[388] Scott attended the law classes at Edinburgh university.
[389] “The first of the great English writers in whom letters asserted an almost public importance.” In the new ‘republic of letters’ Dryden was “chosen chief”; “He had done more than any man to create a literary class”; “he was the first to impress the idea of literature on the English mind.” Master “alike of poetry and prose, covering the fields both of imagination and criticism.... Dryden realized in his own personality the existence of a new power which was thenceforth to tell steadily on the world ... our literature obeyed the impulse he had given it from the beginning of the eighteenth century till near its close.”—J. R. Green.
[390] The first number appeared in November 1665 and was called “The Oxford Gazette,” the court being at that time at Oxford on account of the plague which was then raging in town.
[391] The succession of archbishops of Canterbury from 1486 is: Cardinal Morton, Oxford; Warham (1500), neither university; Cranmer, Cambridge; Pole, Oxford; Parker, Cambridge; Grindal, Cambridge; Whitgift, Cambridge; Bancroft (1604), Cambridge.
Among the names given above, those with an asterisk were further connected with their university as founders, Masters and fellows of colleges, or as chancellors.
[392] Sydenham took a medical degree at Cambridge.
[393] Cf. the Duke of Exeter, ii. pp. 58 n., 156.
[394] The plate of Queens’ College is preserved at Oxford to this day.
[395] Chief of whom was the Earl of Manchester, like Cromwell himself a Cambridge man. Cromwell and Lord Grey of Wark had “dealt very earnestly” with the Heads of colleges to extract a loan of £6000 for the public use. The earnest dealing included shutting most of them up till midnight. Cromwell on their refusal declared he would have taken £1000; not that that sum would have been of any service, but because it would have shown that they had one of the universities on their side. All that Cambridge had, however, was sent to Charles.
[396] Compton and Trelawney.