THE UNIVERSITY UNDER JAMES I.
[Sidenote: The University patronised by James I.]
The influence acquired by the University of Oxford, as a power in the
State, under the Tudor dynasty, was fully 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.
[Sidenote: James I.’s attitude towards the University and the Church]
Whatever may be thought of James I.’s character, it is certain that he
was animated by a generous partiality for the Universities, not only as
bulwarks of his throne but 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.
[Sidenote: Rise and influence of Laud]
In the year 1603, we first hear of ‘Mr. William Laud, B.D. of St.
John’s College,’ as proctor; in 1606 he again 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.
[Sidenote: Completion of the ‘Schools,’ and foundation of Wadham and
Pembroke Colleges]
During the whole reign of James I. the external condition of the
University was prosperous, and it received important accessions, both
in buildings and endowments. On March 30, 1619, the day following
the 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.