OXFORD AND THE REFORMATION
In 1453 Christendom was shocked by the news that the Turks had taken
Constantinople. The home of learning and the citadel of philosophy was
no more. The wisdom of Hellas, so it seemed to contemporary scholars
like Æneas Sylvius, was destined likewise to perish. In fact, it was but
beginning to be diffused. Scholars fled with what MSS. they could save
to the hospitable shores of Italy. And at the very time that these
fugitives were hastening across the Adriatic, it is probable that the
sheets of the Mazarin Bible were issuing from the press at Maintz. Thus
whilst Italy was rescuing from destruction the most valuable thought of
the ancient world, Germany was devising the means for its diffusion in
lands of which Strabo never heard, and to an extent of which the Sosii
never dreamed. The Italians acquired the Greek language with rapidity
and ardour. The student flung aside his scholastic culture; cast away
the study of an Aristotle that had been conformed to Christian Theology,
and the Sentences in which that theology was enshrined, and tried to
identify himself in feeling with the spirit of cultivated paganism. The
cowl and the gown were discarded for the tunic and the toga.
But the New Learning did not make its way at once to England. And when
at length the Englishmen who had travelled and studied in Italy brought
back with them something of the generous enthusiasm with which they had
been fired, their ideas were but coldly welcomed by the followers of
Thomas or the disciples of Duns. At Oxford the New Movement took but a
momentary hold of only a small part of the University, and then was
shaken off by the massive inertness of the intellectual stagnation
characteristic of the country. "They prefer their horses and their dogs
to poets," wrote Poggio; "and like their horses and their dogs they
shall perish and be forgotten."
The majority of Englishmen are always slow to accept new ideas. They
move ponderously and protestingly in the wake of the Continent. The New
Learning was as unwelcome at Oxford as if it had been a motor car. The
schoolmen were still busily chopping their logic, when the Medicis were
ransacking the world for a new play, when Poggio was writing his
"Facetiæ" or editing Tacitus, and Pope Nicholas was founding the Vatican
Library at Rome. And the Renaissance, when it did begin to work in
England, took the form of a religious reformation; the religious genius
of the nation led it to the worship, not of Beauty, but of Truth.
The English were equally late in adopting the new German art of
printing. When Caxton introduced it, it had almost reached its
perfection abroad. Block books--books printed wholly from carved blocks
of wood--had come in and gone out. Arising out of them, the idea of
movable types had long been invented and developed on the Continent.
The Bamberg and Mazarin Bibles, the first two books to be printed from
movable type, had been produced by Gutenberg, Fust and Schöffer as early
as 1453. But it was not till 1477 that Caxton set up his press at
Westminster. A year later the first book was issued from an Oxford
press. This was the famous small quarto of forty-two leaves, "Exposicio
sancti Jeronimi in simbolum apostolorum," written by Tyrannius Rufinus
of Aquileia. The colophon of this book, however, distinctly states that
it was printed in 1468: "Impressa Oxonie et ibi finita anno domini
M.CCCC.LXVIIJ, XVIJ die decembris." But there is every reason to
suppose that an X has been omitted from this date and that the true year
was 1478. Such a misprint is not uncommon. Exactly the same error occurs
in books published at Venice, at Barcelona and at Augsburg. The
workmanship is very much the same as, but slightly inferior to, that of
the next two books which came from the Oxford Press in 1479. And in the
library of All Souls' there is a copy of each of these, which were
originally bound up together. A break of eleven years between the
production of the first and subsequent books is both inconceivable and
inexplicable.
The press from which these books and twelve others were issued at Oxford
during the eight years, 1478-1486, was apparently set up by one Theodore
Rood of Cologne. The first three books, however, namely the "Exposicio"
mentioned, the "Ægidius de originali peccato," and "Textus Ethicorum
Aristotelis per Leonardum Aretinum translatus," bear no printer's name,
but the type was either brought from Cologne or directly copied from
Cologne examples. It strongly resembles that used by Gerard ten Raem de
Berka or Guldenschaff. Still, it cannot be proved that Rood printed
these first three books, or that he ever used the type in which they
alone are printed. The colophon of the fourth book, a Latin commentary
on the "De Anima" of Aristotle by Alexander de Hales, a folio printed
from new type, gives the name of the printer, Theodore Rood, and bears
the date 1481. A copy of it was bought in the year of publication for
the library of Magdalen, where it still remains. The price paid was
thirty-three shillings and fourpence. A very beautiful copy of the next
book, "Commentary on the Lamentation of Jeremiah," by John Lattebury,
1482, is in the library of All Souls'. Four leaves survive in the
Bodleian and four in the Merton Library, of the "Cicero pro Milone," the
first edition of a classic printed in England. Two leaves of a Latin
grammar are to be found in the British Museum.
Rood went into partnership with an Oxford stationer named Thomas Hunt,
and together they produced eight other books with a type more English in
character than the preceding ones. One of these books, "Phalaris," 1485
(Wadham and Corpus Libraries), has a curious colophon in verse, which
describes the printers and their ambition to surpass the Venetians in
their work. The partners ceased to produce books after 1486. Rood
probably returned to Cologne, and the German art found no exponents in
Oxford for the remainder of the century. Subsequently we find Leicester
advancing money to set up Joseph Barnes with a new press. Laud and Fell
were other great patrons of the University Press.
Meantime the return of the Pope to Rome had attracted many foreign
travellers and students to Italy, who could not fail to be impressed by
the new birth of art and intellectual life that was taking place in that
country.
Among the pupils of Guarino of Verona at Ferrara the names of at least
five students from Oxford occur. Of these, Robert Fleming, a relative of
the founder of Lincoln College, was an author of some distinction, and
he compiled a Græco-Latin dictionary at a time when Greek was almost
unknown in England. He brought back from his travels in Italy many
precious books, which he gave to the library of Lincoln College. William
Grey, another of Guarino's pupils, enriched the library of Balliol with
many fine manuscripts redolent of the New Learning. John Tiptoft, Earl
of Worcester, was another scholar who, before paying for his share in
politics with his head, presented to the University the valuable
collection of manuscripts, which he had made in the course of his
travels.
William Selling, a member of the recent foundation of All Souls', was
perhaps the earliest Englishman of influence to catch from Italy the
inspiration of the Greek muse. On his return from that country, he was
appointed to the conventual school at Canterbury. His knowledge of
Greek, and his enthusiasm for Greek literature, became the germ of the
study in England. Thomas Linacre was one of his pupils, who, after
studying at Oxford under Vitelli, journeyed to Italy with Selling. He
was introduced to Politian at Florence. Thence he proceeded to Rome, and
there perhaps formed his taste for the scientific writings of Aristotle
and his devotion to the study of medicine, which afterwards found
expression in the foundation of the College of Physicians and of the two
lectureships at Merton, now merged into the chair which bears his name.
Linacre returned to Oxford and lectured there awhile before being
appointed Physician to Henry VIII. His translation of five medical
treatises of Galen was, Erasmus declared, more valuable than the
original Greek.
We have said that he studied under Vitelli. It was Cornelio Vitelli who,
some time before 1475, first "introduced polite literature to the
schools of Oxford," by a lecture as prelector of New College, upon which
the warden, Thomas Chandler, complimented him in a set Latin speech.
This was probably that Cornelius who, in company with two other
Italians, Cyprian and Nicholas by name, dined with the President of
Magdalen on Christmas Day, 1488. And from the lips of this pioneer
William Grocyn himself learned Greek. Grocyn was a fellow of New College
(1467-1481), but he afterwards removed to Magdalen as Reader in
Theology. He completed his study of Greek and Latin by a sojourn of two
years (1488) at Florence, under Demetrius Chalcondylas and Politian. On
his return to Oxford he took rooms in Exeter College (1491), and gave a
course of lectures on Greek.
A few years later (1496-7) the first step in the revolution against the
system under which the study of the Bible had been ousted by the study
of the Sentences was taken. A course of lectures by John Colet on the
Epistles of S. Paul was the first overt act in a movement towards
practical Christian reform.
It was from Grocyn and Linacre that Thomas More and Erasmus learnt
Greek. For Gibbon's epigram that Erasmus learned Greek at Oxford and
taught it at Cambridge is true, if we qualify it by the reminder that he
knew a little before he came to England and learned more in the years
which intervened between the time when, much to the chagrin of Colet, he
left Oxford and went to Cambridge as an instructor in that language.
Erasmus had taught at Paris. He went to Oxford (1498) to learn and to
observe. His return home from London had been delayed unexpectedly. He
determined to use the opportunity of paying a visit to Oxford. The
reputation of the learned men there attracted him more than the company
of "the gold-chained courtiers" of the capital. He was received as an
inmate of S. Mary's College, which had been built as a house for
students of his own Augustinian order (1435). This house, when it was
dissolved (1541), was converted into a hall for students, and then into
a charitable institution (Bridewell). The site, on the east side of New
Inn Hall Street, is occupied by a house and garden, now called Frewen
Hall, which was chosen in 1859 as the residence of the Prince of Wales
during his studies at Oxford. The west gateway, a few remains of
groining and the wall facing the street north of the gate are
practically all that remains of the building as Erasmus saw it, unless
we reckon the roof of the chapel of B.N.C., which is said to have been
taken from the chapel of S. Mary's College. Erasmus had nothing to
complain of in his welcome to Oxford. He found the prior of his college,
Richard Charnock, an intelligent companion and useful friend. Colet,
having heard from Charnock of his arrival, addressed to him a letter of
welcome, which in the midst of its formal civility has a characteristic
touch of Puritan sincerity. To this Erasmus replied in his own
rhetorical fashion with a letter of elaborate compliment.
His wit, his learning and the charm of his brilliant conversation soon
won him friends. Delightful himself, he found everybody delightful. The
English girls were divinely pretty, and he admired their custom of
kissing visitors. Erasmus made a fair show in the hunting-field, and
was charmed with everything, even with our English climate.
"The air," he wrote from Oxford, "is soft and delicious. The men
are sensible and intelligent. Many of them are even learned, and
not superficially either. They know their classics and so
accurately that I seem to have lost little in not going to Italy.
When Colet speaks I might be listening to Plato. Linacre is as deep
and acute a thinker as I have ever met. Grocyn is a mine of
knowledge, and Nature never formed a sweeter and happier
disposition than that of Thomas More. The number of young men who
are studying ancient literature here is astonishing."
In one of his letters he gives a very lively picture of a gathering of
witty divines at the house of his "sweet and amiable friend" Colet, when
the latter "spoke with a sacred fury" and Erasmus himself, finding the
conversation growing too serious for a social gathering, entertained the
company with a happily invented tale.
At Oxford, then, the great centre of theological study, he was learning
something of the methods of the theologians. They were not strange to
him, for he knew Paris. But the Oxford school was in his mind when he
poured forth his shafts of ridicule upon scholastic divines in his
brilliant satire, "The Praise of Folly." Yet it was at Oxford that Colet
had taught him to detest the authority of Thomas Aquinas, and to apply
to the study of the New Testament the knowledge and methods indicated by
the study of Greek literature. His "Moria" and his "Novum Instrumentum,"
therefore, the books which prepared the way for the Reformation, were
his protest, and the protest of the Christian laity along with him,
against the authority of the clergy and against the popular theology
which was based on the errors of the Vulgate. Erasmus laid the egg and
Luther hatched it--a very different bird, as the former declared. The
fact was that throughout Europe the growing intelligence of the educated
class was slowly but surely developing in antagonism, not merely to
specific doctrines, but to the whole spirit of mediæval theology.
The Old Learning was threatened with destruction. It rose in arms
against Greek and heresy. Bishops fulminated. The clergy cried
Antichrist, and clamoured for sword and faggot. The Universities forbade
the sale of Erasmus's writings, and, seeing what came of the study of
Greek, declared that they would have no more of it. Oxford divided
itself into two bodies, who called themselves Greeks and Trojans, the
Trojans enormously preponderating. The "Greeks," the adherents of the
New Learning, were assailed with every kind of ridicule. They were
openly derided in the streets and abused from the pulpit. In after years
Tyndale, who had been a student at Magdalen Hall, could recall how
"The old barking curs, Duns' disciples and like draff called
Scotists, the children of darkness, raged in every pulpit against
Greek, Latin and Hebrew, and what sorrow the schoolmasters that
taught the true Latin tongue had with them, some beating the pulpit
with their fists for madness, and roaring out with open and foaming
mouth, that if there were but one Terence or Vergil in the world,
and that same in their sleeve, and a fire before them, they would
burn them therin, though it should cost them their lives."
News of what was going on reached the court at Abingdon. At the King's
command, More wrote to the governing body of the University to rebuke
the intemperance of the Trojan clique. But the Heads of Houses were
sleeping over a volcano, and More's letter could not rouse them from
their slumber. For the present the result was that the little band of
pioneers in the New Learning one by one departed out of their coasts.
"The Cardinal of York," More writes, "will not permit these studies to
be meddled with." Wolsey, of course, as well as the King, More and
Archbishop Warham, the Chancellor, was on the side of the New Learning.
He defrayed the expenses of many lectures, for which the University
repeatedly thanked him. He engaged a famous Spanish scholar, Juan Luis
Vives, to occupy his new Chair of Rhetoric; and he sent a rising
English scholar, Thomas Lupset, from Paris to lecture on the Classics at
Oxford.
Vives was the first Professor of Humanity (or Latin) at Corpus Christi,
the first of the Renaissance colleges. His special function it was to
banish all "barbarism" from the "bee-hive," as the founder fondly called
his college, by lecturing daily on the Classics. Tradition says that the
professor was welcomed to his new home by a swarm of bees, which, to
signify the incomparable sweetness of his eloquence, settled under the
leads of his chambers.
[Illustration: Niche & Sundial, Corpus Christi College]
The founder of C.C.C., Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, was a
prelate, statesman, architect, soldier, herald and diplomatist, who, in
the very encyclopædic nature of his talents, was a typical product of
the Renaissance. He had been Bishop of Exeter, of Bath and Wells and of
Durham before he was translated to Winchester; he had been Keeper of the
Privy Seal and Secretary of State, and had played an important part in
the history of his country; he had been Chancellor of Cambridge and
Master of Pembroke College there; but it was chiefly upon Oxford that he
lavished the wealth he had acquired.
Having bought some land between Merton and S. Frideswide's, he proposed
at first to establish a college, after the manner of Durham College,
directly in connection with the Monastery of S. Swithun at Winchester.
But before the building was completed, he determined to make it a
college for secular students. Holinshed gives us the words in which Hugh
Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, who was intimately associated with him in the
work--his arms are to be seen in various places in the existing
buildings--persuaded him to this course.
"What, my Lord, shall we build houses and provide livelihood for a
company of bussing monks, whose end and fall we ourselves may live
to see? No, no. It is more meet a great deal that we should have
care to provide for the increase of learning, and for such as by
their learning shall do good in the Church and Commonwealth."
The broad-minded founder accepted this view. He drew up statutes, by
means of which he hoped to train men who should help the Church to
recognise, to lead and to control the New Movement. The verdict of his
contemporaries with regard to his work and intentions is expressed by
Erasmus, who wrote that "Just as Rhodes was once famous for the
Colossus, and Caria for the tomb of Mausolus, so the new College at
Oxford dedicated to the most profitable literature would be recognised
throughout the civilised world as one of the chief ornaments of
Britain."
The influence of the Renaissance is writ large over Foxe's statutes.
What is remarkable in them is the provision he made for the teaching of
the New Learning. As he furnished his students with a library, rich in
classical MSS. and books in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, a "Bibliotheca
trilinguis" which Erasmus declared would attract more students than Rome
had done hitherto; so also, in addition to the twenty fellows and twenty
scholars of his college, he endowed three Readers, in Greek, in Latin,
and in Theology. Natives of Greece and Italy were to be specially
eligible for these offices; Greek as well as Latin might be spoken in
hall, and some acquaintance with the works of Roman poets, orators and
historians, no less than with Logic and Philosophy, was to be required
of candidates for scholarships, who must also prove their fitness by
ability to compose verses and write letters in Latin.
Cicero, Sallust, Valerius Maximus, Suetonius, Pliny, Livy and Quintilian
are enumerated in the statutes as the prose writers, and Vergil, Ovid,
Lucan, Juvenal, Terence and Plautus as the poets to be expounded by the
Professor of Humanity. The works of Lorenzo Valla, Aulus Gellius and
Politian are recommended as suitable subjects of study during the three
vacations. The Professor of Greek, an officer unknown in any earlier
college, was required to lecture, and to lecture to the whole
University, not only on Grammar, but also on the works of Isocrates,
Lucian, Philostratus, Aristophanes, Theocritus, Euripides, Sophocles,
Pindar, Hesiod, Demosthenes, Thucydides, Aristotle and Plutarch.
The third "Reader" appointed by Foxe was to expound the Old Testament
and the New in alternate years. He was not, however, to be content with
the comments of the schoolmen, but was "to follow so far as possible the
ancient and holy doctors both Latin and Greek."
It will be seen that these statutes form, as it were, at once a charter
and a corpus of the New Learning. Patristic theology was to be restored
to the place of honour whence the quibbles of the schoolmen had banished
it; the masterpieces of the ancient world were, in future, to be studied
instead of the second-rate philosophers and slovenly writers of the Dark
Ages.
Apart from the fascinating hall and library, the buildings of Corpus are
less distinguished than her history. The curious sundial, surmounted by
a pelican vulning herself in piety, which stands in the centre of the
front quadrangle, was erected by a fellow in 1581. As at All Souls' and
elsewhere, the name of the college is indicated by sculpture over the
gateway--a group of angels bearing a pyx, the receptacle of the
sacramental host, the body of Christ (Corpus Christi). The pastoral
staff, a chalice and paten, which belonged to the founder, are still
preserved. They rank among the finest examples of the work of English
mediæval silversmiths.
The connection between Magdalen and C.C.C. was always close. Foxe,
indeed, is said to have been at Magdalen, and to have
[Illustration: First Quadrangle Corpus Christi College.]
left Oxford on account of a pestilence. It is at any rate noteworthy
that he makes special provision against plagues in his statutes. The
severity and frequency of plagues of one sort or another were a serious
obstacle to the prosperity of the University, and therefore of the city,
throughout this century. The causes are not far to seek. For centuries
filth and garbage had been allowed to accumulate in the ill-made,
unswept streets. And though the King might write to the burghers and
command them to remove the nuisances of this sort from before their
doors, the efforts to deal with them were only spasmodic. Brewers and
bakers, again, were forbidden by the King's edict (1293) to make use of
the foul waters of Trill Mill Stream for the making of their bread and
ale. But police was inefficient, and the health of the scholars
frequently suffered from a renewal of this insanitary practice.
Regrators, who burned before their doors stinking fat and suet, were
also forbidden by Edward III. to pursue their habits, and the citizens
were enjoined to repair the pavements in front of their houses.
But in spite of regulations and restrictions butchers persisted in
slaughtering their beasts in their homes and fouling the Trill Mill
Stream with offal. Inundations from the Cherwell and the Thames, not yet
regulated and confined by the Conservancy Board, occasionally swamped
even the cloisters of Magdalen and left behind a legacy of mud, damp and
malaria.
Sweating sickness--a kind of rheumatic fever--struck Oxford hard in
1517. In the following years other loathsome diseases, attributed to the
noisome smells which arose from the marshy grounds around the city and
the obstructed state of the Thames, manifested themselves and caused the
students to fly. Frequent instances are recorded of fellows obtaining
permission to leave Oxford on account of the pestilence. In 1513 most of
the members of Oriel removed to a farm at Dean; in 1522 the inmates of
New College fled on the outbreak of some illness, and the fellows of
University College dispersed on the same account in 1525. From
Magdalen, in unhealthy seasons, there were frequent migrations of a
large portion of the society to Witney or to Brackley, where the
hospital had been indicated by the founder as a place to which such
migrations might be made. But it was in 1528 that the sweating sickness
broke out in its severest form. Many persons died within a few hours of
being attacked by the disease; public business was postponed, and the
lecture rooms were closed. The Festival of S. John was stopped. It was
decreed that all clerks who thought themselves in danger might be absent
until October. It might almost have been the influenza (1894).
The plague broke out in 1571, so that the University term had to be
deferred. It broke out again in the following years, and culminated, in
1577, in the "Black Assizes." Rowland Jencks, a bookbinder, had been
seized and sent to London for railing against the Commonwealth and the
established religion. His house was searched for "bulls, libels, and
suchlike things against the Queen and religion." He was returned to
Oxford to be committed to prison. At the Assizes, held in the Court
House at the Castle-yard, he was condemned to lose his ears. No sooner
was the prisoner removed from the crowded court than, as Wood tells us,
"there arose such an infectious damp or breath among the people,
that many there present, to the apprehensions of most men, were
then smothered and others so deeply infected that they lived not
many hours after. Above 600 sickened in one night; and the day
after, the infectious air being carried into the next villages,
sickened there an hundred more. The number of persons that died in
five weeks' space were 300 in Oxford, and 200 and odd in other
places; so that the whole number that died in that time were 510
persons, of whom many bled till they expired."
The description of the disease given by Wood reminds one of Thucydides'
account of the plague at Athens. The outbreak was attributed by some to
the Roman Catholics, who were said to have used magic to revenge
themselves for the cropping of Jencks' ears, but the explanation
suggested by a remark of Bacon is more probable. "The most pernicious
infection next to the plague," he says, "is the smell of the Jail, when
prisoners have been long and close nastily kept."
In 1582 the plague again threatened. This time measures were taken to
improve the sanitary conditions of the place. Regulations were
introduced, which do not greatly differ from the precautions of modern
legislation. It was, for instance, ordained that--
"No person shall cast or lay any donge, dust, ordure, rubbish,
carreyne or any other thing noyant into any the waters ryvers or
streams or any the streets, wayes or lanes. But every person shall
swepe together & take up the said things noyant out of the channel
of the street so far as their ground reacheth and cause the same to
be carried away twice every week. All privies & hogsties set or
made over upon or adjoining to any the waters or streames leading
to any brew-house shall be removed & taken away. No person shall
keep any hogs or swine within the said City but only within their
own several backsides; no butcher shall keep any slaughter house or
kill any oxen kyne shepe or calves within the walls. All pavements
shall be made and amended in places defective and all chimneys
occupied with fire shall from henceforth be swept four times every
year."
These ordinances, it will be seen, provided against the customary crying
evils of a mediæval town. Similar provisions against similar evils are
to be found in the archives of most cities in England or France in the
sixteenth century. But ordinances are one thing and effective
street-police is another. A hundred years later S. James's Square was
still the receptacle for all offal and cinders, for all the dead cats
and dead dogs of Westminster, whilst Voltaire's scathing description of
the streets of Paris was no exaggeration. It was a state of affairs on
which the Plague of London was the grimmest of all possible
commentaries.
Another outbreak of plague in 1593 produced an order against plays,
which were said to bring too many people, and the plague with them, from
London. Regulations were also passed against overcrowding in the houses.
At the beginning of the reign of James I., however, the infection
spread once more from London to Oxford. Term was prorogued; the colleges
broke up; and the citizens were so hard hit that they petitioned the
University for aid. A weekly contribution from the colleges alleviated
the distress that arose from this doleful sickness. The town was almost
deserted; the shops were closed; and only the keepers of the sick or the
collectors of relief appeared in the streets--"no not so much as dog or
cat." The churches were seldom opened, and grass grew in the common
market-place. Next year and the next plague broke out again, by which
time some arrangements had been made for a system of isolation. Yet the
mediæval attitude of mind towards medicine and sanitation would seem to
have lasted on through the Age of Reason. For in 1774, when small-pox
had many times scourged the town, all attempts at inoculation were
formally forbidden by the Vice-Chancellor and Mayor.
Foxe had aided the rise and rejoiced in the success of Wolsey. But that
success was not universally popular. In spite of his benefactions to
learning, and the University, it was an Oxford Laureate, one of our
earliest satirists, who, when the Cardinal was at the height of his
power, more monarch than the King himself, attacked him with the most
outspoken virulence.
A crown of laurel would seem to have been the outward sign and symbol of
a degree in Rhetoric, and rhetoricians were occasionally styled Poets
Laureate. John Skelton, who was perhaps Court Poet to Henry VIII., was
certainly tutor to Prince Henry and Laureate of both Universities. He
was very proud of this distinction, and, not being troubled by any
excess of modesty, he wrote a poem of 1600 lines in praise of himself:
"A Kynge to me myn habite gave;
At Oxforth the Universyte,
Auvaunsed to that degre
By hole consent of theyr Senate,
I was made Poete Laureate."
So he says; and Cambridge apparently followed suit and admitted him
(1493) to a corresponding degree, and likewise encircled his brows with
a wreath of laurel.
Skelton jeered at the Cardinal's pride and pomp; at his low birth (his
"greasy original") and his lack of scholarship. There was more truth in
Shakespeare's description of him as a "scholar and a right good one,"
for the "Boy Bachelor" had taken his degree of B.A. at fifteen years of
age, "a rare thing and seldom seen." He held a fellowship at Magdalen,
and was bursar for a short while, as we have seen; for six months he
acted as master of Magdalen School, and in 1500 he was instituted to the
Rectory of Lymington, thanks to the favour of the Marquis of Dorset,
whose three sons had been his pupils at the school. It is not every man
who is given even one chance in life, but at last to Wolsey, as to
Wykeham, the opportunity came. He pleased the King by the speed with
which he performed the first errand on which he was dispatched; and from
that time he never ceased to advance in power and the confidence of his
sovereign. The account of that episode, which he gave after his fall to
George Cavendish, is one of the most profitable lessons in history. It
is the secret of success as recorded by a bankrupt millionaire.
Wolsey never allowed his ecclesiastical and political work and honours
to make him forget the University which had given him his start in life.
In 1510 he took his degree of Bachelor of Divinity.
By the University the need for the codification of its statutes, and the
unification of the mass of obscure customs and contradictory ordinances
of which they were by this time composed, had long been felt. Some
efforts had indeed already (1518) been made in this direction, but they
had come to nothing. Graduates who swore to obey the statutes now found
themselves in the awkward position of being really unable to find their
way through the labyrinth of confused and contradictory enactments.
Now it happened that an outbreak of the sweating sickness in 1517 drove
the King and his court from London to Abingdon. Queen Catherine availed
herself of the opportunity to pay a visit to Oxford, to dine at Merton
and to worship at the shrine of S. Frideswide, whilst Wolsey, who
escorted her from Abingdon, attended a solemn meeting of the graduates
at S. Mary's and informed them of his design to establish certain daily
lectures for the benefit of the University at large. For this purpose it
was necessary to alter existing regulations. The graduates seized the
opportunity of inviting the Cardinal, their "Mæcenas," whom they even
came to address as "His Majesty," to undertake a complete revision of
their statutes. In so doing they disregarded the wishes of their
Chancellor, the Archbishop Warham. But their action was fruitless, for
the Cardinal had no time to examine and codify the chaotic enactments of
the mediæval academicians.
It was at Wolsey's request that a charter was granted to the University
(1523) which placed the greater part of the city at its mercy. It was
now empowered to incorporate any trade, whilst all "members of the
privilege" were exempted from having to apply to the city for permission
to carry on business. Many minor rights and immunities were granted to
the Chancellor, and no appeal was allowed from his court. "Any sentence,
just or unjust, by the Chancellor against any person, shall be holden
good, and for the same sentence, so just or unjust, the Chancellor or
his deputy shall not be drawn out of the University for false judgment,
or for the same vexed or troubled by any written commandment of the
King."
Prior to the issue of this charter there had been grievances arising
from the favour shown by the Crown to the University, as, for instance,
when, a few years back, the colleges and other places of the University
had been exempted from the subsidies charged upon the town. The jealousy
which had been slumbering now burst into flames. The bailiffs flatly
refused to summon a jury under the new terms. They were imprisoned. A
writ was issued to enforce the University charter and for the appearance
of the mayor and corporation to answer a suit in chancery.
The same year (1529) the University, not being able to obtain the
assistance of the bailiffs, ordered the bedels to summon a jury for
their leet. The city bailiffs closed the door of the Guildhall, so that
the court thus summoned could not be held. This device they adopted
repeatedly. On one occasion Wolsey proposed to submit the question to
the arbitration of More. But the city perceived their danger and
unanimously refused,
"for," they remarked, "by such arbitrements in time past, the
Commissary & procters & their officers of the University hath
usurped & daily usurpeth upon the town of divers matters contrary
to their compositions."
The struggle passed through several stages. The mayor, one Michael Hethe
by name, refused to take the customary oath at S. Mary's to maintain the
privileges of the University. Proceedings were instituted against him.
His answer, when he was summoned to appear at S. Mary's Church and show
cause why he should not be declared perjured and excommunicate, was
couched in very spirited terms:
"Recommend me unto your master and shew him, I am here in this town
the King's Grace's lieutenant for lack of a better, and I know no
cause why I should appear before him. I know him not for my
ordinary."
The court pronounced him contumacious, and sentenced him to be
excommunicated. He was obliged to demand absolution, but he did not
abate the firmness of his attitude when he obtained it, for he flatly
refused to promise "to stand to the law and to obey the commands of the
Church," though that promise was proposed as a necessary condition of
absolution being granted.
Before the end of this year (1530) the town made a direct petition to
the King against the University, in which the chief incidents in the
hard-fought battle are recounted in detail. Complaint is made, for
instance, that the commissary
"Doth take fourpence for the sale of every horse-lode of fresh
salmon, & one penny of every seme of fresshe herrings, which is
extorcyon": and again "Another time he sent for one William
Falofelde & demanded of him a duty that he should give him a pint
of wine of every hogshead that he did set a-broach, for his taste.
And the said William answered and said that he knew no such duty to
be had, if he knew it he would gladly give it. And thereupon the
said Commissary said he would make him know that it was his duty &
so sent him to prison: and so ever since, for fear of imprisonment,
the said William Falofelde hath sent him wine when he sent for it,
which is to the great losse and hindrance of the said William
Falofelde."
In order to compel submission on the part of the city, the mayor and
twenty of the citizens were discommoned in 1533, so that
"no schollar nor none of their servants, should buy nor sell with
none of them, neither eat nor drink in their houses, under pain of
for every time of so doing to forfeit to the Commissary of 6s. and
8d."
For twenty years the quarrel dragged on, till at last both parties grew
weary. In 1542 arbitrators were called in, and Wolsey's charter was
repealed. But under Elizabeth, when in Leicester they had elected a
Chancellor of sufficient power to represent their interests, the
University began to endeavour to regain the privileges and franchises
which, as they maintained, had only been in abeyance. An Act of
Parliament was procured which confirmed the old obnoxious charter of
1523, but with a clause of all the liberties of the mayor and town. This
clause led the way to fresh acts of aggression on either side, and
renewed recriminations and disputes until, on the report of two judges,
a series of orders was promulgated by the Privy Council (1575), intended
to set at rest the differences between the two bodies for ever. But the
result fell short of the intention. The opposition at this time had been
led by one William Noble, who lived in the old house known as Le
Swynstock. Smarting under the sting of false imprisonment, Noble
commenced suits in the Star Chamber against the University, and
presented petitions both against that body and the mayor and citizens.
His popularity was such that he was elected Member of Parliament for the
city.
Wolsey, as we have seen, had taken some steps towards establishing
public lectureships in the University. But he provided no permanent
endowment for these chairs. His designs developed into a grander scheme.
He determined to found a college which, in splendour and resources,
should eclipse even the noble foundations of Wykeham and Waynflete, a
college where the secular clergy should study the New Learning and use
it as a handmaid of Theology and in the service of the old Church. And
as Wykeham had established in connection with his college a school at
Winchester, so Wolsey proposed to found at his birth-place, Ipswich, and
at Oxford, two sister-seats of learning and religion.
Through the darkness and stagnation of the fifteenth century a few great
men had handed on the torch of learning and of educational ideals. The
pedigree of Christ Church is clearly traceable through Magdalen and New
College back to Merton. Wolsey at Magdalen had learnt to appreciate, in
the most beautiful of all the homes of learning, something of the aims
of the great school-master bishop, Waynflete. And Waynflete himself, can
we doubt? had caught from Wykeham the enthusiasm for producing "rightly
and nobly ordered minds and characters." At Oxford, at Winchester and at
Windsor he had lived under the shadow of the great monuments of
Wykeham's genius, and learned to discern "the true nature of the
beautiful and graceful, the simplicity of beauty in style, harmony and
grace." So that in the architecture of his college--and Architecture, as
Plato tells us, as all the other Arts, is full of grace and harmony,
which are the two sisters of goodness and virtue--he was enabled to
fulfil the Platonic ideal and to provide the youth whom he desired to
benefit with a home where they might dwell "in a land of health and fair
sights and sounds, and receive the good in everything, and where beauty,
the effluence of fair works, might flow into the eye and ear like a
health-giving breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul
from earliest years into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of
reason." Inspired by such examples, Wolsey set himself to build a
college which should eclipse them,
"Though unfinished, yet so famous,
So excellent in art and yet so rising,
That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue."
Indeed, says Fuller, nothing mean could enter into this man's mind.
Immense as were his private resources, they could not bear the strain of
his magnificent plans. He therefore seized upon the idea of
appropriating the property of the regular clergy and applying it to the
foundation and endowment of Cardinal's College. The time was ripe for
some such conversion. Monasticism was outworn. Whatever the merits of
some few monasteries might be, whatever the piety of an occasional Abbot
Samson, or the popularity of a monkish institution which did its duty of
charity and instruction in this or that part of the country, the monks
as a rule had ceased to live up to their original standard. They had
accumulated wealth and lost their hold on the people. And where they
were popular, it was in many cases with the people they had pauperised.
To a statesman with so keen an insight and so broad a mind as Wolsey, it
must have seemed both wise and safe to take this opportunity of
suppressing some of the English priories. Had not Chicheley, when the
alien priories had been suppressed on political grounds, secured some of
their lands for the endowment of his foundation, All Souls' College?
His first step was to obtain a bull from the Pope and the assent of the
King, authorising him (1524) to suppress the Priory of S. Frideswide
and transfer the canons to other houses of the Augustinian order. Their
house and revenues, amounting to nearly £300, were assigned to the
proposed college of secular clerks. The scale of that college is
indicated by the fact that it was to consist of a dean and sixty canons,
forty canons of inferior rank, besides thirteen chaplains, twelve lay
clerks, sixteen choristers and a teacher of music, for the service of
the Church. Six public professors were to be appointed in connection
with the college.
A few months later another bull, which premised that divine service
could not be properly maintained in monasteries which contained less
than seven professed members, empowered Wolsey to suppress any number of
such small religious houses all over the country. This he proceeded to
do, and to transfer the inmates to other monasteries. Their revenues, to
an amount not exceeding 3000 golden ducats, were to be devoted to the
new college.
The plan of thus concentrating the resources of the small and scattered
religious houses was both economical and statesmanlike. But, in its
execution, it gave rise to fear and irritation, of which Wolsey's
political enemies were quick to avail themselves. The perturbation of
the monks is well expressed in Fuller's happy metaphor:
"His proceedings made all the forest of religious foundations in
England to shake, justly fearing the King would finish to fell the
oaks, seeing the Cardinal began to cut the underwood."
Wolsey found it necessary to write to his royal master more than once to
contradict the mis-representations of his opponents. The King had been
informed that monks and abbots had been turned out to starve. Wolsey
declared that what he had done was "to the full satisfaction, recompense
and joyous contentation" of all concerned. The King complained that some
of the monasteries would not contribute to his necessities as much as
they had contributed to the Cardinal's scheme. Wolsey replied that he
had indeed received "from divers mine old lovers and friends right
loving and favourable aids towards the edifying of my said College," but
added that these had been justly obtained and exaggerated in amount. But
he promised in future to take nothing from any religious person.
Meantime he had set about building Cardinal's College with extraordinary
energy and on an enormous scale. The foundation stone was laid on 15th
July 1525. Whilst the Chapter-house and refectory of the old monastery
were kept, the western bays of the church were removed to make way for
the great quadrangle. The Chapel of S. Michael at South Gate was
demolished, and part of the old town wall was thrown down. Room was thus
made for the buildings on the south side of the quadrangle. These, the
first portion of the college to be finished, were the kitchen and that
hall which, in its practical and stately magnificence, can scarcely be
equalled in England or surpassed in Europe. But the fact that it was the
kitchen and dining-room which first reached completion gave an
opportunity to the wits.
"Egregium opus. Cardinalis iste instituit Collegium, et absolvit popinam."
So runs one epigram, which being freely translated is:
"The Mountains were in labour once, and forth there came a mouse;--
Your Cardinal a College planned, and built an eating-house!"
It was part of Wolsey's design to gather into his college all the rising
intellect of Europe. In pursuance of this plan, he induced certain
scholars from Cambridge to migrate thither. But they it was, so men
afterwards complained, who first introduced the taint of heresy into
Oxford. For at first the University was as strictly orthodox as her
powerful patron, who hated "the Hellish Lutherans," could wish. When
Martin Luther (1517) nailed his ninety-five theses on the church door of
Wittenberg, in protest against what Erasmus had called "the crime of
false pardons," the
[Illustration: Cloisters, Christ Church]
sale of indulgences, his protest found no echo here. On the contrary,
the masters in convocation gladly elected three representative
theologians who attended Wolsey's conference in London, and condemned
the noxious doctrines of the German reformer. A committee of theologians
was also held at Oxford, and their condemnation of Luther's teaching won
the warm approval of the University. But the leaven of Lutheranism had
already been introduced. The Cambridge students whom Wolsey had brought
to be canons of Cardinal College, began to hold secret meetings and to
disseminate Lutheran treatises. They made proselytes; they grew bolder,
and nailed upon the church doors at nights some famous "libels and
bills."
Archbishop Warham presently found himself obliged to take notice of the
growing sect. He wrote to Wolsey invoking his aid,
"that the captains of the said erroneous doctrines be punished to
the fearful example of all other. One or two cankered members," he
explains, "have induced no small number of young and incircumspect
fools to give ear unto them," and he proposes that the Cardinal
should give "in commission to some sad father which was brought up
in the University to sit and examine them."
Active measures were now taken to stamp out the heresy in Oxford. Wolsey
ordered the arrest of a certain Thomas Garret of Magdalen, a pernicious
heretic who had been busy selling Tyndale's Bible and the German
reformer's treatises, not only to Oxford students, but even to the Abbot
of Reading. His friends managed to get him safely out of Oxford, but for
some reason or other he returned after three days. The same night he was
arrested in bed in the house of one Radley, a singing-man, where it was
well known that the little Lutheran community was wont to meet. Garret
was not detained in Bocardo, but in a cellar underneath the lodgings of
the commissary, Dr Cottisford, Rector of Lincoln. Whilst the commissary
was at evensong he managed to escape, and made his way to the rooms of
Anthony Dalaber, one of the "brotherhood," at Gloucester College.
Dalaber has left an account--it is a most tearful tale--of the events
which ensued. He had previously had some share in getting Garret away
from Oxford, and was greatly surprised to see him back. He provided him
with a coat in place of his tell-tale gown and hood, and sent him off
with tears and prayers to Wales, whence he hoped to escape to Germany.
After reading the tenth chapter of S. Matthew's Gospel with many a deep
sigh and salt tear, Dalaber went to Cardinal College to give Master
Clarke, a leading brother, notice of what had occurred. On his way he
met William Eden, a fellow of Magdalen, who with a pitiful countenance
explained to him that they were all undone. Dalaber was able to give him
the joyful news of Garret's escape, and proceeded to S. Frideswide's.
"Evensong," he says, "was begun, and the Dean and the other Canons were
there in their grey amices; they were almost at Magnificat before I came
thither. I stood at the Choir door and heard Master Taverner play, and
others of the Chapel there sing, with and among whom I myself was wont
to sing also. But now my singing and music were turned into sighing and
musing. As I thus and there stood, in cometh Dr Cottysford, as fast as
ever he could go, bareheaded, as pale as ashes--I knew his grief well
enough, and to the Dean he goeth into the Choir, where he was sitting in
his stall, and talked with him very sorrowfully." Dalaber describes the
interview which followed, outside the choir, between these two and Dr
London, the Warden of New College, "puffing, blustering and blowing,
like a hungry and greedy lion seeking his prey." The commissary was so
much blamed, that he wept for sorrow. Spies were sent out in every
direction; and when Dalaber returned to his rooms next morning, he found
that they had been thoroughly searched. He had spent the night with the
"brethren," supping at Corpus ("at which supper we were not very
merry"), sleeping at S. Alban Hall, consulting together and praying for
the wisdom of the serpent, and the harmlessness of the dove. This
request would appear to have been in some measure vouchsafed to him,
for, when he was interrogated by the prior as to his own movements and
those of Garret, he was enabled to furnish forth a tale full of
circumstantial detail but wholly untrue. "This tale," he observes, "I
thought meetest, but it was nothing so." Although it were nothing so, he
repeated his convincing narrative on oath, when he was examined at
Lincoln College by Cottisford, Higdon (Dean of Cardinal's College) and
London. He had sworn on a great Mass book laid before him to answer
truly, but, as he complacently observes, "in my heart nothing so meant
to do." Nor, perhaps, did he mean to betray twenty-two of his
associates, and the storehouse of Garret's books, when examined by Dr
London, whom he calls the "rankest, papistical Pharisee of them all"--at
any rate he omits to mention the fact in his narrative.
Of Garret himself, however, no trace could be found; and the commissary,
being "in extreme pensyfness," consulted an astrologer, who made a
figure for him, and told him, with all the cheerful certainty of an
eastern astrologer in these days, that Garret, having fled
south-eastward in a tawny coat, was at that time in London, on his way
to the sea-side. Consulting the stars was strictly forbidden by the
Catholic Church, but the Warden of New College, though a Doctor of
Divinity, was not ashamed to inform the bishop of the astrologer's
saying, or afraid to ask him to inform the Cardinal, Archbishop of York,
concerning it. Luckily for him the commissary did not rely wholly on the
information either of Dalaber or the astrologer. The more practical
method of watching the seaport towns resulted a few days later in
Garret's recapture near Bristol. Many of the Oxford brotherhood were
also imprisoned and excommunicated. Garret, who had written a piteous
letter to Wolsey, praying for release, not from the iron bonds which he
said he justly deserved, but from the more terrible bonds of
excommunication, and who had also made a formal recantation of all his
heresies, was allowed to escape. But first he took part in a procession,
in which most of the other prisoners also appeared, carrying faggots
from S. Mary's Church to S. Frideswide's, and on the way casting into a
bonfire made at Carfax for the purpose certain books which had most
likely formed part of Garret's stock.
At least three of the prisoners, however, died in prison without having
been readmitted to Communion, either from the sweating sickness then
raging, or, as Foxe asserts, from the hardships they endured. For they
were kept, he says, for nearly six months in a deep cave under the
ground, on a diet of salt fish. By Higdon's orders they did at least
receive a Christian burial.
The heretics were crushed in Oxford, but elsewhere the movement grew
apace. The printing press scattered wide-cast books and pamphlets which
openly attacked the corruption of the Church and the monastic orders.
Henry determined to proscribe all books that savoured of heresy. A joint
committee of Oxford and Cambridge theologians was summoned to meet in
London. They examined and condemned the suspected books which were
submitted to them. The publication of English treatises upon Holy
Scripture without ecclesiastical sanction was forbidden by royal
proclamation. Versions of the Bible in the vulgar tongue were at the
same time proscribed.
Yet this orthodox king, to whom as "Defender of the Faith," Leo X. had
sent a sword still preserved in the Ashmolean, was on the brink of a
breach with Rome. For Henry, with his curious mania for matrimony, had
determined to marry Anne Boleyn, but he failed to obtain from the Papal
Legates in England a decree for the dissolution of his marriage. It was
a failure fraught with enormous consequences. The fortunes of Oxford
were involved in it. The King gladly availed himself of the suggestion
of a Cambridge scholar, Thomas Cranmer, that the Universities should be
called on for their judgment. They were thus placed in a position
analogous to that of an oecumenical council with power to control a
pontifical decree. For the Pope's predecessor had granted a
dispensation for Henry's marriage with Catherine, his brother's wife.
Every learned man in Europe, but for bribery or threats, would have
condemned Henry's cause on its merits. But it was evident that the
question would not be decided on its merits.
From a packed commission at Cambridge a decision favourable to a divorce
was with difficulty extorted; but even so it was qualified by an
important reservation. The marriage was declared illegal, if it could be
proved that Catherine's marriage with Prince Arthur had been
consummated. Cambridge was praised by the King for her "wisdom and good
conveyance." Yet that reservation, if the testimony of the Queen herself
was to go for anything, amounted to a conclusion against the divorce.
It was not expected that a favourable verdict would be obtained so
easily from Oxford. At the end of his first letter, in which the King
called upon the University to declare their minds "sincerely and truly
without any abuse," a very plain threat is added, which left no doubt as
to the royal view of what could be considered "sincere and true":
"And in case ye do not uprightly according to divine learning
handle yourselves herein, ye may be assured that we, not without
great cause, shall so quickly and sharply look to your unnatural
misdemeanour therein that it shall not be to your quietness and
ease hereafter."
It was proposed that the question should be referred to a packed
committee. But the Masters of Arts refused to entrust the matter wholly
to the Faculty of Theology. They claimed to nominate a certain number of
delegates. Their attitude provoked sharp reproval and further threats
from the imperious monarch.
The youths of the University were warned not to play masters, or they
would soon learn that "it is not good to stir up a hornets' nest."
Persuasion was used by the Archbishop and the Bishop of Lincoln. The
example of Paris and Cambridge was quoted. The aid of Dr Foxe, who had
proved his skill by obtaining the decree at Cambridge, was called in.
Learned arguments were provided by Nicholas de Burgo, an Italian friar.
But there was no doubt about the popular feeling on the question. Pieces
of hemp and rough drawings of gallows were affixed to the gate of the
bishop's lodging; both he and Father Nicholas were pelted with stones in
the open street; the women of Oxford supported Catherine with such
vehemence, that thirty of them had to be shut up in Bocardo. The King
had dispatched two of his courtiers to Oxford: the Duke of Suffolk and
Sir William Fitzwilliam. The former imprisoned the women; the latter
distributed money to the more venal of the graduates. "No indifferency
was used in the whole matter."
Threats and bribes at last prevailed. A committee carefully packed was
appointed with power to decide in the name of the University. A verdict
was obtained which corresponded to the Cambridge decree. The important
reservation, "if the marriage had been consummated," was added to the
decision that marriage with the widow of a deceased brother was contrary
to the divine and human law.
Cranmer, who had succeeded Warham as Archbishop of Canterbury,
pronounced the King's marriage with Catherine null and void. In the
following year the University was asked to concur in the foregone
decision in favour of separation from Rome. The authority of the Pope in
England was abolished, and the monasteries were rendered liable to
visitation by commission under the Great Seal. The Act of Supremacy
followed. Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More were executed for denying
the royal supremacy, and Thomas Cromwell was appointed Vicar-General of
England.
His failure to procure a decree invalidating Henry's marriage meant the
downfall of Wolsey. His downfall involved the fortunes of his college.
It was rumoured at once that the buildings were to be demolished,
because they bore at every prominent point escutcheons carved with the
arms of the proud Cardinal. Wolsey had "gathered into his College
whatsoever excellent thing there was in the whole realm." The rich
vestments and ornaments with which he had furnished S. Frideswide's
Church were quickly "disposed" by the King. The disposal of this and
other property, lands, offices, plate and tapestries forfeited under the
statute of Praemunire, and carefully catalogued for his royal master by
the fallen minister, had obvious pecuniary advantages. And as in London,
York Place, the palace which the Cardinal had occupied and rebuilt as
Archbishop of York, was confiscated and its name changed to Whitehall;
so, when "bluff Harry broke into the spence," he converted Cardinal's
College into "King Henry VIII.'s College at Oxford" consisting of a dean
and twelve canons only (1532).
Henry had been besought to be gracious to the college; but he replied
that it deserved no favour at his hands, for most of its members had
opposed his wishes in the matter of the divorce. The prospect of the
dissolution of his college at Oxford, foreshadowed by that of his great
foundation at Ipswich, caused Wolsey infinite sorrow. To Thomas Cromwell
he wrote that he could not sleep for the thought of it, and could not
write unto him for weeping and sorrow. He appealed with all the passion
of despair to the King and those in power, that the "sharpness and
rigour of the law should not be visited upon these poor innocents." In
response to a petition from the whole college, Henry replied that he
would not dissolve it entirely. He intended, he said, to have an
honourable college there,
"but not so great or of such magnificence as my Lord Cardinal
intended to have, for it is not thought meet for the common weal of
our realm. Yet we will have a College honourably to maintain the
service of God and literature."
The purely ecclesiastical foundation of 1532 was not calculated to
maintain the service of literature. It was surrendered twelve years
afterwards to the King, whose commissioners received on the same day the
surrender of the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary
at Osney, the new cathedral body formed at the ancient abbey upon the
creation of the see and diocese of Oxford (1542). The way was thus
cleared for the final arrangement by which (4th November 1546) the
episcopal see was transferred from Osney and united with the collegiate
corporation under the title it bears to-day, Ecclesia Christi
Cathedralis Oxon; ex fundatione Regis Henrici Octavi. Thus S.
Frideswide's Church became the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford, and
also the chapel of the college now at last called Christ Church. The
foundation now consisted of a dean, eight canons, eight chaplains, sixty
scholars and forty children, besides an organist, singing men, servants
and almsmen. It was still, then, a foundation of extraordinary
magnificence.
Yet there were not wanting "greedy wretches to gape after the lands
belonging to the Colleges." They urged Henry to treat them as he had
treated the monasteries. But the King refused.
"Ah, sirrah," he replied to one, "I perceive the Abbey lands have
fleshed you, and set your teeth on edge, to ask also those
Colleges. And wheras we had a regard only 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 realm shall be well
governed when we be dead and rotten.... I love not learning so ill
that I will impair the revenues of any one house by a penny, wherby
it may be upholden."
Henry, in fact, may be credited with a genuine desire for the promotion
of learning. He had, besides, no reason to quarrel with the University.
It had proved subservient to his will; the colleges were nurseries of
the secular clergy, who adopted the new order of things. They could not
be regarded like the monks, as mercenaries of a foreign and hostile
power.
But academic enthusiasm was not to be promoted by the despotic methods
of Henry. The arbitrary restrictions of the Six Articles, "that sure
touchstone of a man's conscience," struck at the root of intellectual
liberty. The revival of academic life which had resulted from the
stimulus of the Catholic Renaissance, was suddenly and severely checked
by the early developments of the Reformation. The monasteries had been
dissolved, and the poor students whom they had supported trudged
a-begging. Another outbreak of plague helped to increase the
depopulation of the University. The town suffered severely from both
causes. The halls and hostels stood empty; very few degrees were taken.
Religious controversy usurped the place of education. The University
became a centre of politics and ecclesiasticism. The schools were
deserted or occupied by laundresses; and, whilst commissioners were busy
applying tests, expelling honest fellows, destroying MSS. and smashing
organs, men began to discover that, through the invention of printing,
it had become possible for them to educate themselves. They no longer
needed to go to a monastery or college library to obtain a book;
teaching needed no longer to be merely oral. The multiplication of books
decentralised learning. With the monopoly of manuscripts and the
universality of Latin were taken almost at a moment's notice two of the
chief assets of mediæval Universities. A man might now read what he
liked, and where he liked, instead of being obliged to listen to a
master in the schools teaching set subjects that did not interest him.
And no "test" was required of the independent reader. No wonder that, as
one preacher dismally exclaimed, the Wells of Learning, Oxford and
Cambridge, were dried up.
The King had taken the charters of both University and town into his own
hands in 1530. He did not restore them till 1543. Two years later
Parliament made over all colleges and chantries to the King, "who gave
them very good counsel." Meanwhile, in 1535, a Visitation of the
University had been held. Dr London and Richard Layton were the chief
Visitors. Their object was to establish ecclesiastical conformity, to
supplant the old scholastic teaching and to promote classical learning.
They confirmed the public lectures in Greek and Latin which they found,
and established others, at Magdalen, New College, and C.C.C., and they
settled other lectures of the kind at Merton and Queen's. The other
colleges, they found, could not afford to have such lectures, and
accordingly they directed the students of these to attend the courses at
the others daily. The study of Aristotle and the Holy Scriptures was
enjoined, and the King founded Regius Professorships in Divinity,
Hebrew, Greek, Medicine and Civil Law. The University meantime was
rewarded for its compliance by being exempted from the payment of
tithes. At the same time the professors of the Old Learning were ousted
from the academic chairs. Duns Scotus was dragged from his pedestal with
an ignominy which recalled the fate of Sejanus.
"We have set Duns in Bocardo," wrote Layton, "and have utterly
banished him Oxford for ever with all his blind glosses.... The
second time we came to New College, after we had declared your
injunctions we found all the great Quadrant Court full of the
leaves of Dunse, the wind blowing them into every corner. And there
we found one Mr. Greenfield, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire
gathering up part of the same book leaves, as he said, to make him
sewells or blawnshers to keep the deer within his wood, therby to
have the better cry with his hounds."
That day the downfall of scholasticism in England was at last complete.
During the minority of Edward VI. "there was great expectation in the
University what religion would be professed." It was soon evident which
way the wind was to blow. Young men began to "protest" in Magdalen
Chapel. In 1548 the Protector Somerset and Cranmer determined to reform
the University in the interests of the new Anglican Church. Theologians
were invited from the Continent, and in default of Melancthon, Peter
Martyr arrived and lectured in the Divinity Schools on the Epistles of
S. Paul and the Eucharist. His teaching roused protest from the Roman
Catholics, and polemical divinity, if no other study, flourished for a
while in Oxford. But a commission was now appointed with large powers,
which proceeded to draw up a code of statutes calculated to eliminate
all popery from the constitution of the University. These "Edwardine
statutes," as they were called, remained nominally in force till the
"Laudian" statutes replaced them.
The commissioners dealt severely with the colleges. Many of the fellows
who had opposed the Reformation fled forthwith; others they ejected and
replaced by rigid Calvinists. "All things," the Roman Catholics thought,
"were turned topsy turvy." The disciplinary injunctions and acts of the
commissioners were wholly admirable. Unfortunately their fanaticism in
other directions was of the deplorably iconoclastic sort.
The ancient libraries were rifled; many MSS., guilty of no other
superstition than red letters in their titles, were condemned to the
fire. "Treatises on scholastical divinity were let loose from their
chains and given away or sold to mechanics for servile uses, whilst
those wherein angles or mathematical diagrams appeared were destroyed
because accounted Popish or diabolical or both." The works of the
schoolmen were carried about the city "by certain rude young men" on
biers and finally burnt in the market-place, a proceeding which they
styled the funeral of Scotus and Scotists. Some of the books from
monasteries were sold at this time to grocers and soapsellers, and some
by shiploads to bookbinders abroad, "to the wondering of foreign
nations," says Bale.
From wall and window, the order had gone forth giving sanction to the
popular movement, every picture, every image commemorating saint or
prophet or apostle was to be extirpated. Painted glass, as at New
College, survives to show that the order was imperfectly obeyed. But
everywhere the statues crashed from their niches, rood and rood-loft
were laid low and the sun-light stared in white and stainless on the
whitened aisles. At Magdalen the high altar and various images and
paintings were destroyed, the organ burnt and the vestments sold. At
Christ Church the dean and chapter decided that all altars, statues,
images, tabernacles, missals and other matters of superstition and
idolatry should be removed out of the Cathedral; and the other colleges
and churches followed this example.
The magnificent reredos in the chapel of All Souls', of which the
present work is a conjectural restoration, was smashed; most of the
stained glass there was broken, and the altars were removed together
with "the thing they call an organ."
The Edwardine commissioners proposed to abolish the grammar schools
founded in connection with the colleges. The city, however, immediately
petitioned the King on behalf of the schools:
"Where your poor orators have always had received and enjoyed by
the means of your Colleges founded by your grace's most noble
progenitor's singular treasure, help & commodity for the education
of their sons, and especially the more part of us being not
otherwise able to bring up our children in good learning and to
find them at grammar.... There be in danger to be cast out of some
college thirty, some other forty or fifty, some other more or
fewer, & the most part of them children of your poor orators,
having of the said college meat, drink, cloth & lodging & were
verie well brought up in learning in the common grammar scoole at
the College of S. Marie Magdalen, & so went forward & attained to
logicke & other faculties at the charges of the said College &
likewise of other houses and little or nothing at the charge of
their parents, after their admission into any of the said colleges,
wh. thing hath always heretofore been a great succour unto your
said poor orators."
The petition was successful, though some schools were suppressed.
Magdalen College School, thus preserved, was intended by the
[Illustration: The Grammar Hall Magdalen College]
founder to be to Magdalen what Winchester was to New College. It had
been housed in his life-time in a building (1480), a picturesque
fragment of which yet remains, in what is known as the Grammar Hall. The
Grammar School buildings stood outside the west gate of the college, on
the ground between the modern S. Swithun's buildings and the present
"Grammar Hall," which belonged in part to this school building and in
part (including the south portion and the little bell-tower) to other
buildings that were added to it (1614). All these buildings, save the
fragment that remains to be used as undergraduates' rooms, were removed
in 1845 together with the houses that faced the gravel walk between them
and Long Wall. The present school-room, facing the High, was erected
shortly afterwards (Buckler), in the Perpendicular style, and recently
(1894), across the bridge, on the site once occupied by Turrel's Hall, a
handsome house for the master and fifty boarders has been built (Sir
Arthur Blomfield). At the same time the ground by the river below the
bridge was converted into gardens and a cricket ground for the
choristers and schoolboys, a conversion which has greatly improved the
aspect of the bridge.