A history of the University of Oxford George C. Brodrick 905 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of A history of the
University of Oxford

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will
have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
this eBook.

Title: A history of the University of Oxford

Author: George C. Brodrick

Release date: January 15, 2024 [eBook #72729]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1900

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72729

Credits: Bob Taylor, MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian
Libraries)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD ***

Epochs of Church History
EDITED BY

MANDELL CREIGHTON, D.D., LL.D.
BISHOP OF LONDON

THE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

Epochs of Church History.
Edited by MANDELL CREIGHTON, D.D., LL.D.,
BISHOP OF LONDON.

Fcap. 8vo, price 2s. 6d. each.

THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN OTHER LANDS. By the
Rev. H. W. Tucker, M.A.

THE HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION IN
ENGLAND. By the Rev. George G. Perry, M.A.
THE CHURCH OF THE EARLY FATHERS. By Alfred
Plummer, D.D.

THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. By the Rev. J. H. Overton,
D.D.

A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. By
the Hon. G. C. Brodrick, D.C.L.

A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF
CAMBRIDGE. By J. Bass Mullinger, M.A.
THE CHURCH AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE. By the
Rev. A. Carr, M.A.

THE CHURCH AND THE PURITANS, 1570-1660. By
Henry Offley Wakeman, M.A.

THE CHURCH AND THE EASTERN EMPIRE. By the
Rev. H. F. Tozer, M.A.

HILDEBRAND AND HIS TIMES. By W. R. W. Stephens,
B.D.

THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
By the Rev. W. Hunt, M.A.

THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEN. By Ugo
Balzani.

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION. By A. W. Ward, Litt.D.

WYCLIFFE AND MOVEMENTS FOR REFORM. By
R. L. Poole, M.A., Ph.D.

THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY. By H. M. Gwatkin, M.A.

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY

A HISTORY

OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

BY THE

HON. G. C. BRODRICK, D.C.L.

WARDEN OF MERTON COLLEGE

FOURTH IMPRESSION

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1900

All rights reserved

PREFACE.

The present volume is an attempt to present in a succinct form the history of
an University which, however uncertain its origin, is among the oldest
institutions in Europe. The result of such a task must needs fall very far
short of perfection, and it is probably a just appreciation of its difficulties
which has deterred abler historians from undertaking it. The voluminous
remains of Anthony Wood contain a mine of precious records, but they are
singularly ill-arranged, and his narrative breaks off long before the end of
the seventeenth century. The great monograph of Father Denifle, now in
course of publication, on the early history of European Universities,
promises to be an exhaustive discussion of its subject; but its enormous
bulk and unwieldy construction will repel most English readers, while it
deals only with the rudimentary development of academical constitutions.
The well-known compilation of Huber shows considerable research and
grasp of the subject, but it follows no historical order, and is disfigured by
much irrelevance and prejudice. The publications of the Oxford Historical
Society have already placed documents hitherto scarcely accessible within
the reach of ordinary students, but it will be long before the series can be
completed. All these works, as well as the valuable ‘Munimenta
Academica’ of Mr. Anstey, Professor Burrows’ ‘Visitors’ Register,’ and
many other treatises of less note, have been freely consulted by me. I have
also made use of the Merton College Register, which has been kept with
few interruptions since the year 1482, and of other MSS. documents in the
possession of my own College. But I have not thought it well to encumber
the pages of so compendious a narrative with constant references to
authorities. My principal aim has been to exhibit the various features and
incidents of University history, age by age, in their due proportion; dwelling
more upon broad and undisputed facts than upon comparatively obscure
points which are the natural field of antiquarian speculation or criticism.
Guided by a similar principle, I have not treated all periods of University
history with equal detail. Thus, I have devoted a large share of space to the

period of the Civil Wars, during which the University played a great part in
the national drama; while I have passed lightly over the reign of George III.,
when the University had not only lost all political importance, but had
forfeited its reputation as a place of the highest education and learning. In
the selection of topics from so vast a mass of materials, I have sought to
preserve the continuity of events, so far as possible, rather than to produce a
series of essays on special aspects of University life. I have deviated,
however, from this method in one or two instances, such as the chapter on
Oxford politics in the eighteenth century, and that on the Neo-Catholic
Revival. In several of the earlier chapters, and in those on Oxford in the
present century, I have borrowed the substance of passages from my own
volume, ‘Memorials of Merton College,’ and from articles on recent
University reforms contributed by myself to various periodicals. If I have
succeeded in bringing within a single view the successive phases of
development through which the University has passed in the course of
seven hundred years, and in paving the way for a more comprehensive and
detailed history, the object of this little volume will have been attained.
George C. Brodrick.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
face v

CHAPTER I.
THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITY.
thical origin of the University—Early Schools of Oxford—Intellectual
revival of the twelfth century—Lectures of Vacarius, and first germs of
the University—Connection of Oxford with the University of Paris—
1
Recognition of the scholars by the Papal Legate after the riot of 1209
—Office of Chancellor—University chests, and sources of revenue in
the thirteenth century—Rise of Halls—Early University charters

CHAPTER II.
THE EARLY COLLEGES.
e of Colleges—Foundation of University and Balliol—Foundation of
Merton College—Merton College, Statutes of, 1274—Social position,
manners, and academical life of early students—‘Chamber-dekyns’— 15
Street brawls and disorders—Superiority of colleges in discipline and
tuition

CHAPTER III.
PROGRESS OF THE UNIVERSITY IN THE
FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
ope in the fourteenth century—Social condition of the University— 27
Intellectual vigour of the University—Foundation of Exeter, Oriel,
Queen’s, and Canterbury Colleges—Foundation of New College—
European influence of Oxford in the fourteenth century—Rise of
Wyclif—Career of Wyclif—Feud between Northern and Southern

‘nations’—Early secessions to Cambridge and Northampton—
Secession to Stamford in 1333—Growth of the proctorial authority—
Concession by the Pope of freedom in the election of the Chancellor

CHAPTER IV.
CONFLICTS BETWEEN THE UNIVERSITY AND THE CITY.
yal award of 1290—Riot of 1297 and agreement of 1298—Great riot of
43
1354—Interdict and penance—New charter granted by the King

CHAPTER V.
THE MONKS AND FRIARS AT OXFORD.
edictines and Augustinians—Rise of Mendicant Orders—Claustral
schools—Migration from Paris and influence of Robert Grostete—
48
Position of the friars at Oxford, and University statutes against them—
Intervention of the Pope and the King

CHAPTER VI.
THE UNIVERSITY IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
line in numbers and studies—University delegates at the Councils of
Constance and Basle—Foundation of Lincoln and All Souls’ Colleges
—Extension of University buildings; the Divinity School and the
Bodleian Library—Final organisation of mediæval lectures and 55
examinations—University curriculum—Statute of 1431, regulating
‘inception’—Duties of regent masters—Residence for degrees in the
higher faculties

CHAPTER VII.
THE RENAISSANCE, THE REFORMATION, AND
THE TUDOR PERIOD.
ival of academical life at the end of the fifteenth century—Checked by 68
the Reformation—Pioneers of the new learning at Oxford—Erasmus,
More, Colet, Grocyn, and Linacre—Foundation of Corpus Christi
College by Bishop Fox—Greeks and Trojans—Cardinal Wolsey and

the foundation of Christ Church—Action of the University on the
questions of the Divorce and the Royal Supremacy—Compliance of
the University rewarded by royal favour—The first effects of the
Reformation injurious to the University—Iconoclastic Visitation under
Edward VI.—Leniency towards colleges—Reaction under Mary.
Martyrdom of Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer—Visitation and reforms
of Cardinal Pole—Foundation of Trinity and St. John’s Colleges

CHAPTER VIII.
REIGN OF ELIZABETH AND CHANCELLORSHIP
OF LEICESTER.
tation under Elizabeth and policy of Archbishop Parker—
Chancellorship of Leicester—Changes in the government of the
University—Leicester’s administration of the University—Depression
of intellectual life in the University—Encouragement of study by 87
Elizabeth, and foundation of the Bodleian Library—Increasing
refinement of academical life—Queen Elizabeth’s two visits to Oxford
—Pestilences and disturbances in the sixteenth century

CHAPTER IX.
THE UNIVERSITY UNDER JAMES I.
University patronised by James I.—James I.’s attitude towards the
University and the Church—Rise and influence of Laud—Completion 100
of the ‘Schools,’ and foundation of Wadham and Pembroke Colleges

CHAPTER X.
THE UNIVERSITY UNDER CHARLES I. AND LAUD.
iament at Oxford—Chancellorship of Laud—Compilation of Laudian
statutes—Main provisions of the Laudian statutes—Studies and
examinations under the Laudian statutes—Services of Laud to the
107
University—Last five years of Laud’s chancellorship—Eminent
members of the University in the generation preceding the Civil Wars
—University life in the generation preceding the Civil Wars

CHAPTER XI.
THE UNIVERSITY DURING THE CIVIL WARS AND THE
SIEGE OF OXFORD.
University sides with the King and the Church—The Commons issue
an order for the University—Contributions for the King’s service, and
first occupation of Oxford by Parliamentary troops—Oxford becomes
the royal head-quarters—Aspect of the University during the Queen’s 122
residence—The last two years of the civil war—Siege of Oxford, and
proposals of Fairfax guaranteeing University privileges—Surrender of
Oxford, and subsequent condition of the University

CHAPTER XII.
THE PARLIAMENTARY VISITATION AND THE
COMMONWEALTH.
asures preparatory to the Visitation—Appointment of the Visitors and
the Standing Committee of Parliament—Early proceedings of the
Visitors, and suppression of resistance from the University—Visitation
of colleges. Submissions and expulsions—Reception of Fairfax and 138
Cromwell—Second Board of Visitors—Third Board of Visitors, and
conclusion of the Visitation—State of the University on the recovery
of its independence

CHAPTER XIII.
THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE RESTORATION AND
THE REVOLUTION.
Restoration and new Visitation of the University—Extension of
University buildings. Sheldonian Theatre—Growth of æsthetic tastes
and social refinement—First visit of Charles II.—Second visit of
Charles II. Parliament assembled and dissolved at Oxford—Doctrine 151
of passive resistance adopted by the University. Expulsion of Locke—
Conduct of the University on the outbreak of Monmouth’s rebellion.
James II.’s treatment of Magdalen College

CHAPTER XIV.
UNIVERSITY POLITICS BETWEEN THE REVOLUTION
AND THE ACCESSION OF GEORGE III.
tude of the University towards the Revolution. Visit of William III.—
Origin of Oxford Jacobitism. Visit of Queen Anne—Popularity of
Sacheverell. Position of the Whig minority—Jacobite demonstrations.
A troop of horse sent to Oxford—The Constitution Club. Government 162
scheme for reforming the University—Gradual decline of Jacobitism
in Oxford during the reign of George II.—Revival of loyalty after the
accession of George III.—His visits to Oxford

CHAPTER XV.
UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
ay of University education in the eighteenth century—Contemporary
evidence—Decline in numbers and dearth of eminence in science and
174
literature—Counter-evidence showing that education and learning
were not wholly neglected

CHAPTER XVI.
THE UNIVERSITY DURING THE REIGNS OF GEORGE III.
AND GEORGE IV.
gnation of University legislation in the eighteenth century—Statutes
affecting the University—Political sympathies of the University after
the outbreak of the French Revolution—Accessions to professoriate in
183
the eighteenth century—Architectural improvements—Effects of the
French war upon the University.—Opposition to reforms—Reception
of the Allied Sovereigns.—Abolition of the Mayor’s Oath

CHAPTER XVII.
OXFORD STUDIES AND EXAMINATIONS IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY.

mination statute of 1800, and later amendments—Examination statute
of 1850, and later amendments—University Commission of 1850—
Act of 1854 and new College Ordinances—Effect of these reforms—
191
Abolition of University tests—Local examinations, and board for
examination of public schools—Commission of inquiry (1872) and
Act of 1876—Commission of 1877—Character of last reforms

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE NEO-CATHOLIC REVIVAL, KNOWN AS THE ‘OXFORD
MOVEMENT.’
racter of the ‘Oxford Movement’—A reaction against the rising tide of
Liberalism—Oriel the centre of the Movement—John Henry Newman
—Origin of ‘Tracts for the Times’—Association formed—Newman
assumes the lead—Spread and objects of the movement.—Publication
204
of Tract XC.—Collapse of Tractarianism, and secession of Newman—
The ‘Hampden Controversy’—Proceedings against Pusey and Ward—
Effect of the ‘Oxford Movement’—Controversy on the endowment of
the Greek Professorship.—Defeat of Mr. Gladstone in 1865

CHAPTER XIX.
THE UNIVERSITY IN 1886.
gn of Queen Victoria—State of the University on the Queen’s accession
217
—Influence of recent changes—Present character of the University

DEX 223

THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.

CHAPTER I.
THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITY.

Mythical origin of
The University of Oxford has long ceased to claim the
the University fabulous antiquity for which its mediæval champions
had contended, as for an article of faith, and which
found credit with so conscientious an historian as Anthony Wood. It is now
admitted that nothing is certainly known of its origin, and that its alleged
foundation by Alfred the Great rests upon a tradition which cannot be traced
back to a period beyond the fourteenth century. There is no evidence
whatever to show that any germ of a University, much less that any college,
existed at Oxford in the reign of Alfred, who was born in the neighbouring
town of Wantage. The very contrary may reasonably be inferred from the
negative fact that Asser, in his contemporary biography of Alfred, makes no
allusion to his supposed institution of ‘schools’ at Oxford, though he amply
attests his paternal zeal for English education. The early chroniclers are,
without exception, equally silent on the subject, which is noticed by no
extant writer before the age of Edward III. In the next reign, the primary
myth—for so we must regard it—was developed into a secondary myth,
attributing to Alfred the foundation of University College, and this
imaginary pretension was actually advanced by that college in the course of
a lawsuit. Meanwhile, the simpler tradition of Alfred’s connection with the
University Schools was repeated by author after author in days when the
very nature of historical proof was unknown, and was reinforced in the
sixteenth century by the insertion of a spurious passage into the work of
Asser. It has been reserved for the present century to recognise the plain
truth that we are entirely ignorant of the first stage in the growth of the
University, and that its name is never mentioned in history before the
Norman Conquest.
The silence of Domesday Book respecting the
Early schools of University of Oxford must be taken as presumptive,
Oxford
though by no means conclusive, proof that it had no
corporate existence at that date. Much learning has been spent in

speculations on its origin and primitive constitution, but these speculations
have little support in any facts historically known to us before the Norman
Conquest. It is more than probable, however, that Oxford was already a
resort of students and a place of education. Having been a residence of
Edmund Ironside, Canute, and Harold I., as well as the seat of several
National Councils, it was now recognised as a provincial capital by the
erection of its castle, embracing within it the Collegiate Church of St.
George; while the number of its monastic establishments would naturally
attract poor scholars from all parts of England. The earliest schools, not in
England only but throughout Europe, were attached to monasteries or
cathedrals; and, in the absence of any contrary evidence, analogy almost
compels us to regard the Church as the foster-mother of the University. In
the ‘claustral’ schools of St. Frideswide, and the houses in Oxford
belonging to abbeys, such as those of Abingdon and Eynsham, we may
discern the original seminaries of academical teaching—the first rudiments
of the Studium Generale, afterwards developed into the Universitas
Literaria. On the other hand, it is certain that, side by side with these
claustral schools, secular or lay schools were gradually opened—some
boarding-schools, mainly designed for the reception of boys from the
country, others mere classrooms frequented by the students who lodged
either in private dwellings or in public hostels. It appears that before long
the secular outnumbered the claustral schools, and became centred in a
particular quarter of the city, stretching northward from the west end of St.
Mary’s Church, afterwards known as School Street, and said to have existed
in the year 1109. We may surmise with some confidence that in the infancy
of the University its lecturers were almost exclusively clerks, but too often
scholastic adventurers of mean attainments, whose lessons rose little above
the barest elements of knowledge. But all theories of its rudimentary
organisation are purely conjectural. ‘The Schools of Oxford’ first emerge
into history in the next century, when they really attained a national
celebrity, soon eclipsing those of Canterbury, Winchester, Peterborough,
and others, which may have rivalled them in earlier times.
The twelfth century, the golden age of feudalism and
Intellectual revival
the Crusades, was also marked by a notable movement
of the twelfth
century of thought and revival of speculative activity. The
culture and science which had long found a home at
Cordova now began to diffuse themselves over Western Europe, and the

works of Avicenna introduced a curious relish for Aristotle’s ‘Natural
Philosophy,’ which veiled itself in mysticism to escape ecclesiastical
censure. The old scholastic Trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, with
the mathematical Quadrivium, comprising arithmetic, geometry, astronomy,
and music, still constituted the magic circle of ‘Arts’ in the mediæval sense.
But the ‘sciences,’ as they were then called, of physics, Roman law, and
systematic theology, if not medicine, were now claiming a place in the
curriculum of education; and valuable histories, in the form of chronicles,
were compiled in several English monasteries. That age cannot be called
intellectually barren which produced Lanfranc, Anselm, Abelard, Bernard,
Peter the Lombard, Averroes, Gratian, and Maimonides. The University of
Bologna, with its School of Law, opened by Irnerius under imperial
patronage, was among the first fruits of this mediæval renaissance. The
cultivation of Roman jurisprudence is usually dated from the discovery of a
copy of the Pandects at the capture of Amalfi in 1135, but it cannot have
been wholly unknown at an earlier period, since the religious orders had
been forbidden by a Papal mandate to study it. The lectures of Irnerius,
however, apparently preceding the capture of Amalfi, methodised and
popularised the new learning, which spread rapidly through Western
Europe.
There is historical evidence of Vacarius, a professor
Lectures of from Bologna, having commenced lectures in civil law
Vacarius, and first
germs of the at Oxford, under the patronage of Archbishop Theobald,
University about 1149, in the reign of Stephen, by whom they were
prohibited for a while at the instance of teachers
interested in philosophy and theology. This is the earliest well-ascertained
event in the academical life of Oxford, but it may safely be inferred that if
Vacarius came from Italy to lecture in the schools of Oxford, those schools
had already attained something like a European reputation, and were fitted
to become the germ of an University.[1] We have the positive testimony of
John of Salisbury, who had studied at Paris, that Oxford, just before the
accession of Henry II., was engrossed by logical controversies about the
nature of Universals. Yet this concourse of eager students apparently
possessed no chartered rights. There is no sufficient ground for the assertion
that Henry I. was educated at Oxford, and granted some important
privileges to the so-called ‘University;’ but we know that he lived much
both at Oxford and at Woodstock, that he built the palace of Beaumont on

the north of the city, and that he demised to its corporation the fee farm of
the city for the annual rent of sixty-three pounds. Nor can it be proved, as it
has been alleged, that, having sunk again to a low ebb under Stephen and
Henry II., it was revived by the judicious patronage of Richard I., himself
born at Beaumont. On the other hand, starting from the fact that the Oxford
schools attracted a professor from Italy in the reign of Stephen, we are
justified in believing that they could scarcely have escaped the notice of
Henry I., who earned a name for scholarship in that unlettered era, and is
said to have ‘pleased himself much with the conversation of clerks;’ or of
Stephen, who twice held Councils at Oxford; or of Henry II., who, like his
grandfather, constantly resided in the immediate neighbourhood. Without
the encouragement of the Crown as well as of the Church, they could not
have attained the position which they clearly occupied before the end of the
twelfth century. By this time Oseney Abbey had been founded, and had
annexed the church of St. George within the Castle. Both of these religious
houses served as lodgings for young scholars, who contributed to swell the
number of Oxford students. It is true that we have no trace of academical
endowments, or of royal charters recognising the Oxford schools, in the
twelfth century. But we are informed on good authority that Robert Pullen
(or Pulleyne), author of the Sententiarum Libri Octo, and for some years a
student at Paris, delivered regular courses of lectures on the Scriptures at
Oxford some years before the visit of Vacarius. More than a generation
later, in the year 1186 or 1187, Giraldus Cambrensis, having been
despatched to Ireland by Henry II. as companion of Prince John, publicly
read at Oxford his work on the Topography of Ireland. According to his
own account, ‘not willing to hide his candle under a bushel, but to place it
on a candlestick, that it might give light to all, he resolved to read it
publicly at Oxford, where the most learned and famous of the English
clergy were at that time to be found.’ These recitations lasted three
successive days, and the lecturer has left it on record that he feasted not
only ‘all the doctors of the different faculties and such of their pupils as
were of fame and note,’ but ‘the rest of the scholars,’ with many burgesses
and even the poor of the city. Whether or not the schools thus frequented at
Oxford were mainly founded by the Benedictines, as has been maintained,
and whether or not they were mainly conducted by teachers from Paris, they
assuredly existed, and constituted an University in all but the name.

It is no longer doubtful that, in their earliest stage, the
Connection of schools of Oxford owed much to those of Paris, then in a
Oxford with the
University of Paris far more advanced state of development, though not
formally incorporated into an ‘University’ until early in
the thirteenth century. William of Champeaux had opened a school of logic
at Paris so far back as 1109. His pupil, Abelard, followed him; and the fame
of Abelard himself was far surpassed by that of Peter Lombard, whose text-
book of ‘Sentences’ became the philosophical Bible of the Middle Ages.
Students flocked in from all parts of Europe; lectures multiplied, not only in
one faculty, as at Bologna or Salerno, but in every branch of mediæval
study, especially in those comprised under ‘Arts;’ a system of exercises,
degrees, academical discipline, and even college life, was gradually
matured; and when Philip Augustus gave the new academical guild his
royal approval, it was already in a condition of vigorous activity. In this
sense, the growth of the University of Paris was spontaneous. Like that of
Oxford, it was originally nothing but an association of teachers united by
mutual interest; but, like all mediæval institutions, it grew up under Church
authority. It had originally sprung from the cathedral school of Notre-Dame;
the ecclesiastical chancellor of Paris claimed a paramount jurisdiction over
it, which, however, was constantly resisted by the University, not without
support from the Court of Rome; and the validity of its highest degrees was
derived from the sanction of the Pope himself. Considering the links which
bound England to France, through Normandy and her other French
provinces, as well as the intellectual ascendency of Paris over Western
Europe, it is natural that Oxford should have borrowed many features of her
internal regulations from this source, though it cannot be affirmed with
certainty that she did so. The presumption is strongly confirmed by the
undoubted fact that the ‘English nation’ was one of the four ‘nations’ into
which the students of Paris were divided, the Normans forming another
distinct nation by themselves. Leland tells us that young Englishmen who
then aspired to a high education got their schooling, as we should call it, at
Oxford, but their college training at Paris, and Anthony Wood gives a list of
eminent Oxonians who had studied at Paris, including the names of
Giraldus Cambrensis, Robert Pulleyne, Robert Grosteste, Roger Bacon, and
Stephen Langton. If this be so, it was inevitable that, on their return, they
should bring home with them ideas based on their experience of Paris,
which might thus gradually become a model of academical organisation for

Oxford. In the year 1229, a fresh link of connection with the great French
University was created by a large immigration of Parisian students. The
immediate cause of this immigration was an outbreak of hostility between
the scholars and citizens of Paris, like those which so constantly recurred
between the same parties at Oxford. Henry III. had the foresight to seize
this opportunity of reinforcing his own University, and among the many
students who came from Paris to Oxford on his invitation were several of
his own subjects who had gone abroad for their education.
At all events, at the beginning of the thirteenth
Recognition of the century, we find at Oxford an academical body
scholars by the
Papal Legate after singularly like that long established at Paris, and
the riot of 1209 exhibiting almost equal vitality. In one respect, indeed,
its position was still more independent; for, whereas at
Paris the University was overshadowed by a Royal Court with all the great
dignitaries of the French Church and State, at Oxford the University
authorities had no competitors but the corporation of the city. Moreover,
while at Paris there was a resident chancellor of Notre-Dame, ever ready to
assert his authority, there was no episcopal see of Oxford; the diocesan
lived at a safe distance, and the archdeacon was the highest resident
functionary of the Church. About the beginning of the thirteenth century,
Edmund Rich, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, and Robert Grosteste,
afterwards bishop of Lincoln, became pioneers of Aristotelian study in
Oxford, and were among the earliest graduates in divinity, a faculty then in
its infancy. In the year 1214 we come upon more solid ground in a
documentary record preserved in the archives of the University. This record,
in the shape of a letter from the Papal Legate, refers to an important
incident which had occurred five years before, in 1209, when three students
had been seized and hanged by a mob of townspeople, with the mayor and
burgesses at their head, in revenge for the death of a woman accidentally
killed by another student. In consequence of this outrage, said to have been
countenanced by King John, the city was laid under an interdict by the
Pope, who issued a prohibition against lecturing in Oxford, and the great
body of students migrated to Cambridge, Reading, or elsewhere. The letter
of the Papal Legate, reciting the submission of the burgesses to his
authority, and his disposition to deal mercifully with them, proceeds to
impose upon them certain penalties. One of these is the remission of half
the fixed rent payable for halls tenanted by scholars, for a period of ten

years. Another is the payment of fifty-two shillings yearly for the support of
poor scholars, and the obligation to feast one hundred poor scholars every
year on St. Nicholas’s Day. They are also to swear that, in future, they will
furnish the scholars with provisions at a just and reasonable price; and that
if they shall arrest a clerk they shall deliver him up, upon due requisition
from the bishop of Lincoln or the archdeacon of Oxford, or his official, or
the chancellor, or ‘him whom the bishop of Lincoln shall have deputed to
this office.’ This oath is to be repeated yearly. All masters who continued to
lecture after the retirement of scholars under Papal mandate are to be
suspended from lecturing for three years. All townsmen convicted of
participation in the original crime are to come, without shoes, hats, or
cloaks, to the graves of the murdered ‘clerks,’ and are to give their bodies
proper burial in a place to be solemnly chosen. Upon any default in the
fulfilment of these conditions, the former sentence of excommunication is
again to be enforced by the bishop of Lincoln.
It is to be observed that in this memorable document
Office of chancellor there is no mention of an ‘University.’ The members of
the academical fraternity are called simply ‘clerks’ or
‘scholars studying at Oxford.’ It may further be inferred from the
expressions respecting the chancellor, that no chancellor of the University
existed distinct from the chancellor of the diocese, or, at least, that, if he
existed, he was a nominee of the bishop of Lincoln. On the other hand, the
scholars are recognised throughout as under the special protection of the
Papal See, as well as under special jurisdiction of the bishop of Lincoln,
afterwards to become ex officio Visitor of the University. It seems to follow
that, while the University, as a corporation, was not yet fully constituted,
such a corporation already existed in an inchoate state, and the schools of
Oxford enjoyed a privileged status at the supreme court of Western
Christendom. When they first became, in the legal sense, an ‘University’
under a chancellor of their own, is still a disputed question, though a seal
has been engraved, supposed to be of about the year 1200, which bears the
inscription, ‘Sigillum Cancellarii et Universitatis Oxoniensis.’ Much
learning has been expended on the origin of the chancellorship, and it will
probably never be determined with certainty whether the earliest
chancellors derived their authority exclusively from the bishop of Lincoln
as diocesan, or were in the nature of elective rectors of the schools
(Rectores Scholarum), whose election was confirmed by the bishop of

Lincoln. What is certain is that the acting head of the University was always
entitled Cancellarius rather than Rector Scholarum, that from the beginning
of Henry III.’s reign he is frequently mentioned under this official title,
especially in the important charters of 1244 and 1255, and that by the
middle of the thirteenth century he was treated as an independent
representative of the University, while the official deputy of the bishop at
the University was not the chancellor but the archdeacon of Oxford. At this
period, then, we may regard the University as fully constituted, and the
official list of chancellors begins in the year 1220, when three persons are
mentioned as having filled the office, the last of whom is Robert Grosteste,
afterwards the celebrated reforming bishop of Lincoln. From this epoch we
may safely date the election of the chancellor by Convocation, though it
long continued to be subject to confirmation by the diocesan. A century
later (1322) the election was made biennial.
In the year 1219 the abbot and Convent of Eynsham
University chests, took upon themselves the obligations laid upon the
and sources of
revenue in the burgesses in 1214, so far as regarded the double
thirteenth century. provision for poor scholars. This agreement was carried
Rise of Halls out, yet the burgesses are still treated as liable in an
ordinance issued, in 1240, by Robert Grosteste, then
bishop of Lincoln, which provides for the regular application of the fund to
its original purpose. This ordinance marks an important epoch in the growth
of the University. The ‘Frideswyde Chest,’ and other chests formed on a
like principle by successive benefactions for the relief of poor scholars,
appear to have been the earliest form of corporate property held by the
University. They continued to multiply up to the end of the fifteenth
century, when they had reached the number of twenty-four at least, and are
computed to have contained an aggregate sum of 2,000 marks, all of which
might be in circulation on loan at the same time.[2] It is very difficult to
ascertain what other sources of revenue the University may have possessed
in the first stage of its existence. In the next stage, its income seems to have
been largely derived from academical fines and fees on graces, as well as
from duties paid by masters keeping grammar-schools and principals of
halls, into which the primitive boarding-schools were first transforming
themselves. It is clear that, at this period, the great mass of students, not
being inmates of religious houses, were lodged and boarded in these
unendowed halls, mostly hired from the citizens by clerks, who in some

cases were not even graduates, but were regularly licensed by the
chancellor or his commissary on September 9, and were subject to fixed
rules of discipline laid down from time to time by the governing body of the
University. How many of them may have been open in the middle of the
thirteenth century is a question which cannot be answered. About seventy
are specified by name in a list compiled nearly two centuries later, but we
have no means of knowing how many ancient halls may have then become
extinct, or how many new halls may have been founded. The evidence now
in our possession does not enable us to identify more than about eighty as
having ever existed, and it is certain that all these did not exist at any one
time. Even if we suppose that several hundred students were housed in
monastic buildings during the age preceding the foundation of colleges, and
make a large allowance for those in private lodging-houses, we cannot
estimate the whole number of University scholars at more than 2,000, or at
the most 3,000. The loose statement of Richard of Armagh, so lightly
repeated by Anthony Wood and others, that some 30,000 scholars were
collected at Oxford in this age, not only rests upon no sure historical
ground, but is utterly inconsistent with all that we know of the area covered
by the city, and of the position occupied by the academical population.
It is well known that Henry III. frequently visited
Early University Oxford for the purpose of holding councils or otherwise,
charters
and his relations with the University were constant.
Amongst the letters and charters issued by him in regard to University
affairs three are specially notable. One of these letters, dated 1238, was
addressed to the mayor and burghers, directing them to inquire into the
circumstances of a riot at Oseney Abbey between the servants of Otho, the
Papal Legate, and a body of disorderly students. This riot led to a struggle,
lasting a whole year, between the Legate and the University, supported by
the English bishops, and especially by Robert Grosteste. The Legate was
ultimately appeased by the public submission of the University
representatives in London to his authority, whereupon he withdrew the
interdict which he had laid upon the Oxford clerks, some of whom had
retired to Northampton, and others, it is said, to Salisbury. Meanwhile the
conflicts between the students and townspeople were incessant. In 1244,
after a violent attack of gownsmen on the Jewry, the chancellor of the
University was given by a royal writ exclusive cognisance of all pleas
arising out of contracts relating to personalty, and in 1248 the ‘mayor’s

oath’ of fidelity to the privileges of the University was imposed by letters
patent. By a similar charter, granted in 1255 to the city of Oxford, these
privileges are incidentally confirmed, for it is there provided that if a ‘clerk’
shall injure a townsman he shall be imprisoned until the chancellor shall
claim him, while, if a townsman shall injure a clerk, he shall be imprisoned
until he make satisfaction according to the judgment of the chancellor. Two
years later (in 1257) the liberties of the University were defended against
the bishop of Lincoln himself before the king at St. Albans, on the ground
that Oxford was, after Paris, ‘schola secunda ecclesiæ.’

FOOTNOTES:
[1] It is perhaps needless to observe that ‘universitas’ signifies a ‘corporation’
or guild, and implies no universality in the range of subjects taught, or
Universitas Facultatum. ‘Studium Generale’ probably signifies a place of
education open to all comers.
[2] See the Introduction to Anstey’s Munimenta Academica, pp. xxxv. et sqq.

CHAPTER II.
THE EARLY COLLEGES.

By far the most important event in the academical
Rise of Colleges history of the thirteenth century was the foundation of
University, Balliol, and Merton Colleges. The idea of
secular colleges, it is true, was not wholly new. Harold’s foundation at
Waltham, afterwards converted into an abbey, was originally non-monastic,
and designed to be a home for secular priests, but it was not an educational
institution. There were colleges for the maintenance of poor scholars at
Bologna; rather, however, in the nature of the Oxford halls. If the founders
of the earliest Oxford college were indebted for their inspiration to any
foreign source, they must have derived it from the great French University
in Paris, of which the collegiate system already formed a distinctive feature.
Not to speak of still more ancient colleges at Paris, either attached to
monasteries or serving the purpose of mere lodging-houses, the Sorbonne,
founded about 1250, furnishes a striking precedent for its Oxford
successors, as an academical cloister specially planned for the education of
the secular clergy. Nevertheless, there is no proof that its constitution was
actually imitated or studied by the founder of any Oxford college, and there
is one important difference between the Paris and Oxford colleges, that
whereas the former were appropriated to special faculties, the latter
welcomed students in all faculties. It is, therefore, by no means improbable
that in the development of the college system, as in the original
incorporation of schools into an academical body, like causes produced like
results by independent processes at the French and English Universities.
The claim of University College to priority among
Foundation of Oxford colleges cannot be disputed, if the foundation of
University and
Balliol a college is to be dated from the earliest of the
endowments afterwards appropriated to its support. It
was in 1249 that William of Durham left by will a sum of 310 marks to the
University of Oxford for the maintenance of ten or more Masters, being

natives of the county of Durham, in lodgings to be provided at Oxford out
of this fund. Two houses in School Street, Oxford, and one in High Street,
were purchased by the University before 1263, and were probably occupied
by students. There was, however, no royal charter of incorporation, no
provision for corporate self-government, or for the succession of fellows,
no organised society, no distribution of powers or definition of duties. In a
word, the institution founded by William of Durham was not a college, but
an exhibition-fund to be administered by the University. It was not until
1292 that this scattered body of exhibitioners was consolidated into ‘the
Great Hall of the University,’ as it was then called, under statutes which are
a very meagre copy of those issued nearly thirty years earlier by Walter de
Merton, and which, unlike his, were imposed, not by the founder, but by the
University itself. Meanwhile, at some time between 1263 and 1268, John
Balliol, of Barnard Castle, father of John Balliol, king of Scotland, provided
similar exhibitions for poor scholars at Oxford. His intention was completed
by his wife, Dervorguilla, who collected the recipients of his bounty into a
single building on the present site of the college, increased the endowments
so that it might support a body of sixteen exhibitioners with a yearly stipend
of twenty-seven marks apiece, and in 1282 issued statutes regulating the
new foundation, but fully conceding the principle of self-government.
In the meantime Merton College had been founded on
Foundation of a far larger scale, and had received statutes which,
Merton College
viewed across the interval of six centuries, astonish us
by their comprehensive wisdom and foresight. As an institution for the
promotion of academical education under collegiate discipline but secular
guidance, it was the expression of a conception entirely new in England,
which deserves special consideration, inasmuch as it became the model of
all other collegiate foundations, and determined the future constitution of
both the English Universities. In this sense, Merton College is entitled to
something more than precedence, for its founder was the real founder of the
English college-system.
The oldest foundation charter of Merton College,
Merton College, issued in 1264, was itself the development of still earlier
Statutes of, 1274
schemes for the support of poor scholars, in scholis
degentes. It established an endowed ‘House of the scholars of Merton’ at
Malden, in Surrey, under a warden or bailiffs, with two or three ‘ministers

of the altar.’ Out of the estates assigned to this collegiate house were to be
maintained a body of twenty students in a hall or lodging at Oxford, or
elsewhere, if a more flourishing studium generale should elsewhere be
instituted. In 1274, Walter de Merton, having greatly expanded his first
design, put forth his final statutes, transferring the warden, bailiffs, and
ministers of the altar, from Malden to Oxford, and designating Oxford as
the exclusive and permanent home of the scholars. These statutes, which
continued in force until the year 1856, are a marvellous repertory of minute
and elaborate provisions governing every detail of college life. The number
and allowances of the scholars; their studies, diet, costume, and discipline;
the qualifications, election, and functions of the warden; the distribution of
powers among various college officers; the management of the college
estates, and the conduct of college business, are here regulated with truly
remarkable sagacity. The policy which dictated and underlies them is easy
to discern. Fully appreciating the intellectual movement of his age, and
unwilling to see the paramount control of it in the hands of the religious
orders—the zealous apostles of Papal supremacy—Walter de Merton
resolved to establish within the precincts of the University a great seminary
of secular clergy, which should educate a succession of men capable of
doing good service in Church and State. He was not content with a copy or
even a mere adaptation of the monastic idea; on the contrary, it may be
surmised that he was influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the spirit
of those non-monastic institutions, now almost forgotten, in which the
parochial clergy of an earlier age had sometimes lived together under a
common rule. The employment of his scholars was to be study—not the
claustralis religio of the older religious orders, nor the more practical and
popular self-devotion of the Dominicans and Franciscans. He forbade them
ever to take vows; he enjoined them to maintain their corporate
independence against all foreign encroachments; he ordained that all should
apply themselves to studying the liberal arts and philosophy before entering
upon a course of theology; and he provided special chaplains to relieve
them of ritual and ceremonial duties. He contemplated and even encouraged
their going forth into the great world, only reminding those who might win
an ample fortune (uberior fortuna) to show their gratitude by advancing the
interests of the college. No ascetic obligations were laid upon them, but
residence and continuous study were strictly prescribed, and if any scholars
retired from the college with the intention of giving up learning, or even

ceased to study diligently, their salaries were no longer to be paid. If the
scale of these salaries and statutable allowances was humble, it was chiefly
because the founder intended the number of his scholars to be constantly
increased, as the revenues of the house might be enlarged. He even
recognised the duty of meeting the needs of future ages, and empowered his
scholars not only to make new statutes, but even to migrate elsewhere from
Oxford in case of necessity.
If we seek to measure the effect produced by the rise
Social position, of colleges on the character of the University, we must
manners, and
academical life of endeavour to realise the aspect of University life and
early students manners before colleges were planted in Oxford. The
students, as we have seen, were lodged in religious
houses, licensed halls, or private chambers. The former were mostly
destined to swell the ranks of the regular clergy, and, it may be presumed,
were subjected to some wholesome rules of discipline, independent of any
authority exercised by the University. As they also received the whole or the
greater part of their instruction within the walls of their convents, they
probably were rarely seen in the streets, cultivated a certain degree of
refinement, and took comparatively little part in the riots which constantly
disturbed the peace of Oxford in the Middle Ages. With the other two
classes it was far otherwise. Even the inmates of halls lived in a style and
under conditions which, in our own age, would be regarded as barbarism.
Like other scholars, they were chiefly drawn from a social grade below that
of esquires or wealthy merchants. Many of them were the less vigorous
members of yeomen’s or tradesmen’s families; not a few sprang from the
very lowest ranks, and actually begged their way to Oxford. The majority
had probably come as mere schoolboys, at the age of eleven or twelve, to
one of the numerous grammar-schools which prepared their pupils for the
higher studies taught in the ‘Schools of Oxford’ properly so called. It was
for these younger scholars, we may suppose, that regular ‘fetchers’ and
‘bringers’ were licensed by the University, as we learn from a document of
1459, though some were attended by private servants. The older scholars,
however, doubtless travelled in parties, for the sake of protection and
economy, with their scanty baggage slung over the backs of pack-horses.
Having safely arrived in Oxford, they would disperse to their several halls;
and it does not appear that, at this period, a freshman underwent any
process of matriculation or took any oath before acquiring the privileges of

the University. He would, of course, share his bedroom, if not his bed, with
others, and be content with the roughest fare, but he must also have
dispensed with nearly all the manifold aids to study now enjoyed by the
humblest students. Books existed only in the form of costly manuscripts
treasured up in the chilly reading-rooms of monasteries; privacy was as
impossible by day as by night; and the only chance of acquiring knowledge
was by hanging upon the lips of a teacher lecturing to a mixed class of all
ages and infinitely various attainments, in an ill-lighted room, unprovided
with desks or fireplace, which in these days would be condemned as utterly
unfit for an elementary school-room. The principal of his hall, it is true, was
supposed to be his tutor, but we have positive evidence, in a statute of 1432,
that principals themselves were sometimes illiterate persons, and of
doubtful character; nor was it until that year that it was necessary for them
to be graduates. What kind of language he would hear, and what kind of
habits he would learn, from his chamber-mates and class-mates in the
century preceding the age of Chaucer, we can be at no loss to imagine. And
yet the inmate of a hall, being under some kind of domestic
superintendence, was a model of academical propriety compared with the
unattached students, or ‘chamber-dekyns,’ whose enormities fill so large a
space in the mediæval annals of the University.
It is possible that a certain jealousy on the part of
‘Chamber-dekyns’ principals and others personally interested in the
prosperity of halls may have exaggerated the vices of
these extra-aularian students. At the same time it is self-evident that raw
youths congregated together, under no authority, in the houses of
townspeople, or ‘laymen,’ would be far more likely to be riotous and
disorderly than members of halls, or, still more, of colleges. Accordingly,
the ‘chamber-dekyns’ were always credited with the chief share in the street
brawls and other excesses which so often disgraced the University in the
Middle Ages. The leading statute on the subject, it is true, was passed in the
year 1432, when colleges and halls had already established a decisive
ascendency, and when the ‘chamber-dekyns’ may have sunk into greater
contempt than in earlier times. But that statute, abolishing the system of
lodging in private houses, treats its abuses as of long standing, and probably
describes a state of things which had existed for two centuries. It is here
recited that the peace of the University is constantly disturbed by persons
who, having the appearance of scholars, dwell in no hall and are subject to

no principal, but lurk about the town in taverns and brothels, committing
murders and thefts; wherefore it is ordained that all scholars must reside in
some college or hall, under pain of imprisonment, and that no townsman
shall harbour scholars without special leave from the chancellor.
The reality of the evils against which this statute was
Street brawls and aimed is attested by the frequent recurrence of other
disorders
statutes against crimes of violence committed by
scholars, as well as by college rules against frequenting the streets except
under proper control. We may take as an example an University statute
passed in 1432 against ‘the unbridled prevalence of execrable disturbances’
in Oxford, which specifically imposes fines, on a graduated scale, for
threats of personal violence, carrying weapons, pushing with the shoulder
or striking with the fist, striking with a stone or club, striking with a knife,
dagger, sword, axe, or other warlike weapon, carrying bows and arrows,
gathering armed men, and resisting the execution of justice, especially by
night. The main cause of these brawls is clearly indicated by the further
injunction that no scholar or Master shall take part with another because he
is of the same country, or against him because he is of a different country.
The statutable fines range from one shilling to no less than forty—a highly
deterrent penalty in the reign of Henry VI. It is to be observed that while the
parade of arms within the chancellor’s jurisdiction is prohibited, the
possession of them is rather taken for granted, since they were usually
carried for purposes of defence on long journeys. Bows and arrows, as
essentially offensive weapons, are naturally placed under a stricter ban, and
the heaviest punishment is properly reserved for riotous assemblages, which
had so often led to bloodshed in the streets of mediæval Oxford.
In such a state of society colleges offered not only a
Superiority of tranquil retreat to adult scholars, but also a safe and
colleges in
discipline and well-regulated home to younger students attending
tuition courses of lectures in the schools. The early founders, it
is true, did not design them to be mainly educational
seminaries for the general youth of the country, and probably expected their
inmates to obtain much of their instruction outside the walls of the college.
But the statutes of Merton prove conclusively that ‘Scholars’[3] on
admission were supposed to be of about the same age as modern freshmen,
and to need rudimentary teaching, while express provision was made for the

reception of mere schoolboys. Doubtless, for at least two centuries after the
institution of colleges, their members were greatly outnumbered by those of
halls, and the system which in the fifteenth century triumphed over the
rivalry of private hostels may be more properly called aularian than
collegiate. Nevertheless, the superiority of colleges as boarding-houses for
students inevitably made itself felt from the very first. Humble as their
buildings and domestic arrangements may originally have been, they were
imposing and luxurious by contrast with those of lodging-houses or halls.
Their endowments enabled them to maintain a standard of decency and
comfort in itself conducive to study; their statutes ensured regularity of
discipline; their corporate privileges and rights of self-government imparted
a dignity and security to all connected with them; the example and authority
of their elder fellows, mostly engaged in scholastic or scientific research, if
not in vigorous lecturing, cannot have been wholly lost upon the juniors. In
Merton, and probably in other colleges, disputations were carried on as in
the University schools; attendance at Divine service was a statutable
obligation; students were not allowed to go about the streets unless
accompanied by a Master of Arts; in the dormitories the seniors were
invested with a kind of monitorial authority over the rest; and misconduct
was punishable with expulsion. By degrees, some of the halls came into the
possession and under the control of colleges, which might naturally elect
the most promising of their inmates to scholarships. No wonder that,
however weak numerically, the seven colleges founded before the end of
the fourteenth century produced an immense proportion of the men who
adorned that age by their learning and virtues.[4] Thus, out of eighteen vice-
chancellors who can be identified as having filled that office in the
fourteenth century, five at least were members of Merton College, two of
Oriel, and one of Queen’s. Of sixty-four proctors known to have been
elected during the same century, twenty-two at least were members of
Merton, eight of Oriel, four of Balliol, and one of University, Exeter,
Queen’s, and New College respectively, while it is probable that others, of
whom nothing definite is known, really belonged to one of the seven
ancient colleges. Considering how largely the non-collegiate population of
the University outnumbered these small collegiate bodies, it is a very
significant fact that so many vice-chancellors and proctors should have
been chosen from them in days when election to both these offices was
entirely free. Such a fact goes far to prove that the ‘college monopoly,’ of

which so much has been heard in later times, owed its origin, in a great
degree, to natural selection in a genuine struggle for existence between
endowed and unendowed societies.

FOOTNOTES:
[3] In the Merton Statutes the words ‘Scholar’ and ‘Fellow’ are convertible,
the Scholar being a Junior Fellow upon his first admission.
[4] Though Canterbury College was founded in this century, it does not seem
to have ranked with other colleges in the University, and no vice-chancellor or
proctor is recorded to have been elected from it.

CHAPTER III.
PROGRESS OF THE UNIVERSITY IN THE FOURTEENTH

CENTURY.

The fourteenth century deserves to be regarded as the
Europe in the most progressive and eventful in the history of the
fourteenth century
Middle Ages. All the kingdoms of Europe were engaged
in wars, for the most part destitute of permanent results, yet the work of
civilisation went forward with unbroken steadiness and rapidity. The
Spanish monarchies of Castile and Arragon continued their long struggle
for supremacy with each other, and for national existence with the
Mohammedan power at Granada. Germany was distracted by civil wars and
double imperial elections; Italy was torn asunder by the factions of the
Guelphs and Ghibellines. The usurpation and avarice of the Roman Court
produced an all but general revolt against Papal authority; the seat of the
Holy See was transferred for sixty years to Avignon, and the return of the
Pope to Rome was followed by ‘the Great Schism,’ which lasted fifty years
longer; Russia was subject to the Khan of Kipchak until its southern
provinces were overrun by the hordes of Timur; Poland and Hungary were
exhausting their strength in expeditions against their neighbours or against
Venice, while the Ottoman Turks were advancing into the heart of Eastern
Europe. England was entering upon its purely dynastic crusades for the
possession of the Scotch and French crowns, which, fruitful as they were in
military glory, diverted the energies of the nation, wasted its resources, and
retarded its internal development for several generations. Nevertheless,
literature, art, and education flourished marvellously in the midst of the
storms which racked European society. Ancient learning was revived in
Italy chiefly by the influence of Petrarch and Boccaccio; Dante became the
father of modern Italian poetry; Cimabue and his pupils founded the Italian
school of painting; scholastic philosophy culminated and gave place to a
more independent spirit of inquiry; scientific research first began to
emancipate itself from magical arts; Roman law extended its dominion

everywhere except in England, where, however, Chaucer and Wyclif gave
the first powerful impulse to native English thought; free thinking in
politics and religion penetrated deeply into the popular mind, and increasing
refinement of manners kept pace with the growth of trade and industry.
Universities sprang up one after another—in France, in Spain, in Italy, in
Poland, in Hungary, in Austria, and in Germany; nor is it unduly rash to
surmise that, if the invention of printing could have been anticipated by a
century, the Renaissance and the Reformation itself might have preceded
the capture of Constantinople and the discovery of America.
At the commencement of this century Oxford
Social condition ofpresented strange contrasts between the social and the
the University
intellectual aspects of its academical life. The great riot
of 1297 was scarcely over, and had left a heritage of ill-will which bore fruit
in the frightful conflict of 1354; the encounters between the northern and
southern nations were of frequent recurrence, and there was no effective
system of University discipline, while college discipline, still in its infancy,
was confined within the precincts of Merton, University, and Balliol. The
common herd of students, inmates of halls and inns and lodging-houses,
were still crowded together in miserable sleeping-rooms and lecture-rooms,
without domestic care or comfort, and strangers to all those frank and
generous relations which naturally grow up between young Englishmen,
especially of gentle birth, in the kindly intercourse of modern college life.
They often rendered more or less menial services in return for their
instruction, and were sometimes enabled to borrow from the University
Chest; at other times they relapsed into mendicity, and asked for alms on
the public highways. There were no libraries or museums, and the few
books possessed by the University were stored in a vault under St. Mary’s
Church. The laws of health being unknown, and every sanitary precaution
neglected, the city of Oxford was constantly scourged with pestilence from
which members of the University were fain to fly into neighbouring country
villages.
Under such conditions, and in such a society, it was
Intellectual vigour utterly impossible that education or learning could
of the University
flourish generally according to our modern ideas, and
yet it is certain that a restless and even feverish activity of speculation
prevailed within an inner circle of philosophical spirits, to which there are

few parallels in the history of thought. If their treasury of knowledge was
scanty in the extreme, yet the range of their studies was truly sublime, both
in its aims and in its orbit. In the chilly squalor of uncarpeted and
unwarmed chambers, by the light of narrow and unglazed casements, or the
gleam of flickering oil lamps, poring over dusky manuscripts hardly to be
deciphered by modern eyesight, undisturbed by the boisterous din of riot
and revelry without, men of humble birth, and dependent on charity for bare
subsistence, but with a noble self-confidence transcending that of Bacon or
of Newton, thought out and copied out those subtle masterpieces of
mediæval lore, purporting to unveil the hidden laws of Nature as well as the
dark counsels of Providence and the secrets of human destiny, which—
frivolous and baseless as they may appear under the scrutiny of a later
criticism—must still be ranked among the grandest achievements of
speculative reason. We must remember that archery and other outdoor
sports were then mostly in the nature of martial exercises reserved for the
warlike classes, while music and the fine arts were all but unknown, and the
sedentary labour of the student was relieved neither by the athletic nor by
the æsthetic pastimes of our own more favoured age. Thus driven inward
upon itself, the fire of intellectual ambition burned with a tenfold intensity,
and it was tempered by no such humility as the infinite range of modern
science imposes on the boldest of its disciples. In many a nightly vigil, and
in many a lonely ramble over the wild hill-sides beyond Cowley and
Hincksey, or along the river-sides between Godstow and Iffley, these
pioneers of philosophical research, to whom alchemy was chemistry, and
astronomy but the key to astrology, constantly pursued their hopeless quest
of Wisdom as it was dimly conceived by the patriarch Job, pressing
Aristotle into the service of mediæval theology, which they regarded as the
science of sciences, and inventing a mysterious phraseology which to us has
lost its meaning, but which they mistook for solid knowledge, fondly
imagining that it might lead them upward to some primary law governing
the whole realm of matter and of mind. They failed, indeed, because
success was hopeless, but their very failure paved the way for the ‘new
knowledge’ of the next century, and cleared the ground for the methods and
discoveries which have made other names immortal.
During the reigns of Edward II. and Edward III. the
Foundation of collegiate element in the University was strengthened by
Exeter, Oriel,
the foundation of five new colleges, one of which has

Queen’s, and since become extinct. The first of these was Exeter
Canterbury
Colleges College, founded in 1314 by Walter de Stapledon,
bishop of Exeter. Ten years later, in 1324, Adam de
Brome, almoner of King Edward II., procured from that king a charter of
incorporation for a college, to be called St. Mary’s House, and to consist of
a rector and scholars in divers sciences. In the following year, having
purchased the site of the present college, now called Oriel, he transferred it
to the king, who, by a fresh charter, erected there a collegiate society of ten
scholars for the study of divinity. Queens College was founded upon a
similar model, and under similar conditions, in the year 1340, by Robert de
Egglesfield, chaplain to Queen Philippa. The rules of study and discipline
for Oriel and Queen’s were mostly borrowed from those of Merton, but
some interesting peculiarities may be found in the Queen’s statutes. The
removal of the University from Oxford is distinctly contemplated, but, on
the other hand, able men are to be welcomed as scholars from all parts of
the world, though a preference is reserved for applicants from Cumberland
and Westmoreland, the founder’s native county, on account of its recent
devastation in border-warfare. The securities for impartial election to
fellowships are unusually minute, and there is a great variety of regulations
strongly tinged with the mystical tendency of the founder’s own mind.
Canterbury College, founded by Archbishop Simon Islip in 1361, differed
from these in its original constitution, since it embraced both secular and
‘religious’ students, and was mainly designed to promote the study of the
civil and canon law. Two years later, however, this design was abandoned,
and the college was appropriated to secular priests only, when John Wyclif,
probably the Reformer, was appointed its first head; but he was removed by
Archbishop Langham, and the college became a monastic nursery under the
priory of Canterbury, until it was absorbed into Christ Church in the reign
of Henry VIII.
The foundation of New College by William of
Foundation of New Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, in 1379, has been held
College
to mark a new departure in collegiate history. Like
Walter de Merton, William of Wykeham had filled various high offices of
State, including that of chancellor, and is well known as the designer of
several great architectural works. His main object in founding the College
of ‘St. Mary of Winchester in Oxford,’ since known as New College, is
clearly stated in his charter. It was to repair ‘the scarcity of scholars in the

nation, having been swept away by great pestilences and wars.’
Accordingly, in 1379, he obtained a license from Richard II. to found a
college ‘for seventy scholars studying in the faculties,’ all of whom were to
have passed through his other college for boys at Winchester itself. These
scholars were to be ‘poor indigent clerks,’ sufficiently taught in grammar,
and under twenty years of age. Ten were to study civil and ten canon law;
the remaining fifty were to study the Arts, or philosophy and theology,
though two of these might be specially permitted to devote themselves to
astronomy, and two to medicine. But the claim of William of Wykeham to
be considered the second founder of the college-system depends less on any
notable peculiarity in his statutes than on the grandeur and regularity of the
buildings which he erected on a site then vacant, and found by a jury to be
infested by malefactors, murderers, and thieves, as well as the scene of
other public nuisances. The noble quadrangle, of which the scholars took
possession on the 14th of April, 1386, having already been lodged in Hert
Hall and other tenements, doubtless served as the model for all the later
colleges, and the supremacy of colleges over halls may fitly be dated from
the end of the fourteenth century, when New College was the most
imposing centre of collegiate life.
The importance of Oxford in the eyes of Europe was
European influence increased during the fourteenth century by two causes,
of Oxford in the
fourteenth century the decline of the University of Paris, and the vigorous
protest of Oxford schoolmen against the spiritual
despotism of the Papacy, discredited by its subjection to French influence at
Avignon. The former of these causes was, in fact, nearly connected with the
latter. The University of Paris had owed much to Papal encouragement and
protection, but it had always struggled for corporate independence, and
when, in 1316, it stooped to solicit the patronage of John XXII., by
submitting to him a list of candidates for preferment, it forfeited its unique
position in the estimation of European scholars, then a small but united
brotherhood. On the other hand, it was an English Franciscan of Oxford—
William of Occham—who not only challenged the supremacy of the Pope,
but ‘proclaimed the severance of logic from theology.’ The assertion of this
bold paradox, aggravated by the aggressive Nominalism of its author,
nearly cost him his life, for he was imprisoned by the Pope’s order at
Avignon, and only escaped death by taking refuge at Munich with the
Emperor Louis of Bavaria. His doctrines, however, found wide acceptance

at Oxford, and paved the way for the far deeper revolution in ideas of which
John Wyclif was the pioneer.
The biography of this remarkable man, if authentic
Rise of Wyclif materials for it existed, would cover almost the whole
academical history of Oxford during the latter part of the
fourteenth century. Unfortunately, many of the facts are still involved in
uncertainty. Like Duns Scotus, he is believed to have been a Northerner,
though his birthplace is doubtful; like him, too, he was at once a Realist in
metaphysics and a champion of liberty in theology. Several colleges have
claimed him as their own; Balliol has enrolled him among its Masters,
Queen’s among its commoners, and Merton among its fellows. His name
only appears in the books of Merton in the year 1356, and though he soon
afterwards took an active part in the controversies of the day at Balliol and
elsewhere, it was not until after 1374 that he became known as the founder
of a new school in theology, and, still more, as a dauntless assailant of the
corruptions incident to Papal supremacy and priestly authority. In asserting
the right of private judgment and exposing ecclesiastical abuses, he was a
true successor of Occham, but he dissented from Occham’s Nominalism;
his sympathies were entirely with the secular clergy; and, whereas Occham
was a Franciscan, Wyclif inveighed against all the monastic Orders, but
especially against the friars. The movement which he led was essentially
academical in its origin, and definitely marks a great academical reaction
against the regular clergy, to whose influence learning and education had
owed so much in the previous century.
The career of Wyclif, indeed, belongs to the
Career of Wyclif University quite as much as to the Church. It was as the
last of the Oxford schoolmen, and mostly from Oxford
itself, that he put forth his series of books and pamphlets on the relations of
Church and State, on the subjection of the clergy to civil rule, civil taxation
and civil tribunals, on pardons, indulgences, the worship of saints,
transubstantiation, the supremacy of Holy Scripture, and other like topics,
besides those abstruse scholastic themes which have lost their interest for
the present age. During his earlier struggles, the open patronage of John of
Gaunt, with the occasional protection of the Court, stood him in good stead,
and enabled him to brave not only episcopal censures but Papal anathemas.
His real strength, however, consisted in the influence which he commanded

in the University itself and, through it, in the English people. When Pope
Gregory XI. despatched a Bull to the University of Oxford, calling for an
inquiry into his erroneous doctrines, the University barely consented to
receive it, and took no steps to comply with it, though it was supported by
similar Bulls addressed to the King and the English Bishops. When he was
cited for the second time to answer for his opinions in London, the citizens
were his avowed partisans. When his tenets had become discredited among
the aristocratic party by their supposed connection with the Peasant Revolt,
and were officially denounced, in 1381, by the Chancellor of the University,
sitting with twelve doctors as assessors, his cause was, nevertheless, stoutly
maintained by his followers at Oxford. The next Chancellor, Robert Rygge,
of Merton, was at heart among his adherents, and informed the Archbishop
Courtenay, in answer to a mandate requiring him to search all the colleges
and halls for Wycliffites, that it was as much as his life was worth. The
injunctions of the Archbishop, like those of his predecessor, were
practically defied at Oxford, until the Crown at last entered the lists against
the Reformer. In 1382, a Parliament was held at Oxford. The Convocation
which accompanied it condemned Wyclif’s teaching on the Eucharist; the
condemnation was published in the school of the Augustinian monks, where
Wyclif himself was presiding as professor, and a peremptory order was
issued for his expulsion with all his disciples. He died in 1384, but not
before he had completed his English translation of the Bible. The spirit
which he had kindled continued to animate the University for many years
after his death. In Merton College alone several eminent fellows were
known as Wycliffites in the next generation, and after the condemnation of
Lollardism by the Council of London in 1411, it was thought necessary to
pass a stringent University statute to check the propagation of Lollard
doctrines. By this statute, the penalty of the greater excommunication was
imposed upon all who should disseminate Lollardism, candidates for
degrees were required to abjure it, and heads of colleges or halls were
enjoined to exclude from their societies any person even suspected of it.
While the University was agitated by these
Feud between philosophical and theological storms, its external life
Northern and
Southern ‘nations’ seems to have been comparatively uneventful during the
fourteenth century. We read, however, of a brutal faction
fight between ‘the Northern and Southern clerks’ in 1319, and this ancient
feud continued to disturb the peace of the University for several

generations. The Northern party was apparently the weaker in the
University, perhaps because it had sympathised with Simon de Montfort.
Accordingly we learn from Anthony Wood that, in 1334, Merton College,
which had been suspected of favouring that party, sought to regain
popularity in the University by declining to admit Northern scholars. Again,
in 1349, a strong faction in the same college succeeded in procuring the
election of Wylliott as Chancellor by force, driving out the Northern
proctor, and committing acts of sanguinary violence. In 1327, we hear of a
‘most bloody outrage’ committed by the scholars and townsmen of Oxford,
joined with the townsmen of Abingdon, on the monks of Abingdon Abbey;
and in 1349-50 the ravages of the Black Death were such that Oxford was
almost deserted by its students, and the Warden of Merton is said to have
died of the plague. Two other memorable events occurred in the reign of
Edward III., which deserve more special notice, since they fill a
considerable space in the historical records of the University. The one of
these was the secession to Stamford in 1333; the other was the great riot
which broke out on St. Scholastica’s Day, 1354.[5]
The secession to Stamford was by no means the first
Early secessions to migration of Oxford students to another provincial town
Cambridge and
Northampton since the foundation of the University. In 1209 and again
in 1239 bodies of discontented Oxonians had betaken
themselves to Cambridge, and in 1260 a more important secession took
place, of which two different accounts have been given. According to one,
the emigrants were Northern students who had sided with Simon de
Montfort when he summoned his Parliament to Oxford in 1258, and framed
those articles which became the signal for civil war. It is further stated that,
having been joined at Northampton by refugees from Cambridge, and
distinguished themselves in defending the town against the Royal forces,
they narrowly escaped the King’s vengeance. According to another account,
supported by the authority of Anthony Wood, the King himself, fearing the
effect of political excitement on the masters and scholars of the University,
expressly sanctioned and encouraged the new settlement at Northampton,
specially recommending the emigrants to the good offices of the mayor and
bailiffs. At all events, their stay at Northampton was short, for they returned
to Oxford in 1264 or 1265, apparently in obedience to a Royal order, but
under a safe conduct from Simon de Montfort. It was doubtless this
Northampton colony which the founder of Merton had in view when, in his

first statutes issued in 1264, he gave the rulers of his new society power to
remove the students from Oxford to some other University town—aut alibi,
uli studium viget generale.
The origin of the ‘University at Stamford’ is still more
Secession to obscure. Anthony Wood tells us simply that several
Stamford in 1333
masters, bachelors, and scholars of Oxford ‘did under
colour of some discord among them, and upon some pretences sought after,
depart hence unto Stamford, in Lincolnshire, and there began, or rather
renewed and continued, an academy.’ The seceders themselves, appealing to
Edward III. in January 1334, for permission to continue their studies at
Stamford, vaguely attributed their withdrawal from Oxford to disputes and
disorders which had long prevailed in that University. We may conjecture
that it was a secession of Northern students, but the only certain fact is that
it was headed by one William de Barnaby. The University of Oxford, much
alarmed by the ‘schism,’ as it was called, invoked the aid of the Queen and
the Bishop of Lincoln. At last, the King intervened, but it was not till after
three Royal monitions and the seizure of their goods, that the malcontents
were ejected from Stamford, and the short-lived University broken up in the
summer of 1335. A list of offenders was sent to Edward III., but it only
contained thirty-eight names, including those of seventeen masters. The
‘Academy’ at Stamford, however, left traces in the local names of streets,
which are not even yet wholly effaced, and the jealousy inspired by its
rivalry was not extinguished for more than a century. An University statute
of uncertain date, but clearly later than 1425, and evidently re-enacting an
order already in force, requires every inceptor in any faculty to swear that
he will not recognise any University besides Oxford and Cambridge, and
that he will not lecture or read at Stamford. Meanwhile, a compact was
made between Oxford and Cambridge for their mutual protection against
competition, and the dual monopoly of the two ancient Universities was
henceforth established.
The peace of the University was further promoted in
Growth of the this turbulent age by the gradual development of the
proctorial authority
proctorial authority. The origin of the proctors’, like that
of the Chancellor’s, office is enveloped in much obscurity. The first
proctors named in the official list, which follows the Fasti of Anthony
Wood, are Roger de Plumpton and Henry de Godfree, who are set down as

having officiated in 1267. Proctors are also mentioned by name under the
dates 1281, 1286, and 1288. During the first half of the fourteenth century
the entries of proctors occur in fifteen years only, but in one case the same
two proctors are expressly stated to have served for two years, and it is
quite possible that, even if the election was annual, others may have served
for longer periods. Whatever may have been their original functions, there
can be no doubt that in 1322, if not much earlier, they became the chief
executive officers of the University. It was a main part of their duty to keep
the peace, as best they could, not only between scholars and townspeople,
but also between the numerous factions among the scholars themselves,
between the friars and secular clergy, between the ‘artists’ and the ‘jurists,’
the Nominalists and the Realists, the English students and those from
Wales, Scotland, or Ireland, and, most of all, the Northern and Southern
nations. The standing quarrel between these great academic parties
overshadowed and absorbed into itself all minor rivalries, and influenced
every important question for academic action, especially the election of the
Chancellor. According to Anthony Wood, it was in order to secure fairness
and good order in these elections that, in 1343, the University agreed that
one proctor should always be a Northerner and the other a Southerner, for
the purpose of acting as scrutineers of the votes. On the other hand, the
analogy of the University of Paris might lead us to regard them as
representatives, from the very first, of the ‘nations.’ At all events, their
powers were infinitely wider and more various than those of mere
returning-officers. They kept the money and accounts of the University,
regulated the whole system of lectures and disputations, were responsible
for academical discipline, and were empowered to impeach the Chancellor
himself. Like him, they were elected by the whole body of regents and non-
regents in Congregation, but their elections never required the confirmation
of the Bishop of Lincoln as diocesan, whereas that of the Chancellor, as we
have seen, was originally held invalid until it had been thus confirmed.
In the reign of Edward III., however, a great step was
Concession by the made towards academical independence by the disuse of
Pope of freedom in
the election of the this practice, and thenceforth the University chose its
Chancellor Chancellor as freely as its proctors. Some years before
the way had been paved for this revolt against
ecclesiastical jurisdiction by a solemn compact between the University and
the Cardinal de Mota, then Archdeacon of Oxford by Papal provision, but

permanently non-resident. This Cardinal-Archdeacon had assumed to
exercise authority over the University through certain agents who practised
extortions for his benefit. Thence arose a controversy which lasted twenty
years, the Cardinal having instituted proceedings against the University at
the Papal Court, while the University appealed first to Edward II. and
afterwards to Edward III., both of whom, following the settled policy of the
Plantagenet kings, vigorously intervened on its behalf. At last, after tedious
negotiations, a compromise, very favourable to University rights, was
effected by the mediation of William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich. The
Chancellor was declared to have archidiaconal jurisdiction over all doctors,
masters, and scholars, religious and lay, and even over all rectors, vicars,
and chaplains within the University, unless they should hold cures of souls
in Oxford, in which case they should pay canonical obedience to the
archdeacon. Moreover, in 1368, a Bull was procured from Pope Urban,
solemnly ordaining that thenceforth the election of a Chancellor by the
University itself should be sufficient, without the confirmation of the
diocesan. The reason alleged is a very practical one—that great
inconvenience and even danger to the peace of the University had resulted
from the necessity of sending a deputation to follow the Bishop into distant
parts, while in the meantime there was no resident officer to keep turbulent
persons in order.

FOOTNOTES:
[5] See Chapter IV.

CHAPTER IV.
CONFLICTS BETWEEN THE UNIVERSITY AND THE CITY.

The famous riot of St. Scholastica’s Day, 1354, may be
Royal award of regarded as the sequel of a similar fray in 1297. Both
1290
were simply violent eruptions of a deep-seated feud
between the University and city of Oxford, which had been growing for
several generations. In the year 1290, these bodies appeared by their
deputies before the King and Parliament, when certain articles of peace
were concluded, under Royal authority, which exhibit in a compendious
form the main grievances of the citizens. Most of these grievances relate to
alleged abuses of the Chancellor’s criminal jurisdiction; others have
reference to more or less oppressive privileges of the University, such as its
claim to something like fixity of rent, if not of tenure, for houses in the
occupation of scholars. On each point submitted to him the King’s award is
conspicuous for its good sense and moderation.
The complaints here formulated in the most authentic
Riot of 1297 and shape enable us to understand the bitter animosity which
agreement of 1298
aggravated town-and-gown rows of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries into sanguinary conflicts sometimes bordering upon
civil war. Contests about municipal franchises, prices of provisions, and
rents of halls or inns, were eagerly fanned into a flame by the impetuous
passions of youth, unrestrained by the kindlier sentiments of humanity and
respect for others which temper party-spirit in this happier age. But seven
years had elapsed since this award of Edward I. had been made, when, as
Anthony Wood tells us, ‘there arose a grievous discord between the clerks
and laics of Oxford, occasioned by the fighting of two servants of various
countries that were upon some small occasion invited thereunto.’ Several
murderous affrays had already taken place since the incident thus noticed,
before any general muster of townspeople or students took place. In the
meantime the Chancellor exerted himself to restore order, but several
aldermen and leading citizens headed the mob, who sacked various

scholars’ houses and defeated a body of gownsmen on the favourite battle-
ground of the Beaumont. After this it appears the Chancellor declined to
comply with the mayor’s request that he would confine the gownsmen to
their inns. Accordingly, on the following day the bells of St. Mary’s, as well
as of St. Martin’s, called the combatants to arms, and several thousands are
said to have engaged in the desperate fray which ensued. At first the
gownsmen carried all before them, being superior both in weapons and in
defensive armour, and broke open many shops and dwellings of the
burghers. But the death of their leader and the irruption of rustic labourers
from the country to aid the townspeople ultimately turned the tide of battle
against them. Once compelled to retreat, they were hunted down and
brutally maltreated by the populace; several were killed; others were torn
from the sanctuaries to which they had fled, and driven with whips and
goads into the castle gaol. The ordinary retribution followed. The citizens
implicated in the disturbance were excommunicated by the Bishop of
Lincoln; some of the worst offenders were consigned to the Chancellor’s
prison; two bailiffs were removed from their office, and other persons were
banished from Oxford. A ‘final agreement’ made between the University
and city in 1298, and preserved in the University archives, records these
sentences, together with a general amnesty for all other offences prior to the
agreement, and a renewed promise on the part of the City to respect all the
privileges of the University.
How long this truce lasted we have no means of
Great riot of 1354knowing, but no equally murderous encounter took place
at Oxford until St. Scholastica’s Day, Feb. 10, 1354.[6]
Like the riot of 1297, it arose out of a trumpery squabble, but was carried
on for three days with all the savage fury of an Irish faction fight. Two
students drinking at the Swyndlestock, or Mermaid, tavern, near Carfax,
assaulted the landlord, and were forcibly ejected. Again the bell of St.
Martin’s was rung by order of the mayor, and that of St. Mary’s by order of
the Chancellor, at whom an arrow had been shot by one of the citizens. In
the disturbances which immediately followed no one seems to have been
mortally wounded; but on the following morning, notwithstanding the
efforts of the Chancellor, ostensibly seconded by the mayor, a general battle
was commenced by the citizens, armed with bows and arrows, who drove
the scholars out of the Augustine schools, cleared the whole northern
suburb of their enemies, and sent messengers to call in reinforcements from

the neighbouring villages. To bar the entrance of these auxiliaries, the
scholars made themselves masters of the northern and eastern gates; but the
villagers, making a circuit, poured in by the west gate, numbering, it is said,
nearly 2,000, and swept the streets with fierce cries of ‘Slay, slay!’ ‘Havock
and havock!’ The gownsmen were fairly overborne, and not only that
evening but a great part of the next day was spent by the victorious
townspeople in glutting their savage vengeance, pillaging hall after hall,
and killing or wounding any scholar who fell into their hands; indeed, if we
are to believe Anthony Wood, they went so far as to scalp more than one
chaplain whom they captured, in contempt of the priestly tonsure.
Such an outrage roused the whole clerical order, and
Interdict and the Church took up the quarrel of the University as her
penance
own. After due inquiry an interdict was laid upon the
city by the Bishop of Lincoln, and all the municipal authorities, if not all the
lay inhabitants, were visited with ‘the major excommunication.’ They
appear to have remained under ecclesiastical censure for some three years,
since the relaxation of the interdict and the indenture of peace between the
University and city bear date May 1357. We learn from these documents
that at last the city made a complete and humble submission, confessing
itself deserving of a like excommunication if it should ever again sin in like
manner, and binding itself to accept whatever penance the Bishop should
lay upon it. This penance consisted in the signature of a compact under
which the mayor, bailiffs, and sixty leading citizens were obliged to attend
mass every year in St. Mary’s Church on St. Scholastica’s Day, and to offer
at the high altar one penny each, of which sum two-thirds was to be
distributed at once by the proctors among poor scholars. The city also
undertook to pay one hundred marks annually to the University by way of
compensation on the same day, but was relieved from this obligation by a
deed of even date, upon condition of the other compact being duly fulfilled.
In the meantime, however, the mayor and burgesses
New charter had formally resigned their ancient franchises into the
granted by the King
King’s hands, and the University received a new charter
of privileges and immunities as a reward for the indignities to which it had
been subjected on St. Scholastica’s Day. Under this charter, the Chancellor
of the University obtained the sole control over the ‘assize’ of bread, wine,
ale, and beer; over the ‘assay’ of weights and measures, with jurisdiction in

all cases of ‘forestalling,’ ‘regrating,’ and selling unwholesome food; over
the assessment of rates and taxes, the management of the streets, and like
municipal affairs. He was also empowered to expel all disorderly students,
and the provision for the forfeiture of their arms shows how generally arms
were carried in those turbulent days. Moreover, though he was not as yet
permitted to rescue and sit in judgment on scholars accused of treason,
murder, or ‘mayhem,’ this privilege was afterwards conceded by letters
patent of 1407; but it was provided that academical prisoners should be
tried before a mixed jury of gownsmen and townspeople. It is not difficult
to understand how galling such concessions must have been to the citizens
of Oxford, and however gross the outrages for which they were the
atonement, we can hardly wonder that a bitter grudge should have been
cherished by the City against the University so long as they remained in
force.

FOOTNOTES:
[6] In the meantime, in deference to complaints made by the Chancellor, the
King, Edward II., in the year 1315, regulated the price of provisions in the
Oxford market, as well as in the markets of other towns.

CHAPTER V.
THE MONKS AND FRIARS AT OXFORD.

The history of the monastic settlements at Oxford, and
Benedictines and of their connection with the University, still remains to
Augustinians
be written, but enough is known to show how great a
part they played in its earlier life. For some time before, and for two
generations after the Norman Conquest, the Benedictine monks of St.
Frideswide, having displaced the secular canons, seem to have been the
only body of regular clergy in Oxford. In the monasteries of this Order had
been sheltered most of the scanty learning and culture which survived the
night of the Dark Ages. Having been well nigh crushed out and despoiled of
their few literary treasures in two Danish invasions, they had revived and
extended their influence in the eleventh century. In the reign of Henry I.,
Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, is said to have established a convent of
Augustinian canons at St. Frideswide’s, under the care of Guimond,
chaplain to the King, and soon after 1129 they were reinforced by a society
of the same Order inhabiting the new abbey founded in that year at Oseney.
It does not clearly appear how far the Benedictines were dislodged from
Oxford by the new-comers, but they probably retained houses there for their
students until they obtained possession of Gloucester Hall.
If the claustral schools of the Benedictines were the
Rise of mendicant nursery of the University, a still more powerful impulse
Orders
was imparted to it at a later period by the rise of the two
great mendicant Orders, both of which received munificent aid from Henry
III. In 1221 the Dominicans, or Black Friars, first appeared in Oxford, and
located themselves in the heart of the Jewry, from which they migrated
forty years afterwards into a new monastery by the water-gate in the parish
of St. Ebbe’s, near the modern Speedwell Street. Two or three years later a
little band of Franciscans, or Grey Friars, after a temporary residence in
Canterbury and London, found their way to Oxford, where they were
hospitably entertained by the Dominicans, and obtained the loan of a house

or hall in the parish of St. Ebbe’s. Notwithstanding their exemplary self-
denial and boundless charity, they succeeded in accumulating funds
sufficient to build a magnificent church on a site near Paradise Gardens, and
opened schools of their own. After the lapse of another generation—in 1251
or 1252—a company of Augustinian Friars were sent into England by
Lanfranc, of Milan, and a detachment of them settled on the southern part
of the site now occupied by Wadham College, purchased for them by Sir
John Handlow, of Boarstall. Here were instituted those famous disputations
which, under the name of ‘Austins,’ became the chief school of academical
grammar teaching in the Middle Ages, and survived in a degenerate form
until the end of the last century. In 1254 the Carmelite, or White Friars, took
up their abode close by the Castle, whence they were transferred to
Beaumont Palace by Edward II. in 1313. In 1281 or 1291 Edmund, Earl of
Cornwall, founded, or refounded, the Cistercian Abbey of Rewley, and
established a brotherhood of Trinitarians without the East Gate. Meanwhile
the Benedictines had adopted Gloucester Hall (now Worcester College) as a
seminary for their younger members.
Other smaller religious fraternities are known to have
Claustral schools existed in Oxford, and neighbouring abbeys, such as
those of Oseney, Eynsham, Littlemore, and Dorchester,
kept houses in Oxford for the instruction of boys and young men under their
special charge. The systematic teaching of theology was doubtless the main
object of the lessons given in the old claustral schools, and the curriculum
of secular education was as meagre in reality as it was imposing in
profession. Yet even in these a true spirit of scholarship was kept alive, and
the great teachers of the mendicant Orders were the leading exponents of
the new Aristotelian philosophy, which inspired the subtlest intellects of the
thirteenth century with the power of a revelation. These Orders possessed a
great advantage over the University itself, before colleges were founded, in
occupying handsome and spacious buildings, attractive to poor students,
while the University schools or lecture rooms were apparently little better
than sheds, and St. Mary’s Church was the one edifice capable of being
used for solemn academical functions.
Two causes favoured the rapid establishment of the
Migration from mendicant Orders, and especially of the Franciscans, in
Paris and influence
of Robert Grosteste the schools of Oxford. In the year 1228 a memorable

conflict took place between the students and citizens in Paris, in which the
students were grossly maltreated. Queen Blanche refused them redress, but
Henry III. invited them to settle in England, and Oxford, as well as
Cambridge, benefited largely by the migration which ensued.[7] These Paris
students were mostly the disciples of Dominican or Franciscan professors,
some of whom seem to have accompanied them, and when the Dominicans
again became paramount at Paris, the Franciscans retained a stronghold at
Oxford. Here they owed much to the powerful aid and patronage of Robert
Grosteste, the great scholastical and ecclesiastical reformer of the thirteenth
century. The fame of this remarkable man for scholarship, as well as piety,
rests upon the universal testimony of his own and the succeeding age,
including that of Roger Bacon, himself perhaps the brightest luminary of
mediæval Oxford. But it is only of late that his influence upon the
University has been fully understood. It was indeed an extraordinary chance
which elevated to the See of Lincoln, then possessing a paramount
jurisdiction over the University of Oxford, a man who had been the
foremost of Oxford teachers, the first theological lecturer of the
Franciscans. It was as a working professor and Rector scholarum that he
infused new life into University studies by the comprehensive vigour and
originality of his teaching. When he commenced his stormy episcopate in
1235, his attention was inevitably directed to larger questions then
disturbing the peace of Church and State, but his spirit animated his staunch
friend and successor, Adam Marsh (or de Marisco), the great Franciscan
college-tutor, as he may well be called. It is the glory of the Franciscans to
have produced in the same age Adam Marsh and Roger Bacon, who is
sometimes claimed as an early Fellow of Merton College, but who really
belongs to a period immediately preceding the foundation of colleges.
Though Roger Bacon attests the premature degeneracy of the mendicant
Orders in his own lifetime, though his bold vindication of scientific truth is
little in harmony with the abject submission to Papal authority enjoined
upon the friars, and though he was actually persecuted by his own
community for persevering in his scientific researches, yet he was
essentially a Franciscan. It was in obedience to his patron, Clement IV., that
he compiled his three great treatises, embodying a knowledge which no
other scholar of his time possessed, advocating the claims of mathematics
and language against the frivolous dialectics of the mediæval schools, and

censuring without reserve the organised ignorance which then usurped the
place of science and philosophy.
It is extremely difficult to ascertain the nature of the
Position of the control which the friars acquired over academical
friars at Oxford,
and University studies, or the place, if any, which they occupied in the
statutes against academical system. Of their proselytising activity we
them have abundant evidence, and this was probably the
motive of their constant efforts to secure the privilege of
reading and lecturing in their own schools, instead of in those of the
University; efforts which at Paris seem to have been more or less
successful. At Oxford they are clearly recognised as religious bodies in a
curious ordinance of 1300, which enjoins that in academical processions the
Preaching Friars shall walk first, the White Friars next, and the Black Friars
last. It is scarcely less significant that, although in 1314 the church of St.
Mary was made the one authorised arena of academic ceremonies, to the
exclusion of the religious houses, the four Orders were represented jointly
with the University on the Papal Commission which delivered this decision.
In another statute, of 1326, every bachelor of arts is required to dispute once
and respond once each year before the Augustins (apud Augustinenses),
from which it must be inferred that this Order had already acquired almost a
monopoly of grammar-teaching.
But the lay and secular element in the University always rebelled against
the encroachments of the friars, and was destined to prevail. It is a
suggestive fact that Walter de Merton rigorously excluded every ‘religious’
person or member of a monastic Order from the benefits of his foundation.
Soon afterwards the University took alarm. In 1358[8] we have a trenchant
statute against the abduction of boys under eighteen by the mendicant
Orders, which shows how great a jealousy they had provoked among the
secular clergy of the University, for whose special benefit Merton and other
colleges were founded. This statute expressly recites that noblemen and
commoners are afraid to send their sons to the University, lest they should
be seduced by the mendicant friars into joining their Order before arriving
at years of discretion; and that by these practices the peace of the University
is often disturbed and its numbers diminished. It is therefore enacted that if
any mendicant friar thus seduces or causes to be seduced any youth under
eighteen years of age, or procures his removal from Oxford with intent that

he may be received elsewhere into a religious Order, no graduate of the
cloister or society to which the offender belongs shall be allowed to deliver
or attend lectures in Oxford during the year next ensuing. Another statute of
the same date is apparently aimed at the attempt of friars to lecture on logic
before undergoing the regular yearly course of disputations. This is
immediately followed by the public recantation extorted from a friar who
had affirmed, among other startling propositions, that tithes belonged more
properly to mendicants than to rectors of churches, and that the University
was a school of heresy. Another friar who had disparaged the School of Arts
was compelled to apologize with equal humility. Still the power of the
monastic Orders continued to be formidable, and at Cambridge they seem
to have ultimately carried their point in obtaining exemption from
academical exercises in Arts for their theological students; while at Oxford
there are many instances of college fellows joining their ranks.
In 1365 the Pope entered the lists against the
Intervention of the University on behalf of the friars, and directed the
Pope and the King
Archbishop of Canterbury and bishops to insist upon the
Chancellor’s procuring the repeal of the obnoxious statutes. In the
meantime, however, the intervention of the King and Parliament was
invoked by memorials from both the Universities and the four mendicant
Orders. In consequence of this an ordinance was made, with the assent of
Parliament, by which the statutes against the admission of scholars into
these Orders were relaxed, but all bulls and processes to be procured by the
friars against the Universities from the Court of Rome were prohibited and
declared void. Still the feud continued. One main source of Wyclif’s
popularity in the University was his unsparing denunciation of the
Mendicants, and their decline was among the most permanent results of the
movement which he initiated. But other causes were at work to undermine
their influence. The rise of the colleges was, in fact, the rise of the secular
clergy, and in organising itself more completely, the University naturally
outgrew its dependence on the missionary zeal for education which had
been its life-blood in the thirteenth century.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] See Chapter I. p. 9.
[8] This is the date assigned to the statute by Mr. Anstey in his Munimenta
Academica, on the authority of Anthony Wood, supported by historical
probability.

CHAPTER VI.
THE UNIVERSITY IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

The golden age of mediæval Oxford had culminated in
Decline in numbers the fourteenth century, and the fifteenth century ushered
and studies
in a period of intellectual stagnation, which lasted for at
least sixty years. Many causes, both external and internal, combined to
produce this result. The nation itself, exhausted by the vain effort to
conquer France, and roused from its long dream of Imperial ambition, was
hopeless and disheartened until it was plunged into the most sanguinary of
English Civil Wars. The ecclesiastical independence of the English Church,
which had defied the most powerful of mediæval Popes, and had been
fortified by the recent Statutes of Provisors and Præmunire, was seriously
threatened by the growth of Ultramontane influences, while its revenues
were assailed by democratic agitation. The revolutionary petition of the
Commons, addressed to Henry IV., for the wholesale appropriation of
Church property to secular and charitable uses, boded no good to
Universities, which ranked as ecclesiastical bodies, and were taxed with the
clergy, though anti-monastic in their corporate spirit and in the organisation
of their colleges. Moreover, this petition had been speedily followed by the
actual confiscation of property belonging to alien priories. Soon afterwards,
the French Wars and Wars of the Roses attracted into camps many a student
who might otherwise have frequented the University lecture rooms; the law
no longer drew all its recruits from University clerks; and even the
incumbents of English livings were sometimes chosen from the ranks of the
regular clergy without University training. It is possible that the rise and
spread of the Wycliffite movement at Oxford may have prejudiced it in the
eyes of the English hierarchy, as it certainly did in those of the Popes. At all
events, there is abundant evidence both of the fact that candidates for Holy
Orders resorted to Oxford in diminished numbers, and of the construction
which the University authorities put on that fact. In 1417, and again in
1438, the Archbishop and Bishops in Convocation issued an appeal to
patrons of benefices, calling upon them to give a preference to University

graduates. The memorial addressed to Convocation on behalf of the
University in 1438 complains that her halls were deserted, and that not one
thousand remained out of the many thousands reported to have attended the
schools of Oxford in the last age—when, as we learn from a Royal charter
(of 1355), ‘a multitude of nobles, gentry, strangers, and others continually
flocked thither.’ It is stated that in 1450 only twenty out of two hundred
schools which had once been filled continued to be used for purposes of
education. A few years later we find a license granted to poor scholars,
authorising them to beg for alms—a practice of which Sir Thomas More
speaks as if it were not obsolete in his own time. It was to meet the
necessities of these destitute students that Archbishop Chichele established
a new University Chest; and it was for the relief of the pauperes et
indigentes, no less than for the support of the secular clergy, whose decline
at Oxford is amply attested by his charter, that he afterwards founded the
great college of All Souls.
Notwithstanding this decline, and the undoubted
University decay of learning, we must not exaggerate either the
delegates at the
Councils of actual degeneracy of the University or its loss of
Constance and reputation in Europe. No doubt, the French Wars tended
Basle to weaken its ancient alliance with the great University
of Paris, and the growth of a native English literature
under the inspiration of Chaucer and Wyclif may well have contributed to
its isolation, until it came under the spell of the Italian Renaissance. But it is
an error to assert that Oxford was ‘nowhere to be found in the great Church
Councils of the fifteenth century.’[9] On the contrary, it was very ably
represented, both at Constance in 1414 and at Basle in 1431. At the former
of these Councils, Henry de Abendon, afterwards Warden of Merton,
defended with signal effect the claim of England to precedence over Spain,
and of Oxford to precedence over Salamanca. In order to defray the expense
of sending ‘orators’ to Basle, the University, in its poverty, solicited a
contribution, ‘were it ever so small,’ from the Convocation of the Clergy. It
found a worthy delegate, however, in John Kemp, also of Merton,
afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, who, at the subsequent Council of
Florence, was made a Cardinal by the Pope.
Nor must we forget the great collegiate institutions
Foundation of which owe their origin to this obscure period. The first
Lincoln and All

Souls’ Colleges of these, Lincoln College, was founded in 1427, on a
much humbler scale than New College, by Richard
Flemmyng, Bishop of Lincoln, who, having been a zealous promoter,
became a fanatical opponent of Wyclif’s doctrines, and distinguished
himself at the Council of Siena by attacks against the Hussites. His main
object was to extirpate the Wycliffite heresy, and he specially provided that
any Fellow tainted with these heresies was ‘to be cast out, like a diseased
sheep, from the fold of the college.’ All Souls, founded in 1438 by
Archbishop Chichele, was a far grander monument of academical piety and
was almost unique in its constitution. The college was specially designed to
be a chantry, but it was also to be a place of study, and was to some extent
modelled on New College, where Chichele himself was educated. There
were to be forty scholars, being clerks, bound to study without intermission,
twenty-four of whom were to cultivate Arts and philosophy or theology, and
sixteen the canon or civil law. Magdalen College was founded in 1457 by
William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, upon a plan borrowed from
New College, but without the peculiar feature of organic connection with a
public school, though its founder had been himself the head-master both of
Eton and of Winchester. There are clear traces in the statutes of the coming
Renaissance. Theology remains supreme, as at New College, but moral and
natural philosophy take the place of civil and canon law. Grammar is
preferred to logic, and even Latin verses are recognised. Moreover, the
lecturers in divinity and the two philosophies are to instruct not only the
college but the whole University.
While the collegiate system was thus expanding, and
Extension of classical scholarship was beginning to germinate under
University
buildings: the its shelter, the resources of the University were enriched
Divinity School and by two important accessions—the edifice of the Old
the Bodleian Schools, and the Library presented by the ‘good’ Duke
Library
Humphry of Gloucester. In the early part of the fifteenth
century, thirty-two ‘schools’ were ranged along School Street, between the
west end of St. Mary’s and the city wall, near the present theatre. These
schools had superseded the simple chambers which the University had a
prescriptive right to hire in the houses of private citizens. Many of them
belonged to Oseney Abbey, and in the year 1439 some fourteen of these,
being ruinous, were taken down and rebuilt by the Abbot, Thomas
Hokenorton. The fabric erected by him is described as a long pile of stone

masonry, wholly destitute of architectural effect, consisting of two stories,
and divided into ten schools, five above and five below, which, however,
possessed no monopoly of University lectures or exercises, since these
continued to be carried on in other public schools, if not in private lecture
rooms, despite prohibitory statutes. One reason why School Street was
selected as the privileged quarter for lecturing was doubtless that it
immediately adjoined St. Mary’s Church, which contained the old
Congregation-house, in which the University held all its solemn meetings,
and which, in the Middle Ages, had served at once as the court-house, the
legislative chamber, the examination-room, the public treasury, the hall of
assembly, and the place of worship, for the whole University. In this church
theological lectures had now been given for a century, since the Dominicans
and Franciscans had been compelled to abandon their practice of teaching
divinity to University students within their own walls, and the University
could afford to despise the rivalry of other religious Orders lodged in the
suburbs, at a distance from School Street. In 1426 or 1427 a vacant plot was
purchased by the University from Balliol College, and in 1480 the present
Divinity School was finally opened for the greatest of the faculties, by the
aid of liberal contributions from the Benedictine monks, Archbishop
Chichele, several cathedral bodies, Duke Humphry, and the executors of
Cardinal Beaufort, Archbishop Kemp, and Edmund Duke of Somerset of
1447. In the meantime, Duke Humphry, acceding to a suggestion from the
University, had initiated the erection of a Public Library over the Divinity
School. The building was retarded by the withdrawal of the masons, under
Royal mandate, for works at Windsor and Eton, nor was it completed till
1480, by the aid of Thomas Kemp, Bishop of London, who contributed
1,000 marks, and has been regarded as a second founder. The original
collection of books presented by Duke Humphry to the University in 1439
consisted of 129 volumes only, but it was supplemented by a second gift in
1443. Still, the whole University Library, comprising the previous legacies
of Angerville and Cobham, is said to have contained no more than 500
volumes when it was dispersed at the Reformation. Duke Humphry is also
said to have instituted a professorial Chair for Arts and Philosophy, which,
however, never came into operation, perhaps because the means were not
forthcoming to endow it adequately. For it is certain that at this period the
resources of the University were miserably small, and chiefly wasted in the
enormous expense of suits at the Court of Rome, whose appellate

jurisdiction it had always respected, and whose immediate intervention it
often invoked.[10]
The mediæval system of academical studies and
Final organisation examinations may be considered to have reached its
of mediæval
lectures and maturity in the middle of the fifteenth century. At this
examinations period the University enjoyed comparative repose, and
its constitution was fully organised, though its vigour, as
we have seen, was grievously impaired. Nine colleges had already been
founded, and, by the statute passed in 1432 for the suppression of ‘chamber-
dekyns,’ all members of the University were required to be inmates of some
college or hall, except those who should be specially licensed by the
Chancellor to live in lay houses. By another statute of the same year, the
discipline of the University had been further secured by a peremptory rule
that all principals of halls should be graduates, or qualified by learning and
character to rule their respective households.[11] The proctorial authority
was now firmly established under the ordinance of 1343. Courses of public
lectures were constantly delivered on all the subjects recognised by the
University in the official schools, and private instruction was supplied to
their own inmates by the various colleges and halls.
The institution of an University curriculum, or a set
University course of books or subjects to be studied by candidates
curriculum
for degrees in the various faculties, may be dated from
the statutes given to the University of Paris by the Cardinal Legate, Robert
de Courçon, at the very beginning of the thirteenth century. The Oxford
curriculum seems to have varied but little between the age of the schoolmen
and that of the Renaissance. It is practically certain that admission to the
University was guarded by no entrance examination. Grammar was treated
as the essential foundation of all knowledge, and the University abounded
in grammar schools, but the superstructure raised upon this foundation
appears to have been mainly logical. Both grammar and logic, however,
represented accomplishments which in that age were supposed to be useful
—grammar as giving the power of reading and writing Latin; logic,
supplemented by rhetoric, as the instrument of controversy and persuasion.
Since proficiency in all studies was tested by disputation, logic was
naturally elevated into a position of supremacy. A statute passed in 1408
required all candidates for what is now called a B.A. degree to become

‘sophistæ generales,’ and practise themselves in logical disputations for a
year at least in the ‘Parvisum,’ or classrooms for beginners, before offering
themselves for the preliminary ordeal of Responsions. This examination
seems to have consisted in arguing and answering questions on a given
thesis (respondere ad quæstionem or de quæstione), and the student who
had passed it at the end of his first year was still bound under this statute to
hear lectures on prescribed books in three branches of the Faculty of Arts—
logic, mathematics, and grammar, which always ranked lowest in the scale
of studies. The exercises which constituted ‘determination’[12] were
conducted during Lent in the schools of Masters apparently selected by the
candidates themselves, for the last clause in the statute actually protects
them against impressment or solicitation by Masters desirous of forcing
them into their own schools. The examination was mainly, if not
exclusively, logical and grammatical, the duty of the examining master
being to stop the candidate if he should wander into other subjects or use
unsound arguments. Nothing is said in this statute of candidates once
admitted to determine being rejected for incompetence, but there are rules
to prevent their being admitted at all, unless duly qualified by character,
ability, age, and even stature.
The leading statute which regulated the more
Statute of 1431, important act of ‘inception,’ or admission to the M.A.
regulating
‘inception’ degree, was passed in 1431. It opens with a somewhat
pedantic and solemn preamble, setting forth that
everyone who aspires to be entitled a Master or Professor of Arts ought to
have undergone a complete training in the seven sciences and the three
philosophies. These seven sciences were no other than the old Trivials and
Quadrivials which had become the standard subjects of education ever since
the revival of learning under Charlemagne—grammar, rhetoric and logic;
arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy. The three so-called
philosophies were natural, moral, and metaphysical. The statute proceeds to
ordain that all who are presented for ‘inception’ shall have satisfied all the
requirements for ‘determination,’ and shall also have regularly and earnestly
attended lectures in the seven branches of knowledge here called the seven
liberal Arts, as well as in the three philosophies, during eight years for at
least thirty ‘reading’ days in each year,[13] according to a certain graduated
order prescribed in the statute itself. Thus, grammar was to occupy one

year, rhetoric three years, logic three years, arithmetic one year, music one
year, geometry two years, astronomy two years, natural philosophy, moral
philosophy, and metaphysical philosophy three years each. The orthodox
text-books in which each subject is to be studied are specifically mentioned,
and include Priscian, Boethius, and Euclid, but, above all, Aristotle, who is
recognised as the supreme authority on rhetoric, logic, and all three
philosophies.
Having fulfilled all these conditions, and procured all
Duties of regent the necessary certificates of his moral and intellectual
masters
competence, the bachelor applying for a M.A. degree
was presented before the Chancellor and Proctors in Congregation, when,
after taking certain oaths, one of which bound him not to foment quarrels
between Northerners and Southerners, he was officially licensed to deliver
lectures. On this ceremony, which constituted him a Master of Arts, the
statute of 1431 is silent, but we know from other sources that a M.A. degree
was chiefly, if not exclusively, sought as a passport to ‘inception.’ This
inception, which involved much expense[14] and was attended by many
formalities, consisted in taking possession of a school, and solemnly
commencing a course of lectures as a teaching or ‘regent’ master. It is
provided in the statute that at the end of every term (or year) the proctors
shall ascertain the number of regent masters willing to lecture, and shall
divide them according to seniority, into ten companies as nearly equal in
number as possible. The junior company, with the superintendents of
grammar schools, are to lecture in grammar, and the rest are apparently to
be so ranged in an ascending scale that the highest subjects may be assigned
to the seniors. It is expressly ordained, in order to exclude forbidden lore,
that none shall lecture in any books except those allowed by statute. The
mode of lecturing is also strictly prescribed. First, the text is to be read out,
then its substance and meaning are to be explained; afterwards special
passages are to be noted, and lastly, questions are to be raised and
discussed, but only such as naturally arise out of the text, so that no
prohibited sciences may be taught. Such provisions for public lecturing
were necessary before either an University professoriate or a system of
college tuition was developed, and all regent masters, unless exempted,
were statutably bound to lecture for nearly two years after inception. During
this period they were also specially bound to attend the University
‘Congregation,’ by which degrees were granted, and even when they

became non-regents they were liable to be summoned for this purpose by
the University Bedel, who sounded a bell in order to make a quorum;
whence that assembly was technically called the House of Regents and
Non-Regents. In the earliest times, when it consisted of teachers only, it had
been the sole legislature of the University. It seems, however, that when
degrees were more and more sought as titles of honour or certificates of
proficiency, and graduates frequently obtained exemptions from the duty of
teaching, another more select body, called the ‘Black Congregation,’
assumed the right of discussing measures to be afterwards laid before the
‘Great Congregation,’ as it then came to be called, or ‘Convocation,’ as it
was called in later times, when the preliminary assembly had at last usurped
the name of ‘Congregation.’
The faculty of Arts, however, was but one of several,
Residence for though it embraced the great majority of graduates, and
degrees in the
higher faculties maintained an undisputed supremacy. The ‘science’ of
grammar always filled a subordinate position, and its
requirements were less onerous, but in all the superior faculties of civil or
canon law, medicine, and theology, the ordinary rule was to have graduated
first in Arts, and afterwards to have responded, disputed, and determined in
the studies of the faculty before incepting and receiving the final degree of
Master or Doctor, then practically synonymous. Even those who had
graduated in Arts were required to study theology five years before their
‘opponency’ or degree-examination, while those who had not so graduated
were compelled to go through a seven years’ course; and in either case two
years more of probation were exacted before permission could be obtained
to lecture on the ‘Sentences.’ Thus an Oxford career occupied far more of
life in those days than in our own, and academical residence certainly
extended over a greater part of each year. It was a natural consequence that
University influences left a far deeper impress on the characters and minds
of the students, and that such movements as the Renaissance and the
Reformation passed through a long period of academical incubation before
they acquired a hold over the mass of the nation.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Huber’s English Universities, vol. 1, ch. vi., sect. 80.
[10] An instance of this may be found in the care taken by Archbishop
Chichele, in 1439, to procure a Bull from Pope Eugenius IV. for the foundation
of All Souls’ College.
[11] These statutes were little more than repetitions or confirmations of
ordinances made by King Henry V. in 1421.
[12] The meaning of ‘determination’ is still the subject of dispute. Mr. Boase,
in the preface to his Register of the University of Oxford, explains it thus: ‘After
taking his degree, the bachelor “determined,” that is, instead of disputing
himself, he presided over disputations, and gave out his determination or
decision on the questions discussed.’
[13] This seems the most probable interpretation of a somewhat obscure
passage in the statute, which speaks of octo annorum terminos, and afterwards
of tres terminos or duo terminos anni, as if terminus signified a period, and not
an academical Term. It would be almost impossible to attend all the lectures here
required for thirty reading days in each Term.
[14] It is stated that, so far back as 1268, the inceptors in civil law were
numerous enough to overflow the Oxford hostels, and to be quartered in Oseney
Abbey. In 1431 the expense to be incurred in scholastic banquets on inception in
arts was limited by statute.

CHAPTER VII.
THE RENAISSANCE, THE REFORMATION, AND THE TUDOR

PERIOD.

The reign of Edward IV. may be regarded as a singularly
Revival of blank period in University annals. The Wars of the
academical life at
the end of the Roses, in which feudalism perished by its own hand, but
fifteenth century which left so few traces on the national life, hardly
disturbed the academical repose; and the obscurity
which hangs over the next chapter in the history of the nation rests equally
upon that of the University. But a gradual recovery was in progress, and
soon yielded visible fruits. The close of the fifteenth century found the
University of Oxford far more complete in its outward structure, if
somewhat less vigorous in its inward life, than it had been two centuries
earlier. It was no longer a loose aggregate of students under the paramount
jurisdiction of a bishop resident at Lincoln, but an organised institution,
with a government of its own, under the special protection of the Crown,
and capable of being used as a powerful engine for effecting or resisting
changes in Church or State. While the old order was yielding place to new,
and the fountains of scholastic thought were running dry, there had been a
marked decay in academical energy, and the declining number of students
attested the decreased activity of teaching. But the revival of classical
learning, promoted by the dispersion of Greek scholars after the fall of
Constantinople, was accompanied or followed by that marvellous series of
events which divides modern from mediæval history—the invention of
printing, aided by the improvement of paper-making; the discovery of
America; the consolidation of the European monarchies; and the
Reformation itself. The first effect of the enthusiasm kindled by these new
influences was to invigorate the University; it was not until their secondary
effects were felt that a reaction manifested itself.

The great educational movement which sprang from
Checked by the the Reformation was essentially popular rather than
Reformation
academical, and by no means tended to increase the
relative importance of the Universities. The cause of this is not difficult to
discover. When the only books were manuscripts, the Universities and the
very few other institutions which possessed large collections of manuscripts
attracted the whole literary class from all parts of the country. When
instruction in the sciences was only to be obtained from the lips of a living
teacher, and when schools hardly existed elsewhere, except in connection
with cathedrals or monasteries, the lecture rooms of Oxford were thronged
with students of all ages, and represented almost the entire machinery of
national education. When the Church ruled supreme over the wide realm of
thought, and learning was the monopoly of ‘clerics,’ the great ecclesiastical
stronghold of Oxford far surpassed the metropolis itself as an intellectual
centre. When Latin was the one language of scholars, and English literature
scarcely existed, the academical masters of Latinity, especially as they were
carefully trained in disputation, maintained a peerless supremacy over their
less favoured countrymen. In the larger and freer life which took its birth
from the Reformation, the exclusive privileges of the Universities became
inevitably depreciated, and their degeneracy in the early part of the
sixteenth century presents a humiliating contrast with their ascendency in
the fourteenth. The dissolution of monasteries, the high-handed visitations
of the Tudor Sovereigns, and the diversion of the national energies into new
careers, operated concurrently to empty Oxford of students, nor was it until
near the end of the century that its tone was gradually restored by the wise
policy of Queen Elizabeth.
During the reign of Henry VII. the University was
Pioneers of the new strongly agitated by the struggle between the old
learning at Oxford
scholastic philosophy and the new learning of the
Renaissance. The credit of introducing classical studies, and especially that
of Greek literature, has sometimes been claimed for the Reformation, but it
is rather due to a liberal spirit then springing up in the Catholic world, and
especially to Italian influences. It was from Italy that England caught the
new impulse, and that Oxford imported numerous MSS. of classical
authors, while printing was still almost a fine art. Perhaps the foundation of
grammar schools at Winchester and Eton for the special instruction of boys
in Latin may have contributed to pave the way for the classical revival at

the Universities. At all events, it was in progress before the Reformation,
and was promoted by several enlightened bishops and abbots of the old
religion, and may not improperly be regarded as a legacy of Catholic to
Protestant England. Writing in 1497, Erasmus, who is sometimes described
as the father of classical studies in England, speaks of a ‘rich harvest of
classical literature’ as already flourishing at Oxford on every side, and
declares that he could well nigh forget Italy in the society of Colet, Grocyn,
Lynacre, and More. Indeed, he places England, in respect of culture, above
France or Germany, and second to Italy alone. In fact, we soon afterwards
find Richard Croke, an Englishman, teaching Greek at Leipsic, whence he
migrated, a few years later, to succeed Erasmus himself as Professor at
Cambridge.
During his first visit to Oxford, Erasmus lodged in a
Erasmus, More, conventual house of Augustin Canons, known as St.
Colet, Grocyn, and
Linacre Mary’s College, opposite New Inn Hall. Of the names
thus commemorated by him, that of Sir Thomas More
belongs to the political history of England, but he also deserves to be
remembered as the young student of Canterbury College, among the most
ardent disciples and most zealous promoters of classical teaching at Oxford.
Colet, who had known More in the house of Cardinal Morton, and who
became famous as the founder of St. Paul’s School, was educated at
Magdalen College, but afterwards visited France and Italy, whence he
returned in 1497, to lecture publicly but gratuitously on St. Paul’s Epistles,
and to become a leading pioneer of Latin scholarship in the University.
Grocyn had been elected Fellow of New College as far back as 1467, and
was Divinity Reader at Magdalen College about 1483. It was not until some
years later that he went to Italy for purposes of study, and devoted himself
to Greek and Latin. On his return, he resided in Exeter College, and
delivered the first public lectures on Greek, which seem to have been
attended by Erasmus himself, who speaks of him with unfailing respect.
Lynacre was elected Fellow of All Souls in 1484, but, like Colet and
Grocyn, owed his erudition chiefly to his residence in Italy, where he
became Professor of Medicine at Padua. But his range of studies was so
wide that it was doubted of him whether he was ‘a better Latinist or
Grecian, a better grammarian or physician.’ In modern times he is chiefly
known as among the founders, and as the first President, of the College of
Physicians; while his principal claim to gratitude at Oxford consists in his

posthumous foundation of two Readerships in Physiology at Merton
College, which have since been consolidated into a Professorship of
Anatomy. The new studies, however, met with violent opposition, and
several University dignitaries publicly lectured against Erasmus. Indeed, if
we are to believe Anthony Wood, in spite of all the reformers’ efforts,
academical learning was still in a deplorable state in 1508, the last year of
Henry VII.’s reign. ‘The schools were much frequented with querks and
sophistry. All things, whether taught or written, seemed to be trite or inane.
No pleasant streams of humanity or mythology were gliding among us, and
the Greek language, from whence the greater part of knowledge is derived,
was at a very low ebb, or in a manner forgotten.’
The first endowed lectureship of the Greek language
Foundation of at Oxford was instituted by Richard Fox, Bishop of
Corpus Christi
College by Bishop Winchester, in 1516, as part of his new foundation of
Fox Corpus Christi College. His original intention had been
to found a monastery, and in founding a college instead,
with twenty fellows and twenty scholars, he clearly showed his desire to
encourage the classics by providing also for Professors of Greek and Latin,
as well as of theology, whose lectures should be open to all the University.
By virtue of this endowment, Bishop Fox has been regarded as the founder
of the professorial system, though he must perhaps share that honour, not
only with William of Waynflete, but with Margaret, Countess of Richmond,
mother of Henry VII., who had already founded the Margaret Professorship
of Divinity in 1502. But Fox’s liberal spirit and sympathy with the
Renaissance was shown in provisions, hitherto unknown, for instruction in
the classical authors, for the colloquial use of Greek as well as Latin, and
for the election of lecturers from Greece and Southern Italy. It was upon
these grounds that Erasmus predicted a great future for the college as a
stronghold of the classical movement.
That movement had already provoked a strange
Greeks and Trojans outbreak of academical barbarism in the University of
Oxford. The faction of ‘Trojans,’ as they called
themselves, from their enmity to Greek letters, seems to have been partly
animated by a popular aversion to change, and partly by a far-sighted
appreciation of the anti-Catholic tendencies inherent in the Renaissance. It
is said to have originated in hostility to Grocyn’s Greek lectures at Exeter

College; but it reached its height in the early part of Henry VIII.’s reign, by
which time, however, the classics had won powerful friends at Court, and
the ‘Greeks’ were protected by a peremptory Royal order, issued in 1519. It
is remarkable that no trace of these fierce controversies between
Scholasticism and the New Learning, still less of the impending revolution
in the national religion, is to be discerned in the statutes of Brasenose, the
latest of the pre-Reformation colleges, issued in 1521, nine years after its
foundation. Under these statutes the scholars were bound to study the old
subjects of the scholastic curriculum, ‘Sophistry, Logic, and Philosophy,
and afterwards Divinity ... for the advancement of Holy Church, and for the
support and exaltation of the Christian faith.’ On the other hand, there are
ample proofs that long before the Old Learning ceased to rule the
University system of disputations and examinations, the Renaissance had
already penetrated into the University and College Libraries.
The great minister of Henry VIII., Cardinal Wolsey,
Cardinal Wolsey must always be remembered as the most discerning as
and the foundation
of Christ Church well as the most generous patron of liberal culture,
which he admired for its own sake, though he naturally
regarded it as the handmaid of the Church. It was in 1518 that Wolsey came
to Oxford, in company with Catharine of Aragon, while the King remained
behind at Abingdon. The University, doubtless perceiving the danger of
impending spoliation, ‘made a solemn and ample decree, not only of giving
up their statutes into the Cardinal’s hands, to be reformed, corrected,
renewed, and the like, but also their liberties, indulgences, privileges, nay
the whole University (the colleges excepted), to be by him disposed and
framed into good order.’ Wolsey did not disappoint their confidence, and
some five years later (in 1523) returned the charters, with a new and still
more beneficial one procured from the King. At this period he is believed to
have contemplated the foundation of more than one University
professorship and the erection of University lecture-rooms, but if he ever
entertained such an idea, it was abandoned. In the meantime, however, he
was projecting the foundation of a college for secular clergy on a scale of
grandeur hitherto unknown, for the purpose (as Huber well says) of
‘cultivating the new literature in the service of the old Church.’ In order to
endow ‘Cardinal College,’ as it was to be called, twenty-two priories and
convents were suppressed, under Papal and Royal authority, and their
revenues, amounting to 2,000l., were diverted to the maintenance of ten

professorships, as well as of sixty canonists and forty priests. The students
were to be trained in a great school founded at Ipswich, as those of New
College were trained at Winchester. The first stone of the building was laid
in 1525; scholars had been engaged from Cambridge and the Continent to
serve on the professorial staff; the abbey church of St. Frideswide’s had
been appropriated as the college chapel; and the splendid kitchen, still
preserved, was already completed, when the fall of Wolsey in 1529 arrested
the execution of this grand design.
The King, engrossed with the question of obtaining a
Action of the divorce from Catharine of Aragon, was in no mood to
University on the
questions of the indulge the sympathy which he really felt towards
Divorce and the learned institutions, and was rather bent on obtaining a
Royal Supremacy favourable award from Oxford and the other great
Universities of Europe on the legality of his marriage.
The compliance of the Oxford Convocation was not extorted without
grievous pressure. The younger Masters of Arts, as Wood informs us, stood
firm in refusing to sanction the divorce, and, notwithstanding a threatening
letter from the King himself, the desired vote was only secured, after
repeated failures, by the exclusion of the graduates in Arts from the
Convocation. Soon after this memorable but somewhat disgraceful vote, in
April 1530, the King again visited Oxford, and took back into his own
hands the charters both of the University and of the city, which had again
begun to challenge academical privileges. They were not restored until
1543, and during the interval the University was again invited to pronounce
a solemn verdict—no longer upon a question of private right, but on the
gravest issue of national policy ever submitted to its judgment. For by this
time the preliminary events which ushered in the English Reformation were
following each other in rapid succession. In July 1530, the replies of several
Universities in favour of the divorce had been forwarded to the Pope by the
hand of Cranmer, and in the following March they were laid before
Parliament. In November 1530, Cardinal Wolsey, charged with treason, died
at Leicester on his way to the Tower. At the beginning of 1531, the clergy,
having bought off the penalties of præmunire, were induced, under strong
pressure, to acknowledge Henry as ‘Head of the Church and Clergy, so far
as the law of Christ will allow.’ In 1532, an Act was passed for restraining
all appeals to Rome, Sir Thomas More resigned the Chancellorship, and
Henry married Ann Boleyn. In 1533, Cranmer, having succeeded Warham

as Archbishop of Canterbury, not only pronounced the King’s marriage with
Catharine to be null and void, but that with Anne Boleyn to be good and
lawful. In 1534, the clergy in Convocation were forbidden to make
constitutions except by the royal assent, and the Act was passed forbidding
the payment of annates to Rome. In the same year the formal separation of
the English Church from Rome was consummated by the great Act 25 Hen.
VIII. cap. 21, which left doctrine untouched, it is true, but abolished the
authority of the Pope in England, while it also rendered the monasteries
liable to visitation by commission under the Great Seal. In 1535, under the
Act of Supremacy (26 Hen. VIII. cap. 1), the King assumed the title of
‘Supreme Head of the Church of England’; Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas
More were executed for denying the Royal supremacy, and Thomas
Cromwell was appointed Vicar-General of England.
It was in 1534 that the University was invited to
Compliance of the concur in the foregone conclusion in favour of
University
rewarded by Royal separation from Rome, dictated by canonists and
favour theologians in the King’s interest. It did so with little
hesitation, and it is probable that an honest zeal for the
independence of the National Church mingled with less worthy motives in
eliciting the required consent. Moreover, Protestant doctrines, propagated
by some of the scholars imported from Cambridge and the Continent, had
already taken root in Oxford soil, and several members of Cardinal College
had already undergone persecution. In the following year a visitation of the
University was instituted, for the double purpose of establishing
ecclesiastical conformity and supplanting the old scholastic culture by a
large infusion of classical learning. The study of the Canon Law was
suppressed, and Leighton, one of the visitors, joyfully reported that ‘Dunce’
(Duns Scotus) was ‘set in Bocardo,’ or relegated to an academical limbo,
while the leaves of scholastic manuscripts, torn up by wholesale, might be
seen fluttering about New College quadrangle. On the other hand, the study
of Aristotle was enjoined, together with that of the Holy Scriptures, and an
important concession was made to reward the loyalty of the University,
which had cheerfully surrendered its rights and property into the King’s
hands. It was now exempted from the payment of tenths, or first fruits,
granted by statute to the Crown, on condition of such classical lectureships
being founded there ‘as the Kynge’s majestie shall assigne or appoynte.’
The support of these lectureships was charged upon the five colleges

supposed to be the richest, including Corpus, where classical lectureships
already existed, and the students of the other seven colleges were directed
to attend some of the courses daily. At the same time, following the
example of his grandmother, the Countess Margaret of Richmond, the King
founded and endowed with a yearly stipend of 40l. each five Regius
Professorships of Divinity, Hebrew, Greek, Medicine, and Civil Law. The
endowment was, of course, derived from the spoils of the Church, but
Henry VIII. deserves credit for a sincere desire to promote learning. In
1532, three years after Wolsey’s fall, he took up his great minister’s design
and refounded Cardinal College, though on a reduced scale, under the name
of King Henry the Eighth’s College. In 1545 he dissolved it, and finally
reconstituted it under the name of Christ Church, and in the following year
transferred his new episcopal see of Oxford from Oseney Abbey to St.
Frideswide’s, blending the collegiate with the cathedral establishment by
placing it under the control of a dean and eight canons. We owe to
Holinshed the memorable reply made by the King to some of his courtiers
who fondly hoped that he would have dealt with University endowments,
and especially with this infant college, as he had dealt with the monasteries.
‘Whereas wee had a regard onlie to pull down sin by defacing the
monasteries, you have a desire also to overthrow all goodness by
subversion of colleges. I tell you, sirs, that I judge no land in England better
bestowed than that which is given to our Universities. For by their
maintenance our realme shall be well governed when we be dead and
rotten. I love not learning so ill that I will impair the revenewes of anie one
House by a penie, whereby it may be upholden.’
The reason why college revenues were spared while
The first effects of
monastic revenues were confiscated is not difficult to
the Reformation
injurious to the divine, without supposing that Henry VIII. was pacified
University by the mediation of Catherine Parr. The occupants of
monasteries were regarded as mercenaries of a foreign
power which had become the enemy of the monarchy; the colleges were
nurseries of the secular clergy, who had never been obnoxious to the State,
who shared to a great extent the national spirit, and most of whom adopted
the new ecclesiastical order. The wise foresight of the founders had
excluded monks and friars as aliens from collegiate societies; the
constitution of these was mainly secular, and their dissolution was not
demanded by popular opinion. Nevertheless, the general sense of insecurity

and habit of servility which prevailed under the despotic rule of Henry
could not but have a blighting effect on University life. Such acts as the
execution of Sir Thomas More, one of the brightest stars of the English
Renaissance, and the arbitrary restrictions imposed on Protestantism by the
Six Articles, struck at the root of intellectual liberty, and the early stages of
the Reformation went far to depress the academical enthusiasm kindled by
the Catholic Renaissance.
The dissolution of the monasteries, instead of
Iconoclastic aggrandising the University, contributed to depopulate it,
visitation under
Edward VI. since many of the poorer students, formerly harboured in
monastic houses or lodgings, or supported by monastic
exhibitions, were now cast adrift. The Colleges and Chantries Act, though
never strictly executed, shook public confidence in academical
endowments, and at the beginning of Edward VI.’s reign the University was
far less prosperous than it had been under Wolsey. The number of degrees
continued to fall off, and the number of halls to dwindle, as religious
controversy usurped the place of education, and the University was used as
an instrument to advance the political or ecclesiastical aims of the
Sovereign. Henry VIII. had obtained its sanction to his divorce and to his
revolt against Rome; the Protector Somerset and Cranmer determined to
reform it in the interests of the new Anglican Church. Several years before,
Cranmer had appointed commissions to regulate internal discipline in two
colleges of which he was Visitor, but the Injunctions which he issued upon
their recommendation involved no change of religious faith or ordinances.
Another royal commission or Visitation, with sweeping powers, was issued
for this purpose in 1549. A like commission was appointed for the
University of Cambridge, and the new statutes drawn up for both
Universities were framed on like principles, ‘in order that each eye of the
nation might be set in motion by similar muscles.’ The ‘Edwardine’ code, as
it was afterwards called, was of course so framed as to eliminate everything
which favoured Popery from the constitution of the University, but it was
not otherwise revolutionary, and, though it soon fell into disuse, it remained
nominally in force until it was abrogated by the ‘Caroline’ statutes under the
chancellorship of Laud. But the commissioners were not equally forbearing
in their treatment of individuals, for they proceeded to expel all academical
dignitaries found guilty of upholding the old faith. In dealing with colleges,
the spirit in which they acted was ruthlessly iconoclastic, and not only were

the old services abolished, but altars, images, statues, ‘the things called
organs,’ and everything else which seemed to savour of ‘superstition,’ were
defaced or swept away. The demolition of the magnificent reredos in the
chapel of All Souls’ was assuredly no isolated specimen of their handiwork,
though we have no equally striking record of Vandalism in other colleges.
The amount of destruction wrought by their orders among the libraries and
chapels of colleges cannot now be estimated, but it was certainly enormous,
and ‘cartloads’ of classical and scientific manuscripts were consigned to the
flames, together with many an illuminated masterpiece of scholastic
literature.
At the same time, while the study of canon law was
Leniency towards virtually suppressed, that of civil law, ancient
colleges
philosophy, Hebrew, mathematics, logic, rhetoric, and
medicine was expressly encouraged by the Visitors. Eminent theologians
were invited from the continent, and the lectures of Peter Martyr and others
who accepted the invitation were crowded with eager students. It was even
designed to reconstitute All Souls’ as a college for the special cultivation of
civil law, while New College should be devoted exclusively to ‘artists.’
Many exhibitions for poor boys were suppressed, the Magdalen Grammar
School was saved only by earnest remonstrances from the citizens, and
some new dispositions were made of college revenues with little regard to
founders’ intentions. But the spoliation does not seem to have been so
indiscriminate as Anthony Wood represents it. The Protector Somerset,
being pressed, like Henry VIII., to sanction the general disendowment of
colleges, repelled the proposal with equal indignation; and indeed there is
some reason to believe that colleges were now regarded with peculiar
favour as seminaries of classical learning, and comparatively free from the
scholastic and mediæval spirit which still animated the University system.
Perhaps for this reason the Visitors forbore to exercise their power of
consolidating several colleges into one, though they did not scruple to
remove obnoxious Heads and fellows. Some of their injunctions exhibit
much good sense, and even anticipate modern reforms, such as those which
make fellowships terminable and tenable only on condition of six months’
residence, which insist on a matriculation-examination in grammar and
Latin, and which require that lectures shall be followed by examinations. It
is remarkable that at Magdalen and All Souls’ one fellowship was to be
reserved for Irishmen. Others of their injunctions were purely disciplinary,

such as those which prohibit undue expenditure on banquets after
disputations, the practice of gambling, and the use of cards in term-time.
Such regulations point to an increase of luxury consequent on the
development of colleges, originally designed for the poor but now
frequented by a wealthier class. Polemical divinity, stimulated by Peter
Martyr’s discourses on the Eucharist, continued to flourish; but, with this
exception, University studies were languishing, and while foreign divines
were being imported into England, Oxford professors of civil law were
emigrating to Louvain. The non-collegiate students became fewer and
fewer; the most experienced teachers gradually disappeared; the impulse of
the Renaissance died away; the new spirit of inquiry failed to supply the
place of the old ecclesiastical order; the attractions of trade began to
compete with those of learning, and the Universities no longer monopolised
the most promising youths in the country who declined the profession of
arms.
The accession of Mary, in 1553, ushered in a short-
Reaction under lived reaction. As the leading Romanist divines had
Mary. Martyrdom
of Ridley, Latimer, quitted Oxford on the proclamation of Edward VI., so
and Cranmer now the leading Protestants, headed by Peter Martyr,
were fain to make their escape, though not till after
Jewell had been employed to draw up a congratulatory epistle to the Queen,
whose policy was not fully revealed at the outset of her reign. Heads and
fellows of colleges were released from their obligation to renounce the
authority of the Pope, the Mass superseded the Common Prayer-book, and
Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, instituted a Visitation of the three colleges
under his own personal jurisdiction. After the execution of Lady Jane Grey
and the Queen’s marriage with Philip II. the spirit of persecution rapidly
developed itself, all statutes passed against the Papacy since the twentieth
year of Henry VIII. were repealed, the statutes passed against heretics in the
reigns of Henry IV. and Henry V. were revived, and Oxford became the
scene of those Protestant martyrdoms which have left an indelible
impression of horror and sympathy in the English mind. Several victims of
Catholic intolerance had already perished at the stake, when Cranmer,
Ridley, and Latimer were brought to Oxford for the purpose of undergoing
the solemn farce of an academical trial, and thus implicating the University
in the guilt of their intended condemnation. At a convocation held in St.
Mary’s Church a body of Oxford doctors was commissioned to dispute

against the Protestant bishops on the Eucharist, in concert with a body of
Cambridge doctors similarly commissioned. The so-called ‘disputation’
took place in the Divinity School. A day was assigned to each prisoner, the
academical judgment was of course given against them, the judicial
sentence soon followed, and on October 15, 1555, Ridley and Latimer were
led out to be burned in Canditch, opposite Balliol College, where a sermon
was preached before the stake by Dr. Richard Smyth on the text, ‘Though I
give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.’
Cranmer’s execution was delayed for months, since it required the sanction
of Rome, and his courage, as is well known, gave way under the fear of
death. His recantation came too late to save his life, yet he was called upon
to repeat it in St. Mary’s Church on his way to his doom. Instead of doing
so, he publicly retracted it before the assembled University, with earnest
professions of remorse. He was not allowed to conclude his address, but
hurried off with brutal eagerness, to give at the stake that marvellous
example of heroic constancy which has atoned for all his past errors in the
eyes of Protestants, and crowned the martyrdoms of the English
Reformation. From that moment the cause of the Catholic reaction was
desperate in the University, no less than in the nation. Queen Mary
conferred upon it many benefits and favours, and won the servile homage of
its official representatives, but she never won the hearts of the students, and
the news of her death was received with no less rejoicing in Oxford than in
other parts of England.
In the meantime, however, a fresh Visitation of the
Visitation and University was set on foot, in 1556, by Cardinal Pole,
reforms of Cardinal
Pole who, having succeeded Gardiner as chancellor of
Cambridge in the previous year, now succeeded Sir John
Mason, the first lay chancellor of Oxford. He was the last in that line of
cardinals, beginning with Beaufort, who, armed with the title of Legatus à
latere, assumed to govern the English Church, as it had never been
governed before, under the direct orders of the Pope. The Visitors deputed
by him proceeded to hunt out certain obnoxious persons who had not
withdrawn from Oxford, to burn all the English Bibles which they could
find in the common market-place, and to purge the libraries of Protestant
books. The Cardinal soon afterwards caused the University and college
statutes to be revised, chiefly for the purpose of correcting recent
innovations. For instance, while Edward VI.’s commissioners had

authorised the use of English in college halls, Cardinal Pole restored the old
rule against speaking any language but Latin. It was also an avowed object
of the revision to restore the supremacy of Aristotle and the study of
scholastic philosophy. These changes, having scarcely been effected before
they were reversed, fill less space in University annals than an incident of
comparatively trivial importance, which must have outraged the Protestant
sympathies of the Oxford townspeople. The wife of Peter Martyr had been
interred in Christchurch Cathedral, near the relics of St. Frideswide. Pole
now directed the dean, no unwilling agent, to exhume the body and cast it
into unconsecrated ground. The Dean improved upon his instructions by
having it buried under a dunghill, whence it was again disinterred, mingled
with the relics of St. Frideswide, and finally committed to the grave in the
year 1561. No wonder that Queen Mary’s patronage proved a poor
substitute for academical freedom, that learning continued to decline, that
even sermons were rare and ill-attended, that lectures were almost
suspended, that few ‘proceeded’ in any of the faculties, and that it was
thought necessary to reduce the qualification of standing for the M.A.
degree in order to reinforce the University with Masters.
Two colleges, it is true, Trinity and St. John’s, owe
Foundation of their origin to Mary’s reign, and both were founded by
Trinity and St.
John’s Colleges Roman Catholics, but upon the ruins of monastic
institutions, and before the Marian persecutions had
borne fruit in the University. These colleges, as semi-Catholic foundations
of the Reformation era, may fitly be regarded as forming landmarks
between mediæval and modern Oxford.

CHAPTER VIII.
REIGN OF ELIZABETH AND CHANCELLORSHIP OF

LEICESTER.

With the accession of Elizabeth, in November 1558, the
Visitation under scenes were rapidly shifted, and the parts of the chief
Elizabeth and
policy of actors strangely reversed. For a while, in the quaint
Archbishop Parker language of Anthony Wood, ‘two religions being now as
’twere on foot, divers of the chiefest of the University
retired and absented themselves till they saw how affairs would proceed.’
They had not long to wait. Though she received graciously a deputation
from the University, headed by Dr. Tresham, canon of Christchurch, and Dr.
Raynolds, Warden of Merton, the Queen lost no time in announcing that she
intended to visit it, and made a suspensory order in regard to all academical
elections. In June she nominated a body of Visitors to ‘make a mild and
gentle, not rigorous, reformation.’ One of these Visitors was Bishop Cox, of
Ely, who had acted in a similar capacity under Edward VI., and the
Visitation was conducted on much the same principles, except that it was
less destructive. Still, compliance with the Act of Supremacy just passed
was strictly enforced, and nine Heads of colleges, as well as the Dean and
two canons of Christchurch, proving recusants, were ejected or forced to
resign. Among these were Raynolds and Tresham, the former of whom died
in prison. A considerable number of fellows are mentioned as having been
expelled for refusing the oath, but the majority conformed. Some Protestant
exiles returned from Zurich, Strasburg, and other foreign towns, where they
had suffered great privations; but it is certain that Oxford lost many
Catholic scholars whom she could ill spare, and suffered far more from the
Elizabethan proscriptions than Cambridge, where the Reformation had been
more firmly established. Peter Martyr and Jewell attested the intellectual
and moral degeneracy of the University at the beginning of Elizabeth’s
reign, nor could it have been otherwise after such rapid vicissitudes in
religious doctrine and ecclesiastical government, unsettling the minds of

students, and keeping academical rulers in a constant state of suspense or
time-serving. It is certainly significant that in the very year after the Act of
Uniformity was passed, establishing the revised Common Prayer-book, the
Queen authorised the use of a Latin version thereof in college chapels in
order to promote familiarity with Latin. But it is probable that this, like
other concessions, was also due to a desire, which she fully shared with
Archbishop Parker, to favour the growth of an Anglo-Catholic instead of a
Puritan Church, and to encourage the Protestants without estranging the
Romanists. Meanwhile Sampson, the dean of Christchurch, and Humphrey,
the president of Magdalen, were zealous promoters of the Puritan
movement, and as such distrusted by the queen, especially as they were
known to be in correspondence with Geneva.
In the year 1564 Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester,
Chancellorship of became chancellor of the University, and continued in
Leicester
office nearly twenty-four years. With the exception of
Sir John Mason, elected in 1552, and the Earl of Arundel, elected in 1558,
he was the first layman who had held this high office, which, moreover, had
always been filled by some resident member of the University up to the
year 1484. Non-resident and courtier as he was, however, the office was no
sinecure in his hands. During his long tenure of it, his influence made itself
felt in every department of University life, and was mainly exercised in
favour of the Puritans. For this reason, we cannot accept Anthony Wood’s
censure of him as that of an impartial historian, nor can it be denied that he
took a genuine interest in the affairs of the University, and effected some
useful reforms. One valuable concession obtained by the University under
his chancellorship, and probably at his instance, was its incorporation in
1571 by an Act of Parliament, investing the ‘chancellor, masters, and
scholars’ with the rights of perpetual succession, and confirming to it all the
other privileges conferred upon it by previous monarchs. This parliamentary
title relieved it from the necessity of seeking a new charter from each
succeeding king, and is the organic statute by which its franchises are now
secured. In the same year an Act was passed which, supplemented by
further Acts passed five years later, has done more than any other to save
the revenues of colleges from dissipation. The immense influx of gold from
America, lowering the value of money, had proportionately raised the
nominal value of land, and private landowners were reaping the advantage
in sales and leases. The governing bodies of colleges, in turn, were exacting

increased fines on granting long leases at low rentals, to the injury of their
successors. The Act of 13th Elizabeth checked this practice by enacting that
college leases should be for twenty-one years, or three lives at most, with a
reservation of the customary rent; but means were found to evade the Act,
and it was necessary to make it more stringent. This was done by Acts of
18th Elizabeth, the more important of which, ‘for the maintenance of
colleges,’ is sometimes attributed to the foresight of Sir Thomas Smith, and
sometimes to that of Lord Burghley. It requires that one-third part at least of
the rents to be reserved in college leases shall be payable in corn or in malt,
at 6s. 8d. per quarter and 5s. per quarter respectively. As prices rose, this
one-third ultimately far outweighed in value the remaining two-thirds, and
became ‘a second additional endowment’ to colleges.
Another measure of more doubtful policy was passed
Changes in the by the University itself under the direct instigation of
government of the
University Leicester. We have seen that in the later Middle Ages an
assembly consisting mainly of resident teachers, and
called the ‘Black Congregation,’ held preliminary discussions on University
business about to come before Convocation. In the year 1569, the Earl of
Leicester procured orders to be framed by a delegacy and passed into
statutes, whereby it was provided that in future this preliminary deliberation
should be conducted by the Vice-chancellor, Doctors, Heads of Houses, and
Proctors. This change marks a notable step in the growth of the college
monopoly afterwards established, and could hardly have been carried while
the monastic orders were still powerful in Oxford, and a large body of non-
collegiate students were lodged in halls. Nor could the erection of such a
legislative oligarchy, with a virtual power of suppressing obnoxious
motions, be otherwise than unfavourable to freedom of teaching and
government, however congenial to Tudor notions of academical discipline.
Another change made by Leicester in the same year (1569), though dictated
by a like spirit, cannot be regarded as an innovation, but rather as the
restoration of an ancient usage. From the earliest times Chancellors of the
University had been assisted by deputies, whom they appointed either
periodically, or, more probably, as occasion might require. By the statutes of
1549, issued by Edward VI.’s Visitors, the right of electing these
commissaries, or ‘vice-chancellors,’ as they came to be called, was vested
in the House of Congregation. The practice of nomination was now
resumed by Leicester, and has been maintained ever since. A somewhat

opposite tendency is to be observed in his abolition of the more orderly but
more exclusive mode of electing proctors, which had grown up in lieu of
the old tumultuous elections by an academical plébiscite, when the proctors
represented the ‘nations.’ The nature of this restricted election, per
instantes, as Anthony Wood calls it, is by no means clear; at all events, the
unrestricted election was re-established by Leicester’s influence, and
continued to produce the same disorders as ever, until it was finally
reformed in 1629.
We have abundant proofs of Leicester’s active, and
Leicester’s even meddlesome, interference with the details of
administration of
the University University and college administration. Sometimes he
recommends eminent foreigners for advancement, or
accompanies them on visits to Oxford; sometimes he writes to urge the duty
of encouraging more frequent University sermons; sometimes he corrects
the abuses of disorderly and vituperative preaching by ordering that no one
shall occupy the University pulpit without undergoing a probation in his
own college; sometimes he rebukes the license of youth in respect of
costume; sometimes he superintends the revision of University statutes by a
delegacy mainly composed of Heads of colleges; nor must we overlook his
gift to the University of a new printing-press. But the most permanent
monument of Leicester’s chancellorship was the new test of subscription to
the Thirty-nine Articles and the Royal Supremacy, to be required from
every student above sixteen years of age on his matriculation. This rule was
doubtless intended only to exclude the Romanising party from the
University; but its ulterior consequences, unforeseen by its author, were
mainly felt by the descendants of the Puritans. Thenceforth the University
of Oxford, once open to all Christendom, was narrowed into an exclusively
Church of England institution, and became the favourite arena of Anglican
controversy, developing more and more that special character, at once
worldly and clerical, which it shares with Cambridge alone among the
Universities of Europe.
The letter, dated 1581, in which Leicester urges Convocation to adopt
this disastrous measure, contains other recommendations directed to the
same end. One of these is a proposal that, in order to prevent the sons ‘of
knowne or suspected Papists’ being sent to Oxford to be trained by men of
the same religion, every tutor should be licensed by a select board, to

consist of the vice-chancellor and six doctors or bachelors of divinity. A
third proposal, of which the cause is not yet obsolete, was designed to check
the conversion of professorships into sinecures, by providing for the
appointment of substitutes where professors should fail to discharge their
duties. All these regulations, with some others of a salutary kind, were
sanctioned by decrees of Convocation, but it is clear from a vigorous
remonstrance of the Chancellor, addressed to the University in the
following year, that most of them remained a dead letter. This remonstrance
deserves to be read, as illustrating the difference between Leicester in his
capacity of courtier and in his capacity of University Chancellor. The
political and private character of Leicester belong to history, and the verdict
passed upon him is not likely to be reversed; but it is difficult, after
studying this letter, to regard him as animated only by sinister and frivolous
motives in his dealings with the University. On the other hand, there is clear
evidence of wholesale favouritism and jobbery, as it would now be called,
in his dispensation of his own patronage, and in his repeated and underhand
attempts to control the patronage of colleges. Upon the whole, his
administration of the University was less dishonest and more statesmanlike
than might have been expected of so profligate a politician. It cannot be
compared, however, with the wise administration of Cambridge by the great
Burleigh, and the superiority of the sister-University, both in vital energy
and in national esteem, during the Elizabethan age, was probably due in no
small degree to the superior character of its Chancellor.
Other causes, however, had contributed to depress the
Depression of intellectual life of Oxford, and among these we must not
intellectual life in
the University omit to notice the withdrawal of many gifted scholars to
seek liberty of conscience at the new Catholic seminary
of Douay, founded in 1568. Leicester’s agents were constantly on the watch
against the reappearance of these ‘seminary priests’ at Oxford with intent to
Romanise the University, and this perhaps was no imaginary danger; but
neither learning nor education flourished under Oxford Puritanism. Writing
in 1589, the year following Leicester’s death, Whitgift fully confirms his
estimate of the laxity prevailing at Oxford. In this very year an Act was
passed to check the sale or corrupt resignation of fellowships—evils which
owed their origin to the previous Act regulating college leases, and
indirectly encouraging a system of money allowances to fellows, unknown
in the previous century. The rise of grammar schools, one of the earliest and

best fruits of the Reformation, seems rather to have diminished than to have
increased the demand for the higher University culture. Formerly, when
Oxford itself was a vast group of grammar schools, many a boy who came
there to learn grammar remained there to learn philosophy or law. Now,
boys of the same class often got their schooling near home, and then betook
themselves to one of the numerous vocations which trade and commerce
were opening to English youth in that great age of enterprise and national
expansion. Even the literature of Elizabeth’s reign is courtly and popular
rather than academical, and Oxford contributed little to it. Bacon was a
student at Trinity College, Cambridge; Raleigh at Oriel College; Spenser
and other Elizabethan poets had received an University education; but such
men derived their inspiration from no academical source; their literary
powers were matured in a very different school, and the one of their
compeers whose fame eclipses all the rest, knew Oxford only as a traveller,
on his journeys to Stratford-on-Avon. ‘Home-keeping youths,’ Shakspeare
tells us, ‘have ever homely wits,’ and the saying is characteristic of an age
in which foreign travel often supplied the place of University education.
It was not until the later part of her reign that Queen
Encouragement of Elizabeth actively patronised Oxford culture, and
study by Elizabeth,
and foundation of desired of the Chancellors of both the Universities that
the Bodleian promising scholars might be recommended to her for
Library promotion in Church and State. The stimulating effect of
such patronage upon University studies very soon made
itself felt at Oxford, and men like Sir Henry Savile were the direct product
of it. A still more important recipient of Elizabeth’s favour was Sir Thos.
Bodley, student of Magdalen and fellow of Merton, who, having been a
member of the Queen’s household, was afterwards employed by her on
missions to Germany, France, and Belgium. Among the many benefactors
of the University his name still ranks first and highest. In boyhood he seems
to have imbibed the literary spirit of the Renaissance under foreign
instructors at Geneva, whither his family had fled to avoid the Marian
persecution; at Merton he was one of the earliest readers in Greek, and his
long residence abroad in middle life had quickened his scholarlike tastes. At
last, at the age of fifty-three, he deliberately took leave of State
employments, ‘set up his staff at the library door’ in Oxford, and devoted
himself for the remaining fifteen years of his life to reconstructing and
enriching the library of Duke Humphrey. In 1602, this building, renovated

and enlarged, was opened with a solemn procession from St. Mary’s
Church, and dedicated to the use of the University. The whole design was
not completed until after his death; but the plan of it was fully matured,
with the aid of Sir Henry Savile, by the founder, who drew the statutes with
his own hand and collected some 2,000 volumes before the opening day.
This noble gift excited the emulation of other donors, and probably did
more than any Court patronage to promote learning in the University.
During the last seventeen years of the great Queen’s
Increasing reign the history of Oxford was unruffled by stirring
refinement of
academical life events. That Leicester’s constant remonstrances against
idleness, sinecurism, and extravagance had not been
capricious or unfounded, is proved by the fact of their being repeated and
enforced again and again by his three successors. It was, indeed, the
misfortune of the University that it was roused from the lethargy which
oppressed it after the Catholic reaction, only to become the battle-ground of
the Romanising and Puritan factions in the Anglican Church. While its
highest dignitaries were mostly animated by intense party spirit rather than
by zeal for education, its students fully shared in the genial laxity of
manners, fostered by increasing luxury, which marked the Elizabethan age.
Their numbers were increased, but the new recruits were drawn from a
wealthier class; there were more young gentlemen among them, but fewer
hardworking scholars; more of worldly accomplishments, but less of severe
and earnest study. Many of them were destined for lay professions or even
for trade, and many tutors were now laymen, yet it may be doubted whether
there was as much real freedom of thought in the Protestant Oxford of
Elizabeth as in the Catholic Oxford of the first three Edwards. The
academical system was narrower in principle than in mediæval times, and
the University had become a mere aggregate of colleges and privileged
halls. On the other hand, these collegiate bodies were far more orderly and
refined societies, and learned foreigners, of whom many found a welcome
there, were impressed with the comfort and dignity of social life at Oxford,
as compared with that of continental Universities. One of these, Albericus
Gentilis, became Regius Professor of Civil Law, and for a while revived the
waning interest of that subject, which the combined jealousy of the clergy
and common lawyers had long discouraged as a branch of academical
study.

Queen Elizabeth twice visited Oxford in state, once
Queen Elizabeth’s during her ‘progress’ in 1566, and again in 1592. On the
two visits to Oxford
first occasion she was accompanied by Leicester as
Chancellor, and by Cecil as Secretary of State. She was hailed with effusive
loyalty, and entertained for six days with an incessant round of festivities,
orations, disputations, and Latin plays, which she bore with truly royal
patience, winning universal homage by ‘her sweet, affable, and noble
carriage,’ but frowning gently on divines of the Puritanical and Romanising
parties, while she reserved her most winning smiles for the young students
who amused her with their boyish repartees, sometimes expressed in Latin.
It was not until twenty-six years later that she revisited the University, a
prematurely old woman, but still accompanied by Cecil, now Lord
Burleigh, stayed for the same period, and went through a repetition of the
same ceremonials. This reception lacked the freshness of the former one,
yet enabled the Queen to show that she had not forgotten either her Latinity
or her academical sympathies. According to Anthony Wood, it was one of
her objects ‘to behold the change and amendment of learning and manners
that had been in her long absence made.’ It does not appear how far she was
satisfied in this respect, but her Latin speech to the Heads of Houses
certainly abounds in excellent advice and professions of warm interest in
the welfare of the University. As before, she rallied the ‘precisians,’ as they
were then called, on their over-zeal for Protestantism, counselling all to
study moderation and rest content with obeying the law, instead of seeking
to be in advance of it.
It is remarkable how often the town of Oxford was
Pestilences and scourged with pestilence during the Tudor period, and
disturbances in the
sixteenth century this cause had perhaps as much effect in repelling
students as the unsettled state of ecclesiastical affairs. To
check one fertile source of infection, an order was addressed by the Privy
Council to the vice-chancellor and Heads of colleges, in 1593, forbidding
the performance of plays or interludes in Oxford or within five miles
thereof, since the physicians had connected the plague of that year with the
immense influx of players and vagrants from London into Oxford about the
Act-time. The order further directed the University authorities to concert
measures with the mayor for the prevention of overcrowding; and these
precautions were apparently successful, for the plague did not reappear in

Oxford until 1603, when it was brought thither from London shortly after
the accession of James I.
Scarcely less fatal to academical repose and earnest study were the
violent conflicts and riots, inherited from the Middle Ages, which
constantly recurred throughout the sixteenth century. Some of these arose
out of the old traditional feud between the northern and southern nations,
but that feud had well-nigh died out under Leicester’s chancellorship, and
does not seem to have influenced the keenly contested election of proctors
in 1594, though we hear of a fray provoked by ‘the troublesome Welsh’ in
1587. The contest for the chancellorship which took place on Leicester’s
death was, in the main, one between Puritans and Episcopalians, and the
election of Hatton against Essex was a victory for the Church of England as
established by the moderate policy of Elizabeth. Henceforth Oxford became
the stronghold of Anglicanism, and the internal contests which divided the
University were essentially contests between rival Church parties.
Meanwhile, there was little abatement of the pettier, but still more
inveterate, jealousy between the city and the University. Year after year this
incurable enmity broke forth afresh in some new form, and the law courts,
as well as the Chancellor, were frequently engaged in vain attempts to keep
the peace between bodies equally concerned in the prosperity of Oxford. A
temporary abatement of these disturbances was obtained, in 1581, by the
fresh imposition of an oath to be taken by the city sheriff, on his election,
binding him to uphold the privileges of the University; but the feud was not
to be thus healed. If we duly measure the distraction of energy which must
have resulted from such perpetual disorders, and, far more, from the fierce
religious animosities which long convulsed Oxford and plunged other
countries into civil war—not forgetting the constant interruption of
academical residence by plague—we shall be more disposed to marvel at
the intrinsic vitality of the University than at the many shortcomings
imputed to it, when the death of the great Queen ushered in a new and
eventful period in its history.

CHAPTER IX.
THE UNIVERSITY UNDER JAMES I.

The influence acquired by the University of Oxford, as a
The University power in the State, under the Tudor dynasty, was fully
patronised by James
I. maintained by it under the Stuarts. If it had played a
humbler part in the earlier stages of the Reformation
than in the intellectual movement of the Renaissance, and if for a while the
Protestant episcopate had been mainly recruited from Cambridge, it was
nevertheless destined to bear the brunt of those storms which, already
gathering in the last years of Elizabeth, burst over Church and State in the
first half of the seventeenth century. Before the accession of James I., while
Church-government had been firmly settled on an Episcopalian basis, there
was room for much latitude of opinion within the National Church, and the
religious sentiment of the English people was strongly Puritan. This
dualism was faithfully reflected in the University, where the Act of
Uniformity was strictly enforced, and there was a growing preponderance
of academical authority on the side of the High Church party, yet several
Regius Professors of Divinity in succession were of the Puritan school, and
a deep undercurrent of Puritanism manifested itself again and again among
the more earnest college tutors and students. The vigorous protest of the
University against the famous Millenary petition was dictated not so much
by distrust of its Puritan authorship and tone, as by hostility to its proposals
for reducing the value of impropriations in the hands of colleges. Little as
he understood the English nation, James I. was not slow to appreciate the
advantage of gaining a hold upon the Universities, hastened to show a
personal interest in them, and expressed a wish to be consulted about all
academical affairs of importance. In the very year of his accession, he
granted letters patent to both Universities, commanding each of them to
choose two grave and learned men, professing the civil law, to serve as
burgesses in the House of Commons. Though he was prevented by the
plague from visiting Oxford in that year, he came to Woodstock in the
autumn and received the University authorities. Two years later, in 1605, he

entered Oxford on horseback, surrounded by an imposing cavalcade of
nobles and courtiers, to be received, like Elizabeth, with costly banquets
and pompous disputations, to which, on this occasion, was added a grand
musical service in the cathedral. The pedantic self-complacency of James
enabled him to enjoy in the highest degree all the frivolous solemnities of
this academic ceremonial, of which a full account has been preserved in the
‘Rex Platonicus’ of the Public Orator, Sir Isaac Wake. It is remarkable that
Anthony Wood dates the progress of luxury, with drinking in taverns and
other disorders, from the festivities lavished on this visit. The king gave a
further proof of his confidence in Oxford, by entering his son Prince Henry,
a youth of great promise, who died prematurely in 1612, as a student at
Magdalen College.
Whatever may be thought of James I.’s character, it is
James I.’s attitude certain that he was animated by a generous partiality for
towards the
University and the the Universities, not only as bulwarks of his throne but
Church as seats of learning. It is equally certain that he entered
upon his reign with serious and practical intentions of
Church reform. Accordingly, in 1603, he addressed letters to the
Chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge, pointing out the evils and abuses
resulting from the wholesale diversion of Church revenues, by means of
impropriation, to private aggrandisement. He declared himself ready to
sacrifice all the patronage which had thus devolved upon the Crown, and
called upon the colleges to imitate his example by re-endowing their
benefices with tithes for the support of efficient ministers. He was
dissuaded from carrying out his purpose by the remonstrances of
Archbishop Whitgift and others, but in 1606, after the discovery of the
Gunpowder Plot, the Universities received a valuable gift in the right of
presenting to all benefices in the hands of Roman Catholic patrons, the
southern counties being assigned to Oxford, the northern to Cambridge.
They were also formally exempted from liability to subsidies on three
separate occasions. In such proofs of partiality for the Universities James
was but following out the policy of Elizabeth, who had clearly grasped the
expediency of controlling and conciliating the great seminaries in which the
national clergy were educated. At first his native Calvinism inclined him to
favour the Puritans, whose influence in the University had been greatly
strengthened by the example and teaching of the admirable Laurence
Humphrey, President of Magdalen, and Regius Professor of Divinity, who

died in 1589. But he gradually discovered the natural affinity between
Arminian theories of Church authority and his own theories of kingcraft, as
well as the preponderance of the former in the clerical order, and decisively
cast in his lot with the High Church party. In the grand struggle between the
ecclesiastical courts and the common law judges, the Universities with the
great body of the clergy supported the King and the archbishop in
sustaining the authority of the former. They were again associated with the
King when he conferred a lasting benefit on the English Church and nation
by initiating the Authorised Version of the Bible. In this great work the two
Universities were represented almost equally, and among the Oxford
scholars engaged in it we find seven Heads of colleges and four other
divines, who afterwards became bishops. There is some reason, however, to
believe that he cherished a preference for the sister University, and it is a
somewhat remarkable fact that George Carleton, afterward bishop of
Chichester, was the only Oxford man among the five academical divines
selected by him to represent England at the Synod of Dort.
In the year 1603, we first hear of ‘Mr. William Laud,
Rise and influence B.D. of St. John’s College,’ as proctor; in 1606 he again
of Laud
comes under notice, as preaching in St. Mary’s Church,
and ‘letting fall divers passages savouring of popery,’ which brought him
under the censure of the vice-chancellor. Thenceforth he became a
formidable power, and ultimately the ruling spirit in the University, the
discipline of which he persistently laboured to reform. The eighteen years
which elapsed between his proctorship and his retirement from the
presidency of St. John’s, in 1621, were crowded with events memorable in
the history of the English Church. The failure of the Hampton Court
Conference, in 1604, drove the Puritan party, at last, into active opposition.
The canons enacted in the Convocation of the same year compelled the
clergy to subscribe the Three Articles which the Parliament of 1571 had
expressly refused to impose upon them; and the immediate consequence
was the deprivation of three hundred clergymen. In 1606, the severity of the
laws against Popish recusants was increased, and the arbitrary jurisdiction
of the High Commission was constantly extended until it was openly
challenged by the common law judges. The responsibility of supporting the
king in this aggression on the Constitution rests, in part, on Abbot, formerly
Master of University College, whom the Calvinistic party at Oxford had
regarded as their protector against Laud and his associates, but who, after

succeeding Bancroft as archbishop in 1610, strained the powers of the High
Commission almost as far as Bancroft himself. There was no such
inconsistency in Laud, who, from the first, deliberately set himself to undo
the work of Leicester as Chancellor, and Humphrey as professor of divinity
at Oxford. An appeal was lodged against him by the opposite party when he
was elected President of St. John’s in 1611, but the election was confirmed.
It was he who procured the publication, in 1616, of a stringent order from
the king, by the advice of the clergy in convention, for the subscription of
the Three Articles in the Thirty-sixth Canon by every candidate for a
degree, for strict attendance on University sermons, and for the enforcement
of other safeguards against heterodoxy. This was not the first time that the
Convocation of the clergy had presumed to meddle with the government of
the University, for another canon, passed in 1604, had required surplices to
be worn in college chapels. But, of course, such decrees could only be
enforced by the action of the Crown, the validity of whose jurisdiction over
the Universities was, in itself, somewhat doubtful. In this case, the authority
of the Chancellor, the Earl of Pembroke, was employed to obtain
compliance with the order which, though resented by many, was obeyed. In
1622, the University Convocation gave a further proof of obsequious
loyalty, not only by publicly burning the works of Paræus, in deference to a
mandate of the Privy Council, but also by passing a declaratory resolution
absolutely condemning resistance to a reigning sovereign, offensive or
defensive, upon any pretext whatever. This solemn affirmation of the
doctrine of passive obedience was the more significant and ignoble, because
it came but a few months after the Commons had recorded a solemn protest
against the violation of their liberties, and the king had torn it out of their
Journal with his own hand. The progress of Arminianism in the Church and
University kept pace with that of personal government in the State. It was in
1622 that Coke, Pym, Selden, and others were imprisoned for disputing the
royal prerogative, and from this year Anthony Wood dates ‘such an
alteration in the University, that the name of Calvin (which had carried all
before it) began to lessen by degrees.’ In the great crisis of the next reign it
was found that Oxford Puritanism was by no means extinct, but the
reactionary creed of Laud had almost exclusive possession of the University
pulpit, and soon become dominant. This new faith, half political, half
theological, and affirming at once the divine right of kings and the divine
right of bishops, found partial expression in James’s own maxim—‘No

bishop, no king.’ Absolutism allied itself naturally with the doctrinal system
of Arminianism; the creed of Laud, embraced long ago by the fatuous King
and the Court, had already been adopted deliberately by Prince Charles; it
was now to become the official creed of Oxford for nearly two generations.
During the whole reign of James I. the external
Completion of the condition of the University was prosperous, and it
‘Schools,’ and
foundation of received important accessions, both in buildings and
Wadham and endowments. On March 30, 1619, the day following the
Pembroke Colleges burial of Sir Thomas Bodley in Merton College Chapel,
the first stone of the New Schools, as they were then
called, was laid by his coadjutor, Sir John Bennett. Two colleges, Wadham
and Pembroke, owe their origin to the same period. The former was
founded in 1610 by Dorothea, widow of Nicholas Wadham, under a royal
licence; the latter was founded in 1624 by James I. himself, but endowed at
the cost and charges of Thomas Tesdale and Richard Wightwick. No less
than six professorships were instituted during the same period. The first two
of these—the professorships of geometry and astronomy—bear the name of
their founder, Sir Henry Savile, warden of Merton College, who endowed
them in 1619. In the quaint language of Anthony Wood: ‘Beholding the
Mathematick Studies to be neglected by the generality of men, ’twas now
his desire to recover them, least they should utterly sink into oblivion.’
These benefactions, and the growing wealth of colleges, helped to
strengthen the University in the esteem of the upper classes, upon which it
now depended for its supply of students. According to a census taken in
1611, the number of residents was 2,420, and it continued to increase until
the outbreak of the Civil War.

CHAPTER X.
THE UNIVERSITY UNDER CHARLES I. AND LAUD.

The death of James I. and the succession of Charles I.
Parliament at produced no break in the continuity either of national or
Oxford
of academical history. With less shrewdness than his
father, but more of dignity in his character and bearing, Charles possessed
equal obstinacy, and equally regarded it as his mission to curtail the liberties
of his people, in the interests of the Crown, by the aid of the new State
Church. The profligate and unscrupulous Buckingham retained all his
ascendency, and was Charles’s trusted confidant in politics. Abbot was still
Archbishop of Canterbury, and crowned the young King in Westminster
Abbey, while Laud officiated as Dean of Westminster. But Laud was
Charles’s real adviser in Church affairs, and his evil counsels soon brought
about the disgrace of his rival, Abbot, when the archbishop, reverting to his
earlier principles, boldly opposed the arbitrary and oppressive policy of the
Court. Though he was no longer president of St. John’s College, his
influence over the academical body was never relaxed, and was constantly
exercised on behalf of Arminianism in the Church, and absolutism in the
State. It was some time, however, before the University was directly
affected by the storms which clouded the political horizon from the very
beginning of Charles’s reign. His first Parliament, it is true, was adjourned
to Oxford in the Long Vacation of 1625, on account of the plague then
raging in London, and all the colleges and halls were cleared, by order of
the Privy Council, for the reception of the members. The Privy Council
itself met at Christchurch, the House of Commons sat in the divinity school,
and the Lords ‘in the north part of the picture gallery,’ but the Parliament,
having refused to grant supplies, was dissolved within a fortnight. The
plague, however, had followed it to Oxford, and the commencement of
Michaelmas term had to be postponed until November 9. In 1628 the
election of proctors was attended with more than ordinary tumult; the
Chancellor intervened, and ultimately the King took the matter into his own
hands, referring the decision of it to a committee, including Laud, who

practically dictated their nominees to the University Convocation. In
February 1629, the House of Commons, which had obtained the King’s
assent to the Petition of Right, took upon itself, by a letter from the Speaker,
to call for a return of all persons known to have contravened the Articles of
Religion. The proctors so far recognised the validity of the order as to
institute an inquiry, but Parliament was prorogued not long afterwards, and
the question seems to have dropped. The incident, however, is not without
its importance, as indicating the disposition of Parliament, now roused into
active opposition, to share with the Crown the control of the University. On
August 27 in the same year, Charles I., during his stay at Woodstock, paid
his first state visit to Oxford, and was entertained with his queen in Merton
College, where she was destined to be lodged so long during the Civil War,
of which the premonitory signs were already visible to far-sighted
observers.
In April 1630, the Earl of Pembroke died, and Laud,
Chancellorship of now bishop of London, was elected Chancellor of the
Laud
University by a very narrow majority over Philip, Earl of
Montgomery, Pembroke’s younger brother. His chancellorship lasted eleven
years, and was terminated by his resignation in 1641. However narrow may
have been his Church policy, he was a true and loyal son of the University,
by which he deserves to be remembered as an earnest reformer and liberal
benefactor. It was at his instance that in 1629, the year before he became
Chancellor, a final end was put to the riotous election of proctors which had
so often disgraced the University for centuries. This was effected by the
simple device of constructing a cycle, extending over twenty-three years,
within which period a certain number of turns was assigned to each college,
according to its size and dignity. The inventor of this cycle was Peter
Turner, of Merton, a great mathematician in his day, and it fulfilled its
object by entrusting the nomination of proctors to individual colleges, each
of which could exercise a deliberate choice, instead of leaving it to be
fought out by the academical democracy. This salutary change was accepted
by the University Convocation on the recommendation of the king and the
Earl of Pembroke, but its real originator was Laud. His efforts to reform the
discipline and morals of the University were equally well meant, though
conceived in an almost Puritanical spirit which might have won the
approval of the ‘Precisians,’ who hated him so bitterly, and not without
good cause. These efforts extended to the colleges of which he was Visitor,

and were carried to the length of minutely regulating every detail of
University life. Attendance at sermons and services, the conduct of
disputations in theology and arts, the relations between Masters of Arts and
Bachelors or students, the forms and fashions of academical costume, the
proper length of scholars’ hair, the hours of meals, the custody of college
gates, the presentation to college benefices, the management of college
property, the use of Latin in conversation as well as formal business, the
enforcement of purity in elections to fellowships—such are some of the
academical concerns which received from Laud as careful attention as the
highest interests of the Church and the monarchy. In one respect, indeed,
the policy of Laud strongly resembled that of Leicester, for both maintained
their influence by favouritism, and kept up a regular correspondence with
confidential agents at Oxford, through whom they were informed of
everything that passed there. But while Leicester’s inquisitorial vigilance
was directed not only against disturbers of the peace but against persons
suspected of Romanism, that of Laud was directed against Puritans and
Calvinists.
The greatest and most permanent result of Laud’s
Compilation of chancellorship was the compilation of the famous code,
Laudian Statutes
known as the ‘Laudian’ or ‘Caroline’ Statutes, which
continued to govern the University for more than two centuries. From time
immemorial, the University had claimed and exercised the power of
making, repealing, and revising its own statutes. Under the chancellorship
of Archbishop Warham, in 1513, this power had been delegated to a
committee of seven, and again, in 1518, it was delegated to Cardinal
Wolsey, in spite of the Chancellor’s protest; but in both cases, it was the
University Congregation which conferred the commission, under which,
however, very little seems to have been done. The commissioners of
Edward VI. were appointed under the Great Seal, and drew up the
‘Edwardine Statutes,’ by virtue of an authority independent of the
University. Cardinal Pole, on the contrary, issued his Ordinances, in his
capacity of Chancellor, provisionally only, until a delegacy of Convocation
should decide upon the necessary alterations. Similar delegacies were
appointed by the authority of Convocation, as it was then called, on several
occasions during the reign of Elizabeth; and though in the reigns of her two
successors many ordinances were sent down by the Crown, they were not
accepted as operative until they had been embodied in statutes, or adopted

in express terms by Convocation. Even in 1628, when the proctors had
endeavoured to obstruct the proposed statutes regulating proctorial
elections, and the king threatened with his condign displeasure those who
should persist in opposing them, Convocation went through the form of
enacting them by its own decree. The same course was taken in 1629, under
Lord Pembroke’s chancellorship, but at Laud’s instigation, when the
delegacy was nominated to codify the statutes, which then lay, as Laud said,
‘in a miserable confused heap.’ The work occupied four years, and, when it
was completed, the University placed the new code in the hands of Laud,
with full power to make additions or alterations. He corrected the draught,
and in July 1634 directed a copy to be deposited in each college or hall for a
year, during which amendments might be suggested. At last, in June 1636,
Laud finally promulgated, and the King solemnly confirmed, the ‘Corpus
Statutorum,’ as they were officially designated, and the University
Convocation formally accepted them, with the most fulsome professions of
gratitude to its Chancellor, and of confidence in the eternity of their own
legislation. This confidence was not, and could not be, justified by events;
but an impression long prevailed that the Laudian statutes, though capable
of extension, were as incapable of alteration as the laws of the Medes and
Persians. It is, indeed, very remarkable that, with a few trifling additions,
these statutes proved capable of being worked practically until they were
superseded, in many essential particulars, by the University Reform Act of
1854.
These statutes were for the most part, a digest of those
Main provisions of already in force, but embodied also new regulations of
the Laudian
Statutes great importance, such as those for the government of
the University by the ‘Hebdomadal Board,’ for the
election of proctors according to the cycle recently established, for the
nomination of ‘collectors’ (to preside over ‘determinations’), and for the
conduct of public examinations. The principle of placing the main control
of academical affairs in the hands of heads of colleges and halls had already
been established by Leicester, but it was now reduced to a fundamental law,
and the vice-chancellor, with the Heads of Houses and proctors, was
formally entrusted with the whole administration of the University. This
statute effectually stereotyped the administrative monopoly of the colleges,
and destroyed all trace of the old democratic constitution which had been
controlled only by the authority of the mediæval Church. The same

oligarchical tendency may be discerned in the statute which converted the
popular and public election of proctors by the common suffrages of all the
Masters into a private election by the Doctors and Masters of a certain
standing in each college, however beneficial its effect may have been in
checking the abuses of tumultuous canvassing. While the dignity of the
procuratorial office was thus sensibly reduced, that of the vice-chancellor’s
office was proportionably enhanced. The Laudian Code legalised the
practice resumed by Leicester, directing that the vice-chancellor should be
nominated annually from the heads of colleges by the Chancellor, with the
assent of Convocation. As vicegerent of the Chancellor, and chairman of the
Hebdomadal Board, he gradually acquired a position of greater authority
and independence than had formerly belonged to him. Under Laud’s
chancellorship, indeed, he was expected to make a weekly report to his
chief on the state of the University; but later Chancellors were neither so
conscientious nor so meddlesome, and, in default of urgent necessity for
their intervention, were at last content to be regarded as ornamental
personages, rather than as the actual rulers of the University. One of the
vice-chancellor’s chief duties at this period was to guard the orthodoxy of
the University pulpit, and there are numerous instances of preachers being
summoned before him for controverting Arminian doctrines, and forced to
sign humble recantations of their errors. Where they proved refractory, the
royal prerogative was promptly invoked to coerce them.
The course of study, and standard of examination,
Studies and prescribed by the Laudian statutes were so much beyond
examinations under
the Laudian the requirements of later times that we may well doubt
Statutes whether either can have been strictly enforced. The B.A.
degree, which then concluded the first stage of an
academical career, might be taken at the end of the fourth year, and the
student was bound to have attended lectures in grammar, rhetoric, the
Ethics, Politics, and Economics of Aristotle, logic, moral philosophy,
geometry, and Greek. In order to attain the M.A. degree, three more years
were to be spent in studying geometry, astronomy, metaphysics, natural
philosophy, Greek, and Hebrew. Making every allowance for the longer
residence of those days, as well as for the lower conception of proficiency
in these subjects, we cannot but admire the comprehensive range of this
curriculum, and admit that if it was actually accomplished by a majority of
students, the race of passmen in the seventeenth century must have been

cast in an heroic mould. Disputations, which had long fallen into discredit,
were now superseded by a system of public examinations, the germs of
which are to be found in an obsolete statute of 1588, if not in the earlier
statutes of Edward VI. The examinations for the B.A. and M.A. degrees,
respectively, were to be in the subjects in which the candidates were
statutably bound to have previously heard lectures, and special regard was
to be paid to fluency in Latin, but they can scarcely have been effective
according to modern ideas. They were to be conducted, in rotation, by all
the regent masters, under the orders of the senior proctor; the method of
interrogation seems to have been exclusively oral; and the authority of
Aristotle was to be paramount within the whole sphere of his voluminous
writings. As the ordinary period of residence waxed shorter, and the
University relaxed its authority over its own teachers, the examination
system of Laud, though it nominally survived for more than a century and a
half, became almost as illusory as the old scholastic disputations.
The effusive gratitude manifested by the University
Services of Laud to towards Laud, on the publication of his ‘Caroline’
the University
statutes, was partly, no doubt, the expression of party
spirit, but it was also justified by his great services. He presented to the
Library a splendid collection of Oriental manuscripts, besides procuring
valuable gifts of literary treasures from others; he founded and endowed the
professorship of Arabic; he persuaded the King to annex canonries of
Christchurch to the professorship of Hebrew and the office of Public Orator
—which last grant was never confirmed by Parliament; he obtained for the
University the right of printing Bibles, hitherto the monopoly of the King’s
printers; and he secured for it a new charter extending all its ancient
liberties and privileges. Two important acquisitions made by the University
under the chancellorship of Laud are not known to have been specially due
to his initiative. The earlier of these was the foundation of the Botanic
Gardens in 1632, though its completion was delayed by the Civil War. The
Convocation House, adjoining the Divinity School, was begun in 1634 and
finished in 1638, with an extension of the Bodleian Library above it, and
the apodyterium at its north end, where the Chancellor’s Court is still held.
It was first used in October 1638. By this time, if we may trust Anthony
Wood, the University had recovered its popularity, and numbered at least
4,000 scholars. No wonder that loyal sons of Oxford looked back with fond
regret to Laud’s chancellorship during the evil days of the Civil War and the

Commonwealth. Nor should it be forgotten that if his intolerance of schism
made him a persecutor of the Puritans, he also set himself to exclude
Romish priests from the University; or that he reconverted Chillingworth to
Anglicanism, and rewarded with a canonry the learning of John Hales,
whose views of Church government conflicted greatly with his own.
Though Laud continued to preside over the University
Last five years of until 1641, the glory of his chancellorship was crowned
Laud’s
chancellorship by a solemn visit of the King and Queen to Oxford at the
end of August 1636. This visit lasted three days, and was
attended by all the usual ceremonials, including the performance of
comedies at Christchurch, and St. John’s, Laud’s own college. The Elector
Palatine and his brother, the famous Prince Rupert, received honorary M.A.
degrees on this occasion. After this it may well be imagined that Laud had
little or no leisure for academical cares until his resignation of the
chancellorship by a pathetic letter dated from the Tower on June 26, 1641.
Within this interval of five years, the great controversy about the payment
of ship-money had come to a head; judgment had been given against John
Hampden; Prynne, Burton, and Eastwick had been condemned to the pillory
for their writings; Charles’s fourth Parliament had met after eleven years of
personal government and been promptly dissolved; the Scotch army, after
halting on the border in 1639, had invaded Yorkshire in 1640; the High
Commission Court had been closed for ever; the Long Parliament had
commenced its sittings, and impeached both Strafford and Laud; the
Triennial Act had been passed; the bishops had been excluded from the
House of Lords; the King had agreed that Parliament should not be
adjourned or dissolved without its own consent; Strafford had been
executed; and the ‘Root and Branch Bill’ for the abolition of Episcopacy
had been read in the Commons. Nevertheless, Laud had found time for
close and constant attention to University and college business. It was in
1638 that he instituted a regular examination for the B.A. and M.A. degrees.
In 1639, he sent another donation of books, gave stringent directions for the
repression of disorders in the Convocation House, and made special efforts
to put down drinking parties in colleges and halls, which had come into
vogue, since ‘the scholars (not excepting the seniors) had been hunted out
of alehouses and taverns by the vice-chancellor and proctors constant
walking’—a result of his own disciplinary vigour. In November 1640, he
sent his last present of books, pleading a want of leisure, for the first time,

in excuse for the brevity of his letter. He was now in the hands of his
enemies, and it was freely alleged in the House of Commons that, through
his influence, the University was infected with Popery. Accordingly, on
December 14, a statement was drawn up and signed by all the Heads of
Houses, except Rogers, Principal of New Inn Hall, declaring ‘that they
knew not any one member of this University guilty of, or addicted to,
Popery.’ Parliament, however, ordered the books and registers of the
University to be sent up to London, with a view of extracting materials
from the Acts of Convocation to serve as evidence against Laud. Among the
offences imputed to him at his trial, several related specially to his
administration of the University. He was accused of causing old crucifixes
to be repaired and new ones to be set up; of turning Communion tables
‘altarwise,’ railing them in, and enjoining that obeisance should be made to
them; of encouraging the use of copes; of instituting Latin prayers in Lent;
of introducing superstitious processions; above all, of erecting ‘a very
scandalous statue of the Virgin Mary, with Christ in her arms,’ over the new
porch of St. Mary’s Church. Some of these alleged acts were denied by the
archbishop; others were admitted and defended as consistent with the
received doctrine of the Church. Perhaps none of them would be regarded
by an impartial critic of Laud’s trial as heinous enough to sustain a charge
of high treason, or, indeed, as having any bearing whatever on such a
charge.
Whatever may have been the shortcomings of Oxford
Eminent members in the generation which preceded the Civil War, it
of the University in
the generation certainly produced a number of men whose learning and
piety might have adorned a happier and more peaceful
preceding the Civil
Wars age. Among the Heads of colleges who held office under
Laud’s short chancellorship were John Prideaux, Sir
Nathaniel Brent, Gilbert Sheldon, Brian Duppa, Samuel Fell, and Juxon,
and while the headships of colleges were filled by such men as these, others
not less eminent represented the University in other capacities. In his
rectory at Penshurst, and afterwards in his rooms at Christchurch,
Hammond was maturing a theological knowledge which has placed him
among standard English divines; Bainbridge was prosecuting at Merton
important researches in astronomical science; Earle, afterwards tutor to
Prince Charles, and bishop of Salisbury, was serving in the office of senior
proctor; Selden was acting as burgess for the University; and Brian Twyne

was amassing those antiquarian stores which supplied the most valuable
materials for the marvellous industry of Anthony Wood.
The characteristic features of University life in the
University life in period immediately preceding the Civil War contrasted
the generation
preceding the Civil equally with those which had distinguished it in the
Wars Middle Ages and those which distinguish it in the
present day. The academical community had become far
less democratic and more outwardly decorous since the suppression of
‘chamber-dekyns,’ and the concentration of all the students into colleges
and halls. The Heads of colleges, invested with special privileges and
absolute control over University legislation, were now permanently
resident, and had greater power of keeping good order than had ever
belonged to the proctors, vainly striving to enforce discipline among
thousands of beggarly non-collegiate students. On the other hand, there was
less unity in college society; for, while Bachelor fellows were still an
inferior grade, and bound to ‘cap’ Master fellows in the quadrangles, a new
class of ‘commoners’ had sprung up, mostly consisting of richer men, and
holding aloof from members of the foundation. ‘Town and gown rows’ were
not unknown, and the ancient jealousy between the city and the University
was intensified by the growth of religious and political differences; but the
peace was far better kept, and the streets of Oxford were no longer the
scene of sanguinary affrays. Whether the morality of the students was
essentially improved is open to more doubt. Judging by the constant
repetition of censures on their conduct from chancellors and Visitors, we
might infer that Oxford was quite demoralised. After all, however, most of
these censures are not so much directed against grave offences as against
extravagance in dress and breaches of academical decorum, and it is
impossible not to suspect that over-regulation had something to do with the
perverse neglect of rules among undergraduates. It is the variety of
legitimate outlets for youthful spirits and energy which in modern times has
been found the best antidote for youthful vices, and if we realise the
conditions of undergraduate society in the earlier part of the seventeenth
century, we shall rather be disposed to wonder at the standard of virtue
being so high as it seems to have been. One of these conditions was the
overcrowding of colleges due to the disappearance of hostels. Where two or
three students habitually shared the same room, and a poor scholar rarely
enjoyed the comfort of a bed to himself, unless it were a truckle-bed in his

patron’s chamber, the self-respect and graceful courtesy which is now
traditional among well-bred young Englishmen at the University could
scarcely be cultivated at all. The tutorial system already existed in colleges,
and the personal relations thus established between tutors and pupils were
sometimes productive of very beneficial results; but outside these relations
there was little sympathy and kindly intercourse between members of
different colleges or different classes in the same college. Manly sports
were not unknown, but they were chiefly of the rougher sort, and
discouraged by the authorities. We hear little of boating, or even of riding,
and cricket had not yet been invented, but football was vigorously played,
and led to so many warlike encounters between the combatants that it was
regarded with little favour by vice-chancellors. Archery was still practised,
as well as quoits, and ninepins or skittles, but these last games were coupled
with bull-baiting, bear-baiting, cock-fights, common plays, and public
shows, in official warnings to undergraduates against unlawful pastimes.
Even James I., who prided himself on his ‘Book of Sports’ as much as on
his invectives against tobacco, issued royal letters condemning them,
apparently because, though not intrinsically evil, they brought great crowds
of people together, who might break out into disorder. In short, it may
safely be said that an Oxford student in the reigns of James I. and Charles I.
had less recognised liberty than a public-school boy in the reign of Victoria,
the natural result of which was that he was all the more disposed to rebel
against discipline. Meanwhile his studies, though mainly classical in their
subjects, and mainly conducted within the walls of his college, were largely
scholastic in their methods. The University was still, above all, a training-
school for the clerical profession rather than for the general world.

CHAPTER XI.
THE UNIVERSITY DURING THE CIVIL WARS, AND THE

SIEGE OF OXFORD.

The part to be taken by the University of Oxford in the
The University great national struggle now impending was never for a
sides with the King
and the Church moment doubtful. Throughout its history it had loyally
acknowledged not merely the supremacy of the Crown,
in its capacity of paramount Visitor, but the jurisdiction of the High
Commission and other exertions of the prerogative lately challenged by the
Commons, while it stood committed by its own solemn vote to the doctrine
of passive obedience. It was still more closely identified with the Church.
Its property had always been treated in ancient times as ecclesiastical, being
constantly taxed by votes of the Convocation of Canterbury, and constantly
exempted, by royal letters, from taxes payable on the lands and tenements
of laymen. Its representatives had attended the great Councils of the
Western Church; its Chancellor had always been a great ecclesiastic until
the Reformation; nearly all the Visitors of its colleges were still great
ecclesiastics; and the recent imposition of test-oaths, including those
prescribed by a purely ecclesiastical canon, on all its students, coupled with
the clerical restrictions on most college fellowships, had effectually
rendered it an integral part of the Anglican Church. No doubt, it contained a
strong Puritan element which sympathised with the Parliament, but the
overwhelming majority were heartily on the side of the Church and the
King, and proved themselves capable of great sacrifices for the cause which
they espoused. The first overt act of the University in support of these
principles was taken on April 24, 1641, in the form of a ‘Petition made to
the high and honourable Court of Parliament in behalf of Episcopacy and
Cathedralls.’ This petition was accompanied by another to the same effect,
bearing the signatures of almost all the resident graduates, and derives
additional significance from its date. But a few months before, the canons
lately passed by the Convocation of Canterbury had been declared illegal by

the Commons, and the Bill to exclude bishops from the House of Lords had
just been introduced. Nevertheless, the University did not hesitate to press
upon Parliament, now in no placable mood, the duty of maintaining not
only ‘the ancient and Apostolicall Order’ of bishops, but also ‘those pious
Foundations of Cathedrall Churches, with their Lands and Revenewes.’
Some of the reasons alleged in support of the petition are grave and
weighty; others, if less solid, are still more interesting as indications of the
light in which Church preferments were then regarded by University
graduates. For instance, cathedral endowments are extolled ‘as the principal
outward motive of all Students, especially in Divinitie, and the fittest
reward of some deep and eminent Scholars; as affording a competent
portion in an ingenuous way to many younger Brothers of good Parentage
who devote themselves to the Ministery of the Gospell; as the onely meanes
of subsistence to a multitude of Officers and other Ministers, who with their
families depend upon them; as the maine Authors or Upholders of divers
Schooles, Hospitalls, Highwaies, Bridges, and other publique and pious
works; as the cheife support of many thousand families of the Laity, who
enjoy faire estates from them in a free way; and as funds by which many of
the learned Professors in our University are maintained.’ It was hardly to be
expected that such arguments should prevail with Pym and Hampden,
Prynne and Holles; nor can we be surprised to learn that ‘the answer to it
was very inconsiderable.’ It was, however, presented to the King on the
following day, and his reply, preserved by Anthony Wood, is memorable as
showing how resolutely he linked the fortunes of his Crown with those of
the Church. He declared openly that he knew the clergy were suffering
because of their fidelity to him, protested that he would rather feed on bread
and water than ‘mingle any part of God’s patrimonie with his owne
revenewes;’ insisted that ‘Learning and Studies must needs perish if the
honors and rewards of Learning were destroyed;’ and predicted that
‘Monarchy would not stand long if the Hierarchy perish.’
Within a month after the presentation of this petition
The Commons Strafford had been executed, and the ‘Root and Branch
issue an order for
the University Bill’ for the complete abolition of Episcopacy had been
read in the Commons. Two months later (July 1641) the
Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, with the arbitrary
jurisdiction of the King’s Council, had ceased to exist. On November 22 the
‘Grand Remonstrance’ was passed, containing an elaborate indictment

against the Crown for all the unconstitutional acts committed since the
beginning of the reign, and an appeal to the people of England. Then
followed in quick succession the King’s attempt to arrest the five members
in the House of Commons, his final departure from London, his refusal to
place the custody of fortified places and the command of the militia in the
hands of the Parliament, the levy of forces on both sides, the rejection by
the King of an ultimatum sent by the Parliament, and the erection of the
royal standard at Nottingham, on August 22, 1642. Of these momentous
events the University was, of course, a mere spectator; but the House of
Commons found leisure, in the midst of its preparations for war, to guard its
own interests at Oxford. On June 28, 1641, it issued an order purporting to
abolish the obligation of subscription to the Three Articles of the Thirty-
sixth Canon, as well as that of doing reverence to the Communion-table,
which seems to have been enjoined in some of the colleges. This order was
actually read in Convocation, and was followed in February 1642 by the
receipt of a ‘Protestation,’ which the Speaker, in the name of the House,
called upon the vice-chancellor and Heads of colleges to take and impose
upon all members, and even servants, of the University, being of the age of
eighteen years and upwards. This Protestation, conceived in a moderate
tone, bound the subscriber to uphold Protestantism and the union between
the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. As it contained a
profession of allegiance to the Crown, as well as of respect for the power
and privileges of Parliament, it was generally signed, though many loyal
Protestants objected to it as dictated by a party on the verge of rebellion.
In the summer of 1642, war, though not actually
Contribution for the declared, was felt to be inevitable, and both the king and
King’s service, and
first occupation of the Parliament were already raising supplies for the
Oxford by autumn campaign. On July 7, Charles I., then at York,
Parliamentary addressed a requisition to Prideaux, as vice-chancellor,
troops
inviting the colleges to contribute money for his service
by way of loan at eight per cent. interest, alleging that similar aid had
already been received by his enemies. Convocation immediately voted
away all the reserve funds in Savile’s, Bodley’s, and the University chest,
but it does not appear that any contributions of plate were made by the
colleges on this occasion. On July 12, Parliament issued an order declaring
this requisition illegal, and directing watch and guard to be set on all
highways about Oxford; but it appears from a letter of the king, dated from

Beverley on July 18, that a large subsidy had then reached him. At the same
time, he addressed letters to the Commissioners of Array for the county, the
high sheriff, and the mayor of Oxford, specially requesting them to protect
the University in case of attack. In the middle of August several hundred
graduates and students enrolled themselves, in accordance with a royal
proclamation, and were regularly drilled in the ‘New Park.’ On August 28, a
troop of Royalist horse, under Sir John Byron, entered the city, and the
volunteers were virtually placed under his orders, with the apparent consent
of the citizens, who, however, did not raise a similar corps for the defence
of their own walls. On September 1, a delegacy of thirty members,
including the vice-chancellor and proctors, and popularly called ‘The
Council of War,’ was appointed for the purpose of arming the scholars and
provisioning the Royal troops. But the resolution of the University was
shaken when it was discovered, on September 9, that the citizens were in
communication with the Parliament, and that a Parliamentary force was
about to move on Oxford from Aylesbury. Indeed, the University went so
far as to despatch emissaries to parley with the Parliamentary commanders
at Aylesbury, who answered them roughly, seized Dr. Pinke, of New
College, the deputy vice-chancellor, and sent him as a prisoner to London.
On the following day Sir John Byron, with his few troopers, left Oxford to
join the king, accompanied by about a hundred scholars, one of whom,
Peter Turner, fell into the hands of the enemy in a skirmish near Stow-in-
the-Wold, and was lodged in Northampton gaol. On September 12, a body
of Parliamentary troops entered the city from Aylesbury, under Colonel
Goodwin, who, with other officers, was quartered at Merton College, while
their horses were turned out in Christchurch meadow. They were soon
followed by Lord Say, the new Parliamentary lord-lieutenant of
Oxfordshire. He proceeded to demolish the fortifications already begun, and
instituted a search for plate and arms. In fact, however, no college plate was
then carried off, except that of Christchurch and University College, which
had been hidden away. The other colleges, we are told, were spared, ‘upon
condition it should be forthcoming at the Parliament’s appointment, and not
in the least employed against them’—a condition almost impossible of
fulfilment in the event, which actually occurred, of Oxford becoming the
King’s head-quarters. Upon the whole, Lord Say and his men behaved with
great forbearance during this short occupation, which ended on September
27 or 28. The gownsmen were disarmed, but no injury was done to

buildings or property, beyond some damage to the porch of St. Mary’s
Church and the combustion of ‘divers Popish books and pictures.’
A month later (October 29) Charles I. marched into
Oxford becomes the Oxford by the North Gate, after the battle of Edgehill, at
royal head-quarters
the head of his army, and attended by Prince Rupert,
Prince Maurice, and his two sons. Even the mayor and leading citizens
welcomed him, while the University received him with open arms,
expressed its devotion in Latin orations, and showered degrees on the
noblemen and courtiers in his train. The king himself, with the most
important personages of his staff, except Rupert and Maurice, was lodged in
Christchurch; the officers were distributed among other colleges; the
soldiers were billeted about the city. Thenceforward, Oxford became not
only the base of operations for the Royal army, but the chief seat of the
royal government. Twenty-seven pieces of ordnance were driven into the
grove of Magdalen College and ranged there; the citizens were at first
disarmed, but a regiment of city volunteers was afterwards formed, and
reviewed together with a far more trustworthy regiment of University
volunteers. A plan of fortification was prepared by Rallingson, a B.A. of
Queen’s College, and defensive works were constructed all round Oxford
under the directions of engineers. All inmates of colleges, being of military
age, were impressed into labouring personally upon these works for at least
one entire day per week, bringing their own tools with them; in default of
which they were required to pay twelve pence to the royal treasury. A
powder-mill was established at Oseney, and a mint at New Inn Hall, whence
the students had fled, under suspicion of Roundhead leanings. Thither were
removed all the coining machinery and workmen from the factory which
had been established some time before at Shrewsbury, and the New Inn Hall
mint was conducted under the direction of Thomas Bushell, formerly the
manager of the royal mines in Wales. New College tower and cloisters were
converted into an arsenal for arms, procured by repeated searches, the
grammar-school for the choristers having been removed to a chamber at the
east end of the Hall. The Schools were employed as granaries for the
garrison; lectures and exercises were almost wholly suspended; and in the
three years from 1643 to 1646 the annual number of B.A. degrees conferred
did not exceed fifty. Before long, most of the less warlike and loyal fellows
and students retired into the country; those who remained took up arms and
kept guard on the walls; the colleges more and more assumed the aspect of

barracks; and Oxford, no longer a seat of learning, was divided between the
gaieties of a court and the turmoil of a camp.
This transformation was completed in July 1643,
Aspect of the when Henrietta Maria joined the King at Oxford.
University during
the queen’s Charles I. rode out to meet the Queen, whose passionate
residence and sinister counsels were about to cost him his throne
and his life. She was received with great ceremony at
Christchurch, and conducted by the King himself to Merton College by a
back way, made expressly through gardens belonging to Christchurch and
Corpus Christi College into Merton Grove. There she was saluted with the
usual Latin oration, and took possession of the apartment still known as ‘the
Queen’s room,’ which she occupied, with the adjoining drawing-room, until
the following April. Seldom in history, and never in the annals of the
University, have characters so diverse been grouped together into so
brilliant and picturesque a society as that which thronged the good city of
Oxford during the Queen’s residence in the autumn and winter of 1643—
the last happy interlude of her ill-starred life. Notwithstanding the paralysis
of academical studies, grave dons and gay young students were still to be
seen in the streets, but too often in no academical garb and affecting the airs
of cavaliers, as they mingled with the ladies of the court in Christchurch
walks and Trinity College gardens, or with roystering troopers in the guard-
houses at Rewley, where they entertained their ruder comrades with flashes
of academic wit. Most of the citizens, too, were glad to remain, secretly
cherishing, perhaps, the hope of a future retribution, but not unwilling to
levy high rents for the lodging of those nobles and military officers for
whom there was no room in the colleges. With these were blended in
strange variety other elements imported from the metropolis or the country
—lawyers who had come down to attend the courts held by the Lord
Keeper and one of his judicial brethren; the faithful remnant of the Lords
and Commons, who sat in one of the Schools and the Convocation-house
respectively, while the University Acts were performed once more in St.
Mary’s Church; loyal gentlemen driven out of their manor-houses by the
enemy; clergymen expelled from their parsonages; foreigners seeking
audiences of the perplexed and vacillating King; needy poets, musicians,
and players in the service of the Court, who acted interludes or
Shakespearian pieces in the college halls. Services were still performed in
the chapels; sermons were preached from the pulpit of St. Mary’s; degrees

were conferred wholesale, as rewards for loyal service, until they were so
depreciated that at last the King promised to recommend no more
candidates for them; the outward appearances of academical routine were
maintained with decorum; the King dined and supped in public, moving
freely among his devoted adherents with the royal grace and easy dignity
which long seemed to have perished with the Stuarts; the Queen held those
receptions at Merton College of which a tradition has survived to our own
prosaic days; newspapers were published for the first time in Oxford, and
all the resources of courtly literature were employed to enliven a spectacle
over which the awful catastrophe of that historical tragedy, unforeseen by
the actors themselves, has shed a lurid glamour, never equalled by the
romance of fiction.
During this memorable period, the records of the
The last two years University and colleges are extremely scanty. The
of the civil war
register of Christchurch, then little more than a royal
palace, presents almost a blank; that of Merton contains few entries bearing
on the great events of which Oxford was the scene or the centre. Early in
January 1643, royal letters were issued to all colleges and halls, desiring the
loan of their plate, to be melted down and coined for the King’s service, ‘we
promising you to see the same justly repayd unto you after the rate of 5/ the
ounce for white, and 5/6 for guilt plate, as soon as God shall enable us.’ All
the colleges, except New Inn Hall, are stated to have complied, and the
aggregate weight of plate thus contributed amounted to some 1,500 lbs.,
besides about 700 lbs. sent in by six country gentlemen. Nevertheless, in the
following June, another levy of 2,000l. was made upon the University and
City respectively, to which the City, in an unwonted fit of loyalty, added
another 500l. At last, in October 1643, the Heads of Houses agreed that 40l.
should be raised weekly during the next twenty weeks, by a levy on
colleges and halls, in lieu of all further contributions towards new
fortifications. In the same month articles were drawn up by some of the
leading residents against the Earl of Pembroke, Chancellor of Oxford,
whom they accused of betraying the privileges and neglecting the interests
of the University, but whose real crime was complicity with the Parliament,
and whom the King caused to be superseded by the Marquis of Hertford.
During the summer of this year the fortunes of war had, on the whole, been
in the King’s favour; but he had been compelled to abandon his design of
occupying London, and, after the indecisive battle of Newbury, in which

Falkland was killed, had retreated to Oxford for the winter. Thither he
summoned his so-called Parliament in June 1644, and there, yielding to evil
advice from his wife, he rejected overtures which might have brought about
a peaceful settlement without further bloodshed. On May 29, 1644, a
Parliamentary force under the Earl of Essex and Sir William Waller crossed
the river at Sandford Ferry, and passed through Cowley over Bullingdon
Green, on their way from Abingdon to Islip, but nothing beyond a skirmish
took place as they defiled along the heights within sight of the city. The
object of this movement, as soon appeared, was to enclose the King with his
forces in Oxford; but Charles now showed unexpected resource, and by a
masterly night-march eluded the enemy, and pursued Essex westward,
while Prince Rupert defeated Waller at Copredy Bridge, where many
Oxford scholars were engaged. On June 9 a proclamation of the Privy
Council appeared, commanding all persons to lay in provisions for three
months, in anticipation of a siege, which, however, did not take place in that
year. On July 2 the King’s northern army sustained a crushing defeat at
Marston Moor, and the King himself, though successful against Essex, was
almost cut off on his return to Oxford. On Sunday, October 6, the city of
Oxford, which had been scourged by a plague in the previous year, the
natural result of overcrowding, was ravaged by a great fire, attributed to the
machinations of the Parliamentary troops at Abingdon. The winter passed
quietly at Oxford, and, after the execution of Archbishop Laud in January
1645, negotiations between the King and Parliament were again opened at
Uxbridge, but in vain. Soon afterwards the Parliamentary army was
remodelled, and placed under the command of Fairfax, who advanced to
besiege Oxford, while Charles, who had retired to Chester, hesitated
between relieving it and giving battle to Cromwell. On May 22, Oxford was
partially invested by Fairfax, and besieged for a fortnight. Fairfax
established his own head-quarters at Headington, Wolvercote was held by
Major Browne, Cromwell was posted at Wytham, and the roads between
that village and South Hincksey were secured by the besiegers. On June 2,
the governor made a successful night sally towards Headington, and three
days later the siege was hastily abandoned, when Fairfax moved northward
to join Cromwell, and on June 14 the Royalist cause was finally
shipwrecked at the battle of Naseby. The theatre of war was now shifted
from the neighbourhood of Oxford, and the last engagement in the open
field took place near Chester in the following September. Oxford still held

out for the King, who again fell back upon it for the winter, accompanied by
Princes Rupert and Maurice, and gathered around him a great part of the
English nobility and gentry still faithful to his fortunes. On December 28
we find him ordering special forms of prayer to be used in college chapels
on Wednesdays and Fridays, ‘during these bad times.’
In the spring of 1646, the Parliamentary army devoted
Siege of Oxford, itself to besieging the strong places still occupied by the
and proposals of
Fairfax King’s troops, and on May 1 Fairfax again appeared
guaranteeing before Oxford, which the King had left in disguise a few
University days earlier, with only two attendants. The besieging
privileges
force was distributed round the north side of the city in
the same way as before, and on May 11 it was formally summoned to
surrender. In the letter of summons, addressed to Sir Thomas Glemham, the
governor, Fairfax used language honourable to himself and to Oxford. ‘I
very much desire the preservation of that place, so famous for learning,
from ruin, which inevitably is like to fall upon it unless you concur.’ More
than one conference was held, and some of the privy councillors in Oxford
strove to protract the negotiations until the King himself could be consulted.
In the end, Fairfax made conciliatory proposals which the Royalist leaders
decided to entertain, ‘submitting,’ as they said, ‘to the fate of the kingdom
rather than any way distrusting their own strength.’ By the final treaty,
concluded on June 20, it was stipulated that both the University and the
City should enjoy all their ancient privileges and immunities from taxation.
It was further stipulated that colleges should ‘enjoy their ancient form of
government, subordinate to the immediate authority and power of
Parliament ... and that all churches, chapels, &c., shall be preserved from
defacing and spoil.’ It was, however, significantly added that if any
removals of Heads or other members of the University should be made by
Parliament, the persons so removed should retain their emoluments for six
months after the surrender; and there was an ominous proviso, ‘that this
shall not extend to any reformation there intended by the Parliament, nor
give them any liberty to intermeddle in the government.’
Four days afterwards (June 24), the curtain fell on this
Surrender of memorable episode in the history of the University. The
Oxford, and
subsequent garrison of Oxford marched out 3,000 strong, with
colours flying and drums beating, in drenching rain, by

condition of the Magdalen Bridge, through St. Clement’s, over Shotover
University
Hill, between files of Roundhead infantry, lining the
whole route, but offering them no injury or affront. About 900 of them laid
down their arms on arriving at Thame; 1,100 enlisted for service abroad.
Hundreds of civilians preceded or straggled after them; hundreds more,
chiefly nobles and gentlemen, accompanied Prince Rupert and Prince
Maurice two days later, besides a large body which proceeded northward
and westward, through St. Giles’s, with a convoy. Nevertheless, some two
thousand remained behind, to whom passes were afterwards given by
Fairfax. These consisted mainly of ‘gentlemen and their servants, scholars,
citizens, and inhabitants, not properly of the garrison in pay,’ who had been
specially permitted by the articles of surrender to choose their own time for
departure. The military stores had contained no less than six months’
provision, and seventy barrels of powder were found in the magazine.
Indeed, the writer of an official report, addressed to Speaker Lenthall,
congratulates the Parliament on the bloodless capture of the great Royalist
stronghold, especially as the surrounding fields were soon afterwards
flooded, and siege operations would have been greatly impeded. Order now
reigned again at Oxford, but the University and colleges were almost
emptied of students, and utterly impoverished; notwithstanding which,
some of them contributed out of their penury to relieve the poor of the city,
and All Souls’ passed a self-denying ordinance ‘that there shall be only one
meal a day between this and next Christmas, and so longer, if we shall see
occasion.’ Anthony Wood’s brief description of the state of the University
after the siege had often been quoted, but deserves a place in every history
of the University, since it is the testimony of an eye-witness: ‘The colleges
were much out of repair by the negligence of soldiers, courtiers, and others
who lay in them; a few chambers which were the meanest (in some colleges
none at all) being reserved for the use of the scholars. Their treasure and
plate was all gone, the books of some libraries embezzled, and the number
of scholars few, and mostly indigent. The halls (wherein, as in some
colleges, ale and beer were sold by the penny in their respective butteries)
were very ruinous. Further, also, having few or none in them except their
respective Principals and families, the chambers in them were, to prevent
ruin and injuries of weather, rented out to laicks. In a word, there was scarce
the face of an University left, all things being out of order and disturbed.’

This description is confirmed by college records, still extant, one of which
attests the desolation of Merton, so long occupied by the Queen’s retainers.

CHAPTER XII.
THE PARLIAMENTARY VISITATION AND THE

COMMONWEALTH.

The Parliament, then dominated by Presbyterians, lost
Measures no time in preparing the University for the coming
preparatory to the
Visitation ‘reformation,’ by sending down seven Presbyterian
divines with power to preach in any Oxford church.
These preachers were all University men, and included Reynolds, Cheynell,
Henry Wilkinson, and Corbet—four scholars of some repute, and less
obnoxious than such army chaplains as Hugh Peters, who had already
obtruded themselves into the Oxford pulpits. Wood ridicules the effort to
convert the academical mind through Presbyterian discourses; but there is
evidence that it was not without its effect, though it provoked opposition
from the rising sect of the Independents, already established in Oxford, and
good Churchmen were edified by a fierce disputation between Cheynell and
one Erbury, an Independent army chaplain, formerly of Brasenose College,
the favourite of the fanatical soldiery. At the same time a Parliamentary
order was issued inhibiting elections to University or college offices, and
the making or renewal of leases ‘until the pleasure of Parliament be made
known therein.’ Such interventions were of course warmly resented by
academical Royalists, especially as the King was still nominally in
possession of his throne, and could only be justified on the assumption that
sovereign authority now resided in the Parliament alone. On this
assumption, however, they were in accordance with the policy of the four
last Tudors, who had treated the University as a national institution, to be
moulded into conformity with each successive modification of the National
Church. Philip, Earl of Pembroke, who had been deposed in 1643 to make
room for the Marquis of Hertford, now resumed his office, but does not
appear to have exercised any moderating control over the counsels either of
the Parliament or of the University. Meanwhile, the conflict between rival
preachers and the suspension of academical independence naturally

produced a state of anarchy in academical society, whose leading spirits
were silently organising themselves against the coming Visitation.
The delay of the Parliament in commencing this
Appointment of the Visitation may well have been due to more urgent claims
Visitors and the
Standing on their energy. On January 30, 1647, the King had been
Committee of given up at Newcastle to the Parliamentary
Parliament commissioners, and other events of the greatest moment
followed each other in quick succession.
Presbyterianism was ostensibly established by the Westminster Assembly,
but generally accepted by a small part only of the kingdom, and undermined
by the hostility of the Independents. The so-called ‘Four Ordinances’ passed
by Parliament, and designed to weaken the power of the army, had been met
by a protest from a great meeting of officers held at Saffron Walden. This
brought about an acute conflict between these rival powers, and ‘the Lords
and Commons assembled in Parliament’ were meditating their unsuccessful
attempt to disband the army at the very time when they passed an
ordinance, on May 1, 1647, ‘for the Visitation and Reformation of the
University of Oxford and the several Colleges and Halls therein.’ The object
of the Visitation was expressly defined to be ‘the due correction of offences,
abuses, and disorders, especially of late times committed there.’ The
Visitors were twenty-four in number, fourteen laymen and ten clergymen,
with Sir Nathaniel Brent, Warden of Merton College, as the chairman; but
the laymen gradually ceased to attend, and the work mainly fell into the
hands of the clerical Visitors. Among the lay Visitors were several lawyers,
including Brent himself and Prynne; among the clerical visitors were three
fellows of Merton, and the Principal of Magdalen Hall, which, like Merton,
was strongly tinged with Presbyterian opinions. The Visitors were
instructed to inquire by oath concerning those who neglected to take the
‘Solemn League and Covenant’ or the ‘Negative Oath,’ those who opposed
the execution of the orders of Parliament concerning the discipline and the
Directory, those who contravened ‘any point of doctrine the ignorance
whereof doth exclude from the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper,’ and those
who had borne arms against the Parliament. By the same ordinance a
Standing Committee of Lords and Commons was appointed to receive
reports and hear appeals from the Visitors; but it soon outstepped these
functions, and sometimes took upon itself the right of legislating directly
for the University.

The proceedings of the Visitors were opened by a
Early proceedings citation issued upon May 15, 1647, summoning the
of the Visitors, and
suppression of University to appear before them on June 4, but an
resistance from theabsurd informality led to an adjournment, which the
University events that followed the seizure of the King at Holmby
House prolonged for three months. During the interval, a
delegacy appointed by the University to conduct its defence had drawn up a
very forcible statement of ‘Reasons’ for not submitting to the new tests
about to be imposed. The moderation and ability of this statement did much
to consolidate the opposition to the Visitation, furnished a repertory of
materials for the answers afterwards made by individual colleges, and
earned the special thanks of the Parliament held at Oxford in 1665. The
internal struggles between the Presbyterians and the Independents favoured
the University, but the Committee of Lords and Commons intervened and
armed the Visitors with fresh powers, including that of compelling the
production of documents, imprisoning the contumacious, and pronouncing
definitive sentences of expulsion. This arbitrary commission, endorsed by
the Chancellor of the University, was conferred upon the Visitors in the
name of the king, himself a prisoner in the hands of the Parliament. On
September 29, 1647, their operations actually commenced with prayers and
preaching ‘for three hours together,’ after which all the Heads of Houses
were cited to appear, Dean Fell of Christchurch being specially cited as
vice-chancellor, and a number of resident fellows were appointed to act as
assistants to the Visitors, ‘and to enquire into the behaviour of all
Governours, Professors, Officers, and Members.’ A large majority of the
University and college authorities offered a resolute though passive
resistance, and when the vice-chancellor, as the avowed leader of the
malcontents, was seized and imprisoned, the Visitors found their legal
action more paralysed than ever for want of any constitutional authority
through which their orders could be carried out. The London Committee,
however, again came to their rescue, and on November 11, 1647, six Heads
of colleges, with three canons of Christchurch, and the two proctors, were
forced to appear before this Committee. Selden, Whitelocke, and others
stood their friends, but the adverse majority prevailed, and sentence of
deprivation was pronounced upon most of them. Still the Visitors’ orders
were disregarded, and ‘not a man stirred from his place or removed.’ At last,
on February 18, 1648, Reynolds was appointed vice-chancellor by the Earl

of Pembroke, and the proctors superseded in favour of men who could be
trusted—Crosse of Lincoln and Button of Merton; while the Chancellor
himself was deputed, on March 8, to instal the new functionaries in office,
and to bring the University into subjection. On March 30 a further order of
deprivation was published, embracing the removal of Sheldon from the
wardenship of All Souls’, and Hammond from his canonry of Christchurch.
About the same time the Visitors were empowered to use the military force
at their disposal, and on April 11 the Chancellor himself arrived to enforce
obedience. He found the University in a state of almost open mutiny against
the Parliament and the Visitors. In spite of fresh orders and the appearance
of a body of troops sent down by Fairfax, the Heads of Houses sentenced to
expulsion refused to quit their colleges, Mrs. Fell retained possession of the
deanery in her husband’s absence, and when the members of Convocation
were solemnly cited to meet the Visitors a mere handful responded. Great
pains had been taken to mar the dignity of the Chancellor’s reception, and
loyal pamphleteers lavished their bitterest jests on the absence of
academical ceremony, the presence of soldiers, and the substitution of an
English for a Latin address of welcome. But all serious resistance was now
vain. During a stay of three days Pembroke was lodged at Merton, where
the Visitors usually held their sittings in the Warden’s house, and had
already abstracted the University register from the rooms of French, the
registrar, who happened to be a fellow of the college. Reynolds was
installed as vice-chancellor; ten Heads of colleges were actually ejected,
most of the professors and canons of Christchurch shared the same fate; two
vacant headships were immediately filled up, and worthy successors were
appointed to most of the offices vacated by expulsion; new Masters of Arts
were created, some imported from Cambridge, and the Visitors proceeded
to purge each college with a view to its re-organisation.
The details of these collegiate Visitations are beyond
Visitation of the scope of general University history, but they were all
colleges.
Submissions and conducted on the same principle. Every member of the
expulsions college, from the Head to the humblest servant, was
asked whether he would submit. No evasions were
allowed, and the ‘non-submitters’ were at once turned out. At a later period
(November 1648) the London Committee insisted on the Visitors tendering
also the Negative Oath, involving an abjuration of all connection with the
King, his council, or his officers, and the refusal of this new test led to some

further expulsions. After the lapse of a year, the London Committee went
one step further, and required subscription to ‘the Engagement,’ pledging
the signatories to a government without a King or House of Lords.
Reynolds, Pocock, and Mills, who had taken all the former tests, resigned
their offices rather than submit to this, but it does not seem to have been
strictly or universally applied. No exact list of the cases in which the
Visitors exercised their jurisdiction can now be made out, but the evidence
preserved in the ‘Visitors’ Register,’ which has come down to us, leads to
the conclusion that the numbers of the submissions and expulsions were
nearly equal, amounting in each case to 400 or 500, and spread over several
years. So obstinate was the resistance of some colleges that it was at last
thought necessary to proclaim that any expelled members remaining in
Oxford should incur the penalty of death. But the functions of the Visitors
were by no means purely inquisitorial and judicial. They also
superintended, and often personally directed, the whole internal
management of colleges, regulating leases, dictating admissions to
scholarships and fellowships, making arrangements for examinations,
deciding on the rate of allowances, suggesting if not prescribing the
alteration of statutes, and overriding corporate rights of self-government
with a despotic air which Laud might have envied.
While they were thus engaged, Fairfax and Cromwell
Reception of visited Oxford together in state on May 17, 1649. They
Fairfax and
Cromwell were lodged and entertained at All Souls’, in the absence
of the new Warden, now on duty in Parliament, by
Zanchy, the sub-warden, and one of the proctors, who happened to be a
colonel in the Parliamentary army. Both the generals received a D.C.L.
degree, and Cromwell, addressing the University authorities on behalf of
himself and Fairfax, professed his respect for the interests of learning, and
assured them of his desire to promote these interests for the sake of the
commonwealth. They dined at Magdalen, played bowls on the college
green, had supper in the Bodleian Library, and attended University sermons
at St. Mary’s. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the assurances
given by Cromwell, who became Chancellor on the death of Pembroke, in
January 1650. In this capacity, he not only presented the University with a
collection of manuscripts, but resisted the reduction of academical
endowments proposed by the Barebones Parliament, and supported by

Milton; while Fairfax, himself a man of scholarlike tastes, had already
proved his regard for the University when the city was in his power.
The first stage of the Visitation terminated in April
Second Board of 1652, when the London Committee was dissolved, and
Visitors
the Visitors ceased to act. Their work had been
constantly interrupted by differences with the London Committee, whom
they recognised as their official superiors, but who had of course little
acquaintance with University affairs. These bodies were equally resolved to
Presbyterianise the University, to make its education more emphatically
religious, to strengthen moral discipline, and to enforce such rules as those
against excess in dress, and even that which enjoined the colloquial use of
Latin. They differed chiefly in their mode of action, the Visitors desiring to
adopt a more conciliatory attitude, and to show more respect for academical
independence than the London Committee was prepared to sanction.
Several changes had taken place among the former, and the retirement of
Reynolds had weakened the moderate party on a board which, however,
remained distinctively Presbyterian. During the fourteen months between
April 1652 and June 1653 the history of the University, like the Visitors’
Register, presents almost a blank. On September 9, 1652, Owen, who had
succeeded Reynolds as Dean of Christchurch, was nominated vice-
chancellor by Cromwell. On October 16 he was placed at the head of a
commission to execute all the Chancellor’s official powers. With him were
associated Goddard, the Warden of Merton; Wilkins, the Warden of
Wadham; Goodwin, the President of Magdalen; and Peter French,
prebendary of Christchurch; and the government of the University seems to
have been practically transferred from the Visitors into their hands. Of these
men, Goddard had been head physician to Cromwell’s army in Ireland, and
afterwards in Scotland; Owen and Goodwin had been his chaplains, and
thoroughly enjoyed his confidence; Wilkins was one of the most eminent
scientific authorities of his time; French was Cromwell’s brother-in-law and
had been on the Board of Visitors. All of these, except Wilkins, were
appointed, with five others, to serve on a new and temporary Board of
Visitors, for the creation of which the University itself had petitioned, in
order to carry on the new academical settlement, with the expression of a
hope that they might be fewer in number than before, and all resident. The
proceedings of this Board, in which the Independents were more strongly
represented, deserve but little notice. The process of weeding out the

University and colleges having been completed, and strict rules laid down,
little remained except to interpret these rules, to organise the new system,
and to guard against the revival of abuses. The Visitors, however, agreed to
meet every Monday and Tuesday, and succeeded in doing much useful
work. In September 1654, the Board was reconstituted by Cromwell, who
had been solemnly congratulated by the University on his assumption of the
Protectorate in the previous December.
As Owen had been the ruling spirit on the second
Third Board of Board of Visitors, so this last was mainly dominated by
Visitors, and
conclusion of the the influence of Goodwin, and contained several
Visitation additional members, some Presbyterians. It lasted no
less than four years, but the records of its proceedings
are but scanty, and chiefly relate to corrections of abuses, such as corrupt
resignations of fellowships and irregular elections. In short, the
Parliamentary Visitors, having placed the government of the University and
colleges in hands which they regarded as trustworthy, were mainly occupied
in discharging the functions which properly belonged to the Chancellor and
the ordinary Visitors of the several colleges. In an appeal from Jesus
College, they deliberately set aside the jurisdiction of the Earl of Pembroke
as hereditary Visitor of that society. On the other hand, after Cromwell’s
resignation of the chancellorship on July 3, 1657, they went so far as to lay
before him their decision on an important case at All Souls’, and received
from him an assurance ‘of all due encouragement and countenance from his
Highnesse and the Councell.’ Even while they were claiming a paramount
authority, the University was insensibly recovering its independence. As
vice-chancellor and Dean of Christchurch, Owen was still a great power in
the University, and supported a body of Delegates who proposed a sort of
provisional constitution for the University under which independent
representatives of Convocation would have been associated with the
Visitors. In another instance, Owen sought to override a vote of
Convocation against reforms which he proposed by the direct action of the
Visitors and even of the Protector’s Council, but was foiled in the first
attempt, and dissuaded from making the second. In fact, the University had
begun to legislate again for itself, and was becoming somewhat impatient of
being nursed and schooled by a meddlesome select committee of its own
members. As Convocation alleged, ‘Visitors residing upon the place do
rather nourish and ferment than appease differences,’ and there was a

natural resentment against Heads of colleges acting as judges on their own
causes. Having done its real work, the Visitation was perishing of inanition.
After Richard Cromwell had been elected Chancellor in July 1657, he
appointed Dr. Conant, Rector of Exeter, vice-chancellor, and from this
moment Conant, whose importance had long been growing, became the real
governor of the University. With a firmness and zeal for reform fully equal
to Owen’s, he combined a more conciliatory and statesmanlike character,
and while he resisted, as the champion of academical privileges,
Cromwell’s scheme for a new University at Durham, he stoutly upheld the
autonomy of colleges against the project for superseding all episcopal
Visitors. Nevertheless, for six months after his nomination to the vice-
chancellorship the Parliamentary Visitors continued to meet, and to make
occasional orders, the last of which is dated April 8, 1658, when their
register breaks off abruptly. It is not known how their commission was
terminated, or whether it was terminated at all. By this time, however, it
was beginning to be manifest that, after all, the old order in Church and
State was regretted by a majority of the people, and that England was
almost tired of Puritan despotism. Parliament itself had virtually established
an amended monarchy with a new House of Lords, and the army alone had
prevented Cromwell from assuming the title of King. No one was better
aware than he of the reaction in popular sentiment, calling for a revival of
the institutions so hastily demolished, and his prescient mind foreboded, if
it did not actually foresee, the coming restoration of the Stuarts. In this last
year of his life there was no force in the central government to push on
further interference with Oxford. Moreover the University was now in good
order, and possessed the confidence of the nation.
It is clear, indeed, from scattered notices of passing
State of the events, that its inner life had been less disturbed by the
University on the
recovery of its presence of the Visitors than we might infer from the
independence space which they naturally fill in University history, and
that since the close of the Civil War Oxford studies and
habits had been gradually resuming their ordinary course. It is some proof
of this that even during the Puritan interregnum no order was issued to put
down the disorderly and indecorous buffoonery of the Terræ Filii, those
self-constituted and privileged satirists whose sallies upon University
dignitaries continued to scandalise graver censors of academical morals for
several generations. When John Evelyn visited Oxford in 1654, and

witnessed the celebration of the Act in St. Mary’s Church, he found ‘the
ancient ceremonies and institutions as yet not wholly abolished,’ enjoyed
the usual round of festivities, and admired the mechanical inventions
contrived by Dr. Wilkins with the aid of young Christopher Wren. In the
following year a coffee-house was opened opposite All Souls’ College, and
largely frequented by Royalists and others ‘who esteemed themselves either
virtuosi or wits,’ and in many a private house the services of the Church
were regularly performed by clergymen in surplices, to congregations of
gownsmen, with the full knowledge, if not the actual connivance, of
Cromwell and the Visitors. The academical population was already larger
than it had been in the reign of James I., and the University contained quite
as many scholars and divines of established reputation. Throughout all the
disorders and confusion incident to revolutionary times, it had never ceased
to be respected as a home of religion and learning, and Clarendon himself
bears unconscious witness to the character of the Visitation in the well-
known passage which concludes his strictures upon it. For, after denouncing
it as a reign of barbarism, he proceeds to say that, in spite of all, the
University ‘yielded a harvest of extraordinary good and sound knowledge
in all parts of learning, and many who were wickedly introduced applied
themselves to the study of good learning and the practice of virtue, and had
inclination to that duty and obedience they had never been taught, so that
when it pleased God to bring King Charles the Second back to his throne,
he found that University abounding in excellent learning, and devoted to
duty and obedience little inferior to what it was before its desolation.’

CHAPTER XIII.
THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE RESTORATION AND THE

REVOLUTION.

On Monday, February 13, 1660, news was brought to
The Restoration andOxford that a ‘free Parliament,’ or Convention, was
new Visitation of
the University about to be assembled, and was hailed with great
rejoicings as a sure presage of the coming Restoration.
On May 29 Charles II. entered London, and in June a new set of Visitors
appeared at Oxford to undo the work of their predecessors under the
Commonwealth. This Visitation was issued at the instance, if not by the
direct authority, of the Marquis of Hertford, who succeeded Richard
Cromwell on his resignation in May on the King’s return, and who himself,
dying in the following October, was succeeded by Clarendon. Wood draws
a graphic picture of the various emotions pourtrayed in the countenances of
the defeated and victorious parties at Oxford, the one plucking their hats
over their eyes and foreseeing speedy retribution, the others with cheerful
looks, and reinstating ‘all tokens of monarchy that were lately defaced or
obscured in the University.’ Happily, the personal constitution of the
commission was by no means exclusive, since at least eight of its members
had submitted to the last Visitation, and held offices during the ‘usurpation,’
as it was now to be called. Their instructions, too, were mainly directed to a
restitution of expelled Royalists, of whom the number had greatly dwindled
in the interval, many having died or ‘changed their religion,’ while others,
being married, were no longer eligible for college fellowships. It is said that
not above one-sixth remained to be restored, but among these were several
persons of considerable note. Sheldon had already regained the wardenship
of All Souls’; Walker recovered the mastership of University; Oliver again
became President of Magdalen; Yate, Principal of Brasenose; Newlin,
President of Corpus; Potter, President of Trinity; Baylis, President of St.
John’s; Mansell, Principal of Jesus; and Wightwick, Master of Pembroke.
Reynolds was appointed in quick succession Dean of Christchurch and

Warden of Merton, whence he was promoted to the see of Norwich in the
following year. A large proportion of the fellows elected during the previous
Visitation were allowed to keep their places, for which there were no rival
claimants; others, though statutably elected, were turned out, but in some
cases they were consoled with chaplaincies or other subordinate posts. Two
or three months sufficed to complete these personal changes, but a royal
letter re-established all the statutes and regulations in force before the
‘usurpation,’ including the oaths introduced under James I., and this letter,
coupled with the Act of Uniformity passed in 1662, must have rendered the
positions of many Puritans at Oxford practically untenable. By a clause in
that Act, it was for the first time required that every person elected to a
college fellowship should make a declaration of conformity to the liturgy of
the Church of England in the presence of the vice-chancellor. Such a
provision had a sensible effect in making Oxford once more a seminary of
the clergy and country gentry, but there was no violent break in the
continuity of its corporate life. For some little time after the Restoration, the
University was in an unsettled state, and the students, released from the
bondage of Puritan discipline, betrayed some pardonable excitement; but
good order revived under a succession of prudent vice-chancellors, and
Oxford, so long the battle-ground of rival parties in the State, enjoyed
comparative repose under Charles II.
Several improvements in the external features of the
Extension of city and University may be dated from this reign. Not
University
buildings. the least was the erection of the famous Sheldonian
Sheldonian Theatre Theatre for the performance of the annual Acts, now
known as ‘Commemorations,’ and other academical
solemnities. This building was founded by Gilbert Sheldon, who, having
resumed the wardenship of All Souls’ in 1660, and become Archbishop of
Canterbury in 1663, was elected Chancellor in succession to Clarendon in
1667. In common with many Anglicans of the Laudian school, Sheldon had
long objected to the profanation of St. Mary’s Church involved in the use of
it as a kind of academical town-hall for scholastic exercises and secular
displays. Perhaps the contempt of the Puritans for sacred edifices had
quickened the zeal of Royalists for their dedication to strictly religious
purposes; at all events, the archbishop offered 1,000l. towards the
construction of a suitable theatre, and, meeting with little support from
others, ultimately took upon himself the whole cost, amounting to 25,000l.

The mode in which the site was procured illustrates the change which was
already passing over mediæval Oxford, now in process of conversion from
a fortified into an open town. Though a great part of the walls was
preserved, and the city gates survived for another century, the ditch was
being filled up and new streets constructed along the course of it. Several
houses adjoining the old ramparts were purchased on the north side of the
Divinity School; Christopher Wren was engaged as the architect, and
Streeter as the painter of the pictures which adorn the ceiling; and the
building, having been commenced in 1664, was completed in 1669—the
year in which the Divinity School was restored according to Wren’s
designs. John Evelyn received a degree at the first academical festival held
in it, and was as much impressed by the grandeur of the spectacle and the
learning of the discourses as he was shocked by the vulgar ribaldry of the
Terræ Filius. It is worthy of notice that in the address delivered on this
occasion by Dr. South, as Public Orator, were ‘some malicious and indecent
reflections on the Royal Society, as underminers of the University.’ That
society, in fact, passed through much of its infancy, if it did not take its
birth, at Oxford. Among its earliest and most influential members were Dr.
Wilkins, the Warden of Wadham, Dr. Goddard, the Warden of Merton, and
Dr. Wallis, a Cambridge man, who afterwards became Savilian professor of
geometry in Oxford. These and others were in the habit of meeting for
scientific discussions at Goddard’s lodgings, or Gresham College, in
London, before the end of the Civil War, but about 1649 all three of them
were settled in Oxford, where they found congenial associates in such men
as William Petty, Robert Boyle, and Wren, and resumed their meetings in
Petty’s or Wilkins’ lodgings, while the rest continued to meet in London.
Other facts attest the variety of intellectual life and
Growth of æstheticinterests at Oxford during the same period. Evelyn
tastes and social
refinement speaks of an organ as placed in the upper gallery of the
theatre, and of ‘excellent music, both vocal and
instrumental,’ as part of the programme at the opening of the Sheldonian
Theatre. The earliest order for the apportionment of seats assigns that very
gallery ‘for the performance of music,’ while it allots places to ladies,
strangers, and ‘Cambridge scholars.’ Thenceforth music played a
considerable part among academical recreations, and a taste for the belles-
lettres and the fine arts was rapidly developed. In 1677, the Arundel
marbles were presented to the University by the Earl of Arundel, mainly

owing to the assiduous exertions of John Evelyn; on May 24, 1683, the
Ashmolean Museum was opened, and in the next month Convocation
accepted Elias Ashmole’s gift of all his ‘rarities,’ consisting of valuable
collections in natural history and antiquities. A certain air of literary
dilettantism was characteristic of the same age at the University as well as
in the metropolis. Under a statute passed in 1662, bachelors of Arts were
required, before inception, to recite from memory two Latin declamations
of their own composition, and from this period may be dated the gradual
triumph of Literæ Humaniores over scholastic disputations in the
examination-system of Oxford. Versification in Latin now became a
favourite pastime of Oxford scholars, and many poems of doubtful Latinity
on the politics or philosophy of the day were composed there during the
latter half of the seventeenth century. In the meanwhile, modern notions of
comfort were beginning to modify the old austerity of college life. The
earliest of Oxford common-rooms was instituted at Merton College in 1661,
and sixteen years later Anthony Wood mentions ‘common chambers’
together with alehouses (of which there were said to be above 370), and the
newly established ‘coffea-houses,’ as contributing to the decay of ‘solid and
serious learning.’ College gardens, too, received far more attention than
before, and we may still trace on Loggan’s maps and plans the geometrical
designs upon which these little plots were ingeniously laid out by the
Caroline landscape-gardeners, though Magdalen ‘water walks’ retained
their native wildness.
Charles II. twice visited Oxford, where his presence
First visit of and example could scarcely have been conducive to
Charles II.
virtue or decorum among the students. His reign is
marked by frequent interference with the freedom of college elections, in
the form of attempts to use fellowships as rewards for his favourites or the
relations of old cavaliers, though in more than one instance he gracefully
retracted his mandate. When he arrived at Oxford from Salisbury, in
September 1665, the plague was at its height in London. There he remained
until the following February, lodging, as usual, at Christchurch, while the
Queen was accommodated at Merton, residing in the very rooms in which
her mother-in-law, Henrietta Maria, held her Court during the Civil War.
Miss Stuart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond, occupied a fellow’s rooms in
the same college, and another set was assigned to Barbara Villiers, Lady
Castlemaine, and afterwards Duchess of Cleveland. In these rooms, on

December 28, 1665, was born her son, George Villiers, afterwards Earl of
Northumberland and Duke of Grafton. It is stated in the college register that
bachelor fellows and scholars were turned out of their chambers to make
room for the Court, and that as there were more ladies than students in the
chapel, ‘ordinary prayers’ were used in the service.
Sixteen years had elapsed before Charles II. again
Second visit of visited Oxford, in the spring of 1681, to open the last
Charles II.
Parliament Parliament ever held in the city, supposing that Whig
assembled and members would there be subjected to loyalist influences,
dissolved at Oxford and more amenable to his own dictation. The supposed
discovery of the ‘Popish Plot’ in 1678 had provoked a
fresh outburst of Protestant enthusiasm and bigotry. An Act had been passed
disabling all Papists, except the Duke of York, from sitting in either House
of Parliament, and was quickly followed by a Bill to exclude the Duke of
York from the succession. To arrest the progress of this Bill, two
Parliaments had been dissolved by the King, and that summoned to meet at
Oxford lasted but a week. The King journeyed thither surrounded by his
guards of horse and foot, while the Exclusionist leaders were escorted by
hosts of friends and armed retainers. On this occasion, the schools of
geometry, astronomy, and Greek were fitted up for the House of Lords, the
Convocation House being adapted to receive the Commons. The Commons
again brought in the Exclusion Bill. The King met it with a strange proposal
that, after his own death, the government should be carried on in James’s
name by the Prince of Orange as Regent. The Commons persisted with the
Bill, whereupon the Parliament was suddenly dissolved by the King, who
had quietly put the crown and robes of state into a sedan chair, got into it
himself, and surprised both Houses by his sudden appearance to close the
session. During this short crisis, anti-Papist sentiments found expression
among the gownsmen, but we may safely assume that a majority of
graduates were secretly in favour of the King against the Exclusionists.
Anthony Wood, remarking on the decline of students in 1682, attributes it to
three causes. The first is the constant expectation of another Parliament to
be held at Oxford, and the fear of being turned out to make room for
members. The second is that ‘all those that we call Whigs’ (a name just
invented) ‘and side with the Parliament, will not send their sons for fear of
their being Tories.’ The last is that the University, like the Episcopal bench,
labours under the suspicion of a leaning towards Popery.

In the following year, the University was afforded a
Doctrine of passivegood opportunity for demonstrating its sympathy with
resistance adopted
by the University. the Duke of York by the disclosure of the so-called ‘Rye
Expulsion of Locke House Plot.’ Accordingly, on July 21, 1683,
Convocation passed a decree again condemning the
doctrine that resistance to a king is lawful, which doctrine it formulated in
six propositions expressly stated to have been culled from the works of
Milton, Baxter, and Goodwin. By the same decree, however, the University
recorded an equally solemn anathema against other heresies mostly founded
on the despotic principles of Hobbes’ ‘Leviathan,’ thereby anticipating the
verdict of the country in 1688. Within three months of his death, Charles II.,
acting on these principles, was betrayed into a strange piece of intolerance,
more worthy of his successor, in which he was abetted by the Chapter of
Christchurch, and of which the illustrious John Locke was the victim. On
November 5, 1684, a letter was addressed by Sunderland to Dr. John Fell,
Dean of Christchurch and Bishop of Oxford, directing him to ‘have Locke
removed from being a student.’ Fell replied that Locke had been carefully
watched for years, but had never been heard to utter a disloyal word against
the government, notwithstanding which he basely offered to procure his
removal on receipt of an order from the King, and actually did so.
In the first year of James II.’s reign, the University of
Conduct of the Oxford was once more stirred by martial ardour, when
University on the
outbreak of the Duke of Monmouth landed in Dorsetshire.
Monmouth’s Volunteers from the colleges mustered in great force to
rebellion. James oppose him; a troop of horse and a regiment of foot were
II.’s treatment of
Magdalen College enrolled under the Earl of Abingdon, and the victory of
Sedgemoor was celebrated with academical bonfires, in
which, for once, the City took part. A week later, upon a false alarm, the
volunteers were again called out, but soon disbanded. With that strange
ignorance of his countrymen which ultimately proved his ruin, James
interpreted these signs of loyalty as pledges of abject devotion to his person,
and proceeded to strain the well-tried fidelity of the University by gross
outrages on its privileges. The grand secret of his fatuous statecraft was the
use of the dispensing power, as its end was the supremacy of the Crown and
the restoration of the ancient faith. Having obtained an opinion from the
judges favourable to this dispensing power, he had bestowed commissions
in the army and Church preferments on several professed Romanists. Fell

was succeeded as Dean by Massey, an avowed Papist, nominated by James,
and soon afterwards both the Universities were attacked by the new Court
of High Commission. Cambridge boldly refused to obey a royal mandate
for the admission of a Benedictine to a degree without taking the usual oath.
A severer ordeal was prepared for Oxford. With such instruments as
Obadiah Walker, the Master of University, the King seriously meditated the
conversion of the University, and dispensations were granted for
establishing Romanistic services in colleges. By the Declaration of
Indulgence, issued in 1687, James assumed to make Roman Catholics
admissible to corporations; and the colleges appeared to offer a favourable
trial ground for the experiment. All Souls’ had just escaped a royal mandate
for the election of a Roman Catholic to its wardenship by electing an
extreme Tory of doubtful character, who had friends at Court. The
presidentship of Magdalen College was now vacant, and Farmer, a Papist of
notoriously bad character, was recommended for it by royal letters. The
fellows refused to comply, justifying their refusal on the ground that
James’s nominee was not only unfit for the office but was also disqualified
by their statutes. Accordingly, after vainly petitioning the King to withdraw
his command, they elected Hough, one of their own body, to whom no
exception could be taken. The election was confirmed by the Visitor, but
annulled by the new Court of High Commission, under the presidency of
Jefferies, who treated a deputation from the college with brutal insolence.
The King then issued another order, commanding the college to elect
Parker, bishop of Oxford, an obsequious tool of his own policy. He even
came to Oxford in person, on September 4, 1687, in order to enforce
obedience, and did not scruple to intimidate the fellows with rude threats of
his royal displeasure in case they should prove contumacious. The conduct
of Magdalen on this occasion was eminently constitutional, and had no
slight influence in determining the attitude of the nation. The fellows
maintained their rights firmly but respectfully, and unanimously declined
submission to any arbitrary authority. Thereupon a commission was
appointed with full powers to dispossess all recusants by military force, and
the new President and twenty-five fellows were actually ejected and
declared incapable of Church preferment. Parker died within a
twelvemonth, but James substituted one Gifford, a Papist of the Sorbonne,
and was proceeding to repeople the college with Roman Catholics when the
acquittal of the Seven Bishops and the invitation to William of Orange

suddenly opened his eyes to his real position. During the month of October
1688 he made desperate efforts to save himself from ruin, restoring many
officers deprived of their commissions, dissolving the Ecclesiastical
Commission, and removing Sunderland and Petre from his council. In this
death-bed fit of repentance he addressed letters to the bishop of Winchester,
as Visitor of Magdalen, reinstating the ejected fellows, who, however, had
scarcely returned before James had abdicated, and William and Mary had
been proclaimed.

CHAPTER XIV.
UNIVERSITY POLITICS BETWEEN THE REVOLUTION AND

THE ACCESSION OF GEORGE III.

The Revolution of 1688-9 seems to have been quietly
Attitude of the accepted at Oxford as an irrevocable fact rather than
University towards
the Revolution. welcomed as the consecration of civil and religious
liberty. For a while, indeed, the outrageous invasion of
Visit of William III.
academical privileges by James II. produced its natural
effect, and deputies from the University were despatched to salute William
III. at Crewkerne, after his landing in Torbay. William actually came as far
as Abingdon, but, there receiving news of James’s flight, sent to excuse
himself, and hurried on towards London. Burnet tells us that, at the same
time, and at his request, the ‘Association,’ or pledge to support him in
restoring order and liberty, was signed by almost all the Heads of colleges
and the chief men of the University. But he adds that some of the
signatories, ‘being disappointed in the preferments they aspired to, became
afterwards King William’s most implacable enemies.’ At all events,
reactionary tendencies gradually manifested themselves, and it is said that
Locke, who had little cause for gratitude to Oxford, urged the King to
reform the Universities once more, alleging that otherwise the work of the
Revolution ‘would all soon go back.’ William had been recognised as a
deliverer, but Oxford loyalists had not abandoned their allegiance to the
Stuart dynasty, however inconsistent with their submission to William as
king de facto by the will of a Parliamentary majority. It was not until the
autumn of 1695, after the death of Mary, and the complete transfer of power
to the Whigs, that he found time to visit the University, for a few hours
only, on his way from Woodstock to Windsor. He was received by the
Chancellor, the second Duke of Ormond, and one of a family which, as
representing the high Tory aristocracy, held this office, as if by hereditary
right, for a period of ninety years. All the usual ceremonies were observed;
a select body of Doctors and Masters ‘rode out in their gowns to meet the

King’ a mile on the Woodstock road, and a grand procession conducted him
down the High Street to the east gate of the schools, through which he
passed directly to the theatre, where a sumptuous banquet was prepared for
him. Evelyn states that, being coldly received, he declined the banquet and
barely stayed an hour; according to another report, in itself improbable, the
fear of poison deterred him from tasting the refreshments provided.
However this may be, he certainly never courted or acquired popularity at
the University, which henceforth became a hotbed of Jacobite disaffection
for at least two generations.
The exact source of this sentiment is somewhat
Origin of Oxford difficult to ascertain, but it was probably a survival of
Jacobitism. Visit of
Queen Anne the Puritan Visitation, and was doubtless connected with
hearty respect for the Non-jurors, to whose ranks,
however, Oxford contributed fewer resident members than Cambridge. But
Oxford Churchmen assuredly cherished a genuine hatred of the
latitudinarian opinions attributed to William III., and afterwards patronised
by Whig statesmen. Whatever may have been its source, and whether it was
in the nature of a settled conviction or of an inveterate fashion, Jacobite
partisanship was shared alike by ‘dons’ and by undergraduates, it was the
one important element in the external history of the University under the
first two Georges, and, like Scotch Jacobitism, it retained a sort of poetical
existence up to a still later period. In their opposition to the Comprehension
Scheme promoted by the King, the University of Oxford was supported by
that of Cambridge, in which there long continued to be a strong Jacobite
minority, but which, by comparison with Oxford, soon came to be regarded
as a nursery of Whig principles. Still the commission appointed to prepare a
scheme of Comprehension included the names of Aldrich, afterwards dean
of Christchurch, who had succeeded the Romanist Massey, and Jane,
Regius Professor of divinity, who had been converted from extreme
Toryism by James II.’s aggression on Magdalen, but was reconverted by
William III.’s neglect of his claims to a bishopric. The hopes of a Jacobite
reaction, excited by the accession of Queen Anne, found an enthusiastic
echo in the University. On July 16, 1702, a grand ‘Philological Exercise’
was celebrated in the theatre for the special purpose of honouring the new
Queen. On August 26 of the same year, Queen Anne herself visited Oxford,
where a fierce struggle for precedence at her reception took place between
the University and City, which afterwards showed more respect for the

Stuart dynasty in exile than when it was on the throne. Burnet complains
bitterly of the clerical Toryism and ecclesiastical bigotry which prevailed at
Oxford in 1704, accusing the University of ‘corrupting the principles’ of its
students. Hearne, the learned Oxford chronicler, writing on September 2,
1705, notices a thanksgiving sermon preached by a Mr. Evans, of St. John’s,
a clergyman of doubtful character, of which Dr. Lloyd, bishop of Worcester,
said that ‘he was very glad there was one even in Oxford that would speak
for King William.’ He adds, three days later, that Evans had talked mightily
of publishing this sermon, but that ‘there is none in Oxford will print a thing
so scandalously partial against the Church of England.’
During the furious outbreak of High Church
Popularity of fanaticism, which rallied the mass of English clergy and
Sacheverell.
Position of the shattered the Whig ascendency at the end of 1709, the
Whig minority gownsmen were active partisans of Dr. Sacheverell,
himself a graduate of Magdalen. The vice-chancellor
came forward as surety for him, Atterbury, the future dean of Christchurch,
defended him with great ability, and Oxford afterwards gave him an
enthusiastic reception. The House of Lords marked its sense of this
disloyalty in the following year by causing the famous University decree of
1683 to be publicly burned, together with Sacheverell’s sermons. No sooner
did Queen Anne disavow her Whig advisers and place herself openly under
Tory influences, than Oxford, undeterred by this rebuke, paraded its
Toryism without disguise, and, had it retained its old place in national
politics, the Hanoverian succession would have encountered a still more
formidable opposition. But the Whig oligarchy again saved the country.
After four years of Tory policy, another crisis occurred, the Tory ministry
broke up, the great Whig lords forced their way into the council chamber,
the Hanoverian succession was secured, and Queen Anne opportunely died.
The accession of the Elector of Hanover was received at Oxford with sullen
disappointment, but the Heads of Houses consulted their own interests by
offering a reward of 100l. for the discovery of an unknown person who had
delivered at the mayor’s house a letter protesting against the proclamation
of George I. He was proclaimed, nevertheless, at St. Mary’s, as well as at
Carfax, but the scantiness of the attendance and shabbiness of the
procession was remarked with satisfaction by the Tories. Baffled in their
hopes of support in the highest quarter, the Tory democracy of the
University took refuge in libels, disloyal toasts, and offensive lampoons.

The Whig gownsmen, few as they were, and mostly confined to New
College, Oriel, and Merton, had an influential protector in Gardiner, the
Warden of All Souls’, and vice-chancellor from 1712 to 1715, himself a
moderate Tory, but resolute in saving the University from the risk of casting
in its lot with the Pretender. They formed themselves into a club, which
they called the ‘Constitution Club,’ and to which no one below the rank of
B.A. was eligible. This club soon became the chief object of Tory
resentment, at last culminating in a riot which called for the intervention of
the government.
On May 28, 1715, being the first anniversary of
Jacobite George I.’s birthday since his accession, the Whig club
demonstrations. A
troop of horse senthad assembled to commemorate the day at the King’s
to Oxford Head tavern. They were attacked by a Tory mob, and a
fray ensued, which broke out afresh on the following
day, being the Restoration-day. The Heads of Houses, and even the grand
jury for the county, sheltered the aggressors, and reserved all their rebukes
for the obnoxious club. The government naturally took a different view of
the case, and called for explanations. Feeling that matters, had gone far
enough, the University authorities took means to suppress Jacobite
demonstrations on June 10, the Pretender’s birthday; but they were at no
pains to conceal their real inclinations. On the impeachment and resignation
of Ormond, the University hastened to elect his brother, the Earl of Arran,
as his successor in the chancellorship, and conferred the degree of D.C.L.
on Sir Constantine Phipps, a Tory of Tories, with special marks of honour,
while its representatives in Parliament were prominent leaders of the same
party. At last the patience of the government was exhausted. On the
birthday of the Prince of Wales there were no signs of rejoicing, and
complaint of this omission was made to the mayor by an officer in
command of a recruiting party then in Oxford. Another disturbance ensued,
of which conflicting accounts were sent to London, and the whole affair
came before the House of Lords in the course of a debate on the Mutiny
Bill. The University was ably represented, and a plausible defence was
offered on its behalf, but the verdict of the House was unfavourable. In the
meantime, an address to the Crown voted by the University on the outbreak
of the rebellion in Scotland had met with the reception which its insincerity
deserved, and the government determined to employ decisive measures. A
body of dragoons under Major-General Pepper entered Oxford, martial law

was at once proclaimed, and the students were ordered to remain within
their colleges on pain of being marched off to military execution. After a
few seizures had been made, the dragoons were replaced by Colonel
Handyside’s regiment of foot, which continued to be quartered in Oxford
for the express purpose of overawing the University—no unnecessary
measure when a rebellion of unknown extent had been planned not only in
Scotland and the north of England but in the western counties. It was on this
occasion that an Oxford wit contrasted the King’s severe treatment of
Oxford with his munificent present of a library to Cambridge in lines
which, together with the Cambridge repartee, have become historical.
On May 29 of the following year, while Colonel
The Constitution Handyside’s regiment was still in Oxford, the
Club. Government
scheme for Constitution Club was again the scene of a political
reforming the commotion, though of a less serious nature.
University Meadowcourt, the steward of the club, having forced the
junior proctor to drink the King’s health, was suspended
from his degree for the space of two years; and it was further ordered that
he should not be allowed to supplicate for his grace ‘until he confesses his
manifold crimes and asks pardon upon his knees.’ In spite of the King’s Act
of Grace, to which he skilfully appealed, he was twice refused his M.A.
degree. He lived, however, to bring the disaffection of the University under
the notice of the government in 1719, when the vice-chancellor refused to
notice a disloyal sermon preached by Warton, though he was disappointed
to receive no more than a letter of thanks for his zeal. Other Whigs endured
similar persecutions; the Whig satirist, Amherst, was driven out of St.
John’s College, and social penalties were freely inflicted on members of
Merton, Exeter, Christchurch, and Wadham, then suspected of being anti-
Jacobite societies. The Constitution Club died out before the end of George
I.’s reign, and many academical Whigs became so disheartened as to
conceal their principles or even to affect Toryism for the sake of preferment.
Indeed, the avowed hostility of Oxford and the doubtful fidelity of
Cambridge to the reigning dynasty were regarded with so much anxiety at
Court that it was seriously contemplated to introduce a Bill to suspend the
constitution of both Universities. The draught of this Bill empowered the
‘King to nominate and appoint all and every the Chancellor, Vice-
Chancellor, Proctors, and other officers of the said Universities, and all
Heads of Houses, Fellows, Students, Chaplains, Scholars, and

Exhibitioners, and all members of and in all and every the College and
Colleges, Hall and Halls in the said Universities or either of them, upon all
and every vacancy and vacancies,’ &c. This provisional administration was
to last for seven years, and the project of it was approved by fifteen bishops.
Lord Macclesfield, the Lord Chancellor, had drawn up a separate plan of
reform with the same object of controlling the University through
government patronage. The election of Heads was to be vested in the great
officers of State, with the concurrence of the Visitor and the bishop. The
disposition of all other college emoluments was to be placed in the hands of
a commission. The fellowships were to be limited to a term of twenty years,
lest they should conduce to idleness and self-indulgence. Professorships and
minor fellowships charged with educational duties were to be founded. The
benefices of the Crown and the nobility were to be conferred only on ‘well-
affected persons.’ Colleges in which ‘honest and loyal men’ predominate
were to be specially favoured in the distribution of Crown patronage, ‘till
the true interest in them was become superior to all opposition.’ Happily
wiser counsels prevailed, and there is reason to believe that Archbishop
Wake was largely instrumental in averting the danger. He knew that Oxford
Tories could only be influenced through Tory leaders, and discreetly used
such mediation to keep the factious spirit of the University within tolerable
bounds, until the design against its independence was abandoned. But
George I. never deigned to visit Oxford, being the first sovereign who had
failed to do so since the reign of Mary.
During the earlier years of Walpole’s administration
Gradual decline of the University seems to have been comparatively free
Jacobitism in
Oxford during the from political turmoil. Many of the gownsmen, however,
reign of George II. took part with the citizens in the disorderly revels,
lasting for three nights, which celebrated the withdrawal
of the Excise Bill, in 1733, when the healths of Ormond, Bolingbroke, and
James III. were publicly drunk round the bonfires. On the other hand, in the
following year the University accorded an enthusiastic reception to the
Prince of Orange, who came to marry the Princess Anne. The city shared in
these festivities, conferring its freedom upon the prince at the north gate on
his return from Blenheim, while bell-ringing, illuminations, and bonfires
were kept up for three nights together. Still covert Jacobitism found
expression in the University pulpit, and John Wesley, desiring to guard
himself against the imputation of it when he preached before the University

in 1734, got the vice-chancellor to read and approve his sermon beforehand.
Even after the suppression of the rebellion in 1745 it was not extinct, and in
1748 the government resorted to somewhat excessive severity against three
students who had toasted the Pretender, although the vice-chancellor and
proctors, apprehensive of the result, had issued a peremptory order
declaring their resolution to put down seditious practices. Further
proceedings were instituted against the vice-chancellor and the University
itself, but the motion was negatived by the Court. The government,
however, was not appeased. When the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was
proclaimed at Oxford, the vice-chancellor, Heads of Houses, professors, and
proctors took care to participate in public rejoicings with the mayor and
corporation, but a congratulatory address from the University on this event
was rejected with disdain. The loyalty of the University was still justly
distrusted. In 1754 Dr. King, a notorious Jacobite, and Principal of St. Mary
Hall, elicited rounds of applause from the whole audience in the theatre,
filled with peers, members of Parliament, and country gentlemen, by thrice
pausing upon the word Redeat, purposely introduced into his speech to
gratify ‘the Old Interest.’ No wonder that in the same year Pitt denounced
Oxford Jacobitism in the House of Commons; notwithstanding which, in
the following year (1755), a Tory and Jacobite mob, guarding the
approaches to the polling-booths at the county election for days together,
prevented the Whigs from giving their votes. Again, in 1759, Lord
Westmoreland, who had been a zealous Hanoverian, but had afterwards
turned Jacobite out of resentment against Sir Robert Walpole, was elected
by the University as its Chancellor. Yet the days of Oxford Jacobitism were
already numbered; it was well nigh dead as a creed, and it soon ceased to be
a fashion. The marvellous victories of the same year kindled genuine
enthusiasm among the gownsmen, and a most fulsome address was
presented to George II. by the Oxford Convocation, begging ‘leave to
approach your sacred person with hearts full of duty and affection,’ and
applauding the measures taken ‘for the support of the Protestant religion
and the liberties of Europe.’
With the accession of George III. Jacobitism
Revival of loyalty disappeared or faded into Toryism of the modern type.
after the accession
of George III. His In its congratulatory address the University took special
visits to Oxford credit to itself for having been ‘ever faithful to
monarchy on the most trying occasions.’ The King’s

reply was guarded, recommending ‘sound principles of religious and civil
duties early instilled into the minds of youth.’ His advice seems to have
been adopted; at all events, we hear no more of academical Jacobitism,
loyalty to George III. became fashionable, Dr. King himself appeared at
Court, and the University was probably sincere when, in 1763, it proposed
inviolable ‘attachment to your Majesty’s person and government.’ It may
perhaps have been in recognition of this salutary change in its attitude that
in 1768 the Speaker of the House of Commons paid it an elaborate
compliment, in censuring the authorities of Oxford City for a gross act of
political corruption, specially recommending for imitation the conduct of
their learned neighbour. In the following year, the University presented
another address to the Crown deprecating political agitation ‘under pretence
of defending civil and religious liberties,’ and assuring his Majesty of its
determination to imbue its students with sound principles. By a happy
inconsistency, academical loyalists now managed to reconcile their old
worship of the king de jure with a hearty acceptance of the Hanoverian
succession. Probably Dr. Nowell, Principal of St. Mary Hall, fairly
represented these sentiments when he reasserted the doctrines of divine
right and passive obedience in a sermon preached before the House of
Commons in 1772, for which he was first thanked and then censured. It
deserves notice, however, that a more liberal spirit already made itself felt
in regard to religious toleration. Though Sir Roger Newdigate, on behalf of
the University, stoutly opposed the relief of clergymen from subscription to
the Thirty-nine Articles, a strong minority in the Oxford Convocation
supported, in February 1773, a proposal for requiring from candidates for
matriculation only a declaration of conformity to the worship and liturgy of
the Established Church. An attempt was afterwards made to qualify the
effect of subscription by appending to the statute requiring it an explanatory
note whereby it was virtually reduced to a declaration of conformity, but the
legal validity of such an enactment was challenged, and the proposal was
quietly dropped. In March 1779, a petition was presented by the University,
through its chancellor, Lord North, against the Dissenters’ Toleration Bill,
then before Parliament. This petition embodied a protest against the
principle of allowing dissenting ministers and schoolmasters to preach and
teach without making any profession of belief in Christianity or revelation,
but the petitioners were careful to describe themselves as friends of
toleration, so far as it could be reconciled with the interests of Christianity

and the Established Church. These were the sentiments of the King himself,
and a crowning proof of its fidelity to George III. was given by the
University in 1783, when it publicly thanked the King for dismissing the
Coalition Ministry (including its own Chancellor), and giving his
confidence to Pitt—a service which the king rewarded by visiting Oxford
twice from Nuneham Park, in 1785 and 1786. On each occasion he received
an enthusiastic welcome, but as it was in the middle of the Long Vacation,
he stayed but a few hours, and the traditional solemnities of royal visits
were not repeated. A like enthusiasm was shown by the University on his
recovery from his first illness in 1788.

CHAPTER XV.
UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

If we seek to estimate the intellectual life of Oxford
Decay of Universityduring the century following the Revolution, we find a
education in the
eighteenth century significant dearth of trustworthy materials. Such
evidence as we possess, however, justifies on the whole
the received opinion that this period is the Dark Age of academical history.
The impulse given to culture and scholarship by the new learning of the
Renaissance had died away as completely as that given by the scholastic
revival of the thirteenth century, and nothing came in to supply its place.
The old disputations were almost obsolete, the Laudian system of
examinations had fallen into scandalous abuse, the sex solemnes lectiones
required for the B.A. degree had degenerated into ‘wall lectures’ read in an
empty school. The practice of cramming, however, was unknown, and there
were no artificial restrictions to prevent Oxford becoming a paradise of
mature study and original research.
Unhappily, it was far otherwise. Though
Contemporary undergraduates were freely admitted to the Bodleian
evidence
Library, and it was frequently enriched by donations, we
learn that between 1730 and 1740 many days passed without there being a
single reader there, and it was rare for more than two books to be consulted
in a day. Dean Prideaux, who had long resided in Oxford, professes, in
1691, ‘an unconquerable aversion to the place,’ doubtless aggravated by his
impatience of Jacobite ascendency in the University, but partly founded on
his conviction of its decline as a seat of education. Hearne, writing in 1726,
declared that in nearly all the colleges the fellows were busied in litigation
and quarrels having no connection with the promotion of learning, adding
that ‘good letters miserably decay every day, insomuch that this Ordination
on Trinity Sunday at Oxford there were no fewer (as I am informed) than
fifteen denied Orders for insufficiency—which is the more to be noted,
because our bishops and those employed by them are themselves generally

illiterate men.’ Similar complaints against the degeneracy of University
teaching abound in eighteenth-century literature. Adam Smith, in particular,
attributes the inefficiency of tutors and professors chiefly to the fact of their
being paid by fixed stipends instead of by fees. Johnson testifies that he
learned very little at Pembroke College; Lord Malmesbury regarded his two
years at Merton College as the most unprofitable of his life; Swift
represents drinking strong ale and smoking tobacco as the chief
accomplishments—not indeed of all students, but of ‘young heirs’ sent to
Oxford in deference to custom; Lord Chesterfield speaks of the University
as known only for its ‘treasonable spirit,’ and says that, having been at
Oxford himself, he resolved not to send his son there; Lord Eldon describes
the degree-examination in his own time as merely nominal. But perhaps the
most emphatic condemnation of the Oxford system in the eighteenth
century is supplied by the historian Gibbon, whose reminiscences of his
own University career are often quoted as conclusive evidence on the state
of the University in 1752-3. He laments the fourteen months which he spent
at Magdalen College as the ‘most idle and unprofitable of his whole life.’
He declares that ‘in the University of Oxford, the greater part of the Public
Professors have for these many years given up even the pretence of
teaching.’ He testifies that, in his time, ‘the Fellows of Magdalen were
decent easy men who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the Founder; their days
were filled by a series of uniform employments: the chapel and the hall, the
coffee-house and the common-room; till they retired, weary and well-
satisfied, to a long slumber. From the toil of reading, or thinking, or writing,
they had absolved their conscience.’ He proceeds to allege that gentlemen-
commoners were left to educate themselves, that ‘the obvious methods of
public exercises and examinations were totally unknown,’ that no
superintendence was exercised over the relations of tutors with their pupils,
that his own tutor, though a good old-fashioned scholar, took no pains to
stimulate or encourage his industry, and that he was allowed to make ‘a tour
to Bath, a visit into Buckinghamshire, and four excursions into London, in
the same winter.’
We cannot but acknowledge that Gibbon’s estimate of
Decline in numbers the University in the middle of the century is confirmed
and dearth of
eminence in science by an examination of University records. If we may
and literature judge by the statistics of matriculation, the nation at
large had lost confidence in Oxford education, for the

annual number of admissions, which had often exceeded 300 in the reigns
of Anne and George I., never reached that modest total between 1726 and
1810, while it often fell below 200 about the end of George II.’s reign. It is
equally certain that Oxford contributed far less than in former ages to
politics or literature. In learning it was distanced by Cambridge, where the
modern examination system was developed earlier, and where the immortal
researches of Newton and the solid learning of Bentley had raised the ideal
of academical study. But the real intellectual leadership of the country was
transferred from both Universities to London. Indeed, London itself was no
longer the only non-academical centre of science, art, and culture; for even
provincial towns, like Birmingham and Manchester, Derby and Bristol,
Norwich, Leeds, and Newcastle, were already acquiring an industrial
independence, and intellectual life, of their own. The Methodist Revival,
indeed, of which Gibbon was probably unconscious, owed its origin to a
small band of enthusiasts at Oxford.[15] But, except Methodism, the great
movements of thought which underlay the artificial society of the
eighteenth century had no connection with the University, and the minds
which dominated the world of politics and literature were trained in a
wholly different school. The broad constructive ideas, and ‘encyclopædic
spirit,’ as it has been well called, which animated so many writers and
politicians of that age, in all the countries of western Europe, had little or no
place in the University of Oxford. It was hardly to be expected that
engineers and inventors, like Watt, Arkwright, and Brindley, should have
received an University education, nor do we look in degree-lists for the
names of eminent soldiers like Wellington, or nautical explorers like Cook.
But it is certainly remarkable that so many English poets and humourists—
Pope and Gay, Defoe, Smollett, and Hogarth—should have received no
University education, while Swift, Congreve, and Goldsmith were students
of Dublin, Thomson of Edinburgh, Fielding of Leyden, Prior, Sterne, and
Gray, of Cambridge. Again, if we look to graver departments of literature,
or the history of science, the result is still the same. Robertson was educated
at Glasgow, Hume in France, Berkeley in Dublin; Herschel and Priestley
owed nothing to University education, nor did John Howard, or Joshua
Reynolds, or John Wilkes, or many others who powerfully influenced the
minds of the Georgian era. Jeremy Bentham, it is true, received a part of his
education at Queen’s College, but he carried away no kindly recollection of
his college life, and sums up his estimate of Oxford training in a single

acrimonious sentence—‘Mendacity and insincerity—in these I found the
effects, the sure and only sure effects, of an English University education.’
On the other hand, it would be easy to overstate both
Counter-evidence the intellectual sterility and the educational torpor of the
showing that
education and University in the century following the Revolution. The
learning were not ripe scholarship and academic wit of Addison may still
wholly neglected be appreciated in the pages of the ‘Spectator,’ and Dr.
Parr, in replying to Gibbon, was able to compile an
imposing list of Oxford graduates in the eighteenth century ‘distinguished
by classical, oriental, theological, or mathematical knowledge, by
professional skill, or by parliamentary abilities.’ We must remember that
when the historian entered Magdalen College as a gentleman-commoner, he
was in his fifteenth year; when he left it, he was barely sixteen. The college
did not then bear a high reputation for industry, there were no commoners,
and gentlemen-commoners, being of a different social class from the
‘demies,’ were supposed to enjoy the privilege of idleness. Gibbon himself
mentions that Corpus was fortunate in possessing an admirable tutor in John
Burton. He also candidly admits that Bishop Lowth was a bright exception
to professional sinecurism, and quotes the bishop’s description of his own
academical life, which is too often forgotten, when Gibbon’s adverse
criticism is magnified into a judicial utterance. ‘I spent many years,’ says
Lowth, ‘in that illustrious society, in a well-regulated course of useful
discipline and studies ... where a liberal pursuit of knowledge, and a
genuine freedom of thought, was raised, encouraged, and pushed forward
by example, by commendation, and by authority.’ Moreover, Gibbon allows
that his father may have been unfortunate in the selection of a college and a
tutor, that Sir William Scott’s tutorial, and Blackstone’s professorial,
lectures had done honour to Oxford, that learning had been made ‘a duty, a
pleasure, and even a fashion’ at Christchurch, and that reforms in the system
of instruction had been effected elsewhere. Lord Sheffield, the editor of his
memoirs, adds further proofs of the same improvement, and, on the whole,
Gibbon’s testimony must be taken as a somewhat one-sided statement of a
witness strongly prejudiced against the ecclesiastical character of Oxford,
and irritated by the necessity of quitting it, owing to his conversion to
Romanism. Similar deductions must be made from the testimony of
Bentham, who entered Queen’s in 1760, at the age of 13, and took his
degree, in 1763, at the age of 16, having cherished a precocious contempt

for juvenile amusements, and a precocious, though reasonable, objection to
signing the XXXIX Articles, in spite of conscientious doubts.
It is impossible to ascertain how far the admitted decay of University
lectures and examinations was compensated by college tuition. But it is
clear that some colleges maintained an educational system of their own, and
imposed exercises on their members, often in the form of declamations or
disputations, which stood more or less in the place of those formerly
required by the University. At Merton College, for instance, there were
regular hall-disputations, in which even gentlemen-commoners were
expected to bear their part, besides more solemn disputations in divinity for
Bachelors of Arts, and ‘Variations’ for ‘Master-Fellows’ at the end of the
Act Term. These Variations, as described in a work published in 1749, do
not seem to have possessed any great educational value, and, according to a
contemporary author, ‘were amicably concluded with a magnificent and
expensive supper, the charges of which formerly came to 100l., but of late
years much retrenched.’ Such logical encounters were clearly mere
survivals or revivals of mediæval dialectics, but there is some reason to
believe that sounder and more useful knowledge was quietly cultivated, and
rewarded by fellowships, though not yet recognised by University honours.
When John Wesley was elected a fellow of Lincoln, in 1726, disputations
were held six times a week, as at Merton, but he formed his own scheme of
studies. He allotted Mondays and Tuesdays to classics; Wednesdays to logic
and ethics; Thursdays to Hebrew and Arabic; Fridays to metaphysics and
natural philosophy; Saturdays to rhetoric, poetry, and composition; Sundays
to divinity; besides which, he bestowed much attention on mathematics.
Doubtless, John Wesley was no common man, but he was never regarded as
a prodigy of learning by his fellows, and it was the deliberate opinion of
Johnson, in the next generation, that college tuition was not the farce which
Gibbon imagined it. Speaking of Oxford in 1768, Dr. Johnson said: ‘There
is here, sir, such a progressive emulation. The students are anxious to
appear well to their tutors; the tutors are anxious to have their pupils appear
well in the college; the colleges are anxious to have their students appear
well in the University; and there are excellent rules of discipline in every
college.’ Sir William Jones, who obtained a scholarship at University
College in 1764, and a fellowship two years later, found means to prosecute
his Oriental researches there, and mapped out his own time, like Wesley,
between different branches of study. By the statutes of Hertford College,

framed in 1747, undergraduates were required to produce a declamation,
theme, or translation every week, composing it in English during their
second and third years, and in Latin during their fourth. Nor were
fellowship-examinations by any means an unmeaning form in good
colleges. Those at All Souls’ had long been a real test of intellectual merit,
though motives of favouritism sometimes governed the choice of the
electors. At Merton, in the early part of the eighteenth century, we read of
fellowship-elections being preceded by a thorough examination, including
two days of book-work in Homer, Xenophon, Lucian, Tacitus, and Horace,
besides a ‘theme,’ doubtless in Latin. When we find that some two hundred
and fifty editions of classical works, mostly, but not wholly, in the ancient
languages, were published in Oxford during the first half of the eighteenth
century, it is hardly possible to doubt that many industrious readers must
have existed among the students and fellows of colleges, however imperfect
may have been the organisation of lectures. Dr. Charlett, the eminent Master
of University College, writing in 1715, was able to praise the youths under
his own charge as ‘sober, modest, and studious,’ nor is there any reason to
doubt that many students in other colleges deserved a like character.
Degenerate as it was, and far inferior to Cambridge in the performance of
its higher functions, the University was not so utterly effete as it is
sometimes represented. It produced few great scholars and fewer great
teachers, but it was not wholly unfaithful to its mission of educating the
English clergy and gentry, and the great philosopher, Berkeley, who had
described it as an ideal retreat for learning and piety, deliberately chose it as
his final home and resting-place.

FOOTNOTES:
[15] No description is here given of the origin and progress of Methodism in
Oxford, since the history of the Methodist Revival is reserved for a separate
volume in the present series.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE UNIVERSITY DURING THE REIGNS OF GEORGE III.

AND GEORGE IV.

We may pass lightly over the history of the University
Stagnation of during the latter part of the eighteenth century, when its
University
legislation in the external and internal life were equally barren of
eighteenth century memorable events. Only eight statutes had been enacted
by Convocation between 1636 and 1759; nor was the
succeeding period more prolific of reforms. The legislative energy of the
University was confined for the most part to amendments of mere
administrative details, and it was even suggested that such trifling measures
were beyond its powers. In the year 1759, the right of the University to
abrogate any of the Laudian statutes without the consent of the Crown was
challenged by the proctors. The objection, however, was overruled, and the
principle was established that, whereas it was not competent for the
University to make any statutes as immutable as the laws of the Medes and
Persians, it could not delegate any such power to the King himself, so that
any statute made under royal sanction was subject to repeal, like ordinary
bye-laws. In 1770, a new statute was passed for the regulation of
academical habits, which provoked a long controversy, and incidentally
established the principle, applicable to more important subjects, that no
individual Head of a college, nor even all the Heads of colleges together,
could dispense with statutable rules, independently of Convocation.
Meanwhile, a considerable number of Acts were
Statutes affecting
passed by Parliament confirming or enlarging the
the University
privileges of the University. For instance, in 1774, the
Universities of England and Scotland were empowered by special
enactment to hold in perpetuity their exclusive right of printing books, the
copyright of which should have been vested in them by the authors. Other
Acts granted colleges special exemptions from the land tax in respect of

their buildings, and from legacy duty in respect of collections and other
specific articles bequeathed to them. Resident members of the University
were further exempted from service in the Militia, and the stringent Act of
1799, ‘for better preventing treasonable and seditious practices,’ was
expressly limited so as not to curtail the freedom of University lectures or
the University press.
In 1793, the installation of the Duke of Portland as
Political sympathies
successor to Lord North in the chancellorship was
of the University
signalised by festivities on an unprecedented scale, and a
after the outbreak of
the French tumultuous struggle for admission to the Sheldonian
Revolution Theatre led to a fray which reflected little credit on
academical manners. The hero of the day, and favourite
of the gownsmen, was Edmund Burke, whose son received an honorary
D.C.L. degree, but who is said to have declined it for himself on the ground
that, in 1790, the Heads of Houses had negatived a requisition from forty-
nine Masters of Arts proposing that a D.C.L. degree should be conferred on
him ‘by diploma.’ The political sympathies of the University were, in fact,
strongly called forth on behalf of the Royalist cause in France, and a large
subscription was raised in 1792 for the relief of the French refugees,
especially Catholic priests, three of whom settled at Oxford. Tn 1794 nearly
2,500l. was contributed for purposes of national defence by the resident
body of graduates, including a grant of 200l. from the University chest. In
1798, a further contribution of 4,000l. ‘in aid of the revenue of the country’
was sent to the government from the University and colleges of Oxford,
while an University volunteer corps, mustering about five hundred men,
was formed and drilled, as in the days of the Civil War. This martial ardour,
and the drain of students into the army, doubtless contributed to increase the
depression of academical studies which preceded and rendered necessary
the ‘new examination statutes’ of 1800. But academical studies must also
have suffered from the prevailing distress which marked the winter of 1799,
when bread-riots took place in Oxford, and large subscriptions were raised
in the University for the relief of the poor townspeople.
Notwithstanding the decline of academical vigour
Accessions to during the eighteenth century, both the professorial staff
professoriate in the
eighteenth century and the public buildings of the University received a
considerable extension. In 1708 the Professorship of

Poetry was founded out of funds bequeathed for the purpose by Henry
Birkhead. In 1724 the Regius Professorship of Modern History was
established by George I. In 1728 the Professorship of Botany, then in a state
of suspended animation, was re-endowed out of the munificent bequest of
William Sherard. In 1749 the first Professor of Experimental Philosophy
was appointed, with a salary of 30l., out of the Crewe benefaction. In 1758
the bequest of Charles Viner took effect by the election of William
Blackstone to the new Vinerian Professorship of Common Law. In 1780 the
Clinical Professorship was founded in connection with the Radcliffe
Infirmary. In 1795 the Professorship of Anglo-Saxon was constituted, forty
years after the death of its founder, Dr. Rawlinson, the famous antiquary,
and in 1798 George Aldrich, formerly of Merton College, bequeathed
property for the endowment of Professorships in Anatomy, Medicine, and
Chemistry.
Meanwhile the mediæval aspect of Oxford was
Architectural modified by many new architectural features. Early in
improvements
the century additional buildings sprang up in Magdalen,
Corpus, Queen’s, and Oriel. To the same age belong the Codrington Library
at All Souls’, with the new Library and Peckwater Quadrangle at
Christchurch, and other college buildings. In 1713 the Clarendon Building
was opened to receive the University Press. Books had been printed in
Oxford since 1468, when Caxton’s invention was still on its trial, but
Delegates of the Press were not appointed until 1586, and the University
privilege of printing dates from the patent granted in 1633, at the instance
of Archbishop Laud. After 1669 the University Press was set up and worked
in the Sheldonian Theatre, but the copyright of Clarendon’s ‘History of the
Rebellion’ having been presented to the University, the profits were applied
towards the cost of erecting the fine edifice known as the ‘Clarendon Press’
for 118 years. A still more important benefaction was that of the celebrated
Dr. Radcliffe, who died in 1714, leaving a large sum of money to be
accumulated for the foundation of a Medical Library, an Infirmary, and an
Observatory. The first stone of the library was laid in 1737, all the houses in
‘Cat Street,’ north of St. Mary’s Church, having been demolished to make
room for it. It was opened for the use of students on April 13, 1749, after a
‘two days’ solemnity,’ including a Public Act, and a concert managed by
Handel, whose oratorios had been received with great applause at Oxford
six years earlier, and whose ‘Sampson’ was performed in the Sheldonian

Theatre on the following day. The Infirmary and Observatory were
completed in 1770 and 1795 respectively, but are not under University
control, though closely associated with University studies. In 1788 Sir
Robert Taylor, an architect of some eminence, bequeathed a large sum to
found a building for the cultivation of ‘the European languages,’ but this
bequest did not take full effect until 1848, when the present ‘Taylor
Institution’ was opened. Meanwhile, in 1771, an Act of Parliament had been
passed enabling the City to rebuild Magdalen Bridge, and take down the
east and north gates, the south and west gates having been already
demolished. By these alterations the conversion of Oxford into an
University town was finally consummated, and few of its inhabitants now
realise that it was once a fortified city sheltering a cluster of poor schools
and halls not yet aspiring to the dignity of colleges.
The general history of the University in the present
Effects of the century may be divided into two periods: the first
French war upon
the University. terminated by the Reform Act of 1832, and the great
Opposition to ecclesiastical reaction which followed upon it; the
reforms second embracing the last two or three years of William
IV.’s reign, and the whole reign of Queen Victoria. The
new Examination Statute of 1800, and the subsequent introduction of the
class system,[16] were the only events of any academical importance in the
earlier of these periods, and nothing occurred to disturb the repose of the
University during the last twenty years of George III.’s reign, or the ten
years’ reign of George IV. The domestic records of this interval are meagre
and trivial in the extreme. When the Peace of Amiens was proclaimed in
1802, there seems to have been a short-lived revival of educational vigour
at Oxford; when the war broke out afresh in 1803 volunteers were again
enrolled from the University, and Oxford studies again began to languish. In
1805 these were vigorously attacked by Sydney Smith in the ‘Edinburgh
Review,’ and vigorously defended by Mr. Copleston, afterwards Provost of
Oriel, himself among the foremost of University reformers. While the
country was engaged in its desperate struggle with Napoleon, the ‘class
system’ was being quietly introduced, and supplying a new incentive to
industry. The political animosities which had agitated the University in the
last century had completely died out, but it is certain that Oxford was
profoundly affected by the anti-Jacobin panic which set in after the French
Revolution and lasted for a whole generation. It is, however, some proof of

a latent inclination to moderate Liberalism among Oxford graduates that in
1809 Lord Grenville was elected Chancellor after a contest with Lord
Eldon. On the other hand, the sympathies of the University on all ‘Church
and State’ questions were identical with those of George III. So far back as
1810 a petition was presented against Catholic Emancipation, and when
Robert Peel was elected member for the University in 1817, it was fully
understood that he was to oppose the Catholic Claims. In 1829, the
University Convocation reaffirmed its reprobation of these claims by a
solemn vote. Peel resigned his seat, and upon a new election was defeated
by Sir Robert Inglis. In a like spirit the University petitioned in 1831
against Parliamentary Reform, in 1833 against the Irish Church
Temporalities Bill, and in 1834, with only one dissentient, against the grant
of a charter to the new London University. No doubt, in this last case the
instinctive hostility of Churchmen to a non-religious academical body was
quickened by a less honourable jealousy of a rival institution to be invested
with the power of granting degrees. In spite of the Oxford protest, the
charter was granted at the close of 1836, and in the following year a similar
privilege was conferred upon Durham University.
Two other incidents in University life during this
Reception of the somewhat obscure period deserve a passing notice. In
Allied Sovereigns.
Abolition of the 1814 Oxford was enlivened by the famous visit of the
Mayor’s Oath Allied Sovereigns, when Blucher was received with
enthusiastic plaudits in the Sheldonian Theatre. Had the
loyalty of the University been doubtful, the Prince Regent must have been
reassured by the fervent display of it on this occasion; but these royal visits
had lost their significance when the adhesion of Oxford ceased to be a
factor in Imperial politics, and the subsequent receptions of Queen Adelaide
and Queen Victoria, though almost as hearty as that of Queen Elizabeth,
were tributes of respectful homage and not of political devotion. In 1825 the
mayor and bailiffs of Oxford were released by a document under the
University seal from the penance laid upon them after the great riot on
Scholastica’s Day in 1354, when they were required, as we have seen, to
attend St. Mary’s Church yearly with sixty leading citizens, to celebrate a
mass for the souls of the murdered scholars, and to offer one penny each at
the altar. No sooner was the Sacrifice of the Mass forbidden in the reign of
Elizabeth than the citizens hastened to give up this annual appearance, but
were compelled to resume it by an Order of Council, a litany being

substituted for the mass. The whole ceremony was now abolished; but
another grievance of earlier origin still remained, and was not finally
removed until the year 1859. By the letters patent of Henry III., already
mentioned, dated 1248, the mayor and bailiffs, on taking office, were
directed to swear that they would keep ‘the liberties and customs of the
University,’ the Chancellor having been previously informed, in order that
he might witness the oath personally or by a deputy. This obligation, though
it may have been sometimes evaded, does not seem to have been disputed
for more than six centuries. In 1855, however, the mayor and corporation
requested the University to dispense with the oath. The University at first
demurred, but after friendly conferences gave its sanction to a Bill for
abolishing the oath, upon condition, however, of its being once more taken
by the mayor and sheriff for the last time. In 1859 this Bill, introduced at
the instance of the City, but with the concurrence of the University, was
passed into law, and the standing feud so long maintained between these
ancient corporations was thus brought to an amicable conclusion. The
harmony which has since prevailed between the authorities of the
University and the City may have been partly due to other causes, but it has
certainly been promoted by the disuse of a humiliating formality, well
calculated to revive the memory of barbarous violence on one side and
invidious pretensions on the other.

FOOTNOTES:
[16] See Chapter XVII.

CHAPTER XVII.
OXFORD STUDIES AND EXAMINATIONS IN THE

NINETEENTH CENTURY.

‘The studies of the University were first raised from
Examination Statute their abject state by a statute passed in 1800.’ Such is the
of 1800 and later
amendments testimony of the Oxford University Commissioners
appointed in 1850, and it is amply confirmed by
University records. The Laudian system was doomed to failure from the
first, inasmuch as it provided no security for the capacity of examiners or
against their collusion with the candidates, while these were animated by
little fear of rejection and no hope whatever of distinction. The statute of
1800, for which the credit is mainly due to Dr. Eveleigh, then Provost of
Oriel, was directed to cure these defects. That it was regarded as a vigorous
attempt to raise the standard of degree examinations is proved by the fact
that in 1801, the last year of the ‘old system,’ the number of B.A. degrees
suddenly rose to 250, largely exceeding the average of degrees and even of
matriculations in several preceding years. The new statute was deliberately
based on the Laudian system, in so far as it presupposed an inherent
supremacy in the faculty of Arts, and it was unconsciously based on the old
mediæval curriculum of Trivials and Quadrivials, in so far as it specified
grammar, rhetoric, logic, moral philosophy, and the elements of
mathematics—with the important addition of Latin and Greek literature—as
the essential subjects of examination. But it effected a grand reform in the
method of examination. Candidates were to offer themselves either for what
has since been known as a ‘pass,’ or for Honours, and the Honour-list was
to be divided into two classes, in which the names were to be arranged in
order of merit. There was also to be a further examination for the M.A.
degree, comprising higher mathematical subjects, history, and Hebrew;
while candidates for the B.C.L. degree were to be examined in history and
jurisprudence, besides the subjects required for the B.A. degree. Moreover,
the examiners were thenceforth to be paid by salary, and chosen by

responsible officers to serve for considerable periods. They were solemnly
charged to deliberate maturely and secretly on the merits of the candidates,
sepositis omnino amicitiâ et odio, timore ac spe. Material changes were
introduced into this system by statutes of 1807, modified again in 1809,
1825, 1826, and 1830. The general effect of these changes was to substitute,
in the main, written papers for oral questions, to establish two stated times
in the year for examination, to subdivide the list of honours into three
classes, to relegate mathematics to a ‘School’ by itself, to abrogate the
examination for the M.A. degree, and to make the Greek and Latin
languages, philosophy, and history, the staple of examination in what now
came to be called the Literæ Humaniores School, though permission was
given to illustrate the ancient by modern authors. Meanwhile, the old
scholastic exercise of Responsions in Parviso was replaced by an
elementary examination, bearing the same name, to be passed in the second
year.
Such was the Oxford examination-system when it was
Examination Statute transformed afresh in 1850, by a statute which has been
of 1850 and later
amendments amended and extended by many supplementary
measures. A ‘First Public Examination,’ popularly
known as ‘Moderations,’ was interposed between Responsions and the final
examination for the B.A. degree, thenceforth officially designated the
‘Second Public Examination.’ This intermediate examination, in which
honours are awarded, was specially designed to encourage and test a
scholarlike knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages, ancient history,
philosophy, and logic being mainly reserved for the Final Classical, or
Literæ Humaniores, School. The Honour School of Mathematics was
retained, and two new Schools were established, the one for Natural
Science, the other for Law and Modern History. This last School was
afterwards divided into two schools, of Jurisprudence and of Modern
History, respectively, while a sixth Honour School was added for Theology.
Until the year 1883, two examinations were held annually in each of the six
Honour Schools, but in and since that year one only has been held, and that
in Trinity Term. Two examinations, however, continued to be held annually
for candidates seeking an ordinary degree, and these ‘pass examinations’
were subdivided into several branches, for the purpose of securing a
tolerable degree of proficiency in more than one subject of study.

The important examination statutes of 1850 were in
University contemplation, but not yet in operation, when a Royal
Commission of
1850 Commission was issued, on August 31, in that year, ‘for
the purpose of inquiring into the state, discipline,
studies, and revenues’ of the University and colleges. The report of this
Commission is the most comprehensive review of the whole University
system which has ever been published. It recommended various important
reforms, of which some were effected by an Act of Parliament enacted in
1854, and others through Ordinances framed by executive commissioners,
therein appointed, for the several colleges. In 1850, the sole initiative power
in University legislation, and by far the largest share of University
administration, was still vested in the ‘Hebdomadal Board,’ consisting
solely of heads of colleges with the two proctors, and described by no
unfriendly critic of Oxford institutions as ‘an organised torpor.’ The
assembly of resident and ‘regent’ Masters of Arts, known as the ‘House of
Congregation,’ still existed for the purpose of granting degrees, but its other
business had dwindled to mere formalities. The University Convocation
included, as ever, all Masters of Arts, resident or non-resident, and had the
right of debating, but this right was virtually annulled by the necessity of
speaking in Latin—all but a lost art—and Convocation could only accept or
reject without amendment measures proposed by the Hebdomadal Board.
No student could be a member of the University without belonging to a
college or hall, while every member of a college or hall was compelled to
sleep within its walls, until after his third year of residence. Persons unable
to sign the Thirty-nine Articles were absolutely excluded, not merely from
degrees, but from all access to the University, inasmuch as the test of
subscription was enforced at matriculation. Nevertheless, college
fellowships were further protected against the intrusion of dissenters by the
declaration of conformity to the liturgy required to be made under the Act
of Uniformity. If professorial lectures were not at so low an ebb as in the
days of Gibbon, they were lamentably scarce and ineffective. The
educational function of the University had, in fact, been almost wholly
merged in college tuition, but the scholarships, as well as the fellowships, of
the colleges were fettered by all manner of restrictions, which marred their
value as incentives to industry. The great majority of fellows were bound to
take Holy Orders, and the whole University was dominated by a clerical

spirit, which directly tended to make it, as it had so long been, a focus of
theological controversy.
Though several of the wise and liberal measures
Act of 1854 and recommended by the Commission of 1850 were
new College
Ordinances postponed to a more convenient season, a profound and
most beneficial reform was wrought in the whole spirit
and working of the University system by the Act of 1854, and the College
Ordinances framed under its provisions. The Hebdomadal Board was
replaced by an elective Council, on which Heads of colleges, professors,
and resident Masters of Arts were equally represented. A new
‘Congregation’ was created, embracing all resident members of
Convocation, and soon became a vigorous deliberative assembly, with the
right of speaking in English. The monopoly of colleges was broken down,
and an opening made for ulterior extension by the revival of private halls.
The professoriate was considerably increased, reorganised, and re-endowed,
by means of contributions from colleges. The colleges were emancipated
from their mediæval statutes, were invested with new constitutions, and
acquired new legislative powers. The fellowships were almost universally
thrown open to merit, and the effect of this was not merely to provide ample
rewards for the highest academical attainments, but to place the governing
power within colleges in the hands of able men, likely to promote further
improvements. The number and value of scholarships was largely
augmented, and many, though not all, of the restrictions upon them were
abolished. The great mass of vexatious and obsolete oaths was swept away,
and though candidates for the M.A. degree and persons elected to
fellowships were still required to make the old subscriptions and
declarations, it was enacted that no religious test should be imposed at
matriculation, or on taking a bachelor’s degree. The University itself had
supplemented the extension of its curriculum and examination system by
the foundation of a new museum specially consecrated to natural science.
The permanence of this extension was, however, additionally secured by a
clause introduced into the College Ordinances, whereby it was directed that
fellowships should be appropriated, from time to time, for the
encouragement of all the studies recognised by the University.
Other salutary changes naturally grew out of this
Effect of these comprehensive reform, and far greater progress was

reforms made by the University during the thirty years
immediately following it than in any previous century of
its history. The impulse given to education reacted upon learning and
research; Oxford science began once more to command the respect of
Europe; the professoriate received an accession of illustrious names; and
college tuition, instead of being the mere temporary vocation of fellows
waiting for livings, gradually placed itself on the footing of a regular
profession. Instead of drying up the bounty of founders, as had been
confidently predicted, the reforms of 1854 apparently caused the stream of
benefactions to flow with renewed abundance. Nearly all the older colleges
have extended their buildings, mostly by the aid of private munificence, a
new college has been erected, bearing the name of the Rev. John Keble, and
Magdalen Hall has been refounded, under its original name of Hertford
College, with a large new endowment, provided by Mr. C. Baring.
Meanwhile, a new class of ‘unattached’ or ‘non-collegiate’ students has
been created, the number of which rose to 284 in the year 1880, though it
has since manifested a tendency to fall. The aggregate strength of the
University has been doubled within the same period of thirty-two years, and
the net total of undergraduates in residence has been swelled from about
1,300 to upwards of 2,500, and the annual matriculations have increased in
a like proportion.
The relaxation of the ‘classical monopoly’ and the
Abolition of opening of scholarships was supplemented, in 1871, by
University Tests
a still more important reform—the complete abolition of
University Tests, already reduced by the Act of 1854. This great concession
to religious liberty was brought about by a persistent movement chiefly
emanating from the Universities themselves. In the year 1862 a petition was
presented from 74 resident fellows of colleges at Cambridge, praying for a
repeal of the clause applicable to fellowships in the Act of Uniformity. In
the year 1863, a petition was presented from 106 Heads, professors,
fellows, ex-fellows, and college tutors at Oxford, praying for the removal of
all theological restrictions on degrees. In the year 1868, a petition against
all religious tests, except for degrees in theology, was signed by 80 Heads,
professors, lecturers, and resident fellows at Oxford, while a similar petition
was signed by 123 non-resident fellows and ex-fellows. In the same year a
petition to the same effect was signed by 227 heads and present or former
office-holders and fellows of Cambridge. Separate petitions, specially

directed against the declaration of conformity, were presented by Trinity
and Christ’s Colleges at Cambridge. Supported by the whole
Nonconformist body and by the Liberal party in Parliament, these efforts
were ultimately successful. The contest in Parliament lasted no less than
nine years, and one Bill after another was defeated or withdrawn, but in
1871 the abolition of University Tests was adopted as a government
measure and accepted by the House of Lords. Experience has not justified
the fears of its opponents, and neither the religious character nor the social
peace of the University has been in the slightest degree impaired by the
admission of Nonconformists to its degrees and endowments.
But the impulse given to academical education by the
Local examinations,legislation of 1854 is not to be measured solely by the
and board for
examination of internal growth of the University, now accessible to
public schools every class in the nation. Since that period it has
initiated and carried out two educational movements of
national importance, the one in concert, the other in friendly rivalry, with
the University of Cambridge. The first of these was the scheme of local
examinations for pupils of middle-class schools, established by a statute
passed at Oxford in 1857, afterwards adopted by Cambridge, and now
exercising a regulative influence on middle-class education throughout
England. The examination of public schools by a joint-board representing
the two Universities was originated in 1873, and was doubtless facilitated
by the fear, then prevalent, of State-inspection being applied to endowed
schools. At these examinations certificates are granted, which, under certain
limitations, carry with them an exemption from Responsions at Oxford, as
well as from a part of the ‘previous examinations’ at Cambridge, and of the
military examinations. Such certificates may be regarded as supplying the
rudiments of a missing link not only between secondary and University
education, but also between secondary and professional education.
In the meantime, a new wave of democratic sentiment
Commission of in Parliament impelled Mr. Gladstone to issue, in
inquiry (1872) and
Act of 1876 January 1872, a commission to inquire into academical
property and revenues, as a preliminary step to further
legislation. The functions of this commission were strictly limited to
investigation and to matters of finance, no power being entrusted to it either
of passing judgment on the actual application of University and college

funds, or of suggesting a better application of them—much less of entering
on general questions of University reform. These questions were destined to
be reopened, and a fresh appropriation of academical endowments to be
made, by the Conservative Government which came into office in the
spring of 1874. At this period the system established by the Oxford Reform
Act of 1854, and the executive commission thereby appointed, had barely
taken root, but a vigorous agitation was already in progress against it,
mainly on the ground that it had done too much for educational competition
and too little for learning or research. The principle upon which a fresh
commission was now demanded was not so much the expediency of
redistributing college revenues for the benefit of the colleges themselves, as
the expediency of diverting them from the colleges to the University,
especially in the interests of Natural Science. The Marquis of Salisbury, as
Chancellor of the University and an important member of the government,
heartily espoused these claims, and introduced a Bill expressly designed to
enrich the University at the expense of the colleges.
This Bill was passed, with some amendments, in
Commission of 1877. Its preamble recited the expediency of making
1877
larger provision out of college revenues for University
purposes. It proceeded to institute an executive commission, armed with
sweeping powers of revision and legislation; but, as a safeguard for the
interests of colleges, it gave each college, not indeed a veto upon the
statutes to be framed, but a share in framing them, by means of elected
representatives, associated pro tempore with the commissioners. It further
enjoined that in assessing contributions on colleges, regard should first be
had to the educational wants of the college itself. Accordingly, the
commissioners sat for several years, and elaborated an entirely new code
both for the University and for the colleges, repealing all previous college
statutes or ordinances, but leaving the legislative constitution of the
University untouched. They charged the colleges with an aggregate subsidy
of 20,000l. and upwards for the endowment of professorships and
readerships or lectureships, the contributions of wealthy colleges being
fixed on a higher scale than those of poorer colleges. By the same process
they set free a certain amount of University income for such objects as the
maintenance of buildings and libraries. They regulated the payment, duties,
and appointment of professors and readers, as well as the nomination of
University examiners, which had been subjected to much criticism. They

made some approach towards an organisation of University teaching, by
grouping studies roughly under Faculties, and giving ‘Boards of Faculties’ a
certain limited control over the distribution of lectures. They formulated
extremely minute rules for the publication of University and college
accounts. They remodelled the whole system of college fellowships,
attaching the greater number of them to University or college offices, but
retaining about one hundred sinecure fellowships, terminable in seven
years, with an uniform stipend of 200l. a year, and subject to no obligations
of residence or celibacy. With certain exceptions, they abolished all clerical
restrictions on fellowships or headships, but regulated various details of
college management and tuition which the former commissioners had left in
the discretion of each governing body. They established an uniform
standard of age and value for college scholarships, requiring, as a rule, that
no candidate should have exceeded nineteen, and that no scholarship should
be worth more than 80l. annually. They also provided for the appropriation
of any surplus revenues which should accrue, to college or University
purposes.
It is too soon to pronounce a judgment on the effect of
Character of last these reforms, some of which have not yet come into full
reforms
operation, and which have been supplemented by
incessant changes in the examination statutes, made by the University itself.
Indeed, notwithstanding the bold amendments which it has undergone, the
constitution and educational system of the University must be regarded as
still in a state of transition. It has ceased to be a mere aggregate of colleges,
but it has not ceased to be essentially collegiate in many parts of its
organisation, and the dualism of the professorial and tutorial systems has
been perpetuated. Professorships have been freely created, but attendance
on their lectures has not been made obligatory, and it has been found easier
to provide them with salaries out of college revenues than to provide them
with audiences at the expense of college lecturers. The number of necessary
examinations has been increased, and many obstacles have been thrown in
the way of persistent idleness; but the door of the University has not been
closed against complete ignorance by an effective entrance examination,
and a dunce ignorant of his letters may still matriculate and reside, if he can
find a college to admit him. The student is free to choose his Final School,
and, unless he chooses the Classical School, he may abandon Latin and
Greek, in any case, after Moderations. But a minimum proficiency in these

languages is still necessary for Responsions as well as for Moderations,
several alternatives for which have been offered with an utter disregard of
symmetry or equality between studies. Women have been admitted to
certain University examinations, but not to all, nor on the same terms as
men; and the names of those who obtain honours are published in a class-
list, but not the ordinary class-list. Religious equality has been established
for most purposes, but not for all, and the Faculty of Theology maintains its
exclusive connection not only with the Anglican Church but with the
Anglican clergy. Such are some of the anomalies which have been left to
adjust themselves by successive commissions and successive groups of
University legislators. They have not proved inconsistent with a vigorous
internal life, but while they exist and continue to be multiplied, the
University cannot be said to have attained a state of stable equilibrium, nor
can a poetical unity be imparted to an historical narrative of recent
University reforms.

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE NEO-CATHOLIC REVIVAL, KNOWN AS THE ‘OXFORD

MOVEMENT.’

The great Neo-Catholic Revival of the nineteenth
Character of the century is so intimately identified with Oxford that it
‘Oxford Movement’
came to be widely known as the ‘Oxford Movement.’ It
was less important than Methodism in its purely moral aspect, since it was
far less popular and practical, leaving no such profound impression upon
the religious life of the nation. On the other hand, it exercised a more
powerful influence on Anglican theology, since it wore a more scholarlike
garb, was more attractive to cultivated and imaginative minds, allied itself
with the speculative and historical spirit of the age, and purported to be
essentially constructive or reconstructive. It had from the first a centre, and
solid base of operations, in the University, with branches stretching far and
wide, wherever zealous Churchmen were found. The assaults of Methodism
upon religious apathy in high places had been more in the nature of guerilla
warfare; those of ‘Tractarianism,’ as it came to be called, assumed the
character of a well-organised campaign.
Whatever may have been the aims of its leaders, the
A reaction against Oxford Movement was in truth a reaction, and its real
the rising tide of
Liberalism origin must be sought in political rather than in
ecclesiastical causes. The question of Catholic
Emancipation, which had been stifled at the Union, was revived in 1812
and fiercely debated for the next seventeen years. The measure was equally
opposed by the High and Low Church parties in the Church, but carried in
1829 by a Tory Government in deference to political exigencies. It was
followed by the Reform Act, and in 1832 the reformed Parliament
assembled, with a large majority, not merely Erastian, but hostile to the
National Church. The vote of the bishops on the Reform Bill had exposed
them to popular obloquy; Lord Grey himself had openly threatened them,

and the press was full of attacks on Episcopacy and the Establishment. Lord
Grey’s Act for suppressing ten Irish bishoprics was regarded as the first
outburst of the gathering storm; timid Churchmen trembled for the very
existence of their Church, and the Oxford Movement was set on foot with
the deliberate purpose of defending the Church and the Christianity of
England against the anti-Catholic aggressions of the dominant Liberalism.
The University of Oxford was the natural centre for
Oriel the centre ofsuch a reaction. The constitution of the University and
the Movement
colleges was semi-ecclesiastical; the Heads were clerical
dignitaries; nearly all the fellows were bound to be in Holy Orders. Among
the colleges, Oriel then held the first rank, both as a place of education, and
as the home of a speculative and learned society among the fellows.
Copleston, its last Provost, had been a man of remarkable capacity, and he
was ably seconded by such colleagues as Davison and Whately. The system
of tuition at Oriel was the best in Oxford, and as it was the first college to
throw open its fellowships, it was able to attract the ablest of the young
graduates. It was known that Oriel fellows were selected not merely on the
evidence of the class-list, or by the results of competitive examination, but
also by a discriminating, though arbitrary, estimate of their social qualities
and probable intellectual development. They were, therefore, a select body,
somewhat inclined to mutual admiration, producing little, but freely
criticising everything. The result was an Oriel school of thought, commonly
known as the Noetics, who applied an unsparing logic to received opinions,
especially those concerning religious faith, but whose strength lay rather in
drawing inferences and refuting fallacies than in examining and settling the
premisses from which their syllogisms were deduced. Still, Oriel fostered a
bright and independent intellectual life of its own; the Oriel school was a
standing protest against the prevailing orthodoxy of mere conformity, and it
became the congenial head-quarters of the Oxford Movement.
Pusey and Keble were among the fellows of Oriel,
John Henry when John Henry Newman was elected to a fellowship
Newman
in 1823, and later, in 1826, became tutor in succession to
Jelf. Newman’s early life at Oxford was a solitary one. He did not seek
friends, and in the Oriel common-room his shy and retiring nature
sometimes concealed his real power. As Wesley’s sympathies were
originally with High Church doctrines, so Newman’s were originally with

Evangelical doctrines; he was connected with the Evangelical set at St.
Edmund Hall; he was for a time secretary to the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, and he actually helped to start the ‘Record’
newspaper. In the early development of his ideas he owed much to the
robust intellect of Whately and the accurate criticism of Hawkins, who
succeeded Copleston as Provost in 1827. But his reverence was reserved for
Keble, whose ‘Christian Year’ appeared in the same year and gave the first
secret impulse to the Movement, of which Newman became the head. In the
following year, Pusey, then little known to Newman, returned to Oxford as
Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christchurch, unconsciously destined to
give his own name to Newman’s followers.
At this period Newman had no intention of heading
Origin of ‘Tracts the Oxford Movement, still less of founding a new party
for the Times’
in the Church. His Evangelical principles were gradually
falling away from him, and he was girding himself up for a great struggle
with Secularism as represented by a Liberal Government, but the first steps
in the Tractarian agitation were not taken by him. In 1832 he travelled in
Italy with his friend and pupil, Richard Hurrell Froude; and it was from him
that Newman imbibed his veneration for the Virgin and the Saints, his
antipathy to the Reformation, and his respectful toleration of the Roman
Catholic Church. They went so far as to inquire upon what conditions they
would be allowed to communicate in that Church, but were repelled on
hearing that a subscription to the decisions of the Council of Trent would be
required. It was during Newman’s absence abroad, in July 1833, that Keble
preached his Assize Sermon on ‘National Apostasy,’ which may be said to
have struck the first note of the Movement, and in the same year Peter
Maurice sounded the alarm against ‘Popery in Oxford.’ A series of ‘Tracts
for the Times’ was projected at a conference, also held during Newman’s
absence, by a small body of his friends, but the plan was matured at
subsequent conferences in Oriel, where Newman was present, and Keble
warmly supported it in letters of advice to which the utmost deference was
paid. The proposed aim of these Tracts was expository rather than
controversial; they purported to enlighten the prevailing ignorance on
Church principles and Church history. They were to appear anonymously,
and each writer was to be responsible only for his own production. The
difficulty of maintaining this principle of limited liability was foreseen from

the first, and prudent friends of the Movement were in favour of a judicious
censorship, but Newman was inflexible, and his will prevailed.
The immediate outcome of these Oriel conferences
Association formed was the formation of an association designed to rally all
friends of the Church against the common enemy. This
was the signal for which zealous Churchmen had been waiting, and it met
with an enthusiastic response in all parts of the country. An address to the
Archbishop of Canterbury was drawn up and signed by eight thousand of
the clergy, insisting upon the necessity of restoring Church discipline,
maintaining Church principles, and resisting the growth of
latitudinarianism. A large section of the laity ranged themselves on the side
of the revival. Meetings were held throughout England, and the King
himself volunteered a declaration of his strong affection for the National
Church, now roused from its apathy, and prepared to defend itself
vigorously, not merely as a true branch of the Catholic Church, but as a co-
ordinate power with the State.
Newman had returned from Italy deeply imbued with
Newman assumes the conviction that he had a definite mission to fulfil. He
the lead
was no less firmly assured of the need for individual
action at this juncture than impelled to it by his own self-reliant nature.
While others, therefore, were urging combinations and committees as the
best methods of working, Newman’s strong individuality revolted from
joint control, especially in the form of a ‘Committee of Revision,’ and
pressed him forward to strike the first blow for himself. He took counsel
with Froude alone, when, in the autumn of 1833, he suddenly brought out
the first of that series of Tracts from which his party derived its familiar
name of Tractarians. In so doing he took his own colleagues by surprise,
and precipitated the crisis destined to result from the publication of the
Tracts. From that day forth he was the recognised leader of the Tractarians.
No one among them was equally fitted for that position. Keble was too
modest and studious by disposition, Pusey was not an original pioneer of
the movement, Froude was disqualified by delicate health. Newman stepped
naturally into the place. The influence which he gained in his own college
as a tutor, and in the University as a preacher from the pulpit of St. Mary’s,
had drawn round him a band of followers; his sympathetic character won
the confidence of young minds; his confessions of speculative doubt added

weight to his acceptance of dogmatic authority. Yet the secret of his
personal ascendency was never fully revealed to himself, nor did he ever
fully realise the impression produced by his sermons. To him the Tractarian
Movement was ‘no movement, but the spirit of the times.’ He felt himself,
not the leader of a new party, but a loyal son of the old Church; now
awakened from her lethargy. He claimed no allegiance and issued no
commands. It was through friends and disciples, as we learn from himself,
that his principles were spread, and, as in the case of Socrates, their reports
of his conversations were perhaps the main source of the spell which he
exercised over the University and the Church.
The adhesion of Pusey in 1835 was a great accession
Spread and objects of strength to the Tractarians. He had contributed a Tract
of the movement.
to the series in December 1833, but he did not formally
Publication of Tract
XC. join the Movement until a year and a half later. His
learning, social connections, and official position gave it
a certain dignity and solidity in which it had been lacking. Recruits now
offered themselves in abundance, and gifted young men spent their days
and nights in poring over materials for the Library of the Fathers originated
by Pusey, or in journeying from place to place, in the spirit of the Methodist
Revivalists, though in the pursuit of a very different ideal. But the influence
of Tractarianism over Oxford thought must not be exaggerated. While it
fascinated many subtle and imaginative minds of a high order, and gathered
into itself much of the spiritual and even of the intellectual life of the
University, there were many robust intellects and earnest hearts which it not
only failed to reach but stirred into hostility. If it would be easy to draw up
an imposing list of eminent Oxford men who became Tractarians, it would
not be less easy to enumerate an equal number of equally eminent men who
consistently opposed Tractarianism, and predicted that it must lead to
Romanism. Nothing was further from the original intentions and
expectations of Newman himself. His object was to revive the usages and
doctrines of the primitive Church; to co-operate, indeed, with the Church of
Rome, so far as possible, but to keep aloof from its pernicious corruptions;
to establish the catholicity of the Anglican Church, but, above all, to hold
the via media laid down by its founders. His faith in Anglicanism was first
disturbed in the Long Vacation of 1839 by his supposed discovery of a
decisive analogy between the position of the Monophysite heretics and that
of the Anglican communion. Still, though he was gradually assimilating the

doctrines, he rebelled against the abuses and excesses, of the Roman
Church. Anglicanism as a distinctive creed had become untenable to him,
but he clung to a hope that its title might be lineally deduced from the
primitive Church, instead of being founded on a secession from the Church
of Rome. It was in this frame of mind that he published Tract XC. in the
year 1841, for the purpose of showing that the Articles of the English
Church were directed, not against the doctrines of the Church of Rome as
interpreted by the Council of Trent, but against earlier heresies disavowed
by that Council.
This Tract brought the Movement to a climax. It was
Collapse of received with a storm of indignation throughout the
Tractarianism, and
secession of country. The bishops delivered charges against it, the
Newman great mass of Churchmen regarded it as an attack on the
Protestant Establishment, and a direct invitation to
Romanism. The Bishop of Oxford intervened, and the farther issue of Tracts
was stopped. Henceforth the real tendency of Tractarianism was disclosed,
and its promoters were hopelessly discredited. Newman found, to his own
great surprise, that his power was shattered. He retired, during Lent 1840, to
his parish at Littlemore, entrusting St. Mary’s to a curate, in view of his
possible resignation. His loyalty to the English Church wavered more and
more as he renewed his study of the Arian controversy, and his misgivings
were intensified by the hostile attitude of the bishops, as well as by an
incident which to a secular mind would have appeared trivial—the
institution of the Jerusalem bishopric on a semi-Anglican and semi-
Lutheran basis. His resignation of St. Mary’s in the autumn of 1843, two
years after the publication of Tract XC., was due to an impulse of
despondency on failing to dissuade a young friend from conversion to
Romanism. After preaching his last sermon there he retired into lay-
communion, giving up all idea of acting upon others, and turning all his
thoughts inwards. Two years later, on October 8, 1845, his remaining
difficulties being removed, he was himself received into the Church of
Rome, and finally left Oxford early in the following year. Though his
defection had long been foreseen, it caused a profound shock throughout
the English Church. The first panic was succeeded by a reaction; some
devoted adherents followed him to Rome; others relapsed into lifeless
conformity; and the University soon resumed its wonted tranquillity.

The ‘Hampden Controversy,’ in 1836, may be
The ‘Hampden regarded as an episode of the Tractarian revival, already
Controversy’
in full course of development. This controversy arose
out of Dr. Hampden’s Bampton Lectures on Scholastic Philosophy,
delivered in 1882, which, however, had attracted little attention until he was
appointed Regius Professor of Divinity four years later. No sooner was this
appointment known, than an anti-Hampden Committee was formed, of
which Pusey and Newman were members. The Crown was actually
petitioned to recall its nomination, but this petition was coldly rejected by
Lord Melbourne, and a vote of censure on Dr. Hampden, proposed by the
Hebdomadal Board, was defeated in Convocation by the Proctors’ joint-
veto—a very unusual, but perfectly constitutional, exercise of the Proctorial
authority. A war of pamphlets ensued, and the vote of censure being
reintroduced, after a change of Proctors, was carried by an overwhelming
majority. According to the opinion of eminent counsel, the proceeding was
illegal, as transgressing the jurisdiction of the University under the Charter
of 1636, but the sentence was never reversed, and Dr. Hampden remained
under the ban of the University, excluded from various privileges of his
office, until his elevation to the See of Hereford in 1847. The opposition to
him then broke out afresh, and the Dean of Hereford, in a letter to Lord
John Russell, held out a threat of resistance to the Royal congé d’élire. The
answer of Lord John Russell was such as might be expected, but thirteen
bishops supported the Dean’s protest by a remonstrance, which Lord John
Russell met by a peremptory refusal to make the prerogative of the Crown
dependent on the caprice of a chance majority at one University, largely
composed of persons who had since joined the Church of Rome.
Nevertheless, a final attempt was made to negative the ‘confirmation’ of Dr.
Hampden’s appointment at Bow Church. An argument on this point in the
Court of Queen’s Bench ended in a dismissal of the case, owing to
differences of opinion among the judges, and on March 25, 1848, Dr.
Hampden was duly consecrated Bishop.
On the other hand, while Newman was in retirement
Proceedings against at Littlemore, Pusey was suspended from preaching in
Pusey and Ward
the University pulpit for two years, on a report from a
board appointed to examine a sermon delivered by him at Christ Church, in
which he was alleged to have affirmed the Real Presence in a sense
inconsistent with the doctrines of the Church. Soon afterwards, Dr.

Hampden, as Regius Professor of Divinity, inhibited from his B.D. degree a
candidate who had declined to be examined by him on Tradition and
Transubstantiation. The right of examination was challenged by the
candidate, but upheld by the Delegates of Appeals, to whom the question
was referred. On November 20, 1844, Mr. Ward, a fellow of Balliol, was
summoned before the Vice-Chancellor, and questioned respecting the
authorship of a book entitled ‘The Ideal of a Christian Church.’ A war of
pamphlets ensued, but in the end, on February 13, 1845, a proposition was
submitted to Convocation, densely crowded with non-residents,
condemning Ward’s doctrines as inconsistent with the Articles, with his
subscription thereto, and with his own good faith in subscribing. This
resolution was carried by a large majority, and a further resolution, for the
degradation of Ward, was carried by a smaller majority. A third resolution,
condemning Tract XC., had been appended, but was negatived by the joint
veto of the Proctors. It had actually been intended to subjoin to the first
resolution a declaration annexing a new sense to subscription, and thus
creating a new test, but this addition was ultimately withdrawn in deference
to a legal opinion, which also denied the validity of Ward’s deprivation.
With these proceedings the academical history of the
Effect of the Tractarian Movement may properly be closed, though
‘Oxford Movement’
many distinguished members of the University joined
the Church of Rome at a later period, especially after the celebrated
judgment in the ‘Gorham Case,’ establishing liberty of opinion on
Baptismal Regeneration. For several years after Newman’s conversion, the
progress of the Neo-Catholic Revival was arrested, and when it took a new
departure under the name of Ritualism, it ceased to draw its inspiration
from the University of Oxford. Nevertheless, the work of Newman and his
fellows left its mark on the University as well as on the English Church.
The effect of his speculative teaching was infinitely weakened by his own
conversion to Rome, but the effect of his practical teaching could not be
dissipated. In the widespread restoration of churches, in the improvement of
church-services, and in the greater energy of religious life within the
Anglican communion, we may still recognise the influence for good which
emanated from the Oriel common-room.
Thirty years after his own suspension, Dr. Pusey, now
Controversy on the regarded as a champion of orthodoxy, came forward
Endowment of the

Greek with certain other Doctors of Divinity, to bring a charge
Professorship.
Defeat of Mr. of heresy against Mr. Jowett, of Balliol, the Regius
Gladstone in 1865 Professor of Greek, who had contributed to the volume
called ‘Essays and Reviews.’ A suit was instituted in the
Chancellor’s Court, and on February 6, 1863, a judgment was delivered by
Mr. Mountague Bernard, as assessor. This judgment disallowed the
defendant’s protest against the jurisdiction of the Court in spiritual matters,
or over a Regius Professor; but, in effect, arrested the proceedings without
deciding the case on its merits. A somewhat undignified controversy
followed, and greatly disturbed the peace of the University, on the question
of increasing the very meagre endowment of the Greek Professorship—a
measure which Dr. Pusey opposed on the sole ground that it would
strengthen the position of the existing Professor. The partisanship
engendered by the long struggle on this question divided the senior
members of the University into hostile camps, and often determined their
votes on matters which had no connection with the subject. At last, on
February 18, 1865, a compromise was effected, by accepting the offer of
Christchurch to endow the Professorship. The University, in truth, was
heartily sick of the controversy, and even the High Church residents were
unwilling to please the non-resident clergy by perpetuating an apparent
injustice which damaged their own credit with the abler students. In the
following summer, Mr. Gladstone, who had been elected Member of
Parliament for the University in 1847, and whose seat had been contested at
every subsequent election, was defeated by Mr. Gathorne Hardy. This event
established the supremacy of the Conservative party in the constituency,
and, though a contest took place in 1878, the result was never doubtful, and
the fierce passions incident to constant trials of political strength have
sensibly died away. Thus, two fruitful sources of academical discord were
removed within a few months of each other. The last twenty-one years have
witnessed many warm discussions and close divisions in the University
legislature, but they have been mainly on academical issues, and have
seldom been embittered by the odium theologicum. Since 1865, a tacit
concordat has prevailed between the two great schools of thought in
Oxford, and a philosophical toleration of opinion has superseded the
intolerant dogmatism, not confined to one party in the Church, which had
its origin in the Neo-Catholic Revival.

CHAPTER XIX.
THE UNIVERSITY IN 1886

The last chapter of University history covers a period
Reign of Queen within living memory, and practically coextensive with
Victoria
the reign of Queen Victoria. Its main interest consists in
the rapid succession of theological controversies which have agitated the
academical mind, and in the series of internal reforms dating from 1850.
Both of these subjects have been separately considered, but it still remains
to review briefly the strange transformation wrought in the various aspects
of University life within the lifetime of the present generation, not so much
by external interference as by the natural growth of new social conditions.
On the accession of Queen Victoria the college-
State of the system was already established on its present basis, and
University on the
Queen’s accession effective University examinations had put an end to the
licensed idleness of the eighteenth century. But the
University and the colleges were still governed respectively by antiquated
codes of statutes, which it would have been no less disastrous than
impossible to enforce strictly, but from which, as we have seen, it required
the intervention of the Legislature to release them. Though a considerable
number of able students destined for the Bar were attracted by scholarships
and the prospect of fellowships, Oxford was still mainly a clerical and
aristocratic seminary, exercising a very slight influence on the scientific or
commercial world, and little affected by their fashions. Until it was
connected with the metropolis by railway, it retained the distinctive
character of a provincial town, and many eccentric recluses of a type now
obsolete were still to be found in college rooms, who had never entered a
London club or drawing-room. The whole authority of the University was,
in fact, exerted to keep the railway at a distance, and the Oxford branch was
not opened before June 12, 1844. Though Oxford was much frequented by
visitors in the summer term, not without injury to continuity of study, its
atmosphere was still essentially academical, if not scholastic, and the

conversation as well as the social tone of its residents, both graduates and
undergraduates, differed sensibly from those of their contemporaries in the
metropolis and elsewhere. Oxford Dons had not altogether lost the
traditional characteristics of their class; the model Oxford first-class man,
assuming to have mastered classical literature, Greek philosophy, and
ancient history, which he regarded as the staple of human knowledge, was
accused of exhibiting the pride of intellect in its purest form; young priests
of the new ‘Oxford School’ assuredly carried sacerdotal presumption to its
logical extreme; and the chartered libertinism of ‘fast men’ in one or two
Oxford colleges sometimes brought scandal on the whole University. No
doubt the habits of Oxford ‘collegians’ fifty years ago would have
compared favourably with those of their grandfathers, still more with those
of the squalid but industrious students who begged their way to the
University in the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, hard drinking and its
concomitant vices were by no means obsolete, even in common-rooms, and
though undergraduates cultivated the manners of young gentlemen, their
ordinary moral code was probably but little above that which then prevailed
in the army and the navy. Side by side, however, with the self-indulgent
circles of undergraduate society, there was a limited set deeply impressed
by the ascetic teaching of the Neo-Catholic school, whose practical
influence on its disciples resembled in many respects that of the Evangelical
school at Cambridge, however different in its theological basis. The
prevailing narrowness and intensity of theological opinion was perhaps
favoured by the narrowness of the University curriculum. Classics and
mathematics retained a monopoly of studies; few wasted time on modern
languages, history, or natural science; while music and art in all its aspects
were regarded by most as feminine accomplishments. Since professors were
very scarce, and tutors (being fellows) were unable to marry, family life and
social intercourse with ladies had no place in an University career. The
members of each college associated comparatively little with ‘out-college
men,’ in the absence of clubs, debating societies, and other bonds of non-
collegiate union. Rowing and cricket were vigorously cultivated by young
men from the great public schools, and hunting was carried on, especially
by noblemen and gentlemen-commoners, with a lordly disregard of
economy; but for the mass of students there was no great choice of games
and recreations, at least in the winter. Those who did not aspire to Honours,
being the great majority, had no occasion to read hard, and often lived for

amusement only, since there was an interval of full two years between
Responsions and ‘the Schools,’ unbroken by any examination. Those who
read for Honours generally read with a steadiness and singleness of purpose
incompatible with much attention to any other pursuit. Various as these
elements were, they were readily assimilated by the University, which
seldom failed to leave a distinctive stamp upon one who had passed through
it, and Oxford culture retained a peculiar flavour of its own.
In the course of the last fifty years, a profound though
Influence of recent almost unseen change has gradually passed over the face
changes
of the old University. The introduction of representative
government into the academical constitution has not only cleared away
many abuses, but has at once popularised and centralised University
administration. The recognition of Unattached Students has broken down
the monopoly of colleges; the abolition of close fellowships has infused
new blood and new ideas into the more backward collegiate bodies; the
spontaneous development of numerous clubs and associations—athletic,
literary, or political—has created many new ties among undergraduates, and
weakened the old exclusive spirit of college partisanship. The ‘Combined
Lecture System,’ under which the inmates of one college may receive
instruction in another, has also favoured a division of labour among tutors
which is directly conducive to specialism in teaching. The great extension
of the professoriate, including the new order of University Readers, and still
more the liberal encouragement of new studies, has infinitely expanded the
intellectual interests both of teachers and of students; the admission of
Nonconformists and the progress of free thought have powerfully modified
theological bigotry; the multiplication of feminine influences has
undermined the ideal of semi-monastic seclusion, and greatly increased the
innocent æsthetic distractions which are the most formidable rivals of the
austerer Muses. The gulf between Oxford society and the great world
outside, never very impassable, has been effectually bridged over in every
direction. A very large proportion of professors and college tutors have
travelled widely; many are well known in London as contributors to
scientific and literary periodicals or otherwise; while Oxford itself is
constantly thronged with visitors from the metropolis. In ceasing to be
clerical and aristocratic, the University has become far more cosmopolitan;
all religions are there mingled harmoniously, nor is it uncommon to meet in

the streets young men of Oriental race and complexion wearing academical
costume.
In the meantime, a marked and widespread
Present character of reformation has been wrought in the morals of the
the University
University, and notwithstanding the influx of a large
plebeian element, the manners of undergraduates have become gentler as
their tastes have become more refined. The ostentation of wealth has been
visibly diminished, and, notwithstanding the increase of amusements, there
is probably more of plain living and high thinking in modern Oxford than in
the Oxford of Charles II. or Elizabeth. The University, it is true, has yet to
harmonise many conflicting elements, which mar the symmetry of its
constitution; but it is becoming more and more identified with the highest
intellectual aspirations of the nation as a whole. In ceasing to be the
intellectual stronghold of the mediæval Church, or the instrument of Tudor
statecraft, or the chosen training-school for the Anglican clergy, it may have
lost something of its ancient supremacy, but it has asserted its national
character; and it has perhaps never exercised a more widespread control
over the national mind than it possesses in these latter years of the
nineteenth century.

INDEX.

Abbeys in the neighbourhood of Oxford, 3, 50
Abbot, George, archbp. of Canterbury, 104, 108
Abelard, 4, 7
Abendon, Henry de, warden of Merton, 58
Abingdon abbey, 3;
outrage on the monks in 1327, 37
Academical life, see Oxford University
Act of Uniformity passed in 1662, its application to College fellowships,
152
Addison, Joseph, 179
Aldrich, H., dean of Christchurch, 164
Alfred the Great, alleged foundation of the University by, 1;
Asser’s biography of, 1;
foundation of University College attributed to, 4
All Souls college, see under Oxford
Allied Sovereigns, reception of in 1814, 190
Anne, queen, visits Oxford 26 Aug. 1702, 164
Anselm, 4
Aristotelian philosophy, teachers of the mendicant Orders the leading
exponents of, 50
Aristotle, his Natural Philosophy, 4;
recognised as the supreme authority on rhetoric, logic, and all three
philosophies, 65

Arran, Earl of, becomes Chancellor, 167
Articles, Thirty-nine, subscription to, 92, 104, 173, 180;
the Three, 125;
the Six, 80
Arundel marbles presented in 1677, 155
Ashmolean Museum opened in 1683, 155
Asser, his contemporary biography of King Alfred, 1
Association formed in support of the Church, 208
Atterbury, F., dean of Christ Church, 165
Augustines, see Monks and Friars
Austins’, or disputations, 49
Averroes, 4
Avicenna, 4
Avignon, 34

Bacon, Roger, 8;
liberal spirit of his teaching, 52
Bainbridge, John, 119
Balliol college, 15, 17
Basle, 57, 58
Beaumont palace at Oxford, 5, 6
Benedictines, 7, 49
Bentham, Jeremy, 179;
his objection to signing the 39 Articles, 180
Berkeley, bp., 183
Bernard, 4
Bible, authorized version of, Oxford scholars engaged in it, 103
‘Black Congregation,’ 66

Black Death, ravages of the, 37
Blackstone, sir Will., his professorial lectures, 180
Boarding schools, 3
Boccaccio, 28
Bodleian Library, 59-61;
see also Humphry, Duke
Bodley, sir Thomas, refounded the University Library in 1602, 95, 96
Bologna, 7, 16;
school of law in the University of, 4
Botanic Gardens, 116
Boyle, Robert, 154
Brasenose college, 74
Brent, sir Nathaniel, warden of Merton, 119;
chairman of the Parliamentary Visitors, 140
Buckingham, duke of, 107
Burke, Edmund, declines an honorary D.C.L. degree, 185
Burnet, Bp., 162;
his complaints of Oxford Toryism, 164
Button, Ralph, of Merton coll., 142

Cambridge, early secession of students to, 38;
the University less Jacobite than Oxford, 164
Canterbury college, 32
‘Cardinal College,’ see under Oxford, Ch. Ch.
Carleton, George, bp. of Chichester, selected to represent England at the
Synod of Dort, 103
Carmelites, 50
Castle, Oxford, 2
Catholic emancipation, petition against, in 1810, 189

‘Chamber-dekyns,’ or unattached students, 22, 23;
their disorderly conduct in early times, 22;
abolished by the statute of 1432, 22
Champeaux, William of, tutor of Abelard, 7
Charles I. visits Oxford in August 1636, 116;
marches into Oxford 1642, after the battle of Edgehill, 128;
is lodged at Christ Church, 128;
summons his so-called Parliament (at Oxford), in June 1644, 133;
orders special forms of prayer to be used in college chapels for the
success of his cause, 134
Charles II., his first visit to Oxford (1665), 156;
his second visit (1681), 157
Charlett, Dr., Master of University College, 182
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 28
Chesterfield, Lord, 176
Cheynell, F., 138
Chillingworth, William, 116
Christ Church, 75, 78, 128
Church, the, the foster-mother of the University, 3;
association formed in support of, 208, 209;
effect of the Oxford Movement on, 215
Cimabue, 28
Civil War, first events of, as affecting the University, 127;
last two years of, 132-134
Clarendon building and Press, 186-7
Clarendon, earl of, his evidence on the results of the Parliamentary
Visitation, 150
Classical lectureships founded, 78
Classics, become the staple of University studies after the Restoration,
155

Cleveland, Barbara Villiers, Lady Castlemaine, afterw. Duchess of, 156
Coffee-houses, 150, 156
Coke, Edward, 106
Colet, John, 71
College disputations, 25;
gardens, 156;
leases regulated by Acts of 13 and 18 Eliz., 89, 90;
Ordinances framed under the University Reform Act of 1854, 196,
197;
their beneficial effects, 197, 198;
plate, 128, 132
Colleges, rise of, 15;
early Oxford Colleges not confined to one Faculty, 16;
a safe and well-regulated home to younger students, 24;
their superiority to lodging-houses or halls, 25;
Colleges and Chantries Act, 80;
leniency towards, 81-83;
regarded with favour as seminaries of classical learning, 82;
invested by Leicester with increased control of University government,
90;
see also Oxford Colleges and Halls
Collegiate system, perhaps borrowed from Paris, 16
Commission, Royal, issued 1850, 194, 195;
of inquiry, 1872, 200;
of 1877, statutes made by, 201;
the University as regulated by it, 203
Common-rooms at Oxford, the earliest at Merton coll. in 1661, 156
Commons, House of, assumes authority over the University in 1629, 109;
issues an order for the University (1641), 125, 126;
abolishes subscription to ‘the Three Articles,’ 125
Comprehension Scheme, 164

Conant, Dr., rector of Exeter, appointed vice-chancellor of the University,
148
Constance, Council of, 58
‘Constitution Club,’ the, attacked by a Tory mob, 166;
the scene of a less serious political commotion in 1716, 168;
died out before the end of George I.’s reign, 169
Convocation of the clergy in 1382, 36
Convocation House, 116
Copleston, Bp., his defence of university studies, 188
Copredy Bridge, many Oxford scholars engaged at, 133
Corbet, E., 138
Cordova, 4
Corpus Christi college, 72, 73
Councils, 57
Cranmer, archbp., 80;
tried at Oxford, 84;
his recantation and martyrdom, 84, 85
Crimes of violence committed by scholars, 23
Cromwell, Oliver, visits Oxford in state, May 17, 1649, 144;
becomes chancellor in Jan. 1650, 145;
his liberal treatment of the University, 145;
resigns the chancellorship on July 3, 1657, 147;
his scheme for a new university at Durham, 148
Cromwell, Richard, elected Chancellor of the University, 1657, 148;
resigns the Chancellorship in 1660, 151

Dante, 28
Degrees, 65-67, et passim
‘Determination,’ 63
Disputations, 49, 181;

superseded by a system of public examinations, which soon become
ineffective, 115-117
Dissenters’ Toleration Bill, 1779, 173
Divinity School, 60
Divorce question, the (16th cent.), 75
Domesday book, silence of respecting the University, 2
Dominicans, 49
Dorchester Abbey, 50
Dort, Synod of, 103
Douay, Catholic seminary of, 94
Duppa, Brian, 119
Durham, University of, 148
Durham, William of, the institution founded by, not a college, but an
exhibition-fund to be administered by the University, 17

Earle, John, bp. of Salisbury, 119
Educational movement, the, sprung from the Reformation, popular rather
than academical, 69;
Reasons of this, 69
Edward III., King, charter granted to the University by, 47
‘Edwardine’ code, 81;
iconoclastic in its spirit, 81;
liberal in its dealings with Colleges, 81
Edwardine Visitors, see Visitors
Eighteenth century, decay of University education in, 174, 175;
the dark age of academical history, 174;
contemporary evidence, 175, 176
Eldon, Lord, 176, 189
Elizabeth, Queen, accession of, in Nov. 1558, 87;

see Visitation, Elizabethan;
literature of her reign not academical, 94;
actively patronised Oxford culture in the later part of her reign, 95;
her visits to Oxford in 1566 and 1592, 97, 98
‘Engagement,’ the, 144
‘English nation,’ at Paris, 8
Episcopacy, 123
Erasmus, his testimony to Oxford scholarship in 1497, 70, 71
Eton School, 70
Evelyn, John, 154, 155, 163;
visits Oxford in 1654, 149
Examination instituted for the B.A. and M.A. degrees in 1638, 177;
of Public Schools, Joint-Board for, 199
Examinations, Local (1857), 199;
under the Laudian Statutes, 114
Exeter college, 31
Eynsham, abbey of, 3, 50;
undertakes in 1219 to provide for poor scholars, 12

Fairfax, Lord, his conciliatory proposals to the University (1646), 135;
Fairfax and Cromwell visit Oxford together in state on May 17, 1649,
144
Fell, John, dean of Christ Church, 141
Fell, Mrs., 142
Fell, Samuel, 119
Flemmyng, Richard, bp. of Lincoln, his main object in founding Lincoln
College, to extirpate the Wycliffite heresy, 58
Fourteenth century, the most progressive in the history of the Middle
Ages, 27
Fox, Richard, bp. of Winchester, 72;

regarded as the founder of the professorial system, 73
Franciscans, 49, 51
Friars, see Monks and Friars
Frideswide chest, the, for the relief of poor scholars, the earliest form of
corporate property held by the University, 12
Frideswide, St., see St. Frideswide
Froude, Richard Hurrell, 207

Gentilis, Albericus, 97
George I., his accession received at Oxford with sullen disappointment,
166;
sends a troop of horse to overawe the University, 167;
never deigned to visit Oxford, 170
George II., fulsome address presented to him by the Oxford Convocation,
172
George III., with his accession Jacobitism disappears or fades into
Toryism of the modern type, 172;
his visits to Oxford, 172, 174;
his reply to the first loyal address from the University, 172
Gibbon, E., 176;
his estimate of the University, 177
Giraldus Cambrensis, 8;
publicly reads at Oxford his work on the topography of Ireland, 6
Gladstone, William Ewart, defeated in 1865 by Mr. Gathorne Hardy, 216
Gloucester, duke of, see Humphry, the ‘good’ duke
Gloucester Hall, 49, 50
Goddard, Jonathan, Warden of Merton, 146, 154
Goodwin, Thomas, President of Magdalen coll., 146
Grafton, George Villiers, Duke of, born in Merton coll., 157
Grammar-schools and Halls, duties paid by, 13;

rise of, 94
Gratian, 4
‘Great Congregation,’ 67
‘Greeks and Trojans,’ the, 73
Grenville, lord, elected chancellor in 1809, 189
Grocyn, delivers the first public lectures on Greek (15th cent.), 70, 71
Grostete, Robert, bp. of Lincoln, 8, 9;
his life and influence in the University, 51

Hales, John, patronised by Laud, 116
Halls, duties paid by, 13;
unendowed, mostly hired from the citizens by clerks, 13;
number of, 13;
Principals of, sometimes illiterate and not of necessity graduates until
1432, 22
Hammond, Henry, rector of Penshurst, 119;
removed from his canonry of Ch. Ch., 142
Hampden, John, 124
‘Hampden controversy,’ the, 212-214
Hampton Court conference, 104
Hardy, Gathorne, defeats Mr. Gladstone, 216
Hearne, Thomas, the Oxford chronicler, 175;
his evidence on the dominant Toryism of Oxford, 165
Henrietta Maria, queen, her reception and residence at Oxford (1643),
130
Henry I., lived much at Oxford and at Woodstock, 5;
built the palace of Beaumont, 5
Henry II., resided in the neighbourhood of Oxford, 6
Henry III., 9;
his charters granted to the University in 1244 and 1255, 14, 15

Henry VIII., founds five Regius Professorships, and refounds Cardinal
College, 78;
his protection of University endowments, 79
Henry, Prince, his death in 1612, 102
Hert Hall, 33
Hertford, Marquis of, Chancellor of the University, 133, 151
Hertford college, 182, 197
High Commission, 104
Holles, D., 124
Humphrey, Laurence, President of Magdalen, 88, 103
Humphry, the ‘good’ duke, Library presented by, 59;
initiates the erection of a Public Library over the Divinity School, 60,
61;
the original collection consisted of 129 volumes only, 61
Hyde, Edw., see Clarendon, earl of

‘Inception,’ statutable qualifications for, 64;
M.A. degree chiefly sought as a passport to, 65
Irnerius, opens a school of Law at Bologna, 4

Jacobite partisanship shared alike by ‘dons’ and undergraduates, 164
Jacobitism, gradual decline of in Oxford, during the reign of George II.,
170
James I., his patronage of the University, 101, 102;
visits Oxford (1605), 101;
his attitude towards the University and the Church, 102;
his gradual adoption of Arminian theories, 103
James II. (as Duke of York), not unpopular in the University, 158;
his outrages on University rights, 159;
his treatment of Magdalen Coll., 159
Jefferies, judge, 160

Jewell, bp., 83, 88
Jewry, attack on the, 15
John of Gaunt, 35
John of Salisbury, 5
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 176;
his appreciation of the College system, 181
Jones, Sir William, of Univ. Coll., 182
Jowett, Benj., Regius Professor of Greek, 216
Jurisprudence, Roman, cultivation of, 4
Juxon, William, 119

Keble, rev. John, 197, 206;
his ‘Christian Year’ appears in 1827, 207
Keble College, foundation of, 197
Kemp, John, 58
King, Dr. William, Principal of St. Mary Hall, his Jacobite appeal in the
Theatre, in 1754, 171

Lanfranc, 4
Langton, Stephen, 8
Latimer, Bp., 84
Laud, archbp., rise and influence of, 104-106;
his creed and policy adopted by the Court and the University, 106;
elected Chancellor in April, 1630, 109;
his chancellorship, 109-111;
his reforms of University and College discipline, 110;
his services to the University, 115, 116;
last five years of his Chancellorship, 116-119;
resigns the Chancellorship, June 26, 1641, 117;
his administration of the University attacked on his impeachment, 118
‘Laudian’ or ‘Caroline’ Statutes, compilation of, 111-113;

superseded, in many essential particulars, by the University Reform
Act of 1854, 112;
main provisions of, 113;
their oligarchical tendency, 113;
studies and examinations under, 114, 115;
question about the perpetuity of, 183
Lectures and examinations, final organisation of, in the 15th cent., 61
Leicester, Robert Dudley, earl of, becomes chancellor of the University in
1564, 88;
his administration, 89-93
Library, the earliest possessed by the University, 29;
see also Bodleian Library and Humphry, duke
Linacre, Thomas, 71;
his posthumous foundation of two Readerships in Physiology at
Merton college, 72
Lincoln college, 58
Literæ Humaniores School established in the present century, 193
Local examinations established in 1857, 199
Locke, John, his expulsion from the University, 159;
urges the King to reform the Universities, 162
Lodging-houses, 25
Lollardism, in 1411, 37
Lombard, Peter, his ‘Sentences,’ 7
London Committee, appointed to receive reports from the Parliamentary
Visitors, 140;
dissolved in April 1652, 145
Lowth, bp., his description of his academical life, 179

Macclesfield, lord, lord chancellor, his plan for controlling the University
through government patronage, 169
Magdalen bridge, 188

Magdalen College, 159-161
Magdalen Hall, see Hertford college
Malmesbury, Lord, 176
Manners, University life and, before Colleges were planted, 20-22
Marsh (de Marisco), Adam, friend of Grostete, 52
Martyr, Peter, lectures of, 81;
his wife, 86
Mary, accession of, in 1553, ushered in a short-lived reaction, 83
Mason, sir John, elected chancellor in 1552, 88
Massey, John, 160
Meadowcourt, Richard, fellow of Merton, his Whig partisanship and
degradation, 168
Mendicant Orders, 49, 50
Merton college, see under Oxford
Methodist Revival, the, 178
‘Moderations’ established by statute, of 1850, 193
Monasteries, the, dissolution of, contributing to depopulate the
University, 80
Monastic Orders, 35
Monks and Friars at Oxford, 48, seqq.;
Augustinian canons at St. Frideswide’s, 48;
Augustinian Friars, settle in Oxford in 1251 or 1252, 49;
acquire almost a monopoly of grammar-teaching, 53;
Benedictines, 7, 49;
Benedictine monks of St. Frideswide, 48;
Carmelites, the, settle in Oxford in 1254, 50;
Dominicans, the, first appear in Oxford in 1221, 49;
Franciscans, the, settle in Oxford about 1224, 49;
owe much to the aid and patronage of Robert Grostete, 51;
Friars, protected by the Pope, 54;

position of at Oxford, and University statutes against them, 52-54
Mendicant Orders, rise of, 49, 50
Monmouth, Duke of, 159
More, Sir Thomas, 71
Music, cultivated at Oxford after the Restoration, 155

‘Negative Oath,’ 143
New College, 32, 33
New Inn Hall, 129
Newdigate, sir Roger, 173
Newman, John Henry, his early life and intellectual development, 206,
207;
his career and connection with the Oxford movement, 207-12;
is received into the Church of Rome, Oct. 8, 1845, 212
Non-Jurors, 163
Non-Regents, 66
Northampton, early secessions of students to, 38
Northern and Southern nations, encounters between them, 29, 37;
proctors of the University chosen from in 1343, 41
Nowell, Dr. Thomas, 173

Oath, Negative, 143
Occham, William of, 35;
challenges the supremacy of the Pope, 34
Orange, Prince of, his reception by the University (1734), 170
Oriel college, 31, 205
Ormond, duke of, his impeachment and resignation, 167
Oseney Abbey, 6, 50, 59, 78;
riot at in 1238, 14

Oxford City, a resort of students and a place of education before the
Norman Conquest, 2;
number of its monastic establishments, 2;
early schools of, 2, 3;
Henry I. lived much at, 5;
councils held by Stephen at, 6;
young scholars of, lodge in religious houses, 6;
murder of three students by townspeople in 1209, 9, 10;
penalties imposed by the Papal Legate, 10;
the Mayor’s oath imposed in 1248, 15;
pestilence in, 29, 37, 98;
riots in 1297 and 1354, 43-5;
agreement with Univ., 1298, 43;
further riots, 120;
interdict laid upon, 46;
penance done by the citizens of, 46, 47;
the Sheriff’s oath (1581), 99;
Parliament at, 107-109;
contribution for the King’s service, and first occupation by
Parliamentary troops, 126-128;
Charles I. marches into (1642), 128;
queen Henrietta Maria’s reception and residence at (1643), 130;
becomes Royal head-quarters during the Civil War, 129;
measures taken for its defence, 129;
ravaged by a great fire (1644), 133, 134;
Parliament summoned at (1644), 133;
first siege of (May, 1645), 134;
the siege hastily abandoned (June 5), 134;
second siege, and proposals of Fairfax guaranteeing University
privileges (1646), 135, 136;
surrender of (1646), 136;
Charles II.’s visit to (1665), 156;
and his visit (1681), 157;
Parliament assembled and dissolved at (1681), 157;
relieved from the penance on St. Scholastica’s day in 1825, and from
the ‘Mayor’s Oath’ in 1859, 190, 191
Oxford, Beaumont palace at, 5;

the birthplace of Richard I., 5;
Castle, the, embracing the Collegiate Church of St. George, 2;
Jewry, the, violent attack on, 15;
St. George within the Castle, Collegiate Church of, 2, 6;
St. Mary’s Church, 50, 60, 153;
School Street, 3, 59, 60
Oxford University, mythical origin of, 1, 2;
its alleged foundation by Alfred the Great, 1;
silence of Domesday book respecting, 2;
the Church its foster-mother, 3;
lectures of Vacarius about 1149, 5;
earlier lectures of Robert Pullen, 6;
Giraldus Cambrensis publicly reads at, in 1186 or 1187, 6;
not fully constituted in 1214, 11;
progress during reign of Henry III., 8, 9, 51;
fully constituted by the middle of the 13th cent., 12;
the early sources of its revenue, 12, 13;
early University charters, 14;
statutes in 1292, 17;
University life and manners before Colleges were planted, 20-22;
progress of, in the 14th cent., 27 seqq.;
its intellectual vigour, 29-31;
its European influence, 33, 34;
conflicts between the University and the City, 43-46;
receives a new charter of privileges from Edward III., 47;
position of the Friars at, and University statutes against them, 52;
statutes restraining encroachments of the Friars, 53, 54;
decline in numbers and studies in the 15th cent., 55, 56;
its causes, 56;
revival of academical life at end of 15th cent., 68;
checked by the Reformation, 69;
its action on the questions of the Divorce and the Royal supremacy
(temp. Hen. VIII.), 75, 76, 77;
visitation of, in 1535, 77;
first effects of the Reformation injurious to, 79;
incorporation of, in 1571, 89;
Leicester’s administration of, 91-94;

depression of intellectual life in, 94;
increasing refinement of academical life, 96, 97;
the stronghold of Anglicanism, 99;
patronised by James I., 100-102;
declares its adhesion to the doctrine of Passive Obedience in 1622,
105;
number of students under Laud’s chancellorship, 116;
eminent members of, in the generation preceding the Civil Wars, 119;
University life in the generation preceding the Civil Wars, 120-122;
conduct during Civil Wars, 122-135;
conduct during Parliamentary Visitation, 141-9;
reception of Fairfax and Cromwell by (1649), 144;
state of, on the recovery of its independence, 149;
the Restoration and new Visitation of (1660), 151;
enjoys comparative repose under Charles II., 153;
extension of the University buildings, 153, 154;
decree of, adopting doctrine of Passive Resistance, 158;
publicly burned, 165;
conduct of, on the outbreak of Monmouth’s rebellion, 159;
its attitude towards the Revolution (1688-9), 162;
University politics between the Revolution and the accession of
George III., 162-74;
becomes a hotbed of Jacobite disaffection, 163;
a troop of horse sent to overawe it, 167;
government scheme for reforming it, 168-9;
accords an enthusiastic reception to the Prince of Orange, 1734, 170;
address from, on the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, rejected, 171;
George III.’s visits to, 172-174;
petitions (1799) against the Dissenters’ Toleration Bill, 173;
decay of University education in the 18th cent., 174-177;
statutes affecting the, 184;
visited in 1814 by the Allied Sovereigns, 190;
petitions against various reforms, 189;
Royal commission issued 1850, 194, 195;
University Reform Act of 1854, 112;
its main provisions, 196, 197;
College Ordinances framed under, 196, 197;

their beneficial effects, 197, 198;
University Reform Act of 1876, its object and main provisions, 200,
201;
state of on queen Victoria’s accession, 218-220;
influence of recent changes in, 220, 221;
its present character (1886), 222;
Chancellor, office of, 11, 12-42, 47;
Vice-Chancellor’s office, 26, 91-113;
Proctors, their office and authority, 26, 40-1, 91;
Proctorial cycle instituted, 109;
‘Congregation, Black,’ 66;
‘Congregation, Great,’ 67;
Convocation, University, 67;
Bodleian Library, 59-61;
Botanic Gardens, 116;
Clarendon building, 186;
Convocation House, 116;
Divinity School, the, 60;
Library, the earliest possessed by the University, 29. See Humphry,
Duke;
Radcliffe Library, Infirmary, and Observatory, 187;
Schools, the Old, 59;
Schools, the New, completion of, 106;
Sheldonian Theatre, erection of, 153;
Taylor Institution, 187;
University Press, 187
Oxford Colleges and Halls—All Souls College, 58-9, 147;
Balliol College, 15, 17;
Brasenose College, statutes of, 74;
Canterbury College, 32;
‘Cardinal College.’ See Christ Church;
Christ Church, 75-8;
Charles I. lodged at (1642), 128;
Corpus Christi College, its foundation by bp. Fox, 72, 73;
Exeter College, foundation of, 31;
Gloucester Hall, occupied by Benedictines, 49, 50;
Hert Hall, 33;

Hertford College, statutes of, framed in 1747, 182;
Magdalen Hall, refounded under the name of, 197;
Lincoln College, founded, 58;
Magdalen College, foundation of, 59;
James II.’s treatment of, 159;
Magdalen Hall. See Hertford College;
Merton College, 15, 18-20, 156, 181-2;
the model of all other collegiate foundations, 18;
New College, foundation of by William of Wykeham (1379), marks a
new departure in collegiate history, 32, 33;
New Inn Hall, mint established at, 129;
Oriel College, foundation of, 31;
the centre of the ‘Oxford Movement,’ 205;
Pembroke College, foundation of, 106;
Queen’s College, foundation of, 31;
St. John’s College, foundation of, 86;
St. Mary’s College, 71;
Trinity College, foundation of, 86;
University College, 15, 16;
myth attributing its foundation to Alfred, 2;
Wadham College, foundation of, 106.
See also under Colleges
‘Oxford Movement,’ the, 204-17
Oxford, the see of, 78

Paris, University of, its origin and constitution, 7, 8;
a model of academical organisation for Oxford, 8;
decline of the, in the 14th cent., 33;
discredited by subservience to Pope John XXII., 33, 34;
migration of students from, 51;
curriculum and examinations of, in the Middle Ages, 62, 63
Parker, Archbp., policy of, 87, 88
Parliament, at Oxford, 108-9;
passes an ordinance, on May 1, 1647, for the visitation of the
University and Colleges, 140

Parr, Dr., his list of Oxford graduates in the 18th cent., 179
Passive Resistance, 158
Peel, sir Robert, his election in 1817 and defeat in 1829, 189
Pembroke, Philip, earl of, chancellor of the University, superseded by the
Marquis of Hertford, 132, 133, 139, 143
Pembroke college, 106
Peter the Lombard, 4
Petty, William, 154
Pitt, William, denounces Oxford Jacobitism, 171
Plate, College, 128;
loan of desired, 132
Pole, Card., visitation and reforms of, 85
Pope, the, defends the Friars, 54
Portland, Duke of, his installation, in 1793, 184
Prideaux, Humphrey, dean, 175
Proctors, and Proctorial authority, 26, 40, 41, 91, 109
Professorships, five Regius, founded and endowed by Henry VIII., 78
Prynne, William, 124
Pullen, or Pulleyne, Robert, 6, 8
Puritanism, growth of, in the University during the reign of James I., 101
Pusey, Dr. Edw. Bouverie, 206, 210, 214, 216
Pym, John, 106, 124

Quadrivium, the, 4, 61
Queen’s College, 31

Radcliffe Library, Infirmary, and Observatory, 187
Railway, the Oxford branch opened 1844, 218

Raynolds, Dr., Warden of Merton, 87
Rectores Scholarum, 11
Reformation, academical life checked by, 69, 79
‘Regent’ Masters, 65, 66
Renaissance (the), its origin, 70
Residence for degrees in the higher faculties, 67
Responsions, 63
Restoration (the) and new Visitation of the University, 151
Revolution of 1688-9 quietly accepted at Oxford, 162
Rewley, the Cistercian Abbey of, 50
Reynolds, Edward, 138, 142, 152
Rich, Edmund, archbp. of Canterbury, 9
Richard I., born at Beaumont palace, 5
Richard of Armagh, loose statement of, as to number of scholars, 14
Richmond, Miss Stuart, afterw. Duchess of, 156
Ridley, Bp., burned, 84
Royal Commission of 1850, its report, 194, 195
Royal Society, holds its first meetings at Oxford, 154
Royal Supremacy, 75-77
Rupert, Prince, 117, 128, 136

Sacheverell, Dr., of Magdalen, his popularity, 165
St. Frideswide, monastery and schools of, 3, 48, 78
St. George within the Castle, church of, 2, 6
St. John’s college, 86
St. Mary’s Church, 50, 60, 153
St. Mary’s college, 71

Salerno, Univ. of, 7
Savile, Sir Henry, 95
Savilian Professorships, 107
School Street, 3, 59, 60
‘Schools of Oxford,’ the germ of the University, 3, 6
Schools, the ‘Old,’ 59;
the ‘New,’ 106
Schools of Paris, see Paris
‘Sciences’ (the) in the 12th century, 4
Scott, sir William, his tutorial lectures, 180
Selden, John, 106, 119, 142
Shakspeare, William, 95
Sheldon, Gilbert, warden of All Souls, 119, 142, 152;
archbp. of Canterbury in 1663, Chancellor in 1667, 153;
founds Sheldonian theatre, 153
Six Articles, 80
Smith, Adam, his evidence on Oxford studies, 176
Smith, Sydney, his attack on University studies, 188
Smyth, Dr. Richard, 84
Somerset, the Protector, 80
Sorbonne, the, founded about 1250, 16
South, Dr. Robert, public orator, 154
Southern ‘nation,’ see Northern and Southern nations
Sports, manly, temp. Charles I., 121
Stamford, ‘University’ at, 39, 40
Statutes made by Commission of 1877, 201
Stephen, King, held Councils at Oxford, 6

Studium generale, 3, 5
Studies, University, character of at various periods, 9, 61, 95, 114, 174-6,
191
Subscription to the 39 Articles, 92, 173, 180
Swift, Dean, 176

Taylor Institution, 187
Tests, University, 141;
abolition of in 1871, 198
Terræ Filii, 149, 154
Thirty-nine Articles, Subscription to, established by Leicester, 92
Three Articles, the, 104
‘Town and gown rows,’ 120
Tractarian Movement, contrasted with the Methodist Revival, 204-15
‘Tracts for the Times,’ origin of, 207;
publication of Tract XC., 210-212
Tresham, Dr. Will., canon of Ch. Ch., 87
Trinity college, 86
Trivials and Quadrivials, 4, 64
‘Trojans,’ and ‘Greeks,’ 73
Tutorial system in colleges, temp. Charles I., 121
Twelfth century, the, intellectual revival of, 3, 4
Twyne, Brian, 119

‘Unattached’ or ‘Non-Collegiate’ students, order of instituted, 197
Uniformity, Act of, 152
Universitas literaria, 3
Universities, rise of, throughout Europe in the 14th cent., 28;
see ‘Oxford,’ ‘Bologna,’ and ‘Paris’

University college, 2, 5, 16
University Commission, 1850, see under Oxford
University Press, 187
University Reform Act, 112, 196-201
University Tests, 198
Urban, Pope, bull of in 1368, 42

Vacarius, professor of Bologna, his lectures in civil law, 5
Victoria, Queen, review of University history during her reign, 217-222
Visitations of the University, 77, 80, 85, 87;
Parliamentary, 138-150, 151
‘Visitors’ Register,’ the, 144, 149
Volunteer corps, University, 159, 185, 188

Wadham college, 106
Wake, sir Isaac, his Rex Platonicus, 102
Wake, Archbp., 170
Walker, Obadiah, Master of University Coll., 160
Wallis, Dr. John, Savil. Prof. of Geometry, 154
Waltham, Harold’s college at, 15
Ward, Will. Geo., fellow of Balliol, condemned by the University
Convocation, Feb. 13, 1845, 214
Warham, Archbp., 111
Wesley, John, 181;
his sermon before the University in 1734, 171
Whigs, 158, 166
Whitelocke, Bulstrode, 142
Whitgift, archbp., 94

Wilkins, Dr. John, Warden of Wadham Coll., 146, 154
William III., deputation to, 162;
visits the University, 163
William of Durham, his bequest to the University, 16
Winchester College, 33, 70
Wolsey, Cardinal, 74, 75
Wood, Anthony, 1 et passim
Wren, Christopher, 150, 154
Wyclif, John, 28, 34-6, 55
Wykeham, William of, founds New Coll. (1379), 32, 33

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
Edinburgh & London

Transcriber’s Notes
pg 214 Changed sidenote: Proceedings against Pusey and War
to: Proceedings against Pusey and Ward

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be
renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law
means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the
Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States
without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying
and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the
PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a
registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook,
except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying
royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge
anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is
very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg
eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do
practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by
U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license,
especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any
other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you
agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg License
available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing
Project Gutenberg electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg electronic work,
you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the
terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright)
agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement,
you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg
electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy
of or access to a Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to
be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on
or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be
bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can
do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works even without complying
with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a
lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg electronic works if you
follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to
Project Gutenberg electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation”
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual
work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are

located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works
based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are
removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg
mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing
Project Gutenberg works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for
keeping the Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can
easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when you
share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a
constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the
laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before
downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating
derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg work.
The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status
of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work on which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied
or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with
this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in
the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country
where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is derived from
texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice
indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the
work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without
paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a
work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on
the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs
1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted with the
permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply
with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed
by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project
Gutenberg License for all works posted with the permission of the
copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg License
terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any
other work associated with Project Gutenberg.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently
displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or
immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format other than “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the
official Project Gutenberg website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no
additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of
exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work
in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format
must include the full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph
1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing,
copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg works unless you comply
with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to
or distributing Project Gutenberg electronic works provided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the
use of Project Gutenberg works calculated using the method you
already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the
owner of the Project Gutenberg trademark, but he has agreed to donate
royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days
following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to
prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly
marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about
donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does
not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You
must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works
possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all
access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.

• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution
of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in
this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project

Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3
below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works
not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and
the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as,
but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription
errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or
damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that
damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except
for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to
you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE
THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT
EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE
THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY
DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE
TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL,
PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE
NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you
discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you
can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the
defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund.
If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to

you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work
electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you
may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the
problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in
paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR
FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or
limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable
to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum
disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity
or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that
arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause
to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg work, (b)
alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg
work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project
Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic
works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including
obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the

efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of
life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance
they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s goals and ensuring
that the Project Gutenberg collection will remain freely available for
generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for
Project Gutenberg and future generations. To learn more about the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations
can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)
(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of
Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service.
The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541.
Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax
deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s
laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 41 Watchung Plaza #516,
Montclair NJ 07042, USA, +1 (862) 621-9288. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and
official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the
number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment

including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are
particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States.
Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort,
much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these
requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not
received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or
determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit
www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have
not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against
accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us
with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any
statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the
United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods
and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including
checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit:
www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg
electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with
anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg
eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions,
all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a

copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in
compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility:
www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg, including how
to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation,
how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email
newsletter to hear about new eBooks.