REIGN OF ELIZABETH AND CHANCELLORSHIP OF LEICESTER.
[Sidenote: Visitation under Elizabeth and policy of Archbishop Parker]
With the accession of Elizabeth, in November 1558, the scenes were
rapidly shifted, and the parts of the chief actors strangely reversed.
For a while, in the quaint 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.
[Sidenote: Chancellorship of Leicester]
In the year 1564 Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, became chancellor
of the University, and continued in 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 6_s._ 8_d._ per quarter
and 5_s._ 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.
[Sidenote: Changes in the government of the University]
Another measure of more doubtful policy was passed by the University
itself under the direct instigation of 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.
[Sidenote: Leicester’s administration of the University]
We have abundant proofs of Leicester’s active, and even meddlesome,
interference with the details of 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.
[Sidenote: Depression of intellectual life in the University]
Other causes, however, had contributed to depress the intellectual life
of Oxford, and among these we must not 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.
[Sidenote: Encouragement of study by Elizabeth, and foundation of the
Bodleian Library]
It was not until the later part of her reign that Queen Elizabeth
actively patronised Oxford culture, and desired of the Chancellors of
both the Universities that promising scholars might be recommended
to her for 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.
[Sidenote: Increasing refinement of academical life]
During the last seventeen years of the great Queen’s reign the history
of Oxford was unruffled by stirring 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.
[Sidenote: Queen Elizabeth’s two visits to Oxford]
Queen Elizabeth twice visited Oxford in state, once during her
‘progress’ in 1566, and again in 1592. On the 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.
[Sidenote: Pestilences and disturbances in the sixteenth century]
It is remarkable how often the town of Oxford was scourged with
pestilence during the Tudor period, and 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.