Whether if the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford should be annihilated, and the revenues imployed to the publique affairs of this Commonwealth, (Religion being now out of date, and learning of no use, where men are so generally inspired,) it is not fitting that Brasen Nose College in Oxford should be exempted from that general devastation, as a memorial of the Respect they bore to Oliver late Lord Protector.
This period was not free from disputes between the university and the London Stationers. Field and his partner had in 1655 bought from Christopher and Matthew Barker "ye Manuscript Coppie of the Bible," and the right of printing it, for £1200. In August 1662 two letters were received by the Vice-Chancellor from Charles II, ordering the university to "forbeare to print the Bible and new Testament otherwise than according to the Orders of 1623 and 1629." The university appealed against this and Lord Clarendon appointed a day for hearing both parties—the King's printers and the university. Field undertook not to publish any prayer-books until further orders; Clarendon proposed "an accommodation by way of agreement," and John Pearson, Bishop of Chester, advised the university to make a composition with its rivals. From another correspondent, who signs himself W. D.[67], the Vice-Chancellor received very different advice:
The University's priviledge is looked upon as a trust for the publick good, and theire printing of these bookes will force the Londoners to print something tolerably true ... who otherwise looking meerly at gaine will not care how corruptly they print, witness the 200 blasphemy's wch Mr B. found in theire bibles; & the millions of faults in their schoolbookes, increasing in every edition, so long as Mr B's composition with the stationers held ... whence it was that often errors were drunk in in grammer schooles scarcely after to be corrected at the University, unlesse schoolmrs were so careful as to correct bookes by hand before they lett theire boys have them. It being therefore the University's interest to have youths well and truly grounded in school bookes & the interest of the whole nation to have true bibles, I cannot but think the University trustees in both respects, & feare they would afterwards rew the betraying of so great a trust if they should sell it by farming[68].
The university appears to have taken this advice and a New Testament printed by Field appeared in 1666.
Field's name is found in the St Botolph's parish books from 1657 to 1668, and in 1660 he was churchwarden.
He died on 12 August, 1668, and no successor was immediately appointed, a letter being received by the Vice-Chancellor from the King requesting that the office should not be filled for a time.
At this point the names of Thomas and John Buck re-appear. In a petition to the Vice-Chancellor they repeat accusations, made against Field in 1665, both of false printing and of failure to pay sums due to the two brothers[69]. Whether the claim against Field's estate was substantiated does not appear, but it is evident that Thomas and John Buck still held their printer's patents in 1668.
The first election made after Field's death was that of Matthew Whinn, Registrary, in March, 1669; this seems, however, to have been a purely formal appointment and Field's successor was in fact John Hayes, who was elected in October of the same year, the printing having previously been leased to him for £100 a year, on the condition that there should be no further treaty with the London Stationers.
The books printed during the earlier part of Hayes's tenure of office are similar in general character to those of his predecessor John Field. Dyer describes the Andronicus Rhodius of 1679 as an editio optima and among the other books of the period will be found the usual congratulatory, or lachrymatory, symposia evoked by the funeral of Henrietta Maria, the marriage of William and Mary, the death of Charles II; several university and assize sermons; editions of Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Terence, Lucretius, Ovid, Livy, Sallust; Crashaw's Steps to the Temple and the second edition of Poemata et Epigrammata (1670); John Ray's Collection of Proverbs (1670 and 1678); editions of à Kempis, De Christo Imitando (1685), of Erasmus, Enchiridion (1685), and of North's Plutarch's Lives (1676); as well as bibles, prayer-books, and almanacks. The almanacks are an interesting feature of Cambridge printing at this period. Every year, under a pseudonymous heading (Dove, Swallow, Pond, Swan, etc.), a number of these attractive little books were issued.