Curiously enough, the suppression of the monasteries, and the new vigorous religious movement, did not benefit the University, in spite of the addition of Wolsey's great college; on the contrary, the Reformation nearly emptied the University, which had already lost much of its old activity during the intellectual stagnation of the fifteenth century, so that, in Edward VI.'s reign, washerwomen took to hanging out their clothes in the schools. Most of the halls disappeared for ever, and from that time Oxford passed out of the hands of the poor man, Christ Church as the royal college becoming the special home of the gilded youth. The first functions of the House seem indeed to have been mainly ornamental: Henry VIII. was entertained there, public declamations were given before the University under Edward VI., Cranmer was unfrocked in the cloister under Mary. In Queen Elizabeth's reign, as well as in the seventeenth century, Christ Church Hall was used for the performance of plays, as when in 1583 Dido was acted, and "there was a pleasant sight of hunters, with a full cry of a kennel of hounds, and Mercury and his descending and ascending from and to a high place. The tempest also, wherein it rained small comfits, rose-water, and snew artificial snow, was very strange to the beholders."
The Deans in Elizabeth's time were undistinguished. There was Martiall, who was appointed by Mary, and deprived in 1559 for his religion, "which though he had two or three times changed, yet having made himself Enemies by his indiscreet Carriage, he was obliged to go into Yorkshire"; and there was Sampson, who was "so professed an enemy of the ceremonies of the Church of England," and of organs and vestments, that he was removed by Archbishop Parker, 1565. But there was no one else of much note till Brian Duppa was installed in 1629. This staunch old man left Christ Church in 1641 for the Bishopric of Salisbury, after having "adorned" the cathedral, with the mixed results we have witnessed. He was extremely generous and unselfish; and he stuck to the king through his evil days, even sharing his imprisonment in Carisbrooke Castle, where he is thought materially to have assisted in writing the "Eikon Basilike." Duppa, Mr. Wakeman tells us, "amid many dangers had boldly found means to carry on the torch of apostolic grace, even amid the proscriptions of Cromwell."
During the troubles of the Civil War, Christ Church came in for its share of the work: in 1642 a University regiment of Cavaliers was drilled in Tom Quad, and of the hundred and one students of the House twenty became officers in the king's army. After Edgehill, Charles I. occupied Oxford, and kept his court with Prince Charles in Christ Church. On February 3rd, 1644, the king appointed a thanksgiving to be made at evensong for the taking of Cirencester by Prince Rupert the day before. The doctors were then in their red robes, the officers and men in laced buff coats and polished breastplates. "But there was no new Form of Thanksgiving said, save only that Form for the victory of Edgehill, and a very solemn anthem, with this several times repeated therein—'Thou shalt set a Crown of pure gold upon his Head, and upon his Head shall his Crown flourish.'"
In 1646 Oxford was taken by the Roundheads, and in 1648, at the visitation of the Parliamentary officers (the Dean, Samuel Fell, being in custody), Mrs. Fell, with some other ladies, and her children, refused to walk out of the Deanery, and had to be carried out with her companions, and "deposited in the quadrangle in feminine protest against extrusion." Dean Samuel Fell, who had finished Duppa's wood and glass work in the cathedral, and built the fine staircase into the hall, died heartbroken on February 1st, 1648, "the Day he was acquainted with the murder of his Royal Master King Charles I.": he was buried at Sunningwell, near Abingdon, with this inscription of touching brevity—Depositum S.F. Februar. 1648.
The use of the Latin version of the Prayer Book, and the English version as well, had ceased three months before; but it was kept up in a house in Merton Street by three Christ Church men, one of whom was the Dean's son, John Fell, afterwards himself to become Dean and Bishop of Oxford. The intruding Dean and Chapter seem to have behaved villainously; for, in an account given by the Chapter of 1670, it is stated that the entire revenues of the College had been exhausted by the intruders, all the unfinished work on the north side of Tom Quad demolished, and the timbers actually sawn down from the walls and roof to be used as firewood. Almost every part of the College was damaged in this way, and the huge expense of making the destruction good had to be borne by the new Chapter after the Restoration.
Samuel Fell's first Puritan successor in the Deanery was Reynolds, a Presbyterian who, in two years (1650), was turned out "to make room," says Browne Willis, "for that noted, canting, Independent, Time-serving Hypocrite John Owen." This Owen was himself turned out in 1659, and "retired among the Dissenters at London, and there ended his Days (preaching up Sedition in Conventicles)." He was buried in Bunhill Fields, with a portentously long epitaph, whereof one sentence may suffice as a specimen—In illâ viribus plusquam Herculeis, Serpentibus tribus, Arminio, Socino, Cano, venenosa strinxit guttura.
Reynolds was restored by the Presbyterians in 1659, but them deserting, he became Bishop of Norwich, and was succeeded at Christ Church in 1660 by Morley, who, in the same year, became a Bishop, and afterwards succeeded the tough old Duppa in the see of Winchester, 1662. John Fell, who had seen so much trouble in his father's old house, was next installed therein, in 1660. His biography will be found among the bishops.
James II. made Massey, an ex-Presbyterian convert to the Roman Church, Dean of Christ Church, and the Holy Communion was celebrated according to the Roman use every day in the House. When the king visited Oxford in 1687, he was lodged in the Deanery, and a chapel fitted up for his use. He summoned the fellows of Magdalen, who had refused to admit Bishop Parker as their president, into Christ Church Hall, and said:—"Is this your Church of England loyalty? Get you gone. Know that I, your King, will be obeyed. Go and admit the Bishop of Oxon. Let those who refuse look to it. They shall feel the whole weight of my hand." They refused, and twenty-five of them were expelled. James, by-the-way, touched for the King's Evil in the cathedral about the same time.