A history of the University of Oxford

by George C. Brodrick

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.