The Restoration was welcomed at both universities. The scheme to secure a Protestant succession and the attempt to exclude James now agitated men’s minds. The ‘bill of exclusion’ was condemned both at Oxford and Cambridge; and the earlier Rye House plot was met at the latter by the deposition of Monmouth at that time chancellor of the university. To the loyal addresses sent by both Cambridge and Oxford on the coronation of James II., Cambridge added a condemnation of the attempt to alter the succession. The attitude of the bench of bishops was not less emphatic—only two prelates could be found to sign the invitation to William of Orange.[396] It was with these facts before him that James set to work to affront a loyal clergy and the two loyal seats of learning; and thus gave to each a rare occasion of proving their quality. The king first attempted to force the hand of the universities, and began by ordering Cambridge to confer the M.A. degree on a Catholic.
A.D. 1687.
This was refused. The vice-chancellor, and with him eight fellows (one of whom was Isaac Newton) was cited to appear at Westminster before the High Commission. Oxford was much more harshly treated, and there is nothing in the history of either university to surpass the splendid resistance of Magdalen College to tyranny, during which it was twice depleted of its
A.D. 1688.
fellows. The Declaration of Indulgence, however admirable in itself, struck a blow at constitutional principles, and introduced the dangerous corollary that he who could loose motu proprio could also bind. The loyal archbishop of Canterbury, a graduate of Emmanuel, with six other prelates refused to publish the Indulgence, and were sent to the Tower. Lloyd of S. Asaph, Lake of Chichester, Turner of Ely, and White of Peterborough were Cantabrigians; Ken of Bath and Wells and Trelawney of Bristol, Oxonians.[397] Perhaps never since the primacy of Stephen Langton had the Church in England been so popular, or shown itself so ready to slough the servilism which attends on state Churches.
A.D. 1689.
The nonjurors.
In the following year five of the seven staunch prelates who had withstood James, refused to take the oath of fealty to William and Mary. The primate, with Turner, Lake, White, and Ken, to whom were joined Lloyd of Norwich[398] and Frampton of Gloucester, headed some 400 of the clergy as ‘Nonjurors.’ Under Bancroft the non-juring clergy established a schism in the English Church which lasted till the xix century. The Cambridge Sherlock had at first the greatest influence among them, but neither he nor Ken followed them in the subsequent schism. If another Cambridge man, Jeremy Collier, was the ablest of the nonjurors, Dodwell, a Dublin man, and professor of Ancient History at Oxford, was the most erudite.
The House of Hanover.
Although, as we have seen, the two bishops who signed the invitation to William were Oxford men, Oxford had no love for the ‘Roman-nosed Dutchman,’ and William had no love for Oxford. Halifax, William’s henchman, and Nottingham, the leaders of the party which placed William and Mary on the throne, hailed respectively from Cambridge and Oxford: but it was the favour with which Cambridge greeted the accession of the new sovereigns that became the seed of its whiggery. During the reign of Anne, nevertheless, an anti-Hanoverian spirit spread among the younger men. Not only were there Jacobites