of the city, which had again begun to challenge academical privileges. They were not restored until 1543, and during the interval the University was again invited to pronounce a solemn verdict—no longer upon a question of private right, but on the gravest issue of national policy ever submitted to its judgment. For by this time the preliminary events which ushered in the English Reformation were following each other in rapid succession. In July 1530, the replies of several Universities in favour of the divorce had been forwarded to the Pope by the hand of Cranmer, and in the following March they were laid before Parliament. In November 1530, Cardinal Wolsey, charged with treason, died at Leicester on his way to the Tower. At the beginning of 1531, the clergy, having bought off the penalties of præmunire, were induced, under strong pressure, to acknowledge Henry as ‘Head of the Church and Clergy, so far as the law of Christ will allow.’ In 1532, an Act was passed for restraining all appeals to Rome, Sir Thomas More resigned the Chancellorship, and Henry married Ann Boleyn. In 1533, Cranmer, having succeeded Warham as Archbishop of Canterbury, not only pronounced the King’s marriage with Catharine to be null and void, but that with Anne Boleyn to be good and lawful. In 1534, the clergy in Convocation were forbidden to make constitutions except by the royal assent, and the Act was passed forbidding the payment of annates to Rome. In the same year the formal separation of the English Church from Rome was consummated by the great Act 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 21, which left doctrine untouched, it is true, but abolished the authority of the Pope in England, while it also rendered the monasteries liable to visitation by commission under the Great Seal. In 1535, under the Act of Supremacy (26 Hen. VIII. cap. 1), the King assumed the title of ‘Supreme Head of the Church of England’; Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More were executed for denying the Royal supremacy, and Thomas Cromwell was appointed Vicar-General of England.

Compliance of the University rewarded by Royal favour

It was in 1534 that the University was invited to concur in the foregone conclusion in favour of separation from Rome, dictated by canonists and theologians in the King’s interest. It did so with little hesitation, and it is probable that an honest zeal for the independence of the National Church mingled with less worthy motives in eliciting the required consent. Moreover, Protestant doctrines, propagated by some of the scholars imported from Cambridge and the Continent, had already taken root in Oxford soil, and several members of Cardinal College had already undergone persecution. In the following year a visitation of the University was instituted, for the double purpose of establishing ecclesiastical conformity and supplanting the old scholastic culture by a large infusion of classical learning. The study of the Canon Law was suppressed, and Leighton, one of the visitors, joyfully reported that ‘Dunce’ (Duns Scotus) was ‘set in Bocardo,’ or relegated to an academical limbo, while the leaves of scholastic manuscripts, torn up by wholesale, might be seen fluttering about New College quadrangle. On the other hand, the study of Aristotle was enjoined, together with that of the Holy Scriptures, and an important concession was made to reward the loyalty of the University, which had cheerfully surrendered its rights and property into the King’s hands. It was now exempted from the payment of tenths, or first fruits, granted by statute to the Crown, on condition of such classical lectureships being founded there ‘as the Kynge’s majestie shall assigne or appoynte.’ The support of these lectureships was charged upon the five colleges supposed to be the richest, including Corpus, where classical lectureships already existed, and the students of the other seven colleges were directed to attend some of the courses daily. At the same time, following the example of his grandmother, the Countess Margaret of Richmond, the King founded and endowed with a yearly stipend of 40l. each five Regius Professorships of Divinity, Hebrew, Greek, Medicine, and Civil Law. The endowment was, of course, derived from the spoils of the Church, but Henry VIII. deserves credit for a sincere desire to promote learning. In 1532, three years after Wolsey’s fall, he took up his great minister’s design and refounded Cardinal College, though on a reduced scale, under the name of King Henry the Eighth’s College. In 1545 he dissolved it, and finally reconstituted it under the name of Christ Church, and in the following year transferred his new episcopal see of Oxford from Oseney Abbey to St. Frideswide’s, blending the collegiate with the cathedral establishment by placing it under the control of a dean and eight canons. We owe to Holinshed the memorable reply made by the King to some of his courtiers who fondly hoped that he would have dealt with University endowments, and especially with this infant college, as he had dealt with the monasteries. ‘Whereas wee had a regard onlie to pull down sin by defacing the monasteries, you have a desire also to overthrow all goodness by subversion of colleges. I tell you, sirs, that I judge no land in England better bestowed than that which is given to our Universities. For by their maintenance our realme shall be well governed when we be dead and rotten. I love not learning so ill that I will impair the revenewes of anie one House by a penie, whereby it may be upholden.’

The first effects of the Reformation injurious to the University

The reason why college revenues were spared while monastic revenues were confiscated is not difficult to divine, without supposing that Henry VIII. was pacified by the mediation of Catherine Parr. The occupants of monasteries were regarded as mercenaries of a foreign power which had become the enemy of the monarchy; the colleges were nurseries of the secular clergy, who had never been obnoxious to the State, who shared to a great extent the national spirit, and most of whom adopted the new ecclesiastical order. The wise foresight of the founders had excluded monks and friars as aliens from collegiate societies; the constitution of these was mainly secular, and their dissolution was not demanded by popular opinion. Nevertheless, the general sense of insecurity and habit of servility which prevailed under the despotic rule of Henry could not but have a blighting effect on University life. Such acts as the execution of Sir Thomas More, one of the brightest stars of the English Renaissance, and the arbitrary restrictions imposed on Protestantism by the Six Articles, struck at the root of intellectual liberty, and the early stages of the Reformation went far to depress the academical enthusiasm kindled by the Catholic Renaissance.

Iconoclastic visitation under Edward VI.

The dissolution of the monasteries, instead of aggrandising the University, contributed to depopulate it, since many of the poorer students, formerly harboured in monastic houses or lodgings, or supported by monastic exhibitions, were now cast adrift. The Colleges and Chantries Act, though never strictly executed, shook public confidence in academical endowments, and at the beginning of Edward VI.’s reign the University was far less prosperous than it had been under Wolsey. The number of degrees continued to fall off, and the number of halls to dwindle, as religious controversy usurped the place of education, and the University was used as an instrument to advance the political or ecclesiastical aims of the Sovereign. Henry VIII. had obtained its sanction to his divorce and to his revolt against Rome; the Protector Somerset and Cranmer determined to reform it in the interests of the new Anglican Church. Several years before, Cranmer had appointed commissions to regulate internal discipline in two colleges of which he was Visitor, but the Injunctions which he issued upon their recommendation involved no change of religious faith or ordinances. Another royal commission or Visitation, with sweeping powers, was issued for this purpose in 1549. A like commission was appointed for the University of Cambridge, and the new statutes drawn up for both Universities were framed on like principles, ‘in order that each eye of the nation might be set in motion by similar muscles.’ The ‘Edwardine’ code, as it was afterwards called, was of course so framed as to eliminate everything which favoured Popery from the constitution of the University, but it was not otherwise revolutionary, and, though it soon fell into disuse, it remained nominally in force until it was abrogated by the ‘Caroline’ statutes under the chancellorship of Laud. But the commissioners were not equally forbearing in their treatment of individuals, for they proceeded to expel all academical dignitaries found guilty of upholding the old faith. In dealing with colleges, the spirit in which they acted was ruthlessly iconoclastic, and not only were the old services abolished, but altars, images, statues, ‘the things called organs,’ and everything else which seemed to savour of ‘superstition,’ were defaced or swept away. The demolition of the magnificent reredos in the chapel of All Souls’ was assuredly no isolated specimen of their handiwork, though we have no equally striking record of Vandalism in other colleges. The amount of destruction wrought by their orders among the libraries and chapels of colleges cannot now be estimated, but it was certainly enormous, and ‘cartloads’ of classical and scientific manuscripts were consigned to the flames, together with many an illuminated masterpiece of scholastic literature.

Leniency towards colleges

At the same time, while the study of canon law was virtually suppressed, that of civil law, ancient philosophy, Hebrew, mathematics, logic, rhetoric, and medicine was expressly encouraged by the Visitors. Eminent theologians were invited from the continent, and the lectures of Peter Martyr and others who accepted the invitation were crowded with eager students. It was even designed to reconstitute All Souls’ as a college for the special cultivation of civil law, while New College should be devoted exclusively to ‘artists.’ Many exhibitions for poor boys were suppressed, the Magdalen Grammar School was saved only by earnest remonstrances from the citizens, and some new dispositions were made of college revenues with little regard to founders’ intentions. But the spoliation does not seem to have been so indiscriminate as Anthony Wood represents it. The Protector Somerset, being pressed, like Henry VIII., to sanction the general disendowment of colleges, repelled the proposal with equal indignation; and indeed there is some reason to believe that colleges were now regarded with peculiar favour as seminaries of classical learning, and comparatively free from the scholastic and mediæval spirit which still animated the University system. Perhaps for this reason the Visitors forbore to exercise their power of consolidating several colleges into one, though they did not scruple to remove obnoxious Heads and fellows. Some of their injunctions exhibit much good sense, and even anticipate modern reforms, such as those which make fellowships terminable and tenable only on condition of six months’ residence, which insist on a matriculation-examination in grammar and Latin, and which require that lectures shall be followed by examinations. It is remarkable that at Magdalen and All Souls’ one fellowship was to be reserved for Irishmen. Others of their injunctions were purely disciplinary, such as those which prohibit undue expenditure on banquets after disputations, the practice of gambling, and the use of cards in term-time. Such regulations point to an increase of luxury consequent on the development of colleges, originally designed for the poor but now frequented by a wealthier class. Polemical divinity, stimulated by Peter Martyr’s discourses on the Eucharist, continued to flourish; but, with this exception, University studies were languishing, and while foreign divines were being imported into England, Oxford professors of civil law were emigrating to Louvain. The non-collegiate students became fewer and fewer; the most experienced teachers gradually disappeared; the impulse of the Renaissance died away; the new spirit of inquiry failed to supply the place of the old ecclesiastical order; the attractions of trade began to compete with those of learning, and the Universities no longer monopolised the most promising youths in the country who declined the profession of arms.

Reaction under Mary. Martyrdom of Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer

The accession of Mary, in 1553, ushered in a short-lived reaction. As the leading Romanist divines had quitted Oxford on the proclamation of Edward VI., so now the leading Protestants, headed by Peter Martyr, were fain to make their escape, though not till after Jewell had been employed to draw up a congratulatory epistle to the Queen, whose policy was not fully revealed at the outset of her reign. Heads and fellows of colleges were released from their obligation to renounce the authority of the Pope, the Mass superseded the Common Prayer-book, and Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, instituted a Visitation of the three colleges under his own personal jurisdiction. After the execution of Lady Jane Grey and the Queen’s marriage with Philip II. the spirit of persecution rapidly developed itself, all statutes passed against the Papacy since the twentieth year of Henry VIII. were repealed, the statutes passed against heretics in the reigns of Henry IV. and Henry V. were revived, and Oxford became the scene of those Protestant martyrdoms which have left an indelible impression of horror and sympathy in the English mind. Several victims of Catholic intolerance had already perished at the stake, when Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were brought to Oxford for the purpose of undergoing the solemn farce of an academical trial, and thus implicating the University in the guilt of their intended condemnation. At a convocation held in St. Mary’s Church a body of Oxford doctors was commissioned to dispute against the Protestant bishops on the Eucharist, in concert with a body of Cambridge doctors similarly commissioned. The so-called ‘disputation’ took place in the Divinity School. A day was assigned to each prisoner, the academical judgment was of course given against them, the judicial sentence soon followed, and on October 15, 1555, Ridley and Latimer were led out to be burned in Canditch, opposite Balliol College, where a sermon was preached before the stake by Dr. Richard Smyth on the text, ‘Though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.’ Cranmer’s execution was delayed for months, since it required the sanction of Rome, and his courage, as is well known, gave way under the fear of death. His recantation came too late to save his life, yet he was called upon to repeat it in St. Mary’s Church on his way to his doom. Instead of doing so, he publicly retracted it before the assembled University, with earnest professions of remorse. He was not allowed to conclude his address, but hurried off with brutal eagerness, to give at the stake that marvellous example of heroic constancy which has atoned for all his past errors in the eyes of Protestants, and crowned the martyrdoms of the English Reformation. From that moment the cause of the Catholic reaction was desperate in the University, no less than in the nation. Queen Mary conferred upon it many benefits and favours, and won the servile homage of its official representatives, but she never won the hearts of the students, and the news of her death was received with no less rejoicing in Oxford than in other parts of England.

Visitation and reforms of Cardinal Pole

In the meantime, however, a fresh Visitation of the University was set on foot, in 1556, by Cardinal Pole, who, having succeeded Gardiner as chancellor of Cambridge in the previous year, now succeeded Sir John Mason, the first lay chancellor of Oxford. He was the last in that line of cardinals, beginning with Beaufort, who, armed with the title of Legatus à latere, assumed to govern the English Church, as it had never been governed before, under the direct orders of the Pope. The Visitors deputed by him proceeded to hunt out certain obnoxious persons who had not withdrawn from Oxford, to burn all the English Bibles which they could find in the common market-place, and to purge the libraries of Protestant books. The Cardinal soon afterwards caused the University and college statutes to be revised, chiefly for the purpose of correcting recent innovations. For instance, while Edward VI.’s commissioners had authorised the use of English in college halls, Cardinal Pole restored the old rule against speaking any language but Latin. It was also an avowed object of the revision to restore the supremacy of Aristotle and the study of scholastic philosophy. These changes, having scarcely been effected before they were reversed, fill less space in University annals than an incident of comparatively trivial importance, which must have outraged the Protestant sympathies of the Oxford townspeople. The wife of Peter Martyr had been interred in Christchurch Cathedral, near the relics of St. Frideswide. Pole now directed the dean, no unwilling agent, to exhume the body and cast it into unconsecrated ground. The Dean improved upon his instructions by having it buried under a dunghill, whence it was again disinterred, mingled with the relics of St. Frideswide, and finally committed to the grave in the year 1561. No wonder that Queen Mary’s patronage proved a poor substitute for academical freedom, that learning continued to decline, that even sermons were rare and ill-attended, that lectures were almost suspended, that few ‘proceeded’ in any of the faculties, and that it was thought necessary to reduce the qualification of standing for the M.A. degree in order to reinforce the University with Masters.

Foundation of Trinity and St. John’s Colleges

Two colleges, it is true, Trinity and St. John’s, owe their origin to Mary’s reign, and both were founded by Roman Catholics, but upon the ruins of monastic institutions, and before the Marian persecutions had borne fruit in the University. These colleges, as semi-Catholic foundations of the Reformation era, may fitly be regarded as forming landmarks between mediæval and modern Oxford.

CHAPTER VIII.
REIGN OF ELIZABETH AND CHANCELLORSHIP OF LEICESTER.

Visitation under Elizabeth and policy of Archbishop Parker

With the accession of Elizabeth, in November 1558, the scenes were rapidly shifted, and the parts of the chief actors strangely reversed. For a while, in the quaint language of Anthony Wood, ‘two religions being now as ’twere on foot, divers of the chiefest of the University retired and absented themselves till they saw how affairs would proceed.’ They had not long to wait. Though she received graciously a deputation from the University, headed by Dr. Tresham, canon of Christchurch, and Dr. Raynolds, Warden of Merton, the Queen lost no time in announcing that she intended to visit it, and made a suspensory order in regard to all academical elections. In June she nominated a body of Visitors to ‘make a mild and gentle, not rigorous, reformation.’ One of these Visitors was Bishop Cox, of Ely, who had acted in a similar capacity under Edward VI., and the Visitation was conducted on much the same principles, except that it was less destructive. Still, compliance with the Act of Supremacy just passed was strictly enforced, and nine Heads of colleges, as well as the Dean and two canons of Christchurch, proving recusants, were ejected or forced to resign. Among these were Raynolds and Tresham, the former of whom died in prison. A considerable number of fellows are mentioned as having been expelled for refusing the oath, but the majority conformed. Some Protestant exiles returned from Zurich, Strasburg, and other foreign towns, where they had suffered great privations; but it is certain that Oxford lost many Catholic scholars whom she could ill spare, and suffered far more from the Elizabethan proscriptions than Cambridge, where the Reformation had been more firmly established. Peter Martyr and Jewell attested the intellectual and moral degeneracy of the University at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, nor could it have been otherwise after such rapid vicissitudes in religious doctrine and ecclesiastical government, unsettling the minds of students, and keeping academical rulers in a constant state of suspense or time-serving. It is certainly significant that in the very year after the Act of Uniformity was passed, establishing the revised Common Prayer-book, the Queen authorised the use of a Latin version thereof in college chapels in order to promote familiarity with Latin. But it is probable that this, like other concessions, was also due to a desire, which she fully shared with Archbishop Parker, to favour the growth of an Anglo-Catholic instead of a Puritan Church, and to encourage the Protestants without estranging the Romanists. Meanwhile Sampson, the dean of Christchurch, and Humphrey, the president of Magdalen, were zealous promoters of the Puritan movement, and as such distrusted by the queen, especially as they were known to be in correspondence with Geneva.

Chancellorship of Leicester

In the year 1564 Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, became chancellor of the University, and continued in office nearly twenty-four years. With the exception of Sir John Mason, elected in 1552, and the Earl of Arundel, elected in 1558, he was the first layman who had held this high office, which, moreover, had always been filled by some resident member of the University up to the year 1484. Non-resident and courtier as he was, however, the office was no sinecure in his hands. During his long tenure of it, his influence made itself felt in every department of University life, and was mainly exercised in favour of the Puritans. For this reason, we cannot accept Anthony Wood’s censure of him as that of an impartial historian, nor can it be denied that he took a genuine interest in the affairs of the University, and effected some useful reforms. One valuable concession obtained by the University under his chancellorship, and probably at his instance, was its incorporation in 1571 by an Act of Parliament, investing the ‘chancellor, masters, and scholars’ with the rights of perpetual succession, and confirming to it all the other privileges conferred upon it by previous monarchs. This parliamentary title relieved it from the necessity of seeking a new charter from each succeeding king, and is the organic statute by which its franchises are now secured. In the same year an Act was passed which, supplemented by further Acts passed five years later, has done more than any other to save the revenues of colleges from dissipation. The immense influx of gold from America, lowering the value of money, had proportionately raised the nominal value of land, and private landowners were reaping the advantage in sales and leases. The governing bodies of colleges, in turn, were exacting increased fines on granting long leases at low rentals, to the injury of their successors. The Act of 13th Elizabeth checked this practice by enacting that college leases should be for twenty-one years, or three lives at most, with a reservation of the customary rent; but means were found to evade the Act, and it was necessary to make it more stringent. This was done by Acts of 18th Elizabeth, the more important of which, ‘for the maintenance of colleges,’ is sometimes attributed to the foresight of Sir Thomas Smith, and sometimes to that of Lord Burghley. It requires that one-third part at least of the rents to be reserved in college leases shall be payable in corn or in malt, at 6s. 8d. per quarter and 5s. per quarter respectively. As prices rose, this one-third ultimately far outweighed in value the remaining two-thirds, and became ‘a second additional endowment’ to colleges.

Changes in the government of the University

Another measure of more doubtful policy was passed by the University itself under the direct instigation of Leicester. We have seen that in the later Middle Ages an assembly consisting mainly of resident teachers, and called the ‘Black Congregation,’ held preliminary discussions on University business about to come before Convocation. In the year 1569, the Earl of Leicester procured orders to be framed by a delegacy and passed into statutes, whereby it was provided that in future this preliminary deliberation should be conducted by the Vice-chancellor, Doctors, Heads of Houses, and Proctors. This change marks a notable step in the growth of the college monopoly afterwards established, and could hardly have been carried while the monastic orders were still powerful in Oxford, and a large body of non-collegiate students were lodged in halls. Nor could the erection of such a legislative oligarchy, with a virtual power of suppressing obnoxious motions, be otherwise than unfavourable to freedom of teaching and government, however congenial to Tudor notions of academical discipline. Another change made by Leicester in the same year (1569), though dictated by a like spirit, cannot be regarded as an innovation, but rather as the restoration of an ancient usage. From the earliest times Chancellors of the University had been assisted by deputies, whom they appointed either periodically, or, more probably, as occasion might require. By the statutes of 1549, issued by Edward VI.’s Visitors, the right of electing these commissaries, or ‘vice-chancellors,’ as they came to be called, was vested in the House of Congregation. The practice of nomination was now resumed by Leicester, and has been maintained ever since. A somewhat opposite tendency is to be observed in his abolition of the more orderly but more exclusive mode of electing proctors, which had grown up in lieu of the old tumultuous elections by an academical plébiscite, when the proctors represented the ‘nations.’ The nature of this restricted election, per instantes, as Anthony Wood calls it, is by no means clear; at all events, the unrestricted election was re-established by Leicester’s influence, and continued to produce the same disorders as ever, until it was finally reformed in 1629.

Leicester’s administration of the University

We have abundant proofs of Leicester’s active, and even meddlesome, interference with the details of University and college administration. Sometimes he recommends eminent foreigners for advancement, or accompanies them on visits to Oxford; sometimes he writes to urge the duty of encouraging more frequent University sermons; sometimes he corrects the abuses of disorderly and vituperative preaching by ordering that no one shall occupy the University pulpit without undergoing a probation in his own college; sometimes he rebukes the license of youth in respect of costume; sometimes he superintends the revision of University statutes by a delegacy mainly composed of Heads of colleges; nor must we overlook his gift to the University of a new printing-press. But the most permanent monument of Leicester’s chancellorship was the new test of subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles and the Royal Supremacy, to be required from every student above sixteen years of age on his matriculation. This rule was doubtless intended only to exclude the Romanising party from the University; but its ulterior consequences, unforeseen by its author, were mainly felt by the descendants of the Puritans. Thenceforth the University of Oxford, once open to all Christendom, was narrowed into an exclusively Church of England institution, and became the favourite arena of Anglican controversy, developing more and more that special character, at once worldly and clerical, which it shares with Cambridge alone among the Universities of Europe.

The letter, dated 1581, in which Leicester urges Convocation to adopt this disastrous measure, contains other recommendations directed to the same end. One of these is a proposal that, in order to prevent the sons ‘of knowne or suspected Papists’ being sent to Oxford to be trained by men of the same religion, every tutor should be licensed by a select board, to consist of the vice-chancellor and six doctors or bachelors of divinity. A third proposal, of which the cause is not yet obsolete, was designed to check the conversion of professorships into sinecures, by providing for the appointment of substitutes where professors should fail to discharge their duties. All these regulations, with some others of a salutary kind, were sanctioned by decrees of Convocation, but it is clear from a vigorous remonstrance of the Chancellor, addressed to the University in the following year, that most of them remained a dead letter. This remonstrance deserves to be read, as illustrating the difference between Leicester in his capacity of courtier and in his capacity of University Chancellor. The political and private character of Leicester belong to history, and the verdict passed upon him is not likely to be reversed; but it is difficult, after studying this letter, to regard him as animated only by sinister and frivolous motives in his dealings with the University. On the other hand, there is clear evidence of wholesale favouritism and jobbery, as it would now be called, in his dispensation of his own patronage, and in his repeated and underhand attempts to control the patronage of colleges. Upon the whole, his administration of the University was less dishonest and more statesmanlike than might have been expected of so profligate a politician. It cannot be compared, however, with the wise administration of Cambridge by the great Burleigh, and the superiority of the sister-University, both in vital energy and in national esteem, during the Elizabethan age, was probably due in no small degree to the superior character of its Chancellor.

Depression of intellectual life in the University

Other causes, however, had contributed to depress the intellectual life of Oxford, and among these we must not omit to notice the withdrawal of many gifted scholars to seek liberty of conscience at the new Catholic seminary of Douay, founded in 1568. Leicester’s agents were constantly on the watch against the reappearance of these ‘seminary priests’ at Oxford with intent to Romanise the University, and this perhaps was no imaginary danger; but neither learning nor education flourished under Oxford Puritanism. Writing in 1589, the year following Leicester’s death, Whitgift fully confirms his estimate of the laxity prevailing at Oxford. In this very year an Act was passed to check the sale or corrupt resignation of fellowships—evils which owed their origin to the previous Act regulating college leases, and indirectly encouraging a system of money allowances to fellows, unknown in the previous century. The rise of grammar schools, one of the earliest and best fruits of the Reformation, seems rather to have diminished than to have increased the demand for the higher University culture. Formerly, when Oxford itself was a vast group of grammar schools, many a boy who came there to learn grammar remained there to learn philosophy or law. Now, boys of the same class often got their schooling near home, and then betook themselves to one of the numerous vocations which trade and commerce were opening to English youth in that great age of enterprise and national expansion. Even the literature of Elizabeth’s reign is courtly and popular rather than academical, and Oxford contributed little to it. Bacon was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge; Raleigh at Oriel College; Spenser and other Elizabethan poets had received an University education; but such men derived their inspiration from no academical source; their literary powers were matured in a very different school, and the one of their compeers whose fame eclipses all the rest, knew Oxford only as a traveller, on his journeys to Stratford-on-Avon. ‘Home-keeping youths,’ Shakspeare tells us, ‘have ever homely wits,’ and the saying is characteristic of an age in which foreign travel often supplied the place of University education.

Encouragement of study by Elizabeth, and foundation of the Bodleian Library

It was not until the later part of her reign that Queen Elizabeth actively patronised Oxford culture, and desired of the Chancellors of both the Universities that promising scholars might be recommended to her for promotion in Church and State. The stimulating effect of such patronage upon University studies very soon made itself felt at Oxford, and men like Sir Henry Savile were the direct product of it. A still more important recipient of Elizabeth’s favour was Sir Thos. Bodley, student of Magdalen and fellow of Merton, who, having been a member of the Queen’s household, was afterwards employed by her on missions to Germany, France, and Belgium. Among the many benefactors of the University his name still ranks first and highest. In boyhood he seems to have imbibed the literary spirit of the Renaissance under foreign instructors at Geneva, whither his family had fled to avoid the Marian persecution; at Merton he was one of the earliest readers in Greek, and his long residence abroad in middle life had quickened his scholarlike tastes. At last, at the age of fifty-three, he deliberately took leave of State employments, ‘set up his staff at the library door’ in Oxford, and devoted himself for the remaining fifteen years of his life to reconstructing and enriching the library of Duke Humphrey. In 1602, this building, renovated and enlarged, was opened with a solemn procession from St. Mary’s Church, and dedicated to the use of the University. The whole design was not completed until after his death; but the plan of it was fully matured, with the aid of Sir Henry Savile, by the founder, who drew the statutes with his own hand and collected some 2,000 volumes before the opening day. This noble gift excited the emulation of other donors, and probably did more than any Court patronage to promote learning in the University.

Increasing refinement of academical life

During the last seventeen years of the great Queen’s reign the history of Oxford was unruffled by stirring events. That Leicester’s constant remonstrances against idleness, sinecurism, and extravagance had not been capricious or unfounded, is proved by the fact of their being repeated and enforced again and again by his three successors. It was, indeed, the misfortune of the University that it was roused from the lethargy which oppressed it after the Catholic reaction, only to become the battle-ground of the Romanising and Puritan factions in the Anglican Church. While its highest dignitaries were mostly animated by intense party spirit rather than by zeal for education, its students fully shared in the genial laxity of manners, fostered by increasing luxury, which marked the Elizabethan age. Their numbers were increased, but the new recruits were drawn from a wealthier class; there were more young gentlemen among them, but fewer hardworking scholars; more of worldly accomplishments, but less of severe and earnest study. Many of them were destined for lay professions or even for trade, and many tutors were now laymen, yet it may be doubted whether there was as much real freedom of thought in the Protestant Oxford of Elizabeth as in the Catholic Oxford of the first three Edwards. The academical system was narrower in principle than in mediæval times, and the University had become a mere aggregate of colleges and privileged halls. On the other hand, these collegiate bodies were far more orderly and refined societies, and learned foreigners, of whom many found a welcome there, were impressed with the comfort and dignity of social life at Oxford, as compared with that of continental Universities. One of these, Albericus Gentilis, became Regius Professor of Civil Law, and for a while revived the waning interest of that subject, which the combined jealousy of the clergy and common lawyers had long discouraged as a branch of academical study.

Queen Elizabeth’s two visits to Oxford

Queen Elizabeth twice visited Oxford in state, once during her ‘progress’ in 1566, and again in 1592. On the first occasion she was accompanied by Leicester as Chancellor, and by Cecil as Secretary of State. She was hailed with effusive loyalty, and entertained for six days with an incessant round of festivities, orations, disputations, and Latin plays, which she bore with truly royal patience, winning universal homage by ‘her sweet, affable, and noble carriage,’ but frowning gently on divines of the Puritanical and Romanising parties, while she reserved her most winning smiles for the young students who amused her with their boyish repartees, sometimes expressed in Latin. It was not until twenty-six years later that she revisited the University, a prematurely old woman, but still accompanied by Cecil, now Lord Burleigh, stayed for the same period, and went through a repetition of the same ceremonials. This reception lacked the freshness of the former one, yet enabled the Queen to show that she had not forgotten either her Latinity or her academical sympathies. According to Anthony Wood, it was one of her objects ‘to behold the change and amendment of learning and manners that had been in her long absence made.’ It does not appear how far she was satisfied in this respect, but her Latin speech to the Heads of Houses certainly abounds in excellent advice and professions of warm interest in the welfare of the University. As before, she rallied the ‘precisians,’ as they were then called, on their over-zeal for Protestantism, counselling all to study moderation and rest content with obeying the law, instead of seeking to be in advance of it.

Pestilences and disturbances in the sixteenth century

It is remarkable how often the town of Oxford was scourged with pestilence during the Tudor period, and this cause had perhaps as much effect in repelling students as the unsettled state of ecclesiastical affairs. To check one fertile source of infection, an order was addressed by the Privy Council to the vice-chancellor and Heads of colleges, in 1593, forbidding the performance of plays or interludes in Oxford or within five miles thereof, since the physicians had connected the plague of that year with the immense influx of players and vagrants from London into Oxford about the Act-time. The order further directed the University authorities to concert measures with the mayor for the prevention of overcrowding; and these precautions were apparently successful, for the plague did not reappear in Oxford until 1603, when it was brought thither from London shortly after the accession of James I.

Scarcely less fatal to academical repose and earnest study were the violent conflicts and riots, inherited from the Middle Ages, which constantly recurred throughout the sixteenth century. Some of these arose out of the old traditional feud between the northern and southern nations, but that feud had well-nigh died out under Leicester’s chancellorship, and does not seem to have influenced the keenly contested election of proctors in 1594, though we hear of a fray provoked by ‘the troublesome Welsh’ in 1587. The contest for the chancellorship which took place on Leicester’s death was, in the main, one between Puritans and Episcopalians, and the election of Hatton against Essex was a victory for the Church of England as established by the moderate policy of Elizabeth. Henceforth Oxford became the stronghold of Anglicanism, and the internal contests which divided the University were essentially contests between rival Church parties. Meanwhile, there was little abatement of the pettier, but still more inveterate, jealousy between the city and the University. Year after year this incurable enmity broke forth afresh in some new form, and the law courts, as well as the Chancellor, were frequently engaged in vain attempts to keep the peace between bodies equally concerned in the prosperity of Oxford. A temporary abatement of these disturbances was obtained, in 1581, by the fresh imposition of an oath to be taken by the city sheriff, on his election, binding him to uphold the privileges of the University; but the feud was not to be thus healed. If we duly measure the distraction of energy which must have resulted from such perpetual disorders, and, far more, from the fierce religious animosities which long convulsed Oxford and plunged other countries into civil war—not forgetting the constant interruption of academical residence by plague—we shall be more disposed to marvel at the intrinsic vitality of the University than at the many shortcomings imputed to it, when the death of the great Queen ushered in a new and eventful period in its history.

CHAPTER IX.
THE UNIVERSITY UNDER JAMES I.

The University patronised by James I.

The influence acquired by the University of Oxford, as a power in the State, under the Tudor dynasty, was fully maintained by it under the Stuarts. If it had played a humbler part in the earlier stages of the Reformation than in the intellectual movement of the Renaissance, and if for a while the Protestant episcopate had been mainly recruited from Cambridge, it was nevertheless destined to bear the brunt of those storms which, already gathering in the last years of Elizabeth, burst over Church and State in the first half of the seventeenth century. Before the accession of James I., while Church-government had been firmly settled on an Episcopalian basis, there was room for much latitude of opinion within the National Church, and the religious sentiment of the English people was strongly Puritan. This dualism was faithfully reflected in the University, where the Act of Uniformity was strictly enforced, and there was a growing preponderance of academical authority on the side of the High Church party, yet several Regius Professors of Divinity in succession were of the Puritan school, and a deep undercurrent of Puritanism manifested itself again and again among the more earnest college tutors and students. The vigorous protest of the University against the famous Millenary petition was dictated not so much by distrust of its Puritan authorship and tone, as by hostility to its proposals for reducing the value of impropriations in the hands of colleges. Little as he understood the English nation, James I. was not slow to appreciate the advantage of gaining a hold upon the Universities, hastened to show a personal interest in them, and expressed a wish to be consulted about all academical affairs of importance. In the very year of his accession, he granted letters patent to both Universities, commanding each of them to choose two grave and learned men, professing the civil law, to serve as burgesses in the House of Commons. Though he was prevented by the plague from visiting Oxford in that year, he came to Woodstock in the autumn and received the University authorities. Two years later, in 1605, he entered Oxford on horseback, surrounded by an imposing cavalcade of nobles and courtiers, to be received, like Elizabeth, with costly banquets and pompous disputations, to which, on this occasion, was added a grand musical service in the cathedral. The pedantic self-complacency of James enabled him to enjoy in the highest degree all the frivolous solemnities of this academic ceremonial, of which a full account has been preserved in the ‘Rex Platonicus’ of the Public Orator, Sir Isaac Wake. It is remarkable that Anthony Wood dates the progress of luxury, with drinking in taverns and other disorders, from the festivities lavished on this visit. The king gave a further proof of his confidence in Oxford, by entering his son Prince Henry, a youth of great promise, who died prematurely in 1612, as a student at Magdalen College.

James I.’s attitude towards the University and the Church

Whatever may be thought of James I.’s character, it is certain that he was animated by a generous partiality for the Universities, not only as bulwarks of his throne but as seats of learning. It is equally certain that he entered upon his reign with serious and practical intentions of Church reform. Accordingly, in 1603, he addressed letters to the Chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge, pointing out the evils and abuses resulting from the wholesale diversion of Church revenues, by means of impropriation, to private aggrandisement. He declared himself ready to sacrifice all the patronage which had thus devolved upon the Crown, and called upon the colleges to imitate his example by re-endowing their benefices with tithes for the support of efficient ministers. He was dissuaded from carrying out his purpose by the remonstrances of Archbishop Whitgift and others, but in 1606, after the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, the Universities received a valuable gift in the right of presenting to all benefices in the hands of Roman Catholic patrons, the southern counties being assigned to Oxford, the northern to Cambridge. They were also formally exempted from liability to subsidies on three separate occasions. In such proofs of partiality for the Universities James was but following out the policy of Elizabeth, who had clearly grasped the expediency of controlling and conciliating the great seminaries in which the national clergy were educated. At first his native Calvinism inclined him to favour the Puritans, whose influence in the University had been greatly strengthened by the example and teaching of the admirable Laurence Humphrey, President of Magdalen, and Regius Professor of Divinity, who died in 1589. But he gradually discovered the natural affinity between Arminian theories of Church authority and his own theories of kingcraft, as well as the preponderance of the former in the clerical order, and decisively cast in his lot with the High Church party. In the grand struggle between the ecclesiastical courts and the common law judges, the Universities with the great body of the clergy supported the King and the archbishop in sustaining the authority of the former. They were again associated with the King when he conferred a lasting benefit on the English Church and nation by initiating the Authorised Version of the Bible. In this great work the two Universities were represented almost equally, and among the Oxford scholars engaged in it we find seven Heads of colleges and four other divines, who afterwards became bishops. There is some reason, however, to believe that he cherished a preference for the sister University, and it is a somewhat remarkable fact that George Carleton, afterward bishop of Chichester, was the only Oxford man among the five academical divines selected by him to represent England at the Synod of Dort.

Rise and influence of Laud

In the year 1603, we first hear of ‘Mr. William Laud, B.D. of St. John’s College,’ as proctor; in 1606 he again comes under notice, as preaching in St. Mary’s Church, and ‘letting fall divers passages savouring of popery,’ which brought him under the censure of the vice-chancellor. Thenceforth he became a formidable power, and ultimately the ruling spirit in the University, the discipline of which he persistently laboured to reform. The eighteen years which elapsed between his proctorship and his retirement from the presidency of St. John’s, in 1621, were crowded with events memorable in the history of the English Church. The failure of the Hampton Court Conference, in 1604, drove the Puritan party, at last, into active opposition. The canons enacted in the Convocation of the same year compelled the clergy to subscribe the Three Articles which the Parliament of 1571 had expressly refused to impose upon them; and the immediate consequence was the deprivation of three hundred clergymen. In 1606, the severity of the laws against Popish recusants was increased, and the arbitrary jurisdiction of the High Commission was constantly extended until it was openly challenged by the common law judges. The responsibility of supporting the king in this aggression on the Constitution rests, in part, on Abbot, formerly Master of University College, whom the Calvinistic party at Oxford had regarded as their protector against Laud and his associates, but who, after succeeding Bancroft as archbishop in 1610, strained the powers of the High Commission almost as far as Bancroft himself. There was no such inconsistency in Laud, who, from the first, deliberately set himself to undo the work of Leicester as Chancellor, and Humphrey as professor of divinity at Oxford. An appeal was lodged against him by the opposite party when he was elected President of St. John’s in 1611, but the election was confirmed. It was he who procured the publication, in 1616, of a stringent order from the king, by the advice of the clergy in convention, for the subscription of the Three Articles in the Thirty-sixth Canon by every candidate for a degree, for strict attendance on University sermons, and for the enforcement of other safeguards against heterodoxy. This was not the first time that the Convocation of the clergy had presumed to meddle with the government of the University, for another canon, passed in 1604, had required surplices to be worn in college chapels. But, of course, such decrees could only be enforced by the action of the Crown, the validity of whose jurisdiction over the Universities was, in itself, somewhat doubtful. In this case, the authority of the Chancellor, the Earl of Pembroke, was employed to obtain compliance with the order which, though resented by many, was obeyed. In 1622, the University Convocation gave a further proof of obsequious loyalty, not only by publicly burning the works of Paræus, in deference to a mandate of the Privy Council, but also by passing a declaratory resolution absolutely condemning resistance to a reigning sovereign, offensive or defensive, upon any pretext whatever. This solemn affirmation of the doctrine of passive obedience was the more significant and ignoble, because it came but a few months after the Commons had recorded a solemn protest against the violation of their liberties, and the king had torn it out of their Journal with his own hand. The progress of Arminianism in the Church and University kept pace with that of personal government in the State. It was in 1622 that Coke, Pym, Selden, and others were imprisoned for disputing the royal prerogative, and from this year Anthony Wood dates ‘such an alteration in the University, that the name of Calvin (which had carried all before it) began to lessen by degrees.’ In the great crisis of the next reign it was found that Oxford Puritanism was by no means extinct, but the reactionary creed of Laud had almost exclusive possession of the University pulpit, and soon become dominant. This new faith, half political, half theological, and affirming at once the divine right of kings and the divine right of bishops, found partial expression in James’s own maxim—‘No bishop, no king.’ Absolutism allied itself naturally with the doctrinal system of Arminianism; the creed of Laud, embraced long ago by the fatuous King and the Court, had already been adopted deliberately by Prince Charles; it was now to become the official creed of Oxford for nearly two generations.

Completion of the ‘Schools,’ and foundation of Wadham and Pembroke Colleges

During the whole reign of James I. the external condition of the University was prosperous, and it received important accessions, both in buildings and endowments. On March 30, 1619, the day following the burial of Sir Thomas Bodley in Merton College Chapel, the first stone of the New Schools, as they were then called, was laid by his coadjutor, Sir John Bennett. Two colleges, Wadham and Pembroke, owe their origin to the same period. The former was founded in 1610 by Dorothea, widow of Nicholas Wadham, under a royal licence; the latter was founded in 1624 by James I. himself, but endowed at the cost and charges of Thomas Tesdale and Richard Wightwick. No less than six professorships were instituted during the same period. The first two of these—the professorships of geometry and astronomy—bear the name of their founder, Sir Henry Savile, warden of Merton College, who endowed them in 1619. In the quaint language of Anthony Wood: ‘Beholding the Mathematick Studies to be neglected by the generality of men, ’twas now his desire to recover them, least they should utterly sink into oblivion.’ These benefactions, and the growing wealth of colleges, helped to strengthen the University in the esteem of the upper classes, upon which it now depended for its supply of students. According to a census taken in 1611, the number of residents was 2,420, and it continued to increase until the outbreak of the Civil War.

CHAPTER X.
THE UNIVERSITY UNDER CHARLES I. AND LAUD.

Parliament at Oxford

The death of James I. and the succession of Charles I. produced no break in the continuity either of national or of academical history. With less shrewdness than his father, but more of dignity in his character and bearing, Charles possessed equal obstinacy, and equally regarded it as his mission to curtail the liberties of his people, in the interests of the Crown, by the aid of the new State Church. The profligate and unscrupulous Buckingham retained all his ascendency, and was Charles’s trusted confidant in politics. Abbot was still Archbishop of Canterbury, and crowned the young King in Westminster Abbey, while Laud officiated as Dean of Westminster. But Laud was Charles’s real adviser in Church affairs, and his evil counsels soon brought about the disgrace of his rival, Abbot, when the archbishop, reverting to his earlier principles, boldly opposed the arbitrary and oppressive policy of the Court. Though he was no longer president of St. John’s College, his influence over the academical body was never relaxed, and was constantly exercised on behalf of Arminianism in the Church, and absolutism in the State. It was some time, however, before the University was directly affected by the storms which clouded the political horizon from the very beginning of Charles’s reign. His first Parliament, it is true, was adjourned to Oxford in the Long Vacation of 1625, on account of the plague then raging in London, and all the colleges and halls were cleared, by order of the Privy Council, for the reception of the members. The Privy Council itself met at Christchurch, the House of Commons sat in the divinity school, and the Lords ‘in the north part of the picture gallery,’ but the Parliament, having refused to grant supplies, was dissolved within a fortnight. The plague, however, had followed it to Oxford, and the commencement of Michaelmas term had to be postponed until November 9. In 1628 the election of proctors was attended with more than ordinary tumult; the Chancellor intervened, and ultimately the King took the matter into his own hands, referring the decision of it to a committee, including Laud, who practically dictated their nominees to the University Convocation. In February 1629, the House of Commons, which had obtained the King’s assent to the Petition of Right, took upon itself, by a letter from the Speaker, to call for a return of all persons known to have contravened the Articles of Religion. The proctors so far recognised the validity of the order as to institute an inquiry, but Parliament was prorogued not long afterwards, and the question seems to have dropped. The incident, however, is not without its importance, as indicating the disposition of Parliament, now roused into active opposition, to share with the Crown the control of the University. On August 27 in the same year, Charles I., during his stay at Woodstock, paid his first state visit to Oxford, and was entertained with his queen in Merton College, where she was destined to be lodged so long during the Civil War, of which the premonitory signs were already visible to far-sighted observers.

Chancellorship of Laud

In April 1630, the Earl of Pembroke died, and Laud, now bishop of London, was elected Chancellor of the University by a very narrow majority over Philip, Earl of Montgomery, Pembroke’s younger brother. His chancellorship lasted eleven years, and was terminated by his resignation in 1641. However narrow may have been his Church policy, he was a true and loyal son of the University, by which he deserves to be remembered as an earnest reformer and liberal benefactor. It was at his instance that in 1629, the year before he became Chancellor, a final end was put to the riotous election of proctors which had so often disgraced the University for centuries. This was effected by the simple device of constructing a cycle, extending over twenty-three years, within which period a certain number of turns was assigned to each college, according to its size and dignity. The inventor of this cycle was Peter Turner, of Merton, a great mathematician in his day, and it fulfilled its object by entrusting the nomination of proctors to individual colleges, each of which could exercise a deliberate choice, instead of leaving it to be fought out by the academical democracy. This salutary change was accepted by the University Convocation on the recommendation of the king and the Earl of Pembroke, but its real originator was Laud. His efforts to reform the discipline and morals of the University were equally well meant, though conceived in an almost Puritanical spirit which might have won the approval of the ‘Precisians,’ who hated him so bitterly, and not without good cause. These efforts extended to the colleges of which he was Visitor, and were carried to the length of minutely regulating every detail of University life. Attendance at sermons and services, the conduct of disputations in theology and arts, the relations between Masters of Arts and Bachelors or students, the forms and fashions of academical costume, the proper length of scholars’ hair, the hours of meals, the custody of college gates, the presentation to college benefices, the management of college property, the use of Latin in conversation as well as formal business, the enforcement of purity in elections to fellowships—such are some of the academical concerns which received from Laud as careful attention as the highest interests of the Church and the monarchy. In one respect, indeed, the policy of Laud strongly resembled that of Leicester, for both maintained their influence by favouritism, and kept up a regular correspondence with confidential agents at Oxford, through whom they were informed of everything that passed there. But while Leicester’s inquisitorial vigilance was directed not only against disturbers of the peace but against persons suspected of Romanism, that of Laud was directed against Puritans and Calvinists.

Compilation of Laudian Statutes

The greatest and most permanent result of Laud’s chancellorship was the compilation of the famous code, known as the ‘Laudian’ or ‘Caroline’ Statutes, which continued to govern the University for more than two centuries. From time immemorial, the University had claimed and exercised the power of making, repealing, and revising its own statutes. Under the chancellorship of Archbishop Warham, in 1513, this power had been delegated to a committee of seven, and again, in 1518, it was delegated to Cardinal Wolsey, in spite of the Chancellor’s protest; but in both cases, it was the University Congregation which conferred the commission, under which, however, very little seems to have been done. The commissioners of Edward VI. were appointed under the Great Seal, and drew up the ‘Edwardine Statutes,’ by virtue of an authority independent of the University. Cardinal Pole, on the contrary, issued his Ordinances, in his capacity of Chancellor, provisionally only, until a delegacy of Convocation should decide upon the necessary alterations. Similar delegacies were appointed by the authority of Convocation, as it was then called, on several occasions during the reign of Elizabeth; and though in the reigns of her two successors many ordinances were sent down by the Crown, they were not accepted as operative until they had been embodied in statutes, or adopted in express terms by Convocation. Even in 1628, when the proctors had endeavoured to obstruct the proposed statutes regulating proctorial elections, and the king threatened with his condign displeasure those who should persist in opposing them, Convocation went through the form of enacting them by its own decree. The same course was taken in 1629, under Lord Pembroke’s chancellorship, but at Laud’s instigation, when the delegacy was nominated to codify the statutes, which then lay, as Laud said, ‘in a miserable confused heap.’ The work occupied four years, and, when it was completed, the University placed the new code in the hands of Laud, with full power to make additions or alterations. He corrected the draught, and in July 1634 directed a copy to be deposited in each college or hall for a year, during which amendments might be suggested. At last, in June 1636, Laud finally promulgated, and the King solemnly confirmed, the ‘Corpus Statutorum,’ as they were officially designated, and the University Convocation formally accepted them, with the most fulsome professions of gratitude to its Chancellor, and of confidence in the eternity of their own legislation. This confidence was not, and could not be, justified by events; but an impression long prevailed that the Laudian statutes, though capable of extension, were as incapable of alteration as the laws of the Medes and Persians. It is, indeed, very remarkable that, with a few trifling additions, these statutes proved capable of being worked practically until they were superseded, in many essential particulars, by the University Reform Act of 1854.

Main provisions of the Laudian Statutes

These statutes were for the most part, a digest of those already in force, but embodied also new regulations of great importance, such as those for the government of the University by the ‘Hebdomadal Board,’ for the election of proctors according to the cycle recently established, for the nomination of ‘collectors’ (to preside over ‘determinations’), and for the conduct of public examinations. The principle of placing the main control of academical affairs in the hands of heads of colleges and halls had already been established by Leicester, but it was now reduced to a fundamental law, and the vice-chancellor, with the Heads of Houses and proctors, was formally entrusted with the whole administration of the University. This statute effectually stereotyped the administrative monopoly of the colleges, and destroyed all trace of the old democratic constitution which had been controlled only by the authority of the mediæval Church. The same oligarchical tendency may be discerned in the statute which converted the popular and public election of proctors by the common suffrages of all the Masters into a private election by the Doctors and Masters of a certain standing in each college, however beneficial its effect may have been in checking the abuses of tumultuous canvassing. While the dignity of the procuratorial office was thus sensibly reduced, that of the vice-chancellor’s office was proportionably enhanced. The Laudian Code legalised the practice resumed by Leicester, directing that the vice-chancellor should be nominated annually from the heads of colleges by the Chancellor, with the assent of Convocation. As vicegerent of the Chancellor, and chairman of the Hebdomadal Board, he gradually acquired a position of greater authority and independence than had formerly belonged to him. Under Laud’s chancellorship, indeed, he was expected to make a weekly report to his chief on the state of the University; but later Chancellors were neither so conscientious nor so meddlesome, and, in default of urgent necessity for their intervention, were at last content to be regarded as ornamental personages, rather than as the actual rulers of the University. One of the vice-chancellor’s chief duties at this period was to guard the orthodoxy of the University pulpit, and there are numerous instances of preachers being summoned before him for controverting Arminian doctrines, and forced to sign humble recantations of their errors. Where they proved refractory, the royal prerogative was promptly invoked to coerce them.

Studies and examinations under the Laudian Statutes

The course of study, and standard of examination, prescribed by the Laudian statutes were so much beyond the requirements of later times that we may well doubt whether either can have been strictly enforced. The B.A. degree, which then concluded the first stage of an academical career, might be taken at the end of the fourth year, and the student was bound to have attended lectures in grammar, rhetoric, the Ethics, Politics, and Economics of Aristotle, logic, moral philosophy, geometry, and Greek. In order to attain the M.A. degree, three more years were to be spent in studying geometry, astronomy, metaphysics, natural philosophy, Greek, and Hebrew. Making every allowance for the longer residence of those days, as well as for the lower conception of proficiency in these subjects, we cannot but admire the comprehensive range of this curriculum, and admit that if it was actually accomplished by a majority of students, the race of passmen in the seventeenth century must have been cast in an heroic mould. Disputations, which had long fallen into discredit, were now superseded by a system of public examinations, the germs of which are to be found in an obsolete statute of 1588, if not in the earlier statutes of Edward VI. The examinations for the B.A. and M.A. degrees, respectively, were to be in the subjects in which the candidates were statutably bound to have previously heard lectures, and special regard was to be paid to fluency in Latin, but they can scarcely have been effective according to modern ideas. They were to be conducted, in rotation, by all the regent masters, under the orders of the senior proctor; the method of interrogation seems to have been exclusively oral; and the authority of Aristotle was to be paramount within the whole sphere of his voluminous writings. As the ordinary period of residence waxed shorter, and the University relaxed its authority over its own teachers, the examination system of Laud, though it nominally survived for more than a century and a half, became almost as illusory as the old scholastic disputations.

Services of Laud to the University

The effusive gratitude manifested by the University towards Laud, on the publication of his ‘Caroline’ statutes, was partly, no doubt, the expression of party spirit, but it was also justified by his great services. He presented to the Library a splendid collection of Oriental manuscripts, besides procuring valuable gifts of literary treasures from others; he founded and endowed the professorship of Arabic; he persuaded the King to annex canonries of Christchurch to the professorship of Hebrew and the office of Public Orator—which last grant was never confirmed by Parliament; he obtained for the University the right of printing Bibles, hitherto the monopoly of the King’s printers; and he secured for it a new charter extending all its ancient liberties and privileges. Two important acquisitions made by the University under the chancellorship of Laud are not known to have been specially due to his initiative. The earlier of these was the foundation of the Botanic Gardens in 1632, though its completion was delayed by the Civil War. The Convocation House, adjoining the Divinity School, was begun in 1634 and finished in 1638, with an extension of the Bodleian Library above it, and the apodyterium at its north end, where the Chancellor’s Court is still held. It was first used in October 1638. By this time, if we may trust Anthony Wood, the University had recovered its popularity, and numbered at least 4,000 scholars. No wonder that loyal sons of Oxford looked back with fond regret to Laud’s chancellorship during the evil days of the Civil War and the Commonwealth. Nor should it be forgotten that if his intolerance of schism made him a persecutor of the Puritans, he also set himself to exclude Romish priests from the University; or that he reconverted Chillingworth to Anglicanism, and rewarded with a canonry the learning of John Hales, whose views of Church government conflicted greatly with his own.

Last five years of Laud’s chancellorship

Though Laud continued to preside over the University until 1641, the glory of his chancellorship was crowned by a solemn visit of the King and Queen to Oxford at the end of August 1636. This visit lasted three days, and was attended by all the usual ceremonials, including the performance of comedies at Christchurch, and St. John’s, Laud’s own college. The Elector Palatine and his brother, the famous Prince Rupert, received honorary M.A. degrees on this occasion. After this it may well be imagined that Laud had little or no leisure for academical cares until his resignation of the chancellorship by a pathetic letter dated from the Tower on June 26, 1641. Within this interval of five years, the great controversy about the payment of ship-money had come to a head; judgment had been given against John Hampden; Prynne, Burton, and Eastwick had been condemned to the pillory for their writings; Charles’s fourth Parliament had met after eleven years of personal government and been promptly dissolved; the Scotch army, after halting on the border in 1639, had invaded Yorkshire in 1640; the High Commission Court had been closed for ever; the Long Parliament had commenced its sittings, and impeached both Strafford and Laud; the Triennial Act had been passed; the bishops had been excluded from the House of Lords; the King had agreed that Parliament should not be adjourned or dissolved without its own consent; Strafford had been executed; and the ‘Root and Branch Bill’ for the abolition of Episcopacy had been read in the Commons. Nevertheless, Laud had found time for close and constant attention to University and college business. It was in 1638 that he instituted a regular examination for the B.A. and M.A. degrees. In 1639, he sent another donation of books, gave stringent directions for the repression of disorders in the Convocation House, and made special efforts to put down drinking parties in colleges and halls, which had come into vogue, since ‘the scholars (not excepting the seniors) had been hunted out of alehouses and taverns by the vice-chancellor and proctors constant walking’—a result of his own disciplinary vigour. In November 1640, he sent his last present of books, pleading a want of leisure, for the first time, in excuse for the brevity of his letter. He was now in the hands of his enemies, and it was freely alleged in the House of Commons that, through his influence, the University was infected with Popery. Accordingly, on December 14, a statement was drawn up and signed by all the Heads of Houses, except Rogers, Principal of New Inn Hall, declaring ‘that they knew not any one member of this University guilty of, or addicted to, Popery.’ Parliament, however, ordered the books and registers of the University to be sent up to London, with a view of extracting materials from the Acts of Convocation to serve as evidence against Laud. Among the offences imputed to him at his trial, several related specially to his administration of the University. He was accused of causing old crucifixes to be repaired and new ones to be set up; of turning Communion tables ‘altarwise,’ railing them in, and enjoining that obeisance should be made to them; of encouraging the use of copes; of instituting Latin prayers in Lent; of introducing superstitious processions; above all, of erecting ‘a very scandalous statue of the Virgin Mary, with Christ in her arms,’ over the new porch of St. Mary’s Church. Some of these alleged acts were denied by the archbishop; others were admitted and defended as consistent with the received doctrine of the Church. Perhaps none of them would be regarded by an impartial critic of Laud’s trial as heinous enough to sustain a charge of high treason, or, indeed, as having any bearing whatever on such a charge.

Eminent members of the University in the generation preceding the Civil Wars

Whatever may have been the shortcomings of Oxford in the generation which preceded the Civil War, it certainly produced a number of men whose learning and piety might have adorned a happier and more peaceful age. Among the Heads of colleges who held office under Laud’s short chancellorship were John Prideaux, Sir Nathaniel Brent, Gilbert Sheldon, Brian Duppa, Samuel Fell, and Juxon, and while the headships of colleges were filled by such men as these, others not less eminent represented the University in other capacities. In his rectory at Penshurst, and afterwards in his rooms at Christchurch, Hammond was maturing a theological knowledge which has placed him among standard English divines; Bainbridge was prosecuting at Merton important researches in astronomical science; Earle, afterwards tutor to Prince Charles, and bishop of Salisbury, was serving in the office of senior proctor; Selden was acting as burgess for the University; and Brian Twyne was amassing those antiquarian stores which supplied the most valuable materials for the marvellous industry of Anthony Wood.

University life in the generation preceding the Civil Wars

The characteristic features of University life in the period immediately preceding the Civil War contrasted equally with those which had distinguished it in the Middle Ages and those which distinguish it in the present day. The academical community had become far less democratic and more outwardly decorous since the suppression of ‘chamber-dekyns,’ and the concentration of all the students into colleges and halls. The Heads of colleges, invested with special privileges and absolute control over University legislation, were now permanently resident, and had greater power of keeping good order than had ever belonged to the proctors, vainly striving to enforce discipline among thousands of beggarly non-collegiate students. On the other hand, there was less unity in college society; for, while Bachelor fellows were still an inferior grade, and bound to ‘cap’ Master fellows in the quadrangles, a new class of ‘commoners’ had sprung up, mostly consisting of richer men, and holding aloof from members of the foundation. ‘Town and gown rows’ were not unknown, and the ancient jealousy between the city and the University was intensified by the growth of religious and political differences; but the peace was far better kept, and the streets of Oxford were no longer the scene of sanguinary affrays. Whether the morality of the students was essentially improved is open to more doubt. Judging by the constant repetition of censures on their conduct from chancellors and Visitors, we might infer that Oxford was quite demoralised. After all, however, most of these censures are not so much directed against grave offences as against extravagance in dress and breaches of academical decorum, and it is impossible not to suspect that over-regulation had something to do with the perverse neglect of rules among undergraduates. It is the variety of legitimate outlets for youthful spirits and energy which in modern times has been found the best antidote for youthful vices, and if we realise the conditions of undergraduate society in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, we shall rather be disposed to wonder at the standard of virtue being so high as it seems to have been. One of these conditions was the overcrowding of colleges due to the disappearance of hostels. Where two or three students habitually shared the same room, and a poor scholar rarely enjoyed the comfort of a bed to himself, unless it were a truckle-bed in his patron’s chamber, the self-respect and graceful courtesy which is now traditional among well-bred young Englishmen at the University could scarcely be cultivated at all. The tutorial system already existed in colleges, and the personal relations thus established between tutors and pupils were sometimes productive of very beneficial results; but outside these relations there was little sympathy and kindly intercourse between members of different colleges or different classes in the same college. Manly sports were not unknown, but they were chiefly of the rougher sort, and discouraged by the authorities. We hear little of boating, or even of riding, and cricket had not yet been invented, but football was vigorously played, and led to so many warlike encounters between the combatants that it was regarded with little favour by vice-chancellors. Archery was still practised, as well as quoits, and ninepins or skittles, but these last games were coupled with bull-baiting, bear-baiting, cock-fights, common plays, and public shows, in official warnings to undergraduates against unlawful pastimes. Even James I., who prided himself on his ‘Book of Sports’ as much as on his invectives against tobacco, issued royal letters condemning them, apparently because, though not intrinsically evil, they brought great crowds of people together, who might break out into disorder. In short, it may safely be said that an Oxford student in the reigns of James I. and Charles I. had less recognised liberty than a public-school boy in the reign of Victoria, the natural result of which was that he was all the more disposed to rebel against discipline. Meanwhile his studies, though mainly classical in their subjects, and mainly conducted within the walls of his college, were largely scholastic in their methods. The University was still, above all, a training-school for the clerical profession rather than for the general world.

CHAPTER XI.
THE UNIVERSITY DURING THE CIVIL WARS, AND THE SIEGE OF OXFORD.

The University sides with the King and the Church

The part to be taken by the University of Oxford in the great national struggle now impending was never for a moment doubtful. Throughout its history it had loyally acknowledged not merely the supremacy of the Crown, in its capacity of paramount Visitor, but the jurisdiction of the High Commission and other exertions of the prerogative lately challenged by the Commons, while it stood committed by its own solemn vote to the doctrine of passive obedience. It was still more closely identified with the Church. Its property had always been treated in ancient times as ecclesiastical, being constantly taxed by votes of the Convocation of Canterbury, and constantly exempted, by royal letters, from taxes payable on the lands and tenements of laymen. Its representatives had attended the great Councils of the Western Church; its Chancellor had always been a great ecclesiastic until the Reformation; nearly all the Visitors of its colleges were still great ecclesiastics; and the recent imposition of test-oaths, including those prescribed by a purely ecclesiastical canon, on all its students, coupled with the clerical restrictions on most college fellowships, had effectually rendered it an integral part of the Anglican Church. No doubt, it contained a strong Puritan element which sympathised with the Parliament, but the overwhelming majority were heartily on the side of the Church and the King, and proved themselves capable of great sacrifices for the cause which they espoused. The first overt act of the University in support of these principles was taken on April 24, 1641, in the form of a ‘Petition made to the high and honourable Court of Parliament in behalf of Episcopacy and Cathedralls.’ This petition was accompanied by another to the same effect, bearing the signatures of almost all the resident graduates, and derives additional significance from its date. But a few months before, the canons lately passed by the Convocation of Canterbury had been declared illegal by the Commons, and the Bill to exclude bishops from the House of Lords had just been introduced. Nevertheless, the University did not hesitate to press upon Parliament, now in no placable mood, the duty of maintaining not only ‘the ancient and Apostolicall Order’ of bishops, but also ‘those pious Foundations of Cathedrall Churches, with their Lands and Revenewes.’ Some of the reasons alleged in support of the petition are grave and weighty; others, if less solid, are still more interesting as indications of the light in which Church preferments were then regarded by University graduates. For instance, cathedral endowments are extolled ‘as the principal outward motive of all Students, especially in Divinitie, and the fittest reward of some deep and eminent Scholars; as affording a competent portion in an ingenuous way to many younger Brothers of good Parentage who devote themselves to the Ministery of the Gospell; as the onely meanes of subsistence to a multitude of Officers and other Ministers, who with their families depend upon them; as the maine Authors or Upholders of divers Schooles, Hospitalls, Highwaies, Bridges, and other publique and pious works; as the cheife support of many thousand families of the Laity, who enjoy faire estates from them in a free way; and as funds by which many of the learned Professors in our University are maintained.’ It was hardly to be expected that such arguments should prevail with Pym and Hampden, Prynne and Holles; nor can we be surprised to learn that ‘the answer to it was very inconsiderable.’ It was, however, presented to the King on the following day, and his reply, preserved by Anthony Wood, is memorable as showing how resolutely he linked the fortunes of his Crown with those of the Church. He declared openly that he knew the clergy were suffering because of their fidelity to him, protested that he would rather feed on bread and water than ‘mingle any part of God’s patrimonie with his owne revenewes;’ insisted that ‘Learning and Studies must needs perish if the honors and rewards of Learning were destroyed;’ and predicted that ‘Monarchy would not stand long if the Hierarchy perish.’

The Commons issue an order for the University

Within a month after the presentation of this petition Strafford had been executed, and the ‘Root and Branch Bill’ for the complete abolition of Episcopacy had been read in the Commons. Two months later (July 1641) the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, with the arbitrary jurisdiction of the King’s Council, had ceased to exist. On November 22 the ‘Grand Remonstrance’ was passed, containing an elaborate indictment against the Crown for all the unconstitutional acts committed since the beginning of the reign, and an appeal to the people of England. Then followed in quick succession the King’s attempt to arrest the five members in the House of Commons, his final departure from London, his refusal to place the custody of fortified places and the command of the militia in the hands of the Parliament, the levy of forces on both sides, the rejection by the King of an ultimatum sent by the Parliament, and the erection of the royal standard at Nottingham, on August 22, 1642. Of these momentous events the University was, of course, a mere spectator; but the House of Commons found leisure, in the midst of its preparations for war, to guard its own interests at Oxford. On June 28, 1641, it issued an order purporting to abolish the obligation of subscription to the Three Articles of the Thirty-sixth Canon, as well as that of doing reverence to the Communion-table, which seems to have been enjoined in some of the colleges. This order was actually read in Convocation, and was followed in February 1642 by the receipt of a ‘Protestation,’ which the Speaker, in the name of the House, called upon the vice-chancellor and Heads of colleges to take and impose upon all members, and even servants, of the University, being of the age of eighteen years and upwards. This Protestation, conceived in a moderate tone, bound the subscriber to uphold Protestantism and the union between the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. As it contained a profession of allegiance to the Crown, as well as of respect for the power and privileges of Parliament, it was generally signed, though many loyal Protestants objected to it as dictated by a party on the verge of rebellion.

Contribution for the King’s service, and first occupation of Oxford by Parliamentary troops

In the summer of 1642, war, though not actually declared, was felt to be inevitable, and both the king and the Parliament were already raising supplies for the autumn campaign. On July 7, Charles I., then at York, addressed a requisition to Prideaux, as vice-chancellor, inviting the colleges to contribute money for his service by way of loan at eight per cent. interest, alleging that similar aid had already been received by his enemies. Convocation immediately voted away all the reserve funds in Savile’s, Bodley’s, and the University chest, but it does not appear that any contributions of plate were made by the colleges on this occasion. On July 12, Parliament issued an order declaring this requisition illegal, and directing watch and guard to be set on all highways about Oxford; but it appears from a letter of the king, dated from Beverley on July 18, that a large subsidy had then reached him. At the same time, he addressed letters to the Commissioners of Array for the county, the high sheriff, and the mayor of Oxford, specially requesting them to protect the University in case of attack. In the middle of August several hundred graduates and students enrolled themselves, in accordance with a royal proclamation, and were regularly drilled in the ‘New Park.’ On August 28, a troop of Royalist horse, under Sir John Byron, entered the city, and the volunteers were virtually placed under his orders, with the apparent consent of the citizens, who, however, did not raise a similar corps for the defence of their own walls. On September 1, a delegacy of thirty members, including the vice-chancellor and proctors, and popularly called ‘The Council of War,’ was appointed for the purpose of arming the scholars and provisioning the Royal troops. But the resolution of the University was shaken when it was discovered, on September 9, that the citizens were in communication with the Parliament, and that a Parliamentary force was about to move on Oxford from Aylesbury. Indeed, the University went so far as to despatch emissaries to parley with the Parliamentary commanders at Aylesbury, who answered them roughly, seized Dr. Pinke, of New College, the deputy vice-chancellor, and sent him as a prisoner to London. On the following day Sir John Byron, with his few troopers, left Oxford to join the king, accompanied by about a hundred scholars, one of whom, Peter Turner, fell into the hands of the enemy in a skirmish near Stow-in-the-Wold, and was lodged in Northampton gaol. On September 12, a body of Parliamentary troops entered the city from Aylesbury, under Colonel Goodwin, who, with other officers, was quartered at Merton College, while their horses were turned out in Christchurch meadow. They were soon followed by Lord Say, the new Parliamentary lord-lieutenant of Oxfordshire. He proceeded to demolish the fortifications already begun, and instituted a search for plate and arms. In fact, however, no college plate was then carried off, except that of Christchurch and University College, which had been hidden away. The other colleges, we are told, were spared, ‘upon condition it should be forthcoming at the Parliament’s appointment, and not in the least employed against them’—a condition almost impossible of fulfilment in the event, which actually occurred, of Oxford becoming the King’s head-quarters. Upon the whole, Lord Say and his men behaved with great forbearance during this short occupation, which ended on September 27 or 28. The gownsmen were disarmed, but no injury was done to buildings or property, beyond some damage to the porch of St. Mary’s Church and the combustion of ‘divers Popish books and pictures.’

Oxford becomes the royal head-quarters

A month later (October 29) Charles I. marched into Oxford by the North Gate, after the battle of Edgehill, at the head of his army, and attended by Prince Rupert, Prince Maurice, and his two sons. Even the mayor and leading citizens welcomed him, while the University received him with open arms, expressed its devotion in Latin orations, and showered degrees on the noblemen and courtiers in his train. The king himself, with the most important personages of his staff, except Rupert and Maurice, was lodged in Christchurch; the officers were distributed among other colleges; the soldiers were billeted about the city. Thenceforward, Oxford became not only the base of operations for the Royal army, but the chief seat of the royal government. Twenty-seven pieces of ordnance were driven into the grove of Magdalen College and ranged there; the citizens were at first disarmed, but a regiment of city volunteers was afterwards formed, and reviewed together with a far more trustworthy regiment of University volunteers. A plan of fortification was prepared by Rallingson, a B.A. of Queen’s College, and defensive works were constructed all round Oxford under the directions of engineers. All inmates of colleges, being of military age, were impressed into labouring personally upon these works for at least one entire day per week, bringing their own tools with them; in default of which they were required to pay twelve pence to the royal treasury. A powder-mill was established at Oseney, and a mint at New Inn Hall, whence the students had fled, under suspicion of Roundhead leanings. Thither were removed all the coining machinery and workmen from the factory which had been established some time before at Shrewsbury, and the New Inn Hall mint was conducted under the direction of Thomas Bushell, formerly the manager of the royal mines in Wales. New College tower and cloisters were converted into an arsenal for arms, procured by repeated searches, the grammar-school for the choristers having been removed to a chamber at the east end of the Hall. The Schools were employed as granaries for the garrison; lectures and exercises were almost wholly suspended; and in the three years from 1643 to 1646 the annual number of B.A. degrees conferred did not exceed fifty. Before long, most of the less warlike and loyal fellows and students retired into the country; those who remained took up arms and kept guard on the walls; the colleges more and more assumed the aspect of barracks; and Oxford, no longer a seat of learning, was divided between the gaieties of a court and the turmoil of a camp.

Aspect of the University during the queen’s residence

This transformation was completed in July 1643, when Henrietta Maria joined the King at Oxford. Charles I. rode out to meet the Queen, whose passionate and sinister counsels were about to cost him his throne and his life. She was received with great ceremony at Christchurch, and conducted by the King himself to Merton College by a back way, made expressly through gardens belonging to Christchurch and Corpus Christi College into Merton Grove. There she was saluted with the usual Latin oration, and took possession of the apartment still known as ‘the Queen’s room,’ which she occupied, with the adjoining drawing-room, until the following April. Seldom in history, and never in the annals of the University, have characters so diverse been grouped together into so brilliant and picturesque a society as that which thronged the good city of Oxford during the Queen’s residence in the autumn and winter of 1643—the last happy interlude of her ill-starred life. Notwithstanding the paralysis of academical studies, grave dons and gay young students were still to be seen in the streets, but too often in no academical garb and affecting the airs of cavaliers, as they mingled with the ladies of the court in Christchurch walks and Trinity College gardens, or with roystering troopers in the guard-houses at Rewley, where they entertained their ruder comrades with flashes of academic wit. Most of the citizens, too, were glad to remain, secretly cherishing, perhaps, the hope of a future retribution, but not unwilling to levy high rents for the lodging of those nobles and military officers for whom there was no room in the colleges. With these were blended in strange variety other elements imported from the metropolis or the country—lawyers who had come down to attend the courts held by the Lord Keeper and one of his judicial brethren; the faithful remnant of the Lords and Commons, who sat in one of the Schools and the Convocation-house respectively, while the University Acts were performed once more in St. Mary’s Church; loyal gentlemen driven out of their manor-houses by the enemy; clergymen expelled from their parsonages; foreigners seeking audiences of the perplexed and vacillating King; needy poets, musicians, and players in the service of the Court, who acted interludes or Shakespearian pieces in the college halls. Services were still performed in the chapels; sermons were preached from the pulpit of St. Mary’s; degrees were conferred wholesale, as rewards for loyal service, until they were so depreciated that at last the King promised to recommend no more candidates for them; the outward appearances of academical routine were maintained with decorum; the King dined and supped in public, moving freely among his devoted adherents with the royal grace and easy dignity which long seemed to have perished with the Stuarts; the Queen held those receptions at Merton College of which a tradition has survived to our own prosaic days; newspapers were published for the first time in Oxford, and all the resources of courtly literature were employed to enliven a spectacle over which the awful catastrophe of that historical tragedy, unforeseen by the actors themselves, has shed a lurid glamour, never equalled by the romance of fiction.

The last two years of the civil war

During this memorable period, the records of the University and colleges are extremely scanty. The register of Christchurch, then little more than a royal palace, presents almost a blank; that of Merton contains few entries bearing on the great events of which Oxford was the scene or the centre. Early in January 1643, royal letters were issued to all colleges and halls, desiring the loan of their plate, to be melted down and coined for the King’s service, ‘we promising you to see the same justly repayd unto you after the rate of 5/ the ounce for white, and 5/6 for guilt plate, as soon as God shall enable us.’ All the colleges, except New Inn Hall, are stated to have complied, and the aggregate weight of plate thus contributed amounted to some 1,500 lbs., besides about 700 lbs. sent in by six country gentlemen. Nevertheless, in the following June, another levy of 2,000l. was made upon the University and City respectively, to which the City, in an unwonted fit of loyalty, added another 500l. At last, in October 1643, the Heads of Houses agreed that 40l. should be raised weekly during the next twenty weeks, by a levy on colleges and halls, in lieu of all further contributions towards new fortifications. In the same month articles were drawn up by some of the leading residents against the Earl of Pembroke, Chancellor of Oxford, whom they accused of betraying the privileges and neglecting the interests of the University, but whose real crime was complicity with the Parliament, and whom the King caused to be superseded by the Marquis of Hertford. During the summer of this year the fortunes of war had, on the whole, been in the King’s favour; but he had been compelled to abandon his design of occupying London, and, after the indecisive battle of Newbury, in which Falkland was killed, had retreated to Oxford for the winter. Thither he summoned his so-called Parliament in June 1644, and there, yielding to evil advice from his wife, he rejected overtures which might have brought about a peaceful settlement without further bloodshed. On May 29, 1644, a Parliamentary force under the Earl of Essex and Sir William Waller crossed the river at Sandford Ferry, and passed through Cowley over Bullingdon Green, on their way from Abingdon to Islip, but nothing beyond a skirmish took place as they defiled along the heights within sight of the city. The object of this movement, as soon appeared, was to enclose the King with his forces in Oxford; but Charles now showed unexpected resource, and by a masterly night-march eluded the enemy, and pursued Essex westward, while Prince Rupert defeated Waller at Copredy Bridge, where many Oxford scholars were engaged. On June 9 a proclamation of the Privy Council appeared, commanding all persons to lay in provisions for three months, in anticipation of a siege, which, however, did not take place in that year. On July 2 the King’s northern army sustained a crushing defeat at Marston Moor, and the King himself, though successful against Essex, was almost cut off on his return to Oxford. On Sunday, October 6, the city of Oxford, which had been scourged by a plague in the previous year, the natural result of overcrowding, was ravaged by a great fire, attributed to the machinations of the Parliamentary troops at Abingdon. The winter passed quietly at Oxford, and, after the execution of Archbishop Laud in January 1645, negotiations between the King and Parliament were again opened at Uxbridge, but in vain. Soon afterwards the Parliamentary army was remodelled, and placed under the command of Fairfax, who advanced to besiege Oxford, while Charles, who had retired to Chester, hesitated between relieving it and giving battle to Cromwell. On May 22, Oxford was partially invested by Fairfax, and besieged for a fortnight. Fairfax established his own head-quarters at Headington, Wolvercote was held by Major Browne, Cromwell was posted at Wytham, and the roads between that village and South Hincksey were secured by the besiegers. On June 2, the governor made a successful night sally towards Headington, and three days later the siege was hastily abandoned, when Fairfax moved northward to join Cromwell, and on June 14 the Royalist cause was finally shipwrecked at the battle of Naseby. The theatre of war was now shifted from the neighbourhood of Oxford, and the last engagement in the open field took place near Chester in the following September. Oxford still held out for the King, who again fell back upon it for the winter, accompanied by Princes Rupert and Maurice, and gathered around him a great part of the English nobility and gentry still faithful to his fortunes. On December 28 we find him ordering special forms of prayer to be used in college chapels on Wednesdays and Fridays, ‘during these bad times.’

Siege of Oxford, and proposals of Fairfax guaranteeing University privileges

In the spring of 1646, the Parliamentary army devoted itself to besieging the strong places still occupied by the King’s troops, and on May 1 Fairfax again appeared before Oxford, which the King had left in disguise a few days earlier, with only two attendants. The besieging force was distributed round the north side of the city in the same way as before, and on May 11 it was formally summoned to surrender. In the letter of summons, addressed to Sir Thomas Glemham, the governor, Fairfax used language honourable to himself and to Oxford. ‘I very much desire the preservation of that place, so famous for learning, from ruin, which inevitably is like to fall upon it unless you concur.’ More than one conference was held, and some of the privy councillors in Oxford strove to protract the negotiations until the King himself could be consulted. In the end, Fairfax made conciliatory proposals which the Royalist leaders decided to entertain, ‘submitting,’ as they said, ‘to the fate of the kingdom rather than any way distrusting their own strength.’ By the final treaty, concluded on June 20, it was stipulated that both the University and the City should enjoy all their ancient privileges and immunities from taxation. It was further stipulated that colleges should ‘enjoy their ancient form of government, subordinate to the immediate authority and power of Parliament ... and that all churches, chapels, &c., shall be preserved from defacing and spoil.’ It was, however, significantly added that if any removals of Heads or other members of the University should be made by Parliament, the persons so removed should retain their emoluments for six months after the surrender; and there was an ominous proviso, ‘that this shall not extend to any reformation there intended by the Parliament, nor give them any liberty to intermeddle in the government.’

Surrender of Oxford, and subsequent condition of the University

Four days afterwards (June 24), the curtain fell on this memorable episode in the history of the University. The garrison of Oxford marched out 3,000 strong, with colours flying and drums beating, in drenching rain, by Magdalen Bridge, through St. Clement’s, over Shotover Hill, between files of Roundhead infantry, lining the whole route, but offering them no injury or affront. About 900 of them laid down their arms on arriving at Thame; 1,100 enlisted for service abroad. Hundreds of civilians preceded or straggled after them; hundreds more, chiefly nobles and gentlemen, accompanied Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice two days later, besides a large body which proceeded northward and westward, through St. Giles’s, with a convoy. Nevertheless, some two thousand remained behind, to whom passes were afterwards given by Fairfax. These consisted mainly of ‘gentlemen and their servants, scholars, citizens, and inhabitants, not properly of the garrison in pay,’ who had been specially permitted by the articles of surrender to choose their own time for departure. The military stores had contained no less than six months’ provision, and seventy barrels of powder were found in the magazine. Indeed, the writer of an official report, addressed to Speaker Lenthall, congratulates the Parliament on the bloodless capture of the great Royalist stronghold, especially as the surrounding fields were soon afterwards flooded, and siege operations would have been greatly impeded. Order now reigned again at Oxford, but the University and colleges were almost emptied of students, and utterly impoverished; notwithstanding which, some of them contributed out of their penury to relieve the poor of the city, and All Souls’ passed a self-denying ordinance ‘that there shall be only one meal a day between this and next Christmas, and so longer, if we shall see occasion.’ Anthony Wood’s brief description of the state of the University after the siege had often been quoted, but deserves a place in every history of the University, since it is the testimony of an eye-witness: ‘The colleges were much out of repair by the negligence of soldiers, courtiers, and others who lay in them; a few chambers which were the meanest (in some colleges none at all) being reserved for the use of the scholars. Their treasure and plate was all gone, the books of some libraries embezzled, and the number of scholars few, and mostly indigent. The halls (wherein, as in some colleges, ale and beer were sold by the penny in their respective butteries) were very ruinous. Further, also, having few or none in them except their respective Principals and families, the chambers in them were, to prevent ruin and injuries of weather, rented out to laicks. In a word, there was scarce the face of an University left, all things being out of order and disturbed.’ This description is confirmed by college records, still extant, one of which attests the desolation of Merton, so long occupied by the Queen’s retainers.

CHAPTER XII.
THE PARLIAMENTARY VISITATION AND THE COMMONWEALTH.

Measures preparatory to the Visitation

The Parliament, then dominated by Presbyterians, lost no time in preparing the University for the coming ‘reformation,’ by sending down seven Presbyterian divines with power to preach in any Oxford church. These preachers were all University men, and included Reynolds, Cheynell, Henry Wilkinson, and Corbet—four scholars of some repute, and less obnoxious than such army chaplains as Hugh Peters, who had already obtruded themselves into the Oxford pulpits. Wood ridicules the effort to convert the academical mind through Presbyterian discourses; but there is evidence that it was not without its effect, though it provoked opposition from the rising sect of the Independents, already established in Oxford, and good Churchmen were edified by a fierce disputation between Cheynell and one Erbury, an Independent army chaplain, formerly of Brasenose College, the favourite of the fanatical soldiery. At the same time a Parliamentary order was issued inhibiting elections to University or college offices, and the making or renewal of leases ‘until the pleasure of Parliament be made known therein.’ Such interventions were of course warmly resented by academical Royalists, especially as the King was still nominally in possession of his throne, and could only be justified on the assumption that sovereign authority now resided in the Parliament alone. On this assumption, however, they were in accordance with the policy of the four last Tudors, who had treated the University as a national institution, to be moulded into conformity with each successive modification of the National Church. Philip, Earl of Pembroke, who had been deposed in 1643 to make room for the Marquis of Hertford, now resumed his office, but does not appear to have exercised any moderating control over the counsels either of the Parliament or of the University. Meanwhile, the conflict between rival preachers and the suspension of academical independence naturally produced a state of anarchy in academical society, whose leading spirits were silently organising themselves against the coming Visitation.

Appointment of the Visitors and the Standing Committee of Parliament

The delay of the Parliament in commencing this Visitation may well have been due to more urgent claims on their energy. On January 30, 1647, the King had been given up at Newcastle to the Parliamentary commissioners, and other events of the greatest moment followed each other in quick succession. Presbyterianism was ostensibly established by the Westminster Assembly, but generally accepted by a small part only of the kingdom, and undermined by the hostility of the Independents. The so-called ‘Four Ordinances’ passed by Parliament, and designed to weaken the power of the army, had been met by a protest from a great meeting of officers held at Saffron Walden. This brought about an acute conflict between these rival powers, and ‘the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament’ were meditating their unsuccessful attempt to disband the army at the very time when they passed an ordinance, on May 1, 1647, ‘for the Visitation and Reformation of the University of Oxford and the several Colleges and Halls therein.’ The object of the Visitation was expressly defined to be ‘the due correction of offences, abuses, and disorders, especially of late times committed there.’ The Visitors were twenty-four in number, fourteen laymen and ten clergymen, with Sir Nathaniel Brent, Warden of Merton College, as the chairman; but the laymen gradually ceased to attend, and the work mainly fell into the hands of the clerical Visitors. Among the lay Visitors were several lawyers, including Brent himself and Prynne; among the clerical visitors were three fellows of Merton, and the Principal of Magdalen Hall, which, like Merton, was strongly tinged with Presbyterian opinions. The Visitors were instructed to inquire by oath concerning those who neglected to take the ‘Solemn League and Covenant’ or the ‘Negative Oath,’ those who opposed the execution of the orders of Parliament concerning the discipline and the Directory, those who contravened ‘any point of doctrine the ignorance whereof doth exclude from the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper,’ and those who had borne arms against the Parliament. By the same ordinance a Standing Committee of Lords and Commons was appointed to receive reports and hear appeals from the Visitors; but it soon outstepped these functions, and sometimes took upon itself the right of legislating directly for the University.

Early proceedings of the Visitors, and suppression of resistance from the University

The proceedings of the Visitors were opened by a citation issued upon May 15, 1647, summoning the University to appear before them on June 4, but an absurd informality led to an adjournment, which the events that followed the seizure of the King at Holmby House prolonged for three months. During the interval, a delegacy appointed by the University to conduct its defence had drawn up a very forcible statement of ‘Reasons’ for not submitting to the new tests about to be imposed. The moderation and ability of this statement did much to consolidate the opposition to the Visitation, furnished a repertory of materials for the answers afterwards made by individual colleges, and earned the special thanks of the Parliament held at Oxford in 1665. The internal struggles between the Presbyterians and the Independents favoured the University, but the Committee of Lords and Commons intervened and armed the Visitors with fresh powers, including that of compelling the production of documents, imprisoning the contumacious, and pronouncing definitive sentences of expulsion. This arbitrary commission, endorsed by the Chancellor of the University, was conferred upon the Visitors in the name of the king, himself a prisoner in the hands of the Parliament. On September 29, 1647, their operations actually commenced with prayers and preaching ‘for three hours together,’ after which all the Heads of Houses were cited to appear, Dean Fell of Christchurch being specially cited as vice-chancellor, and a number of resident fellows were appointed to act as assistants to the Visitors, ‘and to enquire into the behaviour of all Governours, Professors, Officers, and Members.’ A large majority of the University and college authorities offered a resolute though passive resistance, and when the vice-chancellor, as the avowed leader of the malcontents, was seized and imprisoned, the Visitors found their legal action more paralysed than ever for want of any constitutional authority through which their orders could be carried out. The London Committee, however, again came to their rescue, and on November 11, 1647, six Heads of colleges, with three canons of Christchurch, and the two proctors, were forced to appear before this Committee. Selden, Whitelocke, and others stood their friends, but the adverse majority prevailed, and sentence of deprivation was pronounced upon most of them. Still the Visitors’ orders were disregarded, and ‘not a man stirred from his place or removed.’ At last, on February 18, 1648, Reynolds was appointed vice-chancellor by the Earl of Pembroke, and the proctors superseded in favour of men who could be trusted—Crosse of Lincoln and Button of Merton; while the Chancellor himself was deputed, on March 8, to instal the new functionaries in office, and to bring the University into subjection. On March 30 a further order of deprivation was published, embracing the removal of Sheldon from the wardenship of All Souls’, and Hammond from his canonry of Christchurch. About the same time the Visitors were empowered to use the military force at their disposal, and on April 11 the Chancellor himself arrived to enforce obedience. He found the University in a state of almost open mutiny against the Parliament and the Visitors. In spite of fresh orders and the appearance of a body of troops sent down by Fairfax, the Heads of Houses sentenced to expulsion refused to quit their colleges, Mrs. Fell retained possession of the deanery in her husband’s absence, and when the members of Convocation were solemnly cited to meet the Visitors a mere handful responded. Great pains had been taken to mar the dignity of the Chancellor’s reception, and loyal pamphleteers lavished their bitterest jests on the absence of academical ceremony, the presence of soldiers, and the substitution of an English for a Latin address of welcome. But all serious resistance was now vain. During a stay of three days Pembroke was lodged at Merton, where the Visitors usually held their sittings in the Warden’s house, and had already abstracted the University register from the rooms of French, the registrar, who happened to be a fellow of the college. Reynolds was installed as vice-chancellor; ten Heads of colleges were actually ejected, most of the professors and canons of Christchurch shared the same fate; two vacant headships were immediately filled up, and worthy successors were appointed to most of the offices vacated by expulsion; new Masters of Arts were created, some imported from Cambridge, and the Visitors proceeded to purge each college with a view to its re-organisation.

Visitation of colleges. Submissions and expulsions

The details of these collegiate Visitations are beyond the scope of general University history, but they were all conducted on the same principle. Every member of the college, from the Head to the humblest servant, was asked whether he would submit. No evasions were allowed, and the ‘non-submitters’ were at once turned out. At a later period (November 1648) the London Committee insisted on the Visitors tendering also the Negative Oath, involving an abjuration of all connection with the King, his council, or his officers, and the refusal of this new test led to some further expulsions. After the lapse of a year, the London Committee went one step further, and required subscription to ‘the Engagement,’ pledging the signatories to a government without a King or House of Lords. Reynolds, Pocock, and Mills, who had taken all the former tests, resigned their offices rather than submit to this, but it does not seem to have been strictly or universally applied. No exact list of the cases in which the Visitors exercised their jurisdiction can now be made out, but the evidence preserved in the ‘Visitors’ Register,’ which has come down to us, leads to the conclusion that the numbers of the submissions and expulsions were nearly equal, amounting in each case to 400 or 500, and spread over several years. So obstinate was the resistance of some colleges that it was at last thought necessary to proclaim that any expelled members remaining in Oxford should incur the penalty of death. But the functions of the Visitors were by no means purely inquisitorial and judicial. They also superintended, and often personally directed, the whole internal management of colleges, regulating leases, dictating admissions to scholarships and fellowships, making arrangements for examinations, deciding on the rate of allowances, suggesting if not prescribing the alteration of statutes, and overriding corporate rights of self-government with a despotic air which Laud might have envied.

Reception of Fairfax and Cromwell

While they were thus engaged, Fairfax and Cromwell visited Oxford together in state on May 17, 1649. They were lodged and entertained at All Souls’, in the absence of the new Warden, now on duty in Parliament, by Zanchy, the sub-warden, and one of the proctors, who happened to be a colonel in the Parliamentary army. Both the generals received a D.C.L. degree, and Cromwell, addressing the University authorities on behalf of himself and Fairfax, professed his respect for the interests of learning, and assured them of his desire to promote these interests for the sake of the commonwealth. They dined at Magdalen, played bowls on the college green, had supper in the Bodleian Library, and attended University sermons at St. Mary’s. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the assurances given by Cromwell, who became Chancellor on the death of Pembroke, in January 1650. In this capacity, he not only presented the University with a collection of manuscripts, but resisted the reduction of academical endowments proposed by the Barebones Parliament, and supported by Milton; while Fairfax, himself a man of scholarlike tastes, had already proved his regard for the University when the city was in his power.

Second Board of Visitors

The first stage of the Visitation terminated in April 1652, when the London Committee was dissolved, and the Visitors ceased to act. Their work had been constantly interrupted by differences with the London Committee, whom they recognised as their official superiors, but who had of course little acquaintance with University affairs. These bodies were equally resolved to Presbyterianise the University, to make its education more emphatically religious, to strengthen moral discipline, and to enforce such rules as those against excess in dress, and even that which enjoined the colloquial use of Latin. They differed chiefly in their mode of action, the Visitors desiring to adopt a more conciliatory attitude, and to show more respect for academical independence than the London Committee was prepared to sanction. Several changes had taken place among the former, and the retirement of Reynolds had weakened the moderate party on a board which, however, remained distinctively Presbyterian. During the fourteen months between April 1652 and June 1653 the history of the University, like the Visitors’ Register, presents almost a blank. On September 9, 1652, Owen, who had succeeded Reynolds as Dean of Christchurch, was nominated vice-chancellor by Cromwell. On October 16 he was placed at the head of a commission to execute all the Chancellor’s official powers. With him were associated Goddard, the Warden of Merton; Wilkins, the Warden of Wadham; Goodwin, the President of Magdalen; and Peter French, prebendary of Christchurch; and the government of the University seems to have been practically transferred from the Visitors into their hands. Of these men, Goddard had been head physician to Cromwell’s army in Ireland, and afterwards in Scotland; Owen and Goodwin had been his chaplains, and thoroughly enjoyed his confidence; Wilkins was one of the most eminent scientific authorities of his time; French was Cromwell’s brother-in-law and had been on the Board of Visitors. All of these, except Wilkins, were appointed, with five others, to serve on a new and temporary Board of Visitors, for the creation of which the University itself had petitioned, in order to carry on the new academical settlement, with the expression of a hope that they might be fewer in number than before, and all resident. The proceedings of this Board, in which the Independents were more strongly represented, deserve but little notice. The process of weeding out the University and colleges having been completed, and strict rules laid down, little remained except to interpret these rules, to organise the new system, and to guard against the revival of abuses. The Visitors, however, agreed to meet every Monday and Tuesday, and succeeded in doing much useful work. In September 1654, the Board was reconstituted by Cromwell, who had been solemnly congratulated by the University on his assumption of the Protectorate in the previous December.

Third Board of Visitors, and conclusion of the Visitation

As Owen had been the ruling spirit on the second Board of Visitors, so this last was mainly dominated by the influence of Goodwin, and contained several additional members, some Presbyterians. It lasted no less than four years, but the records of its proceedings are but scanty, and chiefly relate to corrections of abuses, such as corrupt resignations of fellowships and irregular elections. In short, the Parliamentary Visitors, having placed the government of the University and colleges in hands which they regarded as trustworthy, were mainly occupied in discharging the functions which properly belonged to the Chancellor and the ordinary Visitors of the several colleges. In an appeal from Jesus College, they deliberately set aside the jurisdiction of the Earl of Pembroke as hereditary Visitor of that society. On the other hand, after Cromwell’s resignation of the chancellorship on July 3, 1657, they went so far as to lay before him their decision on an important case at All Souls’, and received from him an assurance ‘of all due encouragement and countenance from his Highnesse and the Councell.’ Even while they were claiming a paramount authority, the University was insensibly recovering its independence. As vice-chancellor and Dean of Christchurch, Owen was still a great power in the University, and supported a body of Delegates who proposed a sort of provisional constitution for the University under which independent representatives of Convocation would have been associated with the Visitors. In another instance, Owen sought to override a vote of Convocation against reforms which he proposed by the direct action of the Visitors and even of the Protector’s Council, but was foiled in the first attempt, and dissuaded from making the second. In fact, the University had begun to legislate again for itself, and was becoming somewhat impatient of being nursed and schooled by a meddlesome select committee of its own members. As Convocation alleged, ‘Visitors residing upon the place do rather nourish and ferment than appease differences,’ and there was a natural resentment against Heads of colleges acting as judges on their own causes. Having done its real work, the Visitation was perishing of inanition. After Richard Cromwell had been elected Chancellor in July 1657, he appointed Dr. Conant, Rector of Exeter, vice-chancellor, and from this moment Conant, whose importance had long been growing, became the real governor of the University. With a firmness and zeal for reform fully equal to Owen’s, he combined a more conciliatory and statesmanlike character, and while he resisted, as the champion of academical privileges, Cromwell’s scheme for a new University at Durham, he stoutly upheld the autonomy of colleges against the project for superseding all episcopal Visitors. Nevertheless, for six months after his nomination to the vice-chancellorship the Parliamentary Visitors continued to meet, and to make occasional orders, the last of which is dated April 8, 1658, when their register breaks off abruptly. It is not known how their commission was terminated, or whether it was terminated at all. By this time, however, it was beginning to be manifest that, after all, the old order in Church and State was regretted by a majority of the people, and that England was almost tired of Puritan despotism. Parliament itself had virtually established an amended monarchy with a new House of Lords, and the army alone had prevented Cromwell from assuming the title of King. No one was better aware than he of the reaction in popular sentiment, calling for a revival of the institutions so hastily demolished, and his prescient mind foreboded, if it did not actually foresee, the coming restoration of the Stuarts. In this last year of his life there was no force in the central government to push on further interference with Oxford. Moreover the University was now in good order, and possessed the confidence of the nation.

State of the University on the recovery of its independence

It is clear, indeed, from scattered notices of passing events, that its inner life had been less disturbed by the presence of the Visitors than we might infer from the space which they naturally fill in University history, and that since the close of the Civil War Oxford studies and habits had been gradually resuming their ordinary course. It is some proof of this that even during the Puritan interregnum no order was issued to put down the disorderly and indecorous buffoonery of the Terræ Filii, those self-constituted and privileged satirists whose sallies upon University dignitaries continued to scandalise graver censors of academical morals for several generations. When John Evelyn visited Oxford in 1654, and witnessed the celebration of the Act in St. Mary’s Church, he found ‘the ancient ceremonies and institutions as yet not wholly abolished,’ enjoyed the usual round of festivities, and admired the mechanical inventions contrived by Dr. Wilkins with the aid of young Christopher Wren. In the following year a coffee-house was opened opposite All Souls’ College, and largely frequented by Royalists and others ‘who esteemed themselves either virtuosi or wits,’ and in many a private house the services of the Church were regularly performed by clergymen in surplices, to congregations of gownsmen, with the full knowledge, if not the actual connivance, of Cromwell and the Visitors. The academical population was already larger than it had been in the reign of James I., and the University contained quite as many scholars and divines of established reputation. Throughout all the disorders and confusion incident to revolutionary times, it had never ceased to be respected as a home of religion and learning, and Clarendon himself bears unconscious witness to the character of the Visitation in the well-known passage which concludes his strictures upon it. For, after denouncing it as a reign of barbarism, he proceeds to say that, in spite of all, the University ‘yielded a harvest of extraordinary good and sound knowledge in all parts of learning, and many who were wickedly introduced applied themselves to the study of good learning and the practice of virtue, and had inclination to that duty and obedience they had never been taught, so that when it pleased God to bring King Charles the Second back to his throne, he found that University abounding in excellent learning, and devoted to duty and obedience little inferior to what it was before its desolation.’

CHAPTER XIII.
THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE RESTORATION AND THE REVOLUTION.

The Restoration and new Visitation of the University

On Monday, February 13, 1660, news was brought to Oxford that a ‘free Parliament,’ or Convention, was about to be assembled, and was hailed with great rejoicings as a sure presage of the coming Restoration. On May 29 Charles II. entered London, and in June a new set of Visitors appeared at Oxford to undo the work of their predecessors under the Commonwealth. This Visitation was issued at the instance, if not by the direct authority, of the Marquis of Hertford, who succeeded Richard Cromwell on his resignation in May on the King’s return, and who himself, dying in the following October, was succeeded by Clarendon. Wood draws a graphic picture of the various emotions pourtrayed in the countenances of the defeated and victorious parties at Oxford, the one plucking their hats over their eyes and foreseeing speedy retribution, the others with cheerful looks, and reinstating ‘all tokens of monarchy that were lately defaced or obscured in the University.’ Happily, the personal constitution of the commission was by no means exclusive, since at least eight of its members had submitted to the last Visitation, and held offices during the ‘usurpation,’ as it was now to be called. Their instructions, too, were mainly directed to a restitution of expelled Royalists, of whom the number had greatly dwindled in the interval, many having died or ‘changed their religion,’ while others, being married, were no longer eligible for college fellowships. It is said that not above one-sixth remained to be restored, but among these were several persons of considerable note. Sheldon had already regained the wardenship of All Souls’; Walker recovered the mastership of University; Oliver again became President of Magdalen; Yate, Principal of Brasenose; Newlin, President of Corpus; Potter, President of Trinity; Baylis, President of St. John’s; Mansell, Principal of Jesus; and Wightwick, Master of Pembroke. Reynolds was appointed in quick succession Dean of Christchurch and Warden of Merton, whence he was promoted to the see of Norwich in the following year. A large proportion of the fellows elected during the previous Visitation were allowed to keep their places, for which there were no rival claimants; others, though statutably elected, were turned out, but in some cases they were consoled with chaplaincies or other subordinate posts. Two or three months sufficed to complete these personal changes, but a royal letter re-established all the statutes and regulations in force before the ‘usurpation,’ including the oaths introduced under James I., and this letter, coupled with the Act of Uniformity passed in 1662, must have rendered the positions of many Puritans at Oxford practically untenable. By a clause in that Act, it was for the first time required that every person elected to a college fellowship should make a declaration of conformity to the liturgy of the Church of England in the presence of the vice-chancellor. Such a provision had a sensible effect in making Oxford once more a seminary of the clergy and country gentry, but there was no violent break in the continuity of its corporate life. For some little time after the Restoration, the University was in an unsettled state, and the students, released from the bondage of Puritan discipline, betrayed some pardonable excitement; but good order revived under a succession of prudent vice-chancellors, and Oxford, so long the battle-ground of rival parties in the State, enjoyed comparative repose under Charles II.

Extension of University buildings. Sheldonian Theatre

Several improvements in the external features of the city and University may be dated from this reign. Not the least was the erection of the famous Sheldonian Theatre for the performance of the annual Acts, now known as ‘Commemorations,’ and other academical solemnities. This building was founded by Gilbert Sheldon, who, having resumed the wardenship of All Souls’ in 1660, and become Archbishop of Canterbury in 1663, was elected Chancellor in succession to Clarendon in 1667. In common with many Anglicans of the Laudian school, Sheldon had long objected to the profanation of St. Mary’s Church involved in the use of it as a kind of academical town-hall for scholastic exercises and secular displays. Perhaps the contempt of the Puritans for sacred edifices had quickened the zeal of Royalists for their dedication to strictly religious purposes; at all events, the archbishop offered 1,000l. towards the construction of a suitable theatre, and, meeting with little support from others, ultimately took upon himself the whole cost, amounting to 25,000l. The mode in which the site was procured illustrates the change which was already passing over mediæval Oxford, now in process of conversion from a fortified into an open town. Though a great part of the walls was preserved, and the city gates survived for another century, the ditch was being filled up and new streets constructed along the course of it. Several houses adjoining the old ramparts were purchased on the north side of the Divinity School; Christopher Wren was engaged as the architect, and Streeter as the painter of the pictures which adorn the ceiling; and the building, having been commenced in 1664, was completed in 1669—the year in which the Divinity School was restored according to Wren’s designs. John Evelyn received a degree at the first academical festival held in it, and was as much impressed by the grandeur of the spectacle and the learning of the discourses as he was shocked by the vulgar ribaldry of the Terræ Filius. It is worthy of notice that in the address delivered on this occasion by Dr. South, as Public Orator, were ‘some malicious and indecent reflections on the Royal Society, as underminers of the University.’ That society, in fact, passed through much of its infancy, if it did not take its birth, at Oxford. Among its earliest and most influential members were Dr. Wilkins, the Warden of Wadham, Dr. Goddard, the Warden of Merton, and Dr. Wallis, a Cambridge man, who afterwards became Savilian professor of geometry in Oxford. These and others were in the habit of meeting for scientific discussions at Goddard’s lodgings, or Gresham College, in London, before the end of the Civil War, but about 1649 all three of them were settled in Oxford, where they found congenial associates in such men as William Petty, Robert Boyle, and Wren, and resumed their meetings in Petty’s or Wilkins’ lodgings, while the rest continued to meet in London.

Growth of æsthetic tastes and social refinement

Other facts attest the variety of intellectual life and interests at Oxford during the same period. Evelyn speaks of an organ as placed in the upper gallery of the theatre, and of ‘excellent music, both vocal and instrumental,’ as part of the programme at the opening of the Sheldonian Theatre. The earliest order for the apportionment of seats assigns that very gallery ‘for the performance of music,’ while it allots places to ladies, strangers, and ‘Cambridge scholars.’ Thenceforth music played a considerable part among academical recreations, and a taste for the belles-lettres and the fine arts was rapidly developed. In 1677, the Arundel marbles were presented to the University by the Earl of Arundel, mainly owing to the assiduous exertions of John Evelyn; on May 24, 1683, the Ashmolean Museum was opened, and in the next month Convocation accepted Elias Ashmole’s gift of all his ‘rarities,’ consisting of valuable collections in natural history and antiquities. A certain air of literary dilettantism was characteristic of the same age at the University as well as in the metropolis. Under a statute passed in 1662, bachelors of Arts were required, before inception, to recite from memory two Latin declamations of their own composition, and from this period may be dated the gradual triumph of Literæ Humaniores over scholastic disputations in the examination-system of Oxford. Versification in Latin now became a favourite pastime of Oxford scholars, and many poems of doubtful Latinity on the politics or philosophy of the day were composed there during the latter half of the seventeenth century. In the meanwhile, modern notions of comfort were beginning to modify the old austerity of college life. The earliest of Oxford common-rooms was instituted at Merton College in 1661, and sixteen years later Anthony Wood mentions ‘common chambers’ together with alehouses (of which there were said to be above 370), and the newly established ‘coffea-houses,’ as contributing to the decay of ‘solid and serious learning.’ College gardens, too, received far more attention than before, and we may still trace on Loggan’s maps and plans the geometrical designs upon which these little plots were ingeniously laid out by the Caroline landscape-gardeners, though Magdalen ‘water walks’ retained their native wildness.

First visit of Charles II.

Charles II. twice visited Oxford, where his presence and example could scarcely have been conducive to virtue or decorum among the students. His reign is marked by frequent interference with the freedom of college elections, in the form of attempts to use fellowships as rewards for his favourites or the relations of old cavaliers, though in more than one instance he gracefully retracted his mandate. When he arrived at Oxford from Salisbury, in September 1665, the plague was at its height in London. There he remained until the following February, lodging, as usual, at Christchurch, while the Queen was accommodated at Merton, residing in the very rooms in which her mother-in-law, Henrietta Maria, held her Court during the Civil War. Miss Stuart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond, occupied a fellow’s rooms in the same college, and another set was assigned to Barbara Villiers, Lady Castlemaine, and afterwards Duchess of Cleveland. In these rooms, on December 28, 1665, was born her son, George Villiers, afterwards Earl of Northumberland and Duke of Grafton. It is stated in the college register that bachelor fellows and scholars were turned out of their chambers to make room for the Court, and that as there were more ladies than students in the chapel, ‘ordinary prayers’ were used in the service.

Second visit of Charles II. Parliament assembled and dissolved at Oxford

Sixteen years had elapsed before Charles II. again visited Oxford, in the spring of 1681, to open the last Parliament ever held in the city, supposing that Whig members would there be subjected to loyalist influences, and more amenable to his own dictation. The supposed discovery of the ‘Popish Plot’ in 1678 had provoked a fresh outburst of Protestant enthusiasm and bigotry. An Act had been passed disabling all Papists, except the Duke of York, from sitting in either House of Parliament, and was quickly followed by a Bill to exclude the Duke of York from the succession. To arrest the progress of this Bill, two Parliaments had been dissolved by the King, and that summoned to meet at Oxford lasted but a week. The King journeyed thither surrounded by his guards of horse and foot, while the Exclusionist leaders were escorted by hosts of friends and armed retainers. On this occasion, the schools of geometry, astronomy, and Greek were fitted up for the House of Lords, the Convocation House being adapted to receive the Commons. The Commons again brought in the Exclusion Bill. The King met it with a strange proposal that, after his own death, the government should be carried on in James’s name by the Prince of Orange as Regent. The Commons persisted with the Bill, whereupon the Parliament was suddenly dissolved by the King, who had quietly put the crown and robes of state into a sedan chair, got into it himself, and surprised both Houses by his sudden appearance to close the session. During this short crisis, anti-Papist sentiments found expression among the gownsmen, but we may safely assume that a majority of graduates were secretly in favour of the King against the Exclusionists. Anthony Wood, remarking on the decline of students in 1682, attributes it to three causes. The first is the constant expectation of another Parliament to be held at Oxford, and the fear of being turned out to make room for members. The second is that ‘all those that we call Whigs’ (a name just invented) ‘and side with the Parliament, will not send their sons for fear of their being Tories.’ The last is that the University, like the Episcopal bench, labours under the suspicion of a leaning towards Popery.

Doctrine of passive resistance adopted by the University. Expulsion of Locke

In the following year, the University was afforded a good opportunity for demonstrating its sympathy with the Duke of York by the disclosure of the so-called ‘Rye House Plot.’ Accordingly, on July 21, 1683, Convocation passed a decree again condemning the doctrine that resistance to a king is lawful, which doctrine it formulated in six propositions expressly stated to have been culled from the works of Milton, Baxter, and Goodwin. By the same decree, however, the University recorded an equally solemn anathema against other heresies mostly founded on the despotic principles of Hobbes’ ‘Leviathan,’ thereby anticipating the verdict of the country in 1688. Within three months of his death, Charles II., acting on these principles, was betrayed into a strange piece of intolerance, more worthy of his successor, in which he was abetted by the Chapter of Christchurch, and of which the illustrious John Locke was the victim. On November 5, 1684, a letter was addressed by Sunderland to Dr. John Fell, Dean of Christchurch and Bishop of Oxford, directing him to ‘have Locke removed from being a student.’ Fell replied that Locke had been carefully watched for years, but had never been heard to utter a disloyal word against the government, notwithstanding which he basely offered to procure his removal on receipt of an order from the King, and actually did so.

Conduct of the University on the outbreak of Monmouth’s rebellion. James II.’s treatment of Magdalen College

In the first year of James II.’s reign, the University of Oxford was once more stirred by martial ardour, when the Duke of Monmouth landed in Dorsetshire. Volunteers from the colleges mustered in great force to oppose him; a troop of horse and a regiment of foot were enrolled under the Earl of Abingdon, and the victory of Sedgemoor was celebrated with academical bonfires, in which, for once, the City took part. A week later, upon a false alarm, the volunteers were again called out, but soon disbanded. With that strange ignorance of his countrymen which ultimately proved his ruin, James interpreted these signs of loyalty as pledges of abject devotion to his person, and proceeded to strain the well-tried fidelity of the University by gross outrages on its privileges. The grand secret of his fatuous statecraft was the use of the dispensing power, as its end was the supremacy of the Crown and the restoration of the ancient faith. Having obtained an opinion from the judges favourable to this dispensing power, he had bestowed commissions in the army and Church preferments on several professed Romanists. Fell was succeeded as Dean by Massey, an avowed Papist, nominated by James, and soon afterwards both the Universities were attacked by the new Court of High Commission. Cambridge boldly refused to obey a royal mandate for the admission of a Benedictine to a degree without taking the usual oath. A severer ordeal was prepared for Oxford. With such instruments as Obadiah Walker, the Master of University, the King seriously meditated the conversion of the University, and dispensations were granted for establishing Romanistic services in colleges. By the Declaration of Indulgence, issued in 1687, James assumed to make Roman Catholics admissible to corporations; and the colleges appeared to offer a favourable trial ground for the experiment. All Souls’ had just escaped a royal mandate for the election of a Roman Catholic to its wardenship by electing an extreme Tory of doubtful character, who had friends at Court. The presidentship of Magdalen College was now vacant, and Farmer, a Papist of notoriously bad character, was recommended for it by royal letters. The fellows refused to comply, justifying their refusal on the ground that James’s nominee was not only unfit for the office but was also disqualified by their statutes. Accordingly, after vainly petitioning the King to withdraw his command, they elected Hough, one of their own body, to whom no exception could be taken. The election was confirmed by the Visitor, but annulled by the new Court of High Commission, under the presidency of Jefferies, who treated a deputation from the college with brutal insolence. The King then issued another order, commanding the college to elect Parker, bishop of Oxford, an obsequious tool of his own policy. He even came to Oxford in person, on September 4, 1687, in order to enforce obedience, and did not scruple to intimidate the fellows with rude threats of his royal displeasure in case they should prove contumacious. The conduct of Magdalen on this occasion was eminently constitutional, and had no slight influence in determining the attitude of the nation. The fellows maintained their rights firmly but respectfully, and unanimously declined submission to any arbitrary authority. Thereupon a commission was appointed with full powers to dispossess all recusants by military force, and the new President and twenty-five fellows were actually ejected and declared incapable of Church preferment. Parker died within a twelvemonth, but James substituted one Gifford, a Papist of the Sorbonne, and was proceeding to repeople the college with Roman Catholics when the acquittal of the Seven Bishops and the invitation to William of Orange suddenly opened his eyes to his real position. During the month of October 1688 he made desperate efforts to save himself from ruin, restoring many officers deprived of their commissions, dissolving the Ecclesiastical Commission, and removing Sunderland and Petre from his council. In this death-bed fit of repentance he addressed letters to the bishop of Winchester, as Visitor of Magdalen, reinstating the ejected fellows, who, however, had scarcely returned before James had abdicated, and William and Mary had been proclaimed.

CHAPTER XIV.
UNIVERSITY POLITICS BETWEEN THE REVOLUTION AND THE ACCESSION OF GEORGE III.

Attitude of the University towards the Revolution. Visit of William III.

The Revolution of 1688-9 seems to have been quietly accepted at Oxford as an irrevocable fact rather than welcomed as the consecration of civil and religious liberty. For a while, indeed, the outrageous invasion of academical privileges by James II. produced its natural effect, and deputies from the University were despatched to salute William III. at Crewkerne, after his landing in Torbay. William actually came as far as Abingdon, but, there receiving news of James’s flight, sent to excuse himself, and hurried on towards London. Burnet tells us that, at the same time, and at his request, the ‘Association,’ or pledge to support him in restoring order and liberty, was signed by almost all the Heads of colleges and the chief men of the University. But he adds that some of the signatories, ‘being disappointed in the preferments they aspired to, became afterwards King William’s most implacable enemies.’ At all events, reactionary tendencies gradually manifested themselves, and it is said that Locke, who had little cause for gratitude to Oxford, urged the King to reform the Universities once more, alleging that otherwise the work of the Revolution ‘would all soon go back.’ William had been recognised as a deliverer, but Oxford loyalists had not abandoned their allegiance to the Stuart dynasty, however inconsistent with their submission to William as king de facto by the will of a Parliamentary majority. It was not until the autumn of 1695, after the death of Mary, and the complete transfer of power to the Whigs, that he found time to visit the University, for a few hours only, on his way from Woodstock to Windsor. He was received by the Chancellor, the second Duke of Ormond, and one of a family which, as representing the high Tory aristocracy, held this office, as if by hereditary right, for a period of ninety years. All the usual ceremonies were observed; a select body of Doctors and Masters ‘rode out in their gowns to meet the King’ a mile on the Woodstock road, and a grand procession conducted him down the High Street to the east gate of the schools, through which he passed directly to the theatre, where a sumptuous banquet was prepared for him. Evelyn states that, being coldly received, he declined the banquet and barely stayed an hour; according to another report, in itself improbable, the fear of poison deterred him from tasting the refreshments provided. However this may be, he certainly never courted or acquired popularity at the University, which henceforth became a hotbed of Jacobite disaffection for at least two generations.

Origin of Oxford Jacobitism. Visit of Queen Anne

The exact source of this sentiment is somewhat difficult to ascertain, but it was probably a survival of the Puritan Visitation, and was doubtless connected with hearty respect for the Non-jurors, to whose ranks, however, Oxford contributed fewer resident members than Cambridge. But Oxford Churchmen assuredly cherished a genuine hatred of the latitudinarian opinions attributed to William III., and afterwards patronised by Whig statesmen. Whatever may have been its source, and whether it was in the nature of a settled conviction or of an inveterate fashion, Jacobite partisanship was shared alike by ‘dons’ and by undergraduates, it was the one important element in the external history of the University under the first two Georges, and, like Scotch Jacobitism, it retained a sort of poetical existence up to a still later period. In their opposition to the Comprehension Scheme promoted by the King, the University of Oxford was supported by that of Cambridge, in which there long continued to be a strong Jacobite minority, but which, by comparison with Oxford, soon came to be regarded as a nursery of Whig principles. Still the commission appointed to prepare a scheme of Comprehension included the names of Aldrich, afterwards dean of Christchurch, who had succeeded the Romanist Massey, and Jane, Regius Professor of divinity, who had been converted from extreme Toryism by James II.’s aggression on Magdalen, but was reconverted by William III.’s neglect of his claims to a bishopric. The hopes of a Jacobite reaction, excited by the accession of Queen Anne, found an enthusiastic echo in the University. On July 16, 1702, a grand ‘Philological Exercise’ was celebrated in the theatre for the special purpose of honouring the new Queen. On August 26 of the same year, Queen Anne herself visited Oxford, where a fierce struggle for precedence at her reception took place between the University and City, which afterwards showed more respect for the Stuart dynasty in exile than when it was on the throne. Burnet complains bitterly of the clerical Toryism and ecclesiastical bigotry which prevailed at Oxford in 1704, accusing the University of ‘corrupting the principles’ of its students. Hearne, the learned Oxford chronicler, writing on September 2, 1705, notices a thanksgiving sermon preached by a Mr. Evans, of St. John’s, a clergyman of doubtful character, of which Dr. Lloyd, bishop of Worcester, said that ‘he was very glad there was one even in Oxford that would speak for King William.’ He adds, three days later, that Evans had talked mightily of publishing this sermon, but that ‘there is none in Oxford will print a thing so scandalously partial against the Church of England.’

Popularity of Sacheverell. Position of the Whig minority

During the furious outbreak of High Church fanaticism, which rallied the mass of English clergy and shattered the Whig ascendency at the end of 1709, the gownsmen were active partisans of Dr. Sacheverell, himself a graduate of Magdalen. The vice-chancellor came forward as surety for him, Atterbury, the future dean of Christchurch, defended him with great ability, and Oxford afterwards gave him an enthusiastic reception. The House of Lords marked its sense of this disloyalty in the following year by causing the famous University decree of 1683 to be publicly burned, together with Sacheverell’s sermons. No sooner did Queen Anne disavow her Whig advisers and place herself openly under Tory influences, than Oxford, undeterred by this rebuke, paraded its Toryism without disguise, and, had it retained its old place in national politics, the Hanoverian succession would have encountered a still more formidable opposition. But the Whig oligarchy again saved the country. After four years of Tory policy, another crisis occurred, the Tory ministry broke up, the great Whig lords forced their way into the council chamber, the Hanoverian succession was secured, and Queen Anne opportunely died. The accession of the Elector of Hanover was received at Oxford with sullen disappointment, but the Heads of Houses consulted their own interests by offering a reward of 100l. for the discovery of an unknown person who had delivered at the mayor’s house a letter protesting against the proclamation of George I. He was proclaimed, nevertheless, at St. Mary’s, as well as at Carfax, but the scantiness of the attendance and shabbiness of the procession was remarked with satisfaction by the Tories. Baffled in their hopes of support in the highest quarter, the Tory democracy of the University took refuge in libels, disloyal toasts, and offensive lampoons. The Whig gownsmen, few as they were, and mostly confined to New College, Oriel, and Merton, had an influential protector in Gardiner, the Warden of All Souls’, and vice-chancellor from 1712 to 1715, himself a moderate Tory, but resolute in saving the University from the risk of casting in its lot with the Pretender. They formed themselves into a club, which they called the ‘Constitution Club,’ and to which no one below the rank of B.A. was eligible. This club soon became the chief object of Tory resentment, at last culminating in a riot which called for the intervention of the government.

Jacobite demonstrations. A troop of horse sent to Oxford

On May 28, 1715, being the first anniversary of George I.’s birthday since his accession, the Whig club had assembled to commemorate the day at the King’s Head tavern. They were attacked by a Tory mob, and a fray ensued, which broke out afresh on the following day, being the Restoration-day. The Heads of Houses, and even the grand jury for the county, sheltered the aggressors, and reserved all their rebukes for the obnoxious club. The government naturally took a different view of the case, and called for explanations. Feeling that matters, had gone far enough, the University authorities took means to suppress Jacobite demonstrations on June 10, the Pretender’s birthday; but they were at no pains to conceal their real inclinations. On the impeachment and resignation of Ormond, the University hastened to elect his brother, the Earl of Arran, as his successor in the chancellorship, and conferred the degree of D.C.L. on Sir Constantine Phipps, a Tory of Tories, with special marks of honour, while its representatives in Parliament were prominent leaders of the same party. At last the patience of the government was exhausted. On the birthday of the Prince of Wales there were no signs of rejoicing, and complaint of this omission was made to the mayor by an officer in command of a recruiting party then in Oxford. Another disturbance ensued, of which conflicting accounts were sent to London, and the whole affair came before the House of Lords in the course of a debate on the Mutiny Bill. The University was ably represented, and a plausible defence was offered on its behalf, but the verdict of the House was unfavourable. In the meantime, an address to the Crown voted by the University on the outbreak of the rebellion in Scotland had met with the reception which its insincerity deserved, and the government determined to employ decisive measures. A body of dragoons under Major-General Pepper entered Oxford, martial law was at once proclaimed, and the students were ordered to remain within their colleges on pain of being marched off to military execution. After a few seizures had been made, the dragoons were replaced by Colonel Handyside’s regiment of foot, which continued to be quartered in Oxford for the express purpose of overawing the University—no unnecessary measure when a rebellion of unknown extent had been planned not only in Scotland and the north of England but in the western counties. It was on this occasion that an Oxford wit contrasted the King’s severe treatment of Oxford with his munificent present of a library to Cambridge in lines which, together with the Cambridge repartee, have become historical.

The Constitution Club. Government scheme for reforming the University

On May 29 of the following year, while Colonel Handyside’s regiment was still in Oxford, the Constitution Club was again the scene of a political commotion, though of a less serious nature. Meadowcourt, the steward of the club, having forced the junior proctor to drink the King’s health, was suspended from his degree for the space of two years; and it was further ordered that he should not be allowed to supplicate for his grace ‘until he confesses his manifold crimes and asks pardon upon his knees.’ In spite of the King’s Act of Grace, to which he skilfully appealed, he was twice refused his M.A. degree. He lived, however, to bring the disaffection of the University under the notice of the government in 1719, when the vice-chancellor refused to notice a disloyal sermon preached by Warton, though he was disappointed to receive no more than a letter of thanks for his zeal. Other Whigs endured similar persecutions; the Whig satirist, Amherst, was driven out of St. John’s College, and social penalties were freely inflicted on members of Merton, Exeter, Christchurch, and Wadham, then suspected of being anti-Jacobite societies. The Constitution Club died out before the end of George I.’s reign, and many academical Whigs became so disheartened as to conceal their principles or even to affect Toryism for the sake of preferment. Indeed, the avowed hostility of Oxford and the doubtful fidelity of Cambridge to the reigning dynasty were regarded with so much anxiety at Court that it was seriously contemplated to introduce a Bill to suspend the constitution of both Universities. The draught of this Bill empowered the ‘King to nominate and appoint all and every the Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Proctors, and other officers of the said Universities, and all Heads of Houses, Fellows, Students, Chaplains, Scholars, and Exhibitioners, and all members of and in all and every the College and Colleges, Hall and Halls in the said Universities or either of them, upon all and every vacancy and vacancies,’ &c. This provisional administration was to last for seven years, and the project of it was approved by fifteen bishops. Lord Macclesfield, the Lord Chancellor, had drawn up a separate plan of reform with the same object of controlling the University through government patronage. The election of Heads was to be vested in the great officers of State, with the concurrence of the Visitor and the bishop. The disposition of all other college emoluments was to be placed in the hands of a commission. The fellowships were to be limited to a term of twenty years, lest they should conduce to idleness and self-indulgence. Professorships and minor fellowships charged with educational duties were to be founded. The benefices of the Crown and the nobility were to be conferred only on ‘well-affected persons.’ Colleges in which ‘honest and loyal men’ predominate were to be specially favoured in the distribution of Crown patronage, ‘till the true interest in them was become superior to all opposition.’ Happily wiser counsels prevailed, and there is reason to believe that Archbishop Wake was largely instrumental in averting the danger. He knew that Oxford Tories could only be influenced through Tory leaders, and discreetly used such mediation to keep the factious spirit of the University within tolerable bounds, until the design against its independence was abandoned. But George I. never deigned to visit Oxford, being the first sovereign who had failed to do so since the reign of Mary.

Gradual decline of Jacobitism in Oxford during the reign of George II.

During the earlier years of Walpole’s administration the University seems to have been comparatively free from political turmoil. Many of the gownsmen, however, took part with the citizens in the disorderly revels, lasting for three nights, which celebrated the withdrawal of the Excise Bill, in 1733, when the healths of Ormond, Bolingbroke, and James III. were publicly drunk round the bonfires. On the other hand, in the following year the University accorded an enthusiastic reception to the Prince of Orange, who came to marry the Princess Anne. The city shared in these festivities, conferring its freedom upon the prince at the north gate on his return from Blenheim, while bell-ringing, illuminations, and bonfires were kept up for three nights together. Still covert Jacobitism found expression in the University pulpit, and John Wesley, desiring to guard himself against the imputation of it when he preached before the University in 1734, got the vice-chancellor to read and approve his sermon beforehand. Even after the suppression of the rebellion in 1745 it was not extinct, and in 1748 the government resorted to somewhat excessive severity against three students who had toasted the Pretender, although the vice-chancellor and proctors, apprehensive of the result, had issued a peremptory order declaring their resolution to put down seditious practices. Further proceedings were instituted against the vice-chancellor and the University itself, but the motion was negatived by the Court. The government, however, was not appeased. When the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was proclaimed at Oxford, the vice-chancellor, Heads of Houses, professors, and proctors took care to participate in public rejoicings with the mayor and corporation, but a congratulatory address from the University on this event was rejected with disdain. The loyalty of the University was still justly distrusted. In 1754 Dr. King, a notorious Jacobite, and Principal of St. Mary Hall, elicited rounds of applause from the whole audience in the theatre, filled with peers, members of Parliament, and country gentlemen, by thrice pausing upon the word Redeat, purposely introduced into his speech to gratify ‘the Old Interest.’ No wonder that in the same year Pitt denounced Oxford Jacobitism in the House of Commons; notwithstanding which, in the following year (1755), a Tory and Jacobite mob, guarding the approaches to the polling-booths at the county election for days together, prevented the Whigs from giving their votes. Again, in 1759, Lord Westmoreland, who had been a zealous Hanoverian, but had afterwards turned Jacobite out of resentment against Sir Robert Walpole, was elected by the University as its Chancellor. Yet the days of Oxford Jacobitism were already numbered; it was well nigh dead as a creed, and it soon ceased to be a fashion. The marvellous victories of the same year kindled genuine enthusiasm among the gownsmen, and a most fulsome address was presented to George II. by the Oxford Convocation, begging ‘leave to approach your sacred person with hearts full of duty and affection,’ and applauding the measures taken ‘for the support of the Protestant religion and the liberties of Europe.’

Revival of loyalty after the accession of George III. His visits to Oxford

With the accession of George III. Jacobitism disappeared or faded into Toryism of the modern type. In its congratulatory address the University took special credit to itself for having been ‘ever faithful to monarchy on the most trying occasions.’ The King’s reply was guarded, recommending ‘sound principles of religious and civil duties early instilled into the minds of youth.’ His advice seems to have been adopted; at all events, we hear no more of academical Jacobitism, loyalty to George III. became fashionable, Dr. King himself appeared at Court, and the University was probably sincere when, in 1763, it proposed inviolable ‘attachment to your Majesty’s person and government.’ It may perhaps have been in recognition of this salutary change in its attitude that in 1768 the Speaker of the House of Commons paid it an elaborate compliment, in censuring the authorities of Oxford City for a gross act of political corruption, specially recommending for imitation the conduct of their learned neighbour. In the following year, the University presented another address to the Crown deprecating political agitation ‘under pretence of defending civil and religious liberties,’ and assuring his Majesty of its determination to imbue its students with sound principles. By a happy inconsistency, academical loyalists now managed to reconcile their old worship of the king de jure with a hearty acceptance of the Hanoverian succession. Probably Dr. Nowell, Principal of St. Mary Hall, fairly represented these sentiments when he reasserted the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience in a sermon preached before the House of Commons in 1772, for which he was first thanked and then censured. It deserves notice, however, that a more liberal spirit already made itself felt in regard to religious toleration. Though Sir Roger Newdigate, on behalf of the University, stoutly opposed the relief of clergymen from subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, a strong minority in the Oxford Convocation supported, in February 1773, a proposal for requiring from candidates for matriculation only a declaration of conformity to the worship and liturgy of the Established Church. An attempt was afterwards made to qualify the effect of subscription by appending to the statute requiring it an explanatory note whereby it was virtually reduced to a declaration of conformity, but the legal validity of such an enactment was challenged, and the proposal was quietly dropped. In March 1779, a petition was presented by the University, through its chancellor, Lord North, against the Dissenters’ Toleration Bill, then before Parliament. This petition embodied a protest against the principle of allowing dissenting ministers and schoolmasters to preach and teach without making any profession of belief in Christianity or revelation, but the petitioners were careful to describe themselves as friends of toleration, so far as it could be reconciled with the interests of Christianity and the Established Church. These were the sentiments of the King himself, and a crowning proof of its fidelity to George III. was given by the University in 1783, when it publicly thanked the King for dismissing the Coalition Ministry (including its own Chancellor), and giving his confidence to Pitt—a service which the king rewarded by visiting Oxford twice from Nuneham Park, in 1785 and 1786. On each occasion he received an enthusiastic welcome, but as it was in the middle of the Long Vacation, he stayed but a few hours, and the traditional solemnities of royal visits were not repeated. A like enthusiasm was shown by the University on his recovery from his first illness in 1788.

CHAPTER XV.
UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

Decay of University education in the eighteenth century

If we seek to estimate the intellectual life of Oxford during the century following the Revolution, we find a significant dearth of trustworthy materials. Such evidence as we possess, however, justifies on the whole the received opinion that this period is the Dark Age of academical history. The impulse given to culture and scholarship by the new learning of the Renaissance had died away as completely as that given by the scholastic revival of the thirteenth century, and nothing came in to supply its place. The old disputations were almost obsolete, the Laudian system of examinations had fallen into scandalous abuse, the sex solemnes lectiones required for the B.A. degree had degenerated into ‘wall lectures’ read in an empty school. The practice of cramming, however, was unknown, and there were no artificial restrictions to prevent Oxford becoming a paradise of mature study and original research.

Contemporary evidence

Unhappily, it was far otherwise. Though undergraduates were freely admitted to the Bodleian Library, and it was frequently enriched by donations, we learn that between 1730 and 1740 many days passed without there being a single reader there, and it was rare for more than two books to be consulted in a day. Dean Prideaux, who had long resided in Oxford, professes, in 1691, ‘an unconquerable aversion to the place,’ doubtless aggravated by his impatience of Jacobite ascendency in the University, but partly founded on his conviction of its decline as a seat of education. Hearne, writing in 1726, declared that in nearly all the colleges the fellows were busied in litigation and quarrels having no connection with the promotion of learning, adding that ‘good letters miserably decay every day, insomuch that this Ordination on Trinity Sunday at Oxford there were no fewer (as I am informed) than fifteen denied Orders for insufficiency—which is the more to be noted, because our bishops and those employed by them are themselves generally illiterate men.’ Similar complaints against the degeneracy of University teaching abound in eighteenth-century literature. Adam Smith, in particular, attributes the inefficiency of tutors and professors chiefly to the fact of their being paid by fixed stipends instead of by fees. Johnson testifies that he learned very little at Pembroke College; Lord Malmesbury regarded his two years at Merton College as the most unprofitable of his life; Swift represents drinking strong ale and smoking tobacco as the chief accomplishments—not indeed of all students, but of ‘young heirs’ sent to Oxford in deference to custom; Lord Chesterfield speaks of the University as known only for its ‘treasonable spirit,’ and says that, having been at Oxford himself, he resolved not to send his son there; Lord Eldon describes the degree-examination in his own time as merely nominal. But perhaps the most emphatic condemnation of the Oxford system in the eighteenth century is supplied by the historian Gibbon, whose reminiscences of his own University career are often quoted as conclusive evidence on the state of the University in 1752-3. He laments the fourteen months which he spent at Magdalen College as the ‘most idle and unprofitable of his whole life.’ He declares that ‘in the University of Oxford, the greater part of the Public Professors have for these many years given up even the pretence of teaching.’ He testifies that, in his time, ‘the Fellows of Magdalen were decent easy men who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the Founder; their days were filled by a series of uniform employments: the chapel and the hall, the coffee-house and the common-room; till they retired, weary and well-satisfied, to a long slumber. From the toil of reading, or thinking, or writing, they had absolved their conscience.’ He proceeds to allege that gentlemen-commoners were left to educate themselves, that ‘the obvious methods of public exercises and examinations were totally unknown,’ that no superintendence was exercised over the relations of tutors with their pupils, that his own tutor, though a good old-fashioned scholar, took no pains to stimulate or encourage his industry, and that he was allowed to make ‘a tour to Bath, a visit into Buckinghamshire, and four excursions into London, in the same winter.’

Decline in numbers and dearth of eminence in science and literature

We cannot but acknowledge that Gibbon’s estimate of the University in the middle of the century is confirmed by an examination of University records. If we may judge by the statistics of matriculation, the nation at large had lost confidence in Oxford education, for the annual number of admissions, which had often exceeded 300 in the reigns of Anne and George I., never reached that modest total between 1726 and 1810, while it often fell below 200 about the end of George II.’s reign. It is equally certain that Oxford contributed far less than in former ages to politics or literature. In learning it was distanced by Cambridge, where the modern examination system was developed earlier, and where the immortal researches of Newton and the solid learning of Bentley had raised the ideal of academical study. But the real intellectual leadership of the country was transferred from both Universities to London. Indeed, London itself was no longer the only non-academical centre of science, art, and culture; for even provincial towns, like Birmingham and Manchester, Derby and Bristol, Norwich, Leeds, and Newcastle, were already acquiring an industrial independence, and intellectual life, of their own. The Methodist Revival, indeed, of which Gibbon was probably unconscious, owed its origin to a small band of enthusiasts at Oxford.[15] But, except Methodism, the great movements of thought which underlay the artificial society of the eighteenth century had no connection with the University, and the minds which dominated the world of politics and literature were trained in a wholly different school. The broad constructive ideas, and ‘encyclopædic spirit,’ as it has been well called, which animated so many writers and politicians of that age, in all the countries of western Europe, had little or no place in the University of Oxford. It was hardly to be expected that engineers and inventors, like Watt, Arkwright, and Brindley, should have received an University education, nor do we look in degree-lists for the names of eminent soldiers like Wellington, or nautical explorers like Cook. But it is certainly remarkable that so many English poets and humourists—Pope and Gay, Defoe, Smollett, and Hogarth—should have received no University education, while Swift, Congreve, and Goldsmith were students of Dublin, Thomson of Edinburgh, Fielding of Leyden, Prior, Sterne, and Gray, of Cambridge. Again, if we look to graver departments of literature, or the history of science, the result is still the same. Robertson was educated at Glasgow, Hume in France, Berkeley in Dublin; Herschel and Priestley owed nothing to University education, nor did John Howard, or Joshua Reynolds, or John Wilkes, or many others who powerfully influenced the minds of the Georgian era. Jeremy Bentham, it is true, received a part of his education at Queen’s College, but he carried away no kindly recollection of his college life, and sums up his estimate of Oxford training in a single acrimonious sentence—‘Mendacity and insincerity—in these I found the effects, the sure and only sure effects, of an English University education.’

Counter-evidence showing that education and learning were not wholly neglected

On the other hand, it would be easy to overstate both the intellectual sterility and the educational torpor of the University in the century following the Revolution. The ripe scholarship and academic wit of Addison may still be appreciated in the pages of the ‘Spectator,’ and Dr. Parr, in replying to Gibbon, was able to compile an imposing list of Oxford graduates in the eighteenth century ‘distinguished by classical, oriental, theological, or mathematical knowledge, by professional skill, or by parliamentary abilities.’ We must remember that when the historian entered Magdalen College as a gentleman-commoner, he was in his fifteenth year; when he left it, he was barely sixteen. The college did not then bear a high reputation for industry, there were no commoners, and gentlemen-commoners, being of a different social class from the ‘demies,’ were supposed to enjoy the privilege of idleness. Gibbon himself mentions that Corpus was fortunate in possessing an admirable tutor in John Burton. He also candidly admits that Bishop Lowth was a bright exception to professional sinecurism, and quotes the bishop’s description of his own academical life, which is too often forgotten, when Gibbon’s adverse criticism is magnified into a judicial utterance. ‘I spent many years,’ says Lowth, ‘in that illustrious society, in a well-regulated course of useful discipline and studies ... where a liberal pursuit of knowledge, and a genuine freedom of thought, was raised, encouraged, and pushed forward by example, by commendation, and by authority.’ Moreover, Gibbon allows that his father may have been unfortunate in the selection of a college and a tutor, that Sir William Scott’s tutorial, and Blackstone’s professorial, lectures had done honour to Oxford, that learning had been made ‘a duty, a pleasure, and even a fashion’ at Christchurch, and that reforms in the system of instruction had been effected elsewhere. Lord Sheffield, the editor of his memoirs, adds further proofs of the same improvement, and, on the whole, Gibbon’s testimony must be taken as a somewhat one-sided statement of a witness strongly prejudiced against the ecclesiastical character of Oxford, and irritated by the necessity of quitting it, owing to his conversion to Romanism. Similar deductions must be made from the testimony of Bentham, who entered Queen’s in 1760, at the age of 13, and took his degree, in 1763, at the age of 16, having cherished a precocious contempt for juvenile amusements, and a precocious, though reasonable, objection to signing the XXXIX Articles, in spite of conscientious doubts.

It is impossible to ascertain how far the admitted decay of University lectures and examinations was compensated by college tuition. But it is clear that some colleges maintained an educational system of their own, and imposed exercises on their members, often in the form of declamations or disputations, which stood more or less in the place of those formerly required by the University. At Merton College, for instance, there were regular hall-disputations, in which even gentlemen-commoners were expected to bear their part, besides more solemn disputations in divinity for Bachelors of Arts, and ‘Variations’ for ‘Master-Fellows’ at the end of the Act Term. These Variations, as described in a work published in 1749, do not seem to have possessed any great educational value, and, according to a contemporary author, ‘were amicably concluded with a magnificent and expensive supper, the charges of which formerly came to 100l., but of late years much retrenched.’ Such logical encounters were clearly mere survivals or revivals of mediæval dialectics, but there is some reason to believe that sounder and more useful knowledge was quietly cultivated, and rewarded by fellowships, though not yet recognised by University honours. When John Wesley was elected a fellow of Lincoln, in 1726, disputations were held six times a week, as at Merton, but he formed his own scheme of studies. He allotted Mondays and Tuesdays to classics; Wednesdays to logic and ethics; Thursdays to Hebrew and Arabic; Fridays to metaphysics and natural philosophy; Saturdays to rhetoric, poetry, and composition; Sundays to divinity; besides which, he bestowed much attention on mathematics. Doubtless, John Wesley was no common man, but he was never regarded as a prodigy of learning by his fellows, and it was the deliberate opinion of Johnson, in the next generation, that college tuition was not the farce which Gibbon imagined it. Speaking of Oxford in 1768, Dr. Johnson said: ‘There is here, sir, such a progressive emulation. The students are anxious to appear well to their tutors; the tutors are anxious to have their pupils appear well in the college; the colleges are anxious to have their students appear well in the University; and there are excellent rules of discipline in every college.’ Sir William Jones, who obtained a scholarship at University College in 1764, and a fellowship two years later, found means to prosecute his Oriental researches there, and mapped out his own time, like Wesley, between different branches of study. By the statutes of Hertford College, framed in 1747, undergraduates were required to produce a declamation, theme, or translation every week, composing it in English during their second and third years, and in Latin during their fourth. Nor were fellowship-examinations by any means an unmeaning form in good colleges. Those at All Souls’ had long been a real test of intellectual merit, though motives of favouritism sometimes governed the choice of the electors. At Merton, in the early part of the eighteenth century, we read of fellowship-elections being preceded by a thorough examination, including two days of book-work in Homer, Xenophon, Lucian, Tacitus, and Horace, besides a ‘theme,’ doubtless in Latin. When we find that some two hundred and fifty editions of classical works, mostly, but not wholly, in the ancient languages, were published in Oxford during the first half of the eighteenth century, it is hardly possible to doubt that many industrious readers must have existed among the students and fellows of colleges, however imperfect may have been the organisation of lectures. Dr. Charlett, the eminent Master of University College, writing in 1715, was able to praise the youths under his own charge as ‘sober, modest, and studious,’ nor is there any reason to doubt that many students in other colleges deserved a like character. Degenerate as it was, and far inferior to Cambridge in the performance of its higher functions, the University was not so utterly effete as it is sometimes represented. It produced few great scholars and fewer great teachers, but it was not wholly unfaithful to its mission of educating the English clergy and gentry, and the great philosopher, Berkeley, who had described it as an ideal retreat for learning and piety, deliberately chose it as his final home and resting-place.