ELIZABETH, BODLEY AND LAUD
The University had declined sadly under Mary. Affairs were not at first
greatly improved when Elizabeth ascended the throne. "Two religions,"
says Wood, "being now as it were on foot, divers of the chiefest of the
University retired and absented themselves till they saw how affairs
would proceed." It was not long, however, before Queen Elizabeth
appointed a body of Visitors to "make a mild and gentle, not rigorous
reformation." The Edwardine system was for the most part restored; the
ejected fellows were brought back, whilst those who refused to comply
with the new Act of Supremacy were expelled in their turn. Of these the
largest number were New College men. The loss of these scholars did not
improve the state of learning at Oxford. But in 1564 the Earl of
Leicester became Chancellor, and it is in some part due to him that
order was restored and a regular course of studies once more
established.
Queen Elizabeth had been imprisoned at Woodstock during her sister's
reign, and some of the needlework which she did when she was there is
preserved at the Bodleian. The University had dispatched a deputation to
her, with a present of gloves and a congratulatory address upon her
accession; she now (31st August 1566) paid to Oxford a long-promised
visit.
She was welcomed by a deputation from the University at Godstow Bridge
and at Bocardo by the civic authorities, who there yielded up to her
the city mace, and presented her with a gilt cup and forty pounds of
gold. A Latin oration at the North Gate and a Greek oration at Carfax
were delivered. The Queen thanked the orator in Greek, and was then
escorted to Christ Church. For three days Disputations were held in the
royal presence in S. Mary's Church. Elizabeth was a good scholar, one
remembers, taught by Roger Ascham, and she really seems to have enjoyed
this learned function. On the last day, at any rate, so keen was the
argument and the Queen's interest in it, that the disputants "tired the
sun with talking and sent him down the sky," so that the lights had to
be lit in the church. At the end of the Disputations a Latin oration was
delivered in praise of the Queen and her victories over the hosts of
Spain and the Pope. "Tuis auspiciis," the peroration ran, "Hispania
Anglum non vidit nisi victorem, Anglia Hispanum nisi captivum."
Loud cries of "Vivat Regina" resounded through the church. Elizabeth was
pressed to reply. She pretended to hesitate, suggesting that the Spanish
Ambassador, or Leicester, or Cecil should speak for her. The courtiers
were wise enough to bow dissent. At length she rose, and her opening
words contained a happy allusion to the growing darkness: "Qui male agit
odit lucem"; "Dominus illuminatio mea," she might have added.
Some relaxation was provided for Her Majesty in the shape of Latin and
English plays which were acted in Christ Church Hall "upon a large
scaffold erected, set about with stately lights of wax variously
wrought." The Latin play was entitled "Marcus Geminus and Progne"; the
English play "Palamon and Arcite," written by Mr Richard Edwards, and
acted, we are told, with very great applause. "In the said play was
acted a cry of hounds in the Quadrant upon the train of a fox in the
hunting of Theseus, with which the young scholars who stood in the
windows were so much taken, supposing it was real, that they cried out
'Now, now. There, there. He's caught! He's caught!' All which the Queen
merrily beholding said 'O excellent! Those boys in very troth are ready
to leap out of the window, to follow the hounds.'" The play, indeed, was
considered to surpass "Damon and Pythias," than which they thought
nothing could be better.
The acting of plays of this kind and in this manner at the Universities
as at the Inns of Law on occasions of high festivity throws considerable
light on the development of the Elizabethan drama. The University Wits,
as they were called, began at this period to lay the foundations of
English fiction in their "Tales"; the early English drama received its
classical tone and form from them also. For John Lyly, George Peele,
Thomas Lodge and others were Oxford men.
The Bohemian extravagance of the life of the "University Wits" in London
will help us to understand why it was that Henry Savile, Warden of
Merton (1586), the austere and accomplished scholar, could not abide
wits. He preferred the plodding scholar, and used to say that if he
wanted wits he would look for them in Newgate. Neither Wits nor their
plays, which were often scurrilous enough, were acceptable to the
Puritans, and within a few years both city and University began to
restrict the performances of plays.
Queen Elizabeth bade farewell to Oxford on 6th September, and on that
day the walls of S. Mary's, All Souls' and University were hung with
innumerable copies of verses bemoaning her departure. By Magdalen
College she took leave of the civic authorities; the University
officials attended her to Shotover, and there, at the conclusion of a
speech from the Provost of Oriel, "she gave him her hand to kiss, with
many thanks to the whole University, speaking then these words, as 'tis
reported, with her face towards Oxford. 'Farewell the worthy University
of Oxford; Farewell my good subjects there; Farewell my dear scholars
and pray God prosper your studies. Farewell. Farewell.'" No wonder she
won universal homage by "her sweet, affable and noble carriage."
The name of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, lover of Elizabeth, is
inseparably connected with Oxford, not only by his chancellorship, but
also by the fact that it is here that his ill-fated wife, Amy Robsart,
is buried. She was found dead at the foot of the stairs in Cumnor Place.
After the inquest her body was brought to Gloucester Hall, and lay there
till it was buried with full heraldic ceremonial on 22nd September 1560
in the choir of S. Mary's Church. The funeral sermon was preached by one
of Dudley's chaplains, who had just been transferred from the mastership
of Balliol to the rectorship of Lincoln. He, fumbling for a phrase to
express her violent death, "tripped once or twice by recommending to his
auditors the virtues of that Lady, so pitifully _murdered_." But there
is no evidence that Amy Robsart was murdered, with or without the
connivance of Leicester. The story which Sir Walter Scott has used in
"Kenilworth" is the baseless invention of political enemies. What
happened to the unfortunate lady was either accident or suicide.
The influence of Leicester and the interest which as Chancellor he took
in the University, is marked by various Acts which had an important
effect upon the course of its development. In 1571 the Chancellor,
masters and scholars received the right of perpetual succession, and
were thus relieved of the necessity of obtaining a new charter from each
succeeding king. In this year too an Act was passed, supplemented by
further enactments in 1575, by which one-third part at least of the
rents to be reserved in college leases is required to be payable in corn
or in malt. The continual rise in prices which has resulted ever since
from the increase, and therefore depreciation, of the precious metals,
has thus only impoverished the colleges so far as rents were fixed in
money, but corn having more or less kept its value, the one-third of the
rents so wisely reserved came to exceed the remainder by far.
Leicester revived the practice of nominating the Vice-Chancellor, and by
an Act of the University passed at his instigation (1569) a great step
was taken in the direction of establishing the monopoly
[Illustration: The Chapel Quad Jesus College]
of the colleges in the government of the University. The preliminary
deliberations of the Black Congregation, consisting of resident masters,
were henceforth to be conducted by the Vice-Chancellor, Doctors, Heads
of Houses and Proctors.
Leicester earned the reputation of being meddlesome, and he certainly
used his position as Chancellor in the dispensing of patronage. But many
of his reforms were statesmanlike, and his endeavours to raise the
standard of discipline and learning were evidently genuine. One of his
chief aims was to prevent the possibility of Romanising priests
obtaining a foothold once more in the University. With this object he
introduced among other provisions a test which was destined to have the
most potent influence on the history of the place. Every student above
sixteen years of age was now required to subscribe on his matriculation
to the Thirty-nine Articles and the royal supremacy. Intended to exclude
the Romanising party only, this rule affected in the future mainly the
descendants of the Puritans who enacted it. Thenceforth, Mr Brodrick
remarks, the University, 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 country, meanwhile, was filled with the Jesuits' propaganda. There
was Robert Parsons, for instance, who had been compelled to resign his
fellowship at Balliol and had since joined the Society of Jesus.
Disguised as a soldier and armed with a secret printing press, he
wandered about the country disseminating Romanist literature. He finally
brought off an extraordinary _coup_ at Oxford. In a wood near Henley he
printed copies of a tract by Campian, a fellow Jesuit, and on
Commemoration Day (1580) every member of the University found a copy of
it in his seat at S. Mary's when he came there to listen to the
University sermon.
Proceedings against the Roman Catholics became more severe as the
struggle continued. Fellows were ejected from colleges; priests were
hung, drawn and quartered. In the reign of James I. George Napier of
Corpus, a seminary priest convicted of high treason, was so treated,
parts of his quartered body being set over the gates of the city and
over the great gate of Christ Church. Puritan Oxford, however, was not
distinguished for learning or discipline, in spite of Leicester's
fatherly exhortations. For the Chancellor rated the University for its
deficiency in sermonising and lecturing, its lack of religious
instruction and education of youth. And as to discipline, he finds fault
with the prevailing excess in apparel "as silk and velvet, and cut
doublets, hose, deep ruffs and such like, like unto or rather exceeding
both Inns of Court men and Courtiers." The streets, he complains, are
more full of scholars than of townsmen, and the ordinary tables and
ale-houses, grown to great number, are overcrowded day and night with
scholars tippling, dicing, carding, tabling and perhaps worse. Ministers
and deacons were presently solemnly forbidden to go into the field to
play at football or to wear weapons to maintain any quarrel under
penalty of expulsion. Plays acted by common stage players were
forbidden, and scholars were not allowed, under pain of imprisonment, to
sit on bulks or penniless bench or other open places, or to gad up and
down the streets. Leicester, however, made a reservation in favour of
the "Tragedies and Comedies used to be set forth by University men," and
he himself was entertained (1585) at Christ Church and at Magdalen with
pleasant comedies.
The students, indeed, had shown themselves so unruly that the affrays
and riots of the Middle Ages seemed to have been revived. The times were
unsettled. Not only were the Roman Catholics and the Calvinists at feud
alike with each other and the moderate party of the Reformed Church,
whom the Queen favoured, but the old quarrels between North and South
and the Welsh broke out again. And the old disputes between the town and
the University had been reopened by a series of orders put forth by the
Privy Council in 1575 which were intended to settle them for ever.
The lack of discipline resulting from these causes is vividly brought
before us by the attack made on the retinue of Lord Norreys by some
scholars of Magdalen who wished to revenge themselves for the punishment
inflicted on one of their number for stealing deer in Shotover forest.
They were repulsed and "beaten down as far as S. Mary's"; but when Lord
Norreys was leaving the town, the scholars
"went up privately to the top of their tower and sent down a shower
of stones that they had picked up, upon him and his retinew,
wounding some and endangering others of their lives. It is said
that upon the foresight of this storm, divers had got boards,
others tables on their heads, to keep them from it, and that if the
Lord had not been in his coach or chariot he would certainly have
been killed."
Some progress, one hopes, had been made in the restoration of order when
Elizabeth paid her final visit "to behold the change and amendment of
learning and manners that had been in her long absence made." She was
received with the same ceremonies as before, but this time, at the
Divinity Disputations in S. Mary's, she did not hesitate to send twice
to a prosy bishop and bid him "cut it short." The fact was that she was
anxious to make a Latin speech herself. But the bishop either could not
or would not sacrifice his beloved periods, and the Queen was obliged to
keep her speech for the Heads of Houses next morning. In the middle of
her oration she noticed the old Lord Treasurer, Burleigh (Cecil),
standing on his lame feet for want of a stool. "Whereupon she called in
all haste for a stool for him, nor would she proceed in her speech till
she saw him provided with one. Then fell she to it, as if there had been
no interruption. Upon which one that knew he might be bold with her,
told her, that she did it on purpose to show that she could interrupt
her speech, unlike the Bishop, and not be put out." In her speech she,
"the only great man in her kingdom," gave some very good advice to the
University, and took the opportunity of rebuking the Romanising and the
Puritan factions of the Church, counselling moderation on all sides.
On her departure she again expressed her love for the place. "Farewell,
farewell, dear Oxford," she exclaimed as she viewed its towers and
spires from the heights of Shotover. "God bless thee and increase thy
sons in number, holiness and virtue!"
[Illustration: Chapel in Jesus]
Some outward and visible signs there certainly were that the Queen's
encouragement of learning and her policy of selecting for her service
"eminent and hopeful students" had borne fruit. In 1571 Jesus College,
the first of the Protestant colleges, had been founded by Hugh ap Rees,
a Welsh Oxonian, at a time when the increase of grammar schools in Wales
was likely to produce an influx of Welsh students into the University.
The statutes were free from any local or national restriction, but
Welshmen always predominated, and Jesus soon came to be regarded, in
Wales, as the National College. Elizabeth figured as a nominal
foundress; and the college, the front of which in Turl Street dates from
her time, the rest being mainly seventeenth-century Gothic, possesses a
famous portrait of her by Zucchero.
A still more noble memorial of Elizabethan times exists in Bodley, as
the great library is called after its founder, "whose single work clouds
the proud fame of the Egyptian Library and shames the tedious growth o'
the wealthy Vatican."
Scarcely had the Duke of Gloucester's library been completed than it
began to be depleted of its treasures. Three volumes only out of that
splendid collection now remain in the Bodleian; one volume has found its
way to Oriel College, another to Corpus Christi; six others may be seen
at the British Museum. The rest had by this time been lost through the
negligence of one generation or the ignorant fanaticism of another. For
scholars borrowed books on insufficient pledges, and preferred to keep
the former and sacrifice the latter. The Edwardine commissioners, as we
have seen, appointed to reform the University, visited the libraries in
the spirit of John Knox. All the books were destroyed or sold. In
Convocation (1556) "venerable men" were chosen to sell the empty shelves
and stalls, and to make a timber-yard of Duke Humphrey's treasure-house!
But the room remained; and it was destined, in its very emptiness and
desolation, to work upon the imagination of one Thomas Bodley, an
accomplished scholar, linguist and diplomatist, who believed with Bury
that a "library of wisdom is more precious than all wealth."
Born at Exeter, he accompanied his father when he fled to Germany from
the Papist persecutions. Whilst other Oxonian Protestants were "eating
mice at Zurich," he studied at Geneva, learning Hebrew under
Chevalerius, Greek under Constantinus, and Divinity under Calvin. Queen
Mary being dead and religion changed, young Bodley was sent to Magdalen.
There, he tells us, he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts (1563). In
the following year he was admitted fellow of Merton College, where he
gave public Greek lectures, without requiring any stipend. He was
elected proctor in 1569, and was subsequently University orator and
studied sundry Faculties. He next determined to travel, to learn modern
languages and to increase his experience in the managing of affairs. He
performed several important diplomatic missions with great ability and
success. On his return from the Hague Burleigh marked him out for the
Secretaryship, but grew jealous of the support he received from Essex.
Bodley found himself unsuited for party intrigue and, weary of
statecraft and diplomacy, decided to withdraw into private life.
But whilst refusing all subsequent offers of high office, he felt that
he was called upon "to do the true part of a profitable member in the
State." All his life, whether immersed in affairs of State at home or
lying abroad for the good of his country, he had never forgotten that
ruined library at Oxford. That there once had been one, he has to remind
the University, was apparent by the room itself remaining.
"Whereupon, examining exactly for the rest of my life what course I
might take, and having sought, as I thought, all the ways to the
wood, to select the most proper, I concluded at the last to set up
my staff at the Library door in Oxford."
He wrote accordingly, offering (1597-8) to restore the place at his own
charge. The offer was gratefully accepted. Bodley had married a rich
widow, and his "purse-ability" was such that he was able to bear the
expense of repairing the room, collecting books and endowing the
library: a work, says Casaubon, rather for a king than a private man.
Two years were spent in fitting up the room and erecting its superb
heraldic roof. The ceiling is divided into square compartments, on each
of which are painted the arms of the University, the open Bible with
seven seals (I Rev. v. I) between three ducal crowns, on the open pages
of which are the words, so truly fitting for a Christian school:
"Dominus Illuminatio mea."
[Illustration: Cooks Buildings S. John's]
On bosses which intervene between each compartment are painted the arms
of Bodley himself.
Bodley now began to solicit his great store of honourable friends to
present books to the library. His proposal was warmly supported by his
countrymen in Devonshire, where, as a contemporary records, "every man
bethought himself now how by some good book or other he might be written
in the scroll of benefactors."
This scroll was the register which Bodley had provided for the enrolment
of the names of all benefactors, with particulars of their gifts. It
consists of two large folios, ornamented with silver-gilt bosses on
their massy covers, which lie on a table of the great room.
Bodley's own donations were large, and he employed a London bookseller
to travel on the Continent and collect books for the library. Besides
numerous private benefactors like Lord Buckhurst and the Earl of Essex
in the early years, the Stationers Company agreed to give Bodley a copy
of every book which they published on condition that they might borrow
the books thus given if needed for reprinting. This arrangement, in
making which Bodley said he met with many rubs and delays, was the
precursor of the obligation of the Copyright Acts, by which a copy of
every book published has to be presented to the Bodleian and the British
Museum. In 1603 Sir Walter Raleigh made a donation of fifty pounds, and
he no doubt had some share in influencing the bestowal of many of the
books which had once belonged to the library of Bishop Hieron. Ossorius,
and were carried off from Faro in Portugal, when that town was captured
by the English fleet under Essex. Raleigh, an Oriel man, was a captain
in the squadron. The library was opened with full solemnity in 1603, and
in the following year King James granted letters patent naming the
library after its founder. That was an honour most richly deserved, for
Bodley was "the first practically public library in Europe; the second,
that of Angelo Rocca at Rome, being opened only in this same year."
To this library, two years later, James, the pedant, who seemed
determined to prove that a learned king, too, could be a crowned ass,
paid a visit. After making an excessively feeble pun anent the bust of
the founder in the large room, which had been sent there by the Earl of
Dorset, Chancellor of the University, he looked at the book shelves, and
remarked that he had often had proof from the University of the fruits
of talent and ability, but had never before seen the garden where those
fruits grew, and whence they were gathered. He examined various MSS. and
discoursed wisely on them; took up the treatise by Gaguinus entitled "De
puritate conceptionis Virginis Mariæ," and remarked that the author had
so written about purity, as if he wished that it should only be found on
the title of his book. The opportunity of thus displaying his learning
was so grateful to the King, that he was moved to an astonishing act of
generosity. He offered to present from all the libraries of the royal
palaces whatever precious and rare books Sir T. Bodley might choose to
carry away. It does not appear that the number or importance of books so
granted was in the event very great. Upon leaving the room the King
exclaimed, probably with sincerity, that were he not King James he would
be a University man; and that were it his fate at any time to be a
captive, he would wish to be shut up, could he but have the choice, in
this place as his prison, to be bound with its chains, and to consume
his days among its books as his fellows in captivity.
To this library came James' ill-starred son, and here, it is said, he
was tempted by Lord Falkland to consult the "Sortes Virgilianæ." The
passage which first met his eye runs thus in Dryden's translation:
"Let him for succour sue from place to place
Torn from his subjects and his son's embrace.
And when at length the cruel war shall cease
On hard conditions may he buy his peace."
Lord Falkland then opened the Virgil in his turn, hoping that his "lot"
might remove the gloomy impression of this bad omen.
[Illustration: The Gardens Exeter College]
But the passage on which he lit dealt with the untimely death of Pallas:
"O curst essay of arms, disastrous doom,
Prelude of bloody deeds and fights to come."
To this library Bacon sent his new book, "The Advancement of Learning,"
and here Milton, leaving the allegro of Horton or Forest Hill for the
penseroso of Oxford's cloisters, made friends with the librarian, and
added his own poems to those treasures which were soon to be defended by
the "unshaken virtue" of his friend, Fairfax, and increased by the
Chancellor, Oliver Cromwell. This is not the place to catalogue the list
of those treasures, the wealth of European literature and the MSS. of
the nearer and the farther East; the great collections which immortalise
the names of the donors, like Laud and Selden, Rawlinson, Gough, Douce
and Sutherland; the books which belonged to Queen Elizabeth and Queen
Margaret, to Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Addison and Shelley; the curios
and _objets-d'art_, princely gifts, like the Arundel and Selden marbles,
coins and portraits, minor curiosities, like stuffed alligators and
dried negro boys, or the lantern of Guy Fawkes, which have all found a
resting-place in
"this goodly Magazine of witte,
This Storehouse of the choicest furniture
The world doth yeelde, heere in this exquisite
And most rare monument, that doth immure
The glorious reliques of the best of men."[36]
In such a place, with such a history, it would be strange indeed if we
did not feel something of the charm that breathes from the very stones
of Bodley.
From the hot and noisy street you pass into the peaceful Schools'
quadrangle, lying beneath the shade of that curious tower, which, as it
were an academic conceit in stone, blends the five orders of classic
architecture with Gothic turret and pinnacle. Architecturally the
"Schools" are plain and poor, but you remember that Bodley conceived the
idea of rebuilding them, and that it was the day after his body had been
put to rest in Merton Chapel (29th March 1613) that the first stone was
laid. The Bodleian forms the west side of this quadrangle. The east wing
of the great library, built (1610-1613) by Bodley when already there was
"more need of a library for the books than of books for the library," is
panelled like the Divinity School, and stretches over the entrance to
it, the Proscholium or "Pig Market," where candidates for degrees were
obliged to wait. The west wing extends over Laud's late Gothic
Convocation House (1634-1640); the books have usurped the third story of
the Schools and the Clarendon building; they are filling the mighty
camera beyond and overflowing into the Ashmolean. But the entrance to
the heart of this grand collection is a modest portal. It opens on a
long winding stair, so long and so wearisome that you seem to have
trodden the very path by which true knowledge is gained ere you pass
through a simple green baize door and see the panorama of all learning,
lit by the glass of the east window, outspread before your eyes.
So to approach it, and passing by the outer library through the yielding
wicket, into Duke Humphrey's gallery, there to turn into one of the
quiet recesses, and calling for book after book, to summon spirits from
the deep of the past, to hold quiet converse with them, while the breeze
and sunlight flow gently in across Wren's huge buttresses from the green
garden of Exeter, till Bodley's own solemn bell calls them back to their
resting-place; this, as has been well said, is the very luxury, or
rather the very poetry of study. "What a place," exclaimed Elia, "What a
place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of
all the writers, that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians,
were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want
to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon
dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage;
and the odour of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the
first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy
orchard."
The growth of the Puritan feeling in Oxford is shown by the formation of
the first Baptist society under Vavasour Powell of Jesus College, whom
John Bunyan once accompanied to this city. The growth of the Puritan
tendency to preach is also indicated by the strange case of Richard
Haydock, a physician of New College, who obtained some notoriety about
this time by preaching at night in his bed. Sermons, he said, came to
him by revelation in his sleep, and he would take a text in his slumbers
and preach on it, "and though his auditory were willing to silence him
by pulling, haling and pinching, yet would he pertinaciously persist to
the end and sleep still." He was not a married fellow evidently. King
James sent for him, and he preached to the monarch in his sleep, but
James made him confess that he was a fraud, who had adopted this curious
means of advertising himself.
The King and Queen and Prince Henry visited Oxford in 1605, and were
welcomed very much as Elizabeth had been. The King, we are told, showed
himself to be of an admirable wit and judgment. The scholars welcomed
him by clapping their hands and humming, which, it was explained to him,
signified applause.
The presence of King James' court, however, was responsible, if we may
believe Wood, for a serious change in manners. For he traces the rise of
that "damnable sin of drunkenness" to this time.
"For wheras in the days of Elizabeth it was little or nothing
practiced, sack being then taken rather for a cordial than a usual
liquor, sold also for that purpose in apothecaries' shops, and a
heinous crime it was to be overtaken with drink, or smoke tobacco,
it now became in a manner common, and a laudable fashion."
The vice in fact grew so prevalent in Oxford, as in the rest of England,
that a statute was passed forbidding members of the University to visit
any tavern and there "sit idly, drink, or use any unlawful play." The
use of the Latin tongue, attendance at lectures and the wearing of
academical dress was also insisted on by the new Chancellor, Archbishop
Bancroft, who added an injunction that long hair was not to be worn:
long hair in those days being accounted a sign not of a poet but of a
swaggerer and ruffian. A few years later it was provided, as a measure
directed against the still increasing vice of drunkenness, that no
scholar should lodge without his college or hall, and that no citizen
should entertain a scholar in his house.
The Gunpowder Plot led to more stringent measures being taken to root
out the Roman Catholics from the University. It is possibly to the deep
impression made by that event that the foundation of Wadham College is
due. The founder of that college (1609), Nicholas Wadham, is said to
have intended to endow a Roman Catholic college at Venice, but to have
decided to endow a number of non-clerical and terminable fellowships at
Oxford instead. His widow, Dorothy, carried out his plans, and, after
Gloucester Hall had refused the benefaction, purchased the site of the
suppressed settlement of Augustinian Friars and built the front
quadrangle with hall and chapel as, externally, we have them to-day. For
the interior of the chapel was dealt with by the Gothic revivalists
(1834). The Wadhams were West Country folk, and the majority of workmen
engaged were Somersetshire men. It is suggested that the extraordinarily
fine Perpendicular character of the chapel choir is due to this fact;
and that the masons reproduced, in the seventeenth century, the style of
their county churches. The choir is a copy of fifteenth-century work;
the ante-chapel and the rest of the quadrangle, so charming in its
unadorned simplicity, are beautiful examples of the survival in Oxford
of the Gothic tradition. Quadrangles at Merton and Wadham are the most
notable examples of this debased and nondescript style, redeemed by most
excellent composition, proportioned like some Elizabethan manor.
James had been inclined at first to favour the Puritans, but when he
finally cast in his lot with the High Church party, the University,
which he, like Elizabeth, had done his best to conciliate as the
educational centre of the national clergy, supported him loyally. In the
year of his accession he had granted letters patent to both
Universities, empowering them each to choose two grave and learned men,
professing the civil law, to serve as burgesses in the House of
Parliament; and the Universities were again indebted to him when they
were called upon to furnish scholars for the great task of preparing the
Authorised Version of the Bible.
Thus Oxford had its share in giving the Book to the people. From this
time forward every Englishman was more than ever a theologian, and at
the Universities, as at Westminster, theological controversy absorbed
all energies. Literature, says Grotius (1613), has little reward.
"Theologians rule, lawyers find profit, Casaubon alone has a fair
success, but he himself thinks it uncertain, and not even he would have
had any place as a literary man--he had to turn theologian."
Oxford, in return, declared itself on the side of passive obedience. The
Church embraced the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings; the
University burned the books of Paræus in S. Mary's Churchyard, and
solemnly decreed that it was not lawful for the subject to resist his
sovereign by force of arms, or to make war against him, either offensive
or defensive (1622). Thus it is evident that the influence of Calvin had
died away at Oxford, and that the University had adopted, by the end of
James' reign, the reactionary creed of Laud, and was ready to support
the Stuart claim to absolutism. The Divine Right of Kings and the Divine
Right of Bishops, as it was indicated by James' own phrase, "No Bishop,
no King," was to be for more than a generation the official creed of
Oxford schooled by Laud. For meanwhile one William Laud, B.D. of S.
John's College, had filled the office of proctor and had been censured
by the Vice-Chancellor for letting fall in a sermon at S. Mary's divers
passages savouring of Popery. But he survived the reproof. President of
S. John's from 1611-1621, he set himself to reform the discipline of the
University and to undo the work of Leicester.
In 1630 he was elected Chancellor in opposition to the younger brother
of the late Chancellor, Lord Pembroke, who was supported by the
Calvinists. Preaching on the points in dispute between Calvin and
Arminius was at once forbidden. This, with Laud as Chancellor, meant
that the Puritans, who regarded Laud's "High Church" views as little
better than Popery in disguise and as exposing the country to a danger
which was too near and too deadly to be trifled with, were muzzled or
driven from the country; but their opponents, if they preached against
the practices of Geneva, met only with the mildest kind of rebuke.
Laud's experience of the University had convinced him of the necessity
of revising and codifying the statutes "which had long lain in a
confused heap." As Chancellor he at once set about that difficult task.
The Caroline or Laudian Statutes were based on the old statutes and
customs as collected, transcribed and drawn up by the antiquarian, Brian
Twyne, fellow of C.C.C. Laud rewarded him with the office of Custos
Archivorum. It was from the vast and scholarly collections of Brian
Twyne that Wood quarried freely, and, it must be said, without due
acknowledgment. But Wood succeeded in a task beyond Twyne's powers. He
achieved immortality by clothing the dry bones of antiquarian fact or
fancy in prose at times so racy and at times so musical.
Already (1629) Laud had been responsible for the introduction of the
cycle, which put an end to the riots that had hitherto attended the
election of proctors. Free election by the academical democracy had
resulted in frequent abuses. The cycle invented
[Illustration: Oriel Window S. John's College]
by Peter Turner of Merton assigned to each college in turn, and in
proportion to its size and dignity, the right of nominating proctors.
The system, modified in 1856 and 1887, still obtains. His care for
discipline led the Chancellor to make some much-needed reforms in the
direction of diminishing the number of ale-houses and enforcing a proper
system of licensing in the town. By his own proclamation he named a
toll-gatherer for the market; he obtained an order from Council for the
destruction of cottages which the townsmen had erected round about the
wall and ditch; and, in spite of a protest from the citizens, the
Caroline Charter was obtained, confirming the rights of the University
over the town.
When the labours of Twyne were finished and the Delegacy had at last
succeeded in codifying the laws and customs, the code was placed in the
hands of Laud. He corrected the draft, and in 1636 the Corpus Statutorum
was promulgated, confirmed by the King and gratefully accepted by the
University. The new code was destined to govern it for two hundred years
and more. Though to a great extent a digest of statutes already in
force, the Laudian Statutes completed and stereotyped the changes which
had long been taking place. The old order changes; the academic
commonwealth becomes an oligarchy; the University is henceforth to be
governed by a "Hebdomadal Board," and all power is definitely
concentrated in the hands of the colleges and the Heads of Houses.
The old scholastic disputations were superseded by a system of public
examinations; the studies required for a degree were organised and
defined; the tutorial system was emphasised by the regulation which
required the student to enter under a tutor resident in the same
college. The code was received with effusive gratitude. The popularity
of Laud was not merely due to the vigour with which he had been
enforcing his views of orthodoxy, and compelling all, whether Roman
Catholics or Puritans, to recant if ever in their sermons they
controverted the Arminian doctrines, which the Stuarts had adopted as
the fundamental principles of their policy in Church and State. For
apart from his narrow Church policy Laud was, in University matters,
both an earnest reformer and a great benefactor. He presented the
library with a magnificent collection of Oriental MSS.; he founded and
endowed the Professorship of Arabic, and, most valuable of all, he
obtained for the University the right of printing Bibles, which is one
of the most valuable endowments of that insufficiently endowed
institution to-day. Besides his buildings at S. John's College, the
building of the Convocation House, adjoining the Divinity School
(1634-1638), with the extension of the Bodleian above it, mark the
chancellorship of Laud, and as the seat of Oxford's government fitly
recall the age of its great lawgiver. The Botanic Gardens were also
founded at this period, and the porch of S. Mary's was erected in 1637
by the Archbishop's chaplain, Dr Owen. The beautiful twisted columns of
this, the south-west porch, are surmounted by a fine statue of the
Virgin, crowned, with the Child in her arms. This statue gave such
offence to the Puritans, that it actually figured in the articles of
impeachment against the Archbishop.
Under Laud the University had quite recovered its popularity. There were
no less than four thousand students; many men of learning and piety were
numbered among its alumni; discipline was to a great extent established.
But the coming struggle soon began to upset the new régime. For the
Civil War was inevitably approaching. The chancellorship of Laud was
crowned by a visit from the King and Queen in 1636. But though the
University and town went out, as was their custom, towards Woodstock to
meet their royal visitors, and though speeches and ceremonies were
performed as usual, Wood notes that in the streets "neither scholars nor
citizens made any expressions of joy or uttered as the manner is, Vivat
Rex!" The visit lasted three days. The Elector Palatine and Prince
Rupert received honorary M.A. degrees. Charles paid special attention to
S. John's College, out of compliment to Laud, who entertained the royal
party there, and drew attention to the library he had enlarged and the
quadrangle he had built, mainly out of the stones obtained from the old
Carmelite Convent in Beaumont Palace--once the Palace of Kings. From
that time forward S. John's was the most royalist of colleges. One of
its most treasured possessions was the portrait of the Royal Martyr,
"which has the whole of the book of Psalms written in the lines of the
face and the hair of the head." Of this picture, as of other things, the
story is told that Charles II. begged it of the college, and promised in
return to grant them any request they might make. They gave the picture,
and requested His Majesty to give them--the picture back again. Comedies
were performed at S. John's and Christ Church. The play at S. John's,
"The Hospital of Lovers" was "merry and without offence," but that at
Christ Church, by William Strode, the public orator, called the
"Floating Island," had more of the moralist than poet in it. The scenery
was realistic, but Lord Carnarvon declared the piece to be the worst he
ever saw, except one at Cambridge. Another play at Christ Church, "The
Royal Slave," by William Cartwright, was more successful. The scenery of
the interludes was arranged by Inigo Jones. The Queen was so pleased
with this piece, that she borrowed the Persian dresses and the scenery
of the piece and had it repeated at Hampton Court, but "by all men's
confession, the players came short of the University actors."
Charles, in this matter at least, was more fortunate than his father.
For James had suffered much boredom from a play called "Technogamia, or
the Marriage of the Arts," in which "there was no point and no sense but
non-sense." He was with difficulty induced to stay to the end.
"At Christ Church 'Marriage,' done before the King,
Lest that those mates should want an offering,
The King himself did offer--what, I pray?
He offered twice or thrice to go away."