But in January, 1644, another issue was raised. Political delinquency being still prominently kept in view, it became associated with religious and ecclesiastical criminations. Many complaints—said the ordinance for regulating the University of Cambridge—were made that the service of the country was retarded, that the enemy was strengthened, that the people's souls were starved, and that their minds were diverted from the care of God's cause by the idle, ill-affected, and scandalous clergy. Commissioners therefore were empowered to call before them all provosts, masters, fellows, students, and members who were scandalous in their lives, or ill-affected to the Parliament, or fomenters of the war, or that should wilfully refuse obedience to the orders of the two Houses, or desert their ordinary places of residence. Persons found guilty of any such offences were to suffer the sequestration of their estates and revenues; at the same time, ministers approved by the Westminster Assembly were authorized to succeed to the vacant posts. The Commissioners had power to administer the Covenant under penalties, and to examine and inhibit all persons who should obstruct the reformation sought to be accomplished by the Parliament and the Assembly. The ordinance evidently placed at the mercy of this new Committee every one who, though not scandalous in life, should decline the Covenant or oppose the Westminster decisions. This document bears date the 22nd of January. On the 30th of the same month, an order appeared to make void the places of all officers, ministers, or other attendants upon Chancery, the King's Bench, and the Common Pleas, who should be guilty of the same offences.[607] The ground on which the Presbyterian party now in power chose to place the controversy with the authorities at Cambridge and elsewhere is sufficiently apparent.
The justice of their final policy ought to be tested by the principles upon which it was avowedly based, not by any laxity of method in the carrying of it out. It is said that, in several instances, those who were entrusted with the execution of the ordinance were very lenient, and did not eject all who refused submission; but this does not affect the character of the enactment. According to Archbishop Tillotson, most of the fellows of King's were exempted through the interest of Dr. Witchcot—an exception which is not at all irreconcilable with Fuller's statement—himself a Cambridge man—that "this Covenant being offered, was generally refused, whereupon the recusants were ordered without any delay to pack out of the University three days after their ejection." Fuller does not say that the order took effect in all cases.[608]
University of Cambridge.
A document in the State Paper Office opens a window through which one can plainly see how sequestrations went on at Cambridge. Houses were rifled, and goods seized. The effects were sold according to appraisements. The books of Dr. Cosin, Master of Peter House and Dean of Durham, were valued at £247 10s., and must have formed a good library for those days. The furniture of Dr. Laney, Master of Pembroke, is all inventoried, down to "blankets," "leather chairs," and "fire irons." The books of Mr. Heath, of Barnet College, are valued at £14; and Mr. Couldham's, of Queen's, at £10. Horses and furniture are mentioned, and articles are described as taken away in carts under the care of soldiers. Zealous partisans received rewards for information relative to concealed property. An infamous soldier was paid for divulging the secret where books belonging to his brother might be found.
University of Cambridge.
Thus a political offence provoked the anger and occasioned the interference of Parliament. But the interference aimed at a religious result through a revival of Puritanism. The East-Anglian University, true to its traditional liberality, fostered that movement towards the end of the sixteenth century, as it had promoted the Reformation fifty years before. In 1565, the University was restive under the yoke of ceremonies, and almost all the men of St. John's came to chapel without hoods or surplices.[609] When Mildmay had founded Emmanuel College (1585), the Queen said: "Sir Walter, I hear you have erected a Puritan foundation." He replied: "No, madam; far be it from me to countenance anything contrary to your established laws; but I have set an acorn, which, when it becomes an oak, God alone knows what will be the fruit thereof."[610] The fruit proved Puritan to the heart's core; and the fact is commemorated in a satire about thirty years afterwards. Its unconsecrated chapel, standing north and south, instead of orientating after the prescribed fashion, has been pronounced "typical of its doctrinal sentiments."[611] Sidney, too, was Puritan, and so was Catherine Hall, the last so persistently, and to such a degree, that it is said not to have contributed one fellow or scholar to the number of the ejected in 1644.[612] Cambridge had the credit of being "a nest of Puritans" in the middle of King James's reign. Perkins and Sibbs, ministers of that class, were exceedingly popular with both the gownsmen and the townspeople. The University for many years supplied by far the majority of the leading Presbyterian Divines;[613] and four out of the five dissenting brethren at Westminster were from Cambridge.[614] Traces of Puritanism existed in Trinity College even so late as 1636. In some tutors' chambers "the private prayers were longer and louder by far" than in chapel.[615] But, before the civil wars, a change in the opposite direction set in. Peter House under Cosin, St. John's under Beale, Queen's under Martin, and Jesus under Sterne, were becoming more and more centres of Anglo-Catholicism. The influence of Laud may be distinctly traced through the last two of these heads of houses—Martin and Sterne having been chaplains to the Archbishop. Nor was the Archbishop himself inactive at Cambridge. The reports about Trinity just noticed were placed in his hands preparatory to his intended visitation in 1636. So far did some go in the anti-Puritan movement that, according to report, at the commencement, in July, 1633, Dr. Collins eulogized Bellarmine, and Dr. Duncan defended some of his theses.[616] Complaints were made by Puritans of altars, vestments, and Jesuit activity. Organs were erected, and the worship in Peter House Chapel incurred the displeasure of the Long Parliament.[617] To judge of the extent to which anti-Presbyterian views prevailed at Cambridge in 1644, we may state that, of residents, it seems about a tenth part of the number was ejected.[618]
The history of Oxford is not altogether like that of Cambridge. The source of three religious impulses of very different kinds, connected respectively with great theological names of very different character—Wesley, Pusey, and Jowett—the Midland University, central and many-sided in its religious spirit, as it is in its geographical position, did much to promote the Reformation, and did something to foster Puritanism. It produced Reynolds, the Presbyterian, and Owen, the Independent. A Puritan wave stirred the waters of the University in 1640. But influence of that kind at Oxford was feeble, compared with its sweep at Cambridge; and the Laudian impetus to Anglo-Catholicism most strongly marked the elder University. Laud was Chancellor of Oxford, and here, of course, his restless brain and untiring hands would specially prosecute the favourite business of his life. Accordingly, instances of his minute, constant, and zealous interference abound throughout his memoirs and papers.[618] He had a very large share in producing that opposition to Puritanism and the Parliament, which characterized Oxford at the commencement of the civil wars.
University of Oxford.