A history of the University of Oxford

by George C. Brodrick

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