A history of the University of Oxford

by George C. Brodrick

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