A history of the University of Oxford

by George C. Brodrick

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.