A.D. 1702-14.
among the undergraduates and the junior dons, but a political party was forming which represented the permanent elements in Toryism when separated from Jacobitism. Amongst this party high churchmanship also found refuge. The non-juring clergy still left at the university lived there in close retirement, and helped to swell the ranks neither of the nascent
A.D. 1714.
A.D. 1715.
Jacobitism nor the new high churchism. A new vice-chancellor, favourable to the House of Hanover, followed a Jacobite predecessor just in time to present a loyal address to George I. on his accession. This was rewarded by the splendid gift of Bishop Moore’s library; while at Oxford, where the Jacobites were more noisy and had just made the anniversary of the Pretender’s birthday the occasion for a disturbance, two Jacobite officers were placed under arrest, and a troop of horse was quartered in the city. These events gave rise to the following couplets:
(Oxford) The King observing with judicious eyes,
The state of both his Universities,
To one he sends a regiment; for why?
That learned body wanted loyalty.
To th’ other books he gave, as well discerning
How much that loyal body wanted learning.
(Sir Wm. Browne
for Cambridge) The King to Oxford sent his troop of horse:
For Tories own no argument but force.
With equal care to Cambridge books he sent:
For Whigs allow no force but argument.
Modern politics.
When we come to modern politics, the parts are played on the political stage at Westminster.
In the radical matter of parliamentary reform, the first step was made by one of Cambridge’s great sons, the younger Pitt, fifty years before a Whig ministry led by Earl Grey, another Cantabrigian, laid the Reform Bill on the table of the House. The claims of America to self government and freedom from taxation were upheld by both the Pitts, by Fox and by Burke, and opposed by Samuel Johnson. The Whigs, as we know, were, as a whole, of Johnson’s mind in the matter.