John Fell (1676-1686), the best known, and also the best of the Bishops of Oxford, was well-fitted to restore the traditions of the place; for his father Samuel Fell was Dean of Christ Church from 1637-1649, and had been elected student of the House as far back as 1601: thus John Fell must have had an intimate knowledge of the traditions of Christ Church as far back as the third interregnum of Elizabeth. A strong royalist, Fell kept in seclusion till the Restoration, when, in 1660, he was made Dean. He at once commenced to restore both the discipline and the buildings of the College. On his appointment to the Bishopric, he was permitted to retain the Deanery as well, in order "that he might better carry on his noble designs, which were so many that they contributed to wear him quite out and shorten his life." He employed Sir Christopher Wren to build Tom Tower, and finished the north side of Tom Quadrangle; he also built a new episcopal palace upon the ruins of the old one at Cuddesden. He founded ten exhibitions, and caused the University Theatre to be erected, and the Printing Press to be "advanced to a glory superior to any place in Christendom." He showed exemplary care in governing his diocese, and established daily prayers at St. Martin's (as the principal city church of Oxford) at eight in the morning and eight at night. His most important book is the "Life of Dr. Henry Hammond," 1660; he also wrote several theological books, edited St. Cyprian's works, and produced a well-known edition of the New Testament. He died in 1686, "having by a most pious unspotted single life left behind him an everlasting character," and was buried in the cathedral, where, in the ante-chapel, there is a monument to him. There is also a beautiful statue of him over the archway that leads past the deanery into Peckwater Quadrangle, by Mr. Bodley.
Anthony à Wood records of him that he was "the most zealous man of his time for the Church of England." Still John Fell had his weak points, as this same Anthony Wood had cause to know. For it so happened that Wood had mentioned Hobbes, the redoubtable author of the "Leviathan," in terms of great admiration, in his History and Antiquities of the University. Wood was himself a strong high-churchman, with (it had been said) a weakness for popery; in praising Hobbes he therefore acted with a generosity and fairness beyond his age. Fell, however, was not so liberal; he considered Hobbes no better than an atheist or a deist, and when one Peers was employed by Wood to translate his book into Latin, Fell got on the right side of the man, and made him alter all Wood's praises of Hobbes to expressions of abuse. The author of the "Leviathan," meeting the King in Pall Mall, got leave to reply, and hit the Bishop rather hard. Fell retorted with an answer that contained the famous description of Hobbes as irritabile illud et vanissimum Malmesburiense animal. Wood, of course, was furious, and the wretched Peers suffered at the hands of the muscular old Antiquary, so that "as Peers alway cometh off with a bloody nose or a black eye, he was a long time afraid to goe anywhere where he might chance to meet his too powerful adversary, for fear of another drubbing."
Samuel Parker (1686-1687) was a typical specimen, of the place-hunter of the period. He was brought up a strict Puritan at Northampton, and, coming to Wadham College in 1656, when the Puritans were in power, he distinguished himself as "one of the most godly young men in the University," and was under the tuition of a rigid Presbyterian. Shortly after the Restoration, however, he changed his mind, and in 1663 he took orders, becoming "a zealous advocate of the Church of England." By 1686, however, he was the creature of James II., and was forced by that monarch upon Magdalen College, Oxford, as its President, in 1687, in the place of the lawful President, John Hough. At the installation only two of the Magdalen Fellows attended; the porter threw down his keys, the butler had to be dismissed because he would not scratch Hough's name from the buttery list, no blacksmith even could be found in Oxford to force the lock of the President's lodgings; and the whole University, which had suffered so much for the Stuarts, was alienated at last. Parker himself died very soon after, in the lodgings that he had unlawfully occupied. He lies buried in the ante-chapel of Magdalen, but no monument marks his grave. Antony Wood intimates that he would have become a Papist, but for his wife, who was unwilling to be parted from him; and he certainty wrote in defence of transubstantiation. Still, Parker, according to Mr. W.H. Hutton (Social England, iv. 421), was by no means a despicable man. As a philosopher in his Disputationes de Deo, and Censure of the Platonick Philosophie, as a satirist in his Discourse of Ecclesiastical Polity, and an ecclesiastical historian, he is eminent. "But most of all is he commended to modern thinkers by his little tract containing reasons for the abolition of the Test Act."
Timothy Hall (1688-1690), another of James II.'s creatures, was also originally a Nonconformist, but afterwards, "getting nothing," says Willis, "for his loss of a small living in Middlesex, he complied." Being a very obscure and inconsiderable person, and on no account for learning, no one took any notice of him. At the Revolution he fled from Oxford, and died "miserably poor at Hackney near London, and was buried in the church there without any memorial."
John Hough (1690-1699), the President of Magdalen whom King James had ejected, was the next bishop. He retained the Presidency during his episcopate. In 1699 he was translated to Lichfield, thence in 1717 to Worcester, where he died in 1743. He was, says Macaulay, "a man of eminent virtue and prudence, who, having borne persecution with fortitude and prosperity with meekness, having risen to high honours, and having modestly declined honours higher still, died in extreme old age, yet in full vigour of mind," fifty-six years after the eventful struggle with James.
William Talbot (1669-1715), father of Lord Chancellor Talbot, was translated to Salisbury in 1715, and to Durham in 1721.
John Potter (1715-1737), son of a linen-draper in Wakefield, wrote a well-known book on the "Antiquities of Greece." He was "a learned and exemplary divine, but of a character by no means amiable, being strongly tinctured with a kind of haughtiness and severity of manners." He became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1737.
Thomas Secker (1737-1758) came of dissenting parents, but was persuaded by the great Bishop Butler to abandon the study of medicine and to take orders in the Church. He was an estimable and able person, and in 1758 became Archbishop of Canterbury. His portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds is at Lambeth.
John Hume (1758-1766), Bishop of Bristol 1756: translated to Salisbury 1766.