A history of the University of Oxford

by George C. Brodrick

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.