UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
TO THE DECLINE OF THE PLATONIST MOVEMENT.
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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THE
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
VOLUME III
FROM THE ELECTION OF BUCKINGHAM TO THE
CHANCELLORSHIP IN 1626
TO THE DECLINE OF THE PLATONIST MOVEMENT
BY
JAMES BASS MULLINGEE, M.A.
LATE UNIVERSITY LECTURER ON HISTORY AND LECTURER
AND LIBRARIAN TO 8T JOHN'S COLLEGE.
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1911
PRESERVATION
SERVICES
ffiambrtoge :
PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
TO
ROBERT FORSYTE SCOTT, ESQUIRE, M.A.
MASTER OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE
AND
VICE-CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.
DEAR MR VICE-CHANCELLOR,
It is with much pleasure that, on the completion
of this Volume, I avail myself of your kind permission to
dedicate it to yourself, as a grateful acknowledgement of
your valuable aid in its production, and as a tribute to
your own profound acquaintance with the history of the
University.
Believe me, dear Mr Vice-chancellor,
Very sincerely yours,
J. BASS MULLINGER.
68 LENSFIELD ROAD, CAMBRIDGE,
^ 1911.
a3
PEEFACE.
As more than a quarter of a century has elapsed since
the second volume of this work was published, I venture
to offer a brief explanation of the protracted delay that has
attended the appearance of the third, notwithstanding that
continuous residence in the university throughout that time
has greatly facilitated access to the original sources of in-
formation and especially those relating to the history of the
colleges. The primary cause, I need hardly say, has been
my engagements as lecturer and librarian at my own
College, and also as lecturer on history to the University,
on ecclesiastical history, as Birkbeck lecturer at Trinity
College, and lecturer on the History of Education to the
Teachers' Training College. A contributing cause has been
one which could hardly be foreseen, — the publication of the
Dictionary of National Biography. As soon as, in 1885, the
first volume of that monumental work appeared, and I was
myself privileged to become a not infrequent contributor,
I could not fail to perceive, not only that I should gain
largely by awaiting the completion of the series, but that
such a course was almost indispensable. My lamented
friend, the Reverend J. E. B. Mayor, the late professor of
Latin, was always ready, indeed, to place his invaluable
collections for a Cambridge Athenae, at my service; but with
the advance of the seventeenth century, as individualities
and controversies alike multiplied, and new and important
fields of literature opened up, the history of university
training and culture throughout Christendom assumes a
viii PREFACE.
deeper significance and an enlarged importance ; while it is
no exaggeration to affirm that the intellectual and religious
history of the English-speaking race, during the same
century, was to a great extent the reflex of the traditions
upheld at Oxford and at Cambridge, together with the
resistance which they there evoked, — the annals of those
two ancient seats of learning, again, receiving no little
illustration from a comparison of the one with the other1.
The value, indeed, of the employment of the comparative
method in the study of history, and especially in the history
of Institutions, is now so generally recognized, that altogether
to abandon it would, it seemed to me, tend to deprive my
labours of much of their value ; and comparatively brief as
is the period dealt with in the succeeding pages, it is one
perhaps more eventful and fraught with instruction than
any, of equal duration, in our national experiences. Between
the sudden fate of Buckingham, the chancellor of Cambridge,
and the fall of Clarendon, the chancellor of Oxford, we are
confronted, at both universities, with such a series of changes,
— in the first instance so subversive, in the sequel so reac-
tionary,— that it is, at first sight, difficult to account for their
occurrence within less than half a century, in connexion
with institutions distinguished alike by their reverence for
the Past and by the tenacity of their traditions. As it was,
an observer visiting either university in 1625 and again in
1669, but ignorant of what had occurred in the interval, might
have been ready to conclude that, whatever had been the
case elsewhere, her professed beliefs, learning and discipline
remained much the same. Or, if change there were, it
was by no means in the direction of improvement. At
Cambridge, the new light which had before seemed breaking
in from Bacon's Novum Organum, appeared to be dying out
under the influence of a revived scholasticism ; the cheerful
confidence wherewith Joseph Mede had been able to greet
1 As an instance of this, I may cite the evidence supplied by the sister
university with regard to the work of the Commissioners in 1654, and the
difficulties attendant upon the same, — an experience which, at Cambridge,
receives but little illustration.
PREFACE. ix
his pupils, as he enquired Quid dubitas ? had been exchanged,
in no small measure, for despondency and dubious tones,
audible even in the pulpit, as one of the most thoughtful of
her teachers, himself a bishop of the restored Church, essayed
the task of giving answer to the query, What is Truth ? To
infer, however, that all that had occurred in that troublous
interval was really destined to remain unproductive of
permanent and beneficial result, is very far from being the
conclusion to which the whole narrative necessarily points ;
and those who may feel inclined to put aside the annals of
bygone learning as devoid of much relevance to present-day
questions, may do well to note that, amid the apparently
ceaseless and barren controversies evoked by theological
divisions during the Commonwealth, a great scholar, —
perhaps the ablest whom Cambridge ever lent to Oxford, —
was there to be heard pleading against all coercive discipline
in secondary education, and demanding that every student
in a university should be at liberty to choose such instruc-
tion as seemed best adapted to ' his individual genius and
design1.' Nor is it less certain, that, when individuality has
thus been accorded due recognition, the extent to which it
may, in turn, be moulded by the directive insight of the
teacher, was a process distinctly apprehended and in actual
operation, alike in Oxford and in Cambridge, two centuries
before it was formulated by Herbart and by Herbert Spencer.
Another main fact to be borne in mind, is that the
importance of the two universities at this period, in relation
to the country at large, was not only unprecedented, but
unsurpassed even in much later times. ' Few persons/ says
Dr Venn, writing in 1897, ' have adequately realized the
commanding position to which they had then attained.
Absolutely, — not relatively merely, — the number of gra-
duates in the years about 1625-30, was greater than was
ever attained again till within living memory. When
allowance is made for the growth of population, it must
be frankly admitted that, as far as concerns the number of
1 See infra, p. 446 and note.
X PREFACE.
trained men sent out into the country, the old Univer-
sities have not yet regained the position they occupied two
centuries and a half ago1.'
Among those to whom I had occasion to acknowledge
my indebtedness in my second volume, although some have
passed away, their places have been filled by others ; and in
the access to registers and other sources of information most
readily everywhere accorded me, it has been no slight
additional encouragement to recognize an increasing interest
in all that serves to illustrate the developement of education
both in the past and in the present. The Histories of the
Colleges, both of Oxford and of Cambridge, published by
Mr F. E. Robinson2, I have found of considerable service,
and from a majority of their authors have been able to gain
additional information of a kind that would hardly have
been obtainable in any other quarter. In my own university,
I have been especially indebted to Dr J. E. Sandys, our
Public Orator, for his careful perusal of my proof-sheets and
valuable criticisms thereupon, and also to Dr Peile, the late
master of Christ's, and to Dr Venn, president of Gains
College, for like aid. The publication of the Biographical
History of Gonville and Gains College by Dr Venn, together
with his notes from the episcopal registries, especially those
of London and Norwich, have also served to render available
results of laborious researches which have been invaluable
for my period ; the first volume of the corresponding work
(by Dr Peile), relating to Christ's College3, has just appeared ;
and it is satisfactory to learn that the second and completing
volume may shortly be looked for, under the editorship of
Mr J. A. Venn, M.A., of Trinity College, to whom also my
acknowledgements are due, for frequent biographical in-
1 Biographical History of Gonville and Gains College, Vol. i, Introduc-
tion, xx—xxi.
2 Now published by Hutchinson & Co., Paternoster Row.
3 Biographical Register of Christ's College (1505-1905) and of the Earlier
Foundation, God's House (1448-1505). By John Peile, Litt.D., F.B.A., late
Master of the College. Vol. i. Camb. Univ. Press. 1911.
PREFACE. XI
formation, — derived from his own and his father's transcripts
of the Lists of Degrees and other documents preserved in
the Registry. To Dr Peile, Dr Ward, master of Peterhouse,
and to the late Provost of King's, — to Thomas Thornely,
esquire, fellow and lecturer of Trinity Hall, and to Dr
T. A. Walker, fellow and librarian of Peterhouse, — I have
throughout been under obligation, either for permission to
consult original documents, or for information transcribed
from the same. At Trinity College, Mr W. W. Rouse Ball
and the Rev. A. H. Boughey, tutors and fellows of the
society, have vouchsafed me much kind help, while to the
exceptional knowledge possessed by the former of the history
of the study of mathematics, both in the university and
elsewhere, I have been still further indebted. To Dr C. H.
Firth, professor of Modern History at Oxford, I have been
under repeated obligation, not only for the guidance afforded
by his articles in the Dictionary of Biography and his recent
volumes on the Protectorate, but also for the loan of his
very valuable notes on the British Museum Catalogue of the
Thomason Tracts. To the Rev. Andrew Clark, of Lincoln
College, my thanks are also due for various information, and
not least for his editorial labours on Anthony Wood's Life
and Times.
As regards the spelling of surnames, I have preferred,
whenever they occur in the Dictionary of Biography, the
form in which they are there given, in order to facilitate
reference to that work.
J. B. M.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. I. FROM THE ACCESSION OF CHARLES I TO THE
MEETING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT.
PAGE
The funeral solemnities at Cambridge 1
The Dolor et Solamen and its contributors 1 — 5
Andrew Downes 2 — 3
Samuel Collins 4
Grace for an annual sermon in commemoration of King James 5
King Charles proclaimed in the market-place at Cambridge,
30 Mar. 1625 ib.
Enthusiasm at his accession ib.
Incidents in his previous relations with Cambridge . . . 5 — 10
Election of NORTHAMPTON to the chancellorship and letter of
acceptance to same, May 1612 6
Subsequent nomination of Prince Charles .... 7
Displeasure of King James who annuls his son's nomination . ib.
Resignation of Northampton ....... ib.
Letter of King James to the university .... 8
He enjoins a new election ib.
Northampton's re-election, June 1612 9
His death, June 1614 ib.
Election of the earl of Suffolk ib.
Charles's growing popularity ...... ib.
The Gratulatio and its contributors 10
Presentation of the same at Royston : 12 Oct. 1623 . . ib.
BUCKINGHAM created Duke: 18 May 1623 ib.
Dissatisfaction of Parliament with the universities . . . 11
Approach of the Plague ib.
JOHN WILLIAMS of St John's College ib.
His appointment to the chancellorship 12
His vindication of the memory of King James ... 13
His relations with Buckingham 13 — 4
M. in. b
XIV CONTENTS.
PAGE
JOSEPH MEDE of Christ's College 14
His services to the university contrasted with those of
Williams 15
His early career ib.
Christ's College under Bainbrigg (1622-1645) : William
Chappell, Robert Gell, Michael Honywood . . . 15 — 6
JOHN MILTON'S entry at Christ's ib.
Remarkable range of Mede's acquirements .... 16 — 7
His position as a theologian ....... 17
His ability and originality as tutor 18 — 9
His regard for individuality among his pupils ... 19
Number of eminent men educated at Christ's College at this
period 19
Mede's other notable qualities 19 — 21
His correspondence at home and abroad . . . . 20
His Clavis Apocalyptica ........ 21
His treatment of Apocalyptical studies illustrated . . 22—4
Widespread influence of his treatise 24 — 5
RICHARD MONTAGU of King's College ...... 25
His Appello Caesar em ........ ib.
Early career of the author ........ 26
His distinctive merits as a controversialist .... 27
His controversy with the Jesuits ib.
His challenge and the Reply 27 — 8
He declines to submit to the dogmatic teaching of either
Romanist or Calvinist 28 — 30
His book made the subject of complaint to the House of
Commons .......... 30
He is admonished by archbishop Abbot and appeals to the
King 30—1
James sanctions the publication of the Appello . . . ib.
Montagu defines his standpoint as that of a non-sectarian . 32
His position in relation to the Lapsarian controversy mainly
identical with that of the English Church, and (as he
asserts) the traditional view at Cambridge . . . 32 — 3
The Appello censured by the House of Commons . . 33
Parliament reassembles at Oxford, August 1625. . . . ib.
Buckeridge, Laud, and Howson memorialize Buckingham in favour
of the Appello ......... 34
Dismissal of Williams from the office of lord keeper, Oct. 1625 . 35
He is supplanted by Laud at the CORONATION at Westminster 36
Laud's manual of service for the occasion .... ib.
Williams's letter to Buckingham, 7 Jan. 1626 ... 37
His appeal to Charles, 6 Feb. 1626 . .... ib
CONTENTS. XV
PAGE
His fortitude amid his changed fortunes .... 37 — 8
His activity at Buckden ....... 38
His benefactions to both Trinity and St John's ... 39
Benefaction of Mary, countess of Shrewsbury, to the College . 39 — 40
His visit in 1628 to inspect the new Library . . . 41 — 2
JOHN PRESTON of Queens' College 42
His gradual decline in Buckingham's favour . . . ib.
His success as a preacher at Lincoln's Inn ... 43
He is consulted by Buckingham respecting the merits of the
Appello .......... ib.
Verdict of the bishops appointed by Charles to report on
the same .......... 44
The CONFERENCE AT YORK HOUSE, Feb. 1626 .... 45
Preston and Thomas Morton are opposed by Buckeridge and
Francis White ......... ib.
THOMAS MORTON : his tolerant character, his severe criticism of
the Appello . 46
JOHN COSIN of Caius College ib.
He appears at the Conference towards its close, at the behest
of Buckingham ........ ib.
Triumph of the ' Montagutians ' 47
The Appello is referred to a Committee of the House of
Commons ib.
Montagu is censured, whereupon Buckingham espouses his
cause ib.
His subsequent impeachment ib.
His position relatively to the decisions of the Synod of Dort . 48
The Appello is condemned by the authors of the Joynt
Attestation ......... 48 — 50
MATTHEW SOTCLIFFE of Trinity College 50
His project of a College for instruction in theological polemics ib.
His de Turco Papismo ........ ib.
His Briefe Censure in reply to Montagu .... ib.
Other replies to the Appello by Henry Burton, Featley, and
Francis Rous 51
Suffolk, as chancellor, enjoins the restoration of discipline . 52
His career and death ........ ib.
GEORGE MONTAIGNE of Queens' College 52 — 3
His loyalty to the society ....... 53
He openly advises Buckingham's election to the chancellorship ib.
Intimation of the royal pleasure to the same effect . . ib.
Advice of bishop Neile, to proceed forthwith to elect
Buckingham ......... ib.
Objections to such precipitancy as summed up by Mede . 54
62
XVI CONTENTS.
Leonard Mawe, now master of Trinity, exerts himself to give
effect to Neile's advice ....... 54
Buckingham's other supporters in the university . . ib.
The earl of Berkshire is however proposed .... 55
THE ELECTION, June 1626 56
Disadvantages under which Berkshire's supporters labour . ib.
Buckingham's dubious majority ...... ib.
Analysis of the election as derived from the Registrary's
lists 56—9
Illustration which this affords of the political sympathies of
the different colleges 57 — 9
Real nature of the contest 59
Buckingham's acknowledgements of his indebtedness to the
university 60
Irritation of Parliament at his election .... 61
Proceedings of the Commons 61 — 2
Royal theory of the relation of the Crown to the universities . 62
The House calls for the dismissal of Buckingham . . ib.
Interchange of congratulations between King, chancellor and
university 63
The installation at York House 63 — 4
Death of Preston 64—5
Death of BACON 65
His designed benefactions to both universities . . . ib.
Williams appointed his executor ib.
Growing admiration of Bacon at "Cambridge ... 66
His sense of indebtedness to the university .... 67
Tribute paid by Cambridge to his memory .... 68
Interference of the Crown in the election to mastership of Caius . 69
Election of SIBBES to same, his successful administration . . 70
Portent of the 'Book Fish' 71
Visit of the chancellor, March 1627 72
The UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ib.
Bequest of archbishop Bancroft 73
Buckingham's proposal to erect a new building ... 74
His assassination, Aug. 1628 . . . . . 75
His services to the university . . . . . . 75 — 6
Charles and Laud deem the occasion favorable to the suppres-
sion of controversy 76
Theological zealotry at the universities :
THOMAS FULLER 77
His acquaintance with Thomas Edwards .... ib.
Character of the latter ib.
His sermon at St Andrew's and his recantation . ib.
CONTENTS. xvii
PAGE
HENRY BURTON of St John's 78
His earlier career ib.
ALEXANDER GILL at Oxford ib.
Corresponding manifestations on the Continent . . . 78—9
The DECLARATION prefixed to the Book of Common Prayer,
Nov. 1628 79
The suppression of the Appello ib.
Pardon of Montagu and dissolution of Parliament . . ib.
Ascendancy of Laud and disgrace of Williams .... 80
Bacon's estimate of religious controversy ...... ib.
FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE 81
His design of founding a Chair of History .... ib.
Advice of Francis Bacon with regard to historical studies . 81 — 2
The use of abridgements to be avoided .... 82
The most profitable authors undervalued by the teachers in
the university ib.
Another man's note-books of little use .... ib.
Bacon's advice a factor in Brooke's design .... 83
The design as subsequently modified by the Caput . . 83 — 4
Foreigners eligible, but those in holy orders to be excluded 84
Gerard Vossius declines the offer of the chair ... 85
Appointment of Isaac Dorislaus ...... ib.
The master of Sidney's description of the circumstances
under which Dorislaus commences his lectures . . 86
Wren's letter to Laud giving a detailed account of the cir-
cumstances ......... 86—8
Dorislaus is forbidden to lecture 88
He quits Cambridge but is retained in his lectureship . 89
Assassination of lord Brooke and of Dorislaus . . . ib.
Obscurity in which the subsequent history of the endowment
of the Chair is involved ....... 89 — 90
Election of the earl of Holland to the chancellorship, August
1628 . . ... .-..-. . . • 90
His career and character • *b.
Laud's ideal of the higher education
Growing perception of the -value and relationship of the Semitic
languages . • . . •
Lodovicus De Dieu •*
The study of Arabic . • • 92— 3
Joseph Scaliger and Erpenius
James Golius and his brother Peter
William Bedwell . ib-
His testimony to the practical value of the spoken language . 94
Its use coextensive with the Muhammadan faith . . ib.
XVlll CONTENTS.
PAGE
Value of its literature and of its translations from other
literatures 94
Its acquirement sanctioned by Papal authority . . . 94 — 5
Foundation of the professorship of Arabic by Sir Thomas
Adams 95
ABRAHAM WHEELOCK. ib.
His ability as university librarian 96
His appointment as professor of Arabic .... ib.
SIR HENRY SPELMAN 97
His letter to Wheelock ib.
Foundation of a lectureship in Anglo-Saxon . . . ib.
Election of Laud to the chancellorship of Oxford, April 1629 . 98
Predominance of court influence in the colleges . . ib.
Devices resorted to by the latter to maintain their independence . 98 — 9
Laud endeavours to suppress the lectureship at Trinity Church . 99
Succession in the same of Preston, Sibbes and Thomas Goodwin . 100
Proposal of Laud to substitute catechising ..... ib.
Charles orders that the lectureship be continued . . . 101
Rise of the same in the estimation of both university and town ib.
Recurrence of the Plague at Cambridge, April 1630 . . 102
Accounts of the visitation given by Mede and Dr Ward . . ib.
The consequent distress ib.
Its effects as regards the medical profession .... 103
Its appearance at Padua . . . . . . . . 104
Comparison drawn by a Trinity man between Padua and Cambridge 104 — 5
Death of Hobson the Carrier, Jan. 163£ 105
Mede's description of Christ's College on his return . . . ib.
Low state of discipline in the university 106 — 7
This partly the result of drinking habits 107
The Ordinances of 1630 ib.
Injunctions issued in 1636 with respect to costume . . . ib.
Competition between servants and poor scholars in colleges . 108
The ACADEMIC COMEDY ib.
Peter Hausted and Thomas Randolph ib.
Hausted's Rival Friends ib.
His description of the reception accorded to his comedy . 109
Randolph's Jealous Lovers ....... ib.
Subsequent careers of Randolph and Hausted . . 109 — 10
The Cornelianum Dolium ib.
William Johnson's Valetudinarium. ..... Ill
ABRAHAM COWLEY ib.
His Naufragium Joculare ....... ib.
His Guardian, afterwards The Cutter of Coleman Street . ib.
Ordinance of Parliament against stage plays . . . ib.
CONTENTS. XIX
Reappearance of a spirit of invectiveness in the pulpit . . 112
Discourses by Bernard, Normanton and John Tourney . . 112—3
Dr Ward's letter on the state of the university . . . . 113
Difficulties of his own position at Cambridge .... 114
CHANGES IN THE HEADSHIPS ib.
THOMAS COMBER, master of Trinity ib.
EDWARD MARTIN, president of Queens' . . . . 115
Dissatisfaction at the royal nominations to the degree
of D.D ib.
DR HENRY BUTT, master of Corpus ib.
His trying experiences as vice-chancellor .... ib.
His suicide 116
Various reasons assigned for the act 116—7
Election of Dr Love as his successor . . . . . 117
DR RICHARD LOVE:
His encounter with Christopher Davenport .... ib.
DR WILLIAM BEALE succeeds by royal mandate to the master-
ship of St John's, Feb. 163f 117—8
Pressure brought to bear on Dr Gwynne by the Visitor . . 118
His death, 17 June 1633 119
Contest for the mastership between Robert Lane and Richard
Holdsworth ib.
Charges against the former investigated by a commission of
enquiry 120
Laud's opinion of the two candidates ib.
Charles eventually appoints Dr Beale to the mastership . . ib.
Death of Dr Lane 120—1
Contrast presented by the career of Holdsworth. . . . 121
Succession of John Cosin to the headship of Peterhouse . . 121 — 2
Innovations which he introduces in the college chapel . . 122
Ralph Brownrig succeeds to the mastership of St Catherine's,
July 1635 ib.
His election carried against Crown influence .... 122 — 3
Laud proposes a Visitation of the university . . . . 123
Relations between his vicar, Sir John Lambe, and Williams . ib.
Williams opposes the Visitation of his diocese of Lincoln . . 123—4
Lambe's unfavorable report with respect to same . . . 124
Laud proposes that the university should consult its archives . 124 — 5
The authorities give instruction for the collection of the evidence
for the primate's claim 125
The chancellor and the lord high steward alike commend the
adoption of such a course ...... ib.
Dr Smyth the vice-chancellor gives orders for a further investiga-
tion of the archives . 126
XX CONTENTS.
PAGE
The university reports that the precedents cited for the Visitation
are not valid . . 126
Laud petitions the Crown that the case may be heard at Hampton
Court 127
His relations at this time with Oxford ib.
His munificent benefactions ib.
He places the lectureship of Arabic on a permanent basis . ib.
The documents in the archives at Oxford are conveyed to
Hampton Court 128
Hearing of the cause, June 1635 128 — 31
Protest of Holland on behalf of Cambridge . . . . 129
Laud's claim supported by Sir John Banks and Sir John
Lambe ib.
Cambridge first called upon to state its case . . . 130
Laud denounces the immunities thereby claimed . . ib.
He animadverts on the unconsecrated college chapels . ib.
Argument of his counsel in defence of his right of Visitation . 130 — 1
The decision given in his favour but never carried into effect 131
Report on Common Disorders in the University, furnished to Laud,
Sept. 1636 • 131—4
LAUD'S RULE AS CHANCELLOR AT OXFORD 134
The new statutes given to the university in 1636 . . 135
Special features of the code ib.
Many of the Oxford bachelors betake themselves to Cambridge 136 — 7
The vice-chancellor of Oxford solicits the intervention of
the authorities at Cambridge 137
Dr Brownrig's reply, May 1639 ib.
Laud's efforts to enforce the colloquial use of Latin justified . 138
LAST DAYS OF JOSEPH MEDE 139 — 40
Conclusion of his correspondence, June 1631 . . . 139
He reverts to his Apocalyptic studies ib.
His sudden death, last will, and bequests . . . . 140
PHILEMON HOLLAND, the translator ...... ib.
He is licensed by the vice-chancellor to receive charity from
the colleges 141
His death at Coventry ib.
Institution of the COMMEMORATION OF BENEFACTORS, Feb. 16f§. ib.
Members of the Committee appointed to draw up the Roll 142
Uncritical character of their earlier selection . . . ib.
Bishop Fisher altogether left out 143
Proposed erection of new Commencement House and Library,
1640 ib.
Convocation reasserts the Doctrine of Divine Right, June 1640 . 144
The doctrine imposed on the universities .... ib.
CONTENTS. XXI
PAGE
Imposition of the Etcetera Oath 144
The omission in the Cambridge copy . . . . . 145
Exceptions taken to the oath by Holdsworth, Brownrig,
Hacket, and Godfrey Goodman ib.
WILLIAM BEALE'S sermon at St Mary's, March 1635 . . . 145 — 6
He attacks Parliament and is called to account, May 1640 146
His complaint to Cosin ib.
Verses by the university on the birth of Prince Henry, July 1640 147
Election of burgesses for the town, Oct. 1640 .... ib.
Intervention of lord keeper Finch ib.
Election of Oliver Cromwell and John Lowrey . . . ib.
Cromwell as an undergraduate 148
CHAP. IT. THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
Tradition respecting Oliver Cromwell 149
Cambridge and the Plantation of VIRGINIA. . . . 149—51
William Crashaw's sermon, February 160^ . . . . 150
Leading colonists from Cambridge ib.
Earl of Southampton, first governor 151
Henry Briggs, John Pory ib.
Anglican traditions of the colony ib.
Proposed university, and college for the natives . . . 152
Failure of the project ib.
Joseph Mede's perplexity with respect to the newly discovered
races 153
His reply to Dr Twisse's queries on the subject . . . ib.
America will certainly not be the site of the New Jerusalem . ib.
His painful conclusion 154
His influence on New England theology discussed . . 154 — 7
Cotton Mather reproduces Mede's theory . . . . 155
The powers of evil are in retreat from the centres of
civilization ......... 156
Relevance of such theorization to New England experiences 157
Developement of the teaching of Cartwright and Walter Travers
in the university 157 — 9
The two Johnsons, Francis and George .... 157
Their careers prior to their appearance at Amsterdam in 1598 157 — 8
The SEPARATIST CHURCH AT AMSTERDAM .... 158 — 63
George Johnson's Discourse, 1603 159
He compares his brother's church with the former church
at Frankfort ib.
His brother expels him from Amsterdam .... ib.
XX11 CONTENTS.
PAGE
His death as a prisoner at Durham 160
HENRY AINSWORTH succeeds to the pastorate at Amsterdam . ib.
His knowledge of Hebrew ....... ib.
His early experiences in the city 160 — 1
WILLIAM BREWSTER earns his livelihood by teaching English 161
The churches in Holland mainly under the direction of Cam-
bridge men ib.
Oxford graduates : Matthew Slade and John Davenport . 161 — 2
Richard Mather and his Cambridge Platform . . . 162
Prevalence of contention among the exiles in Holland . 163
The migration from Amsterdam to Leyden, 1609 . . ib.
JOHN ROBINSON and his church in Leyden 163 — 5
Notable change in the spirit of his teaching . . . 164
He holds that Christianity is progressive with respect to
doctrine 164 — 5
His address to his followers on their leaving to embark in
the Mayjloiver, 1620 165
Religious views of the colonizers of New Plymouth . . . 166 — 7
Contrast presented by the colonizers of New England . . 167
FRANCIS HIGGINSON ib.
His experiences in England ....... 168
His appointment as minister by the Massachusetts Company 168 — 9
His departure for New England 169
He establishes a church at Salem on a Separatist basis 169 — 70
The MEETING AT CAMBRIDGE, August 1629 170 — 1
JOHN WINTHROP'S speech on the occasion . . . . 171
Relations of the Winthrop family with the university . . ib.
Adam Winthrop the younger ...... ib.
His son John enters at Trinity, Dec. 1602 . . . . 172
His married life and family 173
His eldest son John sent to Trinity College, Dublin, his
second son to Emmanuel ...... ib.
John makes the grand tour ib.
The family correspondence 173 — 4
The father's lost letter to John, the contents of which are
indicated in the reply 174 — 5
Decision to transfer the government of the Massachusetts Company
to New England 175—6
The chief leaders in this design : Sir Richard Saltonstall,
George Phillips and Increase Nowell . . . . 176
Winthrop and his companions find themselves confronted by
a Separatist church 176 — 7
Their previous disavowal of the Separatists . . . . 177
Arrival of the Arbella, June 1630 ib.
CONTENTS. xxiii
PAGE
Samuel Skelton of Clare Hall 177
He refuses to recognize the new-comers as members of the
true Church 178
Further results of Laud's repressive policy 178 — 9
Isolated examples of loyalty to the mother church . . . 179
Arrival of JOHN COTTON, Sept. 1633 180
He becomes the chief leader of the colony .... ib.
His theory of 'liberty of conscience' ib.
Real liberty of conscience not conceded in New England . 181
Other Cambridge men 181 — 8
JOHN ELIOT, Thomas James, 181 ; Thomas Weld, Nathaniel
Ward and his Body of Liberties 182
Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone ...... ib.
Thomas Shepard, Daniel Maud, Richard Mather . . . 183
Peter Bulkley, the founder of Concord, John Norton, John
Wheelwright 184
Samuel Whiting, Richard Jennings, John Davenport, founder
of Newhaven 185
Charles Chauncy, who retracts his retractation made in
England and becomes president of Harvard College . 186
Henry Dunster, Chauncy's predecessor ib.
His qualifications as a scholar and administrator . . 187
Circumstances of his expulsion from the presidency . . 188
FOUNDATION OP HARVARD COLLEGE, 1636 ib.
Newtown selected for the site and the name changed to that
of Cambridge ......... ib.
JOHN HARVARD, after whom the College is now named . 188 — 9
His main design to avert the succession of an illiterate
ministry ib.
Expulsion of ROGER WILLIAMS of Pembroke College . . 189 — 91
His intolerance in relation to the Church of England . 190
His repudiation of learning as essential to the understanding
of Scripture ......... ib.
His theory hostile to the universities ..... 191
Signal service rendered by the new foundation to the colony . ib.
The Founder's library 192
Earliest account of the Foundation, 1643 .... 192—5
The scheme of discipline and study 195
Latin verse composition ........ ib.
Hebrew, Chaldee and Syriac ib.
Rhetoric ib.
Practice of recapitulation 196
Requirements for first and second degrees .... ib.
The first COMMENCEMENT, Aug. 1642 196—7
XXIV CONTENTS.
PAGE
The disputants 196
Testimonies to the material and spiritual prosperity of the
colonists . . 197
Depleting effects of the success of their party in England . 198
Thomas Welde and Hugh Peters of Trinity College . . ib.
The Bay Psalm Book ib.
Appeal of Harvard to London for aid, and response thereto 199
Counter migration of many of the exiles to England . 199 — 200
New regulations at Harvard 200
Destruction of its library ib.
In all three colonies the teachers are mainly from Cambridge . ib.
The influence of Joseph Mede is clearly discernible . . . 200 — 1
Theories now advanced with respect to the Indian tribes : 201
first, that they were the myrmidons of Gog and Magog ; secondly,
the Lost Tribes of Israel . 201—2
CHAP. III. FROM THE MEETING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT
TO THE YEAR 1647. (Nov. 1640—1647.)
Dissatisfaction manifested by both political parties with the
universities 203 — 4
Milton's indictment against the same 204
Petition of Manchester to be made a university, 164^ . . ib.
Reasons urged in support of such a measure . . . ib.
Remoteness of Oxford and Cambridge from the north and
the expensiveness of both 204 — 5
Patrons certain to be forthcoming 205
Manchester of great antiquity and now of 'great fame' . ib.
Similar petitions from York and the northern counties . . 206
The claims of York particularized ..... ib.
Its former library, its existing foundations and other available
resources 206 — 7
Fairfax, although admitting the esteem in which Oxford and
Cambridge are held by Parliament, favours the claims of
Manchester 207
The new members for the university : Henry Lucas and Thomas
Eden ib.
APPOINTMENT OF COMMITTEE TO CONSIDER ABUSES IN THE
UNIVERSITIES . . . 208
Proceedings against Cosin ....... ib.
He is deprived of all his church preferments but retains his
mastership . . . 209
CONTENTS. XXV
D'Ewes in the House of Commons asserts the priority of Cambridge
over Oxford, 2 Jan. 164& 209
He admits and accounts for the predominance of Oxford men
in the House ......... 210
But maintains that Cambridge was prior to Oxford both as
' a city ' and a seat of learning ..... ib.
Acts in Parliament abolishing 'subscription' at the universities . 211
Cambridge petitions Parliament on behalf of cathedral endowments ib.
Bill for depriving ecclesiastics of power to intervene in secular
affairs .......... ib.
The Lords insert a proviso whereby Heads are declared
admissible to magisterial functions .... ib.
This provisionally accepted by the Commons ... ib.
Reappointment of the Committee for the Universities, June 1641 ib.
Assessment of the colleges . . . . . . . 212
Holdsworth as vice-chancellor ....... ib.
Death of Dr Chaderton, 1640 ib.
His high esteem for Holdsworth ib.
The statute de Mora Sodorum again contested at Emmanuel . 213
The fellows petition against its re-enactment, 1640 . . ib.
Election of John Worthington as Head notwithstanding . ib.
The Commons declare the election valid, 1642 . . . 214
Worthington's supporters and opponents compared . . ib.
HOLDSWORTH'S ORATION in vesperiis Comitiorum (July 1641) . 215 — 9
He deplores the distressed condition of the university . 216
Upholds the unique position of the English Church and
insists on the true spirit of the English Reformation . 216 — 7
Descants on the gloomy prospects of learning, and appeals to
Parliament not to ignore the noble traditions of both
universities 217 — 8
Urges his audience to renewed efforts, dwelling on the force
of individual example 219
Parliament refers his Oration to a committee . . . ib.
Articles exhibited against Dr Beale, August 1641 . . 219 — 20
Consequent action of Parliament ib.
Royal favour shewn to Holdsworth 220
Loyal feeling of the university as set forth in the Irenodia . 221
Language of the GRAND REMONSTRANCE, 1641 . . . ib.
The Protestation imposed on the university and subscription
on proceeding to degrees again prohibited . . . ib.
The universities claim exemption from the forced Loan . ib.
The VISIT OF KING AND PRINCE, March 164£ .... 222—3
Description of same by Joseph Beaumont of Peterhouse . 222
John Cleveland's Oration . . . ib.
XXVI CONTENTS.
PAGE
Performance of Cowley's Guardian ..... 222
The Banquet at St John's 223
Holdsworth's sermon at Great St Mary's .... ib.
Optimistic tone of his discourse ib.
The KENTISH PETITION 223 — 4
Milton's fourth pamphlet 224
The Episcopal Order now especially threatened . . . ib.
Claims of the Order on the gratitude of poor students . ib.
Aid granted to students from Trinity College, Dublin . . 225
Sermon before the university by Thomas Stephens, May 1642 . ib.
He denounces the prevailing disloyal tendencies . . . ib.
His remarkable anticipation of Puritan excesses . . . 226
TRINITY COLLEGE UNDER THE RULE OF DR COMBER (1631-1645) . ib.
Increased attention paid to modern languages and the belles
lettres 227
Satirical tone of the scholars in relation to current prophecies ib.
Developement of poetry among its members : Hugh Holland,
Thomas Randolph ib.
Andrew Marvell, Cowley, and Sir John Suckling. . . 228
Dispersion of the university owing to the Plague . . . ib.
The ROYAL APPEAL FOR A LOAN, June 1642 .... 229
The Cambridge response 229 — 30
The Oxford response 230
Offer of Charles to take care of the plate still remaining in
each college, July 1642 . 231
Compliance of the colleges 231 — 2
The loan held to be not destined for warlike purposes . 232
Dean Barwick and his brother Peter ib.
Plate sent from St John's and Queens', August 1642 . . 233
BARNABAS OLEY of Clare 234
Device by which he saves the Clare plate .... ib.
Experiences of the other colleges 234 — 5
Town and university alike arm 235
Seizure of arms by Cromwell ib.
He occupies the Castle and intercepts the departure of some
of the plate 236
He is out-manoeuvred by Barnabas Oley who conveys a
portion of the treasure to Nottingham .... ib.
The plate at Magdalene, King's, Jesus, and Sidney . . 237
Cromwell orders the arrest of Drs Beale, Martin and Sterne . 237 — 8
Harshness of their treatment 238
Order for their committal to the Tower, Sept. 1642 . . ib.
Their progress thither 238 — 9
Unpopularity of Dr Wren in his diocese ..... 239
CONTENTS. XXvii
PAGE
Subsequent experiences of Dr Beale 239—40
Baker's estimate of his character .... 240
The ASSOCIATION OF THE EASTERN COUNTIES, Dec. 1642 . ib.
The university petitions Parliament . . . 241
Apprehension of a royalist attack on Cambridge . . ib.
Appeal of Parliament to the county for aid .... ib.
Cromwell proceeds to fortify the town, March 164| . . . 241—2
The Lords endeavour to shield the university by promulgating
a Protection ....... 242 3
Their mandate ignored by Cromwell's soldiery .... 243
Damages suffered by the colleges resulting from the fortifying
of the town ....... ib.
St John's College converted into a prison 243 4
Cromwell's demand for a subsidy refused by the university . 244
Detention of the Heads in the schools ib.
Money forcibly taken from the college bursars . . . 244 5
Dr Power of Christ's College ....... 245
Popular demonstration against his Latin sermon . . ib.
The colleges plundered and their chapels desecrated . . . 246
Holdsworth, the vice-chancellor, arrested and sent to London,
May 1643 ib.
Heads summoned to attend the Westminster Assembly . . 247
The university appeals to both Houses for relief, June 1643 . ib.
The petition referred to a Committee 248
Grace for dispensing with the Commencement ceremonies, June
1643 ib.
JOHN PEARSON, bishop of Chester 249
His sermon in defence of Forms of Prayer . . . 249 — 50
The fortifications completed, Cromwell sets out for Gainsborough 250
Charles Cavendish killed in the skirmish near that town . . 251
Cromwell falls back on Peterborough and sends his prisoners on
to Cambridge ......... ib.
His appeal to the Cambridge Committee .... ib.
Sympathy shewn by the scholars with the prisoners in St John's 251 — 2
Death of Dr Samuel Ward, Sept. 1643 252
The ELECTION TO THE MASTERSHIP OF SIDNEY .... 253
HERBERT THORNDIKE of Trinity 253 — 4
His nomination and that of Richard Minshull as candidates 254
Arrest of John Pawson, one of Thorndike's supporters . ib.
Election of Minshull ib.
Appeal of Thorndike's supporters to Charles at Oxford . ib.
The royal vacillation, resulting in the confirmation of the
election 254—5
Further endowment of the lady Margaret professorship . . 255 — 6
XXV111 CONTENTS.
PAGE
Election of Holdsworth (still a prisoner) to the Chair,
Sept. 1643 256
Endeavour of the university to secure the patronage of the
rectory of Terrington ib.
JOSEPH HALL, bishop of Norwich ......
The ACT OP SEQUESTRATION, March 1643
The university forbidden to admit Holdsworth to his Chair,
Oct. 1643 ib.
Concern manifested at Emmanuel 257
Operation of the Act of Sequestration in the university, Oct. 1643 258
Petition against the same by the authorities . . . ib.
The libraries and other property of some of the Heads
sequestered ......... ib.
.Rising against the Parliamentary party by the royalist townsmen,
Oct. 1645 259
CONTRAST PRESENTED BY AFFAIRS AT OXFORD, 1643-6 . . ib.
Combined activity of town and gown in the defence . . ib.
The customary academic routine to a great extent suspended 260
Ussher continues his labours both as a preacher and an editor ib.
HENRY FERNE of Trinity College ib.
His Resolving of Conscience 260 — 1
The book printed at the University Press, Dec. 1642 . 261
Holdsworth as licenser is summoned and imprisoned . . ib.
Ferae repairs to Oxford ib.
The fortunes of the two University Presses, at this juncture,
compared ib.
Conditions under which the different colleges continued to exist
at Oxford 261—2
Details relating to Balliol, Hart Hall, Lincoln, Oriel, New,
All Souls, Corpus Christi, Christ Church, Trinity,
St John's, Jesus, Wadham 262—3
Further distractions lead to a proposal to open a Hall of
residence for the students in London, such residence
to count as tantamount to residence at either university 263
Petition of Trinity College, Cambridge, against the Sequestration
Act, as involving much suffering to the society at large 264
EDWARD MONTAGU, earl of Manchester, gives his support to
the petition, Dec. 1643 264—5
Declaration of Lords and Commons concerning college estates,
Jan. 1644 ib.
Manchester appointed financial controller of the university 265 — 6
Ordinance for the demolition or taking away of all monuments
of superstition or idolatry throughout the kingdom,
August 1643 266
CONTENTS. xxix
PAGE
The sole exception to same 266
WILLIAM DOWSING at Cambridge, Dec. 1643— Jan. 1644 . . 267
His VISITATION OF THE COLLEGES ib.
Peterhouse and Pembroke 267 8
His dispute with the fellows of the latter .... 268
Caius, Queens', and St Catherine's 269
Growing reputation of Dr Brownrig ib.
His temperate defence of Anglican observance . . . 270
Dowsing's visit to Corpus Christi ib.
The chapel spared, while St Benet's Church suffers severely 270 — 1
Destruction at Jesus, Clare, Trinity Hall, Trinity, St John's,
King's, Magdalene, Sidney and Emmanuel . . . 271 — 2
PARLIAMENTARY ORDINANCE FOR REGULATING THE UNIVERSITY,
Jan. 164| ib.
The Solemn League and Covenant to be tendered . . . 273
Warrants issued by Manchester ib.
The residential element in the colleges required to return to
Cambridge, Feb. 164| ib.
Ejections of five Heads, — COSIN, BEALE, MARTIN, STERNE
and LANEY 273 — 4
Appointment of Commissioners to tender the Covenant,
March 164| 275
General ejection of absentees ...... ib.
The alleged ' Oath of Discovery ' 276
The story rejected by Fuller ib.
Statement of Simeon Ashe 276 — 7
Death of young Oliver Cromwell, March 164| .... 277
Alleged ill-treatment of the Senate by Cromwell's delegate . 278
The tendering of the COVENANT ib.
Ejections consequent upon refusal to be distinguished from
those consequent upon refusal of the ENGAGEMENT . 278 — 9
Perjury involved in taking the Covenant .... 279
OFFICIAL REPORT OF THE SEQUESTRATIONS, 164f . . . 280
Owners of books allowed to repurchase them at their
estimated value ib.
Expulsion of Dr Cosin from Peterhouse .... 280 — 1
His ineffectual endeavour to conceal his library . . . 281
Lazarus Seaman obtains an order for its transfer to the
college 281—2
Election of Lazarus Seaman as master, April 1644 . . 282
Gradual ejection of the fellows, April 1644-5 . . . ib.
Joseph Beaumont, Richard Crashaw 282 — 3
Election to a fellowship of John Knightbridge, the founder
of the professorship .....•• 283
M. III. c
XXX CONTENTS.
Dr Fraucius alone escapes ejection ..... 283
Isaac Barrow, afterwards bishop of St Asaph . . . 284
Crashaw's life at Pembroke ........ ib.
His career at Peterhouse and afterwards .... 285
His description of the havoc wrought by Dowsing . . ib.
His death at Loretto 286
John Tolly's furniture ib.
Expulsions from CLARE HALL, Dr Paske, Barnabas Oley . . 287
PETER GUNNING ib.
Appeal of the royalist party in the Associated Counties to
the colleges to reject the Covenant .... ib.
Consequent appearance of The Certain Disquisitions, a Cam-
bridge production edited by Gunning at Oxford . . 288
Ejections at PEMBROKE COLLEGE 289
Flight of Dr Laney ib.
Walter Balcanquhall, his tomb at Chirk 290
MARK FRANK (master, 1662-4) ib.
Robert Mapletoft (master, 1664-77) ib.
EDMUND BOLDERO 291
Fortunes of the remaining fellows . . . . . ib.
Installation of RICHARD VINES as master ib.
William Moses (master, 1655-60) ib.
Ejections at CAIUS COLLEGE 292
DR BATCHCROFT retains the mastership .... ib.
Additional grounds for ejection now brought forward . . ib.
Richard Watson 293
William Moore, afterwards university librarian . . . ib.
His ultimate resignation of his fellowship .... ib.
Changes at TRINITY HALL ib.
Death of Dr Eden, July 1645 294
John Selden declines the mastership ..... ib.
Election of Robert King ib.
His election set aside by the Commons .... 295
Election of John Bond ib.
Proceedings at CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE ib.
DR LOVE retains the mastership . . . . . . ib.
Ejections of Tunstal, Palgrave, and Heath .... 295 — 6
Appointment of Second Committee, Jan. 160| .... 296
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE of Emmanuel ib.
His appointment to the provostship of King's College . 297
His generosity to COLLINS ib.
Retirement of the latter into private life .... ib.
His eminence alike as an administrator and a scholar . 297 — 8
Ejections at KING'S COLLEGE 298
CONTENTS. XXxi
PAGE
Expulsion of Dr Martin from QUEENS' COLLEGE .... 298
Sequestrations and numerous ejections 298 — 9
Ejections on account of ' other misdemeanours ' and for non-
appearance
Fuller's account compared with that of Simon Patrick .
Installation of HERBERT PALMER as president ....
Nathaniel Ingelo
Ejections at JESUS COLLEGE
Flourishing condition of the society
Ralph Blakestoue, Stephen Hall
Installation of THOMAS YOUNG as master
Numerous ejections and change in the character of the college
that ensued ......... ib.
Ejections at CHRIST'S COLLEGE ib.
MICHAEL HONYWOOD 303
Sequestration of his library in his absence at Utrecht . ib.
ST JOHN'S COLLEGE ib.
Installation of JOHN ARROWSMITH as master .... ib.
Expulsions of Thomas Thornton, the president, Bodurda, the
Barwicks, W. Lacy, Bulkeley and John Otsvay . . 304
Otway's courageous opposition to the Associated Counties . ib.
JOHN CLEVELAND ib.
Recorded sequestrations 304 — 5
ST CATHERINE'S COLLEGE 305—6
Installation of WILLIAM SPURSTOWE as master in 1645, Dr Brown-
rig's expulsion being delayed for a year . . . 305
Expulsions from MAGDALENE COLLEGE 306
DR EDWARD RAINBOWS, master, 1642-50 .... ib.
His success as a college tutor 306 — 7
High reputation of the college under his rule . . . 307
He retains the mastership but nine of the fellows are expelled 307 — 8
Richard Perrinchief . 308
John Saltmarsh ......... ib.
Expulsions from TRINITY COLLEGE ib.
DR COMBER ib.
Testimony borne to his merit by contemporaries . . 308 — 9
Herbert Thorndike 309
Impression produced by his first two Treatises . . . ib.
His expulsion both from his fellowship and his living 309 — 10
Valuation of the property of some of the ejected . . 310
Dr Cheney Row, Dr Meredith, Abraham Cowley, Sir Thomas
Sclater ib.
His subsequent benefaction to the college .... 310 — 1
Recognition of the same by the society . . . . 311
c 2
XXX11 CONTENTS.
PAGE
The state of the college calls for the interference of
Parliament 311
Appointment of Medcalf and Pratt to senior fellowships . ib.
Changes among the scholars ....... 311 — 2
JOHN PELL at Amsterdam 312
Expulsions from EMMANUEL COLLEGE ib.
Holdsworth gives place to TUCKNEY in the mastership . ib.
His endeavour to propitiate the Commissioners . . . ib.
The sequestration of his library forbidden by Manchester . 312 — 3
Nicholas Hall redeems his own library .... 313
Sequestrations of Sorsby and Wells ..... ib.
Ejections at SIDNEY COLLEGE 313 — 4
Robert Bertie and SETH WARD 313
Appearance of Seth Ward and Edward Gibson before the
Commissioners ......... 314
Subsequent experiences of the former 314—5
He succeeds John Greaves as Savilian professor of astronomy
at Oxford 315
DR JOHN WILKINS ib.
His friendship with Ward ib.
Joint influence of both at Wadham College and prosperity of
that society during this period ..... 316
Lawrence Rooke of King's migrates to Wadham, entering as
a fellow-commoner, and there also becomes a friend of
Ward 316—7
The expelled and their successors, throughout the university,
compared 317
Considerations to be borne in mind in such a comparison . 317 — 8
The old and the new Heads contrasted 318
Vines and Laney as estimated by Crashaw .... ib.
Holdsworth compared with Tuckney ..... ib.
Method of procedure in filling up the vacant fellowships . . 319
Examination of the candidates ib.
Promise made by those elected 320
Each succeeds to the status, as regards seniority, of the ejected
fellow ib.
Conditions which rendered the Covenant obnoxious to the univer-
sities 320 — 1
Jasper Mayne, canon of Christchurch . . .' . 321
His attitude in relation to the Covenant .... ib.
His reason in briefest form for rejecting it . . . . 322
Cambridge Commencement of 1645 ib.
Circumstances which rendered the customary solemnities
impracticable ib.
CONTENTS. XXX111
PAGE
Parliament condemns the tenure of ecclesiastical sinecures in
conjunction with masterships 323
Consequent diminution in the value attached to such office 323 — 4
Representation made by Manchester in the House of Lords
on the subject 324
Remedy which he suggests ib.
The Heads petition that the colleges may be exempted from
taxation ib.
Ordinance to that eflect, 11 April 1645 .... ib.
Fresh source of disunion resulting from divisions between Presby-
terian and Independent ....... 324 — 5
Manchester supported by the Heads at Cambridge . . 325
His critical position ........ ib.
Sensation created by the news of the battles of Naseby and
Langport 325—6
Richard Baxter describes his visit to Cromwell's quarters . . 326
The town seeks to abolish the ancient privileges of the uni-
versity 326—7
John Lowry, the mayor, refuses to take the customary oath . 327
The Heads appeal to Lords and Commons, August 1645 . ib.
They represent that the privileges of the university are
endangered by Lowry's action ...... ib.
Response of the Lords to the petition of the Heads . . 328
Counter petition of Lowry to the Commons . . . ib.
Appointment of a COMMISSION to view the statutes of the univer-
sity, Oct. 1645 329
Appointment of two new Committees . . . . . ib
Significance of the Parliamentary claim to visit . . 329 — 30
Further incidents in the contest between the university and the
mayor 330
The question of precedency between the vice-chancellor and
the mayor argued before the Lords, Feb. 164f . . . 330 — 1
The witnesses for the town fail to appear .... 331
Orders given by the Lords for the maintenance of the univer-
sity in its rights and privileges, May 1647 . . . ib.
This order treated with contempt by Lowry's successor,
Sept. 1647 332
Growing contempt for OATHS as practically binding . . . 332 — 3
Perjury involved in the acceptance of the Covenant by univer-
sity graduates ......... 333
Conduct of Kitchingman, the new mayor .... ib.
Scruples of Thomas Hill, master of Trinity, with respect to
his oath as vice-chancellor 333 — 4
His petition to the House of Lords, Nov. 1645 . . . 334
XXXIV CONTENTS.
PAGE
Appointment of Committee to consider the question of
corporate oaths, Sept. 1646 334
REPORTS of the two new Committees, Nov. 1645 . . . ib.
Conditions attached to elections to fellowships . . . ib.
The Heads required to preach at St Mary's . . . 335
PETITION of the university that Bancroft's books may be sent to
Cambridge ib.
Tardy assent of Parliament 335 — 6
Parliamentary grant towards the erection of a new Library,
March 164| 336
Dissent of the Lords, who, however, concur in a grant for the
purchase of a Hebrew library 337
Measures of reform introduced by the university authorities . ib.
Observance of the statutes still made binding by oath . ib.
Order given for the transcription of the Proctors' Books . ib.
Candidates for degrees forbidden to give or receive 'invita-
tions,' April 1647 338
Renewed demonstrations of discontent 339
Consequent proceedings against Zachary Cawdry and George
Hutton .......... ib.
Recurrence of the Plague 339—40
CHAP. IV. THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE PROTECTORATE.
Abduction of the King by Joyce, June 1647 .... 341
His visit to Childerley Hall 342
Enthusiasm of the scholars ....... ib.
Growing ascendancy of the Independents ib.
The Judgement of the University of Oxford, June 1647 . 342 — 3
Irritation of the Puritan party at its publication . . 343
Conflict at Oxford between the garrison and the Presbyterian
soldiery, June 1647 344
The VISITATION AT OXFORD 344 — 9
Miscarriage of the first proceedings of the Visitors . . ib.
Parliament fails to intervene on their behalf . . . ib.
This probably attributable to the increasing influence of the
army 345
Appearance of Jasper Mayne's 'O^Xo^a^ta, June 1647 . . ib.
His estimate of the crisis ib.
Commencement of the work of the Visitors .... 345 — 6
Importance of the results which they accomplished . . 346
Powers with which they were invested .... ib.
The Judgement of the University denounced to the Visitors 346 — 7
CONTENTS. XXXV
PAGE
Anthony Wood's estimate of the principal Commissioners . . 347
Sir Nathaniel Brent, the two John Wilkinsons, Edward
Reynolds, Christopher Rogers, Francis Cheynell and
Henry Wilkinson 347 — 8
John Conant leaves Oxford 349
Numerous defections from among the academic body to Rome . ib.
Stringent censorship of the two University Presses . . . ib.
Proposal for founding a university in London .... ib.
JEREMY TAYLOR, fellow of Caius College 350
Special importance of his Liberty of Prophesying . . ib.
JOHN HALL of St John's 351
His Horae Vacivae, 1646 ib.
Generous recognition of its merits shewn by members of the
university ib.
He turns satirist ......... 352
His Poems, 1646 and 1647 ib.
His effusive eulogies of his patrons ..... 352 — 3
Reassembling of the university on the cessation of the Plague. 353
Predominance of militarism in the town ..... ib.
Fray between students and soldiery ib.
Intervention of Parliament, June 1648 ..... 354
Temerity of Edward Byne, fellow of Caius ib.
Vehemence of the pulpit ib.
Paul Knell before the benchers of Gray's Inn .... ib.
Sermon by R. P. of St John's 355
He proclaims peace to be the indispensable remedy . . ib.
SAMUEL HAMMOND 356
His sermon on the victory at Preston, August 1648 . . ib.
The PEACE OF WESTPHALIA ib.
The university of Marburg during the Thirty Years' War . 357
Principles of religious freedom proclaimed both in Germany
and England . ib.
Charles at Newport sanctions another 'Act for regulating both the
universities' ......... 358
Acceptance of the ENGAGEMENT by the Council of State . . ib.
Scruples of Puritanism in relation to the King's execution ib.
Counter manifesto from Trinity College .... ib.
Tendering of the Engagement at the universities temporarily
postponed 359
Execution of the earl of Holland, March 164f .... ib.
His prayer on the scaffold for the university . . . ib.
Election of Manchester as Holland's successor in the chancellor-
ship 360
Value of his influence to protect the university . . . ib.
XXXVI CONTENTS.
PAGE
The university printers bound over not to print unlicensed books 360
Restrictions imposed on the press generally . . . 361
TRINITY HALL and Doctors' Commons ib.
Origin of their connexion ib.
Civilians and common lawyers 362
Encroachments of the latter on the province of the former ib.
Cromwell applies for a chamber for Dr Dorislaus, Dec. 1648 . ib.
Career of Dorislaus after his dismissal from the Chair of
History 362—3
His share in the impeachment of the late King . . . 363
His assassination at the Hague, May 1649 .... ib.
Honour paid to his memory ib.
Letter from the Council to lady Brooke, Sept. 1649 . . 364
WILLIAM DELL ib.
His election to the mastership of Caius College, May 1649 ib.
His qualifications for the post contrasted with those of his
predecessor ......... ib.
Circumstances of Batchcroft's election in 1626 . . . ib.
He retires from Cambridge 365
His previous career ib.
His relations with Cromwell ib.
Singularity of his views in relation to religious parties . 365 — 6
Probably elected as having influence in high quarters . 366
Significance of subsequent ejections of William Blanckes
and Charles Scarborough ...... 366 — 7
William Harvey, John Greaves, and Seth Ward . . . 367
Milton becomes Latin secretary to the Council of State,
March 1649 367—8
Colloquial Latin made obligatory on the colleges of both
universities ......... 368
Subscription to the ENGAGEMENT now made obligatory at the
universities, October 1649 369
The former Oath superseded by a simple promise . . ib.
Alarm excited by its indefiniteness ib.
It supersedes the Covenant but exposes the acceptor to the
risk of perjury ......... 370
It is denounced by Prynne and by Baxter .... ib.
John Hall demands a Reformation of the Universities . . 371
He points out that they are being left behind by those on
the Continent ......... ib.
His criticism compared with that of Bacon .... ib.
He holds the Cambridge methods obsolete as regards the
teaching of Latin, Greek, Logic and Ethics . . . 372
Pronounces the professoriate both inefficient and inadequate ib.
CONTENTS. XXXV11
PAGE
He complains (a) of the want of provision for teaching
Chemistry, Anatomy, Botany and Mathematics . . 372
(6) of the neglect of History and of Chronology . . . 373
(c) of the absence of competent and experienced teachers . ib.
He insists on a more reasonable interpretation of the
designs of benefactors 374
Recognition extended to his efforts by the Council of State ib.
He accompanies Cromwell to Scotland and receives a pension ib.
His probable obligations both to Milton and to Hartlib . 374 — 5
Election of Cromwell to the chancellorship of Oxford, Feb. 165^ 375
The Engagement, at first, not pressed in the university, in pur-
suance of Cromwell's promise at Cambridge, June 1650 ib.
His changed tone after the victory at Dun bar . . . 375 — 6
EJECTIONS CONSEQUENT UPON THE TENDERING OF THE ENGAGE-
MENT, Nov. 1650-1651 ib.
Peterhouse, Clare, Pembroke, Caius ..... ib.
Trinity Hall, Corpus Christi 377
Three classes of refusers 377 — 8
Their successors all Independents 378
KING'S COLLEGE 378 — 9
Financial condition of the society ib.
Christopher Wase, HENRY MOLLE 379
Form of admission to scholarships prescribed by the London
Committee ......... ib.
QUEENS' COLLEGE 380
Thomas Horton appointed president, Sept. 1648 . . . ib.
Ejection of two fellows ib.
ST CATHERINE'S HALL ib.
JOHN LIGHTFOOT succeeds Spurstowe ..... ib.
His profound scholarship combined with enlightened tolerance 380 — 1
Disorganized condition of the society 381
JESUS COLLEGE 381 — 2
JOHN WORTHINGTON elected master, Nov. 1650 . . . 381
John Sherman, the first new fellow ..... 382
His Historia Collegii lesu ....... ib.
Mr Arthur Gray's criticism of the work .... ib.
CHRIST'S COLLEGE 382 — 3
Smallness of the royalist element . .... 382
HENRY MORE 382—3
RALPH WIDDRINGTON 383
ST JOHN'S COLLEGE 383 — 4
Henry Paman, M.D 383
His letter to Sancroft 383—4
MATTHEW ROBINSON 384
XXXV111 CONTENTS.
PAGE
MAGDALENE COLLEGE ... 384 — 5
Expulsion of DR RAINBOWE 384
Installation of JOHN SADLER 384 — 5
Divergent opinions as to his merits 384
Ejections of Richard Perrinchief and John Howorth . . 385
TRINITY COLLEGE ib.
Peter Samways, John Rhodes 385 — 6
Humfrey Babington (S.T.P. 1669) 386
Onerous requirements originally imposed for the degree
of B.D 386—7
Dr Babington is invited to preach at the Lincoln Assizes, 1678 387
Illustration afforded by his Discourse of the pulpit oratory
of the divine of that period ...... ib,
Views maintained in the Westminster Assembly with regard
to pulpit oratory 388
Objection taken by Palmer to quotations 'in strange languages' ib.
Admiration of country congregations for the same . . ib.
Experience of professor Pococke at Childrey . . . 388 — 9
Dr Babington's assize sermon at Lincoln . . . 389 — 90
He prints it at the request of the Judges .... 390
His benefaction to Trinity ib.
EMMANUEL COLLEGE 390—1
Wm. Sancroft's letter to his brother Thomas . . . ib.
His ultimate ejection from his fellowship .... 391
Election of Thomas Brainford, Carter, Illingworth and
Mosley .......... ib.
William Croone ......... ib.
SIDNEY COLLEGE 392
Example set by Dr Minshull of prompt submission . . ib.
Ejections of refusers of the Engagement as late as 1654 . . ib.
Ejections on other grounds ib.
THE EPISODE AT PETERHOUSE 392— -416
The early monastic rule and that of Peterhouse compared . ib.
Similarity in the requirements with respect to the election
of a Head 393
The smaller the society the greater the necessity for an
autocracy 393 — 4
The master's claim to a negative voice practically conceded
at Peterhouse after 1644 394
The system of probation fellowships 394 — 5
Condition of the college in 1644 395
The newly-elected fellows examined in London . . . ib.
Seaman endeavours to abolish the ' probation ' stage . . ib.
Objections raised by the senior fellows 396
CONTENTS. XXXIX
PAGE
Parliament authorizes an increase in the stipends of Heads of
Colleges 396
Particulars of the distribution of the sum allotted . . 396 — 7
Trinity and Peterhouse unmentioned 397
Point of view from which LAZARUS SEAMAN probably regarded
his own position ib.
The times not favorable to autocracies ib.
CHARLES HOTHAM, intruded fellow of Peterhouse, June 1644 . 398
Circumstances which had led to his adoption of an academic life 398 — 9
Lazarus Seaman's early career 399
His skill as a controversialist ib.
His reputation in the Westminster Assembly . . . ib.
His installation at Peterhouse by Manchester, April 1644 . 400
His frequent absence from the college ib.
Adoniram Byfield 400 — 1
The story of Tobias Conyers 401
Hotham's endeavours to bring about his promotion . . 402
He obtains for him, in the absence of the master, the office of
chapel clerk ......... ib.
Indignation of Seaman on his return ..... ib.
Conyers's reckless conduct 402 — 3
He is flogged and sent down 403
His penitence ib.
He is re-admitted in the following Lent Term . . . ib.
Irregular appropriation of fellowship dividends . . . ib.
Seaman and Hotham are summoned before the London
Committee 404
The latter affirms that delay in filling up the vacant fellowship
is unstatutable ib.
Conyers is elected to the fellowship by a majority of the
fellows . 405
The London Committee annul the election and substitute
Heywood, the master's nominee 405 — 6
Hotham denounces Heywood as disqualified and publishes
his Petition, May 1651 406
He maintains the validity of the college statutes . . ib.
He eulogizes the design of Parliament in appointing a
Commission 406 — 7
He expresses his apprehension lest that design should be
frustrated by the master and his supporters . . 407
He represents the case as urgent and makes further allegations
against Seaman 407 — 8
He pleads for more stringent provisions as regards the
master's authority 408
xl CONTENTS.
PAGE
Seaman suggests that Hothaui's Petition should be dealt with
by the newly appointed Visitors 408 — 9
Hotham resolves on bringing the whole story respecting
Conyers under the notice of the public .... 409
He argues that a college statute cannot be set aside by a
later statute of the university .... 409 — 10
His disparaging estimate of the Elizabethan statutes as
virtually drawn up by the Heads . . . . . 410
He commends the Heads for their moderation in the exercise
of a negative voice, to which Peterhouse offers the sole
exception .......... 411
A college rightly regarded is a corporation modelled on a
limited monarchy ib.
Dr Seaman, being rarely in residence, is the least entitled to
a negative voice 411 — 2
The London Committee resent Hotham's recourse to publi-
cation 412
He is expelled from his fellowship, May 1651 . . . ib.
His censors and supporters compared 412 — 4
Formal testimony of the latter in his favour . . . 414
The so-called Latitudinarian party active in his support . ib.
Hotham proceeds to publish his Corporations Vindicated,
making his appeal to Parliament 415
He brings forward grave accusations against Dr Seaman as
an administrator, and exposes his deficiencies as a
Latinist .......... 415 — 6
CROMWELL inclines to favour a change in the form of government ib.
Sir Thomas Widdrington's suggestion with regard to the restoration
of monarchy 417
Parallel between the College and the Commonwealth . . ib.
Hotham seeks to retire into a contemplative life . . ib.
He is presented to the rectory of Wigan .... ib.
He and his brother embrace the doctrines of Jacob Boehme . 418
Boehme's conception of the religious life .... ib.
His aim, the abolition of religious controversies . . . ib.
The evils by which such controversies were attended now
result in a proposal to abolish the universities themselves ib.
The scholastic method especially called in question . 419 — 20
RENE DESCARTES 420
His early associations ib.
His desire to propitiate the Sorbonne rendered impracticable
by his attitude towards the scholastic logic . . . 421
His sympathy with the Jesuit body alienates him from the
university of Paris 421 — 2
CONTENTS. xli
Statutes of the university (of 1598), whereby the chief
authority is vested in the Crown 422
Expulsion of the Jesuits from Paris ib.
Jealousy with which they were regarded by the university
teachers .......... ib.
Descartes' high opinion of their system of education . . 423
Aversion of the Calvinists of the Reformed churches from
the Order 423 — 4
Despairing of Paris, Descartes aims at founding a school in
some other university ....... 424
This probably his actuating motive in deciding to settle in
the United Provinces . ib.
Comparative freedom there conceded to theological speculation 424 — 5
Characteristic features of Amsterdam, Franeker, Deventer
and Utrecht 425—6
Foundation of the UNIVERSITY OF UTRECHT, March 1636 . . 426
GISBERTUS VOETIUS 426 — 7
Luke Couterel's Act for the degree of B.D., Feb. 1636 . 427
His defence of ' Elenchtic ' as a means of arriving at clearer
conceptions of the doctrines of the Faith . . . 427 — 8
Arrival of Descartes in Utrecht 428
Voetius appointed to the Chair of Theology in the new
university .......... 429
Terms in which Descartes refers to the scholastic logic . ib.
Progress of his doctrines among the students . . . ib.
His disciples Reneri and Regius ..... 429 — 30
Aristotle's entire philosophy impugned in the schools of
Utrecht 430
Voetius proceeds to a formal condemnation of Descartes'
teaching .......... ib.
Voetius and Descartes compared . . . . . . 431
THOMAS HOBBES 432
His agreement with Descartes as regards the defects of university
education .......... ib.
Appearance of his Leviathan, June 1651 ..... 432 — 3
He deprecates both the idolatry of Aristotle and the deference
paid to his commentators ...... 433
The barbarous Latinity of the latter . . . . ib.
The text-books used in the universities the means whereby
the clergy enslave the minds of students . . . 433 — 4
The universities of Papal origin ...... 434
Robert Parsons of Balliol College . ib.
His Memorial of the Reformation of England . . . 434 — 5
His criticisms of Oxford and Cambridge .... 435
xlii CONTENTS.
PAGE
His proposal for holding a GRAND DISPUTATION, whereby
irregular disputations on religious questions should be
permanently superseded ....... 435
Results which he expected would follow .... 435 — 6
He pleads for the abolition of the Oaths required in the
academic course 436
He deprecates the endeavour of the colleges to supply all the
lectures which their members are required to attend . ib.
He pleads for the revival of the canon law .... ib.
He points out the necessity for additional lectures and other
faculties 437
Disparaging language in which he is described by his editor . ib.
The real reasonableness of the Jesuit criticism . . . ib.
Act for the better Propagation of the Gospel, 23 May 1651 . 437 — 8
The Fur Praedestinatus, 1651 438
Thomas Smith's translation of Dailies Right Use of the Fathers,
1651 438—9
Extent to which Daille" held the Patristic literature relevant
to contemporary controversies and consequently still to
be studied 439
Relations between the university and the INDEPENDENTS . . 440
The exiles in Rotterdam ib.
State of religious parties in that city, circ. 1639 . . . ib.
The church at Arnheim 441
THOMAS GOODWIN, Philip Nye, Sidrach Simpson, Jeremiah
Burroughs, William Bridge ib.
The APOLOGETICALL NARRATION ib.
Heylin's description of the movement 442
Hugh Peters of Trinity College ib.
His Short Covenant drawn up at Rotterdam . . . ib.
He sails for Boston and is succeeded by William Bridge . 443
Variance between Bridge and Simpson ib.
Return of the latter to England ib.
The church at Aruheim and its harsh treatment of Ward . ib.
THOMAS EDWARDS of Queens' ib.
His compulsory recantation at Cambridge .... 444
Opinions passed on him by his contemporaries . . . ib.
His Antapoloyia ......... ib.
His Gangraena 445
His depreciatory estimate of the exiles in Holland . . ib.
Appointment of Simpson to the mastership of Pembroke . . 446
Roger Williams publishes his Hireling Ministry .... 447
CHRIST'S COLLEGE in 1653 ib.
JOSEPH SEDGWICK ib.
CONTENTS. xliii
PAGE
His sermon at Great St Mary's, May 1653 .... 447
His reply to Dell, in which he defends learning as necessary
for the divine 448
His plea for the laying aside of theological strife . . ib.
He defines the position of the Independent party . . 449
His main argument in defence of university training . . ib.
His denunciation of f enthusiasm ' and challenge to its up-
holders ib.
Dangers attendant upon a claim to supernatural powers at
this time 450
Sedgwick's defence of the Reformation as the outcome of a
more advanced scholarship ib.
He contrasts the pseudo-philosophy of the Sects with that
derived from the study of Nature ..... 451
He defends the state of discipline in Cambridge . . . ib.
SIDRACH SIMPSON'S Commencement sermon, July 1653 . . 452
He maintains that Christian doctrine relies for its exposition
and defence on an educated and learned clergy . . ib.
Endeavour of William Dell to confute Simpson's 'errors'. . 453
His appeal chiefly to popular prejudice .... ib.
He denounces all teaching of the Gospel ' according to Aristotle ' 454
He cites the example set by the early Reformers . . ib.
His misconception with respect to the Protestant universities
abroad .......... ib.
Dell's own proposals in connexion with a Right Reformation
of Learning 455
New schools to be founded throughout the country ; in which
the vernacular is to be taught and the Bible read . ib.
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew to be studied in the larger
schools ib.
Logic not without its use if kept within reasonable limits 456
Mathematics of high value as bearing upon practical matters ib.
The studies of physic and law require to be reformed . ib.
He deprecates the monopoly of higher education claimed by
Oxford and Cambridge 456—7
JOHN WEBSTER 457
Probably a student for a short time at Cambridge . . . ib.
He pleads for a more systematic attention to medical studies . ib.
Dedicates his Academiarum Examen to General Lambert, an
active supporter of Cromwell 458
Chief points in the Examen &
Objection taken to the use of Latin as the medium of dis-
putations in the schools 459
The neglect of mathematical studies ib.
xliv CONTENTS.
General supineness of the professoriate, to whom he holds up
Harvey, Gilbert and Descartes as examples for imitation . 459
Emphatic praise of Brinsley and Oughtred .... ib.
REPLIES of Dr Wilkins and Seth Ward in their Vindiciae
Academiarum 460
Ward's position at Oxford at this time .... ib.
His qualifications for forming an opinion on university
questions compared with those of Webster . . . 461
WILKINS'S description of Webster ib.
His comments on the Examen ...... ib.
Remarkable progress of mathematical studies already observ-
able at Oxford under Ward and Wallis . . . 462
JOHN WALLIS of Emmanuel, his departure from Cambridge
in consequence of the decline of mathematics in the
university ......... ib.
Webster shewn to be equally at fault with respect to the
deference still paid to Aristotle, and the actual state
of mathematical studies ib.
And also as regards ignorance with respect to the attention
bestowed at Oxford on Cryptography and a nascent
Esperanto 462 — 3
WARD'S share in the criticism of the Examen . 464
He compares Webster to Don Quixote, as attacking non-
existent abuses, and singles out special points with respect
to which he is altogether wrong, e.g. the actual value
attached to the authority of Aristotle, he, however, par-
tially admits the neglect of mathematics .... 464 — 5
Cry raised at this time by the advocates of Natural Science
studies 465
Ward's own ideal of a University, as that of an institution
which concedes to the student freedom of choice in the
subjects which he takes up ...... 466
THOMAS HALL 467
His Histnomastix ......... ib.
His confusion of the two Websters ..... ib.
His Vindiciae Litterarum 468
Ward's criticism of Hobbes ib.
His description of Dell, whose aspersions on the state of
discipline in the universities he repudiates . . . ib.
He affirms the universities to be the outcome of the
national will and pleasure 469
The circumstances under which the Vindiciae were written, as
described by Gardiner, Wood, Colonel Sydenham and
other writers 469 — 70
CONTENTS. xlv
Dissolution of the Short Parliament by Cromwell, 12 Dec.
1653 470
He describes the future policy of the Government with
respect to preachers ib.
The peril which the universities had outlived described by
their respective vice-chancellors 471
The repeal of the Engagement followed by Cromwell's Pro-
clamation of religious freedom 472
Death of DE HILL, master of Trinity ib.
His friendship with Tuckney ...... ib.
Intimacy of both with John Cotton ib.
Hill's reputation as a tutor at Emmanuel and a preacher
in London 473
His succession to the mastership of Trinity, April 1645 . . ib.
His stringent discipline ib.
Punishment of JOHN DRYDEN 474
His character as a student ib.
Resentment to which the poet afterwards gave expression
when receiving his degree at Oxford .... ib.
The Prayer Book, to Hill's annoyance, again used in the
college chapel ib.
JOHN ABROWSMITH succeeds to the mastership of Trinity, 1653 475
His previous experiences at St John's ib.
His genius naturally combative 476
His Tactica Sacra ......... ib.
His appointment as Regius professor of Divinity and also
as a Commissioner ........ ib.
Necessary occasional absence from college consequent upon
the latter office ib.
His Orationes Anti- Weigelianae delivered at the Cambridge Com-
mencement, 1655 477
VALENTINE WEIGEL, 1533-88 477—9
Mark Friedrich Wendelin (1584-1652), rector of Anhalt . 478
His exposure of the revolutionary tendency of Weigel's
teaching with respect to the universities ... ib.
Arrowsmith reads aloud some of the passages quoted by
Wendelin to his Cambridge audience .... ib.
Weigel had taught that a truly religious life was impossible
in a university ........ t'6.
Close resemblance between the hostility of the Weigelians to
universities and that entertained by Dell and other writers 479
Arrowsmith's criticisms really aimed at the Fifth Monarchy
Men, whose denunciation of wealth was another doctrine
which they held in common with the Weigelians . ib.
M. in. d
xlvi CONTENTS.
This feature in their teaching satirized in the Cuique Suum,
a publication of the University Press in 1635 . . 480 — 1
Sense of the gravity of the crisis shewn alike at Oxford
and at Cambridge 481
Other matters referred to by Arrowsmith ib.
Sancroft's library already on the university shelves . . ib.
He suggests that the controversy between Cambridge and
Oxford as to their comparative antiquity should be
dropped 482
He denies the relevancy of the language of the early Re-
formers to existing conditions at the English universities ib.
The PEACE WITH HOLLAND and the Oliva Pads . . . 483
Cromwell's Ordinance for the Visitation of the Universities, Sept. 1654 484
His endeavour to institute a more comprehensive standard
of orthodoxy ib.
His design compared with that of Whitgift and that of Laud 485
Difficulties involved in the constitution of the two COM-
MISSIONS now appointed ib.
Full visitatorial powers conferred on the Heads . . . 486
The chief external Visitors at Oxford and at Cambridge . 486 — 7
Disadvantage under which they laboured when compared
with the residential element 487
Wide scope of their instructions ...... ib.
Opposition raised at Oxford to the involved invasion of the
rights of College Visitors 488
Decline of the controversial spirit in 1655 ..... 489
Noteworthy productions of scholars at Cambridge and elsewhere ib.
Walton's Polyglot 489—93
BRIAN WALTON 490
His prospectus of the Work 490 — 1
Death of Ussher, March 165f 491
His place as editor taken by Thorndike .... ib.
Special qualifications of the latter for the task . . . 492
Death of Wheelock iu London, Sept. 1653 . . . . ib.
Success that attended the labours of the translators . . 493
ROBERT BAILLIE of Glasgow 494
His cousin and correspondent, William Spang . . . ib.
His concern at hearing how scholarship in the United
Provinces is devoting itself to theological controversy . 494 — 5
He asks Spang to send him the works of Voetius . . 495
His approval of Voetius's method ib.
His letter to Voetius 496
He urges him to put forth a trustworthy compendium of
Christian philosophy ib.
CONTENTS. xlvii
PAGE
Reply of Voetius who reports that Cartesian doctrines are
fast spreading in Holland 497
Baillie's description of the state of the Scotch universities 498
His dissatisfaction with Cromwell's Proclamation . . ib.
His displeasure at the claims advanced at Aberdeen to a
superior antiquity ........ 498 — 9
His admiration of the labours of Walton and his fellow
.translators . . " 499
Objections to the Polyglot raised by John Owen . . ib.
Walton's rejoinder to same 500
Baillie expresses his hope that Walton may obtain an
adequate reward ib.
RESULTS OF THE COMMISSION OF 1654 501 — 9
The debate in Parliament, April 1657 501
The Commissioners accused of having exceeded their instruc-
tions ........... ib.
The Heads still claim a 'negative voice' .... ib.
They solicit payment of their respective augmentations . 502 — 3
Their requests are acceded to, while they are invited to give
stricter attention to the duties of the Mastership . . 503
Instances of non-residence of Heads at Caius and Peter-
house ib.
Non -residence partly justified by members in the House . 503 — 4
Objections taken to extension of the time for which the
Commission had been appointed 504
Doubts expressed with regard to the authority of Parliament
in the question 504 — 5
The Presbyterian party propose that the Oxford Commission
should be annulled 505
Dissatisfaction caused by its endeavours to suppress ' corrupt
elections ' in the colleges ib.
The feud at Jesus College, Oxford 506
Expulsion of Dr Roberts, the principal, by the fellows . ib.
Although reinstated by the Visitors, he ultimately resigns . 507
The obligations imposed by the College Oath sometimes clash
with the requirements of the Commissioners . . . 508
Oxford wearied out by the protracted Visitation . . . ib.
John Owen gives place to Conant ...... 508 — 9
Absence in the Cambridge colleges of abuses that call for the
intervention of the Visitors 509
SIR SAMUEL MORLAND and the massacre of the Vaudois in
Piedmont 509—12
His career prior to his mission to the Duke of Savoy . ib.
He gains the notice of Thurloe aud of Ussher . . . 510 — 1
xlviii CONTENTS.
PAGE
Cromwell appoints Morland his envoy to the Courts of France
and Turin 511
Morland next appears as the English resident at Geneva . ib.
His History of the Piedmontese Churches .... 511 — 2
His return to England where he is appointed Thurloe's
secretary 512
He publishes his History and presents his manuscript collec-
tion to the university library 513
WILLIAM MOORE, university librarian, 1653-9 .... ib.
His funeral sermon by Thomas Smith, his successor, testify-
ing to his attainments and devotion to his official
duties 513 — 4
Morland's collection becomes subsequently lost sight of for
more than a century 514
CROMWELL'S popularity now on the wane ib.
He resigns the chancellorship of Oxford and is succeeded by
his son Richard 515
His death, 3 Sept. 1658 ib.
The Lucius et Oratulatio 515 — 9
Contrasts observable in the contributions by seniors and
juniors, and in those from Sidney and those from King's 516 — 7
INSTANCES OF INTERFERENCE IN ELECTIONS TO FELLOWSHIPS
DURING THE PROTECTORATE 519 — 21
BENJAMIN ROGERS admitted bachelor in music in compliance
with Oliver's mandate 520
His subsequent popularity as a composer of cathedral music . ib.
Joseph Seaman recommended by Oliver for a fellowship at
Peterhouse, June 1658 ib.
The Protector recalls his recommendation on learning that
the vacancy had already been filled up . . . . 520 — 1
RICHARD CROMWELL sends order for election of Martin Pindar to
a fellowship at Queens' 521
His assumption that, by virtue of his Protectorship, he stands
in the place of Visitor ib.
Consequent election of Joseph Seaman to the fellowship at
Peterhouse 521 — 2
Richard's chief aim to carry out his father's designs, especially
that of constituting Durham College a university . . 522
Both universities petition against the latter measure . . ib.
The result, as described by Anthony Wood .... 523
Revival of the proposal for an agreement between the Anglican
and Presbyterian bodies 524
EDWARD STILLINGFLEET and his Irenicum .... ib.
THE CRISIS OF 1659 ib.
CONTENTS. xlix
PAGE
Milton's views distinguished from those of Cromwell . . 524
Resolution of Parliament respecting the universities . . 525
Abdication of Richard Cromwell, May 1659. . . . ib.
Milton publishes his Considerations touching the removal of
Hirelings 525 — 6
His appeal to Parliament to deliver the country from the
oppression of the clergy 526
He denounces the education of the latter at the universities
as radically wrong 526 — 7
His apparent ignorance of the real state of the universities at
this time 527
His representations as regards Oxford contravened by
Clarendon 527—8
And as regards Cambridge by evidence afforded by the
colleges themselves 528
THE HEADS, 1650-9 528—36
Influence of ANTHONY TUCKNEY, master of St John's . . ib.
Baker testifies to his merits as an administrator and also to
those of Arrowsmith 528 — 9
Tuckuey's special qualifications 529
His sympathy with certain members of the Latitudinarian
party . 529—30
His personal regard for Whichcote and for Culverwel . 530
His maxim in elections to fellowships ib.
His disclaimer of all pretension to interpret prophecy . ib.
Importance attached to his opinion by other scholars . 531
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE, provost of King's, and JOHN WORTH-
INGTON, master of Jesus 531 — 2
The two contrasted 532
THEOPHILUS DILLINGHAM, master of Clare .... ib.
John Tillotson, his assiduity as college tutor . . . 532 — 3
WILLIAM MOSES, master of Pembroke 533
DR JOHN BOND, master of Trinity Hall .... ib.
THOMAS HOKTON, president of Queens' ib.
His special merits as a preacher 533 — 4
JOHN LIGHTFOOT, master of St Catherine's .... 534
RALPH CDDWORTH, master of Christ's ib.
WILLIAM DILLINGHAM, master of Emmanuel . . . 534 — 5
Decline of discipline at Emmanuel *'&•
Sidney College under Dr Minshull 535
DR LOVE at Corpus Christi • »'&•
Insufficiency of means for enabling promising students to prolong
their studies at the university 535 — 6
MATTHEW POOLE of Emmanuel 536
1 CONTENTS.
PAGE
He pleads with the merchants of London to come to the aid
of the universities 536
His appeal seconded by Richard Baxter .... ib.
Response of the Presbyterian party both in London and in
the provinces . 537
Poole's scheme, as set forth in his Model (1658) . . . ib.
Forty students to be enabled to study at the university for
seven years 537 — 8
Attention to be given in the colleges to the formation of the
student's character 538
The aim in view in instituting extempore prayers . . 538 — 9
Objections urged against same by Richard Samways of Oxford 539
GRACES of 1647, for the revision of academic OATHS, requiring that 539 — 40
(a) a printed copy of his Oath should be given to each
student on his matriculation 540
(6) relieving those convicted of any breach of the statutes
from the imputation of perjury ib.
Grounds on which Richard Samways approves the innovation 541
His estimate of university Oaths in general . . . ib.
Many of the inferior clergy continue to subscribe the Articles
of the Church and thereupon receive canonical ordination 542
Dr Venn's observations on the evidence to this effect afforded
by the Registers of the diocese of London . . . 542 — 3
Similar evidence afforded by the Registers of the diocese of
Norwich .......... 543
Instances of members of colleges thus specially pledged . 543 — 4
Absence of corresponding records at Ely .... 543
Inference to be drawn from foregoing evidence . . . 545
The ceremony of ORDINATION unrecognized by the State under the
Commonwealth ib.
Check placed, in 1654, on the exercise of patronage, in relation to
livings, by the institution of TRIERS and the appointment
of a Commission of Ejectors 545 — 6
Teachers of ' Popish opinions ' and users of the Common
Prayer Book declared liable to ejection .... 546
Renewal in 1659 of the attack upon the universities . . . ib.
Appointment of Dr Wilkins to the mastership of Trinity . . ib.
Subsequent enactment of more stringent requirements in
the B.A. examinations as conducted in the college . 546 — 7
Election of Seth Ward to the presidency of Trinity College, Oxford 546
CHANGES CONSEQUENT UPON THE RESTORATION .... 547 — 8
The Presbyterian and the Independent as described by
Anthony, Wood and Richard Baxter .... ib.
The new movements in philosophy 548
CONTENTS. If
CHAP. V. THE RESTORATION.
PAGE
Declaration by Parliament of its design to uphold the universities 549
PEPYS' visit to Cambridge ib.
He revisits Magdalene and is entertained by Thomas Hill . 550
He finds that 'the old preciseness' has disappeared . . ib.
He dines at Christ's College 551
Appointment of MONCK as general-in-chief ib.
Town and university elections for the Convention Parliament . 551 — 3
Result of the university poll 552
The vice-chancellor's letter to Monck ib.
Monck's reply, preferring to represent his native county . ib.
Letter of Dr Edward Martin from Paris, Apr. 1660 ... 553
His exultation at hearing that Monck designs the restoration
of the Stuart Monarchy ....... ib.
PROCEEDINGS AT CAMBRIDGE ON THE PROCLAMATION OF THE KING,
10-12 May 1660 554
The assembling at the Cross on Market Hill . . . ib.
Proceedings of the Town authorities 555
The King proclaimed at six different places in the town . ib.
Reappearance of the square cap 555 — 6
Duport declares that the circle has at last been squared . ib.
Manchester restored to the chancellorship, May 1660 . . 556
The DEPUTATION TO WHITEHALL ib.
Charles promises to maintain the universities in their
privileges .......... ib.
Indiscriminate bestowal of mandate degrees .... 557 — 8
Thomas Fuller, being among those created D.D., pays his last
visit to Cambridge 558
SERMON at Great St Mary's by DR SPENCER, 28 June 1660 . 559
His plea for Kingship as conducive to the welfare of the
universities 559 — 60
His denunciation of assassination 560
Charles's prudent designs with regard to his Household . . 560 — 1
Decision of the university to reinstate the Crown in possession of
the fee-farm rents ........ 561 — 3
Grace for this purpose, 19 July 1660 562—3
Formal tender of the rents by Dr Love to the King . . 563
Dr Love's installation as dean of Ely ib.
His death, January 166£ ib.
Endeavour of Masters to exculpate him from the charge of
being wanting in loyalty to the Church . . . 564
Assembling of the new Parliament, March 1660-1 . . . ib.
hi CONTENTS.
Meeting of the SAVOY CONFERENCE, 15 April 1661 . . . 564
CHANGES IN THE HEADSHIPS 564 — 86
Enquiry instituted by the Visitor at PETERHOUSE, and flight
of Lazarus Seaman 564
COSIN re-installed as master, but resigns soon after on his
appointment to the see of Durham .... 565
His consecration at Westminster ib.
Admission of BERNARD HALE as master, Nov. 1660 . . ib.
His death, April 1663 ib.
His benefactions to the college 565 — 6
Kesignation of WM. MOSES at PEMBROKE COLLEGE . . . 566
Re-installation of Dr Laney ....... ib.
His sufferings in exile ........ ib.
He is rewarded by both a deanery and a bishopric . . 566 — 7
Eeturn of DR BATCHCROFT to CAIUS COLLEGE .... 567
DR ROBERT KING re-elected to mastership of TRINITY HALL . ib.
CIRCUMSTANCES OF DR WHICHCOTE'S RETIREMENT FROM THE
PROVOSTSHIP OF KING'S . . . . . . 567 — 70
JAMES FLEETWOOD (afterwards bishop of Worcester) . . 568
He objects that Whichcote is statutably disqualified for
re-election and is himself nominated by Charles . . ib.
Arguments to the contrary adduced by Whichcote and his
supporters ib.
Fleetwood's deserts as estimated by Charles . . . 569
He is refused admission at the Lodge by Whichcote's servants ib.
Whichcote ultimately surrenders up possession and leaves
Cambridge 570
Circumstances of the re-installation of DR MARTIN at QUEENS'
COLLEGE ib.
Re-election of the majority of the fellows .... 571
Dr Martin's indignation on surveying the havoc wrought in
the chapel ib.
He determines to petition Parliament for redress . . ib.
His appointment to the deanery of Ely, shortly followed by
his death, Apr. 1662 ib.
Position of DR WORTHINGTON at JESUS COLLEGE . . . 572
His assiduity as rector of Fen Ditton, where he is succeeded
by Dr Hales ib.
Dr Sterne is re-installed in the mastership .... ib,
Worthington removes from his Lodge to Fen Ditton . . ib.
Ultimate appointment of JOHN PEARSON as master of the
college 574
His previous career at Eton and at King's .... ib.
His sermon in defence of Forms of Prayer, June 1643 . 574 — 5
CONTENTS. Hii
PAGE
His lectureship at St Clement's, Eastcheap .... 575
His Exposition of the Creed, 1659 576
His sermons well suited to a city audience .... ib.
He dedicates the published volume to his parishioners . ib.
Value of his marginalia ........ ib.
At ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, TUCKNEY is called upon to resign both
mastership and professorship on the ground of his
advanced age ......... 577
His retirement to London and subsequent experiences . 577 — 8
He is succeeded in the mastership by Peter Gunning . 578
DE GUNNING'S previous election to the mastership of Corpus . ib.
His admission as master of St John's, June 1661 . . 579
Re-installation of DE RAINBOWE in the mastership of MAGDALENE ib.
His appointment to the bishopric of Carlisle, 1664 . . ib.
DE WILKINS at TEINITY COLLEGE ib.
His general popularity and wide sympathies . . 579 — 80
Circumstances which render Charles unable to retain him*
in office 580
DE HENBY FEBNE at Oxford ib.
His second edition of the Resolving of Conscience, 1643 . ib.
The mastership of Trinity long before promised him by
Charles i, to whom he had acted as chaplain at
Carisbrooke . . . . . . . . . 581
His subsequent retirement into Yorkshire and return to
pamphleteering ib.
His appointment to the mastership by Charles n . . ib.
His sound judgement as administrator of Trinity and as
vice-chancellor, 1660-1 ib.
His consecration to the bishopric of Chester . . . ib.
His death, March 1662 ; 581—2
His funeral at Westminster Abbey ib.
Appointment of WILLIAM SANCEOFT to the mastership of EM-
MANUEL, August 1662 582—3
He holds that the college must 'divest itself of its former
singularity' 583
His letter to Ezekiel Wright, describing his impressions on
his return 583 — 4
He holds that a new chapel and a new library are especially
needed, and proposes to rebuild both .... 584
He laments the low standard of attainments, the large
influx of 'foreigners,' and the neglect of Hebrew and
Greek 584-5
Wright in reply deprecates the revival of the statute de Mora,
with respect to which nothing further is done . . 585
liv CONTENTS.
PAGE
Inadequate revenues the chief difficulty of Emmanuel at
this juncture 585 — 6
The University as Bancroft saw it 586
The ACT OF UNIFORMITY, May 1662 587
Language of Clarendon on his election to the chancellorship
of Oxford, Oct. 1660 ib.
Pearson announces his design, as professor, of reverting to the
method of the Schoolmen ib.
The reaction in England compared with that in France . - . ib.
The CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS 588—662
Passages from John Sherman's Commonplaces in Trinity
College Chapel 588
Evidence they afford of the author's sympathy with Whichcote
and More 589
WHICHCOTE the Socrates of the new movement . . 589 — 90
His sermons at Trinity Church 590
Hffs audience a critical one ib.
Samuel Cradock of Emmanuel 590 — 1
He declares Whichcote's critics to be wanting in frank dealing 591
CORRESPONDENCE that ensues between TUCKNEY and WHICHCOTE 591 — 4
The former demurs to Whichcote's theory that the definition
of doctrine should be in Scripture language solely . 592
Whichcote's reply. and Tuckney's rejoinder to same . . ib.
Whichcote maintains that the student comes to the university
in order to discover what is the TRUTH . . . 593
This maxim becomes the keynote of the Platonists' discourse ib.
The concluding letters 593 — 4
Tuckney postpones his final reply, while Whichcote reiterates
his determination to hold by the Truth . . . 594
Whichcote's conception of the growth of the Church criticized by
Westcott 595
Illustration afforded by his Aphorisms of his views on the
subject .......... ib.
His general conclusion, that the attainment of Truth is man's
ultimate object in all enquiry ib.
His acquaintance with the Greek philosophers probably
exaggerated by Burnet . . . 596
Extent to which he is entitled to be reckoned a leader of his
party considered ib.
HENRY MORE
His education at home and at Eton 597
His early religious misgivings ib.
His admission at Christ's College, 1631 .... ib.
His passion for study at this time and subsequently . . 598
CONTENTS. lv
PAGE
His father's concern at his extreme bookishness . . . 598
The dedication of his Philosophical Poems to his father made
the occasion for paying a high tribute to the character of
the latter 599
His motive in so doing ib.
His Song of the Soul 600
He declares himself the disciple of Plato and Plotinus . ib.
Compares the persecutors of Galileo to the Giants who
sought to scale Olympus ib.
Declares that patient intellectual toil, pursued in subservience
to Reason, is the only right method .... 601
Denounces the Ptolemists' refusal to recognize the Truth
merely because it sometimes contradicts impressions
derived from the senses ib.
More himself at this time passing through a critical stage of
intellectual developement ...... ib.
The design of the Song described 602
His rejection of the pagan theory that a future existence
involves oblivion as regards the present life . . . 603
Immunity which he enjoyed alike from persecution for his
beliefs and from the pressure of poverty .... 604
His popularity as a college tutor ...... ib.
His punctual attendance at devotions and other religious
exercises .......... ib.
His persistent refusal of offers of preferment . . . ib.
His careful observance of the laws of health . . . 605
His admiration of the beautiful in Nature .... ib.
The general aim of his studies as described by himself . ib.
Change in his father's estimate of their influence after
visiting him at Christ's . 606
His visits to Ragley ib.
His admiration of Descartes' writings and first letter to the
author ib.
He advises that they should be studied in the universities . 607
He reads Descartes' treatise on the Passions of the Soul with
his pupil, Viscount Conway 608
His reminiscences of his visits to Ragley, during which he had
conceived some of his 'choicest theories' .... ib.
Importance attached by him to the prophecy of Daniel, of
which Cudworth, in a lecture on the subject, had recently
propounded a new interpretation .... 609 — 10
Disadvantages under which Cudworth laboured compared
with More, owing to his official duties, his inferiority as
a Latinist, and early education 610 — 1
Ivi CONTENTS.
His leisure chiefly bestowed on the Hebrew literature con-
nected with his professoriate 611
Value of this in relation to the study of Natural Ethics, on
which, accordingly, he had already announced his inten-
tion of publishing a treatise 611 — 3
More, however, anticipates him in his design . . . 612 — 3
Voluminousness of More's published writings contrasted with
the paucity of Cudworth's 613
Cudworth's earlier Sermons of 1642 and 1647 . . . 613—4
His mode of dealing with the doctrine of transubstantiation . ib.
WORTHINGTON'S relations at this time with MORE and CUDWORTH,
between whom he now acts the part of intermediary . 614
Cudworth's statement of his grievance to Worthington, to
whom he represents More's conduct as disingenuous . 615
He observes that More's reputation is already as high as he
himself could wish it, and demurs to his undertaking a
treatise on Ethics, well knowing that Cudworth himself
had been for a long time similarly engaged . . . 615 — 6
More's counter-representation of the case to Worthington . . 616
He explains that he is aiming at something quite different
from the treatise contemplated by Cudworth . . ib.
He ultimately publishes his Enchiridion Ethicum, designed
as a simple Introduction to the elements of the
subject 616—7
PUBLICATION OF MEDE'S WORKS by Worthington, March 1665 . 617
Letters from Wm. Dillingham and Widdrington on receiving
copies 617 — 8
OUTBREAK OF THE PLAGUE IN LONDON 618
Worthington resolutely refuses to desert his post . . ib.
Extension of the epidemic to Cambridge and measures there
taken by the authorities ....... ib.
Cambridge becomes 'disuniversitied' 619
Energy and good sense shewn by the vice-chancellor, Dr
Wilford ib.
Precautions taken in the colleges against the epidemic . ib.
The majority of the Heads and a few of the fellows continue
to reside 619—20
Issue of weekly bulletins shewing that, on this occasion, the
colleges escaped the infection 620 — 1
The return of the students, by permission, in 1666, is
followed by a recurrence of the epidemic . . . 621
Consequent complete absence of matriculations for the year,
questionists, however, having their seniority reserved to
them. • . - . ib.
CONTENTS. Ivii
PAGE
Riots that follow upon the outbreak of the GREAT FIRE in
London 621
Precautions necessary to protect the colleges from in-
cendiarism ....... ib.
Worthiugton, at St Benet Fink's church, becomes involved
in the calamity ....... ib.
Sympathy shewn him by More, who presents him to the
rectory of Ingoldsby 621 — 2
Similar experiences of Whichcote and Wilkins in the
Capital 622
Seth Ward's generous efforts in behalf of his friends . . ib.
His letter to Worthington ib.
More decides to reside more frequently at Grantham . . 623
Death of Mrs Worthington at Ingoldsby .... ib.
Dejected condition of the widower ib.
His letters to Whichcote and to More ..... 623 4
He urges More to write a manual of Natural Philosophy to
supplant the Cartesian doctrines 624
He resolves to leave Ingoldsby ...... 625
His letter to Lauderdale ib.
Archbishop Sheldon obtains for him the lectureship at the
parish church of Hackney ib.
Worthington's death and funeral 625 — 6
Testimony of Tillotson to the value of his labours . . 626
Reaction in the university with regard to royal mandates for
degrees 626—7
Instances at Trinity Hall, St John's, Corpus Christi, and
Christ's 627—9
Publication of More's Enchiridion Metaphysicum, in opposition to
Descartes . 630
Worthington's edition of JOHN SMITH'S Discourses . . . ib.
NATHANIEL CULVERWEL 630 — 1
Ezekiel Culverwel, his father ....... ib.
Father and son alike Puritan in their sympathies . . ib.
Early careers of NATHANIEL CULVERWEL and JOHN SMITH . ib.
Simon Patrick's Sermon at the funeral of the latter . . 632
Examples of Early Church oratory on which this Discourse is
partly modelled 633
Smith's exceptional merits, as described both by Patrick and
by Worthington 633 — 4
His treatise on the Immortality of the Soul compared with
that by More » • . 634
The vagueness of More's conclusions contrasted with Smith's
careful and sustained argument 634 — 6
Iviii CONTENTS.
PAGE
The latter's mode of treatment of a subject further illustrated by
a comparison with that of Culverwel .... 635 — 6
Circumstances under which CulverwePs Light of Nature was
written 636—7
High value of the treatise, although little more than an
.Introduction to the main enquiry which the writer had
in view . 637
His own description of the proposed scope of the latter . 637 — 8
Limitations' under which he accepts the guidance of reason 638
He maintains that the testimony of the pagan philosopher is
not to be disregarded 639
The author's mental break -down, the result probably of his
loss of popularity, owing to the boldness of his utterance ib.
and especially his imprudent depreciation of Descartes'
Cogito ergo sum ........ 640
His relations with More and Tuckney ib.
Mysterious circumstances under which his death took place 640 — 1
His Spiritual Opticks published by William Dillingham, Dec.
1651 641
Publication by same of the Light of Nature . . . 642
Testimony of his brother, Richard Culverwel, with respect to
his later experiences 642 — 4
Evidence of the soundness of the author's judgement,
.afforded by his discernment of the merits of writers of
widely different schools, his defence of the syllogism,
his advocacy of the employment of reason in connexion
with points of doctrine, and his estimate of the obligations
of the pagan philosophy to Jewish sources . . . 643 — 4
Henry More's Conjectura Cabbalistica ...... 644 — 5
His dedication of the treatise to Cudworth, whose learning
he extols .......... ib.
Theories which he traces back to the teaching of Moses . 645 — 6
Criticism of his main theory by the late prof. Maurice . 646
His formal renunciation of Cartesianism in the Dedication and
Address to the Reader of his Enchiridion Metaphysicum 646 — 7
More now pronounces the principles of Cartesianism inimical
to true religion and exposes the fallacies involved in some
of Descartes' hypotheses 647 — 8
His letter to Clerselier, 1655 648
Divergent tendencies of his studies prior to and after the
Restoration, the result partly of his misgivings with
regard to the prospects of Rationalism, and partly of his
perception of the revived interest in the interpretation
of Prophecy taken by the religious public . . . 648 — 9
CONTENTS. Hx
PAGE
Expression of like misgivings in the Discourses of GEORGE
RUST, afterwards bishop of Dromore, pointing out that the
exclusive possession of TRUTH was claimed by every sect
and every religion, and exposing the motives which
underlay the professed opinions of the sectaries ; while
extended liberty of belief, so far from resulting in greater
unanimity, had seemed to illustrate the difficulties of
accepting Whichcote's canon (p. 593) .... 650 2
In his reluctance to embark in the controversies thus raised,
More prefers to return to his prophetical studies, his
eclectic position being characterized generally by
(a) his independence as a thinker, offering noteworthy
features on a comparison with Hobbes .... 654
(6) his conception of the philosophic life .... 654 — 5
(c) his aversion alike from fanaticism and Popery . . 655
(d) his willingness to accept Thorndike's theory of Church
government ......... 656
Illustration of the popularity of speculations in prophecy afforded
by the career of ISRAEL TONGE ib.
His experiences as a fellow of University College, Oxford . 656 — 7
His disagreement with the fellows and consequent ejection 657
His career subsequent to leaving Oxford .... ib.
His studies on the Apocalypse ib.
His proposed publication of the same anticipated by the
discussion of the subject published by Henry More . ib.
Belief of the latter that his own verification of the Apocalyptic
prophecies in past history afforded better evidence of the
truth of Christianity than did the early miracles . 657 — 8
He predicts that his interpretations will ultimately form part
of the catechetical teaching of the Church ... . 658
Points of contrast in CUDWORTH'S genius when compared with
that of More ib.
His Sermon before the House of Commons, March 1647 . 659
He deprecates disputations on religious questions and urges
the advantages of a study of Nature .... ib.
His Intellectual System of the Universe 660
Apathy or hostility with which it was received on its
publication in 1678 ib.
Martineau's explanation of the same 660 — 1
Services subsequently rendered by Le Clerc and Mosheim
towards bringing its merits under the notice of Con-
tinental scholars . . . . . • • • 661
Cudworth's theory of 'a plastic Nature' .... 662
Death and funeral of MATTHEW WREN, May 1667 . . . ib.
Ix CONTENTS.
PAGE
His administration as bishop of Norwich, and on his transla-
tion to the see of Ely 662—3
His arbitrary mode of procedure as Visitor of Peterhouse and
in connexion with Jesus College ib.
He rebuilds the chapel of Pembroke College . . . 663 — 4
Pearson's Oration at his funeral ...... 664
The last of the Platonists . 664—5
(A) The Poll of the Election for the Chancellorship in 1626.
(B) The Manner of the Presentation of the Duke of Buckingham his
Grace to the Chancellorship of the University of Cambridge.
(C) Ordinances established for a publique Lecture of Historic in the
University of Cambridge.
(D) Order of the King at the Court at Whitehall the 30th of Aprill 1630,
respecting the Nomination to Lord Brooke's History Lecture.
(E) Matriculations for the Years 1620-1669.
(F) Subscriptions on Admission to Holy Orders during the Common-
wealth and the Protectorate.
ERRATA.
p. 57, 1. 13, Roger Andre wes (master of Jesus College, 1618-32) voted
for Buckingham ; see p. 668.
p. 315, L 1, for 'Wemnore' read ' Wenman.'
p. 316, u. 3, for ' Merton ' read ' Wadham.'
p. 347, 1. 3 from bottom, for ' nephew ' read ' uncle.'
p. 608, marginal note, 'conceived his Poem,' for Poem read 'treatise.'
CHAPTER I.
FROM THE ACCESSION OF CHARLES THE FIRST TO
THE MEETING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT.
A CONTEMPORARY writer has briefly described the solemnities v CHAP, i.
at Cambridge on the occasion of the late king's funeral: the ft0c^bridg
assembling at nine o'clock in the morning; the Regent Walk, ofjames i
' School yard/ non-Regent and Regent Houses and Great St 7 '
Mary's, all hung with black, while numerous ' escutcheons and
verses' appeared on the hangings; the afternoon sermon
preached by Dr Collins and followed by an oration by Mr
Thorndike, 'which being ended the company departed to
their severall colleges1.'
The ' verses ' subsequently reappeared in a somewhat re-
markable collection2, wherein laments over the national loss
were blended with effusive aspirations for the happiness of
the new monarch. The volume, a small quarto of 72 pages, T''| ?oior
r O > etSolatnen.
issued from the press of Cantrell Legge, the printer to the
university, whose endeavours to extend the sphere of his
activity were at this time involving the Press in a warm dis-
pute with the Stationers' Company3. On the whole, the
Dolor et Solamen may fairly be regarded as a noteworthy
specimen of its kind, — a literature, which, as illustrative of
contemporary history, has scarcely received the attention it
1 Baker MS. xiv 69. Galliae & Hiberniae Monarchae.
* Cantabrigiensium Dolor et Sola- Excudebat Cantrellus Legge, etc.
men sen Decessio beatissimi Jacobi 4to.
pacifici et Successio augustissimi 3 Bowes (R.), Notes on the Univer-
Regis Caroli Magnae Britanniae sity Printers, p. 297.
M. III. 1
2 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
y cnt£ii^ merits ; and, amid all the customary forced metaphors and
stereotyped classical allusions, there is clearly discernible a
genuine sense that both the universities and the Church had
lost a patron and defender who had discerned more clearly
than most of his predecessors what it was that learning and
Contributors: orthodoxy chiefly needed at his hands. Foremost among the
IfS contributors appears the name of James Stuart, fourth duke
A lest. °f Lennox, who had succeeded to the title in the preceding
year and was at this time a resident member of Trinity
College. The conspicuous place assigned to the youthful
peer's contribution is to be referred to the fact that he was
related by blood to James himself, who had been by " Scots
custom " his guardian during his minority. Among the sixty-
five compositions which follow, the order is determined
mainly by heraldic rules of precedence or by academic status.
The verses themselves, regarded as specimens of Greek or
Latin composition, might well have been consigned to ob-
scurity, but they occasionally afford suggestive illustration of
the point of view of some notable contributor; and among
this number the tribute by Andrew Downes, the regius
professor of Greek, and that by Samuel Collins, the regius
professor of divinity, call more especially for a passing notice.
Andrew The position of Downes, in the earlier half of the year
Downes. r J
*• j|J|(?)- 1625, was of a kind which too frequently confronts us in the
history of institutions, when it devolves upon a present
generation to assess the claims arising out of services ren-
dered to its predecessor. Five years had passed since the
occasion when the Greek professor (as we last saw him)1,
with his legs on the table, admitted young Simonds D'Ewes
to the honour of an interview; and Downes, now in his
HIS removal seventy-seventh year, received an intimation that the resig-
sh?Pfessor" nation of his chair was expected. That he was past work
was evident2, but he pleaded that his stipend ought still to
be paid him. How far that claim was reasonable it is im-
possible, at this distance of time, to decide, but the evidence,
1 See Vol. n 506. him.' Wheelock to Ussher, Ussher's
2 'I could draw little or nothing Works, xv 281.
from Mr Downs, whose memory fails
DOLOR ET SOLA MEN. 3
as far as it goes, would seem to shew that, with ordinary
prudence, he ought not to have been in necessitous circum-
stances. He had been fellow of St John's from 1571 to 1586,
when he migrated to Trinity on his election to his professor-
ship; his labours as one of the translators of the new version
had been recognised by a prebend in the cathedral of Wells ;
he had filled his academic chair for nine and thirty years and
had received fees from numerous pupils ; and, although none
could gainsay the value of his past services, his laborious
method of exposition began to be regarded by the rising
generation with awe rather than admiration1. So long how- ^
ever as James had lived, Downes felt secure. In 1609, he
had received from the royal exchequer a grant of £50, 'of the
king's free gift2'; and in 1621, when dedicating to his royal
patron his Praelectiones to the De Pace of Demosthenes, we
find him expressly stating that his 'obligations to Bucking-
ham, the chief dispenser of James's favours, had been greater
than those under which he lay to ' all the other magnates of
the realm3.' It is these facts which enable us to understand
how it was that, alone among the contributors to the Dolor
et Solamen, Downes could venture to extol the munificence
of his former patron, as verging upon lavishness4, — a fault
which the late king's contemporaries had certainly not been
accustomed to regard with much complacency; but at the
time when the venerable professor sent in his verses, learning
at Cambridge had hardly realised the loss it had sustained.
Downes's plea for the continuance of his stipend granted, he His
* .... . retirement
retired to Coton, where an inscription in the little Norman to Cotou-
church of that village records his death, — which occurred
within rather more than a year subsequent to his removal
thither, — and also attests his services to the university5.
1 Baker- Mayor, p. 599. quippe benignus erat ; | Provexit
1 State Papers (Doin.), James the multos: inopes ditavit amicos ; | Ke-
First, XLV, no. 56; Warrant Book, gibus hie semper gloria summafuit.'
n 64. Dolor, etc., pp. 8-9. 'In February
3 'Ego plus illi, quam omnibus 1611,' says Gardiner, 'James had
debeo Magnatibus.' Downes, Prae- gran ted to six favourites, four of whom
lectiones in Philippicam de Pace were of Scottish birth, no less a sum
Denwsthenis, Epist. Dedicat. than 34.000Z.' Hist, of England, n
4 'Forsitan immodica est largitio 111.
visa quibusdam, | Natura nimium 5 Baker- Mayor, n 599.
1—2
4 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. ^ »phe contribution of Collins, one of the ablest members of
the university at this period, was of a more ambitious charac-
ter. As provost of King's as well as professor, he may have
considered that he lay under a twofold obligation to assume
a prominent place among the mourners, and it is certain that
a tribute of special merit was looked for at his hands. Collins
was already distinguished by his moderation amid the strife
of parties, his refined and graceful wit, which often glanced
and by no means innocuously at his antagonists, and by his
love of the society of scholars such as Sir Henry Wotton (his
brother provost at Eton), John Williams and Gerard Vossius.
It was an impulsive, impetuous, self-reliant spirit, somewhat
too disdainful of the dull and the pedantic, and ever reverting
to his loved classics for solace and inspiration, but at the same
time regarding with scarcely less admiration the new philo-
sophy of Bacon. Hovv'1, not a few might wonder, would
Collins discharge the task of rendering homage to the late
monarch? Although his composition is by far the longest
in the collection, he would seem in a manner to have evaded
the obligation which he could not shirk, by taking refuge in
a detailed enumeration of the most important experiences
in the late monarch's whole career. A remarkable effusion
wanting alike in concinnity and real pathos, and otherwise
notable merely as a specimen of the strained ingenuity then
so prevalent and abounding in recondite allusion and ambigu-
ous expression, to the wonder of the simple and the delectation
of the initiated, but offering one passage of real value for our
special purpose (p. 66), — the lines wherein the writer dilates
on the genuine enthusiasm which prompted James's visits to
the university1. We learn from Collins, what is nowhere else
as explicitly intimated, that James had so greatly delighted
in his Cambridge visits that he found a difficulty in bringing
them to a close, — so completely had the royal pedant found
himself at home at the disputations, the banquets and the
plays, surrounded by the adulation, the learning, the wit
1 ' Ut nostris dignatus adesse pena- vel saepe dolis revocabilis Aula. | Hie
tibus hospes | Dignatus leve proh moriar: hie (inquit) amamus mutua
verbum! gavisus et ardens | Et nulla amamurque.' Dolor, etc., p. 66.
DOLOR ET SOL A At EN. 5
and the youthful exuberance which ran riot on those . CHAP, i.
occasions !
A more formal tribute to the late monarch was paid by institution
the passing of a grace ordaining that, in the morning of the sermon m
fourth Sunday in Lent for ever, there should be a solemn mem°ry-
sermon with praise to God for the perfect and happy state of
the late King James, and in commemoration of the 'in-
numerable benefits ' which the university enjoyed from his
benignity1. On James Ussher, of Trinity College, Dublin,
now archbishop of Armagh, it devolved to be the first to
preach this sermon; and his text on the occasion, his bio-
grapher tells us, was afterwards 'much observed,' it being
taken from Samuel (i xii 25), — ' But if ye still do wickedly,
ye shall be consumed, both you and your king2.' Not less
ominous had appeared to be the incident, that when the
new king was proclaimed at the market-cross in Cambridge, ^nc0fma"
although the season was cold and backward, the voice of the ^March
crier was followed by a peal of thunder in the air3. The 1625'
various aspects of the times were indeed such as justly to
give rise to gloomy anticipations on the part of the more
observant minds in the university. But, for the present,
hope and loyal feeling prevailed; and the great majority
turned to hail with enthusiasm the accession of the new Enthusiasm
monarch. His youth — he was but twenty-four — pleaded accession,
strongly in his behalf; even his taciturnity and reserved
demeanour, when contrasted with his father's loquacity and
vanity, inspired the belief that he was endowed with a
sounder judgement and a more kingly discretion ; while with
many a grave divine and ardent theologian, his recent aban-
donment of the Spanish alliance encouraged the hope that
in him a foremost champion of the interests of Protestantism
throughout Europe might be destined to appear. Another The chief
incidents in
and more remote occurrence can hardly also but have been his previous
* relations
present to their minds. Thirteen years before, when Charles
was in his twelfth year, it had been sought to bring about
1 4qui innumeris et in aeternum 2 Bernard (Nich.), Funeral Sermon
recolendis beneficiis academiam bea- for Ussher (Apr. 17, 1656), p. 86.
verit.' Lib. Grat. Z p. 105. Stat. Lond. 1656.
Acad. Univ. (1785), p. 376. 3 Ellis's Letters (series iii) 244.
6
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i.
ship : May
fetter of*
claries!6
his election as chancellor of the university in succession to
the earl of Salisbury. The endeavour was defeated and
every effort was afterwards used to consign it to oblivion ;
but it none the less remained as a significant episode in the
history of the office, and stands in immediate connexion with
the highly important contest which will shortly claim our
consideration.
The earl of Northampton had, as we have already seen,
been elected on the occasion above referred to, and the
belief was fairly general that a judicious choice had been
made ; for the new chancellor was not only, to use Hacket's
expression/ superlatively learned,' but also enormously wealthy.
In the interval, however, between the nomination and the
election, an untoward incident took place. A report was
spread, probably only too true, that the lord privy-seal was
really ' a papist at heart,' and Charles was nominated in
opposition, Northampton's election being thus carried over
the young prince's head. The new chancellor's first letter,
written while he was still ignorant of the fact that a royal
rival had been nominated against him, gives expression to
something like surprise that in his old age, when even his
person was scarcely known to the university1, and when the
Latin in which he had there been wont to converse had
faded from his memory2, he should have been chosen for
such an honour. He claims their indulgence if, notwith-
standing, he still ventures to 'stammer forth' his acknow-
ledgements in that tongue, — his letter really being couched
in a Latin style of exceptional elegance. And after inti-
mating, in courtly phrase, his acceptance of the proffered
honour, he congratulates the university that both they and
he will be privileged to live under the protection of the
great Maecenas and Solomon of the age, the eminent pro-
moter of sound learning and patron of its professors. Charles's
nomination, however, had been made not only unknown to
1 — ' me vix ex vultu agnitum, in
ipso aetatis meae flexu vel potius
crepusculo, cancellarium elegeritis.'
Camb. Univ. Transactions, ed. Hey-
wood and Wright, n 238.
2 — ' illius etiam penitus oblitus
linguae qua matris academiae prae-
cepta olim audire eamque colloqui et
affari solebam.' Ibid.
CHARLES AND THE CHANCELLORSHIP. 7
Northampton but also to the king, and to both the dis- VCHAP.L
closure came as an unpleasant surprise. For a brief period,
the whole university, says Racket, 'was under as black a
cloud of displeasure as ever I knew in any time1,' an asser- ™j&"h
tion corroborated by that of John Chamberlain of Trinity ™5Sn
College, who states that ' the king was much displeased that
his son should be put in balance with any of his sub-
jects2.' The letter which Northampton now wrote, couched
not in Latin but in plain and forcible English, affords,
accordingly, unmistakeable evidence of his chagrin at being
thus obviously placed in a false position. ' I must,' he writes,
' beseech you all, that insteed of sendinge up your officers "ex
and ministers about the manner of investinge me, you will |™S^
vouchsafe to make another orderly election of an other, con-
gregatis vobis cum meo spiritu, that my heart shall be no less
dedicated and devoted to you all and every one of you
(though I rest your ffellowe regent), then yf I had beine
setled in the state of your high chancellour3.' The heads,
sorely discomfited at this double miscarriage, decided to
send John Williams, at this time one of the proctors, to the g™^,1118 u
king at Greenwich. Williams had already made a favorable <ireenwich-
impression on James by a sermon preached before him in
the preceding year4, and by his adroit representations he
now managed so far to mitigate his displeasure, that, although
still refusing to allow Charles to be nominated for the chan-
cellorship, the king consented to come to the aid of the JTam«8 orders
Northamp-
university by commanding Northampton to withdraw his Jirawhu
resignation. Still smarting, however, under his recent
experience, Northampton was not to be easily prevailed
upon ; nor was it perhaps without a certain cynical satis-
faction that he wrote as follows to the vice-chancellor. 'After
1 Scrinia Eeserata : a Memorial 4 In a letter to his friend and patron,
offered to the great Denervings of John Sir John Wynne, Williams speaks
Williams, D.D., etc. ByJohnHacket, with complacency of the signs of the
late Lord Bishop of Coventry and royal approval which he had succeeded
Idchfield. In the Savoy, 1692. i 21 in eliciting and speculates on the
[referred to in subsequent notes sim- possible results: 'I had,' he writes,
ply as ' Hacket ']. ' a great deal of Court holie water, if
2 MS. Sloane, no. 4173, p. 245; I can make myselfe any good there
Heywood and Wright, n 240. bye.' 22 Nov. 1611. Camb. Ant.
3 Heywood and Wright, n 243. Comm. n 37.
8 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. v longe suite on my knees, I prevayled so fair with ray gracious
and deere master, that he lefte me to my selfe, who held it
best for my selfe, never to appeere in the world with any
marke that was sett on with so pestilent a prejudice1.' Then
j|mfs to the royalty in turn, addressed itself to the university: 'wee
lOJu^eYtik would not/ said the letter, ' have you to misconceave of us
that we are offended for that which hath passed about
the election of your new chancellour.' James, indeed,
prefers to believe that the nomination of 'the Duke of
Yorke ' was attributable not to ' the body of the university '
'but to some of rashe factious humour, whose conditions are
alwaies apt to interrupt unity and uniformity2'; while he
The King pronounces the original election of Northampton to have
testimony been highly commendable — ' whether you looke to his birth,
to North- & J J
fltSess!1'8 hig education in that university, his greate learninge, his
continuall favouringe of all learned men and of all thinges
that tende to the furtherance of learninge or good of the
churche.' But unfortunately the earl himself could not now
be moved to accept the tarnished honour : — ' wee cann,' says
the king, ' by no persuasion or intreaty move him to imbrace
^neewjou it.' The only course left open was, accordingly, in the royal
opinion, a new election — 'wherin wee require you to proceede
speedily and freely; and, on whomsoever your choyce shall
light, wee shall use our authority to cause him to accept it3.'
It seems probable that the king and the peer were acting in
concert ; for, following closely upon this letter, came another,
also in English, from Northampton himself, conveying his
fmpton acquiescence in the course which James suggested and inti-
ancUodares mating his readiness again to be nominated. Amantium
reconciled, irae amoris integratio ! His heart, he affirms, had been
won by the university at his first election and now returns to
that body, ' to be so fastened by the bindinge knott of your
inestimable love,' that 'duringe the tyme of my lyfe' it 'shall
never part agayne4.' But although Northampton may have
felt that the solution of the difficulty held out by the royal
1 Hey wood and Wright, n 244-5. table.' Ibid, n 240.
2 So Chamberlain,— ' that it was 3 Ibid, n 245-6.
done by a few headstrong fellows that 4 Ibid, rr 247-9; Baker MS. iv
are since bound over to the council- 366.
POPULARITY OF CHARLES. 9
authority rendered it impossible for him to withhold his . CH^P. i. ^
assent, and his re-election was carried without a dissentient J?5" r**lec-
tion : IT June
voice, the extreme suavity of his language might alone 161i
suggest that it really veiled a still cherished sense of wrong ;
while with the death of prince Henry, towards the close of
the year, the hopes of the university began again to gather
round the new heir apparent. This feeling, as we have
seen1, found marked expression when in the following March
Charles, along with his brother-in-law, the Elector Palatine,
paid their visit to the university; he was not only elected
' in ordinem magistrorum,' but his portrait, now suspended in
the university library, was painted in special honour of the
occasion2, while the vice-chancellor and the caput were
invested by James with authority to bestow degrees on
whomever they thought fit, all prohibitory statutes being sus-
pended by the royal fiat3. Amid all these brilliant festivities,
however, Northampton was notably absent; and when, in the
following year, he died, few probably were surprised to learn HU death :
° J J 15 June 1614.
that Cambridge, in Racket's homely phrase, ' was never the
better for him by the wealth of a barley-corn.' His nephew,
Thomas Howard, first earl of Suffolk and the lord of Audley ^lection of
* the EARL of
End, who had also been educated at St John's and was the lYeeS!"*'
inheritor of a portion of his uncle's wealth, succeeded him in *• 1626'
the chancellorship, and his profuse hospitality on the occa-
sion of the royal visit in 1615 4 may, not improbably, have
been dictated by a wish to efface the recollection of his pre-
decessor's niggardliness; but his want of sympathy with
learning, together with the incidents which marred his official
career as lord high treasurer, and the difficulties in which he
became involved through his marriage into the family of the
Richs, did much to diminish his prestige with the university;
while, on the other hand, the increased popularity which p™^tv
greeted Charles on his return from Spain now made him the charts?
darling of the nation. Nowhere throughout England had
greater enthusiasm been displayed than at Cambridge on
1 Vol. n 514. 3 Cooper, Annals, ni 56.
2 See label on portrait. Cooper, 4 Vol. n 518.
Add. and Corrections, p. 322.
10 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. that occasion. On Charles's arrival, along with Buckingham,
DejmtaUon at Royston, where James was then keeping court, a deputa-
i20ctit>23. tion at once set out to convey the congratulations of the
university. The bells were rung; 'a gratulatory sermon'
was preached at St Mary's and an oration delivered in the
afternoon1; each college listened to a speech, had its extra
dish at supper, and squibs and a bonfire in the court at
night2. At Royston, the deputation presented a 'book of
verses3,' wherein, in a variety of metres, the loyal Latinists
of the university, and especially those of King's and Trinity,
vied with each other in the ardour of their congratulations,
and employed their utmost ingenuity in extolling the bold
emprise and heroic virtues of the two ' Smiths.' Seldom,
even among the poets of the Augustan age, had the incense
of flattery risen in denser fumes. Spain, according to one
Trinity versifier, had at first imagined herself honoured by
the presence of some celestial deity, but on discovering who
her august visitor really was, became filled with even yet
greater admiration and rapture. Love, sang a bard of Peter-
house, had impelled Charles forth on his outward journey;
a mightier devotion, devotion to the Faith, had summoned
him back. Samuel Collins, here, as ever, most prolific and
exuberant, exulted in the thought that the 'Jesuit scum'
had little cause for rejoicing, and that the nation's hope had
returned undefiled by Circaean enchantments. More than
one contributor, in allusion to the crowning honour that had
just descended on Buckingham by his investiture with the
long dormant ducal title, thought it a happy conceit to
suggest that one who had so ably led his prince, himself well
deserved to be created Dux. Jerome Beale of Pembroke,
the vice-chancellor, inaugurated and closed the series with
two brief effusions, the first addressed to James, the last to
Charles, both alike expressive of the academic sense of the
1 By George Herbert; see his Re- giensisdeSerenissimiPrincipisReditu
mains, p. 224; also Bowes, Catalogue, ex His2)aniis exoptatissimo : quam
p. 13. Augustissimo Regi Jacobo Celsissimo-
2 Nichols, Progresses of James the que Principi Carolo ardentissimi sui
First, iv 929; Cooper, Annals, m Voti Testimonium case voluit. Ex Of-
160-1. ficina Cantrelli Legge, Almae Matris
3 Gratulatio Academiae Cantabri- Cantabrigiae Typographi, 1623. 4to.
POPULARITY OF CHARLES.
11
unworthiness of the offering thus laid at the royal feet1.
The foregoing incidents serve to bring home to us the real
sympathy between the Crown and the great majority of the
university at the time when Charles ascended the throne and
the personal goodwill with which he himself was regarded by
the academic community. The hopes of both Oxford and
Cambridge may, indeed, be said to have almost centered in
the new monarch, while their fears undoubtedly pointed to
parliament, — where dissatisfaction at the tendencies observ-
able alike in the Church and the universities was already
taking shape. ' They talk,' wrote Joseph Mede at Christ's
College, ' of divers bills in the parliament house, as against
the universities, pluralities of benefices, about disposition of
prebends to such as want other preferment,. . .against Montagu
and his late book2.' Before, however, the month had passed
away, he had to report the dreaded approach of the plague ;
and in August the entire university dispersed in alarm. By
September, he was left almost alone in college; endeavour-
ing, as steward, to supply the table with eggs, apple-pies and
custards, ' for want of other fare.' ' We cannot have leave,'
he writes, ' scarce to take the aire. We have but one master
of art in our colledg, and this week he was punisht 10d for
giving the porter's boy a box on the eare because he would
not let him out at the gates3.' It was not until December
1625 that the university was able to reassemble..
The one man on whose advocacy, after that of Bucking-
ham himself, the academic body most relied at this crisis,
was John Williams. The career of that young Welshman,
since his election to his fellowship at St John's4, had been
CHAP. I.
Dissatis-
faction in
parliament
with the
universities.
Mede to
Stuteville :
2 July 1625.
Approach of
the plague.
Mede to
Stuteville :
4 Sept 1625.
JOHN
WlI.LIA.MS.
b. 1582.
d. 1650.
1 'JamTagusauratovolvitseplenius
amne, | Dum putat in vultu numen
inesse tuo. | Neptunum Phoebumque
alii dixere vocantes, | Nee deerat qui
te credidit esse Jovem | At postquam
magni genitum te stirpe Jacobi | Ac-
cepere, stupent et magis inde rogant. |
Ergo tibi tanti est Hispanica regna
videre?' (Gratidatio,p.33). 'Irejubet
te magnus amor majorque redire,
Nam fuit is tantum virginis iste Dei '
(Ib. p. 11). 'Regum deliciae cupidines-
que | Firmus judicii manes fideque,
Nee quicquid Jesuita faex propinet,
Circaeo redis impiatus auro' (Ib. p.
18). — 'Academia supplicat | Deo ut
Redux Dux Carolus sit, Dux Comes. |
Ita erunt bonae Smithi utrique fortu-
nae fabri ' (Ib. p. 15).
2 Birch's Court and Time* of
CJuirles the First, i 39.
3 Ibid. 1 47 ; Heywood and Wright,
n 331. See infra, p. 25.
* See Vol. n 505.
12
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
His appoint-
ment to the
chancellor-
ship (16 July)
and to the
bishopric
of Lincoln
(3 Aug.) 1621.
Growing
belief in
his ability.
one of continuous advancement. Lord Ellesmere, the emi-
nent jurist (better known as Sir Thomas Egerton) who
preceded Bacon in the chancellorship, and who during the
last six years of his life had held office as chancellor of the
university of Oxford, was induced to make Williams his
chaplain ; and when he died in 1617, the latter soon found
himself one of the royal chaplains and in 1618 accompanied
James to Scotland. In 1619 he was installed in the deanery
of Salisbury; and from thence in 1620 was transferred to
the deanery of Westminster, and in the following year he
appeared as the last in the long succession of ecclesiastical
dignitaries who also held the lord keepership, succeeding at
nearly the same time to that office and to the bishopric of
Lincoln1. Ellesmere had bequeathed to his chaplain the
manuscripts of his more important legal treatises, — 'valuable
as the Sibylline Prophecies,' says Williams' biographer2, —
and it is probable that during the lord keeper's brief occu-
pancy of the woolsack they largely aided him in the discharge
of his duties. In the university itself, he had by this time
succeeded in creating an impression of exceptional ability to
steer through opposing currents. He had remonstrated
1 In order to vindicate Williams'
motives in holding these three
important offices conjointly, his
biographer advances the following
considerations: (i) the deanery of
Westminster afforded a far more
favorable arena for the exertion of
his influence whether as a statesman
or a patron of learning, but, accord-
ing to Williams' own statement, the
emoluments of the deanery of Salis-
bury had been ' nothing inferior in
value ' (Hacket, i 44) ; during his
tenure of this post 'the number of
the promoted to the universities '
(from Westminster School) ' was
double for the most part to those
that were transplanted in the fore-
going elections' (Ibid, i 45). (ii) the
Lord Keepership itself, although
properly worth £2790 a year, was
reduced by the diversion of the ' casual
fines ' and the ' greater writs ' to
about one half that amount (p. 52),
and inasmuch as Bacon's venal ad-
ministration of the office had been a
public scandal, James was determined
that ' his new officer ' should be one
who had ' a hand clean from corrup-
tion and taking gifts' (p. 54). (iii)
the revenue of the bishopric of
Lincoln, although ' the largest diocese
in the land ," was not great , ' Williams
being even able to demonstrate that
it would be to the interest of the
Crown that he should retain his
deanship also, for ' here he had some
supplies to his housekeeping from the
College in bread and beer, corn and
fuel; of which if he should be de-
prived, he must be forc'd to call for
a diet, which would cost the King
1600L per annum, or crave for some
addition in lieu thereof, out of the
King's own means, as all his fore-
goers in that office had done' (p. 62).
' Since the forced surrender by bishop
Holbeach' (in 1552) 'of large pos-
sessions, the see of Lincoln had been
very inadequately endowed.' Beed-
ham (B. H.), Notices of Archbp.
Williams, p. 13. 2 Hacket, i 30.
JOHN WILLIAMS. 13
against the suspension of the laws against James's Catholic „ C«AP. i. _
subjects as illegal ; he had protested against the journey to
Spain ; and he now protested with equal earnestness against
the projected hostilities with that great power. On him it
had devolved to watch by the royal death-bed, to close the
monarch's eyes, to preach his funeral sermon; and, keenly
alive to the feelings uppermost in the public mind, he had
on that occasion availed himself of the opportunity to seek
to allay the suspicions then rife with regard to James's sin-
cerity as a professed Protestant. The late king, he solemnly "„'* $y^'
assured his audience, 'did never, out of deep and just reason K^T-iames.
of State, and the bitter necessities of Christendom in these
latter times, give way to any the least connivance in the
world towards the person of a papist1.'
It was at James's suggestion2 that Williams had first HU relations
with Buck-
SOUght the favour of Buckingham; and the deanery of West- ™sham-
minster had been bestowed on him in recognition of the
important part which he had played in bringing about the
marriage of the favorite with the lady Catherine Manners.
But before James's death, a coolness had sprung up between
Buckingham and the lord keeper. We have already seen
how the unfortunate John Knight of Oxford, the too in-
genuous assertor of the doctrines of Paraeus, fell the victim
of his temerity3. It was Williams who had released him
from his fatal imprisonment, and he had done so at the inter-
cession of the earl of Oxford, — the uncompromising opponent
of the Spanish match who atoned for his outspoken opposi-
tion by a term of confinement in the Tower. Buckingham's
subsequent hostility to Oxford appears to have extended
itself, in some measure, to Williams. But Oxford was now
dead ; the project of the Spanish match was at an end ; and
the letter is still extant, written not many days before
James's death4, in which the lord keeper, relying upon his
reputation as one well versed in state affairs, ventured upon
1 Great Britains Saloman : A Ser- date as assigned by Racket and also
more, etc., p. 49. in Camb. Ant. Soc. Comm. (ra 71), see
2 Hacket, i 41. Gardiner, Hist, of England, v 312,
3 See Vol. n 566. n. 1.
4 For important correction of this
14
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
JOSEPH
MEDE of
Christ's
College.
6. 1586.
d. 1638.
the somewhat perilous experiment of presuming to advise
Buckingham with regard to his official career. The duke
was apparently intent on combining two highly important
offices of state in his own person. The marquess of Hamilton,
steward of the household, was just dead, and Buckingham
proposed to be his successor ; but he was already lord high
admiral, and when Williams learned that his patron was
proposing to continue to hold that office also, he ventured to
address to him what was little less than a remonstrance.
He depicted the inconveniences attaching to the command
of the navy in language which was evidently meant to give
the proud minister a distaste for the office, — if he faithfully
discharged its duties he must abandon court life; if he
shirked them and stayed at court it would be to be ' laden
with ignominye.' The stewardship of the household, on the
other hand, would not only 'keep him in all changes and
alterations of yeares nere the Kinge,' but also ' give him the
opportunitye to gratifie all the Court.' ' Be upon earthe,' he
writes, ' as your pietye will one day make you in heaven, an
everlastinge favouritt1.' It was singular advice, when we
observe that it emanated from one who was himself at this
very time both lord chancellor and bishop of an important
diocese, and how far it was taken by Buckingham in good
part is not very clear2, but shortly after, the relations between
the favorite and his would-be adviser were subjected to a
further strain which resulted in a permanent rupture.
By no one was Williams's career, at this time, watched
with keener interest than by his Cambridge contemporary
above named, — the eminent Joseph Mede. The latter was
but four years the lord keeper's junior, and the intimate
relations that then existed between Christ's College and
1 Camb. Ant. Soc. Comm. in 72.
2 Mede's correspondent (probably
Dr Meddus), writing ten months later
(26 Jan. 162f), assigns the advice
given on this subject by Williams
as the occasion of 'the loss of his
lord keeper's place,' and Gardiner
(Hist, of England, v 311) inclines to
accept it as an adequate explanation.
The letter, however, in which
Williams tendered his unpalatable
counsel, as printed in Ellis (Orig.
Letters, series 3, iv 191), seems hardly
in itself to have been sufficient to give
such dire offence, and Mede's cor-
respondent alleges also ' some things
that passed at the last sitting of
parliament ' (Court and Times of
Charles the First, i 73).
career.
JOSEPH MEDE. 15
St John's would incline us to surmise that, almost from the .CHAP. T^
time of his entering the university, Mede must have been
familiar with the name of the brilliant young Welshman on
the sister foundation. Conspicuous, alike, for their common His services
. . to the uni-
attachment to their university, their relations to it were tr
singularly dissimilar. The one, watchful of its interests from
afar, the other, living, labouring and dying within its pre-
cincts ; the one the benefactor, the other the teacher ; the
one the politician, the other the theologian ; but each, after
his manner, unrivalled among his contemporaries in the
influence he exerted, — the one on its institutions, the other
on its thought.
It was in 1602, the year in which Perkins died, that
*
Mede entered Christ's College. He was an Essex lad, but
had received his education at the grammar school at Hod-
desdon in Hertfordshire, where, as the story is told, he had
managed to acquire a Hebrew grammar and had persisted in
making himself familiar with the elements of the language
in spite of the earnest dissuasives of his master. At Christ's
College he found himself in a more congenial atmosphere.
The society was still under the potent influence of Perkins's
example and teaching, though somewhat oppressed by Valen-
tine Gary's arbitrary rule and pronounced leanings towards
Romanism, which led him to inculcate the necessity of con-
fession and the efficacy of prayers for the dead1. But with
Gary's resignation of the mastership in 1622, it had begun
steadily to advance both in numbers and reputation. Thomas ghrut-s
Bainbrigg, his successor, a Westmorland man, notwithstand- SSSS
ing his want of impartiality in promoting his own relatives2, B
appears to have been successful as an administrator, and the
society advanced under his rule. Among the thirteen fellows
on the foundation, there may be named at least three, besides
Joseph Mede, who attained to considerable distinction. These
1 The facts connected with Gary's 2 —'so addicted to his kindred.'
administration at Christ's have re- See Baker MS. xxxn 382-4. Dr
ceived additional illustration since Peile's estimate is that of 'a strict
the publication of the second volume disciplinarian,' and ' a slow methodi-
of my History, in Dr Peile's Hist, of cal man, who did his work to the
Christ's Collage, pp. 122-4. best of his ability,' M.S. p. 131.
16
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i.
Honyawood.
d. i68i.
MILTON'S
/
were Mede's intimate personal friend, William Chappell,
afterwards bishop of Cork, an able disputant in the schools
and one whose reputation for learning was scarcely inferior
to that of Mede himself1,— Robert Gell, whose known devo-
tion to astrological studies in no way impaired the reputation
in which he was held by his contemporaries2, and whose
elaborate suggestions, put forth in 1659, for a revision of the
Authorised Version afford a noteworthy illustration of the
standard of biblical criticism in his day, — and Michael Hony-
wood, afterwards dean of Lincoln, whose memory survives as
that of a discerning benefactor of both his college and his
cathedral, and whose industry as a collector of our early
national literature and the productions of our early English
press might compare with that of Parker himself3. Our
interest in the society at this period culminates as we note
among the signatures of those admitted in 1625 the name
of John Milton, a pensioner, with Chappell for his tutor.
But of all the members on the foundation, there can be
little doubt that, down to his death in 1638, Joseph Mede
possessed the most widespread influence and enjoyed the
highest reputation both in the university and without. The
range of his acquirements was such that it might serve to
represent not inadequately the collective stock of the aca-
demic learning of his day. He was well skilled both in the
technical logic and in the so-called philosophy of the schools;
he knew what little was then known in Cambridge that
really belonged to what we now term mathematics4 ; he was
1 — 'justly esteemed a rich maga-
zine of rational learning.' See Life
of Mede prefixed to third edition of
his Works (ed. Worthington), Lond.
1672, p. v. This Life is evidently by
Worthington himself whose initials
•J. JF.' are appended. Both Mede
and Chappell, when junior fellows,
had been arraigned for 'skoffing at
the Dean in Hall.' Peile, u.s. p. 127.
2 Mr Ball observes in relation to
Henry Briggs, lecturer and examiner
in mathematics at St John's at the
close of the sixteenth century, and
afterwards Gresham professor, that
' almost alone among his contempor-
aries he declared that astrology was
at best a delusion, even if it were not,
as was too frequently the case, a mere
cloak for knavery.' Hist, of the Study
of Mathematics at Cambridge, p. 28.
3 See the interesting account of his
life by the late Canon Venables in
D. N. B.
4 His knowledge of mathematics
represented no advance upon that of
the preceding generation (see Vol. 11
402). Mr Ball (M.S. p. 33) considers
that the first thirty years of the
seventeenth century were almost a
blank in the history of science in the
university.
JOSEPH MEDE. 17
an excellent modern linguist and his knowledge of both VCHAP. i.
history and chronology was regarded by those who knew him
as unrivalled J ; he was a profound theologian, and his treatise •*-
de Sanctitate Relativa was so highly approved by bishop
Andrewes that he would fain have made the author his do-
mestic chaplain; his reputation for anatomical knowledge was ^
such that whenever any special illustration of the science was
given at Caius College he was generally invited to be present;
his acquaintance with the text of Homer was regarded as ^/
unsurpassed in the university ; while his industry in philo-
logical researches led him to compile a large quarto volume,
in which, with sadly perverted ingenuity, a vast array of
Greek, Latin, and English words were traced back to their ^
supposed Hebrew roots2. In addition to these varied acquire-
ments, he appears to have possessed, what was indeed by no
means uncommon in his day, — an excellent practical know- Hisknow-
<f A ledge of
ledge of botany : ' oftentimes,' says his biographer, ' when he ^tany.
and others were walking in the fields or in the colledge-
garden, he would take occasion to speak of the beauty, signa-
tures, useful vertues, and properties of the plants then in
view; for he was a curious florist and accurate herbalist,
thoroughly versed in the book of Nature3.'
Mede's merits as a student might, however, have failed
to earn for him the substantial recognition of a fellowship, if l0'
the arbitrary spirit of Valentine Gary had prevailed. In the
master's opinion, ' he looked too much towards Geneva,' — a
suspicion which appears to have had no better ground than
Mede's habitual tolerance, within certain limits, in matters
of doctrinal belief, and the modesty with which he main-
tained his own views. Otherwise his sympathies were un-
doubtedly those of the moderate Anglican in questions both
of belief and discipline. He systematically condemned the ^
intolerance of Cartwright and his followers, ' for hereby,' he cwtwri
1 'I have found that M. Medes of the Revelation, fol. A 4.
friends, who have been acquainted 2 On the importance erroneously
with the course of his studies, would attached to Hebrew at this time, see
give him the bell for this ' [i.e. history] vol. n 41&-9.
'as herein outstripping all others.' 3 Life (u.s.), p. v.
Twisse (W.), Preface to Mede's Key
M. III. 2
.
on of
18 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. observed, ' as they did the Common Enemy no small credit
and service, so they likewise weakened the true interest and
hazarded the safety of the Protestant Reformed religion1.'
In opposition to those theories that afterwards developed
into Congregationalism, he compiled a pamphlet to prove
the existence of Churches among the primitive Christians
iiis concern and the respect in which they were held. In a sermon at
for decency • • • •
worshilic e umverslty church (afterwards printed), — on ' The Rever-
ence to be used in God's House/ — he advocated views which
Laud himself must have regarded with satisfaction ; while
he adduced, from the practice of the Abyssinian Christians,
evidence which contrasted strongly with the laxity and
levity that too often marred the religious services of his own
day2. Of Joseph Mede it may, indeed, be affirmed that he
was intolerant only of intolerance ; and in a long life largely
given, on the one hand, to the examination of the evidence
on which the traditional learning of his age rested, and on
the other, to adding to its stores, he was guided and stimu-
lated by the unalterable belief that, to quote his own lan-
guage, 'truth could never be prejudiced by the discovery of
truth.'
HIS ability But great as was his receptivity and excellent as was his
and origin-
ality as tutor, judgement, the tutor of Christ's College was not less distin-
guished by the originality of his mind and the ability to
impart what he had acquired. The limited number of pupils
assigned to each college tutor in those days enabled him to
bestow on them an amount of individual attention which
stands in singular contrast to the very slight supervision
exercised by the so-called ' tutor ' at Cambridge in later
generations. He was thus enabled to form an estimate
of each pupil's capacities and aptitudes such as few tutors
have now the opportunity of gaining, even if the range of
their own attainments enabled them to do so. And it was
1 Ibid. p. xxvii. was a bishop.' The Reverence of
- ' "nor is it lawfull for us in God's House. A Sermon preached at
the Church to laugh, to walk up and St Maries in Cambridge, before, the
down, or to speak of secular matters ; Universitie on St Matthies Day, Anno
no nor to spit, hauk or hem in the 163|. By Joseph Mede B.D. and
Church," etc. ...Thus Zaga Zabo of late Fellow of Christs Colledge in
the Abyssine Christians, whereof he Cambridge. Lond. 1638.
JOSEPH MEDE. 19
Mede's special merit that he endeavoured not simply to test , CHAP, i. ^
the acquirements but also to acquaint himself with the indi- foj^nclmdu-
viduality of his pupils. What the ablest teachers, from atr'
Plato down to Pestalozzi, have aimed at, was equally his
aim, — to discern the special powers of each learner and to
advise and direct him accordingly. As soon as the elements
of Latin, logic, and philosophy had been mastered, Mede
appears to have in a great measure discarded the system of ^
class-tuition, preferring to leave each pupil to work inde-
pendently and to propound to him his particular difficulties.
' In the evening,' the narrator tells us, ' they all came to his His evening
chamber to satisfie him that they had performed the task he
had set them. The first question which he used to propound
to every one in his order was, — Quid dubitas ? What doubts
have you met in your studies to-day ? For he supposed
that to doubt nothing and to understand nothing were
verifiable alike. Their doubts being propounded, he resolved
their Quaeres, and so set them upon clear ground to proceed
more distinctly. And then having by prayer commended
them and their studies to God's protection and blessing, he
dismissed them to their lodgings1.'
It can be no matter for surprise that a society whose
younger members were instructed with such rare discrimina-
tion and so much intelligence gradually assumed a foremost
place among the Cambridge colleges with respect to the
number of able men whom it sent forth. In 1626 Thomas
Fuller was a bachelor at Queens', and continued from that
time throughout his life to be a watchful observer of events
and changes at Cambridge. Some seventeen years after ^{|^s to
Mede's death, the historian of his university, struck by the ^S^
long array of illustrious names which Christ's College num-
bered among its alumni, exclaimed : 'It may without flattery ieg"»tthis
be said of this house, " many daughters have done virtuously,
but thou excellest them all2." '
Our impression of Mede's activity of mind as phenomenal ^£',
is further increased when we note, that this assiduous devo-
tion to his duties as an instructor, superadded to his widely
1 Life (u.s.), p. iv. 2 Fuller-Prickett and Wright, p. 183.
2—2
20
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i.
wtrator.
»
spondence at
abroad"*1
varied studies, was still far from completely absorbing either
his time or his energies. He was steward of his college, an
office then supervised by a weekly audit, and in this capacity
his services were highly valued ; while his general ability as
an administrator may be inferred from the fact that he was
twice invited, through the influence of his friend, Ussher, to
assume the provostship of Trinity College, Dublin1. Nor
did his reluctance to quit his college and his university arise
from that forgetfulness of the world without and that indif-
ference to the ordinary affairs of life which not unfrequently
steal over the studious recluse. His keen interest in political
events both in England and abroad might compare with that
of a secretary of state; and in order to obtain intelligence
which should be at once early and trustworthy, he subsidized
regular correspondents, ' as numbering,' says his biographer,
'the affairs of Christendom among his best concernments,
and the gaining a more particular acquaintance therewith
(^v helping to maintain correspondencies amongst learned
and wise men in distant countries) amongst the best uses he
could make of that estate which God had given him2.' The
intelligence thus obtained was frequently transmitted by
Mede to his distinguished relative, Sir Martin Stuteville, who
resided at Dalham in Suffolk and whom he occasionally
visited ; and the letters themselves, along with others from
his own pen, are still preserved in the Harleian collection at
the British Museum, and afford invaluable aid to the his-
torian of the period. It was in this manner that a quiet
Cambridge college became for a time a notable centre of
political intelligence; and the university itself, long after
Williams' fall from office, was raised almost to a level with
1 The first time he was actually
appointed but declined the office, and
William Bedell (afterwards the emi-
nent bishop of Kilmore) was chosen
to fill the post. On the second occa-
sion, in 1634, his fellow-collegian,
William Chappell, was ultimately
appointed by Laud, although, like
Mede, he appears to have sought to
evade the honour. In both cases the
disturbed condition of Ireland pro-
bably acted as a deterrent. Chappell,
according to his own statement, was
appointed in order to reform the
college, and though elected 21 Aug.
1634, was not sworn in until 5 June
1637. He immediately became the
object of fierce attack alike from
Catholic and Puritan : — 'Euunt, facto
agmine, | In me prof ana turba, Roma,
Gevennaque.' See his Vita (written
by himself) in Leland-Hearne, v
263.
2 Life (w.s.), p. xvi.
JOSEPH MEDE. 21
Oxford, notwithstanding the advantages which the frequent . CH^P L
presence of Laud or his emissaries secured, in this respect, to
that city1.
It is probable, however, that it was neither as the scholar
of deep and varied attainments, nor as the able and suc-
cessful teacher, nor again as the best informed resident in
the university in relation to political movements without,
that the name of Joseph Mede most impressed itself on the
minds of his contemporaries. The work which won for him
his widest fame and was regarded as his most enduring
monument, was his Clams Apocalyptica. Originally written
and published in Latin, the work first appeared in 1627.
But in 1642 we find the publication of a translation, with
considerable additions, receiving the sanction of the Long
Parliament. This translation had been executed by Richard ^ o"fthela
More, one of the members of that body and afterwards dis- R™hard
tinguished as an active supporter of the parliamentary party recommend-
. ° fr r 111 edforpubli-
in the Civil War; while the approval of the House had been cation V
Arthur
obtained on the recommendation of Arthur Jackson, a London If
clergyman, and afterwards a member of the Savoy Conference,
who had been appointed to report on the merits of the work2.
Jackson had been educated at Cambridge, having quitted
Trinity College in 1619, taking with him the reputation of
an exemplary and hard-working student. While resident,
he can hardly have failed to have heard something about
the great savant of Christ's College, whose fame was even
then considerable, and it is possible that his estimate of the
merits of the treatise was not altogether unbiassed by what
he already knew of the author. His verdict was highly
favorable. He not only reported that More's translation
was a faithful one, but also expressed his opinion that the
1 The originals of these letters are Michael in Wood street, London, be
in the Harleian collection, nos. 389, desired to peruse M. More his trans-
390; I am indebted to the careful lation of M. Mede his book on the
collation of those printed in the Bevelation this day presented to the
Court and Times of Charles the First said Committee to be licensed, and to
(2 vols., 1849), with the originals, report to the said Committee his
made by Dr Peile, for some useful opinion therein, and concerning the
material and corrections. printing thereof.' Order of Committee
a ' That M. Jackson minister of St of House of Commons, 21 Feb. 164^.
22
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i.
muitrated.
book itself, — The Key of the Revelation, — gave ' much light
for the understanding of many obscure passages in that sweet
and comfortable Prophesie.' 'And though,' he added, 'Mr
Mede's opinion concerning the thousand years of the seventh
trumpet be singular from that which hath been most gene-
rally received by expositors of best esteem, and I conceive
hath no just ground ; yet he therein delivers his judgement
with such modesty and moderation that I think the printing
of it will not be perillous : and therefore conceive that the
publishing of this translation is a good work, and may, with
God's blessing, yield much comfort to many1.' Mede's latest
biographer claims for him the merit of perceiving that ' a
thorough determination of the structural character of the
Apocalypse must be a preliminary to any sound interpreta-
tion of it.' Mede, he says, ' decides that its visions form a
connected and chronological sequence ; the key to the dis-
crimination of an earlier and later chain of events he finds in
Rev. xvii 18 ; he makes no claim to write history in advance
by help of prophecies which remain for fulfilment2.'
^° *ne theological scholar of the present day there is
something sadly grotesque in the bald literalness with which
Mede endeavours to reduce the glowing rhapsody of the
vision in Patmos to coherence and intelligibility. He devised
an elaborate diagram in order to bring home to the compre-
hension of his readers the mechanical process involved in the
opening of the Seven Seals. Singularly enough, his concep-
tion of the 'seven-sealed volume' was at first that of a clasped
quarto, of the kind common in the libraries of his day, the
clasps being seven in number and each bearing its special
seal. To do him justice, however, he did not adopt this form
of representation without considerable misgiving; to use his
own expression, he had ' often beat and hammered upon it,'
sometimes surmising that 'the Seals were not written by
characters in letters, but being painted by certain shapes, lay
hid under some covers of the seals; which being opened,
1 The Key of the Revelation, searced
and demonstrated out of the naturall
and proper Characters of the Visions,
etc., London, 1650 (Jackson's impri-
matur is prefixed to title-page).
2 See article by Dr Alexander
Gordon in D. N. B.
JOSEPH MEDE. 23
each of them in its order, appeared not to be read but to be
beheld and viewed'; ultimately however concluding that
both the written text and the representations 'were to be
joyned together, and that we must say, that indeed the
prophesies were described and pourtrayed in the volume,
whether by signes and shapes or letters, but that these were
no otherwise exhibited to John and other beholders of this
celestial theater, then by a foreign representation, supplying
the room of a rehearsall, not much unlike to our academicall
interludes, where the prompters stand near the actors with
their books in their hands.' This latter hypothesis was not,
however, adopted by Mede without some misgiving, and he
was still pondering the question when he received from a dock,
certain 'Master Haydock, a learned gentleman,' a letter
suggesting another mode of delineation less open to objec-
tion. Bearing in mind the fact, which Mede, singularly
enough, had altogether overlooked, that ' books ' in the days
of St John the Divine differed considerably, as regarded their
exterior, from the volumes which, in the first half of the
seventeenth century, were issuing from the University Press,
Haydock ventured to suggest that a series of parchment
rolls, or, as Mede terms it, a ' seal -bearing sylender,' — each
roll or leaf having its separate band and seal, — would more
accurately represent the ' book ' in Revelation. It is credit-
able to Mede's candour, that although he admitted that it
' had never entered into his thoughts before,' he at once pro-
nounced Haydock's idea ' most ingenious.' Nor was Richard
More, the translator, any less pleased. 'The form of the
seven-sealed book,' he solemnly observes, ' ought to be such
as might satisfie the Lamb's intention, which had an eye
unto prius and posterius, in regard of the sequel of the
ensuing History: for that part which belongs to the first seal
ought to be viewed before the second or the rest be opened.
Whereas in the form of the modern books, untill all the
seaven Seals be opened, no use can be made of any part or
leaf in the book. But in the form of the roll, when every
leaf hath its severall labell inserted in its proper distance,
with a seal and severall impression of emblematicall signi-
24 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. ture, each severall leaf being taken and unsealed in order,
the severall matter therein contained will appear, and no
more of any of the rest till they be opened in order.'
In the diagram inserted in the translation published
after Mede's death, we accordingly find the drawing of his
conjectural 'volume' relegated to a comparatively obscure
corner, while ' Mr Haydock his book,' both sealed and opened,
appears prominently at the head and foot of the design,
won o?^hea" Although, in his application of the prophecies, Mede may
k>pp°a^uiar be acquitted of any attempt to ' write history in advance,'
rary6events. his construction of recent and contemporary events probably
gave encouragement to such endeavour on the part of others.
He found no difficulty in identifying the Osmanli, whose
mighty sway under Amurath IV then extended from the
Tigris to Gibraltar, with Gog and Magog. He considered
himself singularly happy in the invention of a diagram shew-
ing that pontifical Rome, as it stood in his day, represented
just about a tenth of the ancient imperial city, and might
therefore seem to be expressly referred to in the prophecy
that the ' tenth part ' of Babylon should be destroyed. And
he pronounced the ' discovery ' of the meaning of the number
of the Beast put forth by a certain ' Mr Potter,' an 'unfolding
of the greatest mystery that had been discovered since the
beginning of the world1.' The millennium, he thought, was
identical with the day of judgement itself, and would be
ushered in by the thousand years proclaimed by the seventh
trumpet.
Sanctioned, as these theories were, by a great name and
argued with no little ingenuity and plausibility, they attracted
an amount of attention which it would be difficult to explain,
if we did not remember the fascination such speculations pos-
sessed for those numerous students of prophecy who imagined
that it was possible to discern, in actual process all around
them, the drama foreshadowed in the vision seen in Patmos.
The Clavis won for its author the regard of Hartlib and the
praise of nearly all learned Holland ; it modified the religious
\ belief of John Milton ; and taking rank, for more than a
1 Preface to More's translation of the Clavis.
JOSEPH MEDE. 25
century, as a classic, it exerted an influence on theological >. CHAP, i.
thought which no English writer on the period appears
adequately to have recognised. Able and earnest divines in
long succession, the array culminating with the name of
Isaac Newton, devoted to like barren and baseless specula-
tions the years and the intellectual efforts which, more wisely
bestowed, might have resulted in achievements of highest
value in literature and science, — in works as deserving to be
had in remembrance as were their actual labours of the
oblivion which has overtaken them.
At the time, however, of Charles's accession, the theo-
logical world was stirred by questions far more practical in
their bearings than the well-meant speculations of Joseph
Mede; and it will be necessary now to devote somewhat
lengthened consideration to a movement whereby all Cam-
bridge became involved in a controversy which, as regards
the acrimony and intensity of feeling that it excited, can be
compared only with the contests of the time of Cartwright.
The allusion in Mede's letter1 to rumours of proceedings in
the House of Commons ' against Montagu and his book,' had £he APPell°
o Laetarem of
reference to a matter which interested and concerned a MO^TA^U.
certain section of theologians at Cambridge very closely, and bd. i64i.
these a body distinguished both for learning and ability.
The great Anglican party which had so long been seeking to
steer between dislike and distrust of Jesuitism on the one
hand, and of Puritanism on the other, suddenly found itself
called upon to consider the advisability of taking a new de-
parture. A notable pronouncement by James, addressed to
the university of Oxford some years before, had formally
designated both Jesuits and Puritans as bodies ' well knowne
to be medlers in matters of State and Monarchy,' and the
study of their literature had been forbidden2. Neither the
casuistical divinity of the Order nor the dogmatic teaching
of the followers of Cartwright and Perkins was to be allowed
henceforth to occupy the time of the theological student, who
was enjoined to restrict his reading to ' the Scriptures, then
1 Supra,.p. 11. 2 See Vol. n 567; Wood-Gutch, n 343.
26 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. f the Counceiis and ancient Fathers, and then the Schoolmen1.'
Such had been the decision from which we have now to note
the two opposed parties in matters of Church doctrine at
Cambridge endeavouring, under the auspices of the new
regime, to break away. The writer, to whom Mede refers,
was Richard Montagu, fellow of King's College, now in his
r. forty-ninth year. Educated at Eton, he had been elected to
his fellowship in 1597, and by the special favour of king
James had continued to hold it, not only along with a living
in Essex and another in Somerset, but also with a canonry
at Windsor, with the archdeaconry of Hereford, and a royal
chaplaincy, — an accumulation of favours which only con-
spicuous merit and ability could be held even partially
to justify. His knowledge of early Church history, which
was really considerable, overawed the great majority of his
contemporaries. With Sir Henry Savile, who had summoned
him back to Eton, to aid him in his edition of Saint Chrys-
ostom, he stood in high favour; he had even ventured to
pass judgement on the merits of Isaac Casaubon's ' Exercita-
tiones' on Baronius, and had drawn from that great but
modest scholar the admission that his critic was 'really
learned.' His reply to Selden's epoch-making History of
Tithes won such approval from king James that the monarch
decided that the controversy had been virtually set at rest and
forbade Selden to attempt any rejoinder; while the great
jurist himself had the candour to admit that his antagonist
was 'well versed in ancient learning2.' In short, although
Montagu's language on certain doctrinal questions, and more
1 ' Volumusinsuperut,exoccasione constat, etc.' Hist. UniversitatisOxon.
praesentium, collegiorum et aularum p. 227. I cite here Wood's original
vestrae universitatis praesides ac Latin version, from which it is clear
rectores convenire facias, quodque de that James had sent similar instruc-
theologiae studio utrique pridem tions to Cambridge, but of these I
academiae tarn serio commendavimus find no record,
iis in animos revoces; nimirum ut 2 Even Anthony Wood considers
qui facultati illi nomina dederint (Athcnae, m 370) that Selden was
sacrae imprimis paginae incumbant, ' effectually answered ' by Montagu ;
Concilia deinde Patresque antiques, but Mark Pattison's assertion (Isaac
ac demum scriptores Scholasticos Casaubon*, 376) that the former stood
evolvant, a Neotericis sive Jesuitis in about the same relation to the
sive Catharis prorsus abstinentes, latter that Bentley did to Boyle is
quos utique rebus publicis & Mo- much too severe.
narchiam tangentibus sese immiscere
RICHARD MONTAGU. 27
especially his refusal to look upon the pope of Rome as CHAP. r-
identical with Antichrist, exposed him to the suspicion of «'»<?»•
r tinctive
being at heart a Romanist, his reputation was at this time ^n^ver*
scarcely rivalled at either university as that of the scholar, Siah8t>
the dialectician and the satirist in rare combination; and
while the devout were conciliated by the habitual respect
with which he invariably referred to the departed Perkins,
the more worldly minded could not but augur well of the
man who was known to be honoured by the special friend-
ship of Williams1.
As Montagu himself narrates the story, the origin of^*0^™-
this renowned controversy by no means foreshadowed the the Jesuits-
magnitude which it was destined to assume. He had gone
down to his college living of Stanford Rivers in Essex, in
16322, for a quiet resumption of his parish duties, when he
found one of his flock, a somewhat illiterate woman, in deep
mental distress. Certain ' Romish Rangers ' had terrified
her by the assurance that the Protestant faith which she
professed could only result in her spiritual ruin. Montagu
assured her that there was no cause for alarm, — these
emissaries were but ' scare crowes,' — and so far soothed her
feelings as to believe that he had effectually composed her
'disquieted thoughts.' The priests, however, resumed their
machinations, and he eventually felt himself constrained
personally to challenge them to a public disputation, and he "miienge
accordingly handed to his parishioner a paper wherein he called reply. e
upon her tormentors to prove : 1. That the Church of Rome
was either the Catholic Church or a sound member of it.
2. That the Church of England was neither. 3. That those
doctrines which the Church of Rome taught, but which the
Church of England repudiated, had ever been the traditional
doctrine of the true Catholic Church, or ever approved at
any General Council, or could be shewn to be in agreement
1 In dedicating his Treatise of In- more than to all the world beside.'
vocation of Saints to the lord keeper 2 The date '1619' given in the D.
in 1624, Montagu writes :...' your N. B. is evidently incompatible with
honor is he unto whom, next unto the internal evidence. See Montagu's
his most sacred Majestie, my most New Gaga, pp. 2-6 ; also Gardiner, .
gracious soveraigne and master, I owe Hist, of England, v 351.
28 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. witn the teaching of any one of the Fathers for 500 years
after Christ. This broad challenge met with no direct re-
sponse, but some eighteen months later, Montagu received
a tract bearing the title, A Oagg for the New Gospel, in
which certain doctrines, alleged to be those of the Church
of England, were examined and refuted. The writer, whom
Montagu stigmatises as 'a very worthless author,' seemed
scarcely to deserve a reply, had not the opportunity appeared
to be one not to be lost. Here were certain tenets held up
to condemnation, which were asserted to be those of the
English Church, — Montagu held that they were not taught
by his Church, and that a formal disclaimer to that effect
was peremptorily called for. The language in which he
subsequently explained his point of view deserves to be
especially noted : ' I was forced upon the controversies of
these times,' he wrote, ' between the Protestant and Romish
England Confessiomsts. And because it hath bin ever truly counted
sponsibie for a readier way for the advancement of piety rather to lessen
doctrines not » r J
tributebVeto an(^ abate than to multiply the number of many needless
her teaching. contentions in the Church : therefore when I first under-
tooke to answer that very worthless author, I did it with
a firmed purpose to leave all private opinions and particular
positions or oppositions whatsoever, unto their own authors
or abettors, either to stand or fall of themselves; and not
to suffer the Church of England to be charged with the
maintenance of any doctrine which was none of her own,
publickely and universally resolved on. For we are at a
great disadvantage with our adversaries to have those tenents
put and pressed evermore upon us, for the generall doctrine
established in our Church, which are but eyther the problem-
aticall opinions of private doctors, to be held or not held
eyther way ; or else the fancies many of them of factious
men, disclaimed and censured by the Church, not to be held
any way1!
1 Epist. Dedic. to the Appello tradition de 1'Eglise, mais non pas
Caesarem, av. It is difficult here not vos casuistes... Je vois bien...que
to be reminded of Pascal and his fifth tout est bien venu chez vous, hormis
Provincial, — 'Je croyais ne devoir les anciens Peres.' Lettres Provin-
prendre pour regie que 1'Ecriture et la dales, ed. 1853, pp. 95, 103. Of the
RICHARD MONTAGU. 29
Such was the language in which Montagu ultimately . CH^P- T-
justified his position to king Charles. For the present, he
preferred to issue a lengthy pamphlet, extending to 328
quarto pages, which he apparently had not time to con-
dense within more reasonable limits, entitled 'A New Gagg
for an Old Goose1-.' Although not free from the scurrility
that characterised the controversial literature of those times,
this production is justly described by Gardiner as 'a tem-
perate exposition of the reasons which were leading an
increasing body of scholars to reject the doctrines of Rome
and Geneva alike2.' It was the writer's aim to shew that "
the ' errors ' attributed by Calvinist or Romanist to Pro-
testantism were not errors at all, but the outcome of a
deliberate suspension of judgement with respect to certain
opinions, — opinions which had been raised, without adequate
authority, by certain doctors of those communions to the
dignity of dogmas. He accordingly brings forward a series
of these doctrines, among them those of predestination,
transubstantiation, the identification of the pope with
Antichrist, the duty of confession to a priest3, the inter-
cession of angels, prayers for the souls of the departed, and
seeks to prove that they are, as he above describes them,
' problematical opinions ' of doctors, or the ' fancies of factious
men ' ; but in each case it is his endeavour to shew that the
Protestant divine does not seek to put aside these doctrines
by a sweeping negation, but rather to relegate them to the
authors vaunted by Pascal's anta- are expresse for confessing. Igraunt:
gonist, Frances Suarez and Gabriel and for confessing of sinnes too, but
Vasquez were probably already well not expresse for publique or private
known to not a few Anglican di- confessing; not for confessing unto
vines. whom, to man or unto God ; not,
1 A Gagg for the New Gospel1? No: whether in generall they confessed
A NEW GAGG for an OLD Goose. Who themselves sinners ; or, descended to
would needes undertake to stop all some particulars there more ordinary
Protestants mouths for ever, with 276 direct and enormious sinnes. These
places out of their owne English are not instanced, discerned nor
BIBLES.... By Richard Mountagu. determined. Writers are divided in
London, 1624. opinion. You know it not: only
2 Gardiner, Hist, of England, v because there was confessing of
352. sinnes, it must needes be such confes-
3 The following is a good specimen sion of such sinnes as you imagined.'
of his mode of argument : ' The A New Gagg, p. 85.
words of our Bible (Matth. iii 5, 6)
30
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
His book
complained
of to the
House of
Commons.
John Yates.
6. 1622 (?).
d. 1658.
His theory
with respect
to the success
of the new
doctrines.
Archbishop
Abbot ad-
monishes
Montagu.
class of opinions not necessarily included within the limits
of recognised orthodoxy, and with respect to which con-
siderable latitude should be conceded. Unfortunately this
temperate and dispassionate mode of dealing with theological
differences was very far from recommending itself to the
great majority of divines in Cambridge. Every concession
made by Montagu to the adversary, whether Calvinist or
Romanist, seemed only heterodoxical or presumptuous1, and
to a large section the writer's denial of the teaching of
the Church as enforcing the duty of auricular confession
was especially distasteful.
The town of Ipswich was conspicuous at this period for
its traditional allegiance to Reformation doctrine; and two
of its resident ' lecturers ' (as afternoon preachers were then
termed), named Ward and Yates, proceeded to make a selec-
tion of the more obnoxious passages in the New Gagg and
forwarded them, as subject-matter for grave complaint, to
a committee of the House of Commons. Yates, as formerly
a fellow of Emmanuel College, was probably familiar with
Montagu's previous career. In his recently published Modell
of Divinity2 he had already expressed his dislike of the
Arminian and popish doctrines which were spreading with
such alarming rapidity; at the same time giving it as his
opinion, that their success was mainly attributable to the
want of systematic teaching and more especially to the
disuse into which the practice of catechising had fallen, — an
evil which his treatise was designed to assist in remedying.
The House of Commons referred the complaint from Ipswich
to archbishop Abbot, for him to take action as he might
deem fit. Abbot sent for Montagu ; and, without actually
condemning the obnoxious volume, advised him to reconsider
the views therein set forth, and to modify them according as
more mature judgement might suggest. Montagu was not
the man tamely to submit to counsel, when compliance
involved a humiliating admission on his own part. He
1 See Mr Button's able sketch of
Montagu in the D. N. B.
2 A Modell of Divinitie, catechisti-
cally composed, wherein is delivered
the Matter antl Methode of Religion
according to the Creed, Ten Com-
mandments, Lord's Prayer and the
Sacraments. London, 1622. 4to.
RICHARD MONTAGU. 31
sought and obtained an interview with James, to whom he v CHARI
explained and justified his views. 'It pleased His Majesty,' ^°^fJ0
he tells us, ' not only to grant me leave humbly to appeale j'aeJ^Ves
from my defamers unto his most sacred cognisance in pub- sanction1*!
licke, and to represent my just defence against their slanders tumor the
and false surmises unto the world ; but also to give expresse
order unto Dr White1, the reverend dean of Carlile, for the
authorising and publishing thereof, after it had beene duly
read over and approved by him to containe nothing in it
but what was agreeable to the doctrine and discipline
established in the Church of England2.'
Such was the origin of the Appello Caesarem. The
Dean of Carlisle perused the manuscript and sanctioned
its publication; but a few weeks later king James died,
and the ' Epistle Dedicatory ' was addressed to Charles in-
stead, to whom Montagu now preferred his 'just appeal'
against 'two unjust informers3.' The crisis at which the
'Appeal ' came forth, the reputation of the writer, the raci- j
ness of his style, and the genuine ability with which his
whole argument was urged, invested the tractate with excep-
tional interest. It may indeed be fairly questioned whether
in the first half of the seventeenth century, — that age of
pamphleteering, — any similar production excited such ardent
controversy between the opposed parties ; none, certainly, p
stirred or affected so deeply the current of academic thought Ca
at Cambridge. But before we proceed to record the chief
incidents of the remarkable contest that ensued, it will be
well to note Montagu's exact standpoint and the grounds on
which he justified it.
At the outset of his vindication, Montagu seeks to clear
himself definitely and once for all from the charge of teaching
1 Francis White of Caius College, Dr Sam. Ward that, according to
M.A. 1586, already well known as report, White had ' paid for his
one of the disputants against Fisher, place.' His death, in 1638, deprived
the Jesuit, and as author of a treatise Laud of one of his most unflinching
The Orthodox Faith and Way to the supporters.
Church, 1617. In 1625 he was ap- 2 Epist. Dedic. to the Appello Cae-
pointed senior dean of Sion College, sarem, a3v.
and on 3 Dec. 1626 to the bishopric 3 Appello Caesarem. A just Ap-
of Carlisle; in Ussher's correspond- pealefrom tivo unjust Informers. By
ence (Works, xv 369) it is stated by Richard Mountagu. Lond. 1625.
32
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
His position
as regards the
Lapsarian
controversy
that of the
Church of
England.
This again,
as opposed
to the
teaching of
Calvinism,
he asserts to
have been a
distinct tra-
dition at
Cambridge.
the doctrines of Arminius, whose writings he distinctly avers
he has never even read. ' I am not,' he says, ' Arminian,
Calvinist, or Lutheran, but a Christian1.' But while taking,
for his rule of faith, the Scriptures, and the Scriptures only,
he emphatically declares that, as an interpreter of that rule,
he accepts the teaching of the Church of England in prefer-
ence to that of any foreign communion. 'And wherever,' he
adds, ' our mother Church herself refrains from determining
and pronouncing, I also refrain, and I accept as the bounds
of my avowed faith, the consented, resolved, and subscribed
Articles of the Church of England2.' Having thus denned
his general position, Montagu found no difficulty in declaring
that he considered himself in no way bound to adopt any
one of the theories propounded in connexion with the
dark question which at that time seemed to threaten to
absorb half the intellectual energies of Protestantism, —
the Lapsarian controversy. But so far as the Church of
England, in the 16th Article, could be held to have denned
her doctrine in relation thereto, her teaching, he considered,
was in strict harmony with that of the ancient Church, and
all who had subscribed that Article had 'subscribed that
Arminianism ' which many now ' imputed as an error ' unto
himself3. Throughout his argument, Montagu finds satis-
faction in tracing back his views to a distinct tradition of
teaching in his own university. Bancroft, he points out, had
espoused the same cause when he inveighed, at Hampton
Court, against 'that desperate doctrine of predestination';
such too had been the position of Overall (' that most accom-
plished divine, whose memorie shall ever be pretious with
all good men '), and notably on the occasion when he related
to king James the substance ' of those concertations which
himself had sometime had in Cambridge with some doctors
there4,' — 'at which time,' says Montagu, ' that doctrine of the
Church of England then quarrelled, now stiled Arminianism,
accused of noveltie, slandered as pernicious by these informers
1 Ibid. p. 10. Compare Fuller's
language, a few years later, where,
rejecting alike the designation of
Lutheran, Calvinist, or Protestant,
he says, ' we are Christians. ' Ser-
mons (ed. Axon), n 497.
2 Appello, p. 26. 3 Ibid. p. 29.
4 For Overall see Index to Vol. n.
RICHARD MONTAGU. 33
and their brethren, was resolved of and avowed for true, VCHAP. i.
catholic, ancient and orthodox1.' To other eminent Cam-
bridge teachers, to Whitaker, Perkins2, and Thomas Morton3
(now bishop of Lichfield), whose lectures before the univer-
sity the writer had probably attended, there is also frequent
reference. Montagu's design in citing these authorities was
sufficiently intelligible to his contemporaries : he was making
a dexterous appeal to an alleged tradition of doctrine at
Cambridge, — a tradition that ran altogether counter to the
sympathies of the great majority in the university at the
time when he wrote and which that majority would be
certain to call in question and disavow, but whose disavowal
would be all the more certain to cause a highly influential
section of Oxford theologians to rally to his own defence4.
The several stages of the process whereby the Appello, ^naur^b
having first been submitted for criticism to a committee of commons!
the House of Commons, eventually brought upon its author
the censure of that assembly is a familiar story5. In July
1625, a special committee6 having been appointed to examine
Montagu's two treatises, he was handed over to the custody
of the serjeant-at-arms, not indeed as convicted of erroneous
doctrine, but on the more technical charge of contempt of
the House. He was, however, permitted to go .free on his
bond ; and on the eleventh of July parliament adjourned, to
reassemble in August at Oxford, the prevalence of the plague Parliamen
reassemble
in London compelling removal from the capital. The sister AU°xi625:
university thus suddenly found itself converted into the
supreme seat of legislature, while colleges and halls were
occupied by members of both Houses to the displacement
1 Appello, p. 31. (Ibid. p. 299). In support of this
2 Ibid. pp. 89, 139, 169, 170, 173. position, which he refers to as that
3 Ibid. pp. 131, 146, 195, 215, 290, of 'Mother Church,' he says: 'let
294, 299. bishop Morton speak, and bishop
4 Here again Montagu's language Ussher deliver: no Papists I know;
on the duty of confession is note- and, I think, none in your opinion '
worthy: ' My words are, "It is con- (Ibid.).
fessed that private confession unto 6 A story nowhere told with greater
a priest is of very ancient practice in impartiality than by Gardiner, Hist.
the Church ; of excellent use and of England, v 361-5.
benefit, being discreetly handled. We 6 The Committee by which the
refuse it to none, if men require it Petition on Recusancy had been drawn
We urge and perswade itin extremis " ' up. Ibid, v 355.
M. III. 3
34 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
v CHAP, i. alike Of fellows, masters of arts, and students. The divinity
mon8Candthe school was assigned as the place of assembly for the Commons,
rsity' where the Speaker occupied a chair close to that of the
regius professor of divinity. ' It is observed by some,' says
Anthony Wood, ' that this giving up of the divinity school
unto the House of Commons, and placing the Speaker near
the professor's chair, did first put them into a conceit that
the determining of all points and controversies in divinity
did belong to them1.'
Kecognised In this brief interval of three weeks before the re-
importance
decision with assembling of parliament, the young monarch and his
Monetagu° impetuous adviser found themselves under the necessity of
deciding which side they would take in the Montacutian
controversy, a decision, in Gardiner's opinion, ' even yet more
momentous than that of the direction of the war.' Of its
importance in relation to the two universities, the following
outline (which is all that can here be offered) will afford
sufficient proof.
When parliament met again at Oxford, Montagu was too
ill to appear; but in the mean time a powerful influence
had been brought to bear upon Buckingham in his favour.
The party at Oxford to which he had made his tacit appeal
Buckeridge, responded to his call. To Buckeridge, bishop of Rochester,
Hows'on wno had been Laud's tutor at St John's College, to Laud
memorialize
m^vour'of1 himself, now bishop of St Davids, and to Howson, a former
student of Christ Church but now bishop of Oxford, the merits
of the Appello seemed greatly to transcend its defects. The
three prelates, accordingly, drew up a memorial to Bucking-
ham, in which they stated it to be their joint conviction that
the Church of England was in no way bound by the decisions
of the Synod of Dort, that the opinions advanced by Montagu
were not contrary to the teaching of his Church, and that
the writer himself was 'a right honest man2.' But while
thus giving expression to what was virtually a vindication
of his treatise as a whole, they at the same time drew a
scholarly and important distinction between the merits of
1 Wood-Gutch, ii 355.
2 Fuller-Brewer, Append. C, vi 470; Laud's Works, vi 246.
FALL OF WILLIAMS. 35
the different opinions therein propounded, — some of these, , CHAP, i.
in their judgement, being ' expressly ' those of the Church of
England, and such as he was, in a manner, ' bound to main-
tain1'; but others, fit only for the schools, and subject
consequently to be controverted, — ' to be left,' as they phrase
it, ' at more liberty for learned men to abound in their own
sense, so they keep themselves peaceable and distract not the
Church. And therefore to make any man subscribe to
school opinions may justly seem hard in the Church of Christ,
and was one great fault of the Council of Trent2.' Had this
notable letter ended here, it might have gone down to posterity
as embodying at once a temperate defence of Montagu and
a seasonable expression of the principle of toleration in relation
to things indifferent or to questions confessedly unsolvable.
But the sting of the missive was in its tail, and, after
appearing simply as apologists and pleaders for impartiality,
the writers summed up in terms which were distinctly de-
nunciatory of their opponents and have been censured as
'strangely inconsistent' with their preceding utterances.
' We cannot conceive,' they wrote, ' what use there can be of
civil government in the Commonwealth, or of preaching or
external ministry in the Church, if such fatal opinions as
some which are opposite and contrary to those delivered by
Mr Montague shall be publicly taught and maintained3.'
In the following October the lord keeper fell. His shrewd
estimate of the position had probably convinced him that
both Charles and Buckingham, in the conflict in which they
had become involved with the lower house, were marching
on their ruin, but his relations with the all-powerful favorite
were not, as yet, those of declared antagonism, and he still
cherished the hope that they admitted of retrieval. On the Wllli*™5 u
J dismissed
25th of the month, however, he was informed by Conway, om™
the secretary of state, that he must consider his tenure
office as at an end and he was advised to retire to his diocese.
At Cambridge it was believed that his courageous frankness
1 Fuller-Brewer, vi 468; Laud's Works, vi 245.
2 Ibid, vi 468-9 ; Laud's Works, Ibid.
3 Laud, Works, vi 245.
3—2
36 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
. CHAP, i. as an adviser1, his known reluctance to resort to base ex-
pedients of patronage 2, were the sole causes of the disfavour
into which he had fallen, — a belief, it must be admitted, to
which the actual evidence lends but inadequate support.
Although no longer lord keeper, Williams was still dean of
Westminster, and under ordinary circumstances he would, in
that capacity, have been assigned a part in the ceremony of
the coronation. As the time drew near, accordingly, on
hearing that the preparations for the august event were
already in progress, he hastened up from his palace at Buck-
den to London ; it was only however to learn that Charles
He« ordered forbade him to take any share in the ceremony and that he
was required 'to substitute the bishop of St Davids for his
The°corona- deputy3.' It was Laud, therefore, who on the appointed day
minster : officiated in Williams' place, and his appearance was a scarcely
2FeM62£. . . . ,
less sinister omen than was the non-appearance or the queen
in the chair set for her in the abbey. Nor did it serve
greatly to mend matters, that Laud, in compiling a special
service and arranging the ceremonial, did his best to invest
the proceedings with peculiar interest and solemnity, so that
Joseph Mede, writing to Sir Martin Stuteville, could
characterise it as ' one of the most punctual coronations since
the Conquest4.' It is singular that the service which Laud
prepared should eventually have found a home in the Library
which his rival had built5; while the prebend of Buckden,
1 Supra, p. 11. library of his college, where it is now
2 See Hacket, 1 107. preserved. The MS. has since been
3 Cabala, i!07. Letters of Archbp. printed and edited by the Eev. Canon
Williams (ed. Mayor), pp. 57-68. Wordsworth for the Henry Bradshaw
4 Court and Times of Charles the Society, in a volume entitled The
First, i 79. Manner of the Coronation of King
5 The volume containing the ser- Charles the First (London, 1892).
vice, used by Charles on the occasion, Canon Wordsworth's interesting ac-
a 12mo. manuscript with the rubrics count of its history is given in pp.
' in red letters ' which Prynne after- xvi-xviii, where, however, I venture
wards animadverted upon with sour to make one correction, viz. that it
dislike (Canterburie' s Doome, p. 69), was not William Lloyd, bishop of
came into the possession of arch- Norwich, the owner of the volume,
bishop Sancroft ; from his hands it who with six other bishops was com-
passed into those of William Lloyd, mitted to the Tower in 1688, but
bishop of Norwich, and one of the William Lloyd, bishop of St Asaph,
nonjuring bishops, and eventually who had been educated at Oriel
became the property of Thomas College, Oxford.
Baker, who bequeathed it to the
WILLIAMS AND ST JOHN'S COLLEGE. 37
Williams' episcopal seat, had not long been vacated by ^ CH^P-
Laud.
In his dismay and despair, the late lord keeper humbled
himself in the dust before both king and minister. ' I am,'
he wrote to Buckingham, ' a creature of your own, struck
dead onlye with your displeasure.'... 'If I were guiltye of any
unworthye unfaithfulnes for the time past, or not guiltye of
a resolution to doe your Grace all service for the time to com,
all considerations under Heaven could not force me to begge
it so earnestlye, or to professe myselfe as I doe before God
and you, your Grace his most humble, affectionate and de-
voted servaunt1.' His appeal met with no response, and a
month later the writer made another effort, addressing
O to Charles :
himself this time to his monarch, urging his ' griefe and 6 Feb- 162f
necessities,' — ' I am not paid,' he writes, ' that payment of
my pension which shoulde paye the Creditors which lent me
money to buy the same, notwithstanding your Matie hath
bene gratiously pleased to order otherwise ' ; ' secondly, I have
not yet received my writt of summons unto the Parliament
denyed to noe prisoners or condemned persons in the late
raigne of your blessed ffather.' He concludes with an entreaty
that Charles will be pleased to restore him to favour and
mitigate on his behalf ' the causeless displeasure ' of Bucking-
ham2. This appeal, however, seems like the former to have
met with no response, and the writer now began to assume
an air of resignation to his fate. In a letter to his ' friend
and cozen,' Sir John Wynne, dated from Buckden on the first
of the preceding December3, he had already spoken of his
late career as one of ' glorious miserye and splendid slavery '
and feigned to exult in his release. To the world at large it
might well seem that the star of his fortune had definitely
set ; but Williams was blest with a constitutional elasticity
which no caprice of fortune could permanently depress. foAun
1 Letters (ed. Mayor), p. 57. his anger but my prayers to god and
2 ' That your Matie would be pleased your sacred Matie ' (S. P. Dom.
to mitigatt & allay the causeless Charles 7, xx, no. 43).
displeasure of my Lo. D. ag* me who 3 Letter to Sir John Wynne :
is soe litle satisfied with any thinge 1 Dec. 1625. Eur. Mag. xxi; Letters
that I canne doe or suffer that I have (ed. Mayor), p. 35.
noe means left to satisfie and appease
38 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
Cowley, who knew him in his later years, declared, when
addressing him in a yet darker hour, that he
— put ill Fortune in so good a dress
That it outshone other men's happiness1,
and at the present crisis this enviable characteristic came
out in strong relief. To Nature, with her power to soothe
and solace, and to self-estrangement, in obedience to the claims
of duty and the calls of philanthropy, — the fallen statesman
turned ; and, making all allowance for the portraiture of a too
partial biographer, it is still difficult not to infer that
John Williams was on the whole a happier man. 'Every
place,' we are assured, 'wherein he had a title was the better
for his charity.' His diocese, his university, his college, as
in the past they had been always made aware that his gain
was theirs, his advancement that of their most zealous friend
and helper, so now they became not less conscious that his
withdrawal from political life had only served to give his
symPathies fuller play. His palace at Buckden, an ancient
structure, once the residence of Catherine of Aragon, which
had been suffered to fall into decay, now assumed another
aspect; a choice library adorned its walls2; the surrounding
park became stocked with deer; the grounds were replanted;
all the nurseries about London were 'ransacked for flowers
and choice fruits.'...' Alcinous could not have lived better3.'
In founding libraries for his clergy, in establishing and
organising local charities, in battling with rustic ignorance
and superstition, he proved himself no unworthy successor of
the great lights who had before adorned his see, — of a
Remigius, a Hugh of Avalon, a Grosseteste. He was now
frequently in Cambridge, where his quick and impartial
discernment of merit was long after gratefully recorded by
his biographer. Hacket, who had himself been a fellow and
1 ' To the Bishop of Lincoln upon bibliotheque de monseigneur Veveque
his Enlargement out of the Tower.' de Lincoln. Lincoln, 1634. These
Works (ed. Grosart), i 139. French books in Williams' library
2 Among the MSS. in St John's alone appear to have amounted to
College Library (L 4) is : Deux cata- some 600 volumes, of which a large
logues ties livres Franqais qui se trouve proportion relate to French history.
au palais de Buckden, en Vexquise 3 Hacket, n 29.
WILLIAMS AND ST JOHN'S COLLEGE. 39
tutor, as he was afterwards a benefactor of Trinity College, , CHAP, i.
avers that Williams permitted himself to be swayed ' neither ™en™to
by friends, nor favour, nor consanguinity,' and he has placed college.
on record the chief names of the distinguished Trinity men
who, as was his own case, had risen in the world through the
warmhearted bishop's influence, — ' Dr Simson, the author of
the great Chronology, Dr Warr, Mr G. Herbert, Dr Meredith,
Mr H. Thorndicke, Dr Creicton, Dr Fearn, Mr J. Duport,
Mr A. Scattergood, Mr C. Williamson1.' At the same time
Williams' attachment to his own college remained unshaken,
although the venal rule of his own cousin, Owen Gwynne,
might well have alienated a less loyal son. Through his His mumfl-
» cence to
beneficence, four livings, — those of Soulderne, Freshwater, college? s
Aberdaron and St Florence, — were vested in the patronage
of St John's, and lands were acquired for the endowment of
new fellowships and scholarships2. But his noblest bene-
faction was in connexion with the library.
For the erection of the second court, which was completed
in the year 1602, the college had been chiefly indebted to
the countess of Shrewsbury3 (the wife of the seventh earl and ^f^gsg
daughter of the celebrated Bess of Hardwicke), an episode 2f0|?*BWS*
in its architectural history which stands associated in a
singular manner with the personal history of that unfortunate
lady, — 'justly entitled,' says Baker, ' to the foundation of the
whole, what she did being wholly owing to her favour, and
what she left undone being owing to her misfortunes4.'
1 Ibid, n 42. ' Here,' he ejacu- the university of Cambridge. The
lates, ' are ten Nestors in one Militia, countess had, at this time, been for
according to Agamemnon's wish.' some years confined in the Tower,
2 ' The endowment (only some £40 along with her niece the unfortunate
a year) was insufficient from the Arabella Stuart, and had regained
first, and immediately after Williams' her liberty only a few months, when
death the College got leave to sup- a letter conveying the petition of the
press the Fellowships.' Mr B. F. College for her aid reached her. She
Scott, Bursar, Notes from the College had been released in order that she
Records, Series n xiii 23. might be present at the deathbed of
3 Mary, countess of Shrewsbury, the earl, her husband. Hence the
was the daughter of Sir William allusion in the letter to 'yr Lady-
Cavendish of Chatsworth and his shipps great Trebles and expenses in
wife the celebrated 'Bess of Hard- securing yr owne estate and fortuns.'
wicke,' and her munificence to St See Cainb. Ant. Soc. Comm. i 47 ;
John's may be said to mark the Gardiner, Hist, of England, n 119.
commencement of the long connexion 4 Baker-Mayor, i 192.
between the house of Cavendish and
40 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
^ CHAP, i. The countess, indeed, appears to have inherited the same
the8ic^untess taste for building which in her mother amounted to a passion,
stjeohn?sntobut, in 1611, her committal to the Tower, on suspicion of
having connived at the flight of her niece, Arabella Stuart,
led to a suspension of relations with the world without;
and it was not until the death of the earl (who had approved
and aided her designs) that it was deemed prudent to dis-
close the names of the benefactors. Even then their armorial
bearings, — those of the houses of Talbot and Cavendish, —
were not permitted to appear, a blank space over the gate-
way being for some time reserved ' for such arms as the
college should afterwards set up there.'
From this time, however, the relations of the college
with these two noble houses appear to have been those of
beneficent sympathy on the one hand and cordial gratitude
on the other. Early in the seventeenth century, the nephew
of the countess, William Cavendish, afterwards duke of
Newcastle, entered the college as a fellow-commoner; and,
before the century closed, her statue, presented by the third
duke (the husband of lady Margaret Cavendish), was placed
in its present position over the gateway leading from the
second into the third court.
Design of a The earl died in 1616, and in the same year the design
new Library. . . ... .
was formed of building a new library in immediate connexion
with the second court. The books were temporarily removed
into ' one of the great chambers near the hall,' while the old
library, to use Baker's expression, ' was cantoned out into
tenements.' If any hopes had been entertained that the will
of Gilbert Talbot would include a further benefaction to the
library, they were doomed to disappointment, and a series of
unsuccessful applications in other quarters met with no
adequate response. In 1621 Valentine Gary, the master of
Christ's, was raised to the see of Exeter, and continued for
a brief period to hold the two preferments in conjunction.
It is satisfactory to find that, as a former member of St John's,
he continued to feel an interest in the welfare of the society,
although eleven years before he had been disappointed in
the election to the mastership, and, according to Williams'
WILLIAMS AND ST JOHN'S COLLEGE. 41
own statement, his defeat had been largely owing to the -CH^Rr>
efforts of the latter1. But years had rolled by, and Williams, $Sl£™of
when he contrasted Gwynne's discreditable rule at St John's untCtey.
with Gary's elevation to the episcopal bench, may not im-
probably have concluded that he had done his former college
small service in allowing his clannish preferences to prevail
over a just regard for merit, and have felt a real desire to
make some amends both to the society and to the individual.
Such a supposition enables us, at least, better to understand
how it was that Gary was selected by Williams as the medium
of a communication to St John's, to the effect that an un-
known benefactor was willing to aid them in the erection of Benefactions
of Williams
a new library by a gift of £12002. A letter of grateful {^^
acceptance, couched in courtly Latin, was forthwith addressed
to Gary3. But immediately after its despatch, it became
known that their wouldbe benefactor was Williams, to
whom the library was already indebted for choice copies of
the fathers and the schoolmen, and before the day had closed,
a second letter to the donor himself was drawn up and trans-
mitted. ' We, the indigent body of Johnians,' they assure
him, ' desire not the erection of any proud edifice to rival
the Vatican itself, but simply a modest and comely structure
which will not discredit learning by its crowded condition4.'
As, however, time went by, the limited aspirations of
the writers were forgotten in actual achievement. In the The new
building.
course of two years the fabric was completed5. But it was
not until four years later, — when the ceiling, the fittings
and the glazing had been added and the books duly arranged
in their respective presses, — that in the summer of 1628
Williams himself visited Cambridge to inspect what Racket P^",,^
justly terms 'the beautiful pile6.' Great as had been S"1*'
1 See Vol. n 475, n. 4. cundiam non excutiant.' Ibid. 27
2 Baker-Mayor, p. 208. -8.
* Letters of Williams (u. «.),27 May 5 Baker-Mayor, p. 208. Williams
1623 , pp. 26^-7 . eventually gave over £2000 ; Sir Ralph
* 'Nosegena Johannensium turba, Hare, £192, — the College rinding the
non superbum aliquod aut quod Vati- rest. See the details of the building
canum spondeat, meditamur aedi- accounts, as preserved by Baker, in
ficium, sed modesta saltern et decora Willis and Clark, n 270.
tecta, quae literis ob angustias vere- 6 Hacket, n 93.
42
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. T.
£ne reverse that had befallen their benefactor since first his
generous design was made known, he was greeted by his
college with none the less cordiality and respect. His own
portrait, painted by Jackson, adorned the library walls ; the
letters I. L. C. S.1 appeared conspicuously over the central
gable of the great oriel window; whatever fortunes yet
awaited him in life, he might feel that, in the language of
those whom he had thus generously aided, the gratitude that
attends the discerning patron of learning would not suffer his
memory to die 2. Yet another fifteen years passed away, and
a letter from Antony Scattergood, Williams' chaplain, re-
subsequent
care for the minded the college that lapse of time had not lessened
College
Library. their patron's interest in the library or his care for its
completeness3.
In pursuing the career of Williams down to this white
day in a very troublous life, we have been carried somewhat
beyond the point to which we had traced the experiences of
Richard Montagu. The authoritative expression of opinion
on the part of the three bishops would seem to have been
largely decisive with Buckingham, and his influence from
this time was thrown into the scale in Montagu's favour.
As the star of Montagu rose, that of Preston declined. The
latter, whom we last saw installed in his lectureship at
Trinity Church, had hitherto maintained his hold of the
duke's regard with considerable success. The Court was
scandalised, the Puritan party were elated, when the story
was told, how when, after James's death, the king with
Gradual
decline of
Preston in
Bucking-
ham's favour.
1 i.e. lohannesLincolniensis, Gustos
Sigilli.
2 ' Quaecunque autem dederis non
tarn diuturna erunt, quam nominis
tui memoria, quae ut literis et pietati
semper coaeva sit, fecisti publice me-
rendo : privatim quod jam facis vota
precesque nostras sursum eriget, ut
D. 0. M. Honorificentiam tuam in
exemplum bonitatis et Keip. columen
charissime et diutissime servaret.'
This letter is assigned by the editor
(Letters of Arclibp. Williams, p. 28)
to the year 1623. After their patron's
fall, the College writes : ' Interea
temporis Benefacta tua gratissima
memoria recolemus, et omnem felici-
tatem adprecabimur tibi, qui vivis,
loqueris, scribis, aedificas aeternitati.'
Nov. 1626. Ibid. p. 39.
3 Bishop Williams, says the letter,
' is still myndfull of the Library hee
hath f ownded amongst you and of the
legacy he hath bequeathed vnto it.
And to shew this continuance of his
care and pious intentions, he hath
commanded mee to write vnto you that
you will send him vp the catalogue
of his bookes, that hee may the better
examyne and supply what hath been
defalked from you.' 8 Nov. 1641.
Baker-Mayor, p. 530.
MONTAGU AND THE APPELLO. 43
Buckingham repaired in the coach from Theobalds to White- . CH^P- T-
hall, Preston had been their companion on the journey1.
But now, when the master of Emmanuel waited on his patron,
he found him frequently closeted with Laud and could not but
be aware that a change was stealing over his patron's mind, —
a change which was distinctly reflected in the university.
Only a year before, when Richardson the master of Trinity
died, current report had marked out Preston as his successor2,
and now the latter became aware that even his tenure of his
lectureship was precarious ! So strongly indeed did he feel
this, that he deemed it hardly prudent to resign his preacher-
ship at Lincoln's Inn, — 'thinking,' says Ball, 'it might be
a good reserve in case the naughty Heads3, or factions in the
Court, should fall upon him.' At his post in London, ™* sp^S
however, he exerted his great oratorical ability to the ut- iun. nc'
most, and ' wrought much upon the Parliament ' : so that He u con-
suited by
Buckingham, before he quite made up his mind as to the J^
merits of the Appello, thought it prudent to ascertain what ^
were Preston's views about the book. Preston, in turn,
before he gave his opinion, thought it advisable to consult
his old friend Davenant, now removed from the presidency
of Queens' to his see of Salisbury4. Davenant's opinion is
not on record ; but we may safely assume that if Preston
communicated his own views to Buckingham with half the
plainness that Davenant did to Preston, it must have been
perfectly clear to the duke that he must either break with
the Puritan party or throw over Montagu. Before, however, £|fergetshe
he proceeded to extremities, he consulted Charles, and, at ^"of the
that monarch's desire, letters were forwarded to Andrewes,
the bishop of Winchester, signifying to him his Majesty's
1 Life of Preston (ed. Harcourt), giving it to Sir Thomas Coventry,
p. 104. Burnet, Own Time (ed. Airy), who was one of the College Councell ;
i 27-28. Burnet says: ' which being yea he went so far as to nominate the
against the rules of the court gave doctor to be lord keeper.' Life of
great offence.' Preston (ed. Harcourt), p. 117; cf.
2 Ball speaks of Buckingham as Fuller-Brewer, vi 54.
still endeavouring ' to oblige the Puri- 3 Life («. s.), p. 104. Ball is here,
tans, by gratifying Dr Preston all the doubtless, referring to the Caput in
ways he could, and particularly in its collective capacity,
the colledge suite, by depriving 4 IBa.}!, Life of Preston (u. s.), p. 114.
bishop Williams of the scale and
44
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. pleasure, that, in conjunction with the bishops of London1,
Durham, Rochester, Oxford, and St Davids, he ' should take
into consideration the business concerning Mr Montague's
late book,' and that these six divines should ' deliver their
opinions touching the same, for the preservation of the truth
and the peace of the Church of England, together with the
safety of Mr Montague's person.' In compliance with the
royal mandate, the above-named bishops assembled accord-
The^Bishops' ingly at Winchester House, and made report as follows :
16 Jan. i62f . « \\re have met and considered, and for our particulars do
think, that Mr Montagu in his book hath not affirmed any
thing to be the doctrine of the Church of England but that
which in our opinions is the doctrine of the Church of
England, as agreeable thereunto.' They moreover took upon
themselves to suggest, that it would be well if further
controversy on the subject were forbidden by royal com-
mand2. Three of the signatories, it will be observed, were
the same three bishops who had, of their own accord, made
formal representation on the question to Buckingham. Of
the two new signatories, one was Andrewes, for whom, before
the year was over, it devolved on Buckeridge to preach his
funeral sermon ; the other was Richard Neile, a divine of no
great attainments and distinguished by his hostility to
Puritans, but versed in controversy and of sound judgement.
He had been educated at St John's College3, and consequently,
like Andrewes, represented Cambridge ; and it can hardly be
doubted that the adhesion of these two prelates added
considerable force to the combined report.
Buckingham's mind was now probably fully made up,
ne fefo ^he peril of appearing to act solely on his
Baker thus sums up his character:
' disciplinae assertor in ecclesia et
ordinis in republica, invisus proinde
iis qui utrumque turbarent, gravi-
bus ab iis calumniis oneratus, fama
laesus, habitus tantum non papista.'
Baker-Mayor, i 258. Neile, in turn,
became the patron of Laud, who was
largely indebted to him for prefer-
ment in the Church. See Laud's
Works (ed. Bliss), m 134.
NMLBKD
York.p'°f
d. i64ol
other peers,
1 George Montaigne of Queens'
College ; see Vol. n 485.
2 Fuller-Brewer, vi 471 ; Harl.
MSS. 7003, f. 104.
3 He had been sent to St John's
in 1580 by Mildred, lady Burghley,
on the recommendation of Goodman,
the dean of Westminster, who de-
scribed him as ' a poor and fatherless
child, of good hope to be learned,
and to continue therein.' Le Neve,
Lives of the Bishops, etc., p. 137.
MONTAGU AND THE APPELLO. 45
personal responsibility, and held, accordingly, regular and v CHAP, i.
formal conferences with some of his brother peers. Nothing
indeed more forcibly brings home to us the extent to which
the present controversy was agitating the public mind, than
the fact that a considerable proportion of the Upper House,
among whom were Pembroke, lord president of the Council,
Dorset, Bridgewater, Carlisle, Warwick, Mulgrave, and the
lord Say, were generally present, as deeply interested ob-
servers, at the proceedings. According to Buckingham's
own statement, the project of a Conference arose out of an
informal conversation on the subject between himself and
Warwick1. On the 9th February, the proceedings were Since at
opened at York House, the mansion which Buckingham had ^peifiesT
wrested from Bacon four years before ; and Montagu now
found himself called upon to defend his books against the
acutest criticism that his enemies were able to bring to bear
upon them. Buckingham himself presided over the two
formal debates which took place on the llth and the 17th,
and showed, as Gardiner admits, 'great shrewdness and
ability.' Montagu's doctrinal position was impeached and
defended by two eminent divines on either side, Preston Preston and
Thomas
and Thomas Morton being pitted against Buckeridge and Mo^,°n °P-
« ± o o posed by
Francis White, not yet promoted to his bishopric of Carlisle2, ^w^te!
Preston's fame as a disputant was almost unsurpassed ; and
that of Morton as a controversialist had been established by
the publication of his Apologia Catholica, some twenty years
before ; and since we last saw him, standing as a candidate
for the headship of St John's College, his rise in the Church
had been steady and continuous. Already bishop of Lich- MORTON, DP.
field and Coventry, a preferment for which he had been t Jselham'
indebted to the recommendation of Andrewes, he succeeded
in a few more years to the see of Durham. Nor can it be
denied that his attainments and character amply justified
— ' the occasion of this conference able interest for the educated lay
was a private accidental talk between mind at this time. It was with very
my lord of Warwick and myself. ' See different feelings that Laud regarded
' The Sum and Substance of the Con- the assembling of the Conference,
ferences at York House,' etc. Cosin's See his Diary, Works (ed. Bliss),
Works, u 40 and 67. The spectacle ra 180.
of a formal contest between eminent 2 Supra, p. 31, n. 1.
divines seems to have had consider-
46 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. his rapid advancement. To scholarship of an order that won
hlVa°cterant ^or ^m t'le n^ esteem °f Casaubon, and a moderation in
doctrinal questions which led him to decline to arbitrate
between Calvinist and Remonstrant, he united a generous
and unselfish nature which came home to all observers, and
a charity that hoped all things1. Yet notwithstanding, so
strong was the antipathy roused by Montagu's attitude
as a polemic, that even Morton, at the commencement of
the Conference, deemed it necessary to protest that 'he
came not out of spleen or malice against Mr Montagu's
person, intending to destroy him.' Few, however, of the
readers of the Appello can fail to be somewhat startled when
they find the verdict of this gentle prelate to be that,
together with the Oagg, the book 'contained such gross errors,
nav heresies and blasphemies, as were not to be endured in
a Christian commonwealth2.'
It was probably no slight consolation to Montagu, who
was then in feeble health, to find by his side his old uni-
JOHN COSIN, versity friend, John Cosin, to whose pen we are indebted for
bishop of *
?uimm' the only trustworthy, albeit not altogether impartial, narra-
tive of the Conference at York House3. Cosin, who was still
in early manhood, had been educated at Caius College4,
where he was scholar and afterwards junior fellow. He had
been intimate with Montagu at Cambridge, and on leaving
the university had successively officiated as secretary and
librarian to Overall (whose memory he fondly venerated),
and as domestic chaplain to Neile, who bestowed on him a
prebend in the cathedral at Durham. He was now arch-
deacon of the East Riding, was on friendly terms with
Laud, and generally regarded as one of the rising leaders of
Retakes the Arminian party. According to his own statement, he
part iii the , /V /.
conclusion appeared at the Conference ' as a poor assistant commanded
conference, ^hither by the duke,' and took part in the concluding debate5.
The final result of the proceedings was claimed as a triumph
1 — < so clear and upright in his the manuscript of Cosin's narrative
own conscience as to think every were made by Francis White,
man truly conscientious that pre- 4 At Norwich School he had been
tended to be so.' Barwick (Jo.), Life taught by Eichard Briggs, the brother
of Morton, p. 30. of the mathematician. Venn, i 207.
2 Cosin, Works, n 21. B Cosin (M.S.), n 73.
3 The corrections and additions to
MONTAGU AND THE APPELLO. 47
by Montagu's party1; for their opponents, to quote the VCHAP. i.^
language of Gardiner, ' failed to make their points good, as, Mont^-f
in insisting on a complete accordance with the formulas of part)'
the Church, they, in many cases, substituted their own
interpretation for the obvious meaning of the formulas
themselves2.'
But York House was very far from being the House of The Appeal
Eur&in ro-
Commons ; and Charles's second Parliament had already ferred to a
• Committee of
again referred the Appeal to a Committee, — the ' Committee ^nuno™ of
for Religion,' as it was now termed; and, in April, that
Committee's Report was presented to the House by Pym.
It was a lengthy document, setting forth in detail the several ^n^d. is
doctrines with respect to which Montagu's teaching had been
found erroneous. In one of the Articles, Montagu was
described as having ' endeavoured to raise great factions and
divisions in the Commonwealth by casting the odious and
scandalous name of Puritans3 upon such his Majesties loving
subjects as conform themselves to the doctrines and ceremony
of the Church of England.' The House made formal decla-
ration that he had 'endeavoured to reconcile England to
Rome and to alienate the King's affections from his well-
affected subjects,' adjudged him to be deserving of punish-
ment, and order was given that his book should be burnt4.
Buckingham, however, had by this time decided to make
Montagu's cause his own ; and it admits of little doubt that
his own impeachment, which took place about three weeks ^^a0cfh"
later, was largely the result of the odium he thus incurred ham'V
among the great majority in the Commons. ' The duke,' 16
wrote Dr Meddus5 to Mede, ' is the great protector of the
Montagutians ; so that the business of religion is like to
follow his standing or downfal6.'
1 ' What good they have done, I Report of Proceedings of the House
know not, but Montagu's party talk of Commons in the Case of Mr Man-
much of the success on their side.' tague, State Papers (Doni.), Charles
Mede to Sir M. Stuteville, 4 Mar. the First, xxv, nos. 10 and 87.
1626 ; Court and Times of Charles * Dr James Meddus, rector of
the Firxt, i 85. St Gabriel's, Fenchurch. He was a
a Hist, of England, n 65. native of Cheshire, and had studied
* i.e. as equivalent to that of much in the German universities.
Cathari. « 22 May 1626: Court and Times
4 Court and Times, etc., i 96; of Charles the First, i 105.
Bushworth, Collections, i 202-212;
48
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
Montagu's
position
assailed by
the divines
who had
represented
England at
the Synod
of Dort
Recognition
bestowed on
these divines
in England.
Thomas
Goad.
6. 1576.
d. 1638.
The Joynt
Attestation.
The productiveness of the press under the stimulus of
these events was perhaps unprecedented, and replies to the
Appello came pouring forth thick -and fast. The ablest were
undoubtedly those penned by the divines who, as we have
already seen1, had so well sustained the reputation of English
and, more particularly, Cambridge learning at the Synod of
Dort. Montagu had satisfied himself that the decisions of
that Synod implicitly contravened the teaching of the Church
of England, as he interpreted it, and he had frankly avowed
that he did not mean to be bound by them; and as this
avowal, in turn, implied that the above divines had yielded
assent to doctrines not taught by their own Church, while
high dignitaries of that Church had intimated their approval
of his position2, the former could hardly remain silent. All
of them again, save one, on their return from Dordrecht, had
been rewarded by honours and preferment : Carleton was
now bishop of Chichester ; Davenant had been promoted to
the see of Salisbury; Samuel Ward had been appointed
lady Margaret professor ; Walter Balcanquhall, of Pembroke
College3, was now dean of Rochester and by no means
too modest a suitor for further advancement. The solitary
exception was Thomas Goad4 of King's College, whose
transient Arminianism was generally believed to have dated
only from the Synod. But although now prolocutor of the
lower house of Convocation, his services had remained
unrecognised. He discerned his error, and already stood
ranged among the assailants of Montagu.
In a volume entitled A Joynt Attestation5, these divines
now retorted upon the author of the Appello, repudiating
emphatically the assertion that the discipline of the Church
of England had been impugned at Dordrecht and avowing
no less emphatically that, in Montagu's pages, it was. The
1 See Vol. n 560-3.
2 Supra, p. 26.
3 Dr Grosart, in article on ' Bal-
canquhall' in D. N. B., makes him
of Pembroke College, Oxford. But
Broadgate Hall was not known under
that name until 1624 ; and the Uni-
versity Registers (ed. Clark, n i 349)
show that Balcanquhall was incor-
porated B.D. from Cambridge, 14 July
1617.
4 Second son of Eoger, the Provost.
8 A Joynt Attestation, avowing
that the Discipline of the Church of
England was not impeached by the
Synode of Dort. London, 1626.
MONTAGU AND THE APPELLO. 49
signatures appended were those of divines who, by eminent ^^.
services and high character, were entitled to be listened to Jories'fo™
with respect. Carieton, the disciple of Bernard Gilpin ^ftatatu
and the cherished friend of Camden, had long been recog- carbon,
' John
nised as one of the most formidable opponents of Roman ^J£n1
aggression and was in especial repute on account of the £?/,£}"'
courage with which he had maintained the doctrine ofwnd,
IP T • Thomas
apostolical succession at the bynod ; few divines were more Goad,
highly esteemed at Oxford1. Much the same might be said
of Davenant at Cambridge, where his able lectures on
Colossians2 were still remembered; his advancement to his
bishopric had been warmly advocated by Williams, — 'no
professor in Europe,' says Racket, 'did better deserve to
receive the labourer's peny at the twelfth hour of the day3.'
The honour of succeeding Davenant as professor had fallen
to Samuel Ward, master of Sidney, who, in addition to the
service he had rendered at Dordrecht, was aided by the
powerful recommendation of his predecessor. Balcanquhall,
whose letters from the Synod are still preserved, might seem,
to many, none the less entitled to reward as the son of one
who had been distinguished by his determined resistance
to the re-establishment of episcopacy in Scotland. It was,
accordingly, impossible to feign indifference at the joint
manifesto of such a body, when they affirmed, with common
voice, that Montagu had ' rashly and without ground cast a
foule blot upon the Synode of Dort in generall, and conse-
quently in common reputation upon all the members thereof;
among whom those divines that were by his late Majesty of
blessed memory sent thither and concurred in the conclusions
of that nationall Synode are in speciall aymed at, as having
betrayed or impeached the government of their reverend
Mother4.' The Joynt Attestation was preceded by a tractate
from Carleton's pen, — a quarto volume of 236 pages, — in
— 'a person of solid judgment and upon the Colossians which now are
various reading, a bitter enemy to printed.' Ball, Life of Preston (ed.
the papists, and a severe Calvinist.' Harcourt), p. 37.
Wood-Bliss, Athenae, n 422. » Life of Williams, i 63.
— 'he read in the schools with * A Joynt Attestation, p. 2.
much applause those excellent lectures
M. III. 4
50
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
MATTHEW
SUTCLIFFE.
6. 1550 (?).
d. 1629.
His project
of a theo-
logical
college for
instruction
in polemics.
His de Turco-
Papiimo.
His Briefe
Censure in
reply to
Montagu.
which he subjected Montagu's arguments to a lengthened
criticism, and concluded by denouncing him as endeavouring
to 'set up another schoole of divinity'; 'for,' he added, 'by
that knowledge of divinity which is received amongst us and
hitherto preserved, these things cannot stand1.'
It was however not only with the representatives of the
Synod of Dort and its decrees that Montagu found himself
involved in conflict. Another 'miles emeritus,' as Fuller
styles Carleton, appeared in the person of Matthew Sutcliffe,
dean of Exeter. He had received his academic education at
Trinity College at the time when Whitgift was master, and
the standpoint from which he viewed the present theological
controversy was little more than a reflex of Whitgift's in-
fluence. He was at this time sedulously watching over his
cherished project of a theological college for the training of
young clergymen in polemics, from whence they were to
emerge, as he fondly hoped, accomplished athletes, able suc-
cessfully to cope with all assailants of the recognised doctrine
of the English Church, and more especially to oppose and
denounce the tenets of ' papists and Pelagianizing Arminians
and others that draw towards popery and Babylonian slavery.'
The late monarch had warmly approved Sutcliffe's project,
and the new foundation had received the name of ' King
James's College at Chelsea.' The dean of Exeter had him-
self been a noted controversialist in his day. He had written
de Turco-Papismo, — a treatise designed to set forth the close
resemblance which he held to be discernible between Popery
and Mahometanisrn ; he had appeared as the antagonist of
Bellarmine ; he had confuted presbyterianism ; he had ex-
posed the fallacies of Cartwright. He, also, now put forth
an answer to the Appeale, — like Carleton, a veteran angered
at the mere novelty of these new ideas and the sheer pre-
sumption of their author ! He denounced him as ' the recon-
ciler of Christians and Antichrist ' and ' mediatour of the
Pope's Alchoran with apostolicall doctrine,' his ' moderation '
as ' nothing but treason to religion,' and ' his dislike of con-
An Examination of those Things
wherein the Author of the late APPEALE
holdeth the Doctrine of the Church of
the Pelagians and Arminians to be the
Doctrines of the Church of England*
[London, 1626], p. 236.
MONTAGU AND THE APPELLO. 51
troversies a liking of popery1.' It hardly raises our estimate v CHAP, i.
of the essential strength of Sutcliffe's cause, when we find
him condescending to such a paltry device as to write
Mountagus name Mountebank, and referring to him under
this designation throughout the pamphlet. Under the in-
fluence of yet less creditable feelings, Henry Burton of by'nei
St John's College put forth his Plea to an Appealed At ESSef1
Cambridge, Burton had been the disciple of Laurence Cha- Francis'
derton and of Perkins, although he appears to have imbibed
but little of the candid spirit or the learning of either, and
was already entering upon that career of acrimonious hostility
towards Neile and Laud and the entire episcopal order which
subsequently involved him in a like fate with Prynne and
Bastwick. Daniel Featley, a member of Magdalen College,
Oxford, and recently archbishop Abbot's domestic chaplain,
considered that little more was necessary than to exhibit, in
a series of arid parallelisms, what appeared to be the points
of divergence in the Arminian doctrines from those of the
Fathers and their close resemblance to the teachings of
Pelagius. His promotion to the provostship of Sutcliffe's
College at Chelsea, a few years later, was probably partly in
recognition of his services in this memorable controversy.
The only layman who ventured to descend into the arena
was also an Oxonian, — a lawyer who had been educated at
Broadgate Hall, — one Francis Rous, afterwards provost of
Eton and speaker of Cromwell's Barebones' parliament. He
'meant honestly,' says Fuller, in apparent wonder at his
temerity, for at this time, Rous, just returned for Charles'
first parliament, was a comparatively unknown man. In his
Testis Veritatis3, he aims at little more than an attempt to
shew that the Augustinian doctrine of predestination had
1 A brief e Censure upon an Appeale famous Memory. Of the Church of
to Caesar, pp. 3, 40. England. Of the Catholicke Church.
8 To be distinguished from his Plainely shewed to be ONE in the
Apology for an Appeale, put forth points of Predestination, Free-Will,
ten years later, which filled up the Certaintie of Salvation. With a Dig-
measure of his offence and brought couery of the Grounds both Naturall db
upon him his merciless punishment. Politicke O/ARMINIANISM. ByF.Rous.
3 Testis Veritatis: the Doctrine of London, 1626.
King James our late Soueraigne of
4—2
52 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
always been that of the Church of England. This he does
mainly by a series of quotations from the Fathers and recent
English divines; while he stigmatises Armiuianism as 'a
double-faced thing,' a Spanish device for the introduction
of popery and 'the destruction of England and the Low
Countries.'
, It was while this controversy and the ferment it engen-
dered were at their height, that the university was still further
perturbed by a mandate from the chancellor, — ' It has been
the imposed upon me,' wrote Suffolk, ' as a task, by his sacred
majesty1, to restore the ancient discipline of that famous
Feb. leaf. universj^y in my charge.' 'The university,' he went on to
say, ' representeth a body of the commonwealth, nay, every
college is a little commonwealth within itself. It is no hard
matter to beget a reformation, if the heads and seniors apply
themselves thereto. As you tender your duty to our dread
sovereign, the honor of your place and profession, and your
love to me, put all your brains together and be all of one
minde, as one intire man, to bring home that long banisht
pilgrim, discipline, by whose absence the famous nursery of
literature and good manners is in the eye of the state much
declined2.'
His death: The writer's death, within little more than three months
after the arrival of this letter in Cambridge, took place amid
the disquietude occasioned by the proceedings against Buck-
ingham in parliament, and his subsequent impeachment.
In his hour of trouble, Suffolk himself had on one occasion
solicited Buckingham's aid, and now the royal intervention
had to be exerted to shield the once all-powerful minister.
Eliot in the House openly compared him to Sejanus, although
no one anticipated for him the fate of the minister of Tiberius.
Such was the position of affairs, when Charles decided that
Buckingham should succeed Suffolk as chancellor of the
university.
GEORGE Among the more recently promoted members of the
MONTAIOKB. _ .
d 1628 episcopal bench at this time was George Montaigne, who, in
1 The royal letter is printed in Heywood and Wright, i 335-6.
2 See supra, p. 11.
CONTEST FOR THE CHANCELLORSHIP. 53
1621, had been translated from the see of Lincoln to that of . CH^P.
London. Since we last saw him, in the Regent Walk, pre-
siding at the burning of the writings of Paraeus1, his rise had
been rapid and continuous. Disappointed in his competition
with Davenant for the presidency of Queens'2, he had wisely
transferred his energies to a wider field; while at the same
time his loyalty to the home of his university education was
attested by substantial benefits which did him honour8, and
all the more so in that, by becoming the friend and adherent
of Laud, he had associated himself with a party widely
estranged in feeling from the prevalent traditions of that
house.
It was on a Sunday morning4 that Suffolk died ; and on
the Monday, at midday, Dr Wilson, Montaigne's chaplain,
arrived in Cambridge, the bearer of a verbal message from
the bishop5, advising the election of Buckingham, — 'such
being his Majesty's desire and pleasure.' Letters soon fol-
lowed to the same effect : one from Neile, the bishop of
Durham, to Owen Gwynne, the master of St John's, another,
from the same quarter, to the vice-chancellor, Dr Gostlin.
In his letter to Gostlin, Neile urged acquiescence in very
plain terms : ' I do conceive,' he wrote, ' that in effecting „? th^royai
thereof we shall not only ffain an honorable chancellor of thHamV0
effect
the Duke, but in a sort purchase his Majestic himself our
royall patron and chancellor, in that we fixe our election upon
him whom himself desireth6.' These words conveyed, con-
cisely, the grounds on which the supporters of Buckingham's
candidature probably justified to themselves their action in
the matter. Even Owen Gwynne, who was Williams' cousin
and had been indebted to him for the archdeaconry of
1 See Vol. n 566-7. Suffolk, died on Sunday about two
2 See Ibid, n 484-5; D. N. B. o'clock in the morning.' Mede to
xxxiv 276. The supposition that he Sir Martin Stuteville (3 June 1626),
belonged to the Montaignes of Weston Court and Times of Charles the First,
is incorrect; and Mr J. H. Gray's i 107. It is to this characteristic
statement (Hist, of the Queens' College, letter that we are mainly indebted
p. 135) that Montaigne was ' well for our knowledge of the incidents
born ' cannot be substantiated. attending the election.
3 Gray (J. H.), Hist, of the Queens' s According to Sir Benj. Rudyerd,
College, p. 136 ; Ball, Life of Preston the bishop also went himself. State
(ed. Harcourt), p. 36. Papers (Dom.), xxix 9.
4 ' Our chancellor, my lord of 6 Cooper, Annals, m 186.
54
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
Bucking-
ham's other
supporters
in the
university.
Counter con-
siderations
as summed
up by Mede.
The Master
of Trinity
heads the
movement
in Bucking-
ham's
favour.
Mawe and
Wren's
previous
acquaint-
ance with
Buckingham
Huntingdon, readily accepted the position and, along with
Dr Gostlin, threw himself with his whole energy into the
contest. The other Heads were forthwith summoned to a
conference, and when it was found that Wren, the master of
Peterhouse, Mawe, the master of Trinity, Paske, the master
of Clare, and Dr Beale, the master of Pembroke, were also
all strongly of opinion that Neile's advice should be acted
upon, it seemed, at first, that Buckingham's election would
be carried without a dissentient. 'It was in vain,' writes
Mede, ' to say that Dr Wilson's bare word from his lord was
no sufficient testimony of his Majesty's pleasure, nor such as
might be a ground of an act of such consequence ; that we
should by this act prejudge the parliament ; that instead of
patronage we sought for, we might bring a lasting scandal,
a general contempt and hatred upon the university, as men
of most prostitute flattery ; that it would not be safe for us
to engage ourselves in public differences; that at least, to
avoid the imputation of folly and temerity in the doing, it
would be wisdom to wait our full time of fourteen days, and
not to precipitate the election. To this last was answered,
"the sooner the better, and more acceptable"; if we stayed
to expect the event in parliament, it would not be worth
"God a mercy1."'
Among the above-mentioned supporters of Buckingham
were two who were personally well known both to him and
to Charles. These were Leonard Mawe, who had been pro-
moted to the mastership of Trinity in the preceding year,
and Matthew Wren, who had succeeded him at Peterhouse.
They had both accompanied Charles on his visit to Spain,
and together watched over the spiritual welfare of their future
king, — had twice a day celebrated the English service and had
vigilantly counteracted the wiles of ' Spanish priests.' Mawe
indeed had not only laboured but also suffered in the royal
service, having been thrown from his mule on the return
journey and sustained some injury. His signal desert had
been recognised by his promotion at Cambridge, and he was
now determined to give proof of his gratitude. Throwing
1 Court and Times of Charles the First, i 108.
CONTEST FOR THE CHANCELLORSHIP. 55
his whole influence into the scale in Buckingham's favour, v CHAP. T.^
he may fairly be credited with having won for him the
election. In Trinity itself, recent as was his instalment in
office, he shewed no scruples and spared no pains, — ' sending
for the fellows,' according to Mede, ' one by one, to persuade
them — some, twice over.' Most of the leading Heads gave
him effective cooperation, and it was not until the Tuesday
morning that any sign of opposition was discernible. But
during the previous night, something of the old spirit of|^geenof
hostility to the Caput and to its dictation appears to have Mivwsit".11'6
revived among the younger masters of arts1, while a large
section among them, sympathising strongly with the recent
action of the Lower House, could not but feel that to elect
as their chancellor a nobleman who was actually under im-
peachment would certainly be interpreted as a deliberate
slight upon the great representative assembly of the nation.
In the course of the day, Dr Montaigne himself arrived at
Queens' College, and was not a little disconcerted to find
that his beloved society was very far from sharing his views
at the present crisis2; the duke's own secretary, Mason,
and Cosin also, appeared, — the latter warmly advocating
Buckingham's claims ' as the most true patron of the clergy
and of scholars3.' The second son of the late chancellor, g£J££°
Thomas Howard, lord Andover, newly created earl of Berk- D'D- 163L
shire, had living with him, in the capacity of secretary or
chaplain4, one Granado Chester, whose brother was at this
time in residence at Trinity, although his name does not Robert _
appear in the list of voters. The brother, venturing upon D
the initiative, notwithstanding that time did not allow of
his communicating with the earl, brought forward his
name ; and, in the course of the Tuesday, Berkshire was The E*M of
accepted as a candidate and an active canvas in his favour proposed.
was commenced. The Wednesday passed amid a scene of
1 — ' we say the heads in this bent and resolved another way to
election have no more to do than his no small discontentment. ' Gray,
any of us ; wherefore we advise what Hist, of the Queens' College, p. 148.
to do, and whom to set up.' Mede to 3 Mede, Ibid, i 109.
Stuteville, Court and Times of Charles 4 — ' who was either his chaplain
the First, i 108-109. Mede himself, or otherwise interested in him.'
at this time, was only forty. Rushworth, Collections (ed. 1721), I
2 — ' found his own College most 372.
56
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
Disad-
vantage
under which
the sup-
§ liters of
erkshire
labour.
THE
ELECTION :
1 June 1626.
Pressure
exerted by
Dr Mawe.
Bucking-
ham's
dubious
majority.
Analysis of
the election
as derived
from the
Registrary's
lists.
unparalleled excitement. According to Mede, the pressure
put upon the constituency in Buckingham's favour was such
that some, to escape doing violence to their personal con-
victions, got into hackney coaches and retreated beyond the
reach of solicitation; while many, — 'whole colleges/ if we
may credit his assertion, — who had designed to support the
earl, were overpersuaded and abstained from voting. They
laboured also under the disadvantage of having had no time
for organisation, — Berkshire's own consent not having yet
been obtained, — and were, to use Mede's expression, 'a head-
less company' in a double sense1. On Thursday the election
took place. Dr Mawe, untiring to the last, ordered the
Trinity bell to be rung, 'as to an act'; assembled the
fellows in the college hall, and there appealed to them to
accompany him in a body to the schools to vote for the
duke, ' that so they might win the honour to have it accounted
their college act2.'
It is stated by Mede that the poll, when declared, gave
Buckingham a majority of only three votes. The lists3
that have been preserved give a majority of six, but these
lie under a suspicion of having been tampered with4, and
Fuller asserts that Berkshire lost the election ' not for lack
of voices, but fair counting them5.' But the victory, how-
ever gained, appeared to the defeated party simply disastrous,
and that not so much for their own interests as for those of
the university at large. ' What will the parliament say to
us ? ' wrote Mede ; ' did not our burgesses condemn the duke
in their charge given up to the Lords ? '
So far as the evidence afforded by the lists can be relied
upon, it would appear that of the sixteen Heads only a
minority, seven in number, voted. These were Dr Mawe of
Trinity, Owen Gwynne of St John's, John Gostlin of Caius,
Thomas Paske of Clare, Matthew Wren of Peterhouse, Samuel
1 Court and Times of diaries the
First, i 110.
2 Ibid, i 109.
3 See Appendix (A).
4 Kush worth (M.S.) says, 'the Duke
had but one hundred and eight and
the Earl had one hundred and three.'
The late A. W. Haddan (Life of
Herbert Thorndike, p. 172) com-
ments on the absence of Thorndike 's
name from the lists and observes
that ' they seem incorrect.'
5 Worthies of England (ed. 1840),
i 511.
CONTEST FOR THE CHANCELLORSHIP. 57
Walsall of Corpus, and John Mansel of Queens'. The absten- . CH^P- r- ,
tion of the remaining nine may be explained on various * [^H™^
grounds. Dr Eden, master of Trinity Hall, Mr Maiden did not vote-
conjectures, 'was probably in his place in Parliament1.'
Collins, provost of King's, had he followed his own inclina-
tions, would probably have supported Buckingham, but
prudence may have deterred him from openly opposing the
views of the great majority of the society over which he
ruled, especially when we bear in mind that his relations
with that society were about this time in a state of con-
siderable tension2. Bainbrigg, master of Christ's, eminent
as a preacher and a severe disciplinarian, represented the
prevailing tradition of his house. Roger Andrewes, master
of Jesus, may have abstained out of deference for the pre-
vailing feeling of the college. Preston of Emmanuel could
hardly have opposed, with good grace, the election of one to
whom, in past years, he had been under such deep personal
obligation. Ward, master of Sidney, had he voted at all,
would doubtless have been on the earl's side, but illness,
real or feigned, prevented him3. Of the sympathy of Sibbes, ongthVhrown
master of St Catherine's, with the Puritan party there can sympSiiies
be no question. Nothing however survives to explain the ent colleges.
abstention of Barnaby Gooch, master of Magdalene ; while
that of Dr Beale4, of Pembroke, is difficult to account for,
especially when we bear in mind the active part which,
according to Mede, he took in the canvas on behalf of the
duke. Of the colleges which declared in Buckingham's
favour, the lead was taken by Trinity, where 26 votes were
given for, and 10 against, him5. Among the supporters of
1 Hist, of Trinity Hall, p. 136. Works, xv 336.
2 See Austen Leigh, Hist, of King' s * Dr Jerome Beale, whom the
College, p. 100. editor of the Court and Times of
3 ' The night before the choice of Charles the First (i 107) mistakes for
our new chancellor, I was very ill, so his younger brother, William, after-
as without hazard of my health I wards master of St John's.
could not be at the choice, and so 5 Rushworth (u.s.) says that
was absent. The duke carried it ' Trinity College alone supplied the
not above three or four voices from Duke with forty-three votes.' If
the earl of Berkshire ; and had not this statement be correct, nine out of
neither carried it, but that the King's the names on the lists which I have
pleasure was signified for the duke, been unable to identify must be
both by message and letter.' Ward assigned to Trinity,
to Ussher (6 June 1626), Ussher,
58
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. T.
Lewis
Wemys :
D.D. per
lit. Reg.
1624.
Berkshire appear Charles Chauncy and Francis Ostler (both
subsequently lecturers on Greek in the college), Humphrey
Tovey, and Robert Metcalfe, afterwards regius professor of
Hebrew. St John's gave 12 to the duke and 6 to the earl1;
Caius, 10 and 2. Pembroke, influenced, no doubt, by Beale,
gave 6 and 1 ; the solitary supporter of Berkshire was how-
ever a notable exception, being no less a personage than
Nicholas Felton, who had recently resigned the headship of
the college for the see of Ely, — a prelate eminent alike for
his learning, sound judgement, and unfeigned piety. At
Peterhouse the voting was 5 for the duke and 1 for the
earl ; while Sidney, under Ward's influence, exactly reversed
the voting at Pembroke, giving 6 to the earl and 1 to the
duke. But no college shewed so little disposition to sup-
port Buckingham as Queens', where only one voter, a certain
' Ludovicus Wemes'Y appeared on his side, while no less
than 16, — among them Dr George Porter, the solitary doctor
who supported Berkshire3, — stood ranged in opposition.
Emmanuel gave a scarcely less pronounced and similar
response, by voting 12 and 4, Anthony Tuckney appearing
1 Williams, who availed himself of
this occasion as an opportunity for
regaining Buckingham's favour, com-
plained bitterly that he had been
represented as using his influence on
the other side : ' All my chaplains in
Cambridge,' he wrote, ' voted with
your Grace to bee chancellour, of the
which number Mr Eoe was one, who
(if I bee rightly inform'd) made the
complaint unto your Grace that he
was solicited to the contrary by a
friend of his that had belonged unto
mee.' Letter to Buckingham, 3 Feb.
162f . State Papers (Dom.) Charles I,
vol. Lin, no. 15. It is not improbable
that these representations were the
basis of the reconciliation which
subsequently took place between the
chancellor and his discarded friend.
In the following year the two came
together in the contest over the
Petition of Eight, when Williams
pledged himself to ' be his Grace's
faithful servant in the next session
of parliament.' 'Blessed be God,'
says Hacket, ' that they parted then
in perfect charity, for they never
met again.' Life of Williams, n 80;
Gardiner, Hist, of England, vi 277-9 ;
340.
2 Possibly the same as the ' Dr
Welmes ' named by Mede (Court and
Times of diaries the First, i 139) as
likely to succeed as master of Benet
College, on the setting aside of the
election after Dr Walsall's death.
See infra, p. 69.
3 ' We had but one doctor in the
whole town durst (for so I dare
speak) give with us against the duke,
and that was Dr Porter, of Queens'.'
Court and Times of diaries the First,
i 109. So too Bush worth : ' His
chief strength consisted in the
Doctors (whereof seventeen were
for him, and only one against him),
and in the non-regents, who are
masters of arts of five years stand-
ing and upwards. Among the regents
(who are masters under five years)
thirty more were against him than
for him, and four whole colleges
were entire against the Duke.' Col-
lections, 1 371-3 ; Bennet's Collections
(Emm. Coll.), i 182.
CONTEST FOR THE CHANCELLORSHIP. 59
in the former number. Christ's College, notwithstanding v CHAP, i. ^
the example set by Mede, was equally or nearly equally
divided. Jesus gave 1 and 3 ; Magdalene and Trinity Hall
each 2 for Berkshire ; while no vote is recorded on the part
of any member of St Catherine's.
That the contest was essentially one between the two Real nature
J of the
great theological parties of the time can scarcely be contest
doubted1, but it may be questioned whether the motives
which actuated the Puritan voter were quite as disinte-
rested as it has been assumed. Mede, it is true, writing
under pressure and when the excitement was still at its
height, would lead us to conclude that the compulsion
resorted to was entirely on one side, and that, had voters
been left to exercise their own discretion, the earl of Berk-
shire would certainly have carried the day. It is, however,
deserving of note, that Thomas Ball, Preston's favorite
pupil and at this time fellow of Emmanuel, writing two
years after the election, distinctly asserts that not a few
voted for Buckingham under the influence of more disin-
terested feelings than those which actuated Berkshire's
supporters2! Of the whole election it may be said, that
the feeling it excited in Cambridge during its progress, and
its value as an illustration of academic history, combine to
make it one of the most important the university ever
witnessed; while, serving as it did to accentuate the mis-
trust of the universities which already brooded in the minds
of the great majority in the House of Commons, it was
followed by results which continued to operate long after
1 ' ...the whole party which had servants unto the tymes, and it is
seen with displeasure the continued beleeved it had been carried for him
attacks of the Commons upon against the Duke, if the wisedom of
Montagu rallied round the Duke.' Dr Gostlin, then vice-chancellor, and
Gardiner, Hist, of England, \i 115. some others who superintended the
2 Ball, apparently unaware that scrutiny had not prevented it.' Life
Buckingham was really the royal of Preston (ed. Harcourt), pp. 142-3.
nominee, tells us that the Duke was The assertion that ' it was whispered
believed by some to be declining in among Berkshire's supporters that,
the royal favour and that his ' glory' even as it was, an impartial scrutiny
was looked upon as 'departed.' He would have converted their oppo-
then goes on to say: ' The Earle of nents' victory in to a defeat' (Gardiner,
Berkshire, therefore... was set up vi 116), is evidently the exact contrary
against the Duke, and many voted of what Ball intends to convey.
for him that loved greatness and were
60 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
those who took part in the proceedings had all vanished
from the scene.
Official intimation of his election was forthwith forwarded
to the new chancellor by the hands of Reading, one of the
ham^"g" esquire bedells. In a brief letter to the vice-chancellor,
mentswofehfse" Buckingham, in the first instance, contented himself with
both to the the assurance that the friendly feeling which he had always
University . . J J
and to entertained towards Cambridge was now enhanced by a sense
Gostlm. »
of personal indebtedness, while his obligations to Dr Gostlin
himself were such as he would be ' reddie upon any occasion
to acknowledge1.' A longer letter, addressed to the vice-
tettorT™ chancellor, heads and senate of the university, followed soon
after. There was nothing, the writer assured those whom
he addressed, that he held more dear than ' the good opinion
of learned and honest men ' ; he could not however attribute
the honour they had done him to any personal desert, but
to the respect they bore 'the sacred memory of my dead
master the King of schollers, who loved yow.' He concluded
by asking their advice and suggestions, as to ' how wee may
make posteritye remember yow had a thankfull chancellor
and one that really loved yow and your universitye2.'
courtesy of The feelings of Berkshire appear to have been rather those
Berkshire . e . i , «
under his of gratification at having been able to run so formidable a
competitor so hard, than of chagrin at defeat. He too
forwarded a letter, addressed to Granado Chester3, expressive
"jmie'ieaj. of his sense of the kindness designed him by his supporters
in proposing to confer upon him ' one of the greatest honours
of this kingdome so often wedded by men of high places
and noble families of this realm,' and concluded by assuring
them that, ' as he had his first breeding to his great honour
at Cambridge,' so he was still determined to 'live and dye
His the true servant of the university4.' His subsequent rela-
connexion tions, however, brought him into contact with Oxford rather
with Oxford. ...
than with Cambridge: for in 1628 he was appointed lord
1 Cooper, Annals, ra 190. The Baker MS. XLI 164.
original of this letter (in which the 3 ' We were an headlesse com-
day of the month is wanting) is in pany, and he could not direct it
the University Registry. otherwise.' Letter from Mede, Hey-
- Ibid, in 192-3. Original in wood and Wright, n 345.
Registry. See also Rushworth, i 373; 4 Cooper, in 189.
THE CROWN AND THE UNIVERSITY. 61
lieutenant of Oxfordshire, was -subsequently elected high . CHAP. T.
steward of the city, and in 1636 received the honorary
degree of M.A. from the university. In marked contrast to
Buckingham, he lived to approve himself a staunch supporter
of the royal cause in the Civil War, to witness the Restora-
tion, and eventually to die full of years and honours.
In the mean time, parliament, on hearing of the result of p"j.^"ntf
the election to the chancellorship, became, to use Mede's btam"gcking"
expression, ' wonderfully exasperated.' The House, resolving el(
itself into a grand committee, briefly discussed the evidence,
and then reported as its decision, that, just cause of offence Proceedings
having arisen, the university of Cambridge should be called commons :
. June 5 — 7.
upon to send a deputation duly to inform the House respect-
ing the whole transaction. A letter to this effect was drawn
up and reported by Pym and had already been twice read,
when a royal message was received by the chancellor of the
exchequer commanding him to signify the king's pleasure
that ' the House forbear to send this letter1.' According to
one of Mede's correspondents, Charles justified his interfer-
ence by pointing out that the university was entitled to elect
whom it pleased2 ; and even Gardiner admits that, in having
recourse to so high-handed a proceeding, parliament was
'venturing upon unsafe ground.' The spirit of the whole
academic body was, indeed, evidently roused ; arid Dr Eden,
master of Trinity Hall, had already, in his capacity of mem-
ber for the university, protested against the sending of the
above missive. Even Joseph Mede, notwithstanding that his
sympathies were with the defeated party at the election, does
not attempt to conceal his satisfaction when recording the
royal interference and its result. 'So it stayed,' he writes,
' for that time, and they will (as I ever thought) find, not-
withstanding their mighty threats, that they do but beat the
wind and strike at sprites. Sure I am that ours fear no
colours, but I may say no more3.' The Commons, conscious
1 Journals of the House of Com- (4th series), x 467.
mons, i 866-7. ' The Lower house * Harl. MSS. 390, fol. 73 [quoted
was never more violent than now by Gardiner, vi 116].
against the Duke.' Letter of Edward s Court and Times of Charles the
Christian : _see Notes and Queries First, i 110.
62 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. that their procedure called for some explanation, now pleaded
that 'in the manner of the election there were many pas-
theaHouw sages likewise done in contempt of the House,' and besought
of Commons. „ IT i • i • i •
Charles ' to believe that neither in this nor in any other thing,
this House did or shall intend to enlarge their own power
and jurisdiction to the diminution of his Majesty's right or
prerogative1.' The king perceived his advantage and with
unwonted tact availed himself of it, in a reply which is note-
The ro ai wortny as embodying what may be termed the Stuart theory
refationsVf16 °f ^ne relations of the Crown and the universities until the
to'the™" downfall of the dynasty. It was couched in the following
Universities : .
7 June 1626. terms :
' That the University of Cambridge and all Corporations
derive their right and privilege from him; and that he hath
reason to esteem the universities above any other, and is resolved
to defend them against any, which either wilfully, or by chance,
shall go about to infringe their liberties. Concerning the election
itself, his Majesty is far from conceiving it a grievance ; for he
never heard that crimes objected were to be taken as proved ; or
that a man should lose his fame or good opinion in the world
upon an accusation only.
' But whereas you say in the manner of carriage of the
election there were many passages done in it to the contempt of
the House : his Majesty is well pleased that you enquire and
punish the offenders, if there be any that have misbehaved them-
selves in that respect. But for the election itself, or the form of
it, his Majesty doth avow his first message2.'
Hostile The royal reply marks the completion of the rupture
feeling in J r J r
fvo'kijT611' between the Commons and the dominant party in the uni-
ifrirorsit1/. versity, and for a time the Cambridge chancellor and the
treatise of the Cambridge divine became the chief objects of
attack in parliament. It was moved that the king's answer
should forthwith be taken into consideration; while the
Committee of Religion again reverted to the question of
Montagu and his book. Then came a royal mandate for-
bidding all further discussion of these burning topics in the
The House House. Then the House turned upon Buckingham himself,
calls for the
Buckutgimm. formally urging his dismissal, — for ' until this great person,'
the missive said, ' be removed from intermeddling with the ,
1 Cooper, Annals, ra 190. 2 Ibid, m 191-2.
THE INSTALLATION OF BUCKINGHAM. 63
great affairs of State, we are out of hope of any good success1.' v CHAP, i.
Then Charles in high displeasure prorogued parliament, and charies
for a year and nine months the voice of the national assembly K3BS*:
J • 26 June 1626.
was no longer heard.
The exultation of the university at its victory over the interchange
* •'of courtesies
Commons was, at first, unbounded. The king had long {£^°n|}e
before transmitted his thanks to the entire body for ' the gl'ty Univer~
honour done to a Person wee favour out of a loyall respect
had unto our self/ with the assurance, that ' as we shall tife KJng°m
i» -n i • i i /> i • i « *>"> June.
ever justefy Buckingham worthy of this youre election, soe
shall you find the fruite of it2.' The university, in return,
enlarged upon the obligations under which it had been
placed alike by king and chancellor. Charles's ' admirable {^veMity*6
goodness,' they declared, had led him ' to thank them 8th June-
for doing themselves a kindness3!' In replying to Buck- {Cwnfham:
ingham's request that they would advise him as to the 8th June'
mode in which his gratitude might find the most acceptable
expression, they altogether deprecated the notion, — the ducal
mind alone could decide what monument of his goodwill
would most fittingly shew forth the noble purpose by which
he was actuated4! Opportunity, however, was before long
afforded for a less formal exchange of views. On the 12th
July, the vice-chancellor, heads, and other dignitaries set
out for London for the purpose of installing the new chan-
cellor. They rested at Ware for the night and presented ^fJSon at
themselves on the following day at York House. At the i3°juiy waT
reception, the duke solemnly bound himself by oath to a
twofold obligation : firstly, himself to observe and to see that
others observed, the laws, privileges, and customs of the
university; and secondly, faithfully to discharge the duties
of his office. The proceedings, marked with much quaint
1 Gardiner, Hist, of England, vocas, qua potissimum ratione, quo
vi 119. digno monumento, tuam in nos
2 Cabala, p. 203; Cooper, u.s., amoris memoriam posteritati con-
m 193. secres ; verumenimvero, illustrissime
8 ' At tua admirabilis bonitas non Dux, indulgentissimeque Cancellarie,
patitur nos gratis nobismet ipsis major est ea provincia, quam ut nos
benefacere, sed tibi imputari vis earn subeundo simus, quod tuo amori
quod nobis fecimus beneficium.' par sit monumentum, tuum potest
Cabala, p. 257. solummodo excogitare ingenium.'
4 ' Adextremum, nos ad concilium Ib. p. 126.
64 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. detail (faithfully recorded by Mede)1, concluded with a ban-
quet of ostentatious magnificence, which is said to have cost
the chancellor two thousand pounds2. The latter ceremony
was marked by an incident of some importance to the uni-
versity. When the cup went round to the health of the
no health- noble host, it was noted that Preston failed to drain it, as the
others had done, ' but drunk but very little, and so delivered
it unto the next.' A neighbouring doctor of divinity marked
the omission and openly criticised his conduct. The master
of Emmanuel altogether repudiated the notion of having
designed any disrespect to their new chancellor, but pleaded
that he was 'not skilfull in the lawes of drinking healths.'
It is to this trifling circumstance, however, that his biogra-
pher refers the subsequent breach in the relations between
Buckingham and Preston. The former, he says, ' finding that
he could not win Dr Preston and make him his, could not, in
a way of policy, but labour and resolve to wrack and sinke
him3.'
We hear, indeed, but little of Preston after the banquet
at York House. But the fact that he meditated leaving
England and living in retirement at Basel, suggests the
His last changed conditions of his career at Cambridge. At the time
appearance
in public. Of tne iH_fated expedition to the Isle of Rhe, he was preach-
ing before Charles at Whitehall, and dared to predict the
woes that would light on England for her desertion of the
struggling cause of Protestantism abroad, in a manner which
alarmed the royal advisers4. In the course of the ensuing
week, came the news of Buckingham's ignominious retreat,
and Preston, in the eyes of all London, seemed a seer5. Be-
20 July lek fore another twelvemonth had elapsed he had passed away, —
a worn-out man of forty, in whom the ardent spirit had
prematurely wasted the vital powers. He bequeathed an
ample endowment to his college, and it was almost with his
1 See Append. (B) : The Marnier p. 93.
of the Presentation of the Duke of 3 Ball, Life of Preston (ed.
Buckingham his Grace to the Chan- Harcourt), pp. 143-5.
cellorship of the University of Cam- 4 Ibid. p. 154.
bridge. 5 Ibid. pp. 156-9.
2 Diary of Walter Yonge, Esq.,
BACON AND CAMBRIDGE. 65
last breath that he prayed that ' Emmanuel might continue a CHAP.I.
flourishing nursery of religion and learning1.'
The year 1626, fraught with such notable experiences in
the history of the university, was also marked by the loss of
some of her most distinguished sons. In the month of April Death of
died Francis Bacon. True, to the last, to Cambridge and to 9 APril 1626-
the cause of science, he had formed the design, set forth in His designed
. -11 ' • i . . benefactions
his last will, of founding in the university a lectureship in to both .
* universities.
natural philosophy, with ' the science in general thereunto
belonging2.' A second lectureship was to be founded at
Oxford. To Williams3, on whom it would devolve as his app"^^'8
executor to carry this design into execution, Bacon now com- executor: MS
municated his intention. We have already noted that, in tomato™
his comparative retirement at Buckden, the interest of the the sole
* beneficiary..
former in the welfare of his university had undergone no
diminution, and he at once made a bold attempt to divert
the entire benefaction to Cambridge, — Oxford, he urged,
being already provided for in this respect by the recent
benefaction of Sir William Sedley4. ' The two universities/
he writes, ' are the two eyes of this land, and fittest to con-
template the lustre of this bounty : these two lectures are as
1 ' His bookes and all his furniture or physic, as long as he remains
and goods belonging to, and in his lecturer ; and that it be without
lodgings at, Emanuel College, he difference whether he be a stranger
gave to one of his pupils that was or English ; and I wish my executors
fellow there, whom he always greatly to consider of the precedent of Sir
favoured. Some exhibitions he gave Henry Savil's lectures for their better
to schollars there, to be disposed of instruction.' Letters and Life, vn
from tyme to tyme by him that was 544-6.
executor.' Urid. p. 172. His papers 3 — 'now no longer Lord Keeper,'
were bequeathed to his intimate observes Mr Spedding, ' or in favour
friend Sibbes, the master of St at Court, and in a disposition towards
Catherine's Hall. Sibbes's Works Bacon very different from former
(ed. Grosart), i li. manifestations.' Ibid, vn 545.
2 Originally, Bacon designed that 4 A lectureship in natural philo-
there should be tivo lectures at both sophy had been founded by Sir
universities, intending, apparently, William Sedley, Bart., of Hart Hall,
that the subjects of the second who by his will (29 Oct. 1618) be-
lectureship should be left to the queathed the sum of £2000 to
discretion of his executors or of the purchase lands for the endowment,
university authorities. The con- Sir William married the only daughter
ditions of the natural philosophy and heiress of Sir Henry Savile,
lectureship were to be as follows : — whose example would accordingly
' none shall be lecturer (if he be appear to have been operative both
English) except he be master of arts at Oxford and Cambridge. See supra,
of seven years standing, and that he note 2, and Wood-Gutch, H ii 869
be not professed in divinity, law, and note 3.
M. III. 5
66
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
Growing
admiration
of Bacon at
Cambridge
before his
death.
, the two apples of these eyes. An apple when it is single is
an ornament; when double, a pearl or blemish in the eye.
Your lordship may therefore inform yourself if one Sidley of
Kent hath not already founded in Oxford a lecture of this
nature and condition. But if Oxford be in this kind an
Argus, I am sure poor Cambridge is a right Polyphemus ; it
hath but one eye, and that not so steadily or artificially
placed. But bonum est facile sui diffusum : your lordship
being so full of goodness, will quickly find an object to pour
it on. That which made me say thus much, I will say in
verse, that your lordship may remember it better, —
Sola ruinosis stat Cantabrigia pannis,
Atque inopi lingua desertas invocat artes1.'
Bacon, however, with all his regard for Cambridge, had
the general advancement of learning yet more at heart, and
appears not to have admitted the force of Williams' ingeniously
urged argument. But in less than four months after the
above letter was penned, he himself fell a martyr to the
cause which he had so long and faithfully served, and it
soon transpired that the funds resulting from the sale of his
estates would not suffice to give effect to his generous designs.
When the tidings of the lord Verulam's death reached
Cambridge, the sense of the loss which the university and
science had sustained rose superior to considerations of court
favour. The town recalled his services as lord steward ; the
university, his disinterested care for her interests when serv-
ing her as standing counsel and as her representative in
parliament, the lustre shed upon her annals by his wide-
spread fame. Already not a few at Cambridge were becoming
dimly conscious that Francis Bacon had no peer among her
sons. His Essays were universally admired, and the catalogue
of Williams' French books, in his library at Buckden2 (a col-
lection of some 600 volumes), shews him to have been the
possessor of the earliest French version3; while Joseph Mede,
1 Spedding, Letters and Life, vn
547 ; where, for ' disertas,' as printed,
we should probably read desertas.
2 See supra, p. 38 n. 2.
3 This, judging from the title,
must have been the Essais Moraux
...Traduits en Francois par le Sieur
A. Gorges, Chevalier Anglois. Jean
Bill: Londres, 1619.
BACON AND CAMBRIDGE. 67
in the year preceding the author's death, had forwarded to _ CHAP, i.
Sir Martin Stuteville a copy of the new English edition in
quarto, as the most acceptable present he could offer his
distinguished relative1. Samuel Collins, after reading the
Advancement of Learning, declared that he 'found himself in
a case to begin his studies anew and that he had lost all the
time of his studying before2.' At the very time, indeed, that
court influence, as wielded by Laud, was being exerted to
revive the study of Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas at
both universities3, the Baconian philosophy was rallying to a
new standard some of the most original minds in Cambridge.
Bacon himself, strongly as he condemned the prevailing
methods of academic learning, was not unconscious of a cer-
tain appreciation as he laid at the feet of his Alma Mater
each new trophy of his genius4; of that estrangement from
the university which the singular silence of all his biogra-
phers might lead us to infer, we meet with no evidence
whatever. It is as her ' son and nursling ' that he presents
his Novum Organum5. It is ' as a son,' repaying his indebted- Sdebtetow
ness as far as it is in his power,' that he forwards his De university.
Augmentis ; while, in presenting a copy of the same work to
his own college, he writes : ' inasmuch as I imbibed my first
draughts of knowledge at your sources, I have thought it
1 ' On Saturday (unlesse you pro- against school divinity, whereas King
hibit me) I will send you my Lord James and King Charles commanded
Bacons Essays newly enlarged both young students in divinity to begin
in the manner of handling and with Lombard and Aquinas.' State
number of the heads, in a faire print Papers (Dom.) Charles the First,
in quarto.' MedetoSirM. Stuteville, cxcrn, no. 91.
21 May 1625. [For this extract from 4 See Grosart's Herbert (m 434-5)
the Harleian MS. I am indebted to for letter to Bacon on the receipt of
Dr Peile.] In the ninth volume of his Instauratio.
Proceedings of the Cambridge Anti- 5 ' Cum vester films sim et alum-
quarinn Society (pp. 227-237) I have nus, voluptati mihi erit partum meum
called attention to some of the main nuper editum vobis in gremium dare :
facts connected with the, as yet, aliter enim velut pro exposito eum
unwritten chapter of Bacon's life, haberem.' Letters and Life, vn
dealing with his relations with his 135-6. Cf. Vol. n of this History,
own university. p. 573. Of the manner in which
2 Rawley, Life of Bacon (ed. one of Bacon's autograph letters was
Spedding), p. 16. allowed to disappear from the Uni-
3 We find Nich. Ganning, fellow versity Library, Bradshaw has given
of Corpus, objected to as a dis- a pathetic account in his pamphlet,
putant at the Commencement of The University Library, p. 17.
1631 on the ground that he ' railed
5—2
68
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
Tribute
paid by
Cambridge
to his
memory.
Deaths
of Bishop
Andrewes,
Dr Walsall,
and Dr
Gostlin.
right to return to you the increment of the same1.' How
widely and how warmly these feelings were reciprocated,
Cambridge herself was perhaps not fully aware until he was
beyond the reach of all human sympathy, but not a few of
her ablest and wisest sons now united in laying on his tomb
the customary academic tribute to departed merit. Of these
compositions, Rawley, his secretary (a former fellow of Corpus),
appears to have become the depositary. They were all, he
assures us, of more than ordinary merit, but the number was
so considerable that he was fain to give only a selection when
editing them for the press2. The volume was not printed at
Cambridge, nor did the vice-chancellor, as was usual, occupy
a foremost place among the contributors3, — the majority of
whom, veiled under initials, appear to have been Trinity men.
But the names of Samuel Collins, George Herbert, James
Duport, William Bos well4, together with that of William
Atkins, Bacon's own servant, seek no disguise; and the
verses, one and all, amid much that is fantastic in conception
and overstrained in expression, are animated by a common
sentiment, — that of deepest admiration for his genius and
confidence in the permanence of his fame. Rarely has the
contemporary estimate formed by a learned community of
one of its own members been better justified by the sequel!
Scarcely had the great Verulam been laid to rest in the
church of his titular domain, when bishop Andrewes, his
intimate friend, to whom when in perplexity he had often
had recourse for advice, passed away at his palace at South-
wark. Within a few weeks of the contest for the chancellor-
ship, Dr Walsall's place at Corpus knew him no more, and a
dispute that arose with respect to the choice of his successor
gave occasion for Buckingham's first interference in a college
1 Letters and Life, vn 438-9.
2 ' Neque vero parca manu sym-
bolum conjecerunt in eum musae ;
plurimos enim, eosque optimos ver-
sus, apud me contineo ; sed quia ipse
mole non delectabatur, molem baud
magnam extruxi.' Of Bawley's se-
lection, a copy (a small quarto of
seventeen leaves) is in the British
Museum. This was reprinted in
Harleian Misc. (x 287-301) under
the title ' Memoriae Honoratissimi
Francisci, Baronis de Verulamio,,
Vice-Comitis Sancti Albani, sacrum.'
3 Monk, Memoir of Duport, Museum
Criticum, u 676.
4 Whether this be Sir William
Boswell, the former fellow of Jesus.
College and the friend of Joseph
Mede, I am unable to ascertain.
INTERFERENCE OF THE CROWN.
69
election1. The death of Dr Gostlin, the vice-chancellor, and
the election of John Batchcrofb as his successor in the master-
ship of Caius, afforded a pretext for royal interference, as
little justifiable as, in the former case, the chancellor's inter-
position had been distinctly beneficial. Charles, it would
seem, had intended to recommend some other person to the
fellows for their election, but was forestalled by their prompt
action. On hearing however of Batchcrofb's appointment, he
forthwith instituted a peremptory enquiry into the circum-
stances under which the election had taken place. Mede, in
his alarm at the precedent thus set up for an ex post facto
interference in such important transactions, declared that it
seemed likely to bring about ' the utter overthrow of all
elections of masters for ever2.' His apparent ignorance of
the exercise of the royal prerogative in such elections in the
preceding century is deserving of note, and would lead us to
infer that, since the passing of the Elizabethan statutes, it
had been very sparingly exercised3.
CHAP. I.
Interference
of the Crown
in election to
the master-
ship of Caius
College:
Oct. 1626.
1 ' Upon the decease of Dr Walsall,
Mr John Mundey, B.D., was made
choice of for his successor on the
4th of August 1626 ; but the number
of votes being equally divided be-
tween him and Dr Butts, and one of
them being his own and that the
casting vote, his election, upon an
appeal of five fellows to the chan-
cellor, was adjudged not to be legal,
and was accordingly declared void
and his name erased out of the books.'
In their petition to Buckingham the
fellows describe Mundey as ' a man
neither in degree of schooles, nor for
abilities of learning, nor for sufficiency
of living equal to his competitor.'
Masters-Lamb, p. 165.
2 ' On Saturday came down Dr
Mawe, with a commission from the
King to the Heads, to inquire and
certify him : (i) What public proof
of his sufficiency in learning, by any
public exercise, and of his manners,
by his carriage, the new elect hath
given, as is fit for a man to be in
that place and rank, (ii) What he
is in respect of his degrees taken
in the sciences to his predecessors,
the former masters of that college,
(iii) Whether he was elected and
qualified according to statute. The
doctors have had their meetings,
and are divided. The courtiers, Drs
Mawe, Wren, and Beale, over-furious
against him ; vice-chancellor, in-
different ; Collins, Mansell, Ward,
Butts, eager for him. He was chosen
with unanimous consent of all the
fellows ; one only that was absent
sent, notwithstanding, his consent
under his hand.... According to the
college statute, he is every way
qualified. There are near 200 of us
have given our hands we think him
fit for the place, at the intreaty of
the fellows.' Court and Times of
Charles the First, i 169. ' According
to the Annals, the opposition to
Batchcroft was almost entirely the
work of Robert Lane, D.D., of St
John's.' Venn, Biog. Hist, of
Gonville and Caius College, m 86.
3 See Vol. n 71-72. Corrie (His-
torical Notices of the Interference of
the Crown, etc., pp. 51-52) altogether
passes by this notable instance, and
cites the Injunctions of 1629 (infra,
p. 98) as the earliest example in
Charles's reign of the 'Sovereign
claiming the right of supremacy
over individual corporations as well
as over the university generally.'
70
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
Successful
administra-
tion of the
latter.
In the month of November, Dr Hills, the master of St
Catherine's College, died suddenly1, a death which occasioned
an important change in connexion with that society, for John
Hills was succeeded in the mastership by Richard Sibbes.
The former, who must have found it no easy task to sustain
the traditions bequeathed by Overall2, appears to have left
little mark on the history of the college3, but under Sibbes'
short but effective nine years' rule the society again revived.
Sibbes, who had received his education at St John's, where
he was for some time a fellow, and who, like Preston, held a
lectureship at Gray's Inn, — a tribute to his high reputation
as a preacher, — appears to have attracted to the little society
an amount of public interest which resulted in a considerable
increase in its endowments; while, in the language of his
biographer, ' he procured good means and maintenance by
his interest in many worthy persons for the enlargement of
the colledge, and was a means and instrument to establish
learned and religious fellows there, insomuch as, in his time,
it proved a very famous society for piety and learning, both
in fellows and scholars4.'
The excitement consequent upon the election to the
chancellorship had not yet died away, when both town and
1 — ' well on Sunday and eat his
meat, though troubled with a cough,
died suddenly yesterday morning at
Fulbourne, his parsonage.' Medeto
Sir Martin Stuteville (23 Nov. 1626) :
Court and Times of Charles I, i 173.
2 See Vol. ii 500.
3 See the Bp. of Bristol's History
of the college, who concludes that
Hills ' could not quite be trusted with
even the goods and utensils of the
Lodge,' p. 93 ; see also p. 107.
4 Clarke's Lives (ed. 1677), p. 144.
The following enumeration of bene-
factions during Sibbes' mastership
serves to illustrate the statement in
the text : Dr Gostlin, in his last will
(9 Oct. 1626), left the rents and
profits of the Bull Inn for the found-
ing of six scholarships ; Mrs Julian
Stafford, of Harlow, in Essex, gave,
in the following year, a benefaction
for ' four poor scholars students in
divinity,' reserving to ' my good friend
Mr Richard Sibbs, if he be living,
after the decease of my said husband
and myself '...' the use and occu-
pation during his life of the house...
commonly called the Chantry house.'
Thomas Hobbes, of Braintree, in
Essex, in 1631, left cottages and
lands for a like purpose, enjoining
that ' the sons of godly poor ministers,
painful in the work of the Lord, shall
be especially respected before others ' ;
Emmanuel is coupled with Catherine
Hall in this benefaction, but it is
stipulated that ' a priority of respect
in selection of the said scholars '
shall be had to the latter society ' if
any such shall be there to be had
and elected, especially so long as my
worthy friend Doctor Sibbs shall
continue master of the said Hall.'
See Documents relating to St Catha-
rine's College, pp. 104-113 ; also
Sibbes' Works (ed. Grosart), i Ivi ;
Baker MSS. v 165.
THE 'BOOK FISH.' 71
university were alike disquieted by the occurrence of a singu- CHAP, i.^
lar natural phenomenon. On Midsummer eve, a volume con-
taining three pietistic treatises1 was found in the belly of a
cod fish exposed for sale in Cambridge market. One of the {^l^1*^
bedells thought the incident sufficiently remarkable to be Fisll-'
brought under the notice of the vice-chancellor, by whom it
was looked upon as of the greatest gravity, and an incident,
which a century later would have been regarded with no
other feeling than that of amusement, appeared to both the
learned and the vulgar of Cambridge an event fraught with
dismal portent. The appearance of some gigantic comet in
the heavens could hardly, in fact, have been the occasion of
greater dismay. Thomas Fuller, at this time a bachelor at J^ment on
Queens', relates the circumstances in a manner which shews th
that his keen sense of the ludicrous enabled him to rise
superior to the superstition of his time. The book, he tells
us, 'was wrapped about with canvass, and probably that
voracious fish plundered both out of the pocket of some
shipwrecked seaman. The wits of the university made
themselves merry thereat, one making a long copy of verses
thereon, whereof this distich I remember :
If fishes thus do bring us books, then we
May hope to equal Bodlyes library.
But whilst the youngsters disported themselves herewith, the
graver sort beheld it as a sad presage2.' Among those of
'the graver sort' was the exemplary master of Sidney, Dr
Samuel Ward, who thought the prodigy worthy of being
reported in all its details to his friend, archbishop Ussher.
His correspondent fully shared his views. 'The accident,'
wrote the chief scholar of the Ireland of those days, ' is not
lightly to be passed over, which, I fear me, bringeth with it
too true a prophecy of the state to come : and to you of
Cambridge, as you write, it may well be a special admonition,
1 Vox Piscis : or the Book Fish Milbourne 1627. ' The Preface is
contayniitfi Three Treatises which Dr Goads.' Mede to Sir Martin
were found in the Belly of a Cod-fish Stuteville (9 Dec. 1626) : Heywood
in Cambridge Market, on Midsummer and Wright, n 351.
Eve last, Anno Domini 1626. London: 2 Worthies of England, i 562
printed for James Boler and Robert (quoted by Cooper, Annals, m 196).
72
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
Visit of the
Chancellor :
March 162§.
The
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY.
which should not be neglected.' It says more for Ussher's
heart than his head that he takes occasion to turn the event
to profit, as suggestive of the desirability of laying aside
private animosities and combining ' to promote the cause of
God1.'
In the following year, in the month of March, the chan-
cellor visited his university. Mede, in his study at Christ's,
could hear the bells pealing and 'the posts winding their
horns in every street.' In the densely thronged senate house,
Buckingham took his seat, attired in a master of arts' cap,
gown, and hood, and admitted certain noblemen and others
to a like degree. Laud was incorporated D.D. from Oxford
and took the customary oath to observe the privileges of
his new university, a pledge which was not forgotten by
Cambridge in after years. The chancellor, according to Mede,
spoke only 'two words of latine, — placet and admittatur' ;
and he proceeds to tell us how Buckingham dined at Trinity,
'had banquets' at King's, St John's, Clare Hall, and else-
where; how 'he was on the top of King's College chapel, but
refused to have his foote imprinted there as too high for
him2'; how that 'he was wonderfull courteous to all scholars
of any condition both in the Regent House where every one
that came in had his grace's congie, and in the towne as he
walked if a man did but stirre his hatt he should not loose
his labour3.'
The shape which Buckingham's munificence was to
assume was now definitely arranged. For some eighty years
past, the scanty stores of the university library, much di-
minished by pillage, and with many of the volumes which it
1 Ussher, Works, xv 346. So
Baker : ' This alarmed good men,
and several accounts were sent of it,
particularly by Dr Ward and Mr
Mead in two letters to bishop Usher,
who looked upon it as an admonition
of providence to prepare for suffer-
ings.' It marks the decline in
superstition, when we find Baker (a
century later) observing that he
' should hardly have mentioned '
' the accident ' . . . ' had it not been
thought worth notice by two such
great men.' Baker- Mayor, p. 218.
2 So Sir Simonds D'Ewes, in his
Diary (27 Aug. 1627), writes: —
' being come early to Cambridge, I
shewed my wife divers of the colleges,
and we went both up to the top of
King's College Chapel, on the south
side whereof, upon the leads, my
wife's foot was set... and her arms
cut out within the compass of the
foot, in a small escutcheon.' p. 359.
3 Court and Times of Charles the
First, i 202, 204-5.
THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY. 73
still retained divested of their pictures and ornamental work, CHAP,
had been lying in archbishop Rotheram's building, on the
first floor of the east wing of the Schools Quadrangle. The
'Old Library,' on the first floor of the south wing, had ceased
to correspond to its name, being used as a lecture room and
as a place for the performance of the prescribed exercises.
In 1586 a grace had passed the senate empowering the
vice-chancellor and proctors to restore the room to its
original use, it being expressly stated that many persons
were prepared to bestow large donations of books on the
university, provided that the necessary arrangements were
made for their reception. A considerable outlay was accord-
ingly at once made in fitting up the room with presses and
shelves. We hear, however, of no books being placed there \
for Dr Perse's intended benefaction for the erection of a new
library, as we have already seen, had lapsed, owing to the
fact that the work had not been put into execution within
the time required by the donor2. A like condition, imposed
in connexion with a bequest originally intended for a distant
foundation, promised however eventually to result in a great
gain to Cambridge. Archbishop Bancroft, when bequeathing ^"
his valuable library, had directed that it should pass into
the hands of his successors in the see of Canterbury, but it
was on condition that they should successively give security
for the due preservation of the collection in its entirety;
otherwise, the books were to be kept back to adorn the as
yet unerected walls of King James's Chelsea College3, a design
which had enlisted the primate's warmest sympathies. But
the bequest to the future college was accompanied by the
condition that the buildings were erected within six years,
and that period had now elapsed; while Bancroft's will had
directed that, as a second alternative, the books were to be
transferred to the university library at Cambridge4. The
university library now stood, accordingly, in the place of
Chelsea College ; and, amid the darkening aspect of political
1 Willis-Clark, m 27-28. 4 A catalogue of the books is pre-
2 Vol. n 551. served in the University Library
3 See supra, p. 25. (MS. Eb. 9. 5).
74 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. affairs, it was impossible to say how long the primate himself
might be able to hold his own at Lambeth and to provide
for the safety of his predecessor's collection. At the same
time it was evident that should Bancroft's library ever arrive, —
and other like bequests, it was rumoured, might be expected, —
it was especially desirable that the books should be suitably
housed. But Dr Perse's munificent design had, as we have
already seen1, been completely frustrated ; and the East
Room on the first floor of the existing quadrangle still
represented, apparently, the extent of the actually available
accommodation. It was consequently with something like
exultation that the lovers of books in the university now
learned that the solution of their difficulties was at hand,
the new chancellor having announced his intention of
contributing the sum of £7000 to defray the expense
ussherShop °^ an entirely new edifice. The advocacy of Ussher had
the claims of brought to accomplishment what neither lord Brooke2 nor
S?t™1Budcke- Robert Johnson3 had been able to bring about ; and writing
from London to the master of Sidney, the archbishop of
Armagh reported that he 'had dealt very effectually' with
'Buckingham in the matter, 'to which' he added, 'he is him-
self exceeding forward4.'
Bucking- In order to acquire the entire site for the new erection
ham's
theerection" (wnich nad already been decided on), it became necessary
*° ^UJ ou^ *ne tradesmen, mostly booksellers, who occupied
the tenements situated on the north side of what was then
known as Regent Walk, a short street leading directly from
the west door of Great St Mary's to the central door, or porch,
of the Schools Quadrangle5. The occupants, however, proved
exorbitant in their demands, and valuable time was wasted in
endeavouring to bring them to more reasonable terms. 'We
talk here,' wrote Joseph Mede to Sir Martin Stuteville, 'of a
magnificent new library which our great chancellor will
1 Vol. n 551-2. touching the houses and ground be-
2 Willis-Clark, in 36. tween Gains College and the Regent
3 Vol. n 552. Walk, whereon his grace intended to
4 Letters (ed. Parr), no. 109. raise a publick library in Cambridge:
5 See The Certificate made to the 29 Jan. 162|. Heywood and Wright,
most illustrious Duke of Buckingham n 359.
ASSASSINATION OF BUCKINGHAM. 75
build' 'All the houses between Caius College and St v CHAP, i.
Mary's must be pulled down to make room. I wish he might
never do worse deed; but I doubt, I doubt1,' — and his mis-
givings were only too well justified.
In 1628 Parliament had reassembled, and Montagu and Renewed
o strife in
his defender, Cosin of Caius College, along with Mainwaring ^ "«££*
of Oxford, — the new assertor of the royal prerogatives, — fh^House:
were again reported by the Commons as offenders for the
consideration of the Committee of Religion. Then came the
Petition of Right, in connexion with which Williams vainly
essayed the part of mediator. The prorogation of Parliament
soon followed; and within another fortnight Montagu was
nominated to the see of Chichester2. 'More obliged unto
your noble self than to any one,' wrote the bishop designate
to Buckingham; but, on the very day when his consecration
took place at Croydon, there came the tidings of his patron's BucMng-
± ham s as-
assassination at Portsmouth ; the scheme of a new library for IfA^'iess.
the university had again to be abandoned; and Bancroft's
books did not reach Cambridge until the days of the
Commonwealth.
Although throughout the country at large the hated'
favorite's end was greeted with exultation, the university
was almost panic-stricken at his death, for brief as had been
his tenure of the chancellorship, Buckingham had already
given convincing proof of his generous intentions towards
Cambridge. He had presented new silver staves for the t^hseervices
bedells3, 'with the King's and his own arms ensculped university-
thereon'; and, at the suggestion of Ussher, had purchased in
Holland the famous collection of Oriental manuscripts (chiefly
Arabic) acquired by Erpenius, who had been carried off by
the plague in 16244. The purchase was completed by the
1 Court and Times of Cfiarles the Peterhouse Fellows were consecrated
First, i 208. to the episcopate,' — Mawe, to Bath
2 Dr Walker (Peterhouse, p. 100) and Wells, Walter Curie to Kochester.
is of opinion that Peterhouse was 3 ' He gave the bedells their old
regarded with special favour by silver staves and bestowed better and
Buckingham on account of the sup- bigger on the university.' Fuller-
port which Dr Mawe had given Prickett and Wright, pp. 311-2.
the former in the election to the * Professor of Oriental languages
chancellorship ; and he notes it as a at Leyden, d. 13 Nov. 1624 ; see infra,
significant fact that on Sept. 7 ' two p. 93. ' To this day the people of
76 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. widowed duchess, and in 1632 the collection was handed over
to the university. Other services, not formally recorded, in
matters probably of greater moment, had served to create a
lively feeling of gratitude; and a letter from the academic
authorities, written on the eve of the chancellor's contem-
plated departure for Rochelle, expressed a sense of no ordinary
obligation to one, to whom, in common with the entire
residential body, they declared themselves indebted for
priceless blessings, — the university 'peaceably governed, its
privileges vindicated, the treasure, the liberty, the life itself
bestowed on the Muses1.'
Charles The foremost defender of the Montacutians being now no
and Laud
suppress*0 more, both Charles and Laud thought they could discern a
ersy' favorable opportunity for permanently discouraging such
controversies in future. As Gardiner has clearly pointed out,
neither the king nor the bishop had any taste for dogmatic
controversy; and while the former relied on the bishop for
guidance in religious questions, the latter, who in the month
of July had been translated to the see of London, regarded
all theological disputes with contempt, as calculated 'to dis-
tract the clergy from their real work2.' That such disputes
were a growing evil which called for rigorous repression, more
than one example in both universities, of very recent occur-
rence, might have been cited by Laud in evidence.
Leyden cannot understand how the secretary, Doctour Mason, interverted
transaction was managed ; they say the bargain, and gave the poor
that a large instalment of the pur- widow for them five hundred pounds,
chase money had already been paid a summe above their weight in silver,
by the Corporation, but yet that by and a mixed act both of bounty and
some means the manuscripts were charity, the more laudable being
never delivered, and that they have much out of his natural element.'
reason to believe that some of them Life and Death of Duke of Buck-
are at Cambridge, and some perhaps ingliam, in Reliquiae Wottonianae (ed.
elsewhere in England. True it is 1654), p. 98.
that they are all here, and we know l See a contemporary translation
whose liberality we have to thank of a Latin letter sent by the Senate
for them ; indeed, among them are 7 July 1628, in Cooper, Annals,
some of the most valuable books m 202-3; Baker MS., x 360; Ussher's
which the library now possesses.' Letters (ed. Parr), nos. 98, 99, 100 ;
Henry Bradshaw, The University Wotton's Remains, ed. 3, p. 233 ;
Library, p. 18. According to Sir Letters to Ussher in Mem. et cor-
Henry Wotton, the manuscripts were respondance de Duplessis Mornay,
'upon sale to the Jesuites at Antwerp.' xi 143.
' Whereof the Duke getting know- 2 Hist, of England, vn 20.
ledge by his worthy and learned
THEOLOGICAL ZEALOTRY. 77
The father of Thomas Fuller had received his university CHAP. i.
education at Trinity College, and thither the son would also
have probably gone, had it not been that, in the mean time,
his maternal uncle, Davenant, had been elected president of
Queens'1. To Queens' College, accordingly, young Fuller pro-
ceeded. Among those with whom he there became acquainted THOMAS
was one who especially moved him to wonder, — a wonder not ^nters ,
» Queens
unmingled with amusement2. This was Thomas Edwards, iuSLVmi
his senior by three years, — Milton's 'shallow Edwards,' after- Awards
wards notorious as the author of Gangraena. Edwards was student"
already beginning to give evidence of that impetuous tern- d. 1647.
perament which ultimately carried him altogether beyond the
bounds alike of Christian charity and worldly discretion. But,
for a time, his vehemence and extravagance appear to have
been set down to mere youthful effervescence, while his
undeniable ability was recognised by his appointment as
university preacher. By a small circle of admirers, indeed,
he was even looked upon as a coming leader of religious
thought and styled 'the young Luther.' At length, however,
his elation and vanity led him into excesses which could not
be overlooked. He deemed himself one inspired, and in a ^on at
sermon at St Andrew's Church inculcated doctrine which
could only be regarded as subversive of all authority in matters
of belief, whether spiritual, secular, or academic. He was
committed to custody, and on being called upon to give an
explanation of his language, ultimately made a public recan- ^S
tation in St Andrew's Church, at the same time endeavouring 6 APn11628-
to explain away his intemperate invectives by declaring that
he intended simply to dissuade from obedience to superiors
when such compliance involved 'anything contrary to the
Word3.' Edwards soon after left the university and attached
himself to the presbyterian body, becoming notorious as one
1 The father's younger son, John, my contemporary at Queens' Colledge,
entered at Sidney; but this was who often was transported beyond
7 Feb. 1623, after Davenant had due bounds with the keenness and
succeeded to the bishopric of Salis- eagerness of his spirit, and therefore
bury. He is described as ' son of I have just cause to suspect him.'
Thomas Fuller, B.D., fell. Trin., Fuller, Appeal of Injured Innocence
Preb. Sar.' Baker MSS. xi 356. (ed. 1659), pt. vn 502.
2 ' I knew Mr Edwards very well, 3 Heywood and Wright, n 363.
78
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
v *
Henry
Burton :
6. 1578.
d. 1648.
His earlier
career.
Alexander
Gill:
b. 1597.
d. 1642.
His
exultation
at Oxford
over the
fate of Buck-
ingham.
Like mani-
festations
on the
Continent.
of the most virulent and unsparing assailants of the various
forms of doctrine taught among the Independents1. Henry
Burton of St John's, whom we have already noted as one of
Montagu's most violent assailants2, chagrined at his dis-
missal by Charles, on the latter's accession, from the office of
clerk of the closet, and still more so by the fact that the post
was now tilled by his personal enemy, Neile, was little molli-
fied by his presentation to the rectory of St Matthew's, Friday
Street. He availed himself of his city pulpit as vantage
ground from which to assail both the episcopal order and the
Anglican ritual; and in 1627 was cited before the Privy
Council for his Baiting of the Popes Bull. He however
evaded punishment, notwithstanding the marked animosity of
Laud, and subsided for a short time into less dangerous
speculations, after the manner of Mede, on portions of the
Apocalypse3.
At Oxford, the blatant sectarianism of Alexander Gill
the younger, the teacher and friend of Milton at St Paul's
School, who openly exulted over Buckingham's fate by
drinking to the health of Felton along with members of his
own college of Trinity, aroused the stern anger of even the
tolerant Chillingworth, and marked the offender out for
condign punishment which was averted only through the
intercession of Laud4. On the continent, a notable volume
had just appeared from the press at Copenhagen5; it was
the work of a retired physician, one Caspar Bartholinus, who
maintained that the study of the Scriptures themselves was
1 For his subsequent career, see
the sketch of his life by Mr Alsager
Winn in D.N.B.
2 Supra, p. 51.
3 The Seven Vials, or a briefe
Expositionupon the Wand 16 chapters
of the Revelation. 1628.
4 See Masson, Life of Milton, i
207-13 : we may conjecture that it
was really at the intercession of
Chillingworth, at the time a newly
elected fellow of Trinity and a god-
son of Laud. One of the two com-
rades with whom Gill was drinking
at the college butteries, was no less a
person than John Craven, afterwards
the founder of the scholarships which
bearhisname. SeeBlakiston, Trinity
College, pp. 112-3.
5 Bartholinus was a medical prac-
titioner at Copenhagen who, in his
old age, abandoned science for
theology. His treatise, de Studio
Theologico compendiaria et genuina
tamen Ratlone incoando et con-
tinuando breve Consilium (Hafniae,
1628), is valuable for the evidence
which it affords of the extent to
which, in the universities ruled by
the Tridentine decrees, the Scriptures
themselves were at this time almost
altogether neglected.
SUPPRESSION OF THE APPELLO. 79
the chief duty of the theologian ; while, at nearly the same CHAP, i. ^
time, Jean Daille put forth his treatise on the Right Use of
the Fathers, altogether impugning the Anglican standpoint.
Such was the condition of affairs in the theological world
which may be said to have ushered in the famous Declara- The DE-
tion, prefixed in the Book of Common Prayer to the Thirty- Nov- 1628-
nine Articles, enjoining that 'all further curious search be A,u wrestins
of the mean-
laid aside, and these disputes shut up in God's promises, as A^ies6
they be generally set forth to us in the Holy Scriptures, forbidden-
and the general meaning of the Articles of the Church of
England according to them ; and that no man hereafter shall
either print or preach to draw the Article aside any way, but
shall submit to it in the plain and full meaning thereof, and
shall not put his own sense or comment to be the meaning
of the Article, but shall take it in the literal and grammatical
sense1.'
In pursuance of this notable injunction, and with an
obvious desire to administer its provisions with apparent
impartiality, a royal proclamation, issued a few weeks later,
gave orders for 'the calling in' of Montagu's Appello, ' as
the first cause of those disputes and differences which have 17 Jan. i62§.
sithence much troubled the quiet of the Church2.' The
bishop of Chichester yielded prompt obedience. He forth-
with wrote a letter to the primate, disclaiming all design of
seeking to uphold Arminianism; his submission was accepted
with equal promptitude ; a formal grant of the royal pardon Montagu is
effectually shielded the author of the Appello from further and
proceedings by the Commons; and when, on its reassembling,
that body proceeded to assert its right to maintain a theory
of doctrine and discipline which ran counter to the Declara- d^soTv"*!?1
tion, its dissolution forthwith put an end to its existence for i62».arc
1 ' By coulour of this Declaration,' opposition.' Canterbiirie'sDoome,pp.
says Pry nne, 'and pretended amnesty 160-1. 'How many,' asks Gardiner,
of silencing both sides, the Anti- ' who see it ' [the Declaration] ' in
Arminian truths and received doc- the present Book of Common Prayer,
trines of our Church, came to be are aware of its historical import-
totally silenced, suppressed in presse, ance?' Hist, of England, vn 23.
pulpit, si-liixili't, iniircrxitifs, and the 2 Bymer, Foedera, xix 26; Gardi-
Arminian errors found free passage ner, Hist, of England, vn 23.
in them all without any or very little
80 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. another eleven years, and Laud, now both bishop of London
Ascendancy an(j chancellor of the university of Oxford, stood master of
of Laud and <l
waltoros0/ the situation. Williams, who might have rallied the mode-
rate party against him, was himself in disgrace, having been
denounced by the Star-Chamber in 1633 on a charge of
betraying State secrets entrusted to him as a privy councillor.
The charge itself was frivolous; but in endeavouring to repel
it, he became involved in serious difficulties, partly the result
of his own rash subterfuges in order to extricate himself.
For the next nine years he was in disfavour at court, and
was ultimately sent to the Tower. In the mean time, Cam-
bridge suffered not a little at the hands of his successful
rival, and must have often deplored the absence of her once
sequences as powerful advocate, — ' as far as it is possible to argue from
thetotorian. cause to consequence,' says Gardiner, ' if Williams had been
trusted by Charles instead of Laud, there would have been
no Civil War and no dethronement in the future1.'
fstfmateof The point of view from which the philosopher contem-
contJoveVsy. plated these and similar controversies is nowhere better
illustrated than in the writings of the great Verulam, who
passed away when the Montacutian controversy was at its
height. To us, indeed, it is better known than it was to
his contemporaries, for his Advertisement touching the Con-
troversies of the Church of England, as we have already noted2,
was not printed until sixteen years after the author's death.
Had he lived to see the rise of the Cambridge Platonists,
it is difficult not to suppose that the more rational spirit
and enlightened erudition of that famous school would have
drawn from him sincere, if qualified, commendation, but it
may safely be asserted that on dogmatic intolerance, whether
Puritan or Anglican, he looked with almost equal aversion3.
1 Hist, of England, vi 340. to have considered them peculiar to
2 Vol. ii 438, n. 2. himself. ' On his tombstone,' says
3 It is however deserving of note Walton, ' twas directed by him to
that Sir Henry Wotton, the biographer be thus inscribed: Hie jacet hujus
of Buckingham and a writer whose sententiae primus auctor : DISPUTANDI
genius was admired by Bacon, dying PRURITUS ECCLESIARUM SCABIES. No-
ten years later than the philosopher, men alias quaere.' Walton, Lives
and fully sharing his views on this (ed. 1796), p. 179.
broad question, appears nevertheless
BACON ON THEOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY. 81
To him it seemed that the true remedy for this ceaseless and . CHAP, r.
unprofitable warfare was to be sought neither in attempts to
arrive at some well-sustained logical solution of each theo-
logical difficulty nor in the authoritative suppression of all
controversy whatever1. He looked with equal disapproval
upon the Appello Caesarem, upon Sutcliffe's projected Col-
lege, and on the Declaration. It was the aim of Verulam to
divert men's minds from these barren logomachies to other
fields of enquiry, — fields capable of bearing ' fruit' ; and had
his designs found effect and his influence prevailed, the
foundation of the Jacksonian professorship would have been
anticipated by a century and a half, and that of the Regius
professorship of History by nearly a hundred years !
It was in May 1568 that Fulke Greville, first lord Brooke, £™*?LU!
coming up from Shrewsbury School, matriculated as a fellow- BBOOKB:
commoner at Jesus College. As the friend of Sir Philip <i. im.
Sidney2, of Sir Edward Dyer, of Spenser and Giordano
Bruno, as the trusted counsellor of king James, and the
patron of Speed, Camden, Overall, and Samuel Daniel, he
may well be supposed to have acquired, elsewhere than at
Shrewsbury and Cambridge, such an amount of discernment
in liberal studies as would enable him subsequently to rise
superior to the traditional university education of his day.
But in the design which Greville formed towards the close
of his life, of founding a historical chair in the university, £fv£"'^th
there is good reason for inferring that he was especially hSica?
guided by the teaching of Bacon.
It was about the year 1595 that Brooke's cousin, young
Fulke Greville, also went up to Cambridge to study, and
was favoured by the earl of Essex with a letter of advice as
to his work, which there is little doubt was really from the
1 In his De Aug mentis (written in 2 Fulke Greville and Philip Sydney
1623) , he regards with complacency entered at Shrewsbury, each aged 10,
the leisure which ' the greatest wits ' on the same day and in the same
might henceforth look forward to, year (17 Oct. 1564). Sir Henry
owing to ' the consumption and ex- Sydney, writing to his son two years
haustion of all that can be thought later, says : ' I have receaved two
or said on religious questions, which letters from you, one written in
have so long diverted many men's Latine, the other in French.' Sydney
minds from the study of other arts.' Letters (ed. Collins), i 8.
Philosophical Works, v 110.
M. III. 6
82 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
v CHAP, i. pen of Bacon, and it has accordingly been printed by Mr
abridge6- °f Spedding as such in his edition of Bacon's Letters1. The
bTa^oided. gist of the advice here given is, to avoid the use of abridge-
ments (or, as Bacon terms them, 'epitomes'), — elsewhere
denounced by him as 'the corruptions and moths of history2.'
' I hold collections under heads and commonplaces,' he goes
on to say, ' of far more profit and use ; because they have in
them a kind of observation, without the which neither long
life breeds experience, nor great reading great knowledge.'
Passing on to the question that naturally arises as to what
authors are the most profitable for the student thus to
occupy himself with, Bacon takes occasion to declare that he
' infinitely reverences ' ' the judgement of the university'; but,
undervalued after making this prudent reservation, he goes on to say that
teaching the text-books commonly prescribed bf the teachers are by
body in the J J
university. no means to be looked upon as the most profitable for the
student, and for this reason, ' that all or most of grounded
judgement3 do only follow one of the three professions,
divinity, law, or physic ; and are strangers to the books your
abridgers should read, because they despise them.' Passing on
to the authors themselves, he thus speaks of the historians :
' Of all stories, I think Tacitus simply the best ; Livy, very
good; Thucydides above any of the writers of Greek matters;
and the worst of these, and divers others of the ancients, to
be preferred before the best of our moderns.' But ' to speak
plainly of the gathering of heads or commonplaces,' he says
man's'note- ^n conclusion, ' I think first in general that one man's notes
will little profit another, because one man's conceit doth so
much differ from another's; and also because the bare note
itself is nothing so much worth as the suggestion it gives the
reader*.'
In such phrase, — words well deserving to be inscribed in
gold on the walls of every lecture-room in every university, —
1 Letters, n 21-26. their travel.' Ibid, n 23.
2 — 'they that only study abridg- 3 Meaning, apparently, those whose
ments, like men that would visit all judgements had been matured by a
places, pass through every place in complete course of academic study.
such post as they have no time to 4 i.e. when taken in connexion
observe as they go or make profit of with the original text.
use.
BACON ON HISTORICAL STUDY. 83
did Bacon sum up his advice to the Cambridge freshman of CHAP. i.
his day ; and the connexion between that advice and the Bacon's
design, now formed by lord Brooke, of founding a lectureship probable
in the university, becomes at once apparent when we recall ders°gnefor a
that it was the son of the recipient of this letter whom ifnSry?
Brooke adopted as his own son and heir. That the letter
became an heirloom in the family, and that its contents must
have been well known to lord Brooke himself, seems accord-
ingly an almost inevitable inference, while his own personal
relations to the writer are attested by the fact that it was
he who in a manner stood sponsor for Bacon's Life of
Henry vn with the Crown, and that the publication of
that masterly composition was authorised on his recom-
mendation. The ' Ordinances ' which, with the assistance
of his chaplain, William Burton, he now drew up for ' A
Publique Lecture of Historic1,' inoperative although they
practically remained, acquire consequently a special interest
as additional evidence of the spread of the Baconian influence
in connexion with Cambridge studies.
Originally, it was lord Brooke's design that the right of The design
& . J' . ..... of the fouiid-
presentation to the new chair should remain in his family in ati°n as .
J subsequently
perpetuity. To the Heads, however, this proposal appeared S1,
so objectionable that, after the founder's death, a committee
was appointed by royal commission to hear the case argued.
It was composed of certain of the Heads, together with lord
Brooke's executors and his kinsman and successor in the
title, Robert Greville. And the committee, with the sanction
of lord keeper Coventry, decided to vest the presentation in
the university2. The election was to take place every five
years ; and on each occasion the vacancy was to be duly
published before a congregation of the regents and non-
regents ' in the usuall place and forme,' when the Ordinances
were to be read in their hearing by the senior proctor. A
day (' after the sixt and before the tenth day ') was then to
be fixed by the vice-chancellor for proceeding to the election.
In order that the right of choice might not become practi-
cally vested in the larger colleges which, by combination, might
1 See Appendix (C). 2 See Appendix (D).
6—2
84
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. L
All the
colleges to
have an
equal voice
in the
election.
The pro-
fessorship to
l>e open to
foreigners
but not to
anyone in
holy orders,
it being the
founder's
design to
encourage
secular
learning in
relation to
secular
affairs.
A knowledge
of foreign
countries
and lan-
guages to be
held a recom-
mendation.
manage to ' exclude the lesser from any possibilitie to prefer
anie of theirs, though perchance more worthy,' it was pro-
vided that each college should ' depute five persons, of whom
the master or head, and in his absence the vice-master or
president,' was to be one, who in conjunction with certain
specified members of the university ' should have their
suffrages in the election.' On the appointed day, the entire
body of electors was to assemble in the Regent house and
make solemn oath that they would vote only for the candi-
date whom they regarded as most competent for the office ;
caeteris paribus the outgoing professor was to be preferred ;
but all candidates were to be masters of arts and of not less
than five years' standing or thirty years of age. A foreigner
was to be considered eligible, but no one ' in holie orders '
was to be considered so, — 'as well,' says the ordinance,
' because this realme affordeth manie preferements for
divines, fewe or none for professors of profane learning,
the use and application whereof to the practise of life is the
maine end and scope of this foundation : and also because
this Lecture must needs hinder a divine from the studies
and offices of his callinge, due to the Church.' ' Such as
have travelled beyond the seas,' says a further ordinance,
'and soe have added to their learning knowledge of the
moderne languages and experience in foreigne parts; and
likewise such as have been brought upp and exercised in
publique affairs, shalbe accounted most eligible, if they be
equall in the rest1.'
That these ordinances were the outcome of the founder's
own views, admits of no question; but before, apparently, any
scheme could be matured and presented for acceptance to the
university, lord Brooke had sought to instal his lecturer.
Cambridge, however, — at no period of its past history con-
spicuous for devotion to historical studies, — seemed to possess
no scholar whose attainments and abilities adequately corre-
sponded to the founder's ideal, and in default he turned to
1 These highly characteristic ordi-
nances (with a few omissions) will be
found in Appendix (C), being printed
from the copy preserved in the Eolls
Office,— State Papers (Dom.) diaries
I, cxrv, no. 67.
LORD BROOKE'S LECTURESHIP. 85
Leyden, at this time at the summit of her fame and outrival- VCHAP. r.
ling alike Padua and Paris. Preeminent for varied learning,
even in Leyden, stood Gerard Vossius; and it seems not unlikely
that some intimation of Brooke's design had already reached
him, for only a short time before, he had dedicated his famous
treatise, de Historicis Latinis, to Buckingham1. He was now y®™^
solicited by Brooke to occupy the new chair at Cambridge. ,?n"-itedlfo
But Leyden, unwilling to lose so able a teacher, threw declines0 tif'-r
stronger inducements into the opposing scale, and Vossius
elected to remain where he was2. Another member of the
same university, a rising scholar named Isaac Dorislaus, who
had been for some time settled in England, was next
approached and with better success. He now appeared in
Cambridge, the bearer of a letter from Charles himself,
formally apprising the university of Brooke's design and
intimating the royal pleasure that Dorislaus should be forth- ^fp
with assigned a time and a place for the delivery of his
lectures3. Like Erasmus, the new teacher was a foreigner;
while, unlike him, he was no theologian; and both these facts
would tend in those times to cause the majority of the
academic body to regard him with some suspicion. The
study of history itself was still held in little honour, and the Dearth of
J •* f historical
few scholars by whom it was pursued in England had scarcely ^j*^
as yet aspired to interpret the lessons of the past in a spirit
worthy of Macchiavelli or Bodin. Knolles, the author of the
Historie of the Turkes and the translator of Bodin, and
Raleigh, in his History of the World, had indeed furnished
1 ' I had a letter from Mr Vossius Laud), which states that Charles had
before Christmas, with a book of the promised Gerard Vossius to make his
Latin historians, which he lately set son a fellow of some college in Cam-
forth and dedicated to my lord the bridge, and that he has sent letters
duke of Buckingham.' Ward to Us- to Jesus College requiring the fellows
sher : Ussher, Work*, xv 404, i 113. to choose John Vossius on the next
2 The List of the Fellows of vacancy, and the bishop is requested
Jesus College appended to Sherman's to nominate him. He is not to fail
MS. Historia Collegii Jesu contains herein, because ' the honour ' of his
the following entry : ' 1629. Joannes deceased friend, the late Duke of
Vossius LLB. Joannis Gerard: Vossii Buckingham, 'is engaged in it.'
nlius, mandate Dni Regis admissus. State Papers (Dow.) Charles I, CXLH,
— JStas parentum pejor avis tulit | no. 81. The elder Vossius had won
Nos.' — There is a letter (14 May 1629) Laud's good opinion by his work on
from lord Dorchester to Buckeridge, the Pelagian heresy.
bishop of Ely (a draft corrected by 3 See Wren's letter, infra, pp. 86-88.
86
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
Ward's
letter to
Usslier (16
May 1628)
describing
the circum-
stances
under which
Dorislaus
commenced
his lectures.
Wren's
letter to
Laud :
16 Dec. 1627.
admirable models of descriptive narrative not unaccompanied
by indications of some critical power ; while the style of
Daniel, in his History of England, seems almost an anticipa-
tion of the age of Dryden. But even these achievements
were accomplished at a distance from both the English univer-
sities, where historical studies excited but a languid interest
save in so far as they served to illustrate the all-absorbing
study of prophecy, itself a study pursued in a spirit not
unlike, and with a learning hardly superior to, the precon-
ceptions and the culture with which the subject had been
approached by Augustine at Hippo twelve hundred years
before.
Foremost among the representatives of this school at
Cambridge, stood the excellent, albeit somewhat superstitious,
master of Sidney College. From him Dorislaus met with a
kindly welcome, was invited to make his house his home1,
and received a sympathetic support which also led, six months
later, to the composition of a letter which has preserved to
us some details of the circumstances under which the new
lecturer commenced his labours, as regarded by a friendly and
fairly impartial critic. By others, however, the advent of the
foreign scholar, — 'bred,' to use the expression of Fuller, 'in a
popular air/ — was regarded with very different feelings; and
by Matthew Wren, now master of Peterhouse and dean of
Ely, with especial distrust, — distrust which was in no way
disarmed by the fact that the foreigner in question was
married to an Englishwoman and already 'very much Anglized
in language and behaviour2.' Within ten days of the delivery
of Dorislaus's first lecture, Matthew Wren, now a diligent and
obsequious courtier, had communicated to Laud, in a letter3
carefully considered and written in the neatest of hands, his
impressions and misgivings with respect to the new lecturer.
1 ' The Doctor kept with me while
he was in Town.' Ward to Ussher :
Ussher's Works, xv 404. There is a
pleasant postscript to Ward's letter
which gives us a glimpse of the
relations of some of the leaders of
thought at the university at this
time : ' Mr Whalley and Mr Mede
are both in good health, for which
friends I am beholden to your lord-
ship, though you take Mr Bedell
from me. Dr Chaderton also is in
health.' Ibid, xv 405.
2 Fuller-Prickett and Wright,
p. 313.
3 State Papers (Dom.) Charles I,
LXXXVI, no. 87.
ISAAC DOKISLAUS. 87
' At my comming home to Cambridge, I found here one CHAP, i.
Dorislaus, a Dor of the Civill Law at Leiden, sent hither by
the lord Brooke (whose domestic he now is) with his Majesties
letters also to this effect, that we should assigne him a Schole,
Dayes, and Houres wherein to read a History-Lecture. The
Annals of Tacitus (he sayd) were by his Lord (the Founder of
the Lecture) appoynted him for his Theme1. His first Lecture
(December 7th) did passe unexcepted at by any that I could
meet with. But yet I forebare not to shew the Heads in
private, that it contented not me, bycause howere he highly
praeferd a Monarchic before all other formes, and ours above
all, yet he seemed to acknowledge no right of Kingdomes, but
whereof the people's voluntary submission had been the Principium
Constitutionum. The second Lecture, December 12, was stored
with such dangerous passages (as they might be taken) and so
appliable to the exasperations of these villainous times2, that I
could not ahstayne before the Heads there present to take much
offense that such a subject should be handled here, and such
lessons published, and at these times, and E cathedra theologica,
before all the university. The Vicechancelor came in late and
heard him not : but I required him to looke to it. He presently
tooke 2 Senior Doctors aside, who stood nearer and heard better
than I myselfe did, and enquired of them. But they (as he told
me) did somewhat blaunch it, bycause he had used some distrac-
tions towards the end which might well satisfie all. Still I was
urgent with the Vicechancelour to advise what were titt to be
done, and Dr Eden3 joyning stiffely with me, at last he promised
to call for the copies of his Lectures. Out of which I privately
gathered the passages, which I send here to your Honr in the
enclosed paper. A Congregation had been cald before, agaynst
the next day, of purpose to incorporate him here a Dor with us.
But that being in my power this yeare, as I am De Capite
Senatus pro facultate theologiae, I made stay of that, though
otherwise the gentleman (comming to me about it) gave me as
much satisfaction as in such a case could be. -Surely he has
1 Here the effect of Bacon's letter former kings ; and so, among many
to young Greville (supra, p. 82) other things, descended to the vin-
appears to be clearly discernible. dicating of the Netherlanders for
Ward says : — ' where his author retaining their liberties against the
mentioning the conversion of the violences of Spain. In conclusion,
state of Rome from government by he was conceived of by some to speak
kings to the government by consuls too much for the defence of the
(by the suggestion of Junius Brutus), liberties of the people: though he
he took occasion to discourse of the spake with great moderation, and
power of the people under the kings with an exception of such monarchies
and afterward.' Ussher, «.«., xv as ours, where the people had sur-
403. rendered their right to the king, so
2 ' When he touched upon the that in truth there could be no just
excesses of Tarquinius Superbus his exception taken aaainxt him.' Ibid.
infringing of the liberties of the 3 Master of Trinity Hall,
people, which they enjoyed under
88 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. good learning, and seemes to be very ingenuous, and not to have
spoken anything malitiously, but partly out of some wrong
grounds of history and politicks (as I shewed him) and cheefely
out of inexperience of our State, he thought that what they
heare with applause in their owne country, might as freely be
spoken anywhere ; for which he is now very sory that he was so
fouly mistaken. In the end, the Vicechancelour assembled the
Heads, to whom their Dor manifested such ingenuous signes of
his sorrowe, and professions of his readiness to give satisfaction
in any kind, that it was agreed the Vicechancelour should send
him to some one of our freindes among the Lords of the Counsell,
with letters testifying what I have here related to your Honour,
and yf need were to expect further directions. My Lord elect of
Winton was then named, but since I perceive that ' he will write
to our gratious Chancelour also, bycause we are more then afrayd
that this stumble at first entrance may breaks the neck of the
foundation of the lecture intended by the Lord Brooke.'
With an earnest request that his name may not be allowed
to transpire, lest he should thereby incur 'the reproach of
being a Delator,' the writer concludes his letter. The result
which he affected to deprecate, but to which his interference
so materially contributed, of 'breaking the neck of the founda-
tion,' unhappily ensued. ' My lord elect of Winton,' — no other
than Richard Neile of St John's College, to whom Laud had
been largely indebted for his advancement, — was in full
sympathy with his former chaplain, and although my lord of
Durham had just been relegated to his northern see, there
were not a few others besides Dr Montaigne who could well
remember the burning, in the Regent Walk, of the works of
Paraeus2. It were well that the ominous precedent, estab-
lished in connexion with the great teacher at Heidelberg,
should not become operative against the new teacher from
Leyden ! In short, Wren's representations, according to Ward,
had so far weighed with Bainbrigg that, in his capacity of
vice-chancellor, he had forbidden Dorislaus to continue his
forbidden to 11/^1 i
lecture. lectures ; but the Oaput, on being appealed to, revoked the
prohibition. It was, however, renewed at Laud's instance,
and this time by a royal injunction. Further representations
at Court were successful in bringing about the withdrawal of
1 Wren evidently means ' but since then I have learned that,' etc.
2 See Vol. n 563-4.
ISAAC DOEISLAUS. 89
this prohibition also. But then, when all further difficulties v CHAP, i.
had been removed, the founder himself lost heart over his
project, and, chagrined with its miscarriage, penned a letter
to Dorislaus, which Ward says he saw, 'to will him to be srone HO quits
J O Cambridge,
into his country, but he would assure him of his stipend1.' ^ooke"1
There is good reason for supposing that Brooke still cherished Sfhlg8 llim
the hope that Dorislaus would some day resume his lectures le<
under happier auspices; for, by a codicil to his will, made
between February and September 1628, he nominated him
to be lecturer on his foundation for life2, but we have no
evidence that Dorislaus ever lectured at Cambridge again.
To quote the pregnant language of Fuller, a resident in the
university at the time of this episode, the unfortunate scholar,
'accused to the king, troubled at court, and, after his sub-
mission, hardly restored to his place... was himself made an
history at his death, slain in Holland, when first employed
ambassador from the Commonwealth unto the States of the
United Provinces3.' It has been noted, indeed, as a singular
coincidence that the chancellor of the university at the time Assassm-
<? ations of
when Dorislaus read his lecture, the founder of the lecture- s^s^fieaf
ship4, and the lecturer himself, all alike met with a violent SSrisiaus,
death at the hands of assassins5.
Although the endowment appears to have been professedly ®{
appropriated to its original purpose long after the death of
both the founder and the first lecturer, the office was pro- ?"?
bably a sinecure. Carter, who attempted to trace the
succession in the chair, could find, at a considerable interval,
the names of only two readers, and these both in 'holie
orders,' while there is nothing to shew that either of them
1 Ussher, Works, xv 404. vantman, one Ralph Haywood, who
2 '...And I do by these presents witnessed his master's will and was
nominate and appoint doctor Isaac incensed at the omission of his own
Dorislaus to be the first reader of the name in it. Haywood, after the act,
said Lecture during his life and to retired to another room and corn-
have and enjoy the said annuity soe mitted suicide, but his victim lingered
long as hee shall continue lecturer on until the 30th of the month.
and attend the said Lecture and B Dorislaus was assassinated by a
duely performe the same there.' band of royalist refugees in revenge
/State Papers (Dow.) Charles I, cxxvi, for the part which he took in the
no. 78. trial and condemnation of Charles I.
3 Fuller-Prickett & Wright, p. 313. This took place at the Hague in May
4 Lord Brooke was mortally 1649. Van Der Aa, Biographisch
wounded 1 Sept. 1628) by an old ser- Woordenboek, i\ 277-8.
90
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
The
university
appeals to
Charles to
appoint
a new
chancellor.
Election of
the Earl of
Holland to
the chancel-
lorship :
Aug. 1628.
His
character.
actually lectured1. He came to the conclusion that the
endowment had lapsed, although 'by what means' he says he
is unable to discover. Baker, some years before, had already
pronounced it to have been ' lost by the iniquity of the
times2.'
In the mean time the university, in no slight perplexity
in deciding on Buckingham's successor, appealed to royalty
for guidance. 'Like a soul without a body,' wrote the vice-
chancellor to Charles, ' she stirs not, till your majesty's
directions breathe life again, in the choice of another.' The
king responded to this appeal by recommending the election
of the earl of Holland, 'lately a member of your owne body
and well knowne to you all, whose hearty affection to advance
religion and learninge generally in our kingdomes, and
especially in the fountaynes, cannot be doubted of3.' Henry
Rich, second son of the earl of Warwick, had been created a
peer in 1624. He had received his education at Emmanuel
College4, and was now in his thirty-ninth year. Not a few
anticipated that he would prove able to serve the university
in a manner inferior only to the intentions of his predecessor.
He was high in favour at Court; had gained the goodwill of
Buckingham by his pliability in connexion with the Spanish
marriage ; and already filled more than one high office of
State. 'A very well bred man and a fine gentleman/ to
quote the description of Clarendon, and noted for his gallan-
tries; but one whose career was marred by a want of principle
and a spirit of reckless self-aggrandizement which ultimately
brought him to the scaffold. No opposition, however, was
offered to his election. In tendering his thanks to the
electors, he could not but refer to the fate of his predecessor ;
and, in solemn terms, which might afterwards well seem to
1 Carter's list (Hist, of the Univ. of
Camb. p. 459) is as follows :
' 1. Isaac Dorislaus.
2.
3.
4. Dr George, canon of Carlisle.
5. Dr Holmes, 1736' [probably
a confusion with Oxford, where,
in this same year, William Holmes,
dean of Exeter, succeeded to the
chair of History].
2 Baker-Mayor, p. 212.
3 Cabala, 388, 205; quoted by
Cooper, Annals, in 207.
4 Both he and his elder brother,
the earl of Warwick, entered the
College in 1603, and both of them
interested themselves actively in the
colonising of America. Shuckburgh,
Emmanuel College, p. 52.
THE LAUDIAN THEORY. 91
foreshadow his own end, adverted to 'the condition of man,' v CHAP, i.
—'so frail and his time so short here1.'
With the voice of the teacher of history silenced, and
controversy in theology and doctrine placed under a ban, Laud's ideal
Laud found himself in a position to give full effect to his education.'1*
own views in relation to the higher learning. Those views
strongly resembled, were in some respects almost identical
with, the theory of education advocated by the Jesuits.
Laud was unquestionably desirous to widen the field of
knowledge in the universities, to render their treatment of
the ancient trivium and quadrivium more intelligent and ^
thorough, and more especially to give to philology an im- Y
portance and a prominence far greater than it had as yet
attained to in any university in Christendom. But here,
like the Jesuit, he halted. He would sanction no effort to
apply the extended knowledge and the deeper insight thus
acquired to the discussion of dogma, or to the existing creed
and organisation of the English Church. Whatever the
study of the Semitic languages might effect in rendering 9
the Old Testament or the commentaries of the Rabbis more The canou ef
Scripture not
intelligible, the canon of Scripture, as sanctioned by the *° be <»!led
» in question,
Church and reproduced in the 'Authorized Version,' must J*™J5^*J*
not be called in question. Whatever a more advanced criti- u^'iabTa
cism and a profounder scholarship might suggest towards investigation.
modifying the interpretation of the New Testament, an 'assent
in general ' would none the less rigorously be demanded for
the Articles ' established in Parliament in the 13th of
Elizabeth2.' But while Laud held that, to quote his own
expressions, it was 'a divine and infallible revelation by v
which the originals of Scripture were first written,' he con-
ceded that a manuscript — ' the copy ' as he terms it — might
be by no means infallible ; and he considered that ' according
to art and science' each manuscript might and should 'be
examined by former preceding copies, close up to the very
Apostles' time3.' And into this channel of activity it appears
1 Cooper, Annals, in 208; Cabala, 3 ' Conference with Fisher ': Ibid.
p. 254. n 112.
- Works (ed. 1849), vi'12.
92 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
- CH^P- L , to have been his aim largely to direct the labour of the
divine and scholar at the two English universities. To
collate the original Hebrew text with Samaritan and Syriac
versions, to ascertain with greater accuracy the genealogy of
the Patriarchs, to transcribe, decipher and elucidate those
numerous manuscripts both in England and abroad, of which
Selden, Ussher and De Dieu had already indicated the
knowledge of importance, would be a bestowal of time and toil which
sour°cefaial would dignify the worker, while it could hardly fail to raise
req£uitye. the reputation of the Church of England for scholarship and
learning. In some measure, doubtless, in that Oxford which
he did so much to adorn, and within the precincts of his own
College with its fair gardens, the former fellow and tutor of
St John's had himself realised the tranquil pleasures of a
life unselfishly given to the attainment of a knowledge of
the Past, — knew something of the joy which comes to the
researcher as in the pages of each neglected manuscript, in
dimly decipherable character and archaic diction, he descries
some item of evidence that serves to amplify or qualify his
impressions of a distant time, — knew how, under the in-
fluence of such experiences, the mind itself becomes more
dispassionate, the judgement sounder, while traditional pre-
judices fade away as we mark the ebb and flow of doctrines
that are no more ! And if, with the recollection of what
took place at Dordrecht ever present to his mind, and the
denunciatory voices at Sion House still ringing in his ears,
Laud came to the conclusion that it would be better both
for Oxford and for Cambridge that, at least for a while, there
Growing should be less of angry controversy and more of genuine
of thTvaiue acquirement, he stood certainly not alone,
ship of the To De Dieu, who taught in the College Wallon at Leyden,
languages: we may fairly assign the credit of having been one of the
i>edDie'uT nrgt to break away from the fatal theory so confidently
rf.i642. advanced by Mede, — that Hebrew was the parent tongue
from whence all other languages were derived, — and to
SCAIIOEE- discern the family relationship of the Semitic group1. But
d.\m'. b°th Joseph Scaliger and Casaubon, a generation before,
1 See Vol. n 418-9.
PROGRESS IN SEMITIC STUDIES. 93
had clearly perceived the collateral service which a know- - — ^-
ledge of Arabic might render to critical researches connected
with the Scriptures. The former, for whom Hallam rightly
claims 'the glory of having been the first real Arabic scholar'
of this period, had, in his de Emendatione Temporum (1583),
made considerable use of Arabic documents, among which
were included not only versions of Aristotle's chief writings
but also of the Old and New Testament. Portions of these
had been given to the learned world by Erpenius, whose fine Erpenius:
collection of Arabic manuscripts was already in Cambridge, ''• 1624-
to have been followed by matrices of all his Oriental founts
had they not been intercepted by Elzevir, the printer, at
Leyden1. James Golius, who now sat in the chair of Erpenius, James
r Golius:
was professor both of mathematics and of Arabic. He com- '>/ l®jj
piled a Latin-Arabic lexicon, corresponded with Descartes,
and was known to a wide circle of scholars and savants
throughout Europe. His brother Peter, who shared his e^g.
linguistic ability, came under the influences of the Counter- d- 1673-
Reformation and deserted the Protestant ranks for those of
Catholicism. He was widely known by his translation of
the De Imitation* into Arabic; and he also rendered valuable
service as a corrector of the proof-sheets of the Bible, in the
same language, which issued from the press of the Propa-
ganda in Rome.
At Cambridge, the earliest representative of these studies
in the first half of the century was William Bedwell, a Thomas
» _ Bedwell:
nephew of Thomas Bedwell, a fellow of Trinity, and well ;'• if.95-
<f ' William
known in his day as a mathematician and engineer, and %*$?$'
himself a scholar on the same foundation. He subsequently
attracted the notice of Lancelot Andrewes, by whom he was
presented to the vicarage of Tottenham High Cross. In
this sphere of labour he managed to carry on his studies,
mathematical as well as linguistic, became the correspondent
of Casaubon and Erpenius, and compiled an Arabic lexicon. £ Y«Ub1J?
1 — 'his matrices of the Oriental treasure indeed, and for which your
tongues are bought by Elzevir the university shall rest much beholden
printer there ; so that now you must to your chancellor. ' Ussher to Ward,
content yourselves with his manu- 23 June 1626. Works, xv 342 ;
scripts only, which are a very rare Letter no. ex.
94 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. But for our present purpose it is more important to note
HIS the emphatic testimony which he bears to the real and
testimony to . '
the practical practical value of a knowledge of Arabic at that time. In
value of the J
langua-e. 1612 he managed to get printed at the Plantin press at
Antwerp a manuscript translation of the Epistles of St John
into Arabic1, made probably in the fourteenth century, and
in his Preface ' to the pious reader ' he sums up in a forcible
manner the various arguments which may be urged on
behalf of the study of the language. He points out the
its use vastness of the area over which the Muhammadan faith
coextensive
mada^is'm™" extended in his day, so that Christianity, he observes, can
scarcely claim to possess a third portion of the inhabited
globe2. And wherever that faith was professed, from the
Fortunate Islands to the Moluccas, there Arabic was both a
written and a spoken language, and in religion the only one.
It was used alike in the charters and diplomatic correspond-
ence of royalty and in the deeds and contracts of noble
value houses and mercantile firms. It is Arabic, moreover, which,
of its
literature nexfc to Greek and Latin, can boast the largest array of
and of its •
works of learning and of general knowledge. In medicine,
affajn what a throng of writers it exhibits, Khasin", Abin-
(&} i € Razis
(b)i.e. ibn Sennam3, Mesuem, Serapion6 ! What a wealth of ancient
Serapion. i-ii • i i • 1-1
literature, moreover, lies hidden in the translations which
it enshrines of numerous Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Persian,
Chaldaean and Egyptian authors, — authors of whom the
original texts have in many cases disappeared, or are extant
acquirement onty in corrupt and fragmentary condition4. Three hundred
^"papaf*1 years before, when Clement v presided at the Council of
Vienne, was it not decreed with a view to the conversion of
1 D. Johamiis Apostoli & Evange- hamedis religio patet, teste Postello,
listae Epistolae Catholicae omnes, ut vix tertia pars terrarum Orbis nobis
Arabicae ante aliquot secula factae, Christianis reliqua sit.' Praef. A 2.
ex antiquissimo MS. exemplari 3 i.e. 'IbnSina' or Avicenna: see
descriptae, et mine demum Latinae Vol. i 98.
redditae, Opera et studio Wilhelmi 4 Compare the language of Castell
Bedwelli Hastingburgensis A . Sax- half a century later, in his Oratio in
onis. Eaphelengii, 1612. Scholis Theoloyicis habita (Londini,
2 ' Ubicunque vero Mohamedis re- 1667), p. 24: — ' quibus omnibus vitiis,
ligio viget, ibi Arabum lingua in manum adferunt medicam transla-
sacris sola in usu est. Hoc ipse legis- tiones Chaldaica,Syriaca, Samaritica,
lator manifestis verbis sub poena Aethiopica, prae aliis autem Arabi-
capitis sancivit. Tantum autem Mo- carum aliqua.'
literatures.
ABRAHAM WHEELOCK. 95
the Infidel that at each great stadium generate1 the Arabic v CHAP, i.
languages should be taught?
None of the reasons which actuated the foregoing scholars
in their efforts to extend the study of Arabic can well have
been absent from Laud's consideration when he established
the professorship which bears his name at Oxford, and it Foundation
of the
was Bedwell's most distinguished pupil, Edward Pococke, § °^^hir
whom he instituted to the post. But Bedwell himself died 1<i32'
at an advanced age in 1632, and Cambridge was under the
necessity of finding a teacher of Arabic for herself.
In the month of November 1629, Holdsworth had been
appointed Gresham Divinity Lecturer in London, and his
lectures, although delivered in Latin, were attended by
numerous auditors2, among whom was a prosperous draper
named Thomas Adams, afterwards Master of his Company sir Thomas
* • Adams :
and Lord Mayor. Adams had been educated at Trinity £ ^f
College and was now well known to the civic community of
London as a staunch royalist and a man of exemplary life.
While at the university he not improbably became acquainted
with Abraham Wheelock, who also graduated from Trinity ^J^^.
and had subsequently held a fellowship at Clare. The £; \f^
latter was at this time in circumstances which led him to
endeavour to combine his tenure of the incumbency of
St Sepulchre's Church with the twofold office of university
librarian and university amanuensis. The office of librarian
was poorly paid, for thirty-seven years were yet to elapse
before the library received its first endowment at the hands
of the generous Tobias Rustat ; and the Registry still pre-
serves the bond in £200 which Wheelock gave for due
discharge of his duties as librarian according to the rules
enacted in 15823. In his performance of those duties he
1 At the Council of"Vienne,inl311, were attended , ' a circumstance which
it had been decreed that Hebrew, is probably to be partly explained by
Arabic and Chaldee should be taught the fact that in those which were
by two teachers of each, at Paris, afterwards published 'many of the
Oxford, Bologna and Salamanca. protestant doctrines and practices are
See Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, vi defended against the Romish Church.'
545 ; also author's History, i 94-95. Lives, p. 57.
2 Ward speaks of 'the great 3 Luard, Chronological List, etc.,
concourse of divines and other p. 7. Wheelock's election was in
scholars, with which his lectures 1629. His necessitous position prior
96 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. approved himself not only a faithful but also a highly
S'unh-ereit intelligent official ; ' traces of Wheelock's hand,' observes
Librarian. Bradshaw (his distinguished successor in the post), ' are
discernible almost throughout the collection as it existed
in his day, and the library seems to have been both well
used and well cared for during his term of office1.' During
the leisure afforded by his fellowship at Clare, Wheelock
had already devoted considerable attention to the study of
the Oriental languages, and more especially to Arabic, and
his own position being now assured, he began to urge upon
his friend Adams the desirability of instituting a chair of
Arabic at Cambridge. He seems to have cherished the
hope that some city company might be willing to provide
the endowment ; Adams, however, saw no hope of help in
this direction, but he generously offered himself to provide
a stipend of £40 for two or three years, on condition that
His Wheelock should be the first professor, and he subsequently
appointment . - , . . _ .
as professor bestowed a permanent endowment on the chair2. In this
of Arabic :
new capacity, Wheelock became distinguished both as a
student and a teacher, and even ventured to essay a formal
' confutation of the Koran3.' This design he was dissuaded
from carrying to completion ; and he next appears as engaged
upon an edition of the Persian version of the Gospels, with
the printing of which he was occupied at the time of his
to that time may be inferred from of any subsequent period down to the
the fact that in 1625 we find John last twenty years.' Bradshaw (H.),
Gostlin, the vice-chancellor, and six The University Library, p. 19.
of the other Heads, signing a letter 2 On Wheelock's appointment
to ' the Bight Worshipfull the Mayor Adams writes, ' I wish you much joy,
and Aldermen of Lyn ' in recommen- in the execution of that hopeful em-
dation of Wheelock 'to be Master of ployment, that you may be deservedly
your Free School, a place inferiour to honored in Cambridge and renowned
his merits, did not his humility and in England.' Baker MSS. xiv 93;
inclination to that kinde of life, move MS. Harleian 7041; Endowments of
him to condescend thereunto.' It is the University of Cambridge (1904),
deserving of note that the writers ed. J. Willis Clark, pp. 172-3.
refer to the giving of such ' testimony ' 3 'I presumed, two years since, to
as ' an antient custom of our Univer- send Mr Hartlib a specimen of my
sity.' Baker MSS. xiv 116. intentions and beginnings of a con-
i — «we certainly know more of futation of the Alcoran; it was,
the library and have more materials according to my poor skill, a discovery
preserved there for its history from of Mahomet's... to raze out of the
what remains to us of Wheelock's faith of the Eastern people the
time and that of his immediate sue- memory of the Three Persons,' etc.
cessor, William Moore, than we have Ussher, Works, xvi 176.
THE STUDY OF ANGLO-SAXON. 97
death. And, finally, he took an active part in drawing up v CHAP, i.
the plan of Walton's Polyglot, in which the correction of the
Arabic and Persian texts was confided entirely to his hands,
his labours being interrupted only by his death1.
The distinguished antiquary, Sir Henry Spelman, whose ,
admission at Trinity dated back to the year 1580, was now a.\
over 70, and although, according to the statement of Sir
Simonds D'Ewes some years before, was then ' very aged and
almost blind,' was notwithstanding deep in his labours on
his famous compilation of the original sources for English
Church History, — a performance which may be said to have
initiated a new phase of historical study. It was owing to
the difficulties which presented themselves in the interpre-
tation of his Anglo-Saxon authorities while he was thus
occupied, that Wheelock, in turn, found himself consulted fe^
by Spelman as to the possibility of founding another chair
at Cambridge, for a lectureship in Anglo-Saxon2. Spelman's
design found an influential sympathiser in Matthew Wren,
by this time bishop of Norwich and dean of the Chapel
Royal; his own official experience suggested a method
whereby to raise the requisite funds ; and eventually the ^
lectureship was established, an endowment being provided
from the stipend of the impropriate rectory of Middleton3, —
1 D. N. B. LX 443. It is to be noted ing of Christian religion to them who
that Wheelock regarded these labours now sit in darknesse. The gentilman
as strictly obligatory on one who you have pitched uppon for your
filled the post of University Librarian. professor, Mr Abraham Wheelocke,
' I am tied ' [i. e. bound], he wrote in we doe every way approve of both for
1652, ' by my places as Librarie- his abilities and for his faithful pains
Keeper and Amanuensis... to promote and diligence in that employment.'
and assist what I can the publishing Ibid, i 236 n.
of the Saxon and Oriental antiquities.' 2 Letters of Eminent. Literary Men
Todd, Memoirs of Brian Walton, i (Camd. Society), p. 153.
232. In 1636, the vice-chancellor 3 Spelman's famous treatise De
and Heads formally thanked Adams, non temerandis Ecclesiis (1613)
on receiving notification of his desire proved, we are told, highly influen-
to settle the professorship ' for per- tial in awakening the consciences of
petuity.' 'The worke itself e,' they lay impropriators, so that during his
add, 'we conceive to tend not only to residence in London, which dated
the advancement of good literature, from the publication of that work,
by bringing to light much knowledge ' there came to him almost every
which is as yet lockt up in that term ' those anxious ' to consult with
learned tongue, but also to the him how they might legally restore
service of the King and State in our and dispose of their impropriations.'
commerce with those Eastern nations, Reliquiae Spelmanniae (ed. Gibson),
and in God's good time to the enlarg- p. 64.
M. III. 7
98
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
Wheelock himself being appointed the first lecturer1. He
had however no successor; for on his death in 1653 the
office was discontinued, the stipend being applied by Sir
John Spelman (the eldest son of Sir Henry) in assisting
William Somner, Laud's former proteg£ and registrar, to
bring his Anglo-Saxon Dictionary to completion.
Election of
Laud to the
chancellor-
ship of the
university
of Oxford :
12 Apr. 1629.
Predomi-
nance of
court
influence in
the colleges.
Shifts made
by some of
the colleges
to maintain
their inde-
pendence.
The theory which king James had first distinctly enun-
ciated,— that every college in the university was as amenable
to the royal authority as the university itself2, — had been
acted upon with increased vigour by Charles; and both
Holland, as chancellor at Cambridge, and Laud, on his
accession to the corresponding office at Oxford, alike used
their utmost endeavours to give it practical effect. Each
university now began to look upon Court influence as the
most effective means of promotion not merely in the Church
but in the college, and it was rarely that any academic
society was inspired by such a spirit of independence as to
offer to a royal mandate anything but servile acquiescence.
Occasionally, indeed, it was sought to evade the recognition
of such right of interference by an act of ' prenomination,' and
when the mandate arrived it was met by the reply that the
college authorities themselves had already elected the royal
1 On the occasion of the election
of two representatives of the Univer-
sity in 1640 (see infra, ch. m) Sir
Henry was induced to become a can-
didate. He was beaten, however, by
Henry Lucas of St John's, who as
secretary to the chancellor, the earl
of Holland, had probably powerful
supporters. But neither candidate
could claim any intimate knowledge
of the University, for while Spelman's
residence at Trinity had been cut
short by his father's sudden death,
Lucas, although resident for some
time at St John's, had never matricu-
lated. It is evident that Wheelock
interested himself warmly in his
patron's candidature, for in the latter
part of the year we find Spelman
writing to express the 'comfort' he
had derived from the fact 'that so
many worthy men of your University
were pleased in this late election of
their Burgesses for the Parliament,
to cast their thoughts on me (not
dreaming of it) to be one of them.
Had it succeeded,' he goes on to say,
'I should to the utmost extent of
these poor abilities that ruinous old
age hath left unto me, endevored
(as duty tied me) to have done the
best service I could to the Churche,
the Kyngdome, and her my ever
honored and deare Mother your
f amouse University. ' . . . ' Your loving
Frende, Henry Spelman. Barbican
9 Nov: 1640.'
2 See Corrie (G. E.), Brief His-
torical Notices of the Interference of
the Crown, etc., p. 51.
COERCIVE MEASURES OF LAUD. 99
nominee1; or where the kingly choice fell upon an individual „ CHAP, i.
not acceptable to the society, it would be represented that
the fellowship in question was a supernumerary one and
had lapsed with the vacancy2. Such resistance, however, was
certainly exceptional; and it was at this juncture that the
Commons, with the evident design of shielding the colleges,
brought in an Act ' to prevent Corruption in Presentations
and Collations to Benefices and in Elections to Headships,
Fellowships, and Scholars places, in Colleges and Halls.'
This Act, which was read a second time and referred to a
Committee on the 23rd Feb. 1629, would doubtless have
become law had it not been for the dissolution in the follow-
ing March3.
On the church patronage of the university, the Crown
laid an equally unsparing hand, and Laud, with his usual ^l^Aip
keenness of perception, made the afternoon lectureship at i^Sresiup
Trinity church an object of special attack. There it was church.**
that the best talent of the university found that channel for
the exposition of Calvinistic doctrine and an appeal to Puritan
sympathies which the pulpit of Great St Mary's no longer
1 A noteworthy instance occurred at nary' one, as no longer existent,
King's College, where one 'William having lapsed with Seaton's marriage.
Fairebrother,' a scholar of Eton, re- '25 Aprill 1629,' Brief Memoranda,
commended by the provost, Sir Henry M.S.; Baker- Mayor, p. 496.
Wotton, 'as one of the best hope and 3 In the treasury of St John's
proficiencie in the sayd College both College are two letters written in 1641
for scholarship and maners,' was which testify to the spirit of resist-
accepted by ' prenomination.' In this ance which these mandates at length
case the college, convinced of the began to evoke. They are addressed,
merits of the candidate, seems not- one to the earl of Holland, the other
withstanding to have sought to guard to Newcastle, and embody a direct
its independence by 'prevention,' and refusal to elect certain persons who
Dr Collins, the provost of King's, had been recommended by those
thus reported the matter to Holland. noblemen. Holland had twice re-
Original Letters in King's College commended a son of Sir John Watts ;
Library, Vol. rv (really Vol. m), no. the college reply that he is but young,
31. Brief Memoranda of Business of 'yet the beames of your favour will
the University of Cambridge trans- ripen him the sooner for the like
acted since 'my lord' [Holland] was preferment,' whereas we 'have many
Chancellor. Aug. 1628 to 29 Oct. in the college whose fortunes were at
1629. State Papers (Dom.) diaries the last gasp ; and if not now releived,
the First, cxiv, no. 79. their hopes extinct.' Newcastle re-
2 Such was the case when, George commends one Richard Pye, while
Seaton's fellowship at St John's the society protest against the intru-
having become vacant by marriage, sion of ' a stranger, whome to adopt
one Wm. Evelin obtained letters man- were not onely to bastard her present
datory for his election. The college issue, but to disinherit all succeeding
speak of the fellowship as an ' imagi- hopes.' See Baker-Mayor, pp. 528-9.
7—2
100 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. afforded them ; and thither, interspersed with the graver
element among the undergraduates, the townsmen from the
fourteen parishes into which Cambridge was divided, assem-
of1th°ertance kled to listen to discourses such as few other pulpits in the
Lectureship. kmgdom could rival for eloquence and ability. The appoint-
ment to the lectureship, though but slenderly endowed, was
consequently always warmly contested. When Preston, with
his known leanings to Puritanism, was a candidate in 1624,
no slight efforts were made to induce him to withdraw. On
the one hand, he was offered the bishopric of Gloucester1; on
the other, if we may credit Ball, it was represented to him
'that it was a lecture mainteyned by sixpences, a thinge un-
seemely for a master of a college and the Prince's chaplinV
fnuthe^ffice •^n 1626 Preston was succeeded in the office by Sibbes, also,
snjbe^and like Preston, one of Ussher's most distinguished disciples, but
who accepted the appointment only on the special solicitation
of the townsmen3. And now, in 1628, Sibbes was succeeded
by one whom both he and Preston held in high regard, — the
afterwards eminent Thomas Goodwin of St Catherine's
College4. Buckeridge, bishop of Ely, whose sympathy with
Laud in the Montagu controversy has already claimed our
attention, alarmed at this growing tradition of Puritan doc-
trine, strongly opposed Goodwin's appointment. All his efforts,
however, were in vain; and then it was that Laud sought
to carry the position by what may be termed a flank move-
Endeavour ment. In 1630 he issued instructions that throughout the
of Laud to
catechise kingdom all afternoon sermons should be 'turned into cate-
chising,' and in pursuance of this mandate the lectureship at
Trinity church seemed threatened with extinction. Goodwin's
supporters, however, parried the attack with considerable
1 See Vol. n of author's History, held for many yeares past.' MSS.
p. 572, where for 'Chichester' read Baker, xxvn 137. Grosart (Sibbes, i
'Gloucester.' cxi) cites a document in Kymer's
2 Life of Preston (ed. Harcourt), Foedera (xrx 536) which shows that
pp. 98-99. in 1633 Sibbes was presented by Laud
3 Cooper, Annals, m 229, n. (2), to the vicarage of Trinity Church,
where the letter to Sibbes is printed. 4 Originally of Christ's College,
Cooper supposes the lectureship to whence he had migrated in 1619,
have 'originated 'in this 'requisition'; having graduated B.A. three years
in Dorchester's letter, however, it is before. Bp. of Bristol, St Catharine1 &
expressly spoken of as having 'been College, p. 117.
THE TRINITY CHURCH LECTURE. 101
dexterity. They represented to the earl of Dorchester, secre-
tary of state, that the university sermon was preached at
the same hour on the Sunday and that there was reason to
apprehend that it 'would be troubled with a greater resort
than can well be permitted yf the towne sermon should be
discontinued.' The university sermon was so frequently the
occasion of irreverent behaviour on the part of the under-
graduates that the contingency suggested must have come
home very forcibly to Laud, especially intent on the restora-
tion of order and decorum at the services of the Church;
Dorchester, accordingly, received instructions to notify to the
vice-chancellor that ' his Majestie being graciously pleased ^J
that the said Lecture may be continued at the accustomed
hower and in manner as yt hath ben heretofore used, hath c°
given me in charge to make knowne to you his Royal pleasure
accordingly, but under this Caution that not only Divine
Service but Catechising be duely read and used after that
Sermon ended both in that and the rest of the Churches
of the Towne; and that the sermon doe end in convenient tyme
for that purpose, soe as no pretext be made either for the
present or in future tyme by color of the foresaid sermon to
hinder either Divine Service or Catechising, which his Majestie
is resolved to have maintained1.'
This virtual compromise of the question served to avert "sntinuoug
Laud's attack, while the townsmen's sense of the value of general1'16
the lectureship and their desire to maintain it as an institu- cambrid°ge.of
tion were proportionately enhanced. And we find Thomas
Randolph2, when a year or two later he was smarting under
the importunities of his Cambridge duns and turned upon
them with the weapons of satire, after a series of maledictions
hurled at those who, as he avers, suffered him neither 'to eat,
study, or pray,' could conceive no direr menace, by way of
climax, than to threaten 'to put Trinity lecture down3.'
The real importance attached to the appointment is, indeed,
shewn by the fact that for nearly twenty years it was held
1 Cooper, Annals, ra 230. States, put Trinity lecture down.'
- Infra, p. 108. Poetical Works (ed. Hazlitt), pp.
3 'And if this vex 'urn not, I'll 643-6.
grieve the town With this curse,
102 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
cHAi». i. by Whichcote, who was succeeded, we are told, by 'a combi-
nation of learned fellows of colleges1.'
The dissolution of Charles's third Parliament, followed as
it was by the suspension of all free debate for a period of
eleven years, has been described 'as the darkest hour of
Protestantism, whether in England or in the world at large.'
oVtherrence ^ Cambridge it must have seemed a darkness visible, when,
cSridge: a ^ew months later, the ordinary course of studies and the
£apnr.'i63i.to ardour of theological controversy were alike brought to a
Accounts standstill by the recurrence of the plague. Joseph Mede.
given by •>
wlfrdand opening his very newsletters with timorous hand, punctually
retailed to his distinguished kinsman in Suffolk the signs of
its approach. How it raged in London, had broken out at
Northampton, had reached Histon and Girton, and had
already carried off Oxford's chancellor, the earl of Pembroke.
The students were sent down, and on the 28th April he
reports the university as being ' in a manner wholly dissolved,
all meetings and exercises ceasing2'; while a month later,
Ward, writing to Ussher, describes the 'School gates' as
rhe 'shut up' and the colleges as 'left desolate.' 'There have
consequent
distress. died,' he adds, 'of this infection, from the last of February till
the 24th of April, 24 persons, and since then till May 15,
thirty more, and seven more. The magistrates are careful.
But the charge groweth great, both in maintaining the infected
and the poor among us, which want both means and work.'
Yet a month later and Mede himself had taken refuge at
Dalham with his relatives, Sir Martin and Lady Stuteville,
nor did he return to Cambridge until nearly the close of the
year. Hobson, the carrier, discontinued his visits to London ;
the midsummer assizes were removed to Royston. In the
town itself the distress grew so dire that Cambridge was fain
to petition the Crown for aid, and a royal brief, addressed to
the chief dignitaries and officials of the realm, both civil and
1 See Eight Letters of Tuckney and consent of the major part of our
Whichcote (ed. S. Salter), ed. 1753, society, of which we have but seven
p. 5 n. at home at this instant. Only a
2 Court and Times of diaries the sizer may go, with his tutor's ticket,
First, n 75. — ' none but fellows to go upon an errand.' Ib. n 76.
forth, or any to be let in without the
THE PLAGUE OF 1630. 103
ecclesiastical, recommended the cause of the afflicted com- , CHAP, i.
munity to their Christian charity. It pointed out how a
large body of poor who had been wont to earn a livelihood
'by their commerce and trafique as well with the schollers as
with the countrey' were now reduced by the departure of the
university to the greatest extremities, and, owing to the
universal dread of infection, were unable to obtain fresh
employment elsewhere. No less than 2,800 persons, it is
stated, were thus left entirely destitute. London responded
to this appeal with 'a signal bounty,' which, says Fuller,
' deserves never to be forgotten.' 'Some thousands' were con-
tributed by the metropolis; and Norwich, grateful for its own
immunity from the visitation, sent a handsome sum. 'It was
not till January 1630-31,' says Cooper, 'that the town was
sufficiently free from the distemper to allow of a cessation of
the weekly payments to the poor. Altogether 347 died of
the plague and 617 of all diseases, and 839 families, consist-
ing of 2,858 persons, were relieved by charity1.' On the 20th subsequent
of November, commons were resumed in Trinity College;
and in the following year the matriculations throughout the
university, which had fallen in 1630 to 75, rose to 662 2.
Fuller, whose keen sense of the humorous and the incon- P?..?.1^?.
facilitates the
gruous rarely deserts him, even in the presence of the most j^d^raof
tragical episodes, notes how the visitation served to cheapen do
degrees and lower the standard of attainment. 'The corrup-
tion of the air,' he says, 'proved the generation of many
doctors, graduated in a clandestine sort of way without keep-
ing any Acts, to the great disgust of those who had fairly
gotten their degrees with public pains and expense. Yea,
1 Annals, m 228. Cooper cites as of Houghton Conquest, who was
his authority the History of the Town living at the time of the visitation,
by John Bowtell, a Cambridge sta- As a contemporary, Archer's state-
tioner who died in 1813 (see Ibid, iv ment might seem to carry more
505-6). Dr Creighton (Hist, of Epi- weight than Bowtell' s ; but the
demies, i 506), who speaks of this former (see Life in D. N. B.) is
visitation of the plague at Cambridge supposed to have died in 1630, and
as 'a very small one at the most,' the discrepancy in numbers may be
says that 'from first to last it pro- accounted for by supposing that his
duced 214 deaths, known or suspected, ' Memoranda ' give the total of deaths
from plague.' He cites the 'Memo- only down to the time of his own
randa' of Thomas Archer, fellow of decease.
Trinity College and afterwards vicar 2 See Appendix E.
104
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
Alike
visitation
disperses at
the same
time the
University
of Padua.
Peter
Salmon's
letter to
Dr Collins,
giving some
account
of the
university :
2 Aug. 1630.
Dr Collins, being afterwards to admit an able man doctor, did
(according to the pleasantness of his fancy) distinguish inter
cathedram pestilentiae et cathedram eminentiae, leaving it to
his auditors easily to apprehend his meaning therein1.' It
was while the plague was at its height that the royal influence
was exerted to set aside the claims of John Milton to a fellow-
ship at Christ's College in favour of his friend, Edward King,
whose fate he subsequently immortalised in his Lycidas. A
royal mandate extinguished his only chance, for he was now
in his twenty-third year, while King was but eighteen. But
whatever blame attaches to the transaction belongs rather to
Milton's monarch than to his college2. Edward King was
perhaps discerned to be the better churchman; but before
ten years had passed away, an untimely fate had deprived the
English Church of the services of the one, and conscientious
conviction, of those of the other.
If Dr Collins had been one to whom it could afford any
consolation to know that Cambridge was not the only sufferer
from this visitation among the universities of Europe, he might
have found it in a letter which he received, while the plague
was at its height, from Peter Salmon at Padua. Salmon, a
former member of Trinity College, was now resident at Padua,
and he reports that the greater portion of the students at that
famed centre of learning have been dispersed by the same
cause. Otherwise, a pleasant letter, affording us an interesting
glimpse of the Padua of those days, with its ' many faire built
monasteries,' among which Santa Giustina, the house of the
Benedictines, appeared to Salmon to surpass even Trinity
College; while its annual revenue, he asserts, is reported to
be ' very neere that of our whole university, being at least a
100,000 duckets per annum.' His chief admiration, however,
1 Fuller-Prickett and Wright, p.
315.
2 Baker (in a note to a copy of the
Justa Edovardo King naufrago, etc.
in St John's College Library) says
very justly: 'If Milton had any
resentment, it must have been against
the King, for sending his Mandat.
The College gave him no offence, nor
did Mr King, whom he laments so
passionately and elegantly at the
conclusion of these obsequies.' As
however Dr Peile points out, Milton's
grievance was enhanced by the fact
that King, ' who was born in Ireland
but counted as a Yorkshireman,'
was put ' into a southern fellowship. '
See author's article in D. N. B. xxxi
128-9; Peile, Christ's College, p. 137.
THE PLAGUE OF 1630. 105
is reserved for the Schools, 'where two professors of every . CHAP.I.
faculty reade at the same houre, with greate emulation one
of another, contending for the greatest number of auditors.'
'The number of students,' he adds, 'is not inferiour to those
of Cambridge, but promiscuously consisteinge of most nations
in ChristendomeV
On the first of January 1631, at the advanced age of 85, Death of
* ' Hobson the
died Hobson, the carrier, — not indeed a victim of the plague ™j"*T\ ,0
itself, but his business was suspended by it, and, to use
Milton's expression, 'he sickened in his vacancy.' While the
name of many a Cambridge scholar has passed into oblivion,
that of the honest trader has survived, immortalised by the
pens of two illustrious sons of the university, — the greatest
poet and perhaps the greatest wit that adorned our literature
in the seventeenth century. Hobson was interred in St
Benet's Church, where he had probably attended during his
lifetime, as we find that he presented it with a large bible.
A street in Cambridge was subsequently named after him,
his portrait adorns the Guildhall ; while his services to his
generation have been recorded, not without exaggeration, on
the Conduit which bears his name2.
In the mean time, towards the close of 1630, Joseph Mede ^^e0'f
had returned to Cambridge. While the epidemic wras at its coiiele"™ to
height, he had taken refuge with his friend, Sir Martin
Stuteville, at Dalham. From thence, as the alarm declined,
on the 20th of October, he had stolen over to survey the
melancholy and deserted condition of his beloved college. A
glimpse of the internal economy of the college of those times
is afforded by his plaintive description: 'I found,' he says,
1 King's College Letters, Vol. iv, 2 An inscription on the Conduit
no. 30. 'Galileo,' observes Professor states that it was built at Hobson's
Clifford Allbutt, ' taught in Padua for ' sole charge ' ; this however is pro-
twenty years, including the time nounced in Clark and Atkinson (p. 69)
when Harvey graduated there . . . Clini- to be ' certainly incorrect ' ; he appears
cal teaching, initiated in Salerno simply to have made a bequest for
and advanced by the Consilia medica, the maintenance of the conduit in
was formally established in Padua, his will. In 1855 the conduit was
to be pursued in Heidelberg, Leyden removed from the Market Place to
and Vienna.' Harveian Oration the junction of Trumpington Eoad
(1901), pp. 100-1. For the Consilia and Lensfield Road and occupies a site
medica see Daremberg, Histoire et enclosed with railings immediately
Doctrines, i 334. opposite the author's house.
106 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. 'neither scholar nor fellow returned, but Mr Tovey only, and
he forced to dine and sup in chamber with Mr Power and
Mr Siddall, unless he would be alone and have one of the
three women to be his sizar, for there is but one scholar to
attend upon them. I being not willing to live in solitude,
nor to be joined with such company, after some few hours
stay, turned aside to BalshamV It was not until the 27th
of November that he found himself reinstated in, what he
terms, 'my old and wonted home,' and on turning at the
close of the week to indite, as before, his customary Saturday
evening letter to Dalham, noted down a formal record of the
ravages of the plague in the little society, — a list which, how-
ever, comprises only servants and children : ' we are now eight
fellows; Benet College, but four; scholars not so many. The
most in Trinity and St John's2.'
Such visitations, it is observable, have generally been
concomitant with, and have often ushered in, a demoralised
condition of the community at large, and the royal interven-
tion was at this time demanded for the suppression of evils
in comparison with which elections to fellowships and
questions of dogma might well be deemed of minor impor-
tance. To not a few, it now appeared that the boldness of
speculation in connexion with doctrine, which the Declaration
had been designed to repress, was only one phase of the con-
tempt for authority and the spirit of licence which manifested
disS Si5fe °f themselves in every direction. Discipline, if we may rely on
university. tne evidence afforded by college records and authoritative
enactments, was at this period at an exceptionally low ebb
at both universities3, and offences were especially common of
1 Heywood and Wright, n 387. 1625. He adds that his elder brother
2 Ibid, ii 389. ' had been too much corrupted in that
3 — ' that the ancient discipline of kind ' ; and for himself ' that it was
the two universities famous for good a very good fortune that his father so
literature and manners, might by soon removed him from the univer-
oure care and authoritie be restored, sity, though he always reserved a
which hath much declined in these high esteem of it.' Life of Clarendon
latter yearesas hath beene conceived.1 (ed. 1857), i 7. We must take this
State Papers (Dom.) Charles the First, statement, however, in connexion
xrx, no. 59. Edward Hyde (earl of with the fact that Clarendon was
Clarendon) tells us that he was entered at Magdalen soon after he
removed from Oxford by his father, was thirteen.
on this very account. This was in
THE UNIVERSITY DEMORALISED. 107
a kind which suggests the influence of drinking habits, a vice v CHAP, i.
now becoming widely prevalent throughout England; and as ulere^t7
the preacher in the church or the conventicle poured forth hLbiunkm
his denunciations, his voice was drowned by the strains,
redolent of the spirit of Omar Khayyam, which rose in the
adjacent brothel or tavern. A series of Ordinances given by ^f
Charles at Newmarket, on the eve of the outbreak of the
plague, reveals the state of affairs at Cambridge in unmistake-
able language; students often contracted marriages in the
town with 'women of mean estate and of no good fame';
the frequenting of taverns was a matter of serious complaint;
and even masters of arts and bachelors of law and medicine,
relying on a supposed immunity from interference, resorted
to such haunts 'to eat or drink or play or to take tobacco1,'
the authority of those on whom it devolved to enforce disci-
pline being frequently met with open defiance. On the f
occasion of the royal visit in 1632, it was deemed necessary o
to enjoin that 'no tobacco be taken in the hall, nor anywhere
else publiquely, and that neither at their standing in the
streets nor before the Comedye beginne, nor all the tyme
there, any rude or immodest exclamations be made; nor any
humming, hawking, whistling, hissing, or laughing, be used,
or any stamping or knocking, nor any other such uncivill or
unschollarlike or boyish demeanour upon any occasion2.' In
March 1636, a 'Consistory' of the vice-chancellor and Heads J
i • /» T • . • i* j.i_ costume and
issued a series 01 Injunctions, commanding, among other noctivaga-
matters relating to minor morals, a reverent bearing on the
part of students towards superiors ; forbidding the wearing
of long hair hanging over the forehead or the ears, the use of
' unseemly bands,' ' absence without college walls after eight
of the clock at night,' or ' at any time to go to range abroad
out of their colleges into the town or any other places in the
country without leave of their tutor or the chief governors of
every college.' Bedmakers under the age of fifty, 'at the
least,' were not to be employed3. The admission of ' boys or
1 Cabala, p. 204; Cooper, Annals, First, m 45 n.
m 221-2. 8 Cooper (from the Stat. Aca-
2 Nichols, Progresses of James the demiae, p. 487), Annals, in 273.
108 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. i. men ig^ra^ of letters,' on the other hand, for the discharge
of such duties, was at this time systematically discouraged,
as tending to deprive poor scholars of their means of
livelihood1.
It was not merely the licence which prevailed in con-
nexion with the ' Comedye ' but also the character of these
compositions themselves, that brought about the discontinu-
ance of such performances at this period. When royalty
came, on the occasion above referred to, there were two
ntusted: comedies, one by Peter Hausted of Queens', the other by
fhomas Thomas Randolph of Trinity ; both of which were expressly
i. lees. p ' written for the occasion, each author abandoning the custom-
d. 16S5
ary Latin garb for plain vernacular English. Their efforts,
however, met with a very dissimilar reception. Hausted was
already known to his fellow-collegians and apparently not
very favorably. In the preceding year he had written his
Senile Odium, to which a special value attaches from the
fact that, when printed (in 1633), it was preluded by some
Latin iambics from the pen of Edward King, the ' Lycidas '
of Milton. These lines are addressed to Hausted himself,
'in festivissimam ejus Comoediam,' but they clearly shew
that in bringing out the play he had had to encounter a con-
siderable amount of disfavour among the junior members of
the university, and the whole drift of King's verses is to
encourage his friend not to falter before the
Vanus cachinnus, aut ciconia impotens
of the undergraduates.
On what account Hausted was disliked it is difficult to
j^fendT* sa^' kut it is evident that when, in March 1632, his Rival
Friends was produced, its fate was largely forestalled by his
own personal unpopularity2. Hausted himself, when in the
1 ' Cum contra antiqua Academiae eorum impensas sustentandas fieri
et collegiorum statuta paucis abhinc solebant, unde et pauperibus scholari-
annis intra collegiorum pariates pueri bus grave damnum, et Universitati
et viri litterarum rudes, et penitus scandalum domi, foris opprobrium,
inepti qui progressum aliquem in accreverint, etc.' Dyer, Privileges, i
studiis academicis faciant, et feminae 318; Stat. Acad. Cantab, p. 482.
praeterea irrepserint ad ea opera fa- 2 Masson's view (Life of Milton, n
cienda quae a studiosis egenis ad 253) that the play was unpopular
THE ACADEMIC COMEDY. 109
following year his performance was printed in London, was VCHAP. i.^
fain to describe it as ' cried down by boys, faction, envy and Hausted's
confident ignorance,' and himself as the victim of 'black- °fth".
reception
mouthed calumny ' and ' base aspersions and unchristianlike comedy^
slanders,' although he claims that his production was
' approved by the judicious.' Randolph, on the other hand,
at this time a major fellow of Trinity, who, to use his own
expression, ' contented liv'd by Cham's fair stream,' was un-
doubtedly the superior genius. He was already intimate
with Ben Jonson ; and was highly popular in the university,
not least on account of the time and energy he was wont to
expend in bringing out comedies and drilling the performers
in their respective parts. His ' Aristippus, or the Joviall
Philosopher,' which had been acted in the preceding year, was
as decided a success as the Senile Odium had proved a failure,
dexterously courting, as it did, the more frivolous element in
the university, on the one hand, by satirising the existing
methods of education, and, on the other, by lauding the pre-
vailing vice of tippling. The Jealous Lovers appealed with Thej>o/ow
no less force to the same class, by the skill with which it
invested with an air of freshness the theme familiar to the
students of Plautus. When printed it appeared with a dedi-
cation to Dr Comber, the master of Trinity, and with some
complimentary verses from the pen of James Duport. That
eminent Grecian did not hesitate, indeed, to ascribe Ran-
dolph's success to genuine merit, while he intimated that
verses like those of Edward King were but a feeble and
fruitless endeavour to divert the public judgement from a
just award of commendation.
On the king's return from Scotland in 1633, Randolph Randolph's
subsequent
put forth yet another effusion, as a contributor to the volume career-
of academic verses congratulatory on that event1, published
by the University Press. After this he becomes somewhat
, because it carried a 'political moral,' against the abuses of ecclesiastical
seems a somewhat inadequate expla- patronage.
nation. Ignoramus, for instance (see 1 Rex Redux sive Musa Cantabri-
author's History, n 528), which car- gietisis voti damnas de incolumitate
ried with it a like moral, had been et felici reditu Regis Caroli post re-
received with enthusiasm a few years ceptam Coronam Comitiaque peracta
before. Hausted's play was directed in Scotia. Ann. Dom. 1633.
110 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
lost to view amid the dissipations of London life, and the
literary intercourse of its clubs, until, with failing health and
sorely harassed by creditors both at Cambridge and in Town,
he was fain to take refuge in the country with his relatives
and admirers ; and eventually, while scarcely thirty years of
age, ended his brief career at the house of his friend William
Stafford of Blatherwick. Over that grave the voice of censure
was silent; the marble monument to his memory in the
church at Blatherwick was erected by his patron lord Hatton;
the inscription which it bore was composed by his former
rival Hausted; while Duport, who had been his schoolfellow
at Westminster, penned an impassioned tribute to -his genius,
wherein extravagance of eulogy may be condoned as inspired
carbee?ofent ^7 *ne partiality of friendship1. Hausted himself, who sur-
Hausted. vived his rival only ten years, wrote no more comedies; but
contented himself with the composition of hymns and
sermons, — most notable among the former being his Hymnus
Tabaci2; among the latter a discourse on 'The Pharisee and
the Publicane,' which sets forth with grave but trenchant
irony alike the prevailing foibles and the more serious dere-
lictions of the clergy of those days. In 1642 he was created
D.D. at Oxford; and three years later was to be heard of as
sharing with his patron, the earl of Northampton, the rigours
of the siege of Banbury Castle. But long before 'the capital
of the Cavaliers3' succumbed in May 1646 to the parliamen-
tary forces, Hausted was no more.
Randolph, it may be noted, has also been credited with
The the authorship of another comedy, the Gornelianum Dolium.
Cornelianum _ r
which the title-page gives as 'auctore T. R. ingeniosissimo
hujus aevi Heliconio.' The initials are, however, the only
ground for attributing the play to his pen, and both the place
and the time of its first performance are unknown; while the
subject and the drama, alike coarse in the extreme, could
only impair his reputation.
1 See the lines, beginning Alpha z Lines in praise of tobacco!
poetarum, Musarum sola voluptas, in 3 Gardiner, Hist, of the Great Civil
Duport's Musae Subsecivae, pp. 469- War, n 484.
70.
COWLEY. Ill
The scene of the Valetudinarium of William Johnson, a , CHAP, r.^
fellow of Queens' College, where it was produced in February J^MoU
1637, is St Bartholomew's Hospital in London ; and in the ™rium.~
library of Emmanuel College there is preserved the copy
which belonged to archbishop Bancroft. The remaining
comedies that here call for mention were the productions of
the youthful genius of Cowley. He had entered as a scholar ABRAHAM
at Trinity in 1637; and when only in his second year of resi- %l$jf
dence wrote the Naufraqium Joculare. The play appears to HIS
J a r J rr Naufragium
have been suggested by Heywood's English Traveller, which, Jocuiare.
printed five years before, probably fell into Cowley's hands
while he was still a schoolboy at Westminster. His own com-
position is certainly a poor production, the Latin diction being
prosaic and the drama unpoetic; but the same cannot be said H»»
of the Guardian, an English play which he first wrote under ^^MO-
pressure, for the entertainment of the Court, on the occasion $£$?*"
of a visit to the university paid by prince Charles in the p^med
month of March 1642, and performed before him in Trinity cbaiiM:
12 March
College1. 164.
Six months later, however, an ordinance of Parliament ordinance
.of Parlia-
enioined that 'while these sad causes and set times of ^em ag ainst
J stage-plays.
humiliation continue, public stage-plays shall cease and be
forborne2,' — a general edict which necessarily carried with it
the discontinuance of such performances in the universities.
It was not accordingly until the year 1658, that Cowley
resumed his dramatic pen and recast the Guardian. This
version of the play appeared, after the Restoration, under the
far more familiar name of The Cutter of Coleman Street and
was first performed (16 Dec. 1661) in Lincoln's Inn Fields,
where Pepys was one of the audience3.
1 The royal visit is described in a great acceptance which he could, and
letter from Joseph Beaumont to his more than the University dared ex-
father, dated 21 March 164^: Beau- pect.' Archaeologia, xvraSO. Cowley
mont was at this time a fellow of himself says 'it was but rough-drawn,
Peterhouse (where he was afterwards yet it was acted with great approba-
master) and in the preceding year, tion.' Retrosp. Review, xn 40.
according to his biographer, had been 2 Gardiner, u. s. i 17. 'Prynne,'
'appointed guardian and director of observes the historian, 'had his way
the manners and learning of the at last though the terms of the
students of that society.' The prince, announcement were hardly such as
Beaumont tells us, 'commended the to give him complete satisfaction.'
performance and gave all sighnes of 3 For some account of this litera-
112
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
The
prevalent
dissatis-
faction begins
again to find
expression
in the
university
pulpit.
Nathaniel
Bernard in
London
and at
Cambridge.
His sermon
at St Mary's :
6 May 1632.
In enforcing compliance with discipline and ritual, Laud
shewed, as even the Puritan party were compelled to admit,
considerable patience if but little judgement. What moved
him to resentment and sharp repressive measures, was the
imputation that his repudiation of Calvinistic teaching, to-
gether with his efforts to promote decorum in public worship
and the adoption of a more elaborate ritual, simply veiled an
ulterior, purpose of bringing back the English Church to sub-
jection to the see of Rome. After the dissolution of parliament
had deprived the nation of the means of giving formal
expression to the popular discontent, these imputations were
reiterated with a pertinacity which seemed altogether irre-
pressible1. In 1629, a few weeks after the dissolution, one
Nathaniel Bernard, lecturer at St Sepulchre's Church in
London, had startled an audience by praying publicly that
the queen might be led ' to see Christ, whom she hath pierced
with her infidelity, superstition and idolatry2.' On being
summoned before the Court of High Commission, he had
however deemed it prudent to make his submission, and
had been allowed to depart ' as a young scholler and student
in divinity ' with whom the court desired ' to deal mercifully
and favourably.' The growing strength of the Puritan party
at Cambridge is probably to be discerned in the fact that,
three years later, when on a visit to some friends in the
university, Bernard was invited to preach the afternoon
sermon at St Mary's. Untaught or undeterred by his
previous experience, he now ' let fall ' (to use Prynne's ex-
pression) ' divers passages against the introducers of popery
and Arminianism,' inveighing in unmeasured terms against
those who were ' bringing in their Pelagian errours into the
doctrine of our Church established by law, and the super-
stitions of the Church of Rome into our worship of God, as
high altars, crucifixes, and bowing to them, id est (in plain
ture see Wood's Life and Times (ed.
Andrew Clark), i 19-20; Retrospec-
tive Review, xn 33.
1 Gardiner (vn 251), while he
terms Laud the ' ruling spirit ' of the
Court of High Commission, points
out that, at this time, 'Abbot was
constantly in attendance, and was
almost as energetic as Laud in his
enforcement of conformity. '
2 Prynne, Canterburies Doome, p.
362.
THE UNIVERSITY PULPIT. 113
English) worshipping them ; whereby they symbolize with VCHAP.I.
the Church of Rome very shamefully, to the irreparable
shipwracke of many soules who split upon this rocke1.' The
vice-chancellor, Dr Comber, master of Trinity, at once re-
ported the matter to Laud. ' I am sorry,' wrote the latter Baud's
J ' letter to
in reply, ' you have been troubled at Cambridge with the ci'^enor.
distempered speeches of any men in the pulpit. And I
must confesse I heard of both the particulars you mention,
before I received your letter. That in St Johns it seems
they have punished2, and you do very worthily to joyn
with them, in case anything for the publique shall be
further requisite. And, as for Mr Bernard, I am the more
sorry for him, because he is in London within my charge.
Nevertheless if he have done unworthily, I shall be very
ready to assist you and the university in what I may be
able.' Eventually, Bernard was consigned to the ' New ^£nard'8
Prison,' and, having refused to sign a humiliating recantation,
was permitted for a long time to languish there, ' miserably
abused,' says Prynne, ' by the keepers, of whom he oft com-
plained without redresse, and in conclusion utterly ruined
for speaking out the truth3.'
In the following year, the walls of St Mary's were again J°lin
O J J Normanton s
desecrated by unauthorized utterances, — this time on the 24rMa?ch
subject of Grace, — and the preacher, John Normanton4, was 1638-
haled before the vice-chancellor. He too, however, by timely
submission, escaped further punishment. In the next year, counter-
f J • demonstra-
a manifestation made by one of the opposite party, John xouraey o^n
Tourney of Pembroke College, who ventured to impugn the coiu£e°ke
doctrine of the Church on the subject of justification by
faith, excited more attention, especially when it became
evident that the offender was not without sympathisers
among the Heads. The master of Sidney, who in a letter nr ward's
to Ussher narrates the circumstances, cannot refrain from aspect of
• 11 i i /» i • affairs in the
expressing his deep concern at the changed tone and feeling V?iJe™tJr6^4
of all about him. ' I may truly say,' he writes, ' I never
1 Ibid. p. 365. * In 1639 he was deprived of his
2 The college records contain no fellowship at Caius and afterwards
reference to this incident. joined the Roman Church. Venn,
3 Ibid. pp. 363, 367. i 248.
M. III. 3
114 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. knew our university affairs in a worse condition since I was
a member thereof, which is almost forty-six years. Not
but that I hope the greater part is orthodox ; but that new
Heads are brought in, and they are backed in maintaining
novelties and them which broach new opinions, as I doubt
not but you hear; others are disgraced and checked when
they come above, as myself was by my lord of York the
last Lent, for favouring Puritans in consistory; and all
from false informations from hence, which are believed with-
out any examination! ' We have a vice-chancellor,' he adds,
rfwTo'wn3 ' ^na^ favoureth novelties, both in rites and doctrines1.' As
Cambridge, the Nestor of his party, it is evident indeed that Ward had,
at this time, to bear the brunt of the attack, and was un-
comfortably conscious that his enemies would gladly have
driven him both from his chair and from the university. It
was probably not without some ulterior motive of this kind,
that the dean of Wells, where Ward held a canonry, thought
fit to remonstrate with him for not keeping the statutable
three months te^m of residence. As regarded his professor-
ship, Ward declares himself quite ready, on merely personal
grounds, to resign, for then he would have 'leisure to transcribe
things.' But what if he retired only to let in an Arminian2 ?
The changes in the headships to which Ward refers, were
S\aheges a^> w^n one exception, marked by circumstances of unusual
THOMAsp8: interest. At Trinity, indeed, the election of Thomas Comber,
m°*teErRof a moderate Anglican, as successor to Samuel Brooke, may
1631-45; not have occasioned the despondent master of Sidney much
disquiet; but that of Edward Martin to the presidency of
1 Ward's dissatisfaction is all the ' hath carried business for matter of
more noteworthy in that Sidney religion, both stoutly and discreetly ';
College, in the years 1630-36, accord- it is evident (see infra, p. 117) that,
ing to Mr Edwards, was at the zenith at this time, Love, who had been one
of its prosperity. ' The entry of 40 of the royal chaplains, was paying
in 1632-33,' he observes, 'is the assiduous court to royalty. But his
largest in the whole history of the subsequent career shews him to have
College.' Sidney Sussex College, p.94. possessed considerable skill in winning
2 Ussher, Works, xv 580-1. Ward's the good opinion of both parties, a
letter is dated ' Sidn. Coll. Jun. 14, characteristic which perhaps serves
1634.' The vice-chancellor referred to explain the somewhat contradictory
to is Dr Love, master of Corpus. It terms used by Ward respecting him
is singular that in the same letter (p. - in the same letter.
580) Ward speaks of him as one who
CHANGES IN HEADSHIPS. 115
Queens', on the death of Dr Mansell, was fraught with sinister _ CHAP, i.
significance. Martin was Laud's chaplain and nominee, MA^™"
and his bold assertion of the orthodoxy of Arminianism (in of Queens-
his Historicall Narratian) is stigmatized by Prynne ' as the ieeo-62.
greatest affront and imposture ever offered to, or put upon
the Church of England in any age' and 'deserving the
highest censure1.' The dissatisfaction of the Puritan party P'ssatis-
» * faction at
in the university was further increased when it became JlomTatlons
known that Martin, along with several others, was to receive Of i>!i>.degree
his degree as doctor of divinity by virtue of a royal mandate.
Those who had been admitted to the same degree only on
payment of the usual heavy fee, took umbrage alike at the
bestowal of the honour and at the choice of the recipients.
On the day when the degrees were conferred, the Regent
house was the scene of disturbance and uproar, and it was HKNHY
BCTT3,
with some difficulty that Dr Butts, the vice-chancellor, sue- 'v381*'0'
* Corpus,
ceeded in bringing the ceremony to a completion. He had ^^l?22'
recently been elected to the office for a third time, but his
official experience had been throughout a singularly trying
one. His election to the mastership of Corpus had been
carried only after a painful contest2, while his tenure of the
vice-chancellor-ship had been coincident with the visitation of
the plague. A man of humane disposition and actuated
apparently by a commendable sense of duty, he had been con- His »«?««
J J J ' experiences
spicuous, during that terrible crisis, by his efforts to alleviate ^avn^iior.
the distress of the struggling community around him ; and
the official Report, which it devolved upon him to prepare,
forms a narrative which brings vividly before us the social de-
moralization which followed upon the outbreak. It is not
improbable that his own mind was partially unhinged by
the calamities which he witnessed and to some extent shared,
for his language at the close of his report is that of extreme
dejection : ' myself am alone,' he writes, ' a destitute and
forsaken man, not a scholler with me in college, not a
scholler seen by me without3.' The conferring of Martin's
1 See Canterburie's Doome, p. 167 ; 2 Masters, Append, no. XLH.
Histriomastix, 531 ; Searle, Hist, of s This letter is still preserved in
Queens' College, pp. 467-9. the Kegistry. See Masters-Lamb, pp.
116
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
Suicide of
Dr Butts:
1 Apr. 1632.
Various
reasons
assigned for
the act :
the feud
between
Queens' and
Trinity,
personal
disappoint-
ment.
degree took place 20 March 1632. The first of April was
Easter Sunday, and Dr Butts, it had been announced, would
preach before the university that day. But in the morning
he was found hanging, suspended by his garters, in his own
chamber. Nothing in the general condition of the college
(at that time exceptionally flourishing), nothing in his private
affairs, could be found to suggest a motive. ' Cruel destiny/
it was reported by the university to the chancellor (the
earl of Holland), ' and the pangs of a mind diseased must
have urged him on1.' Sir Simonds D'Ewes, however, does
not hesitate to ascribe the act to the mental excitement
which the unfortunate master of Corpus had so recently
undergone2. This view receives a certain support from a
letter, preserved in the Record Office, by a member of
Corpus Christi College whose name is not given. The writer,
singularly enough, represents Dr Butts' loss of mental equi-
poise as commencing ' when Dr Comber and he fell foul of
each other about the precedency of Queens' and Trinity
comedy ' ; but ' the killing blow,' he goes on to say, ' was a
dislike of that comedy3 and a check of the chancellor, who
is said to have told him that the King and himself had more
confidence in his discretion,' etc. The writer then proceeds
to narrate how Dr Butts, shortly before his end, had already
twice made an attempt on his own life, and he attributes his
disordered intellect purely to disappointed ambition, there
being nothing in his private affairs to depress him, inasmuch
as he was ' a man of great kindred and alliance, in Norfolk
166-7. Somewhat later it devolved
on him to furnish the following:
' A Certificate made by the Vice-
Chancellor, A°. Dni. 1630, in the
Time of the Dearth, by vertue of a
Proclamation, and a Book of Orders,
then published, and sent to the Justices
of the several County es and Shires.'
In this Dr Butts says : ' Concerning
fasting and feasting, the schollers
returning as yet very slowly, I have
not much matter for execution : only,
for example sake, I have converted
part of the charge of one annual feast
made by the universitie, to the use
of the poor.' MSS. Cole, XLTI 282.
1 ' ...de cujus luctuoso funere nihil
ultra nobis innotescit, aut Honori tuo
significamus, quam quod facillime
naturae legibus renunciat Is, quem
atrocia Fata et mentis exulceratae
acerbitas praecipitem agunt. ' Masters-
Lamb, p. 169. Masters, who was
unacquainted with D'Ewes' Diary,
says : ' The occasion of which rash and
nefarious action we are at this distance
entirely ignorant of.' Ibid. p. 168.
2 Autobiography (ed. Halliwell), n
67-8 ; see also Searle, Hist, of Queens'
College, p. 469.
3 i.e. Hausted's Eival Friends ;
see supra, pp. 107-8.
CHANGES IN HEADSHIPS. 117
and Suffolk, with the best of the gentry,' and ' rich both in , CHAP, i.
money and inheritance, had a parsonage in Essex and this
mastership.'
By Charles and Laud it was at once decided that, however
the Puritan party might interpret the tragical event, it
should not be wrested by them to their advantage, and a
mandate was forthwith sent enjoining the fellows of Corpus
to elect Dr Richard Love, ' late fellow of Clare Hall.' He Election of
. Dr Love
is ' one, says the missive, ' whom we pursue with our princely »*chis
favour and whom we know to be well esteemed amongst 4 Apr" 1682-
you,... and therefore expect that upon receipt hereof, you
assemble yourselves and make choice of the said Dr Love to
be master of our said ColledgeV Within four days, accordingly,
of the death of Dr Butts, the fellows made their ' choice,' and
Richard Love succeeded to the mastership of Corpus Christi RICHARD
College. In the ensuing year, he was elected vice-chancellor, £ ^|-
and according to the historian of that society, 'greatly
endeared himself to the university ' by venturing into the
dialectical arena at the Commencement against one of the
queen's chaplains, Christopher Davenport by name, better His
i i • T-I o /-<ti ' -TV encounter
known in history as Jb ranciscus a oancta Olara. Davenport, with
•' . Davenport.
in a short pamphlet, had just been endeavouring to prove
that the articles of the Church of England admitted of being
reconciled with the Tridentine decrees. It would have been
difficult to propound a theory which could have more com-
pletely roused the susceptibilities of what was now the
majority in academic Cambridge. And when, accordingly,
the vice-chancellor himself took up the gauntlet, and, being
a practised dialectician, succeeded in refuting his antagonist,
the exultation of the university was considerable2.
Equally significant with the promotion of Edward Martin
to the headship of Trinity was that of William Beale, who «eaie
* succeeds
in 1632 succeeded Andre wes as master of Jesus College and ^f°ne
two years later was elected successor to Owen Gwynne gt
at St John's3. The almost irresponsible position of a head
1 Masters-Lamb, p. 170. John's 'permajorempartemsociorum
2 Ibid. p. 171. ex mandate regio.'
3 He was admitted master of St
118
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
Pressure
brought to
bear on
Gwynne by
the Visitor.
of a college at this period is strikingly illustrated in the case
of Owen Gwynne, the cousin of bishop Williams, to whom
he was indebted for his preferment to the archdeaconry of
Huntingdon. His administration as master had been marked
by scandals to which even the judicial Baker can hardly
refer with composure, and of which the letters by various
writers, addressed to him from the day of his election to the
mastership to within a short time of his death (1612-1633),
and still preserved in the College Treasury, afford strong
presumptive evidence. Written, for the most part, by those
seeking for place or pelf either for themselves or for relatives,
they are often couched in language which would hardly have
been ventured upon with a man of high principle and known
integrity1, but well suited to one of pliant, yielding dis-
position and probably of known lax morality. It was not
however until the year before Gwynne's death, that the de-
cease of bishop Buckeridge, ' a quiet good man,' but advanced
in years, made way for the advancement of one ' of greater
activity and warmer temper' to the see of Ely. In his
capacity as Visitor, Dr Francis White, acting in all proba-
bility in concert with Laud, now addressed to the master of
St John's what Baker characterises as ' a threatening letter,
admonishing him of the disorders and irregularities that had
been too long connived at; and though he had no reason
to apprehend any danger from a visitor whilst he was in
perfect good understanding with his seniors, yet that letter
being backed from court, there was no defence to be made
against two such powers if they should fall upon him at
the same time.' 'Whether,' continues the historian of his
college, ' that letter (or there might be more of the same
kind, that I have not seen) made any impression upon his
mind or broke his heart I must not pretend to determine,
1 See for example the letter of
Emmanuel Utie, a Yorkshireman of
much tenacity of purpose, when
making suit for a college vale : ' Ee-
member me your poore creature, y'
I was none of these headstrong Jades
y' off red to fling you, but tender-
mouth and remained unmouable
under you without a bitte.' 30 Sept.
1612. Eagle, xvi 139 ; see also Ibid.
Vol. xxm. Mr Scott observes that
'the practice of distributing the
balance at the end of the year in the
form of a dividend among all the
Fellows alike was not adopted until
1628.' Ibid, xvi 138.
CONTEST AT ST JOHN'S. 119
but he died the year after, not much lamented, unless by
those that were involved in the same guilt1.'
In the contest for the mastership which ensued, the he
peace of the college was again completely upset2. The more mastew
popular candidate was the president, Dr Lane, a man of lax Robert Lane
r r and Richard
principles but liked on account of his social qualities. The
other candidate, Holdsworth, afterwards master of Emmanuel,
is described by Baker as 'a man of much greater worth'
but unpopular owing to his puritanical leanings. He was,
however, says the same authority, ' undoubtedly chosen by
a clear majority3.' But the college statute required that
the election should take place before a certain day, otherwise
the appointment lapsed to the Crown, and Lane, according
to another account, purposely delayed the election beyond
the prescribed limit4. The technical objection to its validity
thus created ,was not apparently urged in the first instance,
but both parties had recourse to irregularities in supporting
their candidate which furnished ground for dispute, and
both, continues Baker, ' presented their master elect to the
vice-chancellor Dr Laney in order to admission ; but the
case being doubtful or he unwilling to do anything that
should look like opposing the court, which he must have
done by allowing the better plea, he refused to meddle or
to admit either of them : upon which refusal both parties
returned to the college, gave the oath and a sort of admission
1 Baker-Mayor, p. 204. 'It might Pearson, Holdsworth'snephew,writes
have been expected that a man, that concerning him : ' Collegii D. Joannis
left no monumentt of his learning, alumnus olim et socius ad ejusdem
should have left greater monuments magisterium pluribus et potentioribus
of his charity, but therein he has sociorum suffragiis delectus est ; non-
equalled his predecessor, having done nullorum vero perversitate, aliorum
nothing of that kind either in moneys praepotentia, de jure suo cedere co-
or in books. ..But he constituted his actus est.' Ibid. p. 626 (from Life
servant Gr. Gwin his sole executor, prefixed to Holdsworth's Praelec-
who went off with all that was un- tiones, London, 1661).
disposed of, and has not left a * 'How Dr Lane, being president
monument of his master.' Ibid. p. of the colledg, concealed the masters
205. death one day, caused the bell to be
* The various documents connected rung all Friday, being the next day ;
with this singular episode in college and his plott in delaying the eleccion
history are collected in Baker- Mayor, till it hath at length fallen (as he
pp. 623-627. would make it) into the King's hands
3 Ibid. p. 214. So too, Bichard bylapse.' Hey wood and Wright, n 404.
120
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP I.
Charges
against Lane.
Commission
of enquiry.
Laud's
opinion
of the
candidates.
Charles
appoints
WILLIAM
UEALK
to be
master of
St John's :
Feb. 1634.
Deatli of
Dr Lane :
6 June 1634.
to their pretended heads1.' Two masters, accordingly, like
two rival popes, now claimed the allegiance of the society.
At length, in August, an appeal was made to the Crown,
and formal allegations against Lane were preferred. They
were of so grave a character, that Charles decided to appoint
a commission, composed of the Heads, to investigate their
accuracy. According to the evidence then adduced, Lane
was totally unfit for office. Although president of his college,
he had rarely been seen either in the college chapel or at
St Mary's; he was notoriously addicted to drinking; as
bursar, he had embezzled or squandered the revenues of
the society; he had used his influence to bring about the
election of unfit candidates to fellowships, and in two cases
had openly defied the royal mandate. The whole dispute
was carefully watched by Laud, who interested himself
warmly in the matter, and in a letter to Wentworth gave
it as his opinion that, of the two candidates, the one was ' not
sober enough,' the other, ' too weak ' for the post. ' Honest
and learned,' he adds, ' is not enough for government.' It was
not until a twelvemonth after Gwynne's death, that Charles
eventually cut the knot by appointing William Beale (the
master of Jesus College), with the concurrence of the
majority of the fellows2.
' Dr Lane,' continues Baker, ' survived not long ; stung
and grieved with the aspertions that were cast upon him
by his enemies, he died suddenly in the June following, and
was buried privately in the chapel, leaving some debt to
the college and his reputation tainted, that might otherwise
have followed him unstained to the grave ; and may teach
his successors not to pursue preferment too eagerly, unless
1 Heywood and Wright, n 214.
2 Baker-Mayor, p. 627. 'We—
fynding the right of Election by theese
divisions devolved to us, and that,
if eyther of the parties now in compe-
tition shold be preferred, the other
wold be exasperated and so the
schisme fomented, which we will by
no meanes endure, besyds that both
the competitors have submitted the
whol matter to our decision — doe
herby in our princely care of learning
and of the peace and good of that our
university hold it necessary to inter-
pose our royall authority, and doe by
theese presents nominate Wm. Beale
to be master.' Ibid. p. 503. The
account given by Peter Barwick, in
his Life of his brother (p. 12), is
evidently defective, if not inaccurate.
CONTEST AT ST JOHN'S. 121
they be such as are themselves without sin1.' A very , CHAP, i. ^
different career awaited his rival, who shortly after pre- J^"^ by
sented the college with a collection of books for the library,
in order 'to show,' says Baker, 'he had more gratitude
than resentment2.' In 1637 died William Sandcrofb, the
master of Emmanuel and uncle of the archbishop3 (who also
filled that office), and Holdsworth was elected his successor.
He was escorted to Emmanuel by the fellows of his own
college, just as Preston had been escorted thither by the
fellows of Queens' thirteen years before4. On his arrival,
he made it his first duty to pay his respects to Laurence
Chaderton, then verging on his 102nd year. ' Although no
longer master of the college,' said the newly-installed Head
to his venerable predecessor, 'you are still master in it.'
Such a spirit was worthy of one who, in his own subsequent
career, was amply to vindicate himself from the reproach of
undue leanings towards Puritanism and from that of ' weak-
ness' imputed to him by Laud. To quote again the lan-
guage of Baker, Holdsworth 'lived to be preferred by the
King and to suffer for him, and has left to posterity the
reputation of his sufferings as well as of his learning. He
succeeded Dr Gwyn in his archdeaconry and prebend of
Buckden in the Church of Lincoln, though not in his
mastership ; was nominated to the deanery of Worcester and
had the offer of a mitre, though he never wore it5.'
Within a few months of the day when the master of
Sidney penned his gloomy forebodings to Ussher6, a corre-
sponding change at Peterhouse must have seemed to him to \v>en"
. . . , , , , . , , ,. .. c i • succeeded in
point yet more unmistakeably in the direction or his appre- the headship
hensions. On the promotion of Matthew Wren to the see of Jjjyg^.
Hereford, he was succeeded as master by John Cosin, and Jj; \^
1 Baker-Mayor, p. 215. burgh (Emmanuel College, p. 74) as
- Ibid. ' a period of continuous prosperity as
3 William Sancroft, the archbishop, far as numbers were concerned ' and
is said (D. N. B) to have been the one which ' also witnessed a great
first of the family who wrote his increase in the buildings.'
name without the ' d.' He was * See author's History, n 571.
master of Emmanuel from 1662 to 5 Baker-Mayor, u. s.
1665. His uncle's tenure of the office 6 See supra, p. 113.
(1628-1637) is described by Shuck-
Matthew
122
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i.
the latter forthwith proceeded to introduce a more elaborate
ritual and unwonted ornaments into the college chapel. ' A
glorious new altar,' says Prynne, ' was set up and mounted
on steps to which the master, fellowes, schollers bowed and
were enjoined to bow ...... There were basons, candlesticks,
tapers standing on it, and a great crucifix hanging over it1/
It was not however these innovations which, in the latter
half of the same year, suggested to Laud the idea which he
had conceived of visiting the university in his capacity of
metropolitan, — a proposal which now became a foremost
question in the minds of the authorities, not a little
perplexed as to the reply which they should make to this
long dormant claim. Two events, which occurred about
the same time, must have materially influenced the Heads
in coming to the conclusion which they found themselves
ultimately compelled to adopt. The one was the return of
Brownrig to Cambridge to assume the mastership of St
Catherine's, rendered vacant by the death of Sibbes; the
other, the retirement of Dr Beale from the vice-chancellor-
ship, to be succeeded by Henry Smyth, the master of
Magdalene. Many years had elapsed since Brownrig had
gone down to the living of Barley to labour among a rustic
population, but not a few could well remember him as one
who, from the time of his coming up to Pembroke from the
grammar school at Ipswich, had been steadily rising in
reputation, — and he was already noted as combining a keen
wit with sound judgement, and, in the language of Fuller,
His election distinguished both ' for disputing and preaching.' As a
staunch Calvinist, Brownrig was strongly opposed to Laud,
whose influence is probably to be discerned in the endeavour
that had been made to prevent the election of the former to
the mastership; for notwithstanding that the college statutes
required that the head of St Catherine's should be professed
in theology2, and restricted the fellowships to Englishmen,
the Crown had seen fit to nominate for the appointment
Robert Creighton, a fellow of Trinity, who was only of
1 Canterburie1 s Doome, pp. 73-74. 2 Documents, in 80.
tothT18
e July 1635.
influence.
LAUD'S PROPOSED VISITATION. 123
M.A. standing and a native of Dunkeld, but who was Public VCHAP. i.
Orator and could claim relationship with the earls of Athole1.
It was a few weeks before Brownrig's election took place, Lf"doseg to
that Dr Beale, as vice-chancellor, received from Laud official y°srrtake a
:TATION
OF THE
intimation of his design to visit the university2. The arch- u
bishop had already, in the preceding year, exercised that
right in connexion with the diocese of Lincoln, although not uncoTn
without a vigorous protest from Williams3. To the latter,
indeed, the visitation was rendered especially distasteful
from the fact that it was carried out, not by Laud himself,
but by his vicar, Sir John Lambe. Lambe, who was also a ?ir JoH
J I.AMBE :
member of St John's College, had at one time been a zealous f/ \^f
supporter of Williams, while the latter, to quote the language
of Hacket, ' had done as much for Sir John as he could
have done for the worthiest of all his profession4,' and had
appointed him his commissary in the diocese. But in 1633
Lambe was appointed dean of the arches court of Canter-
bury, and from this time became distinguished as an active
supporter of Laud. He now arrived, accordingly, animated ^Ija"
by a fixed determination to cany out his instructions with
but little regard for the feelings of his former benefactor5.
Williams, on the other hand, in his formal protest, had
already put forward a demurrer which could not but be
peculiarly distasteful to Laud. He argued that the proposed ^rounds
on which
visitation was without legitimate precedent, for so far as ,^p0!fe"lth
' the records and registries of the diocese ' could be cited in vlsltatlon-
evidence, it was clear that the great diocese of Lincoln had
never been ' metropolitically visited ' since 1235, that is to
say in the time of Grosseteste. Since that remote date, no
1 This in itself constituted a certain a year longer it might have been for
kinship to royalty, the earls of Athole their advantage, he having been ac-
having been kings in the Isle of ceptable at Court,' etc. This how-
Man. The dispute connected with ever is mere conjecture.
Brownrig's election is further illus- 3 Williams' letter is printed by
trated in MS. Baker, xxvn 46-48, Hacket, n 90-91.
printed in Mayor's Life of Matthew * Ibid, n 98.
Robinson, pp. 131-146. 5 Hacket considers that Lambe is
—'in this,' says Baker (M. s. an instance in proof of the fact that
p. 216), ' he shewed no compliance Williams ' was not always circum-
nor departed from the rights of his spect in his patronage.' He describes
posst and station... Had the university him as 'crafty,' 'hated of all men,'
continued Dr Beale in that station and ' ravenous in taking fees. ' Ibid.
124 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. archbishop of Canterbury had visited the diocese ' but by
the vertue and power of some particular Bull procured from
the Pope, or Letter of Assistance from the King's majesty
since the Supremacy was reassumed in this realm' ; ' and I
find,' he adds, ' the several bishops in these several ages to
have assented to these Visitations as they were Papal and
Regal only1.' As these objections applied almost equally to
other dioceses, and more especially to the design which
Laud had already conceived of visiting the universities, we
unfavorable can hardly be surprised to find that Lambe's report of the
condition of the diocese of Lincoln was highly unfavorable2
and well calculated to deepen the archbishop's conviction
of the necessity of personally visiting that academic com-
munity where the bishop of Lincoln's name was still held in
high regard.
Before, however, proceeding with his design of visiting
Cambridge, Laud had deemed it prudent to endeavour to
forestall any opposition similar to that offered by Williams,
by carefully explaining to the vice-chancellor the limits
which he considered himself bound to observe in the exercise
of his own jurisdiction, at the same time suggesting to the
authorities that they would do well themselves to ascertain
Laud's beforehand their own position in relation thereto — ' in order,'
letter to
i^May'iess. ne wrote, in his letter to Dr Beale, ' that yourself and the
heads might take it into consideration whether you have any
He suggests charter, statute, or privilege to exempt you from my metro-
sh£uidsity political power, having no purpose to offer any violence to
•nhhw* them and secondly to let you know that I intend not in
my visitation to meddle with any power belonging to my
lord your honourable chancellor, or of any other particular
visitor of any college or hall respectively, but only with that
which is ecclesiastical and properly belonging to my metro-
political jurisdiction. I conceive,' he adds, ' that Oxford and
you are in the same state for this business, and for Oxford
1 Hacket, 11 98. divers parts of that diocese many
2 ' For Lincoln itself, my vicar- both of clergy and laity are excessively
general certifies me, there are many given to drunkenness.' Works (ed.
anabaptists in it, and that their leader 1853) , v 326.
is one Johnson a baker ; and that in
LAUD'S PROPOSED VISITATION. 125
I am sure the case is very clear for my visitation there1.' , CH AP. i.
This letter arrived just when the authorities at Cambridge
were specially busied with preparations for the Commence-
ment of 16352, and it was not until the 28th July that they
notified to the chancellor, the earl of Holland, that they had Authorities
given instructions for the collection of the evidence bearing {""do^6
upon the primate's claimed right of visitation3. Holland, in ^^he
acknowledging this communication, expressed his confidence Au&juasV
that the archbishop would act with ' moderation and justice,' u?eccwreen
but also intimated his readiness to ioin with the Heads ' in by°the
university.
the maintenance of all such privileges and exemptions as by
the favour of former times and princes have been used and
enjoyed by the university,' which, he adds, ' is the duty we
owe to posterity.' He further advised that the authorities
should take the opinion of 'learned counsel,' and in the
mean time the primate received the joint assurance of the
chancellor and the university that the whole question was
being thoroughly sifted4. Not less satisfactory was the
tenour of the reply received eight weeks later from the lord
high steward, the earl of Manchester, who, on the docu-
mentary evidence being submitted to him, expressed his
confidence that the primate himself would admit that it was
conclusive. As Henry Montagu at that time also filled the
post of lord privy seal, such an opinion carried no small
weight, while the university was scarcely less gratified by
the complimentary terms in which the writer referred to the
manifest care bestowed by its registrary on the preservation
of its archives5.
The new vice-chancellor not merely occupied the place
before filled by one of Laud's staunchest supporters, but, on
1 Ibid, v 555-6. The whole of about it, till these businesses were
this correspondence is printed from fully passed over.' Laud's Works
Baker MSS. xxxra 193-210. (u. *.), v 556.
2 ' Commencement ' at this time * Ibid, v 557-8.
began with the Sunday immediately 5 ' I do much commend the care
preceding the first Tuesday in July. and diligence I see your register useth
Gunning, Ceremonies, p. 119. in preserving and being so ready in
'It coming to us when we were these things that concern your uni-
all in preparation for our commence- versity rights and privileges.' Ibid.
ment, we did with his grace's leave v 561.
and favour forbear to meet any more
126 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. succeeding to office, immediately gave instructions for a
dJrecSttiat fu^er and closer investigation of such records as bore upon
shaurbelves the question of Laud's proposed visitation1. A further delay
eMmfned. consequently ensued, and with the approach of Christmas
the primate became impatient. On the 18th December he
Laud wrote to the vice-chancellor and heads, complaining some-
complams of A
the delay, what tartly that he had been able to gain from them
' nothing but delays.' ' I cannot,' he adds, ' be ignorant of
that which is in the mouths of all men, namely, that care
and pains you have taken to exclude my power from visiting,
and yet it seems you have not found enough to quit it ; for
if you had, I can see no reason why you should still delay
The to give me answer2.' His missive had scarcely been des-
universitv
Ita7ementain patched when the long-delayed reply of the authorities
its cTaCim°to arrived, setting forth the grounds 'whereupon we conceive
that the University of Cambridge is exempt both from
archiepiscopal and episcopal jurisdiction and visitation.' It
is a somewhat lengthy document, but the main arguments
admit of being very concisely stated: As a recognised
studium generate^ in mediaeval- times, the academic body
had always been held exempt from a visitation such as that
u pointed1* which the primate now proposed to make. Prior to the
precedents'6 Reformation, there had, it was true, been visitations, but
proposed Ie inasmuch as these took place by the papal authority they
visitation are . , ,
not valid. could no longer be cited as precedents ; and, for a like reason,
the visitation made by Cardinal Pole in the reign of Mary
was no longer relevant. There were, however, certain other
visitations, made in Reformation times : there had been one
instituted by Thomas Cromwell in the 27th of Henry vill,
but to this the answer was, that Cromwell himself was
chancellor of the university in that year ; another had taken
place in the reign of Edward VI, but then Somerset, who
held the same office, had ' been moved by letters from the
university to send visitors'; and finally, the notable visitation
1 Laud's Works, v 563. Mittelalters, i 21-27. Laud refers
2 Ibid, v 564. to his claim in a letter to Vossius,
s On this point see Denifle, Die June 1637, in a very different tone.
Entstehung der TJniversitaten des See Works, v 489.
LAUD'S PROPOSED VISITATION. 127
under Elizabeth had taken place ' by commission under , CHAP. L^
the great seal to the chancellor of the university.' In con-
clusion Laud was courteously reminded that when, nine
years before, he had been incorporated D.D., he had sworn
to maintain the privileges of the university1.
In a brief reply, the primate, while professing that he petitions
neither was nor could be ' offended with the fairness of your tha/both1
answer2,' intimated his intention of petitioning the king ' for be heard
a day in which he would graciously be pleased to give a g^to^f
hearing both to Oxon and yourselves.' The relations ofCourt
Laud with the sister university widely differed, however, Canons
from those in which he stood to Cambridge. He was not ti'me'^uh
only chancellor of the university but also one of her most
distinguished sons and benefactors. It was chiefly owing
to his good offices with Pembroke, his predecessor in the
chancellorship, that the famous Barocci collection of Greek
manuscripts had now, for more than a decade, adorned the
presses of the Bodleian3. He had augmented the endowment Snrfftent
of the chair of Hebrew, as subsequently he augmented that
of the Public Oratorship ; he had subsidized the researches
of Pococke ; while still more recently, at the very time when
he was writing to Dr Beale to intimate his intention of
visiting Cambridge, we find Oxford expressing its unbounded
gratitude to ' his Holiness ' for the gift of another and truly
splendid collection of Western and Oriental manuscripts4. ^coMe^on
Five years later, his liberality in placing the lectureship of sTudieinen
Arabic on a permanent basis, evoked another overflow of
gratitude expressed in equally hyperbolical language. Their
chancellor, the university then declared, had 'imported
Araby ' into their midst. ' We must perforce,' said the
letter, ' become Arabians, though whether " Happy " or
" Rocky " remains yet to be seen ; happy, if we yield due
1 See supra, p. 72; Works, v 567 quinquaginta duo ac plures, pondere
-571. inestimabiles, linguarum varietate
Ibid, v 575. omnigeni. Pentecosten emisisti al-
3 It is also to be noted, as illus- teram sub tempore Pentecostes, cum
(rating Laud's liberal spirit in such sis ipse divini Spiritus effusissime
matters, that the collection was made plenus.'...' E domo nostrae Convo-
exceptionally accessible to students, cationis, 28 Mali 1635.' Works, v
4 ' Sunt illi numero quadringenti 114-5.
128 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP- i- obedience to your mandates ; if otherwise, stony and arid1.'
Even the industrial employment of the poor in the city of
Oxford had received his careful attention.
It was accordingly while already under a sense of deep
indebtedness to their all-powerful chancellor, and with a
consciousness of favours still to come, that the university of
Oxford received the intimation of his desire to visit them
officially in matters ecclesiastical. It is an episode on
which Anthony JWood is evidently not desirous of dwelling,
holding himself probably to a certain extent excused from
doing so by the mere fact that the visitation never took
place. ' What I shall take notice concerning this matter,'
he writes, ' is that the archbishop, in order to obtain this his
right which he sought after, desired of the University to
borrow Memorables and Privileges* of the university col-
lected by Rob. Hare ; the which request, though in itself
reasonable (considering withal what a great benefactor the
archbishop had been to the university), yet the members
thereof thought fit to deny him, least they should lend a
nand to betray their own privileges. However when the
Ito^ord68 matter was decided, those books with others and divers
toeHC££ptond papers were laid to open view at the Council board at
Court. ZT* n „,
Hampton Courts
Se^uie0' At Hampton Court, on the 21st June, ' the cause came
June less. f.Q a nearmg before his Majesty sitting in Council.' It must,
however, have been with some misgiving that the repre-
sentatives of the two universities appeared, for scarcely a
month had elapsed since the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's,
after petitioning the Crown against a similar assertion on
the part of the archbishop of a right to visit them, had found
their petition rejected, and a brief entry in Laud's diary
1 ' Necesse est itaque, cum a te metnoration of 1895.
facti simus hoc modo Arabic!, vel 2 Liber Memorabilium Acad. Oxon.
felices nos esse vel petrosos ; felices and Liber Privilegiorum Acad. Oxon.
quidem, si mandatis vestris pie obse- which according to Wood had been
quamur, sin minus, misere petrosos transcribed on parchment from Hare's
et ingratos.' Ibid, v 280-2. See also own copy at the expense of the uni-
Wood-Gutch, n 424 ; and Prof. Mar- versity. See D. N. B. xxiv 374.
goliouth's interesting sketch, ' Laud's 3 Wood-Gutch, n 403.
Educational Work,' in the Laud Com-
LAUD'S PROPOSED VISITATION. 129
had recorded the successful accomplishment of his design1. _ CHAP, i. ^
Standing now on Charles's right hand, he besought the king
to grant him a hearing, while he at the same time expressed
it as his deep conviction that the Church of England ' would
never be able to settle matters right without some power
over the universities.' To this, Holland, standing on the F¥r°'est,of
Holland on
king's left, rejoined that ' he hoped his Majesty would not Cambridge.
suffer the university of Cambridge to lose its ancient privi-
lege ; it being never wont to be visited save by his Majesty
and those by Commission from him,' while it had ' ever been
exempted from the visitation of any bishop or archbishop2.'
The attorney general, however, as probably instructed by the |^h°f
Crown, at once challenged this assertion by a counter- ^^n'ea
assertion of both the antiquity and the ubiquity of the ™f£&* the
metropolitical right of visitation, — which he held to be as claim!
ancient as the office of metropolitan itself, and valid ' in all
places within the province without any manner of exception.'
And even in places, he added, that might under normal
conditions claim exemption, it was still the archbishop's
duty 'to see the doctrine of the Church maintained.' It
followed, consequently, that even if it could be shewn that
colleges were usually exempt from visitation by the metro-
politan, a defective state of discipline, such as that which
was clearly attested by unconsecrated chapels, discarded
surplices, and irregularities in the administration of the
sacraments, called for action on the part of the supreme
authority. Precedents, moreover, could be cited from the
times of Henry vm and Edward VI which made it clear
that at no time had exemption from such interference been
claimed as an inalienable right. Sir John Lambe followed H« is _.
supported
to the same effect : the universities, he pointed out, were
parts of the metropolitan's province, and, if they claimed
exemption, they must first make good their claim by satis-
factory evidence.
Charles, accordingly, now called upon the representatives
' It was ordered with me ' are the the commencement. Works, m 227.
words in which he sums up a result 2 Eushworth, Historical Collec-
which he had probably foreseen from tions, 11 324-8.
M. III. 9
130
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
Cambridge
is first called
upon to state
its case.
The
argument of
its counsel
Hindi the
same as that
•of Williams.
Denunciation
by Laud of
all such
exemptions.
He animad-
verts on the
unconse-
crated
college
chapels.
Argument
of the
primate's
counsel in
defence of
his right of
visitation.
of Oxford and Cambridge to comply with this demand, and
with a view to expediting business proposed, in the first
instance, that one of the two universities should ' speak for
both.' It was however alleged that 'the defences of both
were different one from the other ' ; whereupon Cambridge
was called upon to make the first statement. The argu-
ments put forward by her representatives were essentially
identical with those which Williams had already employed
in opposing the visitation of his own diocese ; and Laud,
who could scarcely have failed to note the fact, was ruffled
by their repetition. He angrily asserted his right to visit
'as often as I will/ and then proceeded to indulge in a
sweeping denunciation of all similar ' exemptions.' The
immunities to which the two universities were now making
claim were, he affirmed, as pernicious as those which the
wealthier monastic foundations of mediaeval times had been
wont to purchase in Rome, in order to set the local bishop
at defiance. And while they themselves became demoralised
by licence, the wealth thus poured into the papal treasury
had proved the undoing of the Roman see. ' Next to
Purgatory,' exemptions had been the chief source of that
enrichment of the papacy which had resulted in its cor-
ruption1. He proceeded to ask how it was that three of the
college chapels2 in Cambridge still remained unconsecrated?
And to this enquiry no satisfactory answer was forthcoming,
while the feeble voice of the centenarian Laurence Chaderton,
expressing a humble hope that the chapels were 'consecrated
by faith and good conscience,' fell far from gratefully on the
royal ears. The next point brought forward for consideration
was the argument of the primate's supporters, — that a legiti-
mate prerogative could not be set aside on the mere ground
1 Rushworth, u. s. p. 327.
2 These were Corpus Christi, Em-
manuel and Sidney: see Baker MSS.
vr 152 . Prynne' s wrath was especially
moved by the preferment of this com-
plaint which he denounces ' super-
stitious and ridiculous frenzie...when
as neither his predecessors Whitgift,
Bancroft and Abbot (men very cere-
monious and two of them much
addicted to superstition) ever so much
as moved any such question con-
cerning the necessity of their (i.e.
the chapels') consecration.' He looks
upon Laud's claim to interfere as a
reproduction of that of the papal
legate, Otho, in the reign of Henry m,
and as advanced 'forhisownlucher.'
Canterburies Doome, p. 127.
LAUD'S PROPOSED VISITATION. 131
of long disuse, and that, although it might be shewn that a , CHAP. T.
long succession of archbishops had abstained from visiting
the university, this ' could be no prescription to bar the right
of the metropolitical see.' Finally, Laud himself produced
'the original renunciation of all privileges from any Pope
made by the Heads of Houses ' on behalf of the university.
And then King and Council could no longer hesitate, and
their formal decision was given, without a dissentient voice, The decision
to the effect that the archbishop of Canterbury was entitled hia favour,
to visit the universities, and that this right might be
exercised by himself in person or by his commissaries, 'as
often as any great emergent cause should move him there-
unto; provided that neither the said archbishop, or any of
his successors, after his first visitation, shall visit on such
emergent cause unless the said cause be first made known
to his Majesty and his successors, and approved by him and
them1.'
A momentous decision, doubtless, with respect to the
destinies of both learning and religion in England, had it
been carried into execution : but, inasmuch as Laud's visita- but was
never carried
tion never took place, chiefly notable as constituting another toto effect
element in the calculations of the most discerning minds in
either university during those critical years which were yet
to intervene before both primate and monarch alike had paid
the penalty of their errors on the scaffold2.
For the present, however, it seemed as though nothing £0e^°n
was likely to bar the accomplishment of Laud's design. £/*j£d<:r'
Letters patent forthwith passed the great seal declaratory of faSSSffl
his right of visitation, while his advisers in Cambridge sept wse.
hastened to lay before him a detailed specification of the
'disorders' prevalent in the university, — a singularly charac-
teristic document, affording amusing illustration of the social
1 Rushworth, u.s. p. 328. etc., and printed in Laud's Works,
2 The correspondence relating to v 555-580. They ' may be of some
the case, and the evidence adduced use,' wrote Baker in his History of
in support of the view maintained by St John'g (i 216), ' if ever that con-
the Cambridge authorities, were tran- troversy should happen to come again
scribed by Baker a century later and into debate,' — a contingency which
are in the Baker MSS. xxxm 193-210, fortunately has never occurred.
9—2
132
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i.
Non-
attendance
in chapel.
life of the time, — the authorship of which was assigned by
some to Sterne, the master of Jesus, and by others to Cosin.
Foremost among the alleged disorders appears the melancholy
fact, that fellows and fellow-commoners too frequently availed
themselves of the immunities conferred by their academic
status to absent themselves from ' public prayers,' preferring
even the tavern or some other place of secular amusement.
The document then passes on to matters of costume, wherein
King's College figured favorably by its loyal adherence to
cap and gown; but of Trinity and Caius it is stated, that
' they keep their order for their wide sleeve gowns and for
their caps too, when they list to put any on, but for the rest
of their garments they are as light and fond as others.'
These three colleges, however, were the most exemplary ; the
remaining body of undergraduates wearing 'new fashioned
gowns of any colour whatever, blew or green, or red or mixt1,
without any uniformity but in hanging sleeves. And their
other garments are light and gay, some with boots and spurs,
others with stockings of diverse colours reversed one upon
another, and round rusti caps they weare (if they weare any
at all) that they may be the sooner despised2.'...' But in all
places among graduates, and priests also, as well as the
younger students, we have fair roses upon the shoe, long
frizled hair upon the head, broad spred bands upon the
shoulders, and long large merchant ruffs about the neck, with
fayre feminine cuffs at the wrist.' The want of order at dis-
putations was lamentable. On Fridays, collegians sallied
forth to eat 'good flesh' at the 'victualling houses.' 'We
know not what fasting is,' the informants go on to say, ' but
this we know, that then the custome is for pupils to goe to
their tutors for supper money to spend in the towne, and
that their tutors do commonly allow them twice as much for
a fasting night as the college commons doe any night of the
week besides3.'
1 In partial extenuation of this
gaudiness as regards colour, it is to
be remembered that a like variety
was to be observed in the streets of
London in those days.
2 i.e. 'recognised.'
3 MSS. Baker, vi 152; Cooper,
Annals, in 280-283.
DISORDERS IN CHURCH AND CHAPEL. 133
The gravamen of the complaints is, however, in connexion . CH^P- r- „
with the subject on which Laud certainly felt most strongly, —
the want of decency and order that prevailed in the religious
services. St Mary's, at Commencement, assumed the appear- Disorders at
* the services
ance of a theatre, and the ordinary service, which was at st Mary's-
provided for by Trinity College, was ' commonly posted over
and cut short at the pleasure of him that is sent thither to
read it.' At the university sermon, ' boys and townsmen '
crowded into the chancel, and at other times were to be seen
'all in a rude heap, with townswomen too, betwixt the doctors
and the altar'; while 'the rest of the church is taken up by
the townsmen of the parish and their families, which is one
reason among others that many schollers pretend for not
coming to this church.' The bidding prayer was generally
omitted. 'The other town churches (whereunto schollers also
frequently repair) are so much out of order that little is
learned there but irreverence and disobedience in sacred
performances.' The state of some of the churchyards was not state of the
• . churchyards.
less scandalous, — 'annoyed and profaned with dwelling-houses
and shops and part of them turned into gardens, where by
digging the bones of the dead have been displaced, with
divers other profanations1.' If Trinity appeared to advantage Trinity
with respect to dress, it exhibited sad neglect with regard to
chapel, where the quire itself was little better than a sham.
' They have diverse dry choristers, as they call them, such as
never could nor ever meane to singe a note and yet enjoy and
are put in to take the benefitt of those places professedly2.'...
1 Troubles and Trials of Arch- Ritcher dryequirister.' .Reprint, p. 5.
bishop Laud (1695), p. 561. In 1616 a B.A. of two years'
2 The late Mr Gerard F. Cobb, in standing appears in the Senior
a Paper entitled The Organ in the Bursar's accounts as still a chorister
CJuipel of Trinity College, printed in and so presumably a dry one. Ib.note.
the Trident for June 1890 (pp. 89- In 1629 Nathanael Willis of more
105), cites the following entries re- than five years' standing since his
lating to ' dry choristers ' : admission as an undergraduate was
Seniority's conclusion-book, March chosen 'a querister extraordinary.'
29, 1613, ' That whereas we have Ib.
agreed upon an order never hereafter In 1636 Abraham Cowley (the poet)
to choose any drye quirister into a was chosen into a ' drie ' chorister's
quirister's place: yet for this once place in reversion, which he held
and no more, we have dispensed with until he was elected to a scholarship
this order and have chosen Tho. in 1637. Ib.
134 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. < They leane or sitt or kneele at prayers, every man in a
severall posture as he pleases.' ' At the name of Jesus few
will bo we and when the Creed is repeated many of the boyes
places6 ky some men's directions turn towards the west doore.' A
topb°ertsoid. graver indictment is preferred in the statement that, by
common report, ' and not without probabilitie,' ' both fellowes
and schollers and officers places are sold.' A like report was
prevalent with respect to King's College, although it was
generally allowed that Dr Collins himself was 'a very free
Gross and uncorrupt man.' At Caius College, the organ had been
irregularities
colleges' 'long since sold away'; while the chapel was made 'a common
meeting place for ordinarie dispatch of leases and such like
occasions.' At Christ's College, ' although their service is
much reformed of late,' there was nothing left of the organ
but ' a broken case.' With regard both to Christ's College
and Emmanuel, complaint is made that many of the students
were lodged and lived out of college, ' where no governour or
doctor could look after their pupils as they ought.' Of St
John's, Queens', Peterhouse, Pembroke, and Jesus, it is
reported that 'they endeavor for order and have brought it
to some good passe. Yet here for apparel and fasting-night
suppers are they faulty still1.'
That the state of discipline called loudly for reformation
and that Laud fully designed that such reform should be
carried out, appears alike beyond question. But he never came.
Laud's rule At this time, indeed, he was induced both by circumstance
as chancellor »
at oxford. an(j inclination to concentrate his chief energies on Oxford,
where his hand, as chancellor, was heavy on the disaffected,
and his influence at its height. It is at Oxford, in 1634,
that we meet with one of the earliest instances of deprivation
of a degree at either of the English universities, — Prynne's
merciless punishment by the Star-Chamber including this
mark of degradation. Throughout the sister university, dis-
cipline was now enforced with an impartial severity which
stood in singular contrast to Laud's discernment and liberality
in connexion with learning. And while his benefactions to
1 MS. Baker, vi 152-5.
LAUD'S STATUTES FOR OXFORD. 135
the Bodleian, together with his endowment of the Public ^CHAP. i.^
Oratorship and services in obtaining a charter for the Press,
dreAv from the academic community renewed expressions of
gratitude for his generous care, the appearance of the New The New
Statutes in 1636 was received with feelings of a very different 1636-
kind. This revised Code, which had been in course of publi-
cation ever since 1629, was dedicated to the king, — Charles,
according to the statement of the Preface, having taken
special interest in the work and carefully corrected the whole
manuscript1; and in the month of June the Corporis Statu-
torum Exemplar sen Codex ipse authenticus was sent down to
Oxford, ' approved, confirmed, and ratified by the chancellor's
letter, under his own a^chiepiscopal seal and under his seal
as chancellor of the university, and further confirmed by the
Royal Charter of Confirmation. It was brought to Oxford by
royal commissioners ; and a Convocation was held on the
22nd June in St Mary's Church, in which the vice-chancellor
received and embraced the statutes in the name of the
university, and all the heads of houses and the proctors made
oath to observe them and subscribed their names at the end
of them2.'
The Code which, with a few trifling additions, became |P^S of
the law at Oxford down to the University Reform Act of coke.6"
1854, was largely a digest of the statutes already in force, in
which, beyond the removal of certain redundancies and dis-
crepancies and the omission of a few obsolete provisions, little
was done in the way of alteration. In one respect, indeed, ™th0rity of
this Code might well seem reactionary, for the importance of confirmed,
dialectic and the authority of Aristotle were to be strenuously
inculcated, it being especially enjoined that, on the day for
the creation of General Sophisters, one of the Regents should
1 ' Ipse multus in eo CAROLUS ; hor- with respect to universities and
tatus est, acceleravit, exegit ; animo- colleges in its most unqualified form :
que vere heroico errores, quos in ' they are,' he said, ' the rights of
academicis facile praeterit, in aca- kings in a most peculiar manner,
demicorum tabulis non tulit.' Carpus For all their establishments, endow-
St<it. r/fir. O.ron. (ed. Griffiths), ments, privileges and orders, by ichich
Praef. ad Lectorem, p. 5. they subsist and are maintained, are
2 Ibid., Preface, pp. xi-xii. It was derived from regal poicer.' Laud,
on this occasion that Mr Secretary Works, v 128.
Cook enunciated the Stuart theory
136
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
Examina-
tions
instituted.
Those
admitted to
a degree
required to
be able to
speak Latin.
Many of the
Oxford
bachelors
betake them
selves to
Cambridge.
ascend the rostrum (suggestum) in the School of Natural
Philosophy, and deliver an address expressly designed to vin-
dicate the above leading features. A genuinely novel element
was however presented in the addition of certain provisions
materially modifying the ordinary curriculum for the degrees
of B.A. and M.A. Students were in future to be required not
simply to attend lectures, but also to pass examinations in
the subjects on which they had been lectured. In the B.A.
course such subjects were to include grammar, rhetoric, Aris-
totle's Ethics, Politics, and Economics, logic, moral philosophy,
geometry, and Greek. In the M.A. course, there was more
geometry and more Greek, together with astronomy, meta-
physics, natural philosophy, and Hebrew1. It was further
required that all students admitted to a degree should give
evidence of possessing a good command of correct colloquial
Latin2. On many of the students, and at Oxford they now
numbered some 5000, this last requirement pressed heavily,
and especially on candidates for the degree of M.A. ; for
while the bachelor was only expected to speak Latin 'gram-
matically' and 'readily/ the master was to be able to do so
'correctly' and 'aptly/ and this too, 'in matters of everyday
life.' It was not long, accordingly, before Cambridge, some-
what to her surprise, began to find Oxford bachelors repairing
to her schools in considerable numbers3. Whatever satisfaction
1 Laud's special interest in this
statute is shewn by a letter to him
from Dr Turner of Merton College:
' I see good effects already of that
statute, which hath been most cryded
down by those from whom I least
expected it, the statute de Exami-
nandis Candidatis, and promise my-
self much more hereafter. I was
present at one examination, and was
glad to hear both the Regents examine
so sufficiently and discreetly, and the
candidates so ably and readily.' See
Laud's History of his Chancellorship
of Oxford in Wharton's Remains of
William Laud, n 170.
2 ' Neque enim ad artium baccalau-
reatum, nisi qui congrue et prompte,
nedum ad magistralem gradum, nisi
qui commode et apte, in rebus quo-
tidiani usus, animi sui sensa lingua
Latina explicare valeat, admitti quen-
quam volumus. ' Statutes of the Uni-
versity of Oxford codified in the year
1636 etc., ed. John Griffiths (Clar.
Press, 1888), p. 89.
3 The following passage, from a
letter written by Laud to Frewen ten
months before, stands probably in
very close connexion with this epi-
sode : ' I do not hear that the younger
sort have been so careful to provide
themselves by speaking Latin in their
several colleges, as I was to give
them warning that they might ; yet
that slmll put no stop upon me, but
that I shall expect and require the
execution of the statute.' Works (u. s.),
v 200-1.
OXFORD MIGRATION TO CAMBRIDGE. 137
might, in the first instance, have been derived from the fact, V°HAP. i.
can hardly however have survived the discovery that the
new-comers were actuated by no higher motive than that of
obtaining the superior academic degree on less onerous con-
ditions than those now imposed by their own Alma Mater ;
nor was it long before this disloyal evasion of her requirements
brought about the direct intervention of Laud, in his capacity
of chancellor. Cambridge, he held, had no right to connive *£ Liludt-i0he
at such devices; and Dr Frewen1, the vice-chancellor of Oxford, vl
was instructed forthwith to make formal protest in the matter lorsoiidtxthed
to the corresponding functionary at Cambridge. 'Tell him,' o"the
authorities at
said Laud's mandate, ' that ' (i.e. what) ' you hear of this Cambridge.
slipping aside of Oxford men without any leave of the univer-
sity to take their degrees at Cambridge, and thereby to elude
our statutes. Then I would have you desire of him and the
Heads, in the name of the university of Oxford, that no man
be suffered to take any degree in Cambridge whatsoever,
unless he bring the consent of the university of Oxford under
seal2.' An interval of twelve days was allowed to elapse
between the writing of Laud's letter and the reply of Dr
Brownrig, who filled at that time the office of vice-chancellor
at Cambridge, — sufficient time, it would seem, to have allowed
of some consultation on the part of the latter with the Heads.
Of this however his concise epistle gives no indication, it
being simply as follows :
StR, ri'freT"
/ pray receive this assurance from me, and I doubt not 7 May 1639.
but the practice of our university will make it good, that according
to your just desire, nothing shall pass here amongst us, either in
this or in any other way, that may give the least interruption to
the mutual amity and correspondence between the two universities,
etc.
RA: BROWNRIGG.
Cambridge,
May 7th 16393.
Whether regarded in connexion with precedent or with
subsequent academic action, Laud's vigorous endeavour to
1 Accepted Frewen, afterwards arch- 2 Wharton (u. «.), n 174-5 ; Laud's
bishop of York and a distinguished Works (ed. Bliss), v 219-20.
benefactor of Magdalen College. 3 Ibid.
138 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
promofce a more general command of good colloquial Latin
appears sufficiently justified. Most of the Oxford colleges
cofk>quiai ie had a statutable provision to like effect, and although this too
use of Latin „ . .
justified. often remained a dead letter, the testimony of a President of
Magdalen establishes the fact that among the scholars of
that foundation, as well as of several others in Oxford, the
practice of speaking nothing but Latin was in force as late as
15901. Laud, in fact, was simply endeavouring to restore
what had been customary in the generation preceding his
own; and, as we shall subsequently see, when the newly
constituted Commonwealth had superseded Monarchy, the
Committee for ; Regulating the Universities ' was fain to en-
join that Latin or Greek should be strictly and constantly
spoken ' in familiar discourse ' within the colleges and halls of
both universities. Scholars both on the Continent and at
home bore testimony which could not be disregarded to the
special disadvantage under which learning in England lay,
owing to the want of an adequate command of the customary
medium of personal intercourse with the educated foreigner
in those times2. If, indeed, Laud's interference at Oxford
had gone no further than requiring that students should talk
with each other in Latin and should abstain from frequenting
taverns, — another point on which he felt and wrote strongly, —
there would have been little to excite unpopularity in the
Oxford which he ruled. It was his petty interference in
matters of academic costume, — the gown, the hat and the
cap, — his mandates as to the tolling of bells and the arrange-
ment of seats in the schools, which were irritating, chiefly
because they related to details which chancellors ordinarily
regarded as hardly calling for such exalted interference.
1 ' I know myne owne House,' said made by divers learned men of the
Dr Bond, ' and divers other Colleges defect that English Scholars labour
whose scholars dare not presume to under, both in their private and
speake any other language then home exercises, and in their publique
Latine.' See Burrows (Montagu), In- discourses with forraynors by their
troduction to Register of the Visitors speaking English in their severall
of the University of Oxford, pp. xcvi Colledges and Halls in Oxon re-
-xcvii. spectively, doe now Order etc.' Ibid.,
2 ' This Committee, takinge into Register, p. 249 ; see also Baker MSS.
consideration the complaint that is xvn 12.
MEDE'S LAST DAYS. 139
We can hardly doubt that Joseph Mede, although little . CHAP. i. ^
more than a looker on, followed with undiminished interest
the deepening drama around him. It is however a real loss
that, at such a crisis, his shrewd estimate of passing events is
wanting to guide us. On the 13th of June 1631, his august ^"jj;1^8^11
relative, Sir Martin Stuteville, had died suddenly at his seat respondent :
at St Edmund's Bury ; and, whatever letters on Cambridge Jl
affairs Mede may have written, subsequent to that date, have
not come down to posterity. The last glimpses we obtain of
him suggest, that sorrow at the fierce contention around,
blended with a constitutional aversion from polemical strife,
to which was now added the timidity of advancing years, were
leading him to withdraw more and more from any active par-
ticipation in university affairs. In order that, as Worthington
expresses it, ' he might not be supposed to be taking a side,'
he kept studiously aloof from the struggle which arose in
1634, between the two great parties in the university, for
securing a preponderance at the disputations of the coming
Commencement1. In the folio wing year we find John Durie Appealed to
O J by John
appealing to him for advice as to the best way of seeking to ^"mediator*:
restore concord among the Protestant Reformed Churches March 163£-
abroad, where theological rancour was at its height. Mede
excused himself in language dictated partly by modesty, but
partly also by evident fear of incurring the displeasure of those
in authority (whether in his own college or in the university
at large is not quite clear2), and contented himself with send-
ing Durie a copy of his Clavis Apocalyptica. It would seem Mede reverts
that, as he saw the end of life approaching, these prophetic
studies assumed for him a yet stronger and more awful fasci-
nation. And as the curtain falls upon the veteran teacher,
we discern him sequestered in his study, intent on themes in
comparison with which the theological ferment without might
well seem but solemn trifling, as he pondered when the angel's
trumpet should again sound and the seventh seal be opened !
1 Life («.«.), p. xix. audemus; alioquin factiosi et inordi-
' Nos enirn hie (ut scias) qui in- nati ingenii notam incursuri, nullo,
ferioris subsellii sumus, ab aliorum mihi crede, siquis eo maculetur,
pendemus arbitrio, neque sine illorum oceano eluendam.' Works (ed. 1672),
nutu aut ductu in talibus quicquam p. 805.
140
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
°HAP. i.
H« sudden
bequests.
Philemon
Holland:
d.i<536.
ue retained however and discharged, to the last, his office
as college steward, never failing to be present every Saturday
night, when, according to the custom at Christ's, the 'man-
ciple1' came to lay before the master and fellows his statement
of the week's expenditure. It was on this customary day, the
29th September 1638, that Joseph Mede was absent from the
board, — smitten down by apoplexy, and summoned away to
render up an account of a more solemn nature to a Master
whom none can doubt he had striven faithfully to serve.
He was buried in the college chapel. To his surviving friends
it might well seem, not long after, that he had been taken
from the evil to come, for he was only in his fifty-third year.
His m°dest fortune was bestowed upon those among whom
yg sec}u(je(j \{fe faft |,een Spenk TO the poor of Cambridge
he bequeathed the sum of one hundred pounds ; three hundred
pounds more (the residue of his estate) to his own College,
'for and towards the new building then intended, as also for
the adorning of the chapel2,' — a matter which, as one of Laud's
chaplains, he probably deemed it politic not to leave uncared
for. ' Nor was he/ say his biographers, ' unmindful of the
library, for he knew well the excellent use of good books3.'
Of the remarkable influence which his teaching continued to
exert in the university long after his death we shall have
occasion to speak in another chapter.
A few months before Cambridge became aware of its full
debt to Mede, there had passed away another of her sons,
and one who died a suppliant for her aid, — a laborious scholar,
who had rendered to history an unprecedented amount of
service as a translator4. Although a pupil of Whitgift and a
fellow of Trinity College, Philemon Holland's subsequent life
had been an almost continuous struggle with depressing
poverty, domestic anxieties and feeble health. Dignified
with a foreign degree of M.D. (where obtained is not on
1 i.e. the head cook, who in later
times developed into the 'steward'
and whose office became associated
with a fellowship.
2 Life (u. s.), p. xxxii.
3 Ibid. p. xxxiii.
4 Fuller, who styles Holland ' the
translator general of his age,' de-
clares that the literature he thus pro-
duced would alone suffice ' to make a
country gentleman a competent li-
brary.' Worthies (ed. Nuttall), m 287.
THE COMMEMORATION OF BENEFACTORS. 141
record), he had essayed the practice of medicine with but . °HAP. i. ^
small success. The corporation of Coventry, in which ancient
city he had taken up his residence, aided him by one or two
small grants of money; and, somewhat singularly, by installing
him, when he was already 76 years of age, headmaster of their
Free School, a post which, — it can scarcely be interpreted to
his discredit, — he was fain to resign within a few months. His
indigence now excited general commiseration, and on its He is
0 t licensed by
reaching the ears of the university, the vice-chancellor, Henry ^l^jf",.
Smyth, the president of Magdalene, sought, as a last device, Rarity from
to aid him with the grant of a licence, entitling him to receive
such 'charitable benevolence as the master and fellows of
every college should be pleased to bestow upon him1.' What
result followed, does not appear; but in less than two years
after, his labours and perplexities were alike terminated by cdvettr*-11 at
his death at Coventry.
Indifference on the part of a corporate body to the records
of its own past history is a sinister sign, but from any such
reproach the university stands sufficiently vindicated at this
time. Discipline might be somewhat lax, — a feature which
the1 ferment that prevailed, alike in the theological and in the
political world, serves partially to explain, — but the under-
current of loyal devotion to the best interests of the university
flowed strongly among its ablest teachers. In the same year institution of
as that in which a President2 was first appointed to rule the *^B°E**TIOS
College at Harvard, and the history of New England as an p
independent community may be said to have its commence-
ment, Cambridge drew up the first formal record of its past
benefactors and ordained an annual Commemoration of their
munificence. The Committee to whom, by a grace of the
Senate, the task of preparing this record was confided,
received instructions ' to explore the archives of the univer-
sity, to transcribe the names and benefactions of the donors,
and arrange them in due order,' the roll of the same to
be recited on a specified day in the academical year by a
1 Baker HSS. xxxm 224. but subsequently joined the exiles in
2 Henry Dunster, a graduate of America. See infra, p. 186.
Magdalene College, who took orders,
142
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
Jrfet™ebers
CHAP, i. preacher at St Mary's especially appointed by the vice-
chancellor1. The names of those appointed were Dr Cosin,
wno was at this time vice-chancellor, Dr Samuel Ward, the
master of Sidney, Dr Comber, the master of Trinity (whose
general attainments were surpassed by few living scholars),
Dr Laney, the master of Pembroke, Dr Sterne, the master of
Jesus, and the public orator, Dr Molle. To these six were
added Michael Honywood2, — a fellow of Christ's College and
an enthusiastic antiquary, whom Obadiah Walker afterwards
described as ' a living library for learning,' — while the two
proctors attended, ex officio, as custodians of the chests in
which the ' archives ' were preserved.
Few will be inclined to impute discredit to these meri-
torious scholars in that their critical faculty was not on a
par with their industry, and that in such a document official
countenance was given to mere legend, but legend not
formally recognised as such until the nineteenth century;
and that consequently 'the most glorious Sigebert, king of
the East Anglians/ Offa, king of the Mercians, Alfred and
his son Edward are gravely represented as the ' Coryphaei '
of the long and august array of the veritable benefactors of
the university3, of those, that is to say, who had bestowed
on it liberties and privileges, or were the founders of its
chairs, the builders of its schools, or donors of property of
any kind, whether foundations, bursaries, or tenements, and,
finally, of those who, either from their own resources, or by
their good offices with others, had aided in the building or
sefectfoan!ier
1 — ' acta publica revolvant, archiva
consulant, praedicta nomina benefi-
ciaque exscribant, colligant et in ordi-
nemdisponant.' Commemoratio Bene-
factorum, Gratia 11 Feb. 16f$. MS.
in Kegistry, transcribed by Cole (MS.
(XLVH 406) and printed in Statuta
Acad. Cantabr. (1785), pp. 381-2;
also in Hey wood and Wright, n 428-
437.
2 See an interesting account of
Honywood by the late canon Ven-
ables in D. N. B.
3 'In hisce jure merito chorum
ducunt serenissimi nostri reges et
principes : inprimis Sigebertus, Orien-
talium Anglorum rex, qui Academiam
nostram vel primus fundavit vel earn,
penitus per injuriam superiorum tem-
porum fractam et deletam, restituit
ex consilioFelicisBurgundi,primi co-
rundem Orientalium Anglorum Epis-
copi, circa annum Domini DCXXX™ ;
deinde nobilissimus rex Merciorum
Offa, Carolo Magno Imperatori con-
temporaneus; Illustrissimus Eegni
Monarcha Aluredus, ejusdemque
Filius Bex Edwardus Senior, dilec-
tissimus Cleri nutritor, amator et
Defensor, etc.' Commemoratio Beiie-
factorum, p. 7.
THE COMMEMORATION OF BENEFACTORS. 143
the adornment of that ' noble temple ' in which the above ,CHAP.
record was to be annually recited1. If however there were
names to which historical evidence compels us to demur,
there are also some which seem ' conspicuous by their |^P
absence.' It was not until the nineteenth century was lel
drawing to its close that the virtual founder of both Christ's
and St John's College was included in the enumeration2.
The abject loyalty of those days could not venture to recog-
nise the services of one, the victim of royal vengeance, whose
head had once been impaled on London Bridge as that of a
traitor to the realm.
Dr Cosin's best efforts were at this time largely given to
another design, — the erection of a new Commencement m^
House and a new University Library, and the project was so Sbra
far successful that plans for the new buildings were actually
submitted to Charles for his approval. The king was
pleased to sanction them and to command that the vice-
chancellor and Heads should forthwith take steps for pro-
curing subscriptions. A sum of £8000 had already been
raised, when the events which will demand our attention in
the next chapter arrested this spirited endeavour to give
effect to the generous purpose of Buckingham3.
Disastrous as had been the effects of the pestilence,
there were many to whom they appeared of small moment
when compared with the moral depression which stole over
the university as the strong hand of authority continued to
interpose its canons of religious belief. If controversy had been
stifled by the Declaration, it was still lawful to strengthen
orthodoxy by exposing the errors of Lutheranism4; and while
1 — ' qui multa nobis turn ipsi con- 4 The following extract from a
cesserunt turn ab aliis impetrarunt letter by Hartlib to Sir Thomas Roe
beneficia.' Ibid. p. 14. (London, 10 Aug. 1640) shews the
2 The Grace for the inclusion of direction which the Cambridge ac-
bishop Fisher's name as that of one tivity was now taking: '...Meditatur
who was the ' adviser of the Lady Rev. Episcopus Salisbr. [Davenant]
Margaret and for thirty years Chan- egregium opus de Fundamentalibus
cellor of the University,' passed the Fidei Capitibus, quod modo subprelo
Senate 14 Feb. 1895, — a tardy recog- est,componendishisceChristianiprae-
nition evoked by the appeal of the sertim Evangelici Orbis litigiis desti-
late Dr F. Watson in his Commem- natum, magno procul dubio Ecclesiae
oration Sermon of 1894. bono...I heare the worthys of Cam-
3 MS. Baker, xxx 454. bridge are at worke to satisfie in like
144 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. L ^ LaUC|'s arbitrary pretensions menaced the privileges of the
university, the liberties of the nation at large seemed in
peril owing to the dispersion of its great .Council. To these
ominous encroachments there was now added a renewed
convocation source of alarm. If parliament was silenced. Convocation
reasserts the
Diving6 °f could still give utterance to its convictions, and it now
so1 jfune 1640. enunciated, in terms more explicit and emphatic than any
that England had ever yet listened to, the theory of the
Divine Right of Kings. Twelve years before, on the occasion
of Manwaring's daring assertion of the doctrine, Laud himself
had shrunk from the obloquy which he foresaw awaited its
assertor, and would fain have left the published Sermons of
that headstrong divine to share the fate of the Appello1.
But now in those memorable Canons, enacted in London,
assented to at York and confirmed by the Great Seal, and
The doctrine formally imposed on ' every member or student of college or
imposed J r J
universities nall>' on ' every reader of divinity or humanity in either of
the universities,' men saw this doctrine constituted an article
of faith, the rejection of which rendered the offender liable
to a sentence of excommunication and suspension from all
the emoluments of ecclesiastical or academic office2.
tKteJ°«raf To Cosin, as vice-chancellor, this mandate was trans-
mitted, together with instructions to cause the famous
etcetera oath to be administered to all resident members of
the university3. The master of Peterhouse, although hitherto
an energetic promoter of the Laudian reforms, was at this
time in no hopeful mood. The far larger emoluments which
manner the requests of the doctours unto his Lordsp. about it, to put all into
of Bremen. Only my Ld. Bish. of a milder traine.' State Papers (Dom.)
Duresme [Morton] is altogether silent. Charles the First, vol. CCCCLXIH,
It may be the Northerne distractions no. 67.
hinder him from such and the like 1 Gardiner, Hist, of England, \i
pacifical overtures. I am much griev- 208-210.
ed for his booke de HoXvroirla (Ubi- 2 Card well, Synodalia, i 380;
quity) Corporis Christi, which is now Cooper, Annals, m 301-2.
in the presse at Cambridge. For both 3 ' ...nor will I ever give my consent
the Bish. of Lincolne and Dr Hacket to alter the government of this Church
told me from the mouth of him that by archbishops, bishops, deans and
corrects it (an accurate and judicious archdeacons, ETC., as it stands now
scholler) that it was a very invective established.' Printed in full in
and bitter writing against the Lu- Cooper, Ibid, m 302 n. 1 ; Gardiner,
theran tenets in that pointe, in so u. s. ix 146; Hutton, The English
much that Dr Brownrig had written Church (1625-1714), pp. 82-83.
THE ETCETERA OATH. 145
he drew as prebendary of Durham seemed likely altogether
to vanish in the conflict with ' the rebels ' in the North, and,
in replying to Laud, he candidly admits that ' the times,' Hifap
to him, appear 'exceedingly bad'; while he begs that more thelu^
definite instructions may be sent him with regard to the
taking and administering of the new oath. Men, he says,
are making a ' great noise ' about it at Cambridge ; and his l^
perplexity is enhanced by the discovery that, in the copy of J^^,,
the oath sent to him, the word ' popish' is altogether omitted abridge
in the clause relating to Catholic superstitions. He would copy>
fain hope that this is only a 'scribe's error,' but he holds
that ' the uncertainty of the "^tceteri " ' is a matter ' whereat
many froward men are likely to stick1.' His misgivings
were fully justified by the sequel. To not a few it seemed
a grave anomaly that Convocation should still be sitting
when parliament had been dissolved. Among their number Exceptions
taken to the
were Holdsworth, now master of Emmanuel, Brownrig, the Jfoygworth
recently installed master of St Catherine's, and Hacket, now Hacke"and
an active parish priest in the important centre of St Andrew's, GOO&BML
Holborn. ' These,' says Fuller, ' importunately pressed that
Convocation might sink with the parliament, it being ominous
and without precedent, that the one should survive when
the other was expired2.' They were supported by Godfrey
Goodman, a former scholar of Trinity College, now bishop
of Gloucester, but already a pervert to the Roman Church.
Goodman, indeed, refused to give his adhesion to the new
canons in their entirety, and paid the penalty of his pre-
sumption by actual suspension from office. He eventually
submitted, but the opposition of Papist and Puritan alike
had now been effectually roused.
The views of the opposite party found an able and wnuam
rr *• Beale: his
courageous champion in Dr Beale. The circumstances under |etr$™ ?*.
which his promotion to the mastership of St John's (at that 27 Man 1^35
time the largest of the Cambridge colleges) had taken place3
1 State Papers (Dom.) diaries the ber of members of St John's was
First, CCCCLXVH, no. 129. 280 ; of Trinity 277. These numbers
3 Fuller-Brewer, vi 166. did not include servants. See Cooper,
3 Supra, p. 117. In 1641 the num- m 314-5.
M*. III. 10
146
A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP. I.
He attacks
Parliament.
He is called
to account
by the Short
Parliament :
May 1640.
His
complaint
to Cosin.
had naturally still further attached him to Charles; and
having been elected to the office of vice-chancellor in the
same year, and also appointed to preach at St Mary's on
the anniversary of the royal accession, his loyalty and grati-
tude found fervid expression in trenchant denunciation of
the powers which, as he held, parliament was unjustly
arrogating to itself. That his attack was not the outcome
of mere bigotry may be inferred from the fact that he
subsequently opposed with equal vigour Laud's claim to
the right of visitation. Baker, indeed, pronounces Beale to
have been ' an extraordinary man,' and is of opinion that he
wanted only ' opportunity and time ' to have raised his
college to the highest pitch of prosperity. His very ability
and conspicuous position made it, however, all the more
impossible to ignore his conduct, and almost the last act of
the ' Short Parliament ' had been to call him to account. He
was summoned up to Westminster to hear the allegations
against him, while extracts from his sermon (delivered five
years before) were referred to the consideration and examina-
tion of a Committee, further instructed to hold a conference
with the Lords1. The day fixed for his appearance was the
seventh of May ; but on the fifth, parliament was dissolved.
Writing to Cosin in the following July, he complained in
bitter terms of the injury already done to his reputation,
and augured ill of the treatment he had yet to look for at
the hands of the Puritan party2.
In the mean time, the judges affirmed the legality of
Convocation continuing to sit, and the prevailing sentiments
of the university were still unmistakeably loyal. On the
birth of prince Henry (afterwards duke of Gloucester and
earl of Cambridge) at Oatlands, these sentiments found
1 Cooper, m 300 ; Baker-Mayor,
p. 629.
2 'My comfort is if every article,
as they framed it, put into the Par-
liament against me, had been in my
sermon, yet not a syllable' [would
have been] ' false though indiscreet.
What those faithfully disposed to
God, the King, and the Church shall
have to look for is shown by the Pu-
ritans usage of me. My good name is
already bespattered all over England,
in Cambridge, and St John's, and
worst of all it has already half foiled
me in the government of my college,
which was the orderliest body for so
great a one in the university. ' 27 July
1640. State Papers (Dam.) Charles
the First, CCCCLI, no. 29.
n0*dention
THE TOWN ELECTION. 147
expression in a collection of verses, imploring with more . CH^P- *• ..
than ordinary fervour the richest blessings of Heaven on byethees
that one of Charles's children in whom the answer to their oiuhe'birth
prayers seemed afterwards so singular! v realised1. The Henry:
J . 8 Jul>' 1640.
town, on the other hand, gave evidence, some three months
later, of strongly divergent feeling, when it devolved upon ^ectjs°snesoffor
the constituency to return two burgesses for the new parlia-
ment. It was apprehended that there would be a warm
contest, and the lord keeper Finch, also high steward of the On
town, ventured upon a bold endeavour to forestall the choice |S^
of the community. In a letter to the mayor and burgesses,
after blandly expressing his hope that the new parliament
would be a ' happie one,' he proceeded to recommend ' my
cosen and freind Mr Thomas Meautys' and 'my brother
Sir Nathaniel Finch ' as worthy of their choice and likely
to forward their interests2. The royalist party at St John's,
headed by Cleveland, the poet, at that time a fellow of the
college, strained every nerve to carry the election of the
despotic Finch's nominees. But their efforts proved fruitless
and the members returned were Oliver Cromwell and John Election of
OLIVER
Lowrey. Cromwell had already represented the borough in £*j> job"
the Short Parliament, and on his being now declared head Lowrey-
of the poll, Cleveland passionately exclaimed that ' that Jf.r\!a1t^Lo
single vote had ruined both Church and Kingdom3.' The
result was probably received with more composure at the
successful candidate's own college of Sidney, where, under
1 Voces votivae ab Academicis Can- Cooper, Annals, in 303-4.
tabrigiensibus pro novissimo Caroli 3 ' When Oliver was in election to
et Mariae Principe Filio emissae. be burgess for the town of Cambridge,
Cantabrigiae : apud Rogerum Daniel, as he engaged all his friends and
1640. 'In truth, the finest youth and interests to oppose it, so, when it
of the most manly understanding that was passed, he said with much pas-
I have ever knowne." Hyde to Ro- sionate zeal, that single vote had
Chester, Clar. State Papers, n, no. ruined both Church and Kingdom.'
1156. Among the contributors to the Life of Cleveland prefixed to Works
Voces, were Dr Collins, Dr Comber (ed. 1687). Cooper understands by
(master of Trinity), Dr Love, Dr this that Cromwell was returned by a
Sterne, Peter Gunning, Pearson majority of only one; but there is no
(afterwards bishop of Chester and record of the numbers and it seems
expositor of the Creed), James Du- more probable that Cleveland is re-
port, and the poets Henry More, fen-ing to the collective vote. He
Crashaw and Cowley. was distinguished, as we shall sub-
s See letter printed from ' Cor- sequently see, by his personal an-
poration Common Day Book' in tipathy to Cromwell.
10—2
148 A.D. 1625 TO 1640.
CHAP, i. ^ Samuel Ward, he had perhaps first become imbued with
those puritan sympathies which had already earned for the
cronweiias society Laud's bitter antipathy1. As an undergraduate,
lew— IMS. however, Cromwell was distinguished rather as an athlete
than in the schools ; but he appears to have studied Greek
and Roman history to some purpose, and he was able, it is
said, when Protector, to converse with foreign ambassadors
in Latin2. In parliament, as member for Huntingdon, he
had already given sufficient evidence of his political leanings
by a speech against the Declaration, and it was not without
reason that Cleveland, from his point of view, prognosticated
so gloomily with respect to the future results of this borough
election at Cambridge.
1 Cromwell was entered at Sidney Lingua ; and the same writer tells
23 April 1616 but appears to have us ' that his Cambridge course, corn-
left the university in June 1617 with- bined with his natural abilities, stood
out taking a degree. him in good stead in his after trans-
8 See Prof. C. H. Firth's valuable actions... though he attained to no
Memoir in the D. N. B. According great perfection in learning.' Eng-
to Winstanley, Cromwell took the land's Worthies (ed. 1660), p. 527.
part of ' Tactus ' in the play of
CHAPTER II.
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
THE oft-repeated story, that Oliver Cromwell had actually > ^ — '
taken his passage in a vessel bound for New England when respecting
he was stopped by an Order of Council1, is discredited by cromweii.
the most authoritative research, but there is good reason for
believing that he at one time fully intended to join the
exiles across the Atlantic, and that he would have carried his
design into effect, had he failed in his candidature for a seat
in the Long Parliament. In the year of the assembling
of that memorable parliament, about the time when the
newly-elected members were on their toilsome journeys from
the provinces to Westminster, the colony of New England
was beginning to take shape as an independent Common-
wealth2; and here, accordingly, a few pages may well be
devoted to some account of the losses which Cambridge
sustained, and of the corresponding gains of the New World,
as the direct result of the long struggle between those
opposing theories of government and belief which have thus
far demanded so large a share of our attention.
It is from a very early date in the history of American ^t^dge
civilisation that we are able to trace a direct connexion V^EOISIA! °f
between Cambridge and the colonisation of the New World.
That connexion, as it first presents itself, is mainly associated
with the plantation of Virginia, — with the generous impulses
1 Cotton Mather, Magnalia (ed. barkation of Cromwell, etc. Boston,
1702), p. 23. The evidence has been 1866.
collected and sifted by Mr John 2 Winsor, Hist, of America, ra 314.
Ward Dean in his Slory of the Em-
150
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
but highly practical aims of the navigators and explorers of
the Elizabethan age. It was within two years of the sailing
of the first expedition, — the Sarah Constant, the God-
Speed, and the Discovery, from Blackwall, — that William
Crashaw, fellow of St John's and father of the poet, preached
before the Council and the little band of 'Adventurers ' a
memorable sermon1. Rarely, indeed, has pulpit oratory
assumed a form at once so practical and so philosophic.
Crashaw's discourse may be described as a cogent exposition
of the grounds on which, even at this early stage, American
colonisation appeared justified at once to the discerning
trader and the enlightened patriot. All the arguments
adduced to dissuade Englishmen from such perilous enter-
prise, as derived from distance2, climate3, and hardships4 to
be encountered, are weighed and answered; all the con-
siderations which seemed to beckon the adventurer onwards,
— such as the gain to the mother country and to Church and
State5, — are urged with an eloquence which casts a veritable
halo round this far-off Virginia, 'whom,' cried the preacher,
' though mine eies see not, my heart shall love6.'
1 A Sermon preached in London
before the right honorable the Lord
Laicarre, Lord Gouernour and Capt.
Generall of Virginea, and others of
his Maiesties Counsellfor that King-
dome and the rest of the Aduenturers
in that Plantation. At the said Lord
Generall his leave taking of England
his native Countrey, and departure
for Virginea, Feb. 21, 1609. By
W. Crashaw, Bachelar of Divinitie,
and Preacher at the Temple. Wherein
both the lawfulnesse of that Action is
maintained and the necessity thereof
is also demonstrated, not so much out
of the grounds of Policie, as of Hu-
manitie, Equity and Christianity.
London, 1610, pp. 83.
2 '...a two moneths voyage, and
we hope we shall shortly be able
to say a moneths.' Ibid. p. 33.
3 ' ...not so hot as Spaine rather
of the same temper with the South
of France.' Ibid. p. 35.
4 ' ...no great thing achieved with-
out enduring miseries.'...' unworthie
are they to be counted fathers and
founders of a new Church and Com-
monwealth that resolved not to un-
dergoe and endure all difficulties,
miseries and hardnesse that flesh and
blood is able to bear.' Ibid. pp.
47-48.
5 ' ...we shall mightily advance
the honorable name of the English
nation. . .inrich our nation, strengthen
our navie, fortifie our kingdom.'
Ibid. p. 76.
6 Ibid. p. 82. Notwithstanding
the enthusiastic spirit of these sen-
timents, however, it is clear, to
quote the words of Mr Philip Bruce,
that ' the Virginian enterprise was
essentially a practical commercial
undertaking' (Economic History of
Virginia in the Seventeenth Century
[London, 1896], i 66-69, where the
author brings into contrast, very
effectively, the alleged and the
genuine objects of the planters).
Miss Kingsbury even goes so far as
to say, ' the Virginia Company was
purely a commercial enterprise con-
ducted by a private concern . ' In trod .
to the Records of the Virginian Com-
pany in London (1905), p. 12.
CAMBRIDGE AND VIRGINIA. 151
Ten years later we find Henry Wriothesley, third earl of
Southampton, who had been educated at St John's College.
O ' colonists
appointed governor of the Virginia Company — an organisation Cambridge:
which, to quote professor Mayor's eulogium, ' secured to s^utS-
Virginia free trade, free trial, free government, and Christian an
education1.' Southampton's deputy was John Ferrar, the perils.66
brother of Nicholas Ferrar of Clare Hall. Along with their
father, Nicholas, the two brothers appear as shareholders in
the 'Somers Islands' as early as 1618, and the younger
Nicholas was afterwards one of the directors of the Company.
Another member of the Company was the eminent mathe-
matician, Henry Briggs of St John's College, afterwards Briggs:
Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford, whose tables ' for d. icso.
the Improvement of Navigation ' appeared in the year sub-
sequent to that in which George Somers was cast ashore on
the Bermudas.
Somewhat later, John Pory of Caius College, one of johnPory:
Richard Hakluyt's most valued coadjutors2, appears crossing <i. less,
the Atlantic as secretary to Sir George Yardley, the new
governor of the colony. In 1621, Pory returned to England
but sailed again for Virginia in 1623 in the capacity of com-
missioner. In the following year he finally returned to the
mother country to settle down in London, where he acted
for the next six years as one of Joseph Mede's most regular
correspondents.
In short, throughout the achievements and the hardships Anglican
• iii- ,. ,. ... ., TT. . . traditions
which mark the history of the earlier colonisation of Virginia, of Virginia.
there breathes a spirit of romantic adventure in quest of
gain, pursued in full sympathy with the country from
whence its first leaders set forth, which is comparatively
wanting in the conditions under which the colonisation of
Plymouth and New England was carried out. ' The Virginia
planter,' says Mr Brock, ' was essentially a transplanted
1 Lives of Nicholas Ferrar, Pref. dustrious, and learned friend, M.
p. xvi ; see also pp. 20-22, 202-217. John Pory, one of speciall skill and
2 ' I have for these 3 yeeres last extraordinarie hope to performe great
past encouraged and furthered in matters in the same and beneficial
these studies of Cosmographie and for the Commonwealth.' Dedication
forren histories, my very honest, in- to Voyages (ed. 1600), m.
152
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP. II.
Proposed
University
for Virginia ;
also College
for the
natives.
Failure of
the project
and neglect
of education
in the
Colony.
Englishman in tastes and convictions and emulated the
social amenities and the culture of the mother country1.'
Hakluyt's followers, accordingly, appear to have taken but
little interest in the New England colonisation, and in John
Pory's numerous letters to Mede we find but one reference
to Transatlantic affairs, — a somewhat disparaging allusion to
Nova Scotia and the doings of lord Baltimore2. At first,
indeed, while the influence of home associations was still
strong upon the settlers, we hear of designs in the direction
of the higher education which were not destined to be
realised. Oilman refers to 'a project for a university as
early as 16243'; and calls attention to the fact that 'several
years before the settlement of Massachusetts Bay, the Vir-
ginia Company determined to set apart at Henrico, ten
thousand acres of land for "a university," including one
thousand for a College " for the children of the infidels " (i.e.
the Indians).' But these commendable designs were never
carried into accomplishment, and the mental culture of the
earlier Virginian settler may be said to have been almost
neglected. It was not until the latter part of the seven-
teenth century that William Randolph, a relative of the
1 Winsor, u.s. in 153. As for
anything approaching to a spirit of
toleration in religion, it is sufficient to
note Crashaw's expressions, ' Suffer
no Papists... Suffer no Brownists nor
factious Separatists; let them keep
their conventicles elsewhere.' A
Sermon, etc., p. 81. William Cra-
shaw, it is to be noted, was at this
time about 28 years of age and had
been elected a fellow of St John's
by royal mandate.
2 Pory ' s acquaintance with the New
World appears to have been limited
to Virginia and Nova Scotia. Of the
latter he speaks as ' that most horrid
region ' and a land consisting of ' no-
thing but rocks, lakes, or mosses, like
bogs, which a man might thrust a
spike down to the buthead in.'
Letter to Mede, 12 Feb. 164$.
Mede's lively interest in these distant
regions attests not only the activity
of his own enquiring mind but also,
probably, the corresponding interest
which the university at large was
beginning to take. Court and Times
of Charles the First, n 52-54, 60.
3 Dr E. D. Neill, in Virginia Ve-
tusta, informs us ' that an island in
the Susquehanna, which the traveller
may see to the north as he crosses
the railroad bridge at Havre de Grace,
was conditionally given for ' ' the
founding and maintenance of a uni-
versitie and such schools in Virginia
as shall there be erected and shall
be called Acadeniia Virginiensis et
Oxoniensis." The death of the pro-
jector, Edward Palmer, interrupted
his plans.' See An Address before
the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard
University, July 1, 1886, by Daniel
C. Oilman, President of the Johns
Hopkins University, 1886, p. 5. The
intelligence and assiduity displayed
by Nicholas Ferrar and his brother
John (also of Clare Hall) in their
efforts to further the developement of
the colony were beyond all praise,
but were frustrated by the represen-
tations of Gondomar to king James.
Lives (u. s.), ed. Mayor, pp. 206-9.
JOSEPH MEDE ON THE NEW WORLD. 153
poet, founded the ' William and Mary College,' an institution VCHAP- ll-^
which, although the only centre of higher education in the
colony, it was found necessary to support by indirect taxa-
tion1. In his sturdy aversion from centralising interference,
the tobacco-planter of Virginia, indeed, reminds us not a
little of his contemporary — the Huguenot ; but it is to New
England that we must look for the features which bear out
the late professor Seeley's criticism, wherein he describes the
first settlers as quitting their native land with ' the determi-
nation not of carrying England with them but of creating
something which should not be England2.'
From a correspondent of a different type to John Pory,
Mede would probably have sought to gather some further
information respecting these distant regions, the discovery of
which, with their strange tribes, had already introduced a Mede's
* perplexity
very perplexing factor into the calculations of the interpreter t^^wiy" to
of prophecy, so that not a few divines were already inclining races™"
to the conclusion that, to use the expression of Cotton
Mather, ' the Church of God was no longer to be wrapp'd up
in Strabo's cloak3.' Mede's own views, however, would per-
haps never have been given to the world had it not been
that his friend, Dr Twisse of Newbury, deemed it incumbent HIS reply to
J Dr Twisse
on him to interrogate the great Cambridge savant on the hh£ on'thelts
subject, he himself being sorely perplexed by the rising up subJ'ect-
of these new elements in the human race, scarcely to be
classified as ' pagan ' and ' not discovered till this Old World
of ours is almost at an end.' 'And considering,' he goes on
to say, 'our English Plantations of late and the opinion of
many grave divines concerning the Gospel's fleeting West-
ward, sometimes I have had such thoughts, Why may not America win
* * certainly not
that be the place of the New Jerusalem ? ' Mede, however, ^New*6 of
having already peremptorily rejected this hypothesis, his corre- Jeru8alem-
1 ' There was no public education, College, New York, 1893.
the only institution of learning, 2 Expansion of England, p. 125.
William and Mary College, being :! Magnalia, bk. i 2: Cf. George
supported by indirect taxes laid by Herbert, The Church Militant, ' Then
the Assembly.' See the highly in- shall Eeligion to America flee;|
teresting sketch, The Financial His- They have their Times of Gospel,
tory of Virginia (1609-1776) : by Wm. e'en as we.'
Zebina Ripley, Ph.D., Columbia
154 THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP. IT. spondent goes on to discuss the somewhat painful alterna-
T^ssT' tive. ' But what, I pray, shall our English there degenerate
arfnTof' Gog and joyn themselves with Gog and Magog ? We have heard
lately, divers ways, that our people have no hope of the
conversion of the natives; and the very week after I received
your last letter I saw a letter written from New England
discoursing of an impossibility of living there, yea, and that
the Gospel is like to be more dear1 in New England than in
the Old. And lastly, unless they be exceeding careful and
God wonderfully merciful, they are like to lose that life and
zeal for God and His truth in New England which they
enjoyed in the Old; as whereof they have already woful
experience, and many there feel it to their smart.' It cannot
be said that Mede, in replying to the above letter, appears
Mede's much wiser than his correspondent. He gives it as his con-
pamful
conclusion. ciusion that the Tempter had been driven from Christendom
to the New World by the gradual triumph of Christianity,
or, as he quaintly puts it, ' that the Devil, being impatient
of the sound of the Gospel and Cross of Christ in every part
of this Old World, so that he could in no place be quiet for
it, and foreseeing that he was like at length to lose all here,
bethought himself to provide him of a seed over which he
might reign securely, and in a place, ubi nee Pelopidarum
facta neque nomen aitdiret2.' With respect to Gog and
Magog, concerning whom he was already committed to a
special theory3, he prefers to maintain a discreet silence.
His probable The evidence of a direct connexion between this singular
influence on
wieoifgf land theory as advanced by Mede and a similar belief which is to
sed' be found prevailing, more than a generation later, among
New England divines, is wanting, but the circumstantial
evidence leaves little doubt that such a connexion actually
existed. When, indeed, we recall the influence which he
exerted over the Cambridge of his time, the very Cambridge,
that is to say, which sent forth the men who mainly governed
and guided these new plantations in the West, who watched
1 ' dear ' in the sense of scarce. p. 799 ; Cicero ad Att. xv 11, 3 and
2 ' Christ's Colledge, March 23, ad Fam. vn 30, 1.
163$': see Mede's Works (ed. 1672), 3 Supra, p. 24.
VIEWS OF COTTON MATHER. 155
over the spiritual needs of each little settlement, preached ,CHAP. n.^
in the pulpit, administered the sacraments, and taught in
the schools, it seems highly improbable that his views on
such a question (to them one of close and personal interest)
should have failed to become familiar. That his theory, by
whatever channel imported, became a veritable tradition in
the New England of the seventeenth century is incontestable.
In the year 1702, Cotton Mather (who had succeeded in ^"her:
1684 to the pastorate of the church at Boston and who, on ^; 172!;
more than one occasion, was a candidate for the presidency
of Harvard College) published that remarkable compilation,
his Ecclesiastical History of New England1, — a volume with
respect to which the student is embarrassed between his
sense of the preservation of much that is valuable as fact
along with not a little that attests the author's boundless
credulity, lack of judgement, and violent prepossessions. If
Prynne, who ridiculed so unsparingly the importance at-
tached by Laud to dreams, could have lived to see to what
depths of superstition Puritanism, unbridled alike by the
judgement of the true scholar and the authority of the
Church, could descend, he might have found in these pages
food for profitable reflexion. For our present purpose, it is
sufficient to note the fact that the leading divine of Boston
in the last quarter of the seventeenth century2, when en-
deavouring to find some acceptable explanation of those
' preternatural occurrences ' to which he devotes a special ^production
chapter, is fain to reproduce Mede's theory. The godly of «L
Boston were, indeed, by no means quick to discern much
similarity between the New England in which their actual
lot was cast and that New Jerusalem which it was their
fondest hope that they should one day behold. On the
1 Magnalia Christi Americana : or, first minister of the town, the first in
the Ecclesiastical History of New-Eng- age, in gifts, and in grace; as all
land, from its first Planting in the his brethren very readily own. I
year 1620 unto the Year of our Lord might add... the first in the whole
1698. In seven Books. By the province and provinces of New Eng-
Beverend and Learned Cotton Mather, land, for universal literature and
M.A. and Pastor of the North Church extensive services.' Colman, Funeral
in Boston, New England. London : Sermon, etc., p. 23 [quoted by Peirce,
1702. Hist, of Harvard University, pp.
2 « We mourn the decease. ..of the 139-140].
156 THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP, ii. contrary, they rather inclined to the theory that the former
was probably the arena in which Gog and Magog were
destined to wage final battle, it being notorious that the
surrounding country was haunted by supernatural agencies, —
witches1, apparitions, devils, — all alike seeking to appal,
torment and drag to destruction the souls of the faithful.
To the new settlers, accordingly,
' — the damp and desert sod
Walled in by dark old forest trees,'
The powers seemed anything but a sanctuary for worship. ' Who can
retreat from tell,' suggests Cotton Mather, 'whether the envy of the
the centres of °o J
civilisation. (Jevils at the favour of God unto men, may not provoke them
to affect retirement from the sight of populous and pros-
perous regions, except so far as they reckon theif work of
tempting mankind necessary to be carry 'd on ? Or, perhaps,
it is not every countrey before which the devils prefer the
desarts. Regions in which the devils are much served by
those usages, either in worship or manners, which are pleasing
to them, are by those doleful creatures enough resorted unto.
Yea, if sin much abound anywhere, some devils entreat that
they may not be sent from thence into the luildemess. But
regions like the land of Israel, where the true God is con-
tinually pray'd unto and where the Word of God is continually
sounding, are filled with such things as are very uneasie unto
the devils. The devils often recede much from thence into
the wilderness, as the devil of Mascon would say to Mr Per-
reaud, the minister that lived in the haunted house, While
you go to prayer, I'll go take a turn in the street*'
1 The belief in witches frequently ' Magic and Witchcraft ' (Hist, of
found expression on the occurrence Rationalism, Vol. 1 118), observes that
of storms at sea: 'the equinoctial Boyle, while sceptical as to the evi-
winds...were often attributed by the dence of many witch stories, 'ex-
ignorant servants and even the repre- pressed his firm belief in the demon
sentatives of higher classes to the of Mascon.' Cotton Mather's pages
machinations of witches.' Bruce, form, indeed, a worthy pendant to
Economic History of Virginia, etc., Lecky's sketch of this superstition
i 628. as it existed in Scotland. At Am-
2 Magnolia, bk. vi, c. vii, 'Re- sterdam, on the other hand, the
lating the Wonders of the invisible theory had been put forward, that
World in preternatural Occurrences,' the native element represented the
p. 66. Lecky, in his chapter on Lost Tribes. See INDEX.
THE EXILES IN AMSTERDAM. 157
Childish as the above speculations now appear, they ,CHAP. n.
possess a real historical value as illustrating the peculiar S^h"08
conception which, from the very first, may be said to have ^Ne^1'011
brooded over New England colonisation in the minds of its experiences,
chief promoters, — its intimate association with suffering for
conscience sake. So long as the Church assumes the right
to penalise divergencies of theological belief, so long, it may
with certainty be predicted, recalcitrant spirits will be found
rising up to challenge both her right to such authority and
the justice of her decisions, and of this the earlier relations
between England and the New World afford ample evidence.
In the preceding volume1, we have already seen how, in
the days of the Marian persecution, the Reformers retreated
to the Continent, and how Zurich and Strassburg, and more
especially Frankfort, in turn afforded shelter to that assertion
Xravers
of a right of private iudgement which afterwards expanded in the
.r J ° . . university.
into Separatism. It was not surprising, indeed, that when
the little band of exiles sought to elaborate for themselves a
new system both of belief and ritual, divergencies of opinion
should soon have become manifest. At Frankfort the con-
troversies waged over the first Prayer Book of king Edward's
reign had given rise to ' troubles ' which, thirty years later,
proved the source of most of the difficulties against which
Whitgift, while at Cambridge2, had to contend, and which
multiplied after his departure. At Christ's College the
brothers Francis and George Johnson carried on an agitation f^jf,,.
for which the former atoned by the forfeiture of his fellow- d.\fvi.
ship and expulsion from the university ; while George, the j^^f ®n .
younger, had been fain to retreat to London where he soon d'.ioik
associated himself with the main body of the Separatists in
the capital. The year 1593 found them both in prison, — ^oJTt^th
Francis in the Clink, George in the Fleet. While thus im- ^^f
mured, they had contrived notwithstanding to carry on a **
correspondence, but one which was neither fraternal nor
even amicable ; and when, after five years' incarceration,
they were released and met, it was as fugitives from the two
ships, the Hopewell and the Chancewell, in which it had
1 n 172-4. 2 Ibid, n 277.
158
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
, been designed by the Council in London to transport them
out of the realm to Newfoundland. Both vessels, however,
under stress of weather, were compelled to put back, and the
brothers succeeded in effecting their escape, — Francis, along
with Daniel Studley1 from the Hopewell, George Johnson,
along with John Clarke, a former mayor of St Albans, from
the ChancewelL Their flight to Amsterdam, and the dissen-
sions among their followers which there broke out, to become
a scandal to Protestant Europe, are described in detail by
Dexter ; and the ancient but now fast-growing city2, itself
acquired a notoriety which led bishop Hall, in 1608,—
Amsterdam. a}though his sympathies were at that time mainly with the
Puritans, — to describe it as 'a common harbour of all
opinions, of all heresies3.' But the extent of religious free-
dom to which the exiles now laid claim altogether tran-
scended the limits of a practicable church organisation. The
brothers themselves, moreover, again quarrelled, and this
time irreconcilably. Francis Johnson, although able to 'hire
a great house with sundry rooms to spare,' refused shelter to
George, whom he stigmatized as ' a nourisher of tale-bearers,
a slaunderer, a teller of untruths4'; and, on accepting the
pastorate of a separate church, excluded him from communion
therewith. George, in retaliation, compiled an elaborate
1 Keferred to by bishop Joseph
Hall as 'your elder Daniel Studley
whom your pastor '[i.e. Henry Ains-
worth] 'so much extolleth,' Apology
of the Church of England against the
Brownists (1610),Hall-Wynter, ix34;
and probably a relative of John Stud-
ley, fellow of Trinity and translator
of Seneca, who in 1573 was obliged
to resign his fellowship owing to
his nonconformity in matters of
doctrine. Cooper, Athenae, n 100.
Dexter gives the name of one Jerome
Studley who died in Newgate, a
sufferer under similar persecution.
Congregationalism, p. 207 n.
2 ' When the twelve years' truce
with Spain was signed in 1609,
Amsterdam is said to have increased
in twenty years from 70,000 to
130,000, and it more than doubled
again during the next decade... It
included representatives of every
known people.' Dexter (H. M. and
Morton), England and Holland of
the Pilgrims, pp. 412-3.
3 Hall-Wynter, vi 186-88. 'If I
were obstinate too, you might hope
with the next gale for me, your more
equal adversary, at Amsterdam.'
Apology, Ibid, ix 6. 'Heresy is not
more frequent in Borne, than apostasy
at Amsterdam ; nor indulgences more
ordinary there, than here excom-
munications.' Ibid, ix 28-29. See
also Young (A.), Chronicles of the
Pilgrim Fathers* (Boston, 1844),
pp. 23-24. As a member of the Synod
of Dort, Hall must have had excel-
lent opportunities for informing him-
self accurately with respect to the
churches at Amsterdam and Leyden.
4 Dexter, Congregationalism, p. 286.
THE EXILES IN AMSTERDAM. 159
treatise1 to prove how completely his brother was in the VCHAP. ir.^
wrong, and in the preface to this remarkable volume adjured j^^n
him to ' let bond of nature, duetie to country, Christian {i°sm^"ces
charitie, sinceritie of profession ' move him ' to repentance,' C(
only to find, hoAvever, that ' a brother offended is harder to
win than a strong cittie2.' The writer subsequently enlarges
at length on the points, first of agreement and then those of
disagreement, in his brother's Church when compared with JJ| c
the former banished English Church at Frankfort, his main
melancholy conclusion being summed up, in his 'Address to church at
Frankfort.
the Reader,' in the following terms: 'If he that Anno 1575
published the troubles which begun at Frankford Anno 1554,
...... complayned and lamented for the unsavourie dealings
against the truth and the professors thereof by reason of
their troubles: and that not only profane and unbrideled
skoffers, but even preachers (and that in theyre pulpits)
such as were to be reverenced for the gifts God had given
them, brake into verie unsavourie speeches and unjust accu-
sations ...... what may these trobles look for in these Daies,
wherein skoffing is come to the height, and all is covered
under pregnancie of Witt, Policie, more than Religion, pos-
sesseth men's hearts, and all overspread with the cloke of
counterfeyte wisdome3?'
The long bitter diatribe was however never completed. HIS own
brother
Expelled from Amsterdam by his own brother, — a well <£P£13 him
merited sentence, if we may credit Henry Ainsworth, ' for Amsterdam-
lying, slandering, false accusation and contention,' — George
Johnson was fain to betake himself back to England, was
again consigned to prison, this time in Durham gaol, and
1 Discourse of some Troubles and flood of light ' on the condition of
Excommunications in the banished the exiles in the little church in
English Church at Amsterdam. Pub- Holland. Congregationalism, pp. 271
lished for sundry causes declared in -2. Another copy has been found in
the Preface to the Pastour of Hie the Library of Sion College, London.
sayd Church ...... Printed at Amster- 2 Discourse, p. 4.
dam, 1603. A black letter volume 3 Ibid. pp. 73-93. ' They at Frank-
of over 200 pages, the only copy of ford,' he observes, 'were content to
which was supposed by Dexter to be take counsel, use the help of the
that which he discovered, with the Ministers, and to follow the French
aid of Dr Aldis Wright, in Trinity Churches in good things.' Ibid.
College Library. Dexter rightly af- p. 73.
firms that the treatise throws ' a
160
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP. II.
Francis
Johnson
retires to
Einden and
is succeeded
in the
pastorate at
Amsterdam
by HENRY
AINSWOETH :
b. 1571.
d. 1623.
Ainsworth
an alumnus
both of
St John's
and of Caius
College.
His
knowledge of
Hebrew.
while there endeavouring to bring his volume to a conclusion
succumbed to the rigours of his confinement. His departure
from Amsterdam had not been followed by a cessation of
those ' troubles ' to which he had himself so materially con-
tributed ; and his brother, along with his ' Franciscans,' as
they were satirically styled, soon after found it necessary to
remove to Emden, in East Friesland, while Ainsworth suc-
ceeded to the premises which they had occupied and to the
position of pastor of those members of the church who had
remained behind1. The doubt which so long attached to his
claim to be regarded as a member of the university has been
finally set at rest by the publication of the Caius College
registers2. It may now be regarded as an ascertained fact
that the distinguished leader of the Separatists at Amster-
dam was a native of Norfolk, who, in 1586 came up from
Swanton Morley and entered at St John's College ; that in
the following year he migrated to Caius College and was
there elected to a scholarship which he continued to hold
until Lady Day 1591. Two years later he appears as one of
the exiles at Amsterdam, and he must consequently have
quitted Cambridge before the arrival of Ferdinand, the
Jew, revived for a time the well-nigh extinct study of
Hebrew in the university3. We must therefore attribute
to the foundation at Caius College of a Hebrew lectureship
by Dame Joyce Frankland in 15854, those modest acquire-
ments in that language which he afterwards turned to
1 ' It was a curious circumstance,
and one to which Robinson and
Brewster did not fail to advert in
their letter to Ainsworth, that "they
[i.e. the 'Franciscans'] who would
have no peace with their brethren
abyding in the same city with them ' '
were thus obliged ' ' to leave it them-
selves and to settle their abode else-
where." Dexter, u. s. p. 339.
2 Biographical History of Gonville
and Caius College. By John Venn.
1. 132. D. N. B. Errata, p. 4. These
facts altogether dispose of Roger
Williams' assertion, when claiming
that Henry Ainsworth 'had scarce
his peer amongst a thousand acade-
micians for the Scripture originals'
[i.e. Hebrew and Greek], that he
'yet scarce set foot icithin a college
walls,' an erroneous statement on
which he grounded the inference that
'God's people have many ways, besides
the university, lazy and monkish, to
attain to an excellent measure of the
knowledge of the tongues.' The
Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, etc.
(ed. 1848), p. 265. Williams wrote
this in 1644 when Ainsworth had
been dead 21 years, and there seems
to be no ground for Dexter 's assertion
(p. 270 n.) that the former ' seems
to have known' the latter 'well.'
3 Vol. n 417.
4 Venn, Annals, m 246-7.
THE EXILES IN HOLLAND. 161
such excellent account. At Amsterdam, indeed, he is said VCHAP. ii.^
to have been at one time under the necessity of supporting His ^y
<f O expenences
himself by acting as a porter to a bookseller ; while William dLm.m8ter"
Brewster, who had entered at Peterhouse in 15801, gained ^REWSTBB-
a livelihood by teaching English to the young Dutchmen of ^'.ifwp1'
the city, a task in the performance of which we learn that
he was materially aided by a 'knowledge of Latin and a
little Greek' which he had carried away from Cambridge
after but a short period of residence2.
The chief teachers of these exiles in Holland were, indeed, The churches
' of the exiles
all Cambridge men. And although some uncertainty still m^1°yand
exists as to which of the colleges educated John Robinson, dS^ioneof
whose life abroad was passed and ended in Leyden3, it is m*™. m
certain that John Smith, 'the Se-Baptist,' belonged to
Christ's College, and Robert Browne, ' the first pastor of the
first Independent church in England,' to that of Corpus
Chrisfci4; while in the long array of names which confront us
in the pages of George Johnson's querulous narrative, there
are not a few which may fairly be supposed to be those of
Cambridge graduates of whom no other record is preserved.
A like conjecture, however, cannot be supported in connexion comparative
with the sister university, whose registers offer in this respect °I
a complete contrast, — the name of Matthew Slade of St Alban ^
Hall, a distinguished scholar and the friend of Casaubon, *• J^f (?)
being the only one which also occurs in the list of Francis
Johnson's congregation. Much the same holds good with
1 The eminent founder of New nicies of the Pilgrim Fathers, p. 409.
Plymouth does not appear to have 3 Robinson's identity with the John
proceeded to a degree. D. N. B. Robinson admitted at Emmanuel
Errata, p. 36. Dr Walker attributes 2 March 1592-3, assumed by Young
Brewster's education at Peterhouse to (Chronicles of the Pilgrims, p. 452),
the patronage of archbishop Sandys, is shewn by Gordon's article in
under whose brother, Sir Samuel D. N. B. to be at least open to ques-
Sandys, William Brewster, senior tion. Dexter (p. 360) supposes him
(the father of the 'Pilgrim Father'), to be the John Robinson of Corpus
held the land which he cultivated. who matriculated in 1592 and of whom
See Peterhouse, p. 120, n. 1 ; also Masters says ' Fell. 1598. Qu. bene-
the interesting chapter on ' Scrooby, need near Yarmouth in Norfolk, but
the Birthplace of the Pilgrim Church,' being molested by the Ecclesiastical
in England and Holland of the Pil- Courts, removed to Leyden, where
grims. By the late H. M. Dexter he set up a Congregation of the man-
and his Son. 1905. p. 283. ner of the Brownists.' A List of
2 Bradford (W.), Hist, of the Ply- Members, etc., p. 41.
mouth Plantation, in Young's Chro- * Vol. n 300-2.
M.' III. 11
162
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP. II.
His
Cambridge
Platform.
Cambridge
always
regarded as
the fountain-
head of
Puritan
doctrines.
respect to the emigrants to New Plymouth and New England,
John Davenport of Merton (and afterwards of Magdalen)
and Richard Mather1 of Brasenose (the father of Increase
Mather) being apparently the only two prominent
Oxonians in the primary group of teachers in the latter
colony. Of these, the former, having incurred the dis-
pleasure of Laud by his courageous efforts on behalf of the
distressed ministers in the Palatinate, fled in 1634 to
Amsterdam where he was elected co-pastor of the Separatist
church; while the latter, who emigrated directly to America,
became distinguished as the author of a scheme of church
organisation which was destined to become the basis of the
better known ' Cambridge Platform2.' It was to Cambridge,
in short, that the Puritan, having gained a haven beyond
the reach of the persecutor, would ever and anon gratefully
revert in memory, as to the arena where Cartwright had
done battle for spiritual freedom, where Perkins had taught,
where Preston, Chaderton and Sibbes were then actually
pleading and contending for the rights and liberties which
he and they alike held so dear3.
But on the other hand, the sympathy which went out to
the exiles from those of their party who remained behind in
the university cannot have failed to undergo some diminu-
1 Eichard Mather entered at Bra-
senose 9 May 1618, but continued to
reside in Oxford only a short time,
a fact which may partially explain
why the historian of the College pro-
fesses (p. 125) entire ignorance of his
subsequent history. Hist, of Bra-
senose College. By John Buchan.
1898.
2 Church Government and Church-
Covenant discussed in an Answer of
the Elders of the severall Churches
in New-England to two and thirty
Questions sent over to them by divers
Ministers in England, etc. 1643. ' Of
which Book my father was the sole
Author.' Mather (Increase), Order
of the Gospel, etc. (1700), p. 73.
Dexter, who recognises in this treatise
the influence of Francis Johnson,
gives a careful analysis of the Plat-
form agreed to by a Synod of the
New England Churches in 1647 and
cites evidence to shew that Eichard
Mather's treatise was 'that out of
which it was chiefly taken.' Con-
gregationalism, pp. 426, 438-447.
3 A feature in our University his-
tory which it has appeared to me all
the more necessary to bring into due
prominence, in that it has been left
almost unrecognised by the chief
writers on the period, not excepting
even Gardiner, who leaves it alto-
gether unmentioned in his able
chapter on the Separatists (History
of England, c. xxxvi) ; see also James
Eussell Lowell's Oration, in Record
of Harvard Commemoration (1886),
p. 201, where, after naming seven
divines, five of whom were of Cam-
bridge, he speaks of the entire number
as 'ministers trained at Oxford and
Cambridge.'
to Ley<
A.D. 16
.609.
JOHN
JOHN ROBINSON. 163
tion as it became evident that, wherever they settled, dissen- .CHAP-_n'^
sions almost invariably broke out ; and it was certainly not Prevalence
* "of contention
without good reason that bishop Hall, in his notable letter *??,0"S 'he
o JT 7 exiles in
of remonstrance addressed to John Smith and Robinson, Hl
gave expression to the wish that their followers ' loved truth
but half as much as they did strife1.' So obvious indeed
was this discreditable feature, that Charles Morton, writing
at an interval of half a century, was fain to urge by way of
extenuation that in Holland 'they were necessitated to defend
the cause of Christ by writing against opposites of various
sorts2.' The causes which brought about the migration to The migra-
' ° tion from
Leyden are however too clearly recorded by Bradford to be
gainsaid : ' When Mr Robinson,' he writes, ' Mr Brewster and
other principal members had lived at Amsterdam about a £°i
year, Mr Robinson, their pastor, and some others of best
discerning, seeing how Mr John Smith and his company
were already fallen into contention with the church which
was there before them, and no means they could use would
do any good to cure the same they removed to Leyden,
a fair and beautiful city and of a sweet situation, but made
more famous by the University by which it is adorned3.'
It cannot however be affirmed that, with the removal to Fortunes and
prospects of
Leyden, the spirit of controversy materially abated, although LeVdeSf°h in
Robinson's church there enjoyed, we are told, 'a steady and
continuous growth and numbered nearly three hundred com-
municants4,' while he himself became a student in the
university and was a frequent auditor at the lectures of
Episcopius5 and Polyander. Arminianism was rampant all
1 Hall-Wynter, vi 187. company.' See p. 488, where their
2 Preface (written 1680) to Brad- respective occupations are particular-
ford's History, p. i. ised.
3 Chronicles of 'the Pilgrim Father '«2, 4 Dexter, u.s. p. 389.
pp. 34-35. A highly interesting sketch 5 If Bobinson had not himself dis-
of the Leyden of this period is to be puted with Episcopius in the schools
found in the recent work of the two on Arminian doctrine, on which occa-
Dexters, England and Holland of sion he is said to have been pro-
the Pilgrims, pp. 475-595 ; ' the nounced the victor, we might incline
records,' they say, ' mention the occu- to the belief that, in his later views,
pations of 131 persons whose names he was not uninfluenced by the teacher
or other details concerning whom who afterwards inspired divines like
imply their English connections, and Chillingworth and Hoadly. See
eighty-six of whom are known to have Dexter, pp. 388-9 ; Bradford, Ply-
belonged in some sense to the Pilgrim mouth Plantation, p. 21.
11—2
164 THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP, ii.^ around, and Robinson soon acquired additional distinction
by the ability with which he confronted its adherents. He
even went so far as to write in defence of that famous Synod
which he had seen assemble at Dordrecht, so near at hand,
and there hold its memorable discussions1. But after a few
years, more practical considerations began to force themselves
on the attention alike of pastor and church. It became more
and more evident that the prospect of ever being able per-
manently to improve their condition in the foreign city was
but small, while it was slowly recognised that Holland gene-
rally was not the country in which their children could be
brought up with advantage, — the parents themselves being
only too conscious that they ran the risk of ultimately losing
their national character2. But most noteworthy of all was
the change which appears now to have taken place in the
mind of Robinson himself. As his troublous life drew near
its close, his inclination for controversy diminished, while he
became especially distinguished by a breadth of view and
tolerance of divergencies of belief which mark him out as a
He begins °
thinker of profound insight and originality. He began to
perceive, what others in the succeeding generation were to
discern yet more clearly, that doctrinal theology did not
admit of a final settlement at the hands of any disputant in
the schools, however able, or of any thinker in his study,
however profound. The true Church's creed could not be
held to have been permanently stereotyped either in the
teaching of Martin Luther or in that of John Calvin; and
although the sentiments of the pastor at Leyden towards the
followers of these two great teachers were far from unfriendly,
the actual condition of the two communions filled him with
apprehension, sinking as they seemed to be into apathy and
1 See Vol. H 560-562 ; as already and our name of English, how little
noted, out of the five divines deputed good we did or were likely to do to
by king James to attend the Synod the Dutch in reforming the Sabbath,
four were from Cambridge. how unable there to give such edu-
2 — ' considering how hard the cation to our children as we ourselves
country was where we lived, how had received, etc.' Winslow's Brief e
many spent their estate in it and Narration of the true Grounds or
were forced to return for England,... Cause of the first planting of New
how like we were to lose our language England, Young's Chronicles, p. 382.
JOHN ROBINSON. 165
formalism and possessed by an unpromising reluctance either CHAP, n.
to pursue the path which might lead to the reconcilement of
their respective doctrines or to work out their independent
fuller developement. The Christian scholar, as John Robinson
now taught, was bound continually to search the Scriptures
as a means of attaining to fresh 'light and truth1'; the
Church itself should ever be aspiring to realise more fully
the Divine conception as it reveals itself to the devout and
reverent enquirer ; and finally, says the narrator, ' he ad-
vised us by all means to close with the godly party of the
Kingdom of England, and rather to study union than divi-
sion, viz. how near we might possibly without sin close with
them, than in the least degree to affect division or separation
from them2.'
Such was the burden of the Address wherewith, five
years before his death, Robinson sought at once to animate
and to admonish that little band of his disciples who were qulttta"
about, with his full sanction, to take their departure from embark at
1 Plymouth
Leyden and embark at Plymouth in the Mayflower. A more ^h^OJcer.
striking contrast to the discourse delivered in London by Sept- 162°-
William Crashaw, ten years before, it would be difficult to
imagine. So foreign, indeed, do these utterances seem to
the prevailing theological atmosphere of those days that the
sceptically inclined have been disposed to regard them as an
anachronism, and Dexter characterises Winslow's summary Doubta
* raised by
as an endeavour to exalt Robinson ' as the Apostle of a ^^'t
thought so progressive as to be quite out of sight of his own ^R^nso
times3.' The adoption of such a canon of criticism in rela-
tion to history at large, would however involve the deposition
of not a few seers whose conceptions have been in advance of
their own generation ; and it is to be borne in mind, not
only that Edward Winslow had studied under Robinson at
Leyden and was one of the passengers in the Mayflower, but
1 ' He was very confident the Lord (Dr J. E.), Harvard Lectures on the
had more truth and light yet to brake Revival of Learning, p. 204.
out of his Holy Word.' Prince(Tho.), - Winslow, Briefe Narration (u.s.),
New England Chronology (Boston, pp. 397-8.
1736); reprinted in Arber's English 3 Congregationalism, etc., p. 409.
Garntr, H 416. See also Sandys
166
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP. II.
Religious
views of the
colonisers
of New
Plymouth.
also that it was one of the main objects of his treatise to
disprove the allegation that 'division in the church at Leyden
was the occasion, nay cause, of the first plantation in New
England.' 'As if/ he indignantly exclaims, ' the foundation
of our New England plantations had been laid upon division
or separation, than which nothing is more untrue1' !
But whatever doubt may attach to the credibility of the
above episode, as described by one who was subsequently
himself Governor of the new settlement, none can reasonably
be suggested in connexion with the main features of the
expedition. As the fire which burned on the altars reared
by the colonists throughout ancient Hellas had been borne
across the waters from the Prytaneum in Athens, so the
light of faith which illumined the new colony on the shore
of Plymouth Bay was conveyed thither by this little band of
pilgrims from the 'Athens of the West2.' William Brewster,
the Nestor of the party, succeeded in carrying with him his
library of 274 volumes, 'sixty-four of which were in the
learned languages3'; and although the conviction that their
more advanced views would scarcely be tolerated in Virginia,
might have deterred their leaders from sailing for that
eminently conservative colony, Winslow energetically vindi-
cates the whole body from the charge of being actuated, at
their setting out, by a spirit of uncompromising Separatism4,
and the fact that they sailed under the sanction of the Vir-
ginia Company in London5 lends support to his disclaimer.
1 Briefe Narration, p. 380. For
Gardiner's assertion (Hist, of Eng-
land, iv 170) that ' if Robinson had
had his way, the English Church
would have been parcelled out into
a number of independent congrega-
tions, the members of which would
have treated the mass of their country-
men as unworthy of the very name
of Christians,' I fail to discern the
justification.
2 ' Of the 34 more than half are
known to have come from Leyden ;
in fact, but four are certainly known
to be of the Southampton accession.'
Winsor, Hist, of America, in 268.
3 Young's Chronicles, etc., p. 27.
4 — ' however the church of Leyden
differed in some particulars, it made
no schism or separation from the
Reformed Churches, but held com-
munion with them occasionally.'
Briefe Narration, p. 391. ' And for
the French Churches, that we held
and do hold communion with them,
take note of our practice at Leyden.'
Ibid. p. 393.
5 — ' our agents repaired to the
Virginia Company, who demanded
our ends of going; which being re-
lated they said that the thing was
of God.' Winslow, p. 383; Winsor,
in 269. According however to Brad-
ford, a strong opposition to settling
in Virginia emanated from England :
' Some againe (and those tJiat were
NEW PLYMOUTH. 167
The exiles in the Mayflower had, indeed, in the course of CHAP, n.
their negotiations with the English Crown prior to their
departure from Leyden, already recognised the theory of a
certain authority being vested in the State in connexion
with religious matters; and, to quote the language of Mr
Doyle, had thereby established ' the conciliatory and acqui-
escent character of the Puritanism of Plymouth as distin-
guished from the militant and aggressive type of Puritanism
which animated the later settlement of Massachusetts1.' In
the developement of this ' type,' however, it is undeniable
that the influence of teachers whom Cambridge had educated
is again paramount, and it is to Massachusetts Bay that we
must next turn, — to where at Salem, Boston, and the new
Cambridge, a movement is to be seen in process far exceed-
ing that at Plymouth Bay in importance and in permanence.
The policy of the earliest settlers in New England seemed contrast
presented
at first to augur well neither for breadth of culture nor for {£,*?„«,„
tolerance in belief. Among bishop John Williams' contem- En^d.
poraries at St John's during the time when he was a fellow
of the college, were two brothers of distinguished promise,
Timothy and Francis Higginson, the former slightly Williams' Francis
senior, the latter some few years his junior2. Timothy be- &• ^
came a fellow of the society, but Francis, although probably
the abler man, was less fortunate. He retired first of all to
the living of Claybrooke in Leicestershire, his native county,
most relied on) fell in utter dislike have him first renounce his calling
with Virginia, and would do nothing to the office of the ministry, received
if they went thither.' History, etc., in England, and then to receive
quoted by Morton Dexter in the a new calling from them.' New
England and Holland, p. 586. English Canaan (quoted by Felt,
1 Cambridge Modern History, vn Ecclesiastical History of New Eng-
12-13; Winsor, ra 265. Mr Oscar land, i 88).
S. Straus discerns in the Plymouth 2 Mr Arthur Gray (Hist, of Jesus
community 'a more tolerant and College, p. 91) speaks of Francis
humane spirit ' than is observable in as ' admitted at Jesus College in 1608,
the other colonists: 'they counseled but B.A. of St John's in 1609.'
moderation towards Quakers and were This appears to be correct ; but Shuck-
never guilty of burning witches.1 burgh confuses him with a Francis
Roger Williams (New York, 1894), Higginson who was ' entered at Em-
p. 16. That they subsequently be- manuel in 1622 ' (Hist, of Emmanuel
came staunch Separatists is, how- College, p. 46), a date which cannot
ever, unquestionable. Morton tells be made to synchronise with the facts
us that when John Lyford was sent of the personal career of the minister
out to be their pastor, ' the brethren, at Salem. See D. N. B. xxvi 372.
before they would allow it, would
168
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP. II.
His licence
revoked by
Laud's
influence.
He receives
an appoint-
ment from
the Massa-
chusetts
Company.
and subsequently to Leicester itself, on being appointed to
the preachership of St Nicholas in that town. Here, not-
withstanding his ability as a preacher, the puritanical lean-
ings of his teaching compelled him in 1627 to vacate his
post ; and bishop Williams, to whom his talents and attain-
ments were well known and who probably sympathised to a
certain extent with his religious scruples, had to employ his
best endeavours to save him from destitution1. Higginson
was permitted to hold an afternoon lectureship and also to
assist an aged incumbent of one of the Leicester churches in
the performance of his duties ; while his former parishioners
aided him with voluntary contributions. At this stage,
however, Laud intervened and managed to procure the with-
drawal of the young preacher's licence, and the latter was
now fain to find employment as a teacher of students who
were preparing for the university. Scanty as were his
resources, he was endeavouring to aid those who were yet
more in need than himself, — the exiles from the Palatinate, —
by collecting funds in their behalf, when he learned that he
was shortly to be summoned before the Court of High Com-
mission2, and, having already become deeply interested in
the prospects of the rising settlements in America, he forth-
with made an offer of his services as minister to the Massa-
chusetts Bay Company. The company had just received its
charter of incorporation together with powers which enabled
them to establish a local subordinate government on New
England soil, and Higginson's offer was cordially accepted3.
He was not only appointed, with a liberal salary and a
promise of provision for his family in the event of his death,
but was also nominated a member of the New England
1 Williams encouraged preaching
and was himself active as a preacher
throughout his diocese, and according
to Hacket was on this very account
' deciphered to the King for an up-
holder of Nonconf ormitants . ' Scrinia
Reserata, n 39.
2 Higginson's efforts were probably
the result of the circular letter issued
by Sibbes (at this time Master of
St Catherine's), asking for contri-
butions for the exiles, an appeal
which led to his being cited in 1627,
along with William George of King's
College, and two others, before the
Star-Chamber. 'The four,' says
Gardiner (vii 261), ' were reprimanded
for this act of invitation to charity,
which seemed likely to be more fa-
vourably received than the forced
loan had been.'
3 Winsor, in 311.
FRANCIS HIGGINSON. 169
Council. In a farewell sermon at Leicester he predicted the ^CHAP. n.
woes that awaited his own country, and gave expression to a "jfJo^t611
fervent hope that the infant colony to whose spiritual needs Leicester-
he was shortly to minister might ' be designed by Heaven as
a refuge and shelter for the exiles against the storms which
were coming upon the nation and a region where they might
practice the Church Reformation which they had been bear-
ing witness unto1.'
On the 25th of April 1629, Francis Higginson sailed His
r ° departure
from Gravesend in the Talbot, together with his wife and f°r New
England.
eight children, arriving in the harbour at Salem on the 29th
of June. As the English coast faded out of sight, Cotton
Mather records how, along with his family, he took his stand
at the stern of the vessel, straining his eyes for a last glimpse
of that native land which he was never again to see. If
tradition may be trusted, an auditor noted down one fervid
utterance which appears to have been intended to define
and justify to his own mind the momentous decision which
he was carrying into irrevocable effect : ' We will not say,' he After
, . , . „
said, ' as the Separatists were wont to say, at their leaving of
England, " Farewell, Babylon ! Farewell, Rome ! " But we fcof
will say Farewell, dear England ! Farewell, Church of God e^lSies
in England and all Christian friends there ! We do not go ssuemona
Separatist
to New England as separatists from the Church of England, basis.
though we cannot but separate from corruptions of it ; but
we go to practise the positive part of church reformation and
propagate the Gospel in America2.' The separation which
he had in mind when he uttered this language was, however,
in Felt's opinion, something ' very different from what he
embraced in the colony,' — the latter, he holds, being ' recon-
cilable with the reform which he proposed to adopt as duty
should dictate3.' It is evident indeed that from the time
1 Cotton Mather, Mafinalia, bk. m, optimism in recording his first im-
c. i, p. 74. The mere absence of any pressions of New England and its
trace of such language in Higgin- natural features, an account corn-
son's own Journal hardly warrants parable only with that given by
our rejection of the story. The Sir Walter Ralegh of Guiana.
change which his views underwent 2 Felt, Ecclesiastical Hist, of New
subsequent to his landing would suf- England, i 110-11.
ficiently account for this. What is 3 Ibid.
more significant is his determined
repudiating
170 THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
._ CHAP. IT. that he landed a change came over the tone of his teaching.
He drew up a Confession of Faith which was soon censured
as inclining to anabaptism ; he ignored the Book of Common
Prayer in his services ; and under the exhilaration produced,
apparently, by change of climate, he averred that ' a sup of
New England's air was better than a whole draught of Old
England's ale1.' But whatever may have been his ultimate
designs, they were brought to a termination by his prema-
ture death, which took place within thirteen months after
his arrival. A certain personal charm, combined with genuine
ability and attainments, served to perpetuate his memory
long after he was gone; and, in professor Tyler's opinion,
' no braver or more exquisite spirit adorned the first decade
of New England colonisation2.'
The Within little more than a month after Francis Higgin-
MEBTING AT
26A August* : son's arrival °ut at Salem, a meeting of primary importance
had been held in Cambridge, not indeed under academic
auspices nor, as far as we know, in any one of the colleges, —
more probably in one of the ancient inns of the Town, — a
gathering however, which although unnoted by any contem-
porary annalist, may be said to have been attended by conse-
quences hardly to be over-estimated when viewed in connexion
with their effects alike on the Old and the New World3. The
members of the Massachusetts Company were summoned
together for consultation, and after long debating of pros
and cons, arrived at a series of decisions which ultimately
involved not only their own departure from the country but
also the transference of the administration of the affairs of
1 See his New England's Plan- denial of selfishness, in firmness of
tation (1629) ; reprinted in Mass. His- purpose and in nobleness of end.'
torical Collections, 1 120-1. Ecclesiast. Hist, of New England,
2 Hist, of American Literature, i pp. 120-1. The names of the twelve
166. members of the Company who thus
3 Felt, who compares this assem- met he gives (p. 119) as follows :
blage to the Achaean League, to Ei. Saltonstall, Thomas Dudley,
which however he pronounces it William Vassall, Nicholas West,
greatly superior both as regards its Isaac Johnson, John Humphrey,
conception and its results, further Thomas Sharp, Increase Nowell,
observes, 'Various have been the John Winthrop, William Pynchon,
covenants formed by individuals of Kellam Browne, William Colbron.
different nations and for divers pur- Young [Chronicles (Mass.), p. 282]
poses, but none of them has exceeded gives the same list, but ' Pynchon '
that before us in purity of motive, in is here spelt 'Pinchon.'
resolves to
THE MEETING AT CAMBRIDGE. 171
the new colony to New England. It was with feelings of ^CHAP. n.
despair that they too regarded the condition of their native J^Yd"18 of
country and that of Europe at large. If they looked across
the Channel, ' the Churches ' seemed ' brought to desolation';
. , , . .
while at home 'the ffountames of learning and religion settle in the
appeared corrupt with 'licentious government1'; the univer-
sities, more especially, were denounced as centres ' where
men straine at knatts and swallowe camels,' and, while
employing ' all severity for maineteynance of cappes and
other accomplyments, suffer all ruffianlike fashions and dis-
order in manners to passe uncontrolled.' Let the Company
therefore cross the Western waters, undismayed by the fate
of Virginia, whose settlers might thank ' there owne slouth
and security for the misfortunes which had overtaken them2.'
Such was the language of the foremost leader on this
memorable occasion ; and in order to understand how it was, JOHN
WlNTHEOP :
that John Winthrop came to be at Cambridge on such &• i|||
business in August 1629, it will be necessary here to take
note of the leading facts in the personal history of one whom
New England has since agreed to recognise as the ' Moses '
of its colonisation.
John Winthrop the elder, one of the undergraduates ^fet^*
admitted at Trinity College in 1602, belonged to a Suffolk S
family who, early in the sixteenth century, had acquired university.
sufficient wealth to enable its head, Adam Winthrop, to ^j*™,™.
purchase the manor of Groton in Suffolk, — a property rf.^l
formerly held by the suppressed monastery of Bury St
Edmund's ; and for the next two generations the history of
the family becomes closely associated with the university.
1 In the 'copy' of this document land, and for incouraginge such tchose
printed by Young, this passage is as heartes God shall move to joyne wth
follows: 'most children, even the them in it. Winthrop (Jo.), Life and
best, wittiest, and of fairest hopes, Letters, i 309-17; Palfrey, Hist, of
are perverted, corrupted, and utterly New England, p. 302; Young (Alex.),
overthrown by the multitude of evil Chronicles (Mass.), pp. 271-278. The
examples and licentious governors of allusion to Virginia refers to the
those seminaries.' See General Con- abolition of the Company in 1625,
siderations for Planting Neic England, when, according to Ripley, 'the
in Young, Chronicles (Mass.), p. 272. community became a true body politic,
2 Hutchinson(T-), Original Papers, and the real history of taxation be-
pp. 25-26. Reasons to be considered gins.' Financial History of Virginia,
for justifieinge the undertakers of p. 93.
the intended Plantation in Neic Eng-
172
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP.
Adam
Winthrop
the younger
6. 1548.
d. lt>23.
His
connexion
both with
St John's
and Trinity.
2Dec.yi602.
Adam, who is characterised in the ancestral pedigree as vir
pius et verae religionis amans, was the father of seven
children, of whom his namesake, the third son, succeeded to
the estate at Groton, and a daughter, named Alice, married
Thomas Mildmay (afterwards Sir Thomas), one of the Essex
Mildmays, — a family which, like the Winthrops, had risen
into importance mainly on the ruins of the monasteries, and
of which Sir Walter, the founder of Emmanuel College, was
one of the most distinguished members. The younger
Adam, for more than 16 years, held the office of auditor
both at St John's and Trinity, regularly travelling up to
Cambridge from Groton Hall in the winter time in order to
discharge the duties attaching to his appointments. His
first wife was Alice Still, a sister of that Dr John Still who,
as we have already seen1, was successively master of the
same two societies; while Dr Still's first wife was Anne
Alabaster, daughter of Thomas Alabaster of Hadleigh in
Suffolk, and Roger Alabaster, her nephew, had married
Adam Winthrop's sister Bridget, — a series of interreciprocal
relationships which may fairly be supposed to have stood, in
some measure, in the relation of cause and effect as regarded
Adam's appointments at the two colleges. Some eight years
before he resigned the auditorship2, we find Adam entering
1 his third son, John Winthrop above named, at Trinity.
Throughout his whole career, the latter reflected the home
influences under which he had been brought up, in his
devout and gentle disposition, exemplary life and aversion
from Roman Catholicism, and not least by his familiarity
with, and reverence for, the writings of Cartwright and
William Perkins3. His stay at Trinity, however, was brief,
1 Vol. n 273.
2 Adam surrendered his auditor-
ship at Trinity 16 Apr. 1610. His
diary shews that his relations with
the bishop continued to be intimate
as long as they both lived, and ' the
name of Still has been preserved in
the Winthrop family for many genera-
tions.' Life and Letters, i 33, 47.
3 Life and Letters of John Win-
etc. By Eobert C. Win-
throp. Boston, 1869. i 64, 74.—' and
finding by reading of Mr Perkins,
and other books.' Ibid, n 169, a
quotation from' Governor Winthrop's
(the elder) Christian experience,'
written by himself. [On 23 June
1874, the Hon. Robert Winthrop,
President of the Hist. Society of
Mass., received an honorary degree
at Cambridge.]
JOHN WINTHROP. 173
for when only in his eighteenth year he married Mary, the CHAP. n.
daughter of John Forth of Great Stanbridge, Essex, by whom ^"n""6*1
he had three sons and two daughters. After her early death, famil>'-
in 1615, his two subsequent marriages resulted in a large
family, and by the time that his eldest son, John (the future
governor of Connecticut), was old enough to be sent from
Bury St Edmund's to college, the squire of Groton found it
necessary to consider whether he could afford to defray the
expenses of a Cambridge education. Eventually it was He enters his
eldest son,
decided that John Winthrop the younger should be sent, J^-81
not to Trinity at Cambridge, but to Trinity at Dublin, the gjfj^
latter foundation having recently risen somewhat in estima-
tion in England, — partly perhaps in consequence of its
charter, bestowed by king James some nine years before.
The Dublin of those days, however, was far from affording a
congenial atmosphere for a youth of John Winthrop's tastes
and disposition, for we find the father expressing his gratifi-
cation at hearing that his son 'declined the evil company
and manners of the place1,' and he evidently thought it MS second,
J Forth, at
better to send his second son, Forth, to Emmanuel. Emmanuel.
In 1628, John made his grand tour, sailing first for John makes
T • i • i • tne grand
Livorno and from thence to Constantinople, and returning tour,
by Venice, Padua and Amsterdam. His absence from Eng-
land extended over some fourteen months, and his enjoyment
of such a series of novel impressions cannot but have been
somewhat marred by the fact that, although not a few letters
were sent out to him from home, they all miscarried, and he
appears to have been without tidings of his family through-
out the time. Judging from the extant correspondence of The family
correspond-
the Winthrops, the lost letters can hardly have been either
commonplace or unsympathetic, and must have offered a
singular contrast to those Paston letters of the neighbouring
county, two centuries before. Those that still exist, some
between the father and his two sons, some between the two
brothers, are at once affectionate and dignified on the one
hand, and frank and cordial on the other ; while, as regards
1 Ibid, i 172.
ence.
174
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP. II.
Winthrop's
liberality to
his sons at
college.
His lost
letter to
John, the
contents of
which are
indicated in
the reply.
tone and sentiment, they are capable of sustaining a com-
parison with the best epistolary correspondence of the period.
The father, indeed, seems to have been a model parent, —
liberal to both his sons, and not afraid to tell either the
resident in reckless Dublin, or the one in costly Cambridge,
that, if he found his allowance insufficient, he could have
The least acceptable passages in his own letters
morej
were probably those in Latin, into which he occasionally
deviates with the evident design of testing either John's or
Forth's ability to reply in the same language ; and the only
dissatisfaction to which he gives expression, is that evoked
by his failure in these same endeavours. It can hardly
therefore but have been a somewhat keener disappointment
to the young tourist than to most travellers under similar
conditions, that throughout his long absence from home, his
letters never reached him. There was, however, another
letter from the father which he duly received, but the subse-
quent loss of which the historian has yet more cause to
regret.
It was in the midst of the political gloom which deepened
as the year 1629 advanced, that John at last found his way
back from the Continent to London. On his arrival, a letter
from his father was put into his hands; but the familiar
handwriting, so long unseen, conveyed no cheering intelli-
gence. It told how the writer had been abruptly dismissed
from his attorneyship in the Court of Wards (to which he
had been promoted only three years before), and it also
stated that much as he would have liked to come to London,
in order to welcome his son on his return, he was unable to
do so, — for he was about to attend an important meeting in
Cambridge2. It is this letter, long ' missing from the family
1 To John at Dublin, he writes:
•So as, if £20 be too little (as I
always accounted it) you shall have
£30 ; and when that shall not suffice,
you shall have more.' Life and
Letters, 1 177. The father probably
was influenced by considerations of
economy in sending his elder son to
Dublin ; in the Reasons (supra, p. 171,
n. 2), among other objections to the
English universities, we find alleged
' the unsupportable charge of there
education.' Ibid, i 310. Sir Simonds
D'Ewes, when he went as a fellow-
commoner to St John's in 1618,
found £50 per annum quite in-
adequate for the maintenance of his
position.
2 Ibid, i 305.
JOHN WINTHROP. 175
file,' as the biographer of his house expresses it, which ap- CHAP,
prised the younger Winthrop of his father's determination to
quit his native land in order to place himself at the head
of the great movement Westward. It also contained a
copy of the ' Conclusions ' which led to his decision. But
although the letter is lost, John's reply is still extant, — a
reply in which the purport of the former may be said to be,
in a certain measure, reflected. ' The Conclusions,' wrote
John, ' which you sent down, I showed my uncle and aunt,
who liked them well ; I think they are unanswerable1.'
The charter granted in March 1629 to the Massachusetts £7"^™
Bay Company had 'originally contemplated,' says Dr Deane, M^L°-fth
' that the government of the Company should be administered company
in England.' It was this design which was set aside by the England,
memorable decision of the conclave at Cambridge above
recorded2. Immediately after arriving at that decision, legal
advice had been obtained 'in favour of the authority to make
the transfer ; and on full consideration it was determined by
the general consent of the Company, that the government
and patent should be settled in New England, and not be
continued in subordination to the Company here, as now it
is3.' But it was not until March 1630, that John Winthrop
sailed in the Arbella4, from Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight,
empowered to assume the governorship of the colony in the
place of Matthew Cradock, its first governor, who now
returned to England for the purpose of there watching over
1 Ibid, i 307. The conjecture of (1769), p. 24; Gardiner, vn 154.
Thomas Hutchinson, governor of 2 Supra, pp. 170-1.
the Massachusetts province in the 3 Palfrey, Hist, of New England
following century, that this paper (ed. 1884), i 105-6; Felt, Eccle-
was the compilation of Francis Hig- siastical Hist, of New England, pp.
ginson, seems scarcely tenable, after 120-1.
the evidence adduced by Winthrop' s 4 So named after Lady Arbella
biographer has been duly weighed. Johnson, one of the company, who
The latter points out that the docu- ' coming " from a paradise of plenty
ment itself is in the handwriting of and pleasure, which she enjoyed in
Forth Winthrop, 'who,' he says the family of a noble earldom, into a
(i 317), 'was frequently employed as wilderness of wants," survived her
a copyist for his father ' ; and Gar- arrival only a month ; and her hus-
diner, although he ignores alike the band, singularly esteemed and beloved
place and the circumstances of its by the colonists, died of grief a few
production, accepts Robert Winslow's weeks after.' Palfrey, Hist, of New
theory with respect to the authorship. England, ed. 1884, 1 114.
See Hutchinson, Original Papers
176
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP. II.
Sir Richard
Salt • >nst;i 11 :
b. 158(5 (?>
d. 1«58.
George
Phillips,
Isaac
Johnson and
Increase
Nowell.
Winthrop
and his
companions
find them-
selves con-
fronted by a
Separatist
Church.
the commercial interests of the new community1, from his
house in St Swithin's Lane. The twelve signatories to the
Reasons drawn up at Cambridge were probably all men of
some culture, in whom religious enthusiasm was tempered
by a practical knowledge of affairs, and four of them now
accompanied Winthrop in his voyage across the Atlantic.
Of these the foremost was undoubtedly Sir Richard Salton-
stall, a nephew of the lord mayor of London. He had been
a fellow-commoner at Jesus College, and during his under-
graduateship was intimate with Sir Simonds D'Ewes, who
refers to him in his A utobiograpky as ' my very entire
friend2.' Although his stay in the colony was short, he
continued to take a warm interest in its welfare, and in
1651 we find him endeavouring to mitigate the severity
with which John Cotton and John Wilson were at that time
dealing with the Quakers. George Phillips, a master
of arts of Caius College, was a man of much force of
character and a good scholar3. Isaac Johnson, who died at
Boston in the following year, was the richest man in the
colony and had married a daughter of the earl of Lincoln.
Increase Nowell subsequently approved himself one of the
most useful members of the community and acted as secre-
tary during the years 1644-9. On their arrival, the new-
comers found that Higginson's influence at Salem had already
resulted in the establishment of the separatist theory.
' Thenceforward,' says Dr Deane, ' following that example,
the Massachusetts colony became a colony of congregational
churches. It has been a favorite saying with eulogists of
Massachusetts4, that the pious founders of the colony came
1 Cradock's widow, Rebecca, after-
wards married Dr Whichcote, the
Provost of King's College: see Tul-
loch, Rational Theology, n 431, n. 2.
2 Autobiography, 1 140; for Salton-
stall see N.&Q., Series m, vol. i 350.
3 Phillips died at Watertown,
Mass., 1 July 1644; his 'study of
bookes1 was valued at £71. 9s. 9d.
D. N. B. See also Venn, Bio-
graphical History of Oonville and
Caius College, i 208.
4 'In its earliest days there was
in the Mass, settlement a strong and
outspoken element of intellectual
inquiry and religious protest. It
found intelligent expression in Roger
Williams and Sir Henry Vane, and
inarticulate expression in Anne Hut-
chinson.' See Antinomianism in the
Colony of Massachusetts Bay (1636-
38), including the SHORT STORY and
other Documents. Edited by Charles
Francis Adams. Boston: published
JOHN WINTHKOP. 177
over to this wilderness to establish here the principle of CHAP, IT.
civil and religious liberty, and to transmit the same inviolate
to their remotest posterity. Probably nothing was further
from their purpose, which was simply to find a place where
they themselves and those who agreed with them, could
enjoy such liberty1.' The facts sufficiently support this
candid criticism. Before the Arbella sailed, reports had
been current that it was really the design of the leaders of
the expedition 'to counteract the civil and ecclesiastical
authorities at home,' and they had accordingly drawn up
and signed an Address to their ' Brethren of the Church of
England ' to protest against this ' misreport ' of their inten-
tions. ' We desire,' said this manifesto, ' you would be ™evfous
pleased to take notice of the principals and body of our °
i 111 with the
company, as those who esteem it our honour to call the separatists.
Church of England, from whence we rise, our deare mother,
and cannot part from our native countrie, where she specially
resideth, without much sadness of heart and many tears in
our eyes2.' If the voyagers had really anticipated that these
loyal sentiments would awaken an echo in the hearts of
those who had preceded them to the colony, they must have
been painfully disappointed. They found Francis Higginson ^Jjj™1
already sinking under the effects of climate and fatigue, and ^uneies
it was on his co-pastor, Samuel Skelton of Clare Hall, that fj^n of
it devolved to welcome the new-comers. Along with John Clare Hal1'
Endecott, the governor, and Christopher Levett, a member
of the Council, he went on board and invited Winthrop and
by the Prince Society : 1894. Introd. must not be quoted as having the
p. 14 : see also Publications of the technical sense which it now bears ' ;
Narragamett Club, n 93. The Short but that it meant ' the aggregate of
Story supplies details which .Win- English Christians, whether, in the
throp's Hist, of New England fails upshot of the movements which were
to give. now going on, their polity should turn
1 Winsor, m 312. out to be Episcopal, or Presbyterian,
2 Felt, u.s. p. 132. Felt appears or something different from either.'
to me to describe the design of this This is, I think, disproved by what
Address correctly when he speaks of followed on the landing of the corn-
it as being 'to remove suspicions... pany. Palfrey also states that the
concerning the motives and purposes Address was drawn up by the Rev.
of the emigrants.' Palfrey [Hist, of John White, a leading clergyman of
New England (ed. 1884), i 111], on Dorchester and an active promoter of
the other hand, asserts that 'the the whole scheme of emigration.
phrase "the Church of England"
M. III. 12
178
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP. II.
He refuses
to recognise
the new-
comers as
members of
the true
Church.
Further
results of
Laud's
repressive
policy.
others ashore, where, we are informed, they were hospitably
entertained. Regard for the principles they professed and
which they had so recently put on formal record precluded
their stay for the Sabbath, inasmuch as, not being members
of reformed churches like those at Salem and Plymouth,
Skelton considered that he could not conscientiously admit
them into communion, nor could he allow one of their children
to be baptised1. Well might John Cotton, still resident in
England, observe, in a letter to Skelton, ' You went hence of
another judgement, I am afraid your change hath sprung
from New Plymouth men2 ! '
It may, indeed, fairly be said that these noteworthy
incidents mark the turning point of the ecclesiastical history
of Puritanism in New England3, and the consequent com-
pleted divergence of the colonies from the mother country
both in their theory of political allegiance and in their
theological sympathies. Winthrop and some of those who
came with him made, it is true, an honest stand in defence
of their own views ; but of those who came after them, albeit
many of them men of commanding influence and signal
ability, the great majority soon found that their only hope
of union lay in the renunciation of all that reflected the
Church of England ritual or savoured, however faintly, of
Armiiiian doctrine. But it cannot be said that the result
was productive of that perfect harmony of religious thought
and feeling which represented the ideal of the more enthu-
siastic minds. Again and again, in turning the records of
these infant communities, we find laments over the wrang-
lings and the schisms that from time to time arose and the
stern repressive measures which they rendered necessary4.
1 Felt, u. s. p. 134. 'For con-
firmation of this,' he adds, in a foot-
note, 'we have extracts, under Oc-
tober 2, from Cotton's letter.'
2 Ibid. p. 143.
3 '...in any attempt to trace a
connexion between liberal education
the other side of the water ' [i.e.
in the mother country] ' and the pro-
gress of New England, the arrival of
the Massachusetts Company must
mark the real beginning.' Dexter.
See his Congregationalism, c. vrn.
4 Thus, shortly after John Cotton's
arrival in Massachusetts, we learn
that ' a company of Antinomian and
Familistical sectaries were strangely
crouded in among our more orthodox
planters; by the artifices of which
busie opinionists there was a dan-
gerous blow given, first unto the
faith and so unto the peace of the
Churches.' Cotton Mather, Mag-
nalia, bk. m, c. i 21.
NEW ENGLAND. 179
Had it not been, indeed, for the intolerance which ruled at ,CHAP. n.^
home, Separatism in New England might possibly have
wrought its own cure. But so long as Laud was at the
helm, each fresh arrival served only to accentuate the con-
viction that between the exile and the persecutor all hope
of effecting a compromise was at an end1. As it was, the
example already set seemed well nigh contagious, and many
an earnest divine whom Cambridge had trained to minister
to the congregations of the towns and villages of England
was missing from his post, and now appeared, with em-
bittered feelings and deepest sense of wrong, to reinforce the
growing communities on the remote shores of Massachusetts
Bay. Within three weeks after the arrival of the Arbella,
seven more vessels arrived, among the passengers being John
Wilson of Christ's2, who, after devoting three years to the
study of law, had turned to that of theology. Before winter,
the number of ships reached to seventeen, with a total of
some thousand passengers3.
Of those who arrived during this period, very few appear isolated
to have given their support to Endecott and Winthrop. [{Bother
One William Blackstone, a master of arts of Emmanuel Church-
College, presented, however, a notable exception, pithily
observing that he had quitted England owing to his dislike
of ' the lords bishops,' and that he now felt himself unable to
unite with the Separatists, owing to his dislike of ' the lords
brethren4.' John Cotton, the divine to whom .(as we have
already seen) Preston attributed his conversion5, writing
from Boston in England, also frankly gave it as his opinion
that Skelton was in error in holding, — first, that no man
may be admitted to the sacrament, though a member of the
Catholic Church, unless he be a member of some particular
Reformed church ; secondly, that none of the congregations
in England are particular reformed churches but Mr Sathrop's
1 Professor Dexter calls attention of Dr Peile, who identifies him with
to the fact that ' not a single student a ' John Wilson ' who was admitted
from St John's College, Oxford a sizar of Christ's College in 1625
(Laud's own college), shared in the but did not proceed to a degree,
settling of New England.' Influence 3 Palfrey, M.S. r 113.
of the English Universities, etc., p. 6. 4 Felt, i 137-8.
2 Such, at least, is the conjecture ° See author's History, n 482.
12—2
180 THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP, ii. and such as his1.' But in the course of two more years, John
Cotton himself appeared among the refugees and before long
announced his entire conversion to the theory which Skelton
had put in force at Salem. The importance of his accession
to their number was evident to all, but especially to those
who remembered him at Cambridge as one of the ablest
dialecticians in her schools, as one of Preston's most intimate
friends, and one whom Williams, as long as it was in his
power, protected and sought to advance in the royal favour2.
The exultation of the colony was consequently unbounded,
and, even before he set foot on the shore of Massachusetts
Bay, Boston had already been named after the Lincolnshire
town where he had laboured with preeminent success3.
He becomes Of the process by which John Cotton was induced to
the chief J
thedceoiony abandon the view which he had enforced in his letter to
Skelton we hear nothing. He became, almost at once, the
central figure in the colony; its lawgiver and high-priest;
and, as its virtual dictator, lived to correspond on equal
terms with Cromwell. His grandson has preserved to us the
conditions which he laid down with regard to admission to
H^theory of the community over which he presided: 'none,' he held,
conscience.' < should be electors, nor elected therein, except such as were
visible subjects of our Lord Jesus Christ, personally confede-
rated in our Churches4.' To such, and to such only, Cotton
held, liberty of conscience might be safely granted ; for we
know, he wrote, that 'they will not persist in heresie or
turbulent schisme, when they are convinced in conscience of
the sinfulnesse thereof5.' It illustrates the remoteness of
1 Felt, p. 143. The letter is ad- congregation; and the answers he
dressed to Skelton himself. opened and applied to the general
2 Cotton, Magnolia, in i 18. advantage of the hearers.' Cotton
3 ' as a compliment and an entice- Mather, Magnolia, mil?. ' His
ment to him.' Tyler, Hist, of house also was full of young students :
American Literature, i 214. ' In the whereof some were sent to him out
space of twenty years that he lived of Germany, some out of Holland,
at Boston, on the Lord's Days in but most out of Cambridge.' Ibid.
the afternoons, he thrice went over 4 Ibid. p. 21.
the body of Divinity in a cate- 5 The Controversie concerning
chistical way; and gave the heads Liberty of Conscience in Matters of
of his discourse to young scholars Religion, etc. By Mr John Cotton
and others in the town, that they of Boston in New-England, p. 14.
might answer to his questions in the London, 1646.
JOHN COTTON. 181
logical subtlety from any practical bearing upon questions in VCHAP. n.
which party feeling was concerned, that a dialectician of
some eminence could succeed in thus shutting his eyes to
the fallacy involved in the above definition and its 'rider.'
But in fact, of toleration, as it was afterwards interpreted by R<*i "berty
J of conscience
Locke and Bentham, the New England divine had no more •lnotNewncede(1
conception than Laud. ' It is Satan's policy,' said Thomas England-
Shepard, 'to plead for an indefinite and boundless toleration1.'
Salus populi suprema lex was, indeed, a maxim then held
applicable to matters spiritual as well as temporal ; and even
as physicians, in the present day, hold that liberty cannot be
conceded to individual discretion when the presence of an
epidemic endangers the safety of the entire community, so
the Fathers of New England could only discern in the
exercise of individual judgement on questions of religious
belief, a peril to be shunned which menaced the welfare of
the community in relations of incalculably greater import-
ance.
When Cotton landed, he found himself surrounded by
Cambridge men, to all of whom his name was probably
familiar, while not a few were personally known to him. A
brief notice of some of the more notable will serve to illus-
trate the closeness of the relations between the colonists and
the parent university. In addition to those already noted,
one of the foremost was John Eliot, of Jesus College2, whose JOHN ELIOT:
arrival had preceded Cotton's by some two years, — the Boni- rf- ISM.
face of his age, in whom apostolic wisdom, high attainment,
and noble self-devotion met in rare combination. Some
twelve months later, in 1632, came Thomas James of Em- Thomas
James.
manuel, who had quitted his post as a Lincolnshire clergyman M<A- 1618-
to become the pastor of the church in Charlestown ; with
1 Chaplin (J.), Life of Henry of the Massachusetts Indians was
Dunster, p. 185. Boston, U. S. A. first printed in 1663,— 'the first
1872 [quoted by Prof. Tyler, u. s. missionary Bible.' A copy 'bearing
p. 108]. his autograph and a dedicatory Latin
2 In 1622, Eliot was admitted distich ' was presented by him to the
B.A. and in 1625 he appears as College Library, where it is still pre-
receiving college testimonials for or- served. Gray (Arthur), Jesus College,
dination. His translation of the p. 91.
Bible into the language (now extinct)
182 THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP, ii. him came Thomas Weld of Trinity, from his living at Terling
in Essex. The latest arrival, prior to Cotton's coming, was
Nathaniel Ward1, also of Emmanuel, who represented an
important addition to the learning of the community. Ward
was already past middle life ; he had travelled much but his
earlier studies had been -chiefly in the Common Law. In
the course of a residence in Germany, however, he had spent
His acquaint- some time at the university of Heidelberg and had there
ance with rf
become acquainted with the celebrated Paraeus2, by whom he
was induced to take holy orders and become a preacher. On
returning to England, he became a lecturer at St Michael's,
Cornhill, and the boldness with which he there enunciated
his Calvinistic doctrines led to his being cited before Laud.
The inevitable result followed : Ward was deprived of his
office and in 1632 sailed for New England. Here his legal
attainments, rather than his abilities as a preacher, were
duly turned to account ; and the Code of laws adopted in
1641 by the colonists, entitled The Body of Liberties, was
mainly his work. Cotton had been accompanied by two
Emmanuel men of a reputation but little inferior to his own,
— Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone. Hooker had been a
d. lew. famous preacher at Chelmsford ; and, when silenced by Laud
in the pulpit, had, like Higginson, betaken himself to the
work of education. He had opened a school at Little Baddow,
close by, where John Eliot had been his usher, an experience
to which the latter always referred back as the commence-
ment of his spiritual life. Molested here, Hooker had fled
to Holland ; and from thence, at the invitation of those who
remembered him in the mother country, had come to settle
among them at Newtown. His real ability, fine presence,
and oratorical power, at once marked him out for preemi-
nence, and as 'priest and king,' to use the expression of
itraeel professor Tyler, he finished his days at Hartford. Samuel
Stone had been a lecturer at Torcester in Northamptonshire,
and now became co-pastor or teacher under Hooker. Another
1 See Life published at Boston, 1867. learning of Cambridge at this period,
2 Of the marked influence exerted I have already spoken : see Vol. n
by the teaching of Paraeus on the 562-7.
CAMBRIDGE AND NEW ENGLAND. 183
of Laud's exiles and one whom he appears to have regarded
with especial antipathy, was Thomas Shepard, of Emmanuel,
who arrived in the following year, — a divine inferior to none d. 16*9.
TVT A 1fi
of his brethren in New England in attainments and intel-
lectual power and one whose posthumous fame surpassed
that which he enjoyed while living1. ' In person he had
some disadvantages. He lacked the bodily vigour, the mas-
sive proportions, the stateliness of his two compeers, Thomas
Hooker and John Cotton. A poor, weak, pale-complexioned
man, whose physical powers were feeble but spent to the
full. A cloistered student and an invalid, recoiling from the
crisp breath of a New England winter. But a subtle and
commanding intellect ; a profound thinker ; his style clear,
terse, abounding in energy, with frequent flashes of eloquence;
the charm of his diction enhanced by the manner of his
speech, which was almost matchless for its sweet and lofty
grace, its pathos, its thrilling intensity, its ringing fulness
and force. He may be described as the preachers' preacher2.'
The conviction among those who remained behind in the
mother country, that New England was indeed ' a refuge for
the people of God3,' continued to gather force. Among those
who next arrived were Daniel Maud, another of Emmanuel's JjJJJjf1.
sons, and Richard Mather of Oxford, of whom mention has ^\- Vl^
M.A. lol
already been made. Mather's eloquence as a preacher and his
general ability soon served to render him a leading figure in
the councils of New England, by whom his ' Cambridge Plat-
form,' devised as a safeguard against the introduction of
Presbyterianism, was ultimately adopted as an accepted expo-
sition of their theory of church government4. Along with
1 See his autobiography printed in 1689), his name is spelt ' Shephard.'
the Chronicles of the First Planters There is a copy of this rare volume
of the Colony of Mass. Bay (1623- in the library of St John's College,
1636). Edited by Alex. Young. A. 3. 52.
Boston, 1846. 3 See letter from Blakiston to
2 Tyler, Hist. American Literature, Thomas Morton (22 May 1635).
i 206-7. Shepard also assisted John State Papers (Dom.) Charles the
Eliot in his efforts to evangelise the First, DXL, no. 24.
Indians and aided him in the compi- 4 ' When the Platform of Church
lation of his works in the Massa- Discipline was agreed to... in the year
chusetts-Indian language. In one of 1647, Mr Mather's Model was that
these, the Samproutteahae Quinnup- out of which it was chiefly taken.'
pekompanaenin... (Cambridge, N. E. Cotton Mather, Magnolia, m 128. —
184 THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP. IT. these came Peter Bulkley, another of those whom, to Eng-
Se*?' land's loss, the tyranny of Laud had driven forth. A former
Bulkley : J J
d.\f&9. fellow of St John's, of ample means and good social position,
he was also a scholar who wrote Latin verse with more than
ordinary skill. For twenty-one years prior to his quitting
England he had been rector of Woodhill, in Bedfordshire.
In the year following his arrival, having induced a consider-
able number of his fellow-colonists to join him in an expedi-
The founder tion up country, he built the town of Concord, which became
of Concord : * '
his sphere of labour for the rest of his life. Another of
Shepard's companions, also distinguished by his talents and
attainments, was John Norton of Peterhouse1. After taking
his degree, he had betaken himself to his native town of
Bishop Stortford to be a curate at the parish church and to
teach in the once famous High School of that place. While
thus occupied, his views underwent a change and he decided
to join the exiles in New Plymouth ; before leaving the
country, he married a lady of considerable wealth who also
fully sympathised with him in his designs. ' The church of
Plymouth,' says Felt, ' being earnest to have him abide with
them, and Mr Smith vacating his place for him, he engages
to Preach f°r them on trial. Thus one of the ablest watch-
men on the walls of Zion begins his eventful career, for a
short period, among disciples of Robinson, whom he much
resembled in talents, learning, character, and usefulness2.'
wight: In the following year, John Wheelwright of Sidney College,
B.A. 161$.
M.A. 1618.
'a terse, clear, and well-balanced sum- Norton for the honorary degree of
mary of the general system which Doctor of Letters on the following
had been already outlined in the day (19 June 1884), thus referred
treatises of the New England Elders ; to his descent from the illustrious
enlarged by being carried to its exile: 'Domum illam proximam, Col-
logical conclusions on a few points legiorum nostrorum antiquissimum,
which had never been fully developed.' non sine pietate quadam contem-
Dexter, Congregationalism, p. 438. plabitur, recordatus illic educatum
An excellent outline of the whole esseunumemajoribussuis, theologum
treatise will be found in pp. 439-464. ilium non minus doctum quam mo-
1 — 'the learned expounder of the destum, qui cum aliis plurimis trans
doctrine and discipline of the New aequor Atlanticum libertatis asylum
England Churches.' See first speech plus quam duobus abhinc saeculis
of Prof. Norton at the Tercentenary petivit.' Ibid. p. 75.
Festival of Emmanuel College, p. 19. 2 Ecclesiastical Hist, of New Eng-
The Public Orator (Dr Sandys) on land, pp. 244-5.
presenting Professor Charles Eliot
CAMBRIDGE AND NEW ENGLAND. 185
Samuel Whiting of Emmanuel College1, and one Richard VCHAP. n.^
Jennings2 were added to the community at Massachusetts, j^"^.
The year 1637 was marked by the arrival of John Davenport £ohn
* Davenport :
and Charles Chauncy. Of these the former, — an elder bro- £ if^-
ther of the better known Franciscan, Christopher Davenport,
— had been a member first of Merton College, Oxford, and
subsequently of Magdalen. He was a native of Coventry
where his father had been mayor ; and during the plague of
1625, in London, had distinguished himself by his heroic
courage in visiting and rendering spiritual consolation to the
sufferers. His efforts, dictated by a like spirit of philan-
thropy, to render aid to the distressed ministers in the
Palatinate, exposed him to the dislike of Laud3 and the
tyranny of the Court of High Commission. He resigned his
living in London4 and retired for a time to Holland, where
he was chosen co-pastor of the English church in Amsterdam.
On his return to England5 he decided to join the refugees in
America, and rendered important service in obtaining the
new charter for Massachusetts6. On landing at Boston in
June 1637, he was received with more than the usual
cordiality and invited by the Council to settle on certain
lands to be assigned to him. He decided however to settle
at Quinnipiac, and there, in conjunction with some friends
who had accompanied him from England, founded the colony ^ founder*
Of Newhaven7. ofNewharen.
1 Whiting had been the pupil of rate in consequence of his inability
John Yates at Emmanuel and was in- to concur in the baptism of chil-
fluenced by his teaching ; he was also, dren not ' proven to belong to English
say sShuckburgh, 'the intimate friend parents': according to Young (Chro-
and "chamber-mate" of Anthony nicies, Mass. p. 103, n. 1) he had a
Tuckney.' Emm. Coll. p. 48. benefice bestowed on him on his
2 A member of the university but return to England.
whose name I have been unable to 6 Young, Ibid. 70, n. 3, 101, 102.
discover in the Grace Book. 7 — ' after almost a generation
3 The primate, however, vouch- passed in New Haven, he became,
safed to describe him as ' a most re- when over seventy, pastor of the
ligious man who fled to New Eng- first Church in Boston,' but in the
land for the sake of a good con- fierce contest over what was known
science.' See art. 'Davenport' in as 'the Half Way Covenant," the
D. N. B. xrv 111, by A. Wood church became again divided and he
Eenton. was carried off by apoplexy in the
4 The livingofSt Stephen's Church, year 1670. Sprague, Annals of tlie
Coleman Street. American Pulpit, i 93; Dexter, pp.
5 Davenport resigned the co-pasto- 586, n. 220, 651, 653.
186
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP, ii.
ws
-1672.
16W—1654.
No scholar brought with him better university creden-
tials than Charles Chauncy, who was not only bachelor of
divinity, but had filled the post of Greek lecturer at Trinity
College, and was a conspicuous contributor to the Cambridge
'occasional' verses1. Settled for a time as minister at Ware
in Hertfordshire, he had been twice summoned by the Court
of High Commission to account for the utterance of heterodox
opinions. On his refusing to admit that they were such, he
was imprisoned, and not set at liberty until he had formally
recanted. He too now landed at Plymouth, deeply troubled
in mind at the weakness which had led him to bow before
the persecutor and make, what he termed, his 'scandalous
submission.' There was as yet no press in New England;
but in 1641 he published in London his ' Retraction,' largely
devoted to setting forth ' the unlawfulnesse arid danger of
rayling in altars or communion tables,' and expressly de-
signed to conciliate those who ' either were or justly might
be, offended' at his past relapse2. During the Puritan
ascendancy in England, Chauncy was invited by his former
parishioners at Ware to return home, and he was about to
embark at Boston when an invitation to become president of
|jarvar(j College diverted him from his design.
The circumstances under which his predecessor, Henry
of Dunster, the first president, had vacated the post were
painful, but those under which he had been installed were
perhaps even more so, and both alike leave upon us a melan-
choly impression of the conditions amid which Harvard
developed into what it subsequently became. Nathaniel
Eaton, who had been actually designated first president, was
a member of Trinity College and a pupil of William Ames3,
and had at first given promise of a useful and honorable
career. Indulgence in drink, however, ruined his temper
and power of self-control, and, after some months of misrule
over the unfortunate youths whom he was called upon to
1 He has verses in the Dolor et
Solamen (supra, pp. 1-2), pp. 16-19,
and also in the Epithalamium (Bowes,
p. 13), pp. 5-6, — in this latter, both
Greek and Latin.
2 Felt, u. s. p. 442.
3 For Ames and his influence as a
teacher, see Vol. n, sub v.
CAMBRIDGE AND HARVARD. 187
instruct, he was eventually dismissed from his probationary CHAP, n.
tenure of the presidency for having cudgelled his usher,
Briscoe, almost to death, — ' with a walnut-tree plant,' says (?)Ri.Briscoe
Winthrop, ' big enough to have killed a horse and a yard in M.A. isis
length1.' When, accordingly, Dunster entered upon the
duties of president, Harvard was in a sadly demoralised
condition; but, as a member of Magdalene College in the
time of the plague of 1630, he had become familiarised with
scenes of suffering and destitution and now manfully applied
himself, in a rare spirit of self-abnegation, to remedy the
pitiable state of affairs around him. Fortunately he could His,.,,
•> qualifications
bring to bear upon the task not only genuine attainments
(he is said to have been an excellent Hebraist) together with trator-
high character2, but also exceptional ability as an adminis-
trator, and Harvard manifestly prospered under his rule. As
time went on, however, it was discovered that he was
grievously in error in his views on a question which, in the
eyes of the elders of the Church in Massachusetts, was of
paramount importance, for he disapproved of infant baptism.
' Wherefore.' says Cotton Mather, ' the overseers of the Col-
lege became solicitous that the students there might not be
unawares ensnared in the errors of their president, and
laboured with an extreme agony either to rescue the good
man from his own mistake or to restrain him from imposing
them upon " the hope of the flock " ; of both which, finding
themselves to despair, they did, as quietly as they could,
procure his removal, and provided him a successor in Mr
Charles Chauncey3.' In reality, however, the treatment to
which Dunster was subjected at his expulsion, though differ-
ing in kind, was scarcely less inhumane than that to which
Eaton had subjected his unfortunate usher ; and after an
irreproachable discharge of office, extending over fourteen
1 Winthrop (Jo.), Hist, of New dations of the domestical affairs of
England (wrongly styled his 'Jour- the College; whom God hath much
naP), i 308; Young's Chronicles honored and blessed.' Shepard's
(Mass.), p. 552. Memoir of his own Life, Young's
— ' a man,' wrote Thomas Shep- Chronicles (Mass.), pp. 552-3.
ard, during Dunster's actual tenure 3 Hist, of Netc England, bk. m
of office, 'pious, painful and fit to xii, p. 100.
teach, and very fit to lay the foun-
188
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP. IL
Circum-
stances of
Dunster's
expulsion
from the
presidency.
FOUBDATIOS
OF HARVARD
COLLEGE :
1636.
' Newtown '
becomes
Cambridge
und its
College is
designated
Harvard
College :
1638.
JOHN
HARVARD :
b. 1607.
d. Sept. 1638,
years, during which time he bestowed a hundred acres of
land on the college and built the president's house, the
fugitive from the tyranny of Laud became in turn a fugitive
from the despotic rule of the authorities of Harvard. The
circumstances under which his expulsion took place were
more truthfully described by the preacher at Harvard Com-
memoration two centuries and a half later1 ; and how little
they impaired the estimation in which Dunster was held by
the Independents in England may be inferred from the fact
that he was immediately after invited by Henry Cromwell
to accept an appointment in connexion with the English
Colony in Ireland. This he, however, declined, and at the
suggestion of Chauncy, his successor at Harvard, accepted
the pastorate of the church at Scituate which the latter
vacated, — the two thus interchanging places2.
Notwithstanding these harsher features, however, the
earnest thoughtfulness of the rulers of the new colony in all
matters relating to the training of those who should come
after them, is undeniable; and, as Palfrey observes, it was
before ' roads were made and bridges built ' that, as a matter
of primary consideration, the subject of education was brought
forward. In 1637, Newtown was selected for the site of a
College, and the name changed in 1638 to that of Cambridge3;
while a sum equivalent to the amount of the annual revenue
of the colony, so far as raised by taxation, was appropriated
for the new buildings. In the following year it was resolved
that the college should be designated Harvard College, in
recognition of the aid afforded by its chief benefactor3. John
Harvard had been educated at Emmanuel College, where the
records shew his admission as a pensioner, 19 December
1 — 'convicted and dismissed from
his position and his house in the
dead of winter, being sent forth with-
out a home, with his wife sick, and,
as he says, ' ' his youngest child ex-
tremely so," not because he. was not
a virtuous, humble and learned man,
but because, as Cotton Mather said,
" he had fallen into the briars of anti-
paedo- baptism.'" Sermon by Eev.
Francis G. Peabody, in Record of
the Commemoration (Nov. 5-8, 1886)
of the 250th Anniversary of the
Founding of Harvard College.
2 Shurtleff's Records, etc., i 180.
3 The dates appear to be as follows :
on 15 Nov. 1637 it was decided that
the College should be at Newtown;
2 May 1638, that Newtown should
be called Cambridge. Mass. Colonial
Records, quoted in Everett's (W.)
On the Cam (ed. 1869), p. 4.
FOUNDATION OF HARVARD COLLEGE. 189
1627 \ He proceeded to both the B.A. and the M.A. degree2; .CHAP.II.^
but the Puritan principles which he had imbibed, combined
with the rigour of the existing government, rendered life in
England insupportable to him. He had inherited a com-
petence, or something more, by the death of his mother8;
and after marrying Ann Sadler, the daughter of a Sussex
clergyman, he sailed in 1637 for New England. On his
arrival, he was admitted a freeman of the colony and settled
as a minister in Charlestown ; he was shortly after seized
with consumption and died in the following year. His
arrival had occurred at a very critical stage in the history
of the new foundation. ' It is hazardous,' says professor
F. B. Dexter, ' to transpose history ; but I do not think it
rash to say that a failure to plant and endow Harvard Col-
lege for five-and-twenty years, — that is, until the most of
the generation of educated men who came over had passed
away, — would have so stunted and paralysed the social
progress of Massachusetts, as to have altered essentially the
whole course of events bearing on national history in which
Massachusetts has had a part4.' The founders themselves His
. . foundation
are described by the earliest historian of the college, as "P*68*^
* O ' designed to
' dreading to have an illiterate ministry to the Churches, tu^s^on of
when our present ministers shall lie in the dust5.' n5nistry?te
In order fully to realise the force of this observation, it is
necessary to recall the fact that, in the year preceding the
foundation of the new society, Roger Williams, another ^fje£ms of
Cambridge cleric6 who, to use his own expression, had been
' pursued out of the land ' by Laud, had also been called ^
upon by John Cotton to relieve Massachusetts of his presence. A 1683-
The fact that the English primate, and one of the chief
1 ' John Harvard, Middlesex, Dec. 4 Influence of the English Uni-
19. Pens. 10. 0.' Emmanuel Coll. versities, etc., p. 11.
Registers. s New England's First Fruits (see
* B.A. 1631, M.A. 1635; made infra, p. 192), p. 12 [should be 20].
freeman of the colony of Mass. Bay, 6 Masson (Life of Milton, n2 560)
Nov. 1637. assigns Williams to Jesus College,
3 Thomas Harvard, John's only Oxford; Mr Seccombe, however (in
brother, pre-deceased him in 1637. the D. N. B.) to Pembroke College,
The mother's fortune, accruing from Cambridge, whence he matriculated
property left her by three husbands, as pensioner, 7 July 1625. See Essex
ultimately devolved on John. D.N.B. Archaeol.Soc. W.S.n (1884), pp. 34-6.
190 THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
VCHAP. n^ leaders of those whom he had driven into exile, thus con-
curred in their censure of the same individual, in itself
sufficiently noteworthy, affords a valuable illustration in
Stoierance connexion with our whole subject. If we accept the state-
iherchurchto ment of G. E. Ellis, that Williams was one of those who
soon after the arrival of John Winthrop and his company
had demanded from them ' a penitential avowal of sin ' on
' account of their having once been in fellowship with the
English Church1,' we might at first be disposed to regard
the fact as simply attesting, — like Francis Johnson's expul-
sion of his brother from Amsterdam, — that dissension becomes
almost inevitable among those who claim the right of private
judgement in the interpretation of Scripture. The theory
propounded by Williams went, however, yet further. During
the five years which followed upon his arrival at Nantasket
in February 1632, he had been engaged as a pastor first at
Salem and subsequently at Plymouth2. Soon after he landed,
' Governor Winthrop ' had visited Plymouth and listened to
his ' prophesying.' What impression he derived from what
he then heard is not on record. In Dexter's opinion, indeed,
it was Williams' ' factious and impracticable views on civil
policy, quite as much or even more than any views on
theology, that led to his subsequent banishment. The later
history of Williams,' he adds, 'was Massachusetts' best vindi-
«pudiation cation3.' But it was when the authorities of Harvard Col-
as essentiai lege approached the subject of university education, that
u°nd\£sfcuid- the necessity of peremptorily disowning his teaching became
scripture, too obvious to be disregarded. The theologian who incul-
cated the theory of what has been termed ' soul-liberty,' or,
in more customary phraseology, ' individualism,' in relation
to religious belief, was already gravitating to conclusions
which struck at the root not merely of all canons of belief
1 Winsor, m 242. 3 Winsor, in 290. John Cotton
2 Among other arrivals at Plymouth declares that ' the concourse of people '
at this time was Eobert Bartlett, the to Williams, ' on the Lordes Day in
ancestor of John Bartlett, the author private... provoked the Magistrates...
of Familiar Quotations, who died at to put upon him a winter's journey
his house in Cambridge (England) out of the country.' Answer to
on 2nd Dec. 1905, act. 85. See Master Roger Williams, p. 57.
Athenaeum, 9th Dec. 1905.
ROGER WILLIAMS. 191
but also at anything approaching to a tradition of Scriptural ,CHAP. n.
exegesis. The oppressive tyranny of Laud at both Oxford
and Cambridge was evoking a corresponding claim for un-
bridled licence across the Atlantic. It was subsequently
maintained by Williams, not simply that every man had a
right to interpret the Scriptures for himself, but that the
teaching of others, however competent, and the acquirement
of accessory learning, however profound, might be little
better than hindrances to the attainment of a right under-
standing of the sense of the inspired page. He even, ulti- {^tj£e^ythe
mately, could bring himself to believe that a pious cobbler, universities.
if content to study the Scriptures for himself, might attain
to an insight into their meaning not inferior to that of the
most eminent schoolman of the universities1. 'Christ/ he
wrote, 'never appointed nor needed the divinity degrees of
universities and colleges ' ; ' the national and parishional
constitution of Churches' he stigmatised as 'idolatry,' and
the ' hireling ministry ' attending upon them as ' none of the
ministrie of Christ Jesus2.'
As the chronicler whom we have above cited3 leads us to important
service
infer, Harvard College was founded in a very different spirit ifa^Ird by
from that which dominated Roger Williams' estimate of the £c
universities of his time, and even before the founder's death, th
the increasing tide of immigrants, — some 20,000 of whom
are said to have arrived in the colony between the years
1630 and 1640, — imparted fresh stimulus to the carrying
out of the whole design ; while, before another seven years
had passed, Massachusetts, in noteworthy contrast to Vir- s£
ginia, presented to the world the earliest example of a system {5? M^f™
of public education supported by the contributions of the ch
citizens and imposed as obligatory on their children.
1 ' I cannot but with honorable few of those high Rabbies that scorne
testimony remember that eminent to mend or make a shoe, could aptly
Christian, Witness, and Prophet of and readily from the holy Scripture
Christ, even that despised and yet outgo him.' The Hireling Ministry
beloved Samuel How, who being by none of Christs, or A Discourse touch-
calling a cobler and without humane ing the propagating the Gospel of
learning ... by searching the holy Christ Jesus (London, 1652).
Scriptures, grew so excellent a textu- 2 Ibid. Alt;, p. 36.
ary or Scripture learned man, that 3 Supra, p. 189.
192 THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP, n^ John Harvard himself bequeathed, it would seem almost
with his dying breath, not only half his fortune but also his
library, containing 320 volumes, to the new foundation1, — a
slender endowment, it is true, when compared with the
munificent designs of Buckingham in relation to the Old
Cambridge, but while these gleamed but for a moment and
went out in blood, the tiny lamp kindled from Puritan Em-
manuel on New England's shore shone on, and continues
still to shine, rivalling the parent flame.
account Within five years after Harvard's death there appeared
foundation: in London a small quarto pamphlet2, descriptive, firstly, of
the endeavours already made by the colony for the conver-
sion of the Indians, and, secondly, of the results which had
up to that time attended the foundation of the new college,
together with some account of the general discipline and
course of studies that had been established. It is interesting
to note how a tone of something approaching to complacency
in the quaint but expressive diction of the narrator has
already taken the place of the misgivings and anxiety amid
which the undertaking had been commenced. After describ-
ing the benefaction of Harvard himself, whom he characterises
as 'a godly gentleman and a lover of learning,' the writer
goes on to say,
' after him another gave 300 1., others after them cast in more, and
the publique hand of the State added the rest : the College was, by
common consent, appointed to be at Cambridge (a place very pleasant
and accommodate).... The edifice is very fine and comely without,
having in it a spacious Hall (where they daily meet at Common Lec-
tures and Exercises) and a large Library with some Bookes to it, the
gifts of diverse of our friends, their Chambers and studies also fitted
for and possessed by the Students, and all other roomes of Office neces-
sary and convenient, with all needful Offices thereto belonging : and by
1 It was in recognition of his respect first of the... Indians. 2. Of
generosity that the College was called the progresse of learning, in the Col-
after him. The number of the vols. ledge at Cambridge in Massacusetts
is given from the article ' Harvard ' Bay. With divers other speciall
in the D. N. B. Dr Birkbeck Hill, Matters concerning that Countrey.
in his Harvard College by an Oxo- London, Printed by B. 0. and G. D.
nian (p. 9), says, 'more than two for Henry Overton, and are to be
hundred and sixty volumes.' sold in his Shop in Popes-head- Alley.
2 New England's First Fruits: in 1643. [Brit. Museum: E. 87.]
HARVARD COLLEGE. 193
the side of the Colledge a faire Grammar Schoole for the training up of CHAP. ir.
young Schollars, and fitting of them for Academicall Learning, that still Young
as they are judged ripe, they may be received into the Colledge of this b^0i^ed°
Schoole : Master Corlet is the Mr, who hath very well approved him- Grammar
selfe for his abilities dexterity and painfulnesse and in teaching and Scl'°°i,
education of the youth under him. special
master.
' Over the Colledge is master Dumter placed, as President, a learned Henry
conscionable and industrious man ; who hath so trained up his Pupills wnlseif
in the tongues and Arts, and so seasoned them with the principles of de8cribcd-
Remarkable
Divinity and Christianity that we have to our great comfort (and in progress of
truth) beyond our hopes, beheld their progresse in Learning and godli- under* hfcf °
nesse also ; the former of these hath appeared in their publique pr
declamations in Latine and Greeke, and Disputations Logicall and
Philosophicall, which they have been wonted (besides their ordinary
Exercises in the Colledge Hall) in the audience of the Magistrates
Ministers, and other Schollars, for the probation of their growth in
Learning, upon set dayes, constantly once every moneth to make and
uphold: The latter hath been manifested in sundry of them, by the
savoury breathings of their Spirits in their godly conversation. Inso-
much that we are confident, if these early blossomes may be cherished
and warmed with the influence of the friends of Learning, and lovers
of this pious Worke, they will by the help of God, come to happy
maturity in a short time.'
' Over the Colledge are twelve Overseers chosen by the generall other
Court, six of them are of the Magistrates, the other six of the Ministers,
who are to promote the best good of it, and (having a power of influence
into all persons in it) are to see that every one be diligent and pro-
ficient in his proper place. 13.
'2. Rules, and Precepts that are observed in the Colledge.
' 1. When any Schollar is able to understand Tully, or such like Conditions of
classicall Latine Author ex tempore, and make and speake true Latine
in Verse and Prose suo ut aiunt Marte ; And decline perfectly the
Paradigms of Nounes and Verbes in the Greek tongue: Let him then
and not before be capable of admission into the Colledge.
' 2. Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed The chief
to consider well, the maiue end of his life and studies is to Know God before eaci»
and Jesus Christ which is eternall life JOH. 17. 3
' 3. Every one shall so exercise himselfe in reading the Scriptures The
twice a day, that he shall be ready to give such an account of his pro- to°be studied
ficiency therein, both in Theoreticall observations of the Language, tw
and Logick, and in Practicall and spiritual truths, as his Tutor shall
require, according to his ability. ...
M. III. 13
194
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP. II.
Attendance
at prayers
and lectures.
Punishments
to be
inflicted.
'4. That they eschewing all profanation of God's name, etc. do
studie with good conscience carefully to retaine God and the love of
his truth in their mindes
' 5. That they shall studiously redeeme the time ; observe the
generall hours appointed for all the students, and the speciall houres
for their own classis : and then diligently attend the Lectures, without
any disturbance by word or gesture. And if in anything they doubt,
they shall enquire as of their fellowes, so, (in case of Non satisfaction)
modestly of their Tutors.
' 6. None shall under any pretence whatsoever frequent the com-
pany and society of such men as lead an unfit, and dissolute life. Nor
shall any without his Tutors leave...goe abroad to other Townes.
' 7. Every Schollar shall be present in his Tutors chamber at the
7th houre in the morning, immediately after the sovind of the Bell at
his opening the Scripture and prayer so also at the 5th houre at night,
and then give account of his owne private reading1, as aforesaid, in
Particular the third, and constantly attend Lectures in the Hall at the
houres appointed. But if any (without necessary impediment) shall
absent himself from prayer or Lectures, he shall bee lyable to Admoni-
tion, if he offend above once a week.
' 8. If any Schollar shall be found to transgresse any of the Laws
of God, or the Schoole, after twice Admonition, he shall be lyable, if
not adultus, to correction2, if adultus, his name shall be given up to the
1 A detail of discipline in which
the example of Joseph Mede seems
to be clearly discernible: see supra,
p. 19.
2 This favours the conclusion that
undergraduates at Cambridge of a
certain age (probably under eighteen)
were still, generally, liable to corporal
punishment, — the whole method and
arrangement of the discipline and
studies at Harvard being evidently
closely modelled on the system that
obtained at Emmanuel and Christ's
at this time. The question that has
been raised (see Masson, Life of
Milton, i2 159-) as to the probability
of Milton's having been 'whipt' at
the latter college is consequently thus
made somewhat clearer. Whatever
may be the conclusion in respect of
this individual case, it is fairly certain
that Johnson's assertion, that the
poet ' was one of the last students in
either university that suffered the
indignity,' may safely be rejected.
We find, for example, that in 1628
(three years later than Milton ' s quarrel
with the authorities at Christ's)
similar punishment was actually
ordered and only remitted on an
appeal to the Crown: 'Gill and
Grimkin are degraded ; but for their
fines and corporal punishment there
is obtained a mitigation of the first,
and a full remission of the latter,
upon old Mr Gill's, the father's,
petition to his majesty, which my
lord of London seconded, for his
coat sake and love to the father.'
Mede to Stuteville ; Court and Times
of Charles the First, i 437. Thomas
Middleton, two years later (1630), in
his Chaste Maid, etc. (Act m 2),
represents a mother saying to her
son, a B.A. from Cambridge, 'You'll
ne'er lin ' (i.e. cease) ' till I make
your tutor whip you.' Whereupon
the son rejoins: ' 0 monstrous ab-
surdity! | Ne'er was the like in Cam-
bridge since my time ; | Life, whip
a bachelor ! you'd be laugh'd at
soundly." Works (ed. Dyce), iv 51.
HARVARD COLLEGE. 195
Overseers of the College, that he may be admonished at the publick CHAP, n.
monethly Act.'
A scheme of study, embracing logic, physics, ethics, and
politics, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, attests the
enduring influence of the traditions handed down from the
age of Martianus Capella1. Etymology, syntax, prosody,
and ' dialects2/ shew that . the elementary training which
Cambridge had been fain to relegate, first to the Magister Latin.
Glomeriae, and subsequently to the grammar school, were
similarly eliminated from the original undergraduate course
at Harvard3. In ' poetry/ it is significant that the student Versc .
» composition
is required to study as his models the version of St John's ^okno^ng
Gospel (in Greek hexameters) by the Christian Greek poet DuportSb^d
Nornius or the recent compositions of James Duport, whose
rendering of the Book of Job into Greek and Latin verse,
was at this time the theme of admiration at Cambridge
and continued, for some time, to be a text-book in the
university4. The Latin models of the Augustan age are
altogether tabooed. It being the primary design to educate
* a learned ministry/ Hebrew, along with Chaldee and Syriac, ^JJ,6*'
is prescribed as a subject of weekly instruction for aU. aB*.Bf"lft
History is to be studied in the winter months ; botany, in
the summer. The study of rhetoric, together with the Rhetoric.
practice of declaiming, is to be so ordered, ' that every
That his contemptuous disclaimer were publicly whipt.' Wood, Annals,
was not intended to imply that such n 416.
practice had really died out at Cam- l See author's History, 1 23-28, 140.
bridge, is shewn by the following 2 I.e. niceties of expression,
extract relating to the time of the 3 This material fact appears to
Puritan regime: '1648. Mail 22. have been overlooked by Mr Edgar
Johannes Stark de mails moribus Rich, in his sketch of The Evolution
Collegio amovendus. Item Benton of the Harvard Student in his 'Ad-
qui ab eo seductus est per Tutorem dress to the Undergraduates ' in 1886.
suum Mnum Johnson virgis casti- See Record of the Commemoration,
gandus' (Coll. Ord. Book). This is etc., pp. 139-143. Cambridge, N.E.,
the last instance upon record of a 1887.
member of this College (i.e. Corpus 4 ' The 2dyeare at 3d houre practice
Christi) suffering corporal punish- in poesy, Nonnus, Duport, or the
ment.' Masters-Lamb, p. 177 n. At like.' Here, there can be no doubt,
Oxford, in 1638, the undergraduates that by 'Duport' is intended: Qpi)vo-
having pelted the Senior Proctor on 6pia/j.{los, sive liber Job Graeco car-
his return from St Mary's (on the mine redditus : Greek and Latin,
expiration of his office), Laud sent Cambridge, 1637,— the volume which
down so sharp a reprimand, that first established Duport's reputation
•*two or three of the younger sort... as a scholar and a poet.
13—2
196
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP. II.
Require-
ments for
first and
second
degrees.
The first
COMMENCE-
MENT.
The
disputants.
Schollar may declaim once a moneth1.' Recapitulation,
that essential part of the educator's work, is provided for by
the requirement that ' the summe of every lecture shall be
examined, before the new lecture be read.'
The requirements for admission to a degree are as
follows :
' 1. Every Schollar, that on proofe is found able to read the
originalls of the Old and New Testament into the Latine tongue, and
to resolve them logically ; withall being of godly life and conversation ;
and at any publick Act hath the approbation of the Overseers and
Master of the Colledge, is fit to be dignified with his first degree?
' 2. Every Schollar that giveth up in writing a System, or Synopsis,,
or Summe of Logick, naturall and rnorall Philosophy, Arithmetick,
Geometry and Astronomy : And is ready to defend his Theses or posi-
tions : Withall skilled in the originalls as above said : And of godly
life and conversation ; And so approved; by the Overseers and Master
of the Colledge, at any publique Act, is fit to be dignified with his 2d
degree2.'
' The first Commencement,' says Peirce, ' took place on
the second Tuesday of August, 1642. Upon this novel and
auspicious occasion, the venerable fathers of the land, the
governor, magistrates, and ministers from all parts, with
others in great numbers, repaired to Cambridge, and attended
with delight to refined displays of European learning, on
a spot which but just before was the abode of savages3/
Disputations on questions in philology, rhetoric, logic and
philosophy followed, — the names of the disputants being
Benjamin Woodbridge4, George Downing6, William Hubbard,
Henry Saltonstall6, John Bulkley (the son of Peter), John
Wilson, Nathaniel ' Brusterus,' Samuel Belingham, Tobias
Bernard7, — 'nine young gentlemen,' continues Peirce, 'who
were the first to receive the honours of a college in British
America ; and who proved themselves not unworthy of that
1 Peirce, u. s. Append, pp. 6, 7.
2 Hid. p. 7.
3 Hist, of Harvard College, p. 9.
4 Of Magdalen College, Oxford.
5 Son of Emmanuel Downing of
Queens' College and grandfather of
the founder of Downing College.
His mother was Lucy Winthrop,
sister of John Winthrop the governor
of the colony.
6 Grandson of Sir Kichard Salton-
stall and fellow of New College,
Oxford.
7 See New England's First Fruits,
pp. 17, 24-26.
sermon in
HARVARD COLLEGE. 197
distinction, by the respectability and eminence to which ^CHAP. n.
they afterwards attained both in this country and in Europe1.'
In the pages in which, — like William Crashaw, when ^ofJd^al
addressing the ' adventurers ' on the eve of their departure c'q
for Virginia2, — the writer endeavours to disprove the obiec-
0 .
tions and ' false reports ' which had been current in relation 161°-
to New England colonization, we are presented with some
noteworthy points of comparison with the views and expe-
riences of the founders of the earlier colony. The Puritan
defence, as regards general ability, will hardly, indeed, sustain
a comparison with that of the scholarly Anglican of the
preceding generation, to which it is inferior alike in literary
power and in its grasp of the whole subject of colonization ;
but it stigmatizes, with no less confidence and in much the
same language, as 'evil reports against Canaan,' calumnies
such as those which Crashaw had affirmed to be 'slanders,
false reports ' spread abroad ' to betray the businesse which
God himselfe hath put into our hands3.' Five years before,
the Puritan party at home had recognised the success of the
New England colonists as already beyond all question.
'They have,' wrote Sir Simonds D'Ewes, in 1638, ' raised £e^ony
such forts, built so many towns, brought into culture so probity of
much ground, and so dispersed and enriched themselves, as by D-EWCS".
all men may see whom malice blindeth not nor impiety
transverseth, that the very finger of God hath hitherto gone
with them and guideth them4.' Before another decade had Testimony
elapsed, in 1646, Peter Bulkley of St John's, the founder |^]™!ty ,)V
and pastor of Concord, could write with equal complacency p- Bulkle-v-
of the spiritual condition of his flock. ' We have,' he says,
* that plenty and abundance of ordinances and meanes of
grace as few people enjoy the like ; we are as a city set upon
an hill, in the open view of all the earth, the eyes of the
world are upon us, because we professe our selves to be a
people in covenant with God5.' In the interval that elapsed
1 Hist, of Harvard University, 6 The Gospel Covenant; preached
p. 9 and Append, pp. 56-66. in Concord in Neic England (London,
2 Supra, p. 150. 1646), p. 383. Similarly, four years
3 Crashaw's Sermon (u. ».), p. 39. before, the compilers of the Report
4 Autobiography, n 116. on the College enumerate a series
198
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP. II.
Thomas
Welde :
ft. 1590 (?).
(I. 1662.
Hugh Peters
of Trinity
College :
b. 1598.
d. 1660.
between the two foregoing testimonies there had however
taken place a notable change. In 1641 the tide of emigra-
tion across the Atlantic began rapidly to ebb, and before long
was altogether surpassed by the tide of returning emigrants
from West to East, eager to share in the benefits which they
held could not fail to result from the measures initiated by
the Long Parliament and to participate in the glorious
contest. History, indeed, seems almost repeating itself when
we compare the aims and feelings of these men with those
of the returning Marian exiles some eighty years before1,
and discern the same intensified conviction of the truth of
those doctrines in the defence of which they had suffered so
severely, the same exorbitant expectations, and, in the great
majority, the same intolerance and dogmatic spirit2.
A certain minority, however, and more especially those
who had received an academic education, gave evidence that
their experiences, during their expatriation, had not been
without a somewhat sobering effect. Among such, was
Thomas Welde of Trinity College3, who along with his better
known contemporary and fellow-collegian, Hugh Peters,
appeared in London charged with the special duty of
representing to the friends of the colony its waning fortunes
and soliciting aid. Welde had been a member of the Synod
which met at Newtown in 1637 and condemned the Antino-
mian tenets of Wheelwright and Anne Hutchinson ; he had
also been one of the compilers of the Bay Psalm Book, the
earliest production of the Colonist press. Doubtless on their
voyage back to England the two divines talked over their
college days at Trinity ; but we may, with still less hesita-
of 'remarkable passages' of God's
' providence to our Plantation '
(twelve in number), foremost among
which they place the ' sweeping away
great multitudes of the Natives by
the small Pox, a little before we went
thither, that He might make room
for us there.' New England's First
Fruits, p. 20.
1 Hist, of Harvard University,
p. 9 and Append, pp. 56-66.
2 Hence the grave irony of John
Pearson in his sermon in defence of
' Forms of Prayer,' preached in 1643,
— ' We shall have some of Columbus's
discoveries, and of the spirit which
moves upon the Pacific waters.'
Minor Theological Works, n 110-1.
'The American lay-preachers,' ob-
serves his editor, ' are often mentioned
in the records of the time.'
3 See Dexter, Congregationalism,
p. 586, n. 220 ; Adams (C. F.), Anti-
nomianism in the Colony of Mass.
Bay (1636-38), Introd. p. 34.
HARVARD COLLEGE. 199
tion, conclude that they also discussed together the dangers ,CHAP. n.
which menaced the nascent churches which they had left
behind. Was Boston to prove another Amsterdam ? On $%£££$
their arrival in London, Peters' energetic pleadings resulted forLakidon
in the sending out of a valuable supply of commodities to evXiin
Massachusetts, but he soon after became absorbed in his
duties as chaplain to the forces for the reduction of Ireland ;
while Welde, who could never forget Harvard, continued for
many years to forward sums of money which he managed to
collect, from time to time, for the support of the College1.
Neither returned to New England, but both did their best
to counteract the growing forces of fanaticism at home, —
Peters by editing Richard Mather's treatise on Church
Government, a vindication of the position of the Indepen-
dents in the Colony, and Welde by rendering similar service
to a work attributed to John Winthrop, exposing those
errors of the Antinomians and Familists2, which had already
led to their condemnation.
As early as 1642, letters had been sent out from the
mother country inviting three of the New England pastors
to cross the seas in order to take part in the deliberations of
the Westminster Assembly; and, although no practical result
is recorded as having immediately followed, the effect of such
an invitation on the minds and feelings of those to whom it
was addressed cannot but have been considerable3. ' New counter
migration
England historians,' observes Masson, ' tell us of Winthrops, °f mai?>" of
* ' the exiles to
Winslows, Sedgwicks, Stoughtons, Fenwicks, Downings, En«land-
Mathers, Aliens and others, who came over to England in
this way, and even performed parts of some consequence in
1 It is to this period probably that Testament back into the original
we should refer those features of Greek. See Quincy's Harvard, r515;
ascetic life and somewhat depressing Record of the 250th Anniversary of
discipline preserved to us in the Harvard (Camb.,N.E.,1887),p. Ill;
narrative of Quincy and others, — Hill (Birkbeck), Harvard College by
the students assembling in winter an Oxonian (London, 1894), p. 5.
time in the lofty, drafty hall which 2 A Short Story of the Rise, Reign
served as common room and lecture and Ruin of the Antinomians, Fami-
room, ' lighted by the public candle, lists and Libertines that infected the
and cowering over the public fire,' Churches of New England. London,
and mainly intent on acquiring a 1644.
superficial competency to render the 3 See Winthrop (Jo.), Life and
Old Testament out of the Hebrew Letters, n 92.
into Greek and the English New
200
THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP. II.
New
regulations
at Harvard.
Destruction
of its
Library.
In all three
colonies the
teachers
mainly from
Cambridge.
The
influence
of Joseph
Mede's
teaching
clearly
discernible.
the parliamentary service or afterwards in the service of the
Protectorate ; and they dwell with natural pride on the fact
that some of the best of these were strictly of New England
breeding, the earliest students and graduates of Harvard V
In the mean time, among those who remained behind, the
determination to carry out the designs of the founder was in
no way impaired. In 1643, Harvard proceeded to set its
house in order, and a Committee was appointed to audit the
expenditure of the money received from the estate ; a Trea-
surer was appointed and a seal was adopted. In 1654, a
Secretary was elected, and the records were regularly entered
in a volume which has since disappeared. The destructive
fire of 1764, in which Harvard Hall was burnt down, destroyed
the Library, only some 200 or 300 volumes having been
rescued from the flames, and many an interesting memento
of the days which we have briefly passed under review was
thus irrevocably lost2.
It may however suffice, for our present purpose, if we
have succeeded in shewing that whether we turn to Virginia,
to New Plymouth, or to Massachusetts, the records clearly
establish the fact that in each of these colonies the initiative
as regards education was taken mainly by those whom Cam-
bridge had educated, and at Harvard by Cambridge men
alone. Nor is it less clear that those who carried on the
work, although they affected to consider the condition of
both the English universities deplorable, still retained, for
the most part, the traditions of their past academic life and
the methods of their former teachers. In theology, and
more especially, in the interpretation of prophecy, the dis-
course of Joseph Mede3 operated with singular potency. The
1 Life of Milton, n2 587 ; see also
Palfrey, Hist, of Neic England, i
582-6. Palfrey's first three volumes
appeared in the years 1858-1864;
but in the opinion of Dr Charles
Deane (writing in 1886) contained
'the best history of this section of
our country yet written, as well for
its luminous text as for the autho-
rities in its notes.' Winsor, m 344.
2 Early Records of Harvard Col-
lege. By Andrew Macfarlane Davis,
A'.M. 1895. ' Of 5000 volumes only
100 were saved, and of John Har-
vard's books but a single one. It
bears the title of The Christian War-
fare against the Deuill, World, and
Flesh. London, 1634.' Harvard
College by an Oxonian. By George
Birkbeck Hill, p. 287.
3 Supra, pp. 21-25.
WHO WERE THE INDIANS? 201
first colonisers, as they listened by night in the recesses of ^CHAP. n.^
the wilderness to those dismal 'roarings' which they held
could only proceed from ' devils or lions1,' no longer doubted
that in the receding Indian they beheld the myrmidon of Gog Theories put
J J " forward with
and Magog, and that their own lot was now cast in those J^1^^0,,
very regions where Satan was making his last stand ; while {"^Vere**
the lucubrations of the Cambridge pundit over the Apoca- myrmidons
lyptic page found their counterpart in John Cotton's treatise Magog:
of The Churches Resurrection*. And as the tidings of the
events in England was borne across the Atlantic, the divines
of Boston and Harvard discoursed of the thousand years,
the Papacy and Antichrist, and sternly exulted in the
thought that the final episode of the great drama of man's
destiny had actually begun !
But before another decade had passed, the theologian
had again changed his views. In their perplexity, the Israel-
divines of London endeavoured to ascertain whether the
pundits of the Jewish world held any definite opinion in
relation to the question which had baffled the divines of
Cambridge; and we hear, from Edward Winslow, of 'a godly
minister of London ' writing to ' Rabbi-ben-Israel, a great
Dr of the Jewes, now living at Amsterdam, to know whether
after all their labour, travells, and most diligent enquiry,
they did yet know what was become of the ten tribes of
Israel ? ' The oracle responded in terms sufficiently explicit.
His answer, says Winslow, was ' to this effect, if not in these
words, that they were certainly transported into America,
and that they [the Jews in Holland] had infallible proofs of
their being there.' And the governor of Plymouth Colony
then proceeds to give it as his own opinion, that it was ' not
less probable that these Indians should come from the stock
of Abraham, than any other Nation this day known in the
world. Especially considering the juncture of time wherein
1 See Bradford and Winslmc's By that Learned and Reverend John
Journal in Young's Chronicles (Ply- Cotton, Teacher to the Church of
mouth), pp. 105, 155, 176. BOSTON in NEW ENGLAND, and there
2 The Churches Resurrection, or corrected by his own hand. London,
the Opening of the Fift and sixt 1642.
verses of 20th Chap, of the Revelation.
202 THE EXILES TO AMERICA.
CHAP, n.^ G0d hath opened their hearts to entertain the Gospel, being
so nigh the very year in which many eminent and learned
divines, have from Scripture grounds, according to their
• apprehensions, foretold the conversion of the Jewes1.'
1 See Winslow's 'Epistle Dedi- For Winslow himself, see supra
catory ' to that remarkable tract (pp. 165-6). He was at this time in
The Glorious Progress of the Gospel, London, for the purpose of repelling
amongst the Indians in Neiv England. the charges of intolerance and per-
Manifested under the Hand of that secution which had been brought
famous instrument of the Lord Mr against the colonists of Massachu-
John Eliot, etc. A3 v. London, 1649. setts. Life of John Winthrop, n 347.
CHAPTER III.
FROM THE MEETING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT
TO THE YEAR 1647. (Nov. 1640—1647.)
RETURNING now to Cambridge and the events which marked vC.HA^' "L/
the rule of the party there in power, it would not be difficult
to shew that, although important in themselves, they can
hardly compare in enduring and far-reaching results with
those which followed upon the labours of the exiles beyond
the seas. The actual state of the university was, indeed, J^tlon8"
at this time regarded with almost equal dissatisfaction by ™/bpthted
both of the two great religious parties which divided the theEngHsh
. , . . , Universities.
country at large, each of them alike admitting that at
Cambridge as at Oxford there was much that called for
energetic reform. But while Laud interpreted the word as
implying a restoration of discipline and an improved ritual,
together with the suppression of schism, the Puritan, whether
at home or in New England, held that what was chiefly
needed was the surrender of all that savoured of Roman
doctrine and the revival of a more genuinely spiritual
teaching1. Distrust and dislike of the existing system at
1 Cotton thus sums up the Puritan calling.... Here also special care would
view in both the Old and the New be taken for setting up of such
England :...' it were necessary, that preachers in both the universities, as
some experienced godly, learned whose spirit and gift and ministery
nobles and ministers were deputed to might be exemplary patterns to
visit and reforme the universities; young students.' The Way of the
that subscriptions to ceremonies and Churches of Christ in New-England.
prescript liturgies were removed ; that Or the way of Churches walking in
degrees in divinitie were not abused Brotherly equalitie or co-ordination,
unto qualifications for pluralities and without subjection of one Church to
non-residency nor allowed in the another. By Mr J. Cotton, Teacher
ministers of churches to put a differ- of the Church at Boston, New-
ence between brethren of the same England. London, 1645.
204 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. the universities was, in fact, becoming more and more the
Stment burden of the Puritan indictment; and Milton, in his
pamphlets against prelacy (of which no less than five ap-
peared within eighteen months of the assembling of the
Long Parliament), insisted with all the power of his stern
and glowing rhetoric, upon the manner in which the 'in-
genuous natures ' of the well-born English youth were being
turned aside from ' the service of God ' to that of ' prelaty,'
fed as they were ' with nothing else but the scragged and
thorny lectures of monkish and miserable sophistry,' to be
' sent home again with such a scholastic bur in their throats
as both stopped and hindered all true and generous phi-
losophy from entering1.'
Such denunciations may well be supposed to have ac-
quired additional force and were probably read with all the
more attention, in that, nearly at the very time of their
appearance, an endeavour was being made to prevail upon
the new parliament to grant a charter for the establishment
of- a new university in the north of England, Manchester and
York competing for the honour of becoming the seat of its
petition of foundation. In March 1642, Henry Fairfax transmitted to
Manchester
untors?tye-a ^s brother, lord Fairfax, then in London, some 'propositions
lately made at Manchester, in a public meeting there, con-
cerning an university2.' This document, which purports to
come from 'the nobility, gentry, clergy, freeholders, and other
inhabitants of the northern parts of England,' enforces the
desirability of founding such an institution at that centre by
arguments which it would be interesting to compare with
those which, more than two hundred years later, eventually
Reasons carried the proposal into actual effect. ' We are,' say the
urged m
the measure- petitioners, 'inhabitants lying above two hundred miles from
ol™xfordss Oxford or Cambridge (few under one hundred) insomuch
that divers gentlemen are induced to send their sons to
Lancashire, _ ... „ ,
foreign universities, or else to allow them only country
breeding. The great charges of the other universities3,
1 The Reason of Church-govern- in 164£; see his interesting note,
inent urg'd against Prelaty, by Mr Life of Milton, n2 361, n. 3.
John Milton. London, 1641. This, 2 Fairfax Correspond, n 271.
as Masson points out, was published s See supra, p. 174 n.
PETITION OF MANCHESTER. 205
necessarily occasioned by the multitude of scholars ; ihe ,CHAP. in.
dearth of provisions, the want of fuel and scarcity of lodgings, ^"fbotii
forcing many men of indifferent and competent estates, able
enough to maintain their children in another convenient s
place of the kingdom, either to debar them of university university
. , . . ....or to send
breeding:, to make them servitors, or, at best, to allow them him into the
Church as an
only two or three years' maintenance, and then to provide '"iterate,
them of a country cure, or, which is worse, without any
degrees, without university learning, to procure them holy
orders, and so obtrude them upon the Church, which (we
speak from sad experience) hath occasioned many ignorant
and unlearned ministers amongst us.' The avoidance of such
a crying evil in the future, — the necessity for a learned clergy
' able to convince and discourage Papists1,' — the opportunity
that appeared to be now presenting itself of turning to best
account the preferred aid of certain would-be patrons of the Patrons win
. , , , be forth-
scheme, — the honour which would accrue to the northern coming,
counties, ' which, by reason of their distance from the Court
and universities, have suffered a double eclipse of honour
and learning,' — are all urged as weighty further considera-
tions. With regard to the proposed locality, ' we apprehend,'
say the petitioners, ' Manchester to be the fittest place for
such a foundation, it being almost the centre of these
northern parts, a town of great antiquity, formerly both a Manchester
city and a sanctuary, and now of great fame and ability, by antiquity
the happy traffic of its inhabitants, for its situation, provision 'greatfame-'
of food, fuel, and buildings, as happy as any town in the
northern parts of the kingdom. To all this we add the con-
venience of the College there already built2, both large and
1 The sentiment, common to the we must compare the Cambridge
would-be founders of a university at divines bred before and after that
Manchester and the actual founders revolution, by which the mathe-
of Harvard (supra, p. 189), — that 'an matical and physical sciences sup-
illiterate ministry' was an evil es- planted our statutory course.' Pref.
pecially to be deprecated, — deserves to Nicholas Farrer, pp. xliv-v.
to be noted. 'Do we ask,' says 2 The reference is to Hugh Old-
professor Mayor, 'whether rhetoric, ham's Grammar School. See What-
logic, metaphysics (to say nothing ton (W. E.), History of Manchester
of moral philosophy and systematic .SV/wwJ, pp. 9-23; Thompson (Joseph),
theology) may safely be banished The Owens College (Manchester,
from a great seminary of the Church ; 1886), c. xxm.
206
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
Petitions of
York to be
made a
universit;
Marcl
rsitv :
1 164J.
Students
from the
north
seldom
return
thither.
The claims
of York
particular-
ised :
Its former
library.
Its existing
foundations,
ancient, and now, as we understand, intended to this purpose
by the piety and munificence of the Right Honourable
James Lord Strange, a noble encourager of this great work1.'
From York came two petitions, — one from the city, the
other from the city and the northern counties conjointly2.
Both embody similar arguments to those urged on behalf of
Manchester, but the petitioners lay greater stress on the
overflowing numbers and the dearness of living at Oxford
and Cambridge as virtually excluding all but the sons of the
wealthy. Scotland, it is urged, already possesses four univer-
sities, it is time that England had a third. Here the
petitioners give expression to an emphatic disclaimer of
anything like hostility to the two existing ' most famous
universities, which, as they are so, we still hope they shall
continue, the glory of Europe'; but there is also a plaintive
reference to the fact, that those whom the North sends
thither to study, rarely return to instruct the benighted
regions which they have quitted, and that those who do so
are the least eligible of the number. The claims of York are
pressed without undue modesty, — its central and ' healthful '
situation, its antiquity, its fame, its trade and commerce, and
ready command of the commodities of life, being all succes-
sively alleged as rendering the city a fit centre for education.
Even Alcuin, and the famous library of which he was the
custodian, are not forgotten3, — the latter, 'sometime the
most famous in Europe, but being burnt about the time the
university 'of Paris was founded,' might now, it is suggested,
' again be made to flourish by the help of charitable persons.'
There are, moreover, already two colleges in York : one", ' the
Bedron, well endowed,... with a large hall for the readers and
good convenient lodgings for the students'; another, 'founded
by St William, in king Stephen's time, which though now in
1 Fairfax Correspondence, n 273-4.
Macaulay, in referring to the later
progress of our manufacturing towns
says, very truly, that even in the
seventeenth century ' their rapid
progress and their vast opulence were
sometimes described in language
which seems ludicrous to a man who
has seen their present grandeur.'
Hist, of England (ed. 1849), i 339.
2 As early as 1604 it had been
proposed that a University, or at
least a College, should be founded at
Eipon. See Peck, Desiderata Cu-
riosa, lib. vn, no. 20.
3 See author's History, i 9.
THE PETITION OF YORK. 207
another fee, is thought may be redeemed by worthy bene- VCHAP- m-,
factors.' There are also ' fair houses, of late the dean and aud .1ot,J11er
available
prebends, which, though now in lease, may in time expire, resource8-
and remain unto some pious uses,' and lastly, there is already
a printer and a press in the city. The scheme is finally
described as ' tending very much to the honour of God,
the happiness and advantage, not only of these northern
parts but of the whole kingdom1.'
Fairfax and his brother, by whom the petitions were Fairfax
* * favorable to
forwarded, appear alike to have been disposed to support the MancheTte^
claims of Manchester, notwithstanding their family relations
with Yorkshire2, although the former expresses it as his
opinion that ' those well affected to the now universities,' His
testimony to
which he adds 'include every member of 'oar House... w ill be Swwc1fm
in danger to oppose this.' He however admits that he Cambridge1
' much fears a happy issue of it,' seeing that ' the House has parliament^
made an order to entertain no new matter till some of those
great and many businesses we have grasped be ended3.'
And his misgivings were justified by the sequel. When,
indeed, he spoke of the House as ' well affected ' towards the
universities, he simply meant, anxious for their maintenance
as the two chief seats of learning in the realm ; but it now
began to be only too clear that parliament was intent on a
policy which could not fail to result id the transformation of
each into a community with different traditions, changed
institutions, and another discipline; into something, in short,
in which the advocates of the maintenance of the existing
order would feel that they had neither part nor lot.
The election for the new Parliament had resulted in the The new
members
return, for the university, of two representatives who proved ^1!^.
distinguished benefactors at a later time, — the one, Henry J**£|J.
Lucas of St John's College, secretary to the chancellor, ''• 1663-
Holland, and afterwards the founder of the Lucasian chair
of mathematics ; the other, Dr Eden, master of Trinity Hall, ^°^s
who liberally endowed that society with lands. Both were d' 1645-
1 Fairfax Correspondence, n 274- in the Long Parliament. D. N. B.
280. 3 Ibid, n 180.
2 Fairfax himself represented York
208
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. returned by majorities nearly doubling the numbers polled
by their opponents, but both eventually subscribed to the
Solemn League and Covenant. For each, the progress of
events in the House can hardly but have had a special
interest. The previous parliament had already appointed a
sub-Committee ' to consider of the abuses of the universities
in matters of religion,' and the importance of the work to be
undertaken in this direction was now unmistakably indicated
by the re-appointment of the above sub-Committee as a
Committee from the House, entrusted with the same powers
but also authorised ' to deal with all abuses in matters of
religion and civil government either done or suffered by the
universities1.' The master of Peterhouse was, under this
proviso, singled out* for attack. It was alleged that he had
been accessory to an endeavour to win over a convert to
Popery by the bribe of a fellowship in the college2; while
more practical ground was taken by the presentation of a
petition3 drawing attention to his ' superstitious and popish '
innovations at Durham and also to the vindictive spirit in
which he had urged on proceedings in the court of High
Commission. Cosin, in fact, stood between two fires ; for he
had also used language, described as 'scornful, scandalous,
and malicious,' with reference to the royal supremacy in the
Church4. He was consequently sentenced to be sequestered
Extended
powers of the
original sub-
Committee
appointed to
consider of
abuses in the
Universities :
Dec. 1640.
Proceedings
against
Cosin :
Nov. 1640.
1 Cooper, Annals, in 313.
2 That the tendencies at Peter-
house under Cosin's regime were
something more than anti-Puritanical
appears to me unquestionable. Bar-
grave [Alex. VII (Cam. Soc.), p. 37]
says that about 1649, when he first
went to Rome, ' there were four
revolters to the Roman church that
had been fellows of Peterhouse with
myself ' ; one of these was Richard
Crashaw, the poet. Worthington in
his Diary (ann. 1640, Jan. 16) says:
' There was one Mr Nicols put in
prison here for speaking against the
King's supremacy and seducing to
Popery, he was Fellow of Peterhouse.'
3 See Gardiner, Hist, of England,
vn 44-49. The petition against
Cosin was presented by one of his
own prebendaries, Peter Smart, who
had preached in 1628 in Durham
Cathedral against the innovations
there introduced. Smart is described
by Gardiner (ib. p. 45) as ' an in-
accurate, if not a consciously men-
dacious, reporter of things which
had passed before his eyes.' — 'an
old man of most f reward „ tierce, and
unpeaceable spirit,' says Cosin's bio-
grapher: Life of Cosin (prefixed to
Oxford ed. of his Works'), i Append,
p. xxiii. Smart had been a school-
master at Durham.
4 ' That the dean and chapter of
that Church, whereof Dr Cosin was
one, with many others, being invited
to dinner in the town of Durham,
Dr Cosin then and there spake words
derogating from the King's preroga-
tive: the words were these, — "the
King hath no more power over the
Church than the boy that rubs my
horse's heels.'" Ibid. p. xxvi.
:
THE UNIVERSITIES AND PARLIAMENT. 209
from all his ecclesiastical benefices and declared, 'in the CHAP. in.
opinion of this House, unfit and unworthy to be a governor He is
... . deprived
in either of the universities or to continue anv longer head °f a11 h>s
* Church
or governor of any College1.' For the present, however, he {Juf%tetas8
remained at his post at Peterhouse. ship?*8*6*"
Early in 1641. an incident in the debate on the subsidy D-Ewes, in
J . ... the House of
for the royal forces, again brought the two universities under commons,
•f maintains
the notice of the House. In the proviso exempting the two c^nJbndg^
academic communities from the obligation to contribute to oveToxford:
the subsidy, Cambridge was name.d before Oxford, and On2Jan'164T'
her right to such priority being challenged, it devolved on
Sir Simonds D'Ewes. the new member for Sudbury, to
adduce what arguments he could in support of such a claim.
His speech is in harmony with what we know about the
orator himself, — a reserved and somewhat saturnine nature,
regarding with the austere aversion characteristic of his
party, the levity and profanity of the majority of those by
whom he was surrounded, but not untouched by certain finer
influences, such as had been brought to bear upon him as the
pupil of Holdsworth at St John's2, and with a decided apti-
tude and liking for antiquarian research and the spelling out
of monastic records and civic registers3. On quitting the
university for London, to study at the Middle Temple, he had
carried on his labours, now among the records in the Tower,
now in the archives of the Guildhall; and although his
' Journals of the Parliaments of Elizabeth ' remained in
manuscript, and it was his own first parliament, he had
already obtained some reputation as an authority in questions
of precedent and privilege, in relation to the House. As he
glanced around him, it may be questioned whether any
member, Selden and Holies excepted, would have appeared
to him a very formidable antagonist in that particular line
1 Commons1 Journals, n 71 [quoted laries, monastic registers, early wills
by Cooper, in 309-10]. and records, and from public and
2 Of Holdsworth, his pupil always private muniments which he ran-
spoke in terms of the highest regard. sacked with extraordinary diligence,
See D'Ewes' Autobiography, i 107, constitute a very valuable apparatus
218, 428. for the history of English antiquities
3 According to Dr Jessopp, 'the and law.' I). N. D. xiv 453.
voluminous transcripts from cartu-
M. III. 14
210 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. of argument which he deemed suitable for the occasion,
and notwithstanding his comparative youth (he was only
thirty-eight), he spoke with the air and adroitness of a
parliamentary veteran, ' having only a few fragmentary notes
by him.'
™daexpudns At the outset, he intimated that, if the question at issue
dominance was to be determined by votes, Cambridge must submit to
menlnthe be defeated, — ' for we all know,' he observed, ' the multitude
House.
of borough towns in the western parts of England which do
send so many worthy members hither.' He ventured to
suggest, however, that votes should be weighed as well as
numbered, and proposed to his audience ' a more noble way '
°f deciding the controversy. Dismissing, accordingly, the
Latof°ra fantastic arguments of Twyne and Dr Caius, as grounded
Cambridge on ' the dreams of the ancients,' he took up his stand on the
was prior to
oxford. evidence afforded in those ' exotic and rare monuments (not
known to many),' — Gildas, Nennius, and the Saxon Chronicle.
It was clear from those authorities that ' Cair-grant ' (which
was Cambridge) existed as ' a city of fame ' as far back as the
days of Penda ; while as regarded its antiquity as a seat of
learning, ' no man, I suppose,' said the orator, ' will question
or gainsay that it was "a centre of study" in the days of
king Alfred, that Henry Beauclerc was sent thither by his
father " to be there instructed," or that " the most antient
and first endowed college of England" was — Pembroke1'!
D'Ewes's loyal courage and audacity of statement failed,
however, to carry conviction home to those whom he ad-
dressed2 ; and in the bill, as it passed, and also in the 'Act
for the further Relief of the Army and the Northern Parts,'
Oxford took her rightful precedence.
In the mean time, the action of the House in relation to
more practical questions was prompt and unsparing. The
1 Parliamentary Hist, of England, that the speech which Holland com-
ix 182; Somers Tracts (ed. Scott), mended was that 'Concerning the
iv 313. Privilege of Parliament in Causes
2 Cooper (A. and C. p. 360) sup- Civil and Criminal,' on the occasion
poses the earl of Holland's letter to of the arrest of the Five Members,
D'Ewes (Autobiography, n 289) to and delivered 6 Jan. 164^. Somers
refer to this speech : it is evident, Tracts, iv 315-6.
however, from the internal evidence,
THE UNIVERSITIES AND PARLIAMENT. 211
Grand Committee for Religion formally resolved that the ^CHAP. in.
statute passed in 16161, imposing subscription on 'all that payment
take any degree in Schooles,' was 'against the law and liberty ?%$ȣ$?-
of the subject and ought not to be pressed2.' Some three u'nu-craities :
months later, this resolution was extended so as to apply to ^Vpr'iwi
subscription imposed on 'all graduates and students what-
ever3.'
The university now addressed to parliament a letter and um-eversity
a petition4, — the former in Latin, the latter in English, — on
behalf of the menaced cathedral endowments, pointing out Su
- *» i • i /» endowments.
how • the advancement or learning, the encouragement or
students, and the preferment of learned men ' were alike
aided by such resources ; while almost simultaneously a bill deprivTng
was brought forward in the House, by the opposite party, ofpowe1tlcs
for restraining bishops and other ecclesiastics from ' inter- in Sar"6
meddling in secular affairs.' The Lords, however, on taking
the measure into consideration, inserted a proviso, allowing pnrs0evr^ by
the two universities to have justices of the peace from among whereb^8
their own Heads, — who were, at this time, with the exception declared*6
„ T\ T~I i * i"i i TTT'n' • 1 1* i i admissible
of Dr Eden, all in clerical orders. VV illiams, — himself the last tomagisteriai
functions ;
ecclesiastic who bore the great seal, — did not hesitate to
express, from his seat in the House 5, his satisfaction at the
introduction of this proviso ; ' but for which,' he sarcastically
observed, ' the scholars must have gone for justice to those
parties to whom they go for their mustard and vinegar6.'
On the 4th June, the Committee for the Universities was this proviso
accepted by
reappointed, with instructions to prepare a bill for the better slubjec?lto°ns
regulation of those bodies ; and on the 28th of the month, it on,tepproval
was formally declared by the House 'that neither of the for1"™ *
universities shall be subject to the injunction of doing winch is
•? «* ° reappointed:
reverence to the communion table, either in the church of4Ju"e1641-
1 See author's History, n 458. of Clare College, and intimate with
2 Cooper, Annals, m 309; cf. Ib. Father Paul. SeeD. N. B.
p. 104, also Wood-Gutch, n 323, 343. 5 Williams had been released from
3 Cooper, Ibid, m 310; Commons' the Tower in the preceding November
Journals, 11 117. and was now associated with the
4 Both were presented to the House party of compromise, especially on
by Dr Isaac Bargrave, dean of Can- the question of the retention of the
terbury, and Holland's secretary Book of Common Prayer. Lords'
(Verney, Notes of the Long Parlia- Journals, iv 174 ; Hacket, n 146.
mcnt, p. 76). Bargrave was a fellow 6 Parl. Hist, of England, ix 311.
14—2
212 A.D. 1640 TO 164-7.
CHAP, in. St Mary in either of the universities, or in any church or
chapel belonging to any college or hall within either of
the universities, — by which they understand bowing and
congeeing unto it and offering at it1.'
Assessment An assessment to a poll tax made of the colleges, in the
colleges. August of this year, shews the total number of members
(exclusive of servants) to have been 2091, St John's standing
first, in respect of numbers, with a total of 280, and Trinity
next, with 27 7 2, the former society thus assuming the leader-
ship which it continued to retain for nearly one hundred and
twenty years.
Hoidsworth When we recall that Laud was now a prisoner in the
as vice- *
chancellor. Tower and that, only a few weeks before, Strafford had
suffered on the scaffold, we shall better understand the
changed feelings, the consciousness of being face to face with
dire emergencies, which led Hoidsworth, — whom we last
noted as a protestor against the irregular continuance of the
sitting of Convocation3, — to deliver an oration4 which may
certainly rank as one of the most memorable in the history
of the university. As master of Emmanuel, it had already
devolved upon him to support the action of the Crown in
opposition to the Commons; while his position as vice-
chancellor, an office which he continued to hold for three
successive years, from 1640 to 1642, necessarily imparted
Death of additional importance to his example. It was during the
Chaderton :
13 NOV. 1640. nrst year of his vice-chancellorship that Laurence Chaderton
passed away in his hundred and third year, but with his
interest in the affairs of his college manifesting itself almost
HIS to the last. He did not fail to discern Holdsworth*s merits
esteem for
Hoidsworth. as an administrator, and without apparently intending to
disparage the rule of his own more immediate successors,
Preston and Sandcroft, was heard to declare that Hoidsworth
was ' the only master he ever saw in that house5.'
1 Cooper, Annals, m 314. cancellarius, An. 1641. Printed at
2 Corporation Mtmiments, quoted end of Holdsworth's Praelectiones
in Cooper, in 314-5. Theologicae, 1661 : see infra, p. 215.
3 See supra, p. 145. 6 See Life of Hoidsworth by the
4 Oratio solennis quam habuit...in late Bishop Creighton, D. N. B. xxvn
Vesperiis Comitiorum Academiae Pro- 124.
ne Mora
Sociorum at
Emmanuel
nst its re-
tment :
THE UNIVERSITIES AND PARLIAMENT. 213
We have already seen1 that, under William Sandcroft CHAP. in.
(Holdsworth's immediate predecessor), an attempt had been Revival of
. r the contest
made by certain of the fellows of Emmanuel to briner about respecting
» o the statute
the re-enactment of the statute de mora sociorum, and that
the attempt had been defeated, — that is to say, the fellows of
the society had continued to postpone at pleasure proceeding
to the degree of D.D., thereby prolonging indefinitely the
tenure of their fellowships. At the suggestion of Sir Henry
Mildmay (the grandson of the founder), however, measures
were now being taken to restore what was justly regarded as
having been an essential feature in Sir Walter's design when
he drew up his scheme for Emmanuel College2. The fellows, Petition of
the fellows
on the other hand, again petitioned against the re-enactment
of the statute, on the ground that they would thereby be Dec' 1640'
subjected to restrictions such as were imposed on the fellows
of no other college in Cambridge except Sidney, and that
even at Sidney these restrictions had been materially miti-
gated3. In 1641, however, Sir Henry Mildmay defected from
the royal cause of which he had thitherto been a supporter,
and on the 2nd of July a bill for 'the confirming of the
Statutes of Emmanuel College,' involving the re-enactment
of the statute de mora sociorum, was read in the House of
Commons for the second time. But while the bill was still
in progress a case arose in the College which gave the House
an opportunity for more definite interference. On October 16,
there was an election to a fellowship. The master and four The election
• of JOHN
of the fellows voted for John Worthington, but six of the W)°*THIN°-
fellows for a Mr T. Hodges. Out of these six, however, there 1641-1642-
1 Vol. n 317. trusted with that foundation, did
2 See Ibid, n 316. think fit to allow them seven years
3 See ' Petition from Emanuel longer than was permitted to us,
College to the Committee of the after they had considered the incon-
House of Commons for ordering the veniences of this statute.' Baker
Statutes of that College, Dec. 1640' : MS. B pp. 88-89; see also Documents,
' May it please you to be informed m 525 and 575. Singularly enough,
that there is no college in that uni- the petitioners appear to have been
versity where the Fellows are pe- totally ignorant of the fact that the
remptorily compelled to take their statute de Mora had already been
degree of Doctor at their time, but altogether repealed at Sidney (see
only in this and in Sidney College, Vol. n 317) in the year 1614. Docu-
although the statutes were in a sort ments, m 575-6; Edwards (G. M.),
verbatim taken forth of ours, yet Sidney Sussex College, pp. 70-71.
the executors of the Foundress, in-
!
214
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
Decision of
the House of
Commons :
29 March
1642.
Worthing-
ton's sup-
porters and
opponents
compared.
were three who, having failed to proceed to their doctor's
degree when of sufficient standing to do so, would be held to
be disqualified if the statute de Mora were. to be carried into
effect. Holdsworth, accordingly, and those who supported
him protested against the validity of their votes; while the
voters, ignoring their own disqualification, vindicated their
choice on the ground that Hodges came from one of the two
counties, Essex and Northamptonshire, to which the founder
himself had assigned a preference1. Worthington's supporters,
on the other hand, contended that such preference was only
to obtain ceteris paribus, and was not intended to override
merit2. The question was at once referred to the House
of Commons; where, on Oct. 21, an order was passed for-
bidding the master to admit either of the candidates until
the Committee appointed to consider the bill had decided on
the point at issue. A sub-Committee had, however, to be
re-appointed for this special purpose, which did not send in
its report until early in 1642, when a resolution passed the
House, declaring Worthington to be the candidate whose
election must be held valid, while Wright, Hall and Holbech,
were declared ' non socii, according to the statute de Mora
Sociorum, any dispensation to the contrary notwithstanding3.'
Apart from the fact that Worthington's merits were
undeniable and that he was afterwards promoted to the
mastership of Jesus College, being already distinguished as
one of the ablest preachers of his day, as the valued corre-
spondent of eminent scholars, and editor of the much esteemed
writings of Joseph Mede, the names of his supporters would
alone suggest that the House of Commons was in the right.
Three of those who voted with Holdsworth afterwards became
heads of colleges : Benjamin Whichcote, provost of King's ;
1 Vol. n 312, n. 4.
2 How little personal merit was
allowed to weigh with the 'six,' is
to be seen from the following minute,
signed by Cudworth : ' Mr Sarson,
in his chamber... told me that he
acknowledged... a vast difference be-
tween Mr Worthington and Mr H.
in worth, but was determined to the
inferior by the clause of the statute,
ob quod comitatus Essexiae et North-
amptoniae, etc.' See Reasons against
the election of Mr T. #....16 Oct.
1641. Heywood and Wright, n 560
-5.
3 Commons' Journals, n 52-53 ;
Cooper, Annals, in 307, n. 1 ; Shuck-
burgh, Emmanuel, pp. 90, 91.
THE UNIVERSITIES AND PARLIAMENT. 215
John Sadler, master of Magdalene; Cudvvorth, master of CHAP.JIII.
Christ's; each of them prominent figures in the history of
learning, who will claim no small share of our attention in a
subsequent chapter. Of three of the disqualified voters, on the
other hand, Thomas Holbech, although he afterwards became
master of Emmanuel, held office for only five years, while he
attained to no distinction beyond its walls ; Hall, along with
Wright, had been chiefly distinguished by the pertinacity
with which they both urged their claims to dues from ' the
Pinchbeck property'; while Han-is refused to recognise his
superannuation and even to leave the college, and was
ultimately summoned before parliament as a delinquent in
the following year1. On the whole, the case deserves to be
recorded as exemplifying the real value of an occasional
appeal from the narrow sympathies and personal jealousies
of a small society to a less biassed tribunal without.
It was while the question of Worthington's election was Hoidsr
still in suspense, during the Cambridge Commencement of ORATION »»
c ° vetperiit
July 1641, that certain members of the House of Commons
arrived from London to grace the ceremonials by their
presence. On Holdsworth, as vice-chancellor, it devolved to
welcome the guests, and the oration which he now delivered
must take rank as one of the most important ever delivered
on a like occasion. In the preceding March, the Lords had
nominated from their number that memorable Committee of
whose labours Laud, now a prisoner in the Tower, augured so
gloomily; and a sub-Committee, largely composed of Cam-
bridge divines, of whom Holdsworth was one, had been
appointed to assist them by 'preparing matters for their
cognizance2.' In the belief of Fuller, whose uncle Davenant,
bishop of Salisbury, died heartbroken during the sittings of
this latter body, their labours might have been blessed to the
saving of the Church had they not been prematurely termi-
1 Shuckburgh, Ibid. 78, 95. stop the breaches which sedition had
2 ' The bishop of Lincoln, having caused.' Life of Williams, n 146.
the chair in both' (Fuller-Brewer, Among the 'Assistants,' were Ussher,
vi 188) ; ' with authority given him,' Morton, Hall, Samuel Ward, Hacket
adds Hacket, ' to call together those and Holdsworth. Kennet's Chro
Assistants whom the Lords had nicle, m 105.
named to consult for peace, and to
216 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, m^ nated by the action of the presbyterian party in the following
May. As it was, when Holdsworth came forward on the
above occasion as the mouthpiece of the university, it was
with a melancholy consciousness that the hopes of his party
had been scattered to the winds, while the cloud which over-
hung his college remained still undispelled.
At the outset, consequently, he found himself compelled
to admit that it was in no festive mood that the university
He descants welcomed its guests. Even on the most felicitous occasions.
on the &
ofStheSS he observes, academic rejoicing had always been tinctured
university, with a certain austerity ; but such was now the condition of
the community, so uncertain or rather hopeless were the
prospects of learning, so tottering the fortunes of the Church,
that moans and plaints were far more fitting than exultation,
joy, or congratulatory strains, — the trappings of woe, than
festal adornment. ' I can tell you nothing,' cried the orator,
' this year, — a year whose star seems wrapt in cloud, — of
aught that is joyous or prosperous ; the occasion calls not for
graceful, well-turned periods, but rather for deep sighs, loud
sobs, and broken utterance, such as may betray rather than
declare the incredible grief of the university not only for
her own misfortunes but also for those of the Church ! ' Far,
however, is it from his purpose, he avers, to cast the slightest
aspersion upon parliament and its proceedings ; the university
can only deplore that its written appeals have been in vain,
can only hope that its grief may yet move the legislator to
compassion. Up to this time, religion in England had worn
not merely an air of peace and calm, it had also been splendid
the unique and magnificent. 'Our Church,' he exclaimed, 'is happier
tteKngiish far than others: she traces back her origin to no popular
Church, .... . , M j •
insurrection, has instituted no maimed and mutilated priest-
hood, no novel discipline destined soon to disappear; but
whatever stands forth to view as confirmed by successive
ages, approved by Councils, defined by ancient Fathers, and
originating in Apostolic times, this she has restored, main-
tained, and handed down for our observance — But now,
how all was changed ! The mind falters and refuses to
record the insults, the contumely, the foul abuse, couched in
HOLDSWORTH'S ORATION. 217
terms of lowest scurrility and buffoonery, which were hurled >°_HA^- "^
at the discipline, the liturgy, the clergy, the whole episcopal
order, nay at that very Church itself, which stood adorned
by such great names. Even the Reformation itself was now
inveighed against as something at once incomplete and
corrupt, stained with the dregs of Popery and calling for
further reform and cleansing.' ' I had imagined,' continued and insists
on the true
the orator, 'all inexperienced as I was1, that what we call the 1^*^ Re-
Reformation had come to pass in times and was the work of fomatlon-
men full of bitter hatred of the popes of Rome, — men of
whom it would be impossible to suppose that they would
wittingly have retained aught of that Superstition which had
inflicted on many of them not only imprisonment and exile
but even death. Surely, even to suppose so, is to pay scant
reverence to those who were the champions of our Faith !
If such indeed be the fate which is to overtake their fame,
the extinction of true religion itself cannot be far distant.
Come, fellow academicians, let us prepare the exequies ! G^om^sof
We will take our seats by the waters of the Cam, and weep Iearnins-
when we remember thee, O Sion ! We will hang our harps
•on the willows, and now at length bid a long farewell to
learning. Farewell, ye stately ceremonies and thronged as-
semblies ! Farewell, ye contests of scholars and honorable
disputations, bright purple and adorning gown, maces,
insignia, genius, polite learning, studies, order, discipline, and
ye venerable foundations of our ancestors; and thou too,
Religion, which hast so long adorned our Church of England !
1 ' Existimavi ego, homo rerum restauratione consul tabant. An quis-
imperitus, Reformationem quam di- quam est adeo delirus ut censeat,
cimus religionis divina providentia calente adhuc martyrum sanguine,
in ea tempora hominesque incidisse, flagrante Papismi odio, et inju-
qui post Mariae quinquennium per- riarum recentissimarum memoria,
sequutionis flamma erepti, infesto potuisse hos summos viros tarn solute
adversus pontificios odio ferebantur : ac negligenter ad tarn magno pretio
vixdum sanctorum martyrum sanguis redemptam Reformationem se ac-
exaruerat, vix erant a ferro et vin- cingere, ut istius Superstitionis re-
culis confessorum cohortes laxatae, liquias ullas retinerent quam vin-
vix redierant qui se patria fortunisque culis, exsiliis et sanguine expiassent?'
omnibus religionis causa exuissent, Oratio, etc. p. 734. Cf. Vol. n 171-
vix a sanctorum oculis abstersae 3 of author's History. This theory
erant lacrymae quas in cineres mar- of the Reformed Church of England,
tyrum effuderant, cum primum de as maintained in the reign of
reformatione Fidei, de religionis Charles I, is deserving of note.
218 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. »iji-s now fae twelfth hour alike of the Muses and of the
Graces1.'
His appeal to gut he would not abandon all hope without a final appeal
Parliament,
theTobu! °n t° Parliament, — ' to those who, under the best of princes,
on^othuU held the Keys of the State in that famed assembly.' He
appealed to each legislator to remember that the two uni-
versities were not merely seminaries of the Church, but were
also the two eyes of the entire realm, — being not only the
homes of the prophets, but fountains for society at large,
healthful streams watering alike Church and State, schools
in which the finest intellects were instructed in all that
related to the conduct of life. Whatever harm befel the
universities must needs prove detrimental to the whole land.
Then, even as Alexander at Thebes spared the house of
Pindar'2, let them guard the universities from overthrow I
Let them only remember what great leaders, what defenders
of the Faith, from the days of St Basil downwards, had been
trained at like seats of learning; let them remember the
men whom Oxford had educated, — that Oxford which, panic-
stricken by the weight of her misfortunes, was now overtaken
by a miscarriage. As for the array of like names at Cam-
bridge, it was endless ; before he could pronounce them there
would have risen to the lips of those whom he addressed a
succession of names, — now celestial spirits, who had sustained
untiringly the fight for the Faith and had broken the power
of pontiffs. Let them remember that these were all men
whom the university had trained and that not a few of them
had been bishops. To attack the episcopal order as a body*
was, indeed, a fratricidal strife, which, to those who urged it
on, would prove as fatal as did civil warfare to the Greeks of
1 ' Valete, solennia et celebritates ; bid spare | The house of Pindarus.'—
valete, studiosorum certamina et ho- Milton's sonnet, written some sixteen
nestae velitationes, et fulgor pur- months later, on the eve of the an-
purae et togae decus, et fasces et ticipated assault on the City of Lon-
insignia et ingenium et cultior litera- don, almost suggests that the poet
tura et libri et studium et ordo et may have read some copy of Holds-
disciplina et pia majorum instituta worth's Oration already in circu-
et quae diu in Anglia religio floruisti : lation ; otherwise, both probably
in duodecima hora sumus et Mu- drew, independently, from Pliny, vn
sarum et Gratiarum.' Ibid. p. 735. 29 § 109; or Aelian, Var. Hist, xin 7.
2 ' The great Emathian conqueror 3 Beferring to the Covenant.
•
HOLDSWORTH'S ORATION. 219
old, who perished in such conflicts long after their external ,CHAP- I1T-_
foes, the barbarians, had been subdued.
With a final adjuration to the university to address itself He urges
J , * the force of
vigorously to grapple with the impending crisis, and to each j^id£al
individual member, to let his own life and studies be such as
might serve to enhance the fame and reputation of his Alma
Mater, the vice-chancellor brought his fervid oration to a
close. So stirring an appeal and protest against the
doctrines of that same Covenant which, in another three
years, was to be imposed upon the whole university, speaks
forcibly for Holdsworth's grasp of the actual situation.
Within three weeks of its delivery it had been reported to Parliament
- x refers his
the Commons, who had forthwith referred the whole matter c^J2utt£a
to a Committee1. At the same time the proceedings against
Dr William Beale, which had been so abruptly terminated by Articles
r J J exhibited
the dissolution2, were resumed, articles being now exhibited jfrai^*lc.
impugning alike the discipline and the doctrine which he 6 Aug- 164L
advocated. He had preached ' presumptuously ' against
Puritanism ; he had enforced all manner of ritualistic ob-
servances; he had been 'the sole encourager of Dr Cosins in
his vice-chancellorship to tyranize in that Jesuitical, popish,
and canterburian religion'; while the peculiarly sinister
imputation levelled against Cosin was now preferred against
Beale himself, it being alleged that he 'did seduce and allure
divers young students out of other colledges, promising
them upon their conformitie great preferment in his colledge,
which he did frequently3.' Parliament took prompt action consequent
i IT, • » • action of
in order to repress such ' Romish practices throughout the Parliament
university. Heads of colleges were forthwith called upon to
remove the communion tables from the east end of their
chapels, to take away the rails and level the chancels. ' All
1 ' Ordered that the information 2 See supra, p. 146 ; order had
given concerning an Oration made been given for the production of the
in the Universityof Cambridge touch- articles, Oct. 15, 1640 ; i.e. & fort-
ing the decay of learning etc., by night before the opening of the Long
Dr Holdsworth the Vicechancellor, Parliament.
wherein it was alleged were great 3 Heywood and Wright, C<un-
rerlections on the Parliament's pro- bridge Transactions during the Pu-
ceedings, be referred to a Com- ritau Period, n 442-4; Baker- Mayor,
mittee.' Rushworth, pt. iii, i 355. pp. 629-30.
220 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, i ii^ crucifixes, scandalous pictures of any one or more persons of
the Trinity, and all images of the Virgin Mary ' were to be
'taken away and abolished'; tapers, candlesticks and basons
were to be removed ; and all ' corporal bowing ' at the name
of Jesus or towards the east end of the church was to be
discontinued1!
Koyai favour Charles, in the mean time, had shewn his sense of the
shewn to
Hoidsworth. value of Holdsworth's services by appointing him one of
his own chaplains, and somewhat later offered him the see
of Bristol, a perilous honour which, amid the storm of un-
popularity then descending on the whole episcopal order, the
master of Emmanuel deemed it prudent to decline. His
loyalty remained, however, unshaken; and when, in the
following November, the king returned from Scotland, having
secured, as it was fondly hoped, the allegiance of that country
by his timely concessions, the university poured forth its
congratulations in a collection of occasional verses wherein
Holdsworth's contributions, as those of the vice-chancellor,
Demonstra- served both to usher in and to conclude the series. Forming,
tii in of loyal
(?n!verskyythe as these effusions do, a bulky pamphlet of nearly one hundred
lirmodia. pages2, and composed, as they are, in various languages, —
Greek, Latin, Hebrew, English, and Anglo-Saxon, — their
subscriptions sufficiently attest the remarkable unanimity of
the leading men in the university at that critical juncture.
Whatever sinister interpretations men elsewhere might place
on the Irish Massacre and the ' Incident,' Cambridge at least
was determined to put the most favorable construction on
1 Commons'1 Journals, u 278, 287 Orat. Acad. publ. ; Abrahamus
[quoted by Cooper, Annals, m 316]. Whelocus, Bibliothec. pub. ; N. Ho-
2 Irenodia Cantabriyiensis : ob pa- bart, Coll. Eegal. Soc. Senior, Aca-
cificum Serenissimi Regis Caroli e demiae Procurator ; Jacob. Duport,
Scotia reditum Mense Novembri 1641. S. T. B. Graecae linguae Professor;
Ex Officina Eogeri Daniel, Almae J. Beaumont, Coll. S. Pet. So. ;
Academiae Typographi, 1641. The N. Culverwell, Mag. in Art. Coll.
chief contributors are : E. Holds- Emman. [the author] ; Guil. Eetch-
worth, Acad. Procancellarius ; S. ford, Art. Bac. Aul. Clar. [one of the
Wardus, Praefectus Coll. Sidneyani ; two contributors in Anglo-Saxon] ;
E. A. Brownrigg, Aul. Cath. Prae- E. Cudworth, M.A. Coll. Emman.
fectus; Eich. Love, Praef. C. C. C. ; Socius [one of the contributors in
Eich. Sterne, Praefectus Coll. Jesu ; Hebrew] ; A. Cowley, Trin. Coll. ;
Henr. Feme, S. Th. Profess.; Tho. John Cleveland, Fellow of St John's
Goad, Eegal. LL.D. Jur. Civilis Pro- College.
fessor Eegius; Henr. Molle, Eegal.
PARLIAMENT AND THE UNIVERSITIES. 221
the royal policy and implicitly avow its disbelief in the .CHAP, in.
aspersions cast upon Charles's good name.
But the dangers which Holdsworth had foreboded now
came on thick and fast. In the following December, the
Grand Remonstrance was carried by Parliament to the king
at Hampton Court ; couched, as it was, in language which Language
might almost seem to glance directly at the recent speech of 6ran? Re-
J monstrance
the vice-chancellor, it embodies a distinct intimation of a court™pton
design to reform and purge ' the fountains of learning, the l Dec' 1641'
two universities,' — 'in order,' say the Remonstrants, 'that the
streams flowing from thence may be clear and pure, and an
honour and comfort to the whole land1.' Before January had The
passed, the famous ' Protestation ' ' to defend the true Pro- imposed
on the
testant religion2,' which in the preceding April had been universlty-
sent by Cromwell and Lowry to the burgesses of the town,
was imposed as a declaration obligatory on both universities.
In the following month it was reported to the House that irregular
. , . . ... subscription
notwithstanding the recent order against subscription on prohibited.
proceeding to degrees, students, on graduating, were still
sometimes pressed to make formal record of their unalterable
loyalty to King and Church ; and Sir Robert Harley, Strode,
Cromwell and Hampden were accordingly instructed to draw
up letters of remonstrance addressed to both universities3.
About the same time, the claim of these bodies to be Resistance
exempted from contribution to the loan for the defence of the universities
to the forced
kingdom was rejected by the House. The Committee for £°^n-
the Universities was again revived ; while a petition from
the gentry and commoners of Cambridgeshire to the House
of Lords urged upon the attention of that body, among other
measures, — to be undertaken ' with as much zeal and speed
as the pressing necessity of the times require,' — one for
the 'purging of the universities4.'
1 Rushworth, Hist. Collections, m, of this period: see infra, c. iv and
vol. i 450. Appendix (F).
2 Gardiner, Hist, of England, ix 4 Cooper, Annals, m 319, 320.
353-4; Cooper, Annals, m 311, n. 2 'Ourblessedparliamentarieworthies,'
and 317. wrote Vicars (Parl. Chron. p. 40) in
3 Commons' Journals, n 425. The the same year, ' have given us
same practice, however, is observable, great hope of timely purging the two
long after, in the Bishops' Registers famous fountains of our Kingdom,
222
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
Letter of
JOSEPH
BEAUMONT,
Master of
Peterhouse :
6. 1616.
d. 1699.
John
Cleveland's
Oration.
Performance
of the play
of The
Guardian
by Cowley.
It was while this ferment was at its height that prince
Charles, not yet twelve years of age, paid a visit to the
university, where, two days later, he was joined by his royal
sire. Joseph Beaumont of Peterhouse, — recently appointed
' guardian and director of the manners and learning ' of the
students of that society over which he was afterwards to
preside, — described, in a letter to his father, the reception of
the prince, and characterises it as wanting in 'no circumstance
of honor which the court about him or the university could
give.' The king on his arrival, he says, was 'highly pleased'
to learn how the prince had been received, and prolonged
what he had designed to be a private visit into a public stay
of some hours. Holdsworth, as vice-chancellor, presented
him with a handsome bible, while Dr Collins, the provost
of King's, presented another to the prince. The master of
Trinity, Dr Comber, greeted his monarch in a set oration ;
and at St John's the public orator discharged a like courtesy.
Both these addresses, however, seemed thrown into the shade
by that of Cleveland who, in a succession of bold but brilliant
metaphors, managed to compliment his monarch in such
felicitous terms that the latter, we are told, ' called for him,
and with great expressions of kindness gave him his hand to
kiss, and commanded that a copy of the address should be
sent after him to Huritington, whither he was hastening that
night1.' ' As the statue of Memnon,' said the poet, ' became
vocal in the rays of the rising sun, so the university, but
lately plunged in grief, has become eloquent in the sunshine
of the royal presence2.' It was on this occasion, also, that
Cowley, now a minor fellow of Trinity, composed, as already
noted3, his play of The Guardian. Charles banqueted at
Oxford and Cambridge, from the
much myre and mud of Komish in-
novations.' John Vicars, gibbeted
by Butler in his H-udibras (i i 645)
and by John Goodwin as ' Babshakeh
Vicars,' was a member of Queen's
College, Oxford. He attacked both
Cavaliers and Independents with
almost equal virulence.
1 Cleveland's Life, prefixed to
Works, ed. 1687; letter from Beau-
mont to his father, Arcliaeologia,
xvm 30; Cooper, Annals, in 321-2;
Baker MS. xxxni 235-6.
2 ' Memnonis statua solaribus per-
cussa radiis vocalem musicam de-
disse fertur : habent vel hi parietes
chordas magicas, quas minima vultus
vestri strictura quasi plectro ani-
mavit.' Cleveland, Works, p. 135
(ed. 1687).
3 See supra, p. 111.
ROYALTY AT CAMBRIDGE. 223
St John's, surveyed the chapel and the library, and, Dr Beale VCHAP. m-,
himself being absent, did not scruple to say a kindly word on sfjoim**
his behalf, declaring that until the charges against him were
clearly substantiated he was determined to hold him guiltless1.
The university, charmed with the royal condescension, rose to
the highest pitch of enthusiasm. Beaumont subscribed his
letter to his father as written on ' the best day of my life ' ;
while on the following Sunday, which was the anniversary of
Charles's accession, Holdsworth, preaching at Great St Mary's, HOWS-
could venture to hold up the condition of the nation at large ("™°n at
to the admiration of his audience as even more than satis- If MarTiek
factory. ' Never,' he declared, 'were the riches of the kingdom
so great, its peace so constant, the state of it for all things so
prosperous2.' This complacent tone is certainly somewhat HIS
. . , optimistic
surprising when we note that the words were spoken within tone n<>t
* confirmed
two days after the presentation of the Kentish Petition to J^jJowy"
Parliament, and that on the Monday following upon Holds- evidence-
worth's discourse that petition was rejected3.
The Kentish Petition4, although in itself little more than iheKentM
Petition.
a somewhat doubtful claim to represent the predominant
feeling of the resident gentry round about Maidstone, had its
value, in Gardiner's opinion, as an indication of the 'distracted
condition ' of the whole country, and, it may be added, of
both the universities. It pleaded, on the one hand, for the
full execution of the laws against the Catholics; on the other,
for the maintenance of episcopal government, and for the
establishment of a Synod, which was to be empowered to
decide upon all disputes concerning doctrine or ceremonies.
It called for the suppression of ' schismatical sermons and
1 Beaumont's letter, H.S. ; Baker- 3 'The Kentish Petition,' says
Mayor, p. 217. Baker asserts that Gardiner, ' may fairly be accepted as
Charles ' did Dr Beale the honour to embodying the spirit which was soon
accept an entertainment from him in to animate the King's supporters in
the college': the Master, however, the Civil War.' ties Hist, of England,
being at that time under the censure x 179—80.
of the House of Commons, probably 4 This noteworthy manifesto must
deemed it more becoming to absent not be confounded with the petition
himself. of the Root and Branch party, also
2 A Sermon at St Maries on the emanating from Kent, presented in
Day of his Majesties happy Inaugu- Jan. 164J. See Gardiner, Fall of
ration, p. 27. the Monarchy, i57, 440-1.
224 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. pamphlets ' and for the silencing of all laymen who, ' arro-
gating to themselves the rights of the clergy, devoted their
energies to preaching up ' libertinism and atheism.' It also-
urged that no order of either House should acquire validity
before the Royal assent had made it a statute of the realm.
In short, it advocated the maintenance of precisely those insti-
tutions and restrictive enactments against which Milton, in
Milton's his. Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty, — re-
Pamphiet. nouncing his previous incognito, — now appeared as the avowed
antagonist of Andrewes, Ussher and Hall, and those other
writers whose theories had recently found renewed exposition
in the collection known as the ' Oxford Tracts1.' But it was
Ehfs i the bishopric as an institution, which was now recognised to
threatened ; be specially on its trial. ' I have no reverence for bishops/
observed Sir Edmund Verney to Hyde2; and the battle of
Edgehill, at which, a few weeks after that utterance, the
speaker fell, may almost be said to have been fought to
decide the question of the maintenance or the abolition of
the episcopal order. How closely that order was associated,
in the academic mind, with the best interests and prevalent
theCgaratit°ude aspirations of the university, is a fact too clearly brought
rtuden'ts. home to the student of Cambridge history at this period,
to call for any further elucidation in these pages. The
originally penniless lad, who, notwithstanding high promise
and a genuine love of letters, could never have set foot in
college had not his merit been discerned by some generous
prelate, and who, frequently during his subsequent career in
the university, found himself aided by endowments which
bore witness to a like munificence in some preceding genera-
tion, until a well-earned success at length brought home to
him the consciousness that he, in turn, might aspire to wear
the mitre and to be a patron, could hardly but feel that, in
his own experience, what Milton describes as ' the benefit of a
wise and well-rectified nurture3,' had been placed within his
1 For a concise account of these i 5.
seven pamphlets, see Masson's Life 3 Reason of Church Government,
of Milton, n 363-9. cited by Masson, n 373.
2 Gardiner, Hist, of the Civil War,
THOMAS STEPHENS' SERMON. 225
reach by members of that very Order which the poet himself ,CHAP. HL,
was at this time so energetically assailing. Hence, in the ussner-s
preceding year, Ussher had drafted his scheme of a modified
episcopacy, which he vainly hoped might serve to appease
the scruples of more moderate Puritans : and hence, again, Aid granted
0 to students
with a view to conciliate, the university had recently acceded ££ffeTerim'ty
to a request from the Commons to aid two poor students from Dublin-
Trinity College, Dublin, by granting them exhibitions1.
Within a few weeks of the delivery of Holdsworth's oration,
another notable discourse, — this time from the university
pulpit, — bore witness to the fact that rapid changes had
already taken place during the interval. On the 31st May,
Thomas Stephens, master of Bury St Edmund's School,
preached from the text In those days there was no King in
Israel; every man did that which was right in their own eyes2.
Like Holds worth3, he could still recognise the material pros-
perity of the realm, but the eight weeks which had intervened
enabled him to discern the dangers ahead far more clearly.
' If these scattered drops,' cried the preacher, ' which fall so He de-
x •*• nounces the
fast, do fore-token a black storm a coming... we need not go §^o^i"g
farr to seek a cause.' ' We who enjoy all those blessings
which a peacable government can inrich a land with, we
which sit every man under our own vines and our own fig-
trees partaking of the fatnesse of the land,... we which now
hear the bells toll quietly to bring us together to the publick
service of God, which, were it not for this government, we
might expect would be jangling in a more dismal tune,
ringing a funeral peal to the town or city, — that we
1 Commons1 Journals, n 557. Al- 3 Stephens appears to have been
though Romanists were supposed to personally known to Holdsworth, for
be debarred from admission at Trinity he tells us that the latter, in his
College, ' the authorities of the Col- capacity of vice-chancellor, called
lege,' says its historian, 'studiously upon him to preach a second sermon,
avoided any public enquiry into the but this was never delivered. See
religious tenets of undergraduates. Preface to Three Seasonable Sermons :
Until 1794 no student was required to the First preach' t at St Mary's in
make any declaration of his creed at Cambridge, May 31, 1642. The
entrance, and it appears that even Others designed for publick Auditories
those who lived within the walls were but prevented. By Tho. Stephens,
not forced to attend the services of M.A. London. The volume was not
the chapel if known to be Dissenters.' printed until the Restoration, the
Trinity College, Dublin. By W. Preface being dated 'Bury St Edm.
Macneile Dixon (1902), p. 45. June 6, 1660.'
2 Judges, xxi 25.
M. III. 15
226
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
TEINITT
COLLEGE
under the
rule of
Dr COMBER :
1631—1645.
Protestants, should conceive a mischief against the King...
and lift up the finger against the Lord's Anointed1!' In
language that must afterwards have seemed almost pro-
phetic, he assailed with bitter sarcasm the denouncers of
the Laudian ritual. ' Force open the doors, break down the
windows, let the spies enter and the armed men keep the
passage ! But once in, 'tis not the altar and rails will serve
them, — no, the vestry and the library, yes, the poor man's
box shall be suspected to have a golden image in it ! Nay
there is no place secure, there is an idoll in the desk ; away
with the Book of Common Prayer, teare it to pieces ! There
is an idoll in the pulpit too, or rather the priest of idolls ;
hale him, pull him out, tear off the sacred vestments from his
superstitious shoulders : the ephod and the teraphim will not
suffice, the surplice and the hood ; cherubims and seraphins
must all away, nay the very stones of the pavement shall be
torne up, because men kneel upon them ; " Thus, O God, do
they break down the carved works of thy house with axes
arid hammers2." '
If the ferment in the university was but the reflex of the
excitement that prevailed throughout the entire realm,
Trinity College, in turn, appears to have offered within its
own limits an epitome of the contention in the whole
university. It is at this great crisis, indeed, that this society
begins to assume that high position among the colleges which
it has almost ever since maintained ; and if Dr Comber
might lament that his mastership had fallen upon evil days,
he might find consolation in the fact that his own 'college had
prospered under his rule. In the earlier years of the century,
there are traces of favoritism in elections and of negligence
on the part of the tutors, much resembling the condition
of the neighbouring society under the misrule of Owen
Gwynne, although the complaint of Arthur Jackson probably
represents a somewhat exceptional experience3. Under
1 Stephens' Sermon, u. s. p. 26.
2 Ibid. pp. 18-19.
3 Jackson entered at Trinity circ.
1616 ; and his biographer tells us that
he was under the tuition of ' one so
little minding the faithful discharge
of that great work he undertook, that
I have often heard him say, he might
have been half a year absent, and
his tutor not known it.' Life (pre-
. TRINITY COLLEGE. 227
Comber, however, a marked reform is observable. The CH\P. m.
Admissions, from the year 1635, were regularly kept and
carefully preserved : his example as an indefatigable student increased
_ * 1 attention
and his remarkable attainments as a scholar encouraged {J^^
humanising studies1; and there is to be discerned not only )|Sf thfes
an improved standard of taste in literature, and more especi- be
ally in poetry, but also a juster sense of the limits to be
observed in Biblical criticism and interpretation. In 1642,
when, as we have already seen2, Arthur Jackson (now rector Arthur
•f ' Jackson:
of St Michael's in Wood Street) was petitioning parliament *• ^(?)-
to sanction the printing of Richard More's translation of
Mede's Apocalyptic studies3, the scholars of Trinity, — availing contrast in
themselves of the licence which marked the royal visit, — put j^a^*™
forth a collection of satirical predictions, among which it was ProCpheties.
foretold that ' the bare profession of being a member of the
Latin Church... shall plainly appeare to be a publike sign and
the marke of the Beast4.'
Trinity, at this time, as Mr Ball observes, was especially Deveiope-
» * ment of
'favoured by the poets5'; and, subsequent to the deaths of j^fon7 its
Donne and George Herbert, a succession of versifiers and members:
play-writers may be cited in evidence. Hugh Holland, the Hu,gh .
* J * Holland:
poet of travel and author of the Cypres Garland, — and d- 1633-
Thomas Randolph, whom Duport eulogises as the Ovid of £-
the age6 — were both fellows of the society. But there were d-
fixed to Jackson's Annotations on 3 The order was given 18 Apr.
Isaiah), pp. 1-2. 1642, and the volume appeared in
1 'Adde to this his incomparable 1643 as The Key of the Revelation,
dexterity in the Easterne and West- with a preface by Dr Twisse.
erne languages, as Hebrew, Arabick, 4 Certaine Prophesies presented be-
Coptick, Samaritane, Syriack, Caldee, fore the Kings Majesty by the Scholers
Persian, Greeke and Latine, in which of Trinity Colledge in the University
he was most excellent; likewise the of Cambridge. Printed at London
French, Spanish and Italian, which forT. B. 1642 [Univ. Lib. Z. 23. 11].
he understood and could speak. This 6 Notes on Trinity College, pp. 89,
provision he stored himself e with, 90.
partly at home here, and partly abroad 8 Duport (Jas.), Musae Subsecivae,
in his tra veils.' Funeral Sermon pp. 469-70. See supra, pp. 109-10.
by B. Boreman, B.D. delivered in The tribute of Duport is characterised
Trinity Colledge Chappell the 29 of by* more genuine feeling than he
March, 1653. ' Panegyrick ' prefixed, usually evinces. ' Immodicis brevis
p. 8. See also the Epitaphium by est aetas, et rara senectus; | Haec
Duport, Ibid, and in Musae Sub- tua culpa fuit, te placuisse nimis,' —
secivae, p. 491. such is his verdict on his friend's
2 Supra, p. 21. career.
15—2
228 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. instances in which these tastes, in themselves refining and
elevating, were also accompanied by a recklessness and
licentiousness that recall the days of Nash and Greene1.
Marveii and Andrew Marvell appears to have ' gone down,' once and again 2,
cowiey. under circumstances which must have seriously prejudiced
his prospects of academic success ; and he eventually quitted
the university in 1641, leaving behind him no more memorable
achievement than some verses in the Musa Cantabrigiensis.
It may however be conjectured that the reputation which he
subsequently acquired by his knowledge of continental lan-
guages, is not altogether to be dissociated from the influence
of the example set by the master of his college. Cowiey,
whom, in 1642, we find busied with the composition of his
Dispersion Davideis, had already won his fellowship ; but early in June,
owingto* when the university was again dispersing through fear of
p^uef" the plague, the unhappy end of Sir John Suckling in Paris
sITjohn became known in England. It was but little more than
6Uieo9ng: fifteen years since, at the age of sixteen, he had entered as
a fellow-commoner. He had gone down without taking a
degree, but not without having already given evidence of
attainments beyond his years. His sparkling verse, if it
rarely attained to excellence, gave suggestion of a genius
capable of better things ; while his Session of the Poets and
his just appreciation of Shakespeare indicated a critical
discernment above the level of his time.
If Holdsworth had ever contemplate^ the delivery of
another oration at the approaching Commencement, his
design was frustrated by a Grace passed on the 6th June for
the discontinuance of all sermons, lectures and exercises until
the authorities should deem it safe for the university to
1 See Vol. n 432. Seniors that Mr Carter, Dominus
2 According to his biographer, Wakefield, Dominus Marvell, Do-
Cooke, Marvell first quitted Cam- minus Waterhouse, and Dominus
bridge under the influence of certain Maye, in regard that some of them
Jesuits, who persuaded him to trans- are reported to be married, and the
fer himself to London ; but finally others looke not after their days nor
left (after proceeding B. A.) about the acts, shall receave no more benefitt
time when we find the following of the college, and shall be out of
entry in the Conclusion Book of their places, unless they show just
Trinity College — ' Sept. 24 (1641) : It cause to the college for the contrary
is agreed by the Master and eight in three months. '
THE ROYAL LOAN. 229
reassemble. Six days later, an Ordinance of the House of .CHAP, in.
Lords nominated him a member of the Assembly of Divines
and the nomination was approved by the Commons1. His
measure of offence, in the eyes of the latter House, was
indeed not as yet filled up, but it was very shortly to
become so.
Before June had passed, the loyal feeling of those who The royal
. J" . J -11 appeal f<"
remained in the university was put to very practical test by ^J^ 1642_
a royal appeal, dated from York, for aid to enable the Crown
to cope with the levies and the loans which Parliament was
collecting, — collecting moreover, Charles' letter went on to
say, ' upon false and scandalous pretences (and which we have
sufficiently made appear to be such by our proclamations and
declarations, and by the declarations of our lords and coun-
sellors here present with us) that we intended to make war
upon our Parliament.' Royalty accordingly desires 'the
assistance of our good subjects for our necessary defence.'
' By our perpetual care and protection of such nurseries of
learning,' it is further urged, 'we have especiall reason to
expect their particular care of us, and their extraordinary
assistance to our defence and preservation'; and ' our colleges
out of their treasuries,' individuals 'out of their particular
fortunes,' are consequently called upon to contribute, — 'in-
terest of eight pounds per cent.' being promised when the
money is repaid, which it shall be, 'justly and speedily as
soon as it shall please God to settle the distraction of this
poor kingdom2.'
The response of the university was singularly prompt.
As early as the second of July, some at least of the colleges resPon
had paid their quota and still possess the receipt given by
1 Lords' Journals, vi 92. The year plate and money is still brought in
'1643' in Cooper, Annals, m 324, against us, notwithstanding our decla-
n. (5), is a misprint. rations and proclamations to the
- Heywood and Wright, n 450-1; contrary." In all important points
Baker MSS. x 114 ; Wood (Annals, the two letters are however identical ;
n 438) prints ' upon a false and scan- but that to Cambridge is dated :
dalous pretence,' [which, adds the 'Given at our Court at York the
Oxford letter, ' we have sufficiently 29th of June, 1642 ' ; that to Oxford
made appeare to be such by our is dated: 'Given at our Court at
actions and declarations]... that we Yorke Julii the seventh, Anno D'ni
intended to make warre upon our 1642.'
Parliament, horse is still levied and
230 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. the royal agent1, John Poley, fellow of Queens' College and
proctor for the year2. Queens' College gave £185, of which
amount its loyal president, Edward Martin, whose sympathy
with the Anglican party had, as we have seen, already been
practically attested3, contributed £100; St John's gave
£150 ; Sidney £1004. For some reason which does not
appear, Charles's appeal to Oxford was not written until
The oxford more than a week after that sent to Cambridge5; but the
response.
response of the sister university was equally prompt and
yet more liberal. On the letter being read, Wood tells
us, ' the whole Convocation consented that whatsoever money
the university was possessed of, whether in Savile's mathe-
matical chest, Bodley's, or in the university chest, should be
lent to the king6'; and on the 20th July, Sir Edward
Nicholas, the secretary of state, was able to report that
Oxford had 'voluntarily sent in £10,000 to the king'
and Cambridge 'a faire proporcion also,' such proportion
amounting to £6000 7. On the whole the compliance of
both universities was highly encouraging, and might well
seem to suggest a means of supply which could be relied
upon until the source itself was exhausted. The royal letter,
moreover, contained a significant allusion : it spoke of ' the
1 The receipt sent to St John's exequatur.' Liber Gratiarum Z, p.
College, for money handed over from 441 ; see also Life of Barwick, p. 22 n.
the college treasury by Dr Beale, is 3 See supra, p. 115.
printed in Baker-Mayor, p. 632 ; also 4 MS. Baker, D 118-20. The
in Life of Dr John Barwick, p. 22. Acta Collegii at Sidney contains the
3 Poley's services in the royal following entry: 'Jul. 2: 1642. A
cause were so highly valued that, a Hundred Pounds taken out of the
few months later (10 Oct. 1642), a Treasury for the King's use: It was
Grace was passed to enable him to ordered by the Master, Mr Garbut,
appoint a substitute in his office of Pendreth, Haine, Ward, being the
proctor : ' Cum Magister Johannes major part then present, that 100 lib.
Poley modo electus ad officium pro- should be taken out of the Treasury
curatoris hujus academiae Eegiis for the King's use and so much plate
negotiis detentus sit adeo ut huic as hath been given to the Master and
congregation! muneri suo subeundo Fellows for Admissions of Fellows
adesse non posset, placeat vobis ut Commoners should be set apart in
dictus Johannes Poley ad dictum lieu of it till it be repaid.' Baker
officium admittatur et jurejurando («. s.) has 'Bendreth' for Pendreth ;
astringatur sub persona Guilielmi but see Cooper, Annals, in 357, and
Quarles procuratoris sive substituti Edwards, Sidn. Coll. p. 95. Pendreth
sui in hac causa legitime constituti ; was Seth Ward's tutor,
et ut dictus Guilielmus Quarles in 5 See supra, p. 229, n. 2.
absentia Johannis Poley praedicti 6 Wood-Gutch, n 439.
omnia quae ad ipsius officium spec- 7 State Papers (Dom.) Charles I
tant, aeque ut si ipse praesens foret, (1642), ccccxi, no. 84.
SENDING OF THE COLLEGE PLATE. 231
plate and money still brought in against us ' by Parliament VCHAP. m.^
(supra, p. 229, n. 2). The hint was readily taken ; and, if we
may credit Clarendon, the heads of houses now proceeded to
invite the royal attention to the wealth of the colleges in
this respect, 'which lay useless in their treasuries, there
being enough besides for their common use1.' It is certain Charles
, , . offers to take
that, within a few days of the receipt of the contributions care ?fj fhe ,
•> remainder of
which had already depleted the coffers of Oxford and ^fcouege
Cambridge, another royal letter arrived in which it was res
intimated that his Majesty, ' being informed of the further 24r
readiness of all or most of our colleges in Cambridge to make
offer of depositing their plate into our hands for the better
security and safety thereof,' and having further received
intelligence of a 'sequestration' intended upon the same,
' thereby to deprive us of their good affections to our service
and to employ the same against us,' had thought good to
signify that 'what plate soever any of the colleges shall
resolve to commit into our custody by delivering it to this
bearer to be transported to us, we shall receive as a further
testimony of their loyal affections to us.' Then follows a
promise to restore the plate again ' to its utmost value,' —
such promise, in turn, being accompanied by a release of the
colleges from any statutable obligation which might seem to
run counter to the royal request, and an instruction to each
' to take a just account of what plate shall be committed to
us, and of the full weight thereof, and of the names of the
donors ; that the same proportion, in the same manner may
be again returned to them when it shall please God to end
these troubles2.'
The idea that the value of ancient plate could be given
back by restitution of its exact weight in silver, a little
reminds us of the condition imposed by Mummius on the
captains charged with the transport of the works of art at
Corinth to Italy; but again the compliance of each university compliance
appears to have been unhesitating and unquestioning3. It is colleges.
1 Hist, of the Rebellion (ed. 1720), Treasury,' 403, 404.
n 21. 3 The following entry in the Eental
2 Baker MSS. x 366-7; 'Eegister Book of St John's College, under
of Letters in S. John's College the year 1635, seems to shew that
232
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
The loan
held to be
not destined
for warlike
purposes.
JOHN
BABWICE,
dean of
St Paul's :
b. 1612.
d. 1664.
Peter
Barwick :
b. 1619.
d. 1T05.
probable, however, that not a few members of the university
still cherished the hope that Charles would never find himself
reduced to the necessity of actually melting down the plate
for conversion into coined money, and the authorities appear,
both then and long after, to have maintained the specious
plea that the design of the senders was ' not at all to foment
any war, which was not at that time begun1.' But with
such representations the facts seem hardly in unison; and
Cromwell, at this time member for Cambridge, on marching
upon the town, to intercept the convoying of the plate, found
himself confronted by the trained bands of Huntingdonshire
and Cambridgeshire under the leadership of the sheriffs of
those counties Sir Richard Stone and Sir John Cotton.
Of the best type of Charles's supporters in the university
at this crisis, the two Barwicks of St John's are noteworthy
examples. Both natives of Westmorland and educated at
Sedberg school, they inherited the strong royalist traditions
of their county and ably upheld them in their college. John,
the elder, now thirty years of age, rendered good service
under Dr Beale, in superintending the conduct of affairs,
while Peter, his brother and afterwards his biographer2,
it was a practice to sell College
plate when no longer serviceable:
' Memorandum : that those pieces of
College plate hereafter specified
having growne old and uselesse were
sould att London by order of the
Master and Seniors who did then
purpose that the money should goe
towards the Organs which since was
wholy payd for with Mr Bouthes
money.' A list follows, — the articles
enumerated being 'pots,' beakers,
and bowls. In 1647 when ' taxes
were very high and the college stock
very low,' a similar expedient was
had recourse to at Corpus Christi
College (Masters, p. 149) ; while at
St Catherine's, in the latter half of
the seventeenth century, a sum of
£405. 16s. 2d. was thus realised,
partly to defray the expenditure on
new buildings. See Dr G.F.Browne's
St Catharine's, pp. 141-4.
1 See petition of the university to
the House of Lords read 7th October
1643, printed in Cooper, Annals, m
359. So also the writers of the
Querela (p. 4), 'And therefore, lest
our plate should become a bait to
have our libraries rifled... we thought
it our wisest course to secure all by
securing that in His Majesties hands. '
In the Act of Sequestration (31 Mar.
1643), sending 'money, plate, horse,'
are all included as forms of subsidy
rendering the offender liable to se-
questration of his estate. Scobell,
Acts and Ordinances, i 38.
2 Peter Barwick' s account of his
brother (composed in Latin) was
not written until 1671, when he was
far advanced in years, and cannot
certainly be accepted as a strictly
accurate narrative of the events of
nearly thirty years before. See
Preface (pp. 8-9) to Life of the
Reverend Dr John Barwick, D.D.,
sometime Fellow of St John's College
in Cambridge, and immediately after
the Restoration successively Dean of
Durham and St Paul's. Written in
Latin by his Brother Dr Peter Bar-
SENDING OF THE COLLEGE PLATE. 233
although not yet bachelor of arts, was a keen and deeply VCHAP. m.
interested observer of all that went on, both within and
without the college walls. John, to quote his brother's
expression, was resolved ' not to perform his duty by halves,'
and by his exertions no less than 2065 ounces of plate
(' grocer's weight') were collected. Of this a list was drawn P
up, and at a meeting of the seniority, held August 8th, it
was formally agreed that the same ' should be sent to the Aug' 1642<
king's majesty and deposited in his hands for the security
thereof and service of his majesty according to the tenor of
his majesty's late letters1.' At Queens' College, 'by the
unanimous act and consent of Master and fellows,' a like
ready response was made, 591 ounces of plate and 923 ounces
of ' white plate ' being collected. In a receipt bearing date
August 3, John Poley, the royal agent, acknowledges the
arrival of the same, and in a preamble to the list of several
articles, expressly attests that they have been delivered
' upon his majesty's royal promise of restitution either in
kind or full value according to the quality of the plate2.'
As secrecy in forwarding this treasure seems hardly to have
been contemplated, and was probably impracticable, the
accounts of contemporaries bring before us a singular scene :
the crates containing the plate standing in the chief quad-
rangle of the respective colleges, — the streets thronged with
spectators waiting to see each convoy set forth, — while a
lively expectation of an actual encounter between Cromwell's
soldiery and the royalist forces within the town itself added
not a little to the excitement that prevailed among the
lookers-on3.
wick, formerly Fellow of the same also Baker-Mayor, p. 536.
College and after wards Physician in 1 Baker-Mayor, p. 623 ; Hey wood
Ordinary to King Charles II. London, and Wright, n 452-4.
1724. It may be observed that the 2 Camb. Antiq. Soc. Communica-
very title-page contains a misstate- tions, i 241-252. ' Inventory of Plate
ment, Peter Barwick never having sent to King Charles I by Queens'
been fellow of St John's College; College,' etc. Communication by
he however justifies himself in C. H. Cooper (with notes) ; also
making this assertion on the ground printed in Searle's History of Queens'
that he had been nominated and College, pp. 517-521.
presented to a fellowship by ' bishop 3 Kingston (A.), East Anglia and
Wrenn' when the latter was a prisoner the Great Civil War, p. 59. The
in the Tower. See Preface, p. 2 ; following, from Prayers of Mr George
234
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
Device by
which he
saves the
Clare plate.
Experiences
of the other
colleges.
Foremost among Charles's most enthusiastic supporters
was Barnabas Oley, president of Clare, an energetic York-
shireman in the prime of life, chiefly remembered in later
times as the editor of George Herbert's Remains1. His
enthusiasm, however, was happily blended with a certain
coolness of judgement which led him, at this juncture, to
conclude that the treasure of Clare would be far safer in his
own keeping than in the king's ; and, by advancing a large
sum from his private resources, he succeeded in getting the
college plate consigned to his special care and thus pre-
serving it intact down to the Restoration. To him, accord-
ingly, the society is indebted for the fact that its celebrated
triad of drinking cups2, presented by 'Dr' William Butler3,
continues, along with other rarities, still to adorn its banquets.
The authorities of Caius4, Trinity Hall5, Corpus Christi,
St Catherine's and Christ's6, appear also to have evaded
spoliation. From King's a certain portion reached the royal
quarters at Nottingham, the remainder was intercepted7.
As regards Trinity, there appears to be some doubt both as
to when and to what extent the society responded to the
royal appeal8. At Magdalene, although Dr Rainbow in the
Swathe [of St John's, M.A., 1626]
Minister of Denham in Suffolk, p. 34,
shews that such a collision was anti-
cipated : ' Aug. 13 [1642] : 0 My good
Lord God, etc. I praise the for pre-
venting bloodshed at Cambridge upon
Thursday, about the quarrel of the
college plate, which was taken by
the Parliament as it was going
towards the King.' See The Schis-
matics delineated by Philalethes
Cantabrigiensis [Zachary Grey],
Append, i. Lond. 1739.
1 For Oley's energetic discharge
of his duties as a ' Country Parson '
see Letter from J. Worthington to
T. Hearne. Aubrey's Letters, n 79.
2 See Illustrated Catalogue of the
Loan Collection of Plate exhibited in
the Fitzicilliam Museum, May 1895.
By J. E. Foster and T. D. Atkinson.
Camb. 1896, p. 24. Butler, says
Mr Wardale, 'gave us our three oldest
pieces of plate known respectively
as the "Poison Cup," the "Falcon
Cup," and the "Serpentine Cup.'"
Clare College, p. 107.
3 See author's History, n 545 ;
also Lives of Nicholas Ferrar (ed.
J. E. B. Mayor), p. 12, n. 1. ' So
great was his reputation that he was
always known p,s " Dr Butler," al-
though he never took the M.D.
degree.' Wardale, u. s. p. 106.
4 Venn, Annals of Cains College,
in 301.
5 'Dr Eden was a Parliamentarian,
and his College plate stopped at
home.' Maiden, Trinity Hall, p.
139.
6 ' The college was not devotedly
loyal — it sent neither plate nor
money.' Peile, Christ.' s College, p.
160.
7 Austen Leigh, King's College,
p. 127.
8 Ball (W. W. E.), Notes on the
History of Trinity College, Cam-
bridge, pp. 91, 92. A letter, pre-
served in the muniment room, dated
' Westminster, 17 Aug. 1649,' records
that ' Mr Ehodes and Mr Samwayes,
SENDING OF THE COLLEGE PLATE. 235
following year subscribed the Covenant, the society suffered CHAP. in.
severely, and with difficulty succeeded in saving its splendid
silver-gilt chalice and cover of 1587 \
The sense of loyalty to one's own college and of repug-
nance to the alienation of interesting memorials of each
society's past history, which once alienated, could never be
replaced, conflicted indeed very perceptibly, and at times
painfully, with the yet higher duty of loyalty to the Crown,
while rarely in the history of Cambridge has either sentiment
been productive of such bitter antagonism between the civic
and the academic communities. Already both Town and
Gown were arming; and the former, under the guidance of
their representative in parliament, were likewise collecting
plate for the aid of the forces under his command ; they To.wn "»d
J university
had also provided themselves with muskets, and, if we may alike arm-
credit Barwick, did not scruple to fire into the windows
of obnoxious students2. The university, in self-defence,
collected like weapons, and on the 20th of July it was re-
ported to parliament that fifteen chests of arms, designed for
the colleges, had been brought surreptitiously into the town,
and that of these Cromwell had seized upon ten, his designs seizure of
° arms by
on the rest having been thwarted by the scholars of Trinity. Cromwe11-
It was now ordered by the Commons that he should ' keep
the said armes for the peace and safeguard of the town of
Cambridge,' while any further supplies of arms to the univer-
sity from London were at the same time forbidden3. Prior to
these occurrences, Cromwell had been actively engaged in
arming and equipping the parliamentary forces in the sur-
rounding county, a work on which he had bestowed not only
his best energies but also no small portion of his private
fortune. On the 15th of July, the Commons had ordered
that he should be repaid one hundred pounds, and they now
received the gratifying intelligence that he had arrived at
fellows of Trinity College, are proved Nevile's Court]. Letter from Eev.
Delinquents for sending plate to the A. H. F. Boughey.
King, and yet remain Fellows of the 1 Purnell (E. K.), Magdalene Col-
said College.' The Bursar's accounts lege, p. 208.
also contain an entry : 'Bestowed on 2 Querela, p. 4.
the souldiers and those that watched 3 Cooper, Annals, m 326-7 ; Com-
the plate in the New Court' [i.e. mom' Journals, n 675.
236
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
He is out-
manoeuvred
by Barnabas
Oley who
arrives at
Nottingham
with the
plate :
22 Aug. 1642.
the centre of resistance, had seized the magazine in the
castle at Cambridge, and had succeeded in preventing the
departure of no small portion of the plate destined for the
service of the king1. Another portion had narrowly escaped
seizure when already on the way. 'Lowler Hedges,' by
which term Barwick appears to designate the present
Lolworth2 (a village some six miles distant from Cambridge
on the road to Huntingdon), was selected by Cromwell as the
place where to await the treasure which had been already
sent on. But, according to the narrator, he was at the head
of nothing more than ' a disorderly band of peasants on foot,'
while the plate was convoyed by 'a small party of horse.'
This force, again, was commanded by Barnabas Oley, who,
cautious on behalf of his own college, exhibited no lack
of courage in the cause of his king. Anticipating danger,
and possessing an accurate knowledge of the by-roads, the
president of Clare conducted the convoy so as completely to
evade the intercepting force and in this manner arrived
safely with the treasure at Nottingham. There ' he had the
honour to lay at his majesty's feet this small testimony and
earnest of the university's loyalty at that very time when
the royal standard was set up in the castle there, summoning
the king's good subjects from all parts to the performance of
their faith and true allegiance3.'
With respect to another portion of the plate, however,
Cromwell was more successful. On the sa'me day that the
royal standard was erected at Nottingham, parliament received
1 'Mr Cromwell, in Cambridgeshire,
has seized the magazine in the Castle
at Cambridge and hath hindered the
carrying of the plate from that uni-
versity ; which, as some report, was
to the value of twenty thousand
pounds, or thereabouts.' Commons'
Journals, n 720. Cooper (Annals,
in 328, n. 2) appears to confuse the
plate which Cromwell sought to in-
tercept on the high road with that
which he actually prevented from
leaving the town.
2 ' Lowlworth ' in Lyson (Bri-
tannia, n i) seems to be the tran-
sitional form; see also Grose, An-
tiquities of England and Wales, n
20-21.
3 Life of Barwick, pp. 26-27. The
exact coincidence of the two events
may however be doubted ; for the
writer [p. 27, note o] gives the 25th
of August as the date of the erection
of the royal standard at Nottingham,
an event which Dr Gardiner assigns
to the 22nd. Hist, of England, x 219.
It is amusing to read in the Querela,
p. 5 (see infra, p. 238), of ' one Master
Cromwell,' whose ' designes being
frustrated' 'his opinion as of an
active subtile man [was] thereby
somewhat shaken and endangered.'
SENDING OF THE COLLEGE PLATE. 237
intelligence that the plate sent from Magdalene College had ,CHAP. ni.^
been ' stayed as it was going to Yorke ' and order was forth- ^cSii tn
with given that it should be brought to the metropolis, ' to th^puite'of
be laid up in the Chamber of London, till this House take and of
King's;
further order1.' The plate at King's was similarly inter-
cepted, while that of Jesus College was only saved by ti^f °{ J***3
burying it in a place of concealment, where it was found *"^|jfj£ly
after a lapse of ten years2. Sidney College evaded the that of
r J J ' Sidney saved
requisition by contributing £100 and setting aside so much b-v evasion,
plate as hath been given to the Master and fellows for
admission of fellow commoners,' in lieu of the money ' till it
be repaid3.' In the mean time the care of the 'town of
Cambridge ' had been especially confided to Cromwell, and
although the university was not named in his instructions,
an injunction subsequently laid upon Roger Daniel, the
university printer, 'not to print anything concerning the
proceedings of parliament without the consent or order of
one or both houses of parliament4,' gave sufficient intimation
that the academic community could expect no exemption
from the severities of martial law, while events at Colchester
and Canterbury already afforded ominous presage of the
lengths to which uncontrolled fanaticism might proceed.
On finding himself virtual dictator at Cambridge, cromweip
° assumes the
Cromwell's first step was to arrest the three Heads who had |u?hority
been most active in collecting and forwarding the plate. the£ne™of
The chapels of St John's, Queens' and Jesus were surrounded M^in^and
during the hours of service, and Beale, Martin, and Sterne
were taken into custody. The untiring activity of the first
1 ' Die Lunae, 22 August!, 1642': discovered it, £1. Ssh. 2d.' Wor-
Commons' Journals, n 731 [Cooper, thington' s Diary and Correspondence,
Annals, m 329]. It was not until p. 178. In Fowler's Hist, of Corpus
the following February that order Christi College, Oxford (ed. 1893),
was given by the Commons that this p. 228, we find an instance of an
plate should ' be referred to my lord endeavour on the part of some of the
of Manchester, to be disposed of for Eoyalists (the only one that has come
the use of the publick, as his lord- under my notice) actually to return
ship shall think fit.' Commons' some of the more ancient plate; an
Journals, m 389. For the residue endeavour which was happily suc-
which the college succeeded in saving, cessful. This was in 1653.
see Mr Purnell's Magdalene College, 3 Baker MS. D 120.
p. 208. 4 Commons' Journals, rr 751 [quoted
2 '1652: for digging up the plate, by Cooper, Annals, in 332].
128h. For entertaining those that
238 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. in. in the royal behalf marked him out as the chief offender;
while Martin, in becoming a member of Convocation, had
aggravated his original offence of licensing the Historicall
Narration. Dr Sterne's inoffensive career, prior to his recent
compliance with the royal behest, might fairly have pleaded
in his behalf; but he, too, had recently been putting up a
new organ in the chapel at Jesus, although at the time of
his arrest he appears to have been engaged in nothing more
heinous than the erection of the new chambers on the north
side of the entrance court1.
of thdry According to their own statement, the arrest of the three
treatment Jjeads was effected ' with all possible scorn and contempt,
especially Cromwell behaving himselfe most insolently to-
wards them, and when one of the doctors made it a request to
Cromwell, that he might stay a little to put up some linnen,
Cromwell denyed him the favour; and, whether in a jeere or
simple malice, told him that it was not in his commission*.'
On receiving the intelligence of their arrest, parliament
at once transmitted the following mandate to Cromwell :
Order for Sept. 1. 1642.
their
a?ong"with I* is ordered by the Comittee of the Lords and Comons
the'xower- aPP°inted for the safety of the kingdome, That the Bishop of
8ept. 1642. Ely, Dr Martin, Dr Beal, and Dr Sterne bee safely conveyed by
you to Blackwall and from thence by water to the Tower of
London, where they are to bee kept, till further direction bee
given.
To Captaine Oliver ESSEX.
Cromwell. P. WHARTON. [JOHN lord] ROBERTS.
PH. STAPLETON.
ANTH. NICOLLS.
Their After a humiliating journey to London, during which the
progress _ » °
thither. people in the villages ' were called to come and abuse and
revile them,' Dr Wren, and the three Cambridge heads were
1 '...noviaedificii in atrio exterior!, byterianum. ' Historia Collegii Jesu
versus plagam aquilonalem, prima Cantabrigiensis, a I. Shermanno,
fundamina posuit ; aeternum sc. Mu- p. 40. Cf. Willis-Clark, n 173.
sarum domicilium, juxta et nominis 2 Mercurius Eusticus, pp. 114-5.
sui monumentum. Huic tarn prae- 3 Searle, Hist, of Queens' College,
claro operi dum ultimam admovebat p. 474.
manum gliscebat bellum illud pres-
ARREST OF THE HEADS. 239
paraded through the streets of the capital in triumph ; ' and ,CHAP. in.
though,' says the Querela1, ' there was an expresse order
from the Lords for their imprisonment in the Tower, which
met them at Tottenham High crosse...yet were they led
captive through Bartholomew Faire, and so as farre as
Temple Bar, and back through the city to prison in the
Tower, on purpose that they might be houted at or stoned
by the rabble rout2.' In popular disfavour, Wren un- J£$°P0uf-
doubtedly might claim the foremost place. Ever since his ^fo^e.
resignation of the mastership of Peterhouse in favour of
Cosin and his promotion to the see of Norwich, his
mischievous activity in East Anglia had earned for him a
widespread and unenviable notoriety. The 'new imposi-
tions' which he introduced, says D'Ewes, 'were, many of
them, conceived to be so dangerous and unlawful, as divers
godly, learned, and orthodox men either left their livings
voluntarily, or were suspended and deprived in the two
counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, because they would not
yield unto them3.' Dr Beale saw Cambridge no more ; and, fs^-^*
if Barwick's statements are to be relied upon, his subsequent ofl)rBeale-
trials and sufferings, terminating in his pathetic end abroad,
might compare with those of the primitive martyrs. It
1 Querela Cantabrigiensis : or a been realised, for, according to the
Remonstrance by way of Apologie for Mercurius Eusticus (pp. 474-5), 'as
the banished Members of the late they passe along, they are enter-
Jlourishing university of Cambridge. tained with exclamations, reproaches,
By some of the said Sufferers. Anno scornes, and curses, and considering
Dom. 1647 (p. 5). This graphic the prejudice raised in the City of
sketch, written within three years them, it was God's great mercy that
after the events which it narrates, they found no worse usage from
was mainly the work of John Bar- them.' In the Tower, order was
wick, others contributing, — accord- expressly given that they should
ing to his brother, ' others of the hold no communication with Laud,
university, each taking a particular 3 Autobiography, n 141. Cf.
account of the sufferings of his own Prynne's assertion, quoted by Heylyn
college.' Life of Barwick, p. 32. (Cyprianus Anglicus, p. 309), that
Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy, ' in all queen Maries time no such
i 113 I. This forms the oasis of the havoc was made in so short a time
statements in the Life, and Thomas of the faithful ministers of God in
Baker (Baker-Mayor, pp. 219-20) any part, nay, in the whole land,
appears to accept its statements as than [? as] had been made in his
trustworthy. The above edition and diocese.' That he actually drove a
that which bears the imprint ' Oxo- considerable industrial element into
niae, Anno Dom. 1646 ' are nearly the Low Countries is denied by
identical. Churton : see Pearson's Minor Theo-
2 The 'purpose' appears to have logical Works, n 82-83.
240
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
Baker's
estimate
of his
character.
CHAP. IIL appears to be beyond question that during the next three
years he was exposed, along with the other three prisoners,
to hardships and indignities which, had passions been less
deeply stirred, would scarcely have failed to evoke remon-
strance and redress1. Baker, no lavish bestower of praise,
declares him to have been ' a person of such eminent worth
and abilities as rendered him above the reach of commen-
dation2.'
The sufferings of the recalcitrant members of the univer-
sity at Cambridge were also not inconsiderable. The re-
jection of Charles's overtures by the Houses of Parliament,
and their formal Declaration on the occasion, involved the
denunciation of the loyal Heads as ' delinquents ' and conse-
quently liable to the penalties of confiscation and even death.
The mere threat of confiscation, says Gardiner, 'converted
many a lukewarm supporter of the King into an enthusiastic
partisan3.' Parliament found the necessity for vigorous
action more urgent than ever, and on the 20th December,
the Association of the Eastern Counties (comprising Essex,
Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire) was
formally constituted4. The response of these rural popula-
tions was singularly prompt and unanimous. 'One may
imagine,' says Mr Kingston, to whom we are indebted for a
fuller account of this episode than is to be found in any
preceding writer, ' the growing force of armed men marching
in from the broad acres of Norfolk and Suffolk, from the far-
away corners of Essex, from the stagnant Fens, and from the
hills of Hertfordshire, to the rendezvous at Cambridge5.' A
The
Association
of the
Eastern
Counties :
Dec. 1642.
1 Heylyn's statement (Ib. p. 468)
that on March 14 (164f ) Laud ' had
word brought him of a plot for send-
ing him and bishop Wren, his fellow
prisoner, to perpetual exile in New
England ; and that Wells, a factious
preacher, which came lately thence,
had laid wagers of it ; but when the
matter came in agitation in the
House of Commons it appeared to be
so horrible and foul a practice that
it was generally rejected,' is borne
out by Barwick and by him made to
include Beale, Martin and Sterne.
Life of Barwick, pp. 40-41. Ac-
cording to Cole (MS. XLVHI 260)
' when the three masters were com-
mitted together, Dr Beale got an
exchange and so was enlarged.' This
however is in direct conflict with
Peter Barwick's account (Life, pp. 41
-42), and also that of the Querela
(pp. 5-6) and is not sanctioned by
Dr Rigg in the D. N, B.
2 Baker MSS. xxxn 318.
3 See Great Civil War, i 21-22.
4 The addition of Huntingdon (May
26) and Lincoln (Sept. 20) in 1643,
made the number seven. Husband,
p. 807.
5 East Anglia and the Great Civil
War, p. 85.
INCIDENTS OF THE WAR. 241
petition from the university, on the other hand, addressed to .CHA^- IIL-.
both Houses, expressed the hope that ' the liberall sciences ' ™jever8ity
might be 'as prevalent as the mechanical'; and the petitioners, FMiSaSfent
who describe themselves as ' intruding not with swords, but
knees which had not yet been bended,' pleaded pathetically
the cause of the Incarcerati, — those ' pillars of their dejected
Mother University,' whose lot they compared with that of
' Joseph in the pit or S. Peter with the jaylor.' At the same
time, they indignantly repudiate the charges of ' Romish '
innovations brought against the college chapels and intimate
that, like the ancient Christians, they are ready to defend
their Anglican forms of worship1. During the months of
January and February, indeed, the apprehension of an attack Appre-
J _ liension of
by the royalist forces invested Cambridge with a strategic *tteckon
importance scarcely inferior to that of Oxford. Prince Rupert Cambndee-
advancing from Wiltshire, and Lord Capel from his ancestral
seat at Hadham Hall, compelled Cromwell to send, right and
left, urgent messages to the Association for aid, a summons
which resulted in his soon finding himself at the head of an
effective force of 800 horse and foot, while a volunteer army,
estimated at from fifteen to thirty thousand, poured into the
town. The alarm quickly subsided; but when the rustic
levies had disbanded, the parliamentary general's first care
was to fortify Cambridge against any future attack; while, in
order to raise the requisite funds, an appeal was circulated f8^™™*
in the surrounding villages which the officiating clergyman ^j"ebfor1u~d
was instructed to read aloud in church on the morning of u^wbtb
Sunday, March 1 2. It enforced the necessity for prompt proceeds to
contributions, — at least £2000 was required2. From the 9th town-
to the 22nd of March, ' colonel Cromwell ' himself was away
1 'Againe, wee are ready with our Petition of the Gentlemen and Stu-
lives and blouds to present all col- dents of the Vniversitie of Cam-
legiate chappels, if that they lay in bridge. Offered to both Houses upon
our power, as well in interioribus Wednesday, being the 5. day of
quant in e.rterioribus, not acknow- Januar. 164$. Upon the Arrivall of
ledging more or lesse divine Service that Newes to them of the Bishops
then with what as in former times our late Imprisonment. With their Appeale
more primitive Christians did with to his most excellent Majesty. London,
erected bodies and drawn weapons Printed for John Greensmith. 1642.
stand to the Doxologie Creed and 2 Bowtell MSS. n 123, quoted by
Besponsals to the Church.' The Mr Kingston, p. 92.
M. III. 16
242 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. IIL at Lovvestoft, Norwich and King's Lynn, repressing royalist
demonstrations, but by Wednesday the 22nd he was back in
Cambridge and the necessary works were now pushed on
apace.
Amid the surrounding din and confusion, the fate of
Lionel Gatford, arrested on a cold night in January in his
chamber at Jesus College, of which he had long been a
fellow, awakens the sympathy of the scholar. He had stolen
up from his rectory of Dennington ' for the convenience of
the library,' says Walker; in reality, to compile his pamphlet
setting forth the doctrine of the Church in relation to
obedience to the King. He was now hurried up to London
to be confined in Ely House. There, notwithstanding the
difficulties of his position, he contrived to publish a sermon
inveighing against Anabaptists and other disturbers of the
Church's peace, which Parliament deemed it necessary to
refer to the consideration of the committee at Cambridge.
It was not until after the Restoration that Gatford again
saw his church and parsonage at Dennington, both by that
time in a ruinous condition1.
Endeavour In the mean time the above petition, together with certain
of the House . . n .
sWeiTthe10 energetlc representations made to the Lords in Parliament
«reivperrosmuuy by the earl of Holland, as chancellor of the university, at
Protection, length moved them to a formal effort to shield the academic
body from the impending peril. A ' Protection,' promulgated
4 March 1643, enjoined 'that no person or persons whatsoever
shall presume to offer any outrage or violence either by them-
selves or others unto any of the colledges, chapels, libraries,
schooles, or other buildings belonging to the said university
or to any the scholars or publique ministers thereof; nor
plunder, purloyne, deface, spoyle, or take away any the bookes,
goods, chattels, or houshold stuffe of or belonging to the
said university, or any college there, or to any scholar or
publique minister thereof, under any colour or pretence
1 Registers of Jesus College. In when questioned by the ' Tryers,'
1631, Gatford, a native of Sussex, had 'When he was converted?' made
been appointed vicar of St Clement's; the well-known reply, 'When the
like Holdsworth, he originally be- Puritans turned rebels.' Walker,
longed to the Puritan party, and Sufferings, etc. n 255.
INCIDENTS OF THE WAR. 243
whatsoever, as they will answer the contrary to this house VCHAP. ni^
at their utmost perils. And that divine service may be
quietly performed and executed throughout all the said
university according to the settlement of the Church of
England, without any trouble, let, or disturbance, untill the
pleasure of the Parliament be further signified1.' To this
mandate Cromwell gave little heed : while his soldiery, Their
• • 11-1 mandate
judging from the recorded evidence, appear to have taken a ignored by
J Cromwell s
mischievous pleasure in violating each particular behest. soldier-v-
Houses were forthwith pulled down to furnish material for
the defence of the Castle, while six ' fair bridges ' of stone
and timber, — being those of St John's, Trinity, King's,
Garret Hostel, and 'two at Queenes,' — were demolished. The
orchards, 'woods and groves/ were cut down and publicly
sold, — ' to a great value,' says the Querela, ' when by an
ordinance ' (referring to the above ' Protection ') ' they were
declared not sequestrable2.' The western range of Clare injury to
.... , the colleges
College was at this time in course of construction by resulting
• from the
John Westley, under the direction of Barnabas Oley, whose J^tefe^01"
taste and energy as a restorer presented a singular contrast oftheTown-
to the destroying zeal of the Puritan3. The works were now
stopped, the materials which lay ready to hand being taken
to fortify the Castle; and when John Evelyn visited Cam-
bridge twelve years later, he found the buildings still
uncompleted4. The 'old court' of St John's, to use st John's
Barwick's expression, ' was converted into a prison for his converted
into a prison
Majesties loyall subjects/ the authorities not allowing the J
owners ' to remove any bedding or other goods, whereof the
1 Lords' Journals, v 636; Cooper, parliament.' Walker, Sufferings of
Annals, m 339. the Clergy, i 108.
- Querela Cant. (ed. 1647), Pref. 3 Throughout his career, from his
A 3. ' These protections proved only own college and his college living
the shutting of the door after the at Great Gransden to the stalls of
steed was stolen; for to prevent their King's College Chapel and the walls
having any effect, whilst they were of Worcester Cathedral, the restoring
in progress, a warrant was suddenly hand of Barnabas Oley is still to be
issued and violently prosecuted by traced. See Wardale, Clare College,
the lord Grey of Warke to col. Coke, 129-132; and for his eminence as
lieut.-col. Brildon, etc., authorising a college tutor, a valuable note in
them to enter into the houses of all Lives of Nicholas Ferrar (ed. J. E. B.
papists, malignants, etc. that have, Mayor), pp. 303-4.
or shall have, refused to appear at * Willis-Clark, i 100; Wardale,
musters, or to contribute to the pp. 67-72.
16—2
244 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. gaoler could make any use or benefit, but renting them all
out together with the chambers at above five hundred pounds
per an.1'
The efforts on behalf of the royal cause had already
almost emptied the coffers of the colleges, and the demands
of parliament for like aid met with no response. But in the
last week in March, Cromwell2 returned to Cambridge, and
in conjunction with lord Grey of Wark applied additional
cromweii's pressure. On Good Friday, the thirtieth of March, the
a subsidy Heads assembled ' in the public schools ' to take the whole
is refused
university question into consideration. The debate was a protracted
one. The day waned. Suddenly the building was sur-
rounded by soldiery. The intimation was sufficiently clear ;
but Holdsworth, who presided as vice-chancellor, was a man
of courage, and his example appears to have confirmed the
assembly in a unanimous refusal to grant supplies to parlia-
Detentionof ment. The whole body were accordingly kept prisoners in
the Heads in . ., . - . . _ .
the schools: the schools until after midnight, 'without food, tiring or
30 Mar. 1643.
lodging, being many of them threescore yeares old and up-
wards3.' ' And for no other reason,' continues the narrator,
' but only because they could not in conscience comply or
contribute anything to this detestable warre against his
Majesty. Yet they, notwithstanding all terrours and ill
usage, the day following this their imprisonment did con-
stantly and unanimously avouch and declare before the then
generall of the Association, that it was against true religion
and good conscience for any to contribute to the Parliament
Monies in this warre4.' Harsher measures were now resorted to.
forcibly
taken from j_t was near quarter day, and either the bursars of the
the bursars » '
of colleges, different colleges had already received many of the rents, or
the tenants had the money stored up, ready to be paid over.
These funds were now forcibly seized5, and compulsion, in
1 Querela, p. 14 ; Life of Matthew soldiers till one of the clock at night/
Robinson (ed. Mayor), p. 9, n. 2. 4 Querela, p. 8.
2 — ' formerly a member of that 5 Mercurius Aulicus, Apr. 22 ;
house which he then so abused.' Cooper, Annals, in 342. A statement
Ib. p. 10. confirmed by the following entry in
3 Worthington (Diary, p. 18) says : the Bursar's books of St John's Col-
' D" and Presidents of Coll. were lege : ' taken by violence out of the
detained in the Schools by a guard of Bursar's studye by Captaine Mason
CROMWELL'S TREATMENT OF THE COLLEGES. 245
one direction, soon developed into open molestation in CHAP.HI.
another. Christ's College, at this time, was entitled to
a preference in the appointment of the Lady Margaret
preacher1, and Dr Power, the senior fellow of that society,
had already been Preacher for nearly thirty years2. He was,
however, debarred, by the statute of the foundress, from
holding other preferment3, while the obligatory duties of the
office were limited to the preaching of six Latin sermons in
the course of each academic year. Power's remarkable tenacity
in his tenure of the post was regarded possibly with envy by
other aspirant divines, and certainly with aversion by many
who, unable to understand his discourses, regarded him as
a mere college drone. One of his six sermons had to be Popular
demonstra-
delivered on the eve of the commencement of each term, and th^LatUT81
on the day before Easter term, 1643, as the preacher, now in Se
his sixty-seventh year, was crossing the market-place to
Great St Mary's, there to deliver his discourse ad clerum, he
found himself pursued by a mob of soldiers, shouting after
him, ' a Pope, a Pope4,' and vowing ' high revenge if he
offered to goe into the pulpit.' ' Whereupon,' continues the
narrator, ' the church was straightways filled with great
multitudes, and when some who accompanied the preacher
told them that it was an university exercise, and to be by
statute performed in Latine, they replyed, they knew no reason
why all sermons should not be performed in English that all
might be edified5.' As it was, Dr Power himself was fain to
who broke open his chamber and beneficium.' Endowments, u.s. p. 69 ;
studyedoores, in the presence of divers Hare MSS. m 40.
fellowes, Aug. 8, 1642, £11. 6. 4.' 4 Dr Peile observes that 'possibly
Expensae necessariae, 1642-3. because of his suspected leaning to
1 Endowments of the University (ed. Popery, he seems for many years to
1904), p. 68. have taken no part in college business.'
2 Graduati Cantabrifliemes (ed. Christ's College, p. 160. This, how-
1884), p. 664. Power's lengthened ever, was probably simply owing to
tenure was surpassed, however, by the fact that Power's preachership
that of Dr John Covel, master of debarred him from filling any college
Christ's, who held the Preachership office. See Endowments, u. *.
from 1680 to his death in 1722. 5 Querela, p. 11. That the nar-
After which, no ' Christian ' appears rator is not here endeavouring to
as preacher until 1865, when Dr magnify a trifling incident into one
Swainson filled the office for a single of real gravity, is evident from the
year. Ibid. Grace which it was found necessary
3 ' Volumus etiam quod predicator to enact in the following September :
predictus nullum omnino habeat ' 19 Sept. 1643. Whereas the Terme
246
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
Holdsworth
arrested
and sent to
London :
May 1643.
beat a retreat and take refuge in his own college. Similar
outrages followed; and even gowns and hoods as worn by
ordinary graduates, were threatened with destruction, while
in St Mary's the Book of Common Prayer was wantonly
mutilated1. The soldiery quartered in the colleges were
under little or no restraint ; ' commons ' disappeared in hall ;
books, from the scholars' chambers; the furniture was burnt;
much of the carved work in the chapels was pulled down ;
monuments were defaced; and even the crosses on the
towers were removed. In St Mary's, at Cromwell's express
injunction, a beautiful carved cross was ' ruined,' although it
' had not a jot of imagery or statue work about it2.' Towards
the close of the month, we learn with little surprise that the
scholars were beginning to quit the university or rather were
sent away, owing to their manifest disaffection towards the
new rule3.
In the following May, Holdsworth. now in his third year
of office as vice-chancellor4, was arrested on the charge of
having permitted the royal Declarations, originally printed
at York, to be reprinted at the University Press5. As the
charge admitted of no denial, he was forthwith conveyed to
London and there placed in confinement in Ely House. Here,
his treatment was, in the first instance, extremely lenient :
approacheth and the statutes require
that there should be a Latine sermon
to introduce the same : may it please
you that for the avoiding of the like
tumult which threatened some danger
to the preacher in the beginning of
the last Terme, the said Latine
sermon be for this time omitted.'
Baker MSS. xxv 168.
1 'our Common Prayer-book was
torne before our faces.' Querela,
p. 11.
2 Querela, p. 17; 'Mar. 22. for
taking downe the Crosse over the
bell Tower,' Rental Book (1634-49)
of St John's College, sub anno 1643.
3 Heywood and Wright, n 457.
4 ' . . .we adde D. Holdsworth, whose
universal approbation put upon him
the troublesome office . of Vice-
chancellorship for three yeeres to-
gether in the beginning of these
troubles; yet before his triennial
office was expired, his person was
seized upon and imprisoned' etc.
Querela, p. T. ' It is a high point
of perfection,' wrote Holdsworth, ' to
be able to transforme such a place:
a prison into a study, — meditation
doth it; into an oratory, its donne
by devotion ; prayer can turn it into
a sanctuary, and can bring to pass,
that where Socrates is, the prison
is not; of those prayers, I beseech
you, let me partake.' Letter to
Ward, 7th June 1643 : Tanner MSS.
LXII, fol. 107.
5 His Majesties Answer to the Decla-
ration of the Houses of Parliament,
concerning the Commission of Array :
Of the first of July, 1642. Printed
by his Majesties speciall command,
At Cambridge. By Roger Daniel,
Printer to the famous Universitie.
1642 [Bowes, pp. 28 and 515].
CROMWELL AT CAMBRIDGE. 247
he was allowed to preach, and, although Brownrig at Cam- ,CHAP.
bridge discharged the actual duties of the vice-chancellorship,
continued to sign documents as still holding the office. Mean-
while his name appeared in the list of divines summoned to
attend the deliberations of the Westminster Assembly which
stood convened for the first of July; along with him were
nominated Brownrig, Samuel Ward (the master of Sidney)
and Dr Love (the master of Corpus) — the two former repre-
senting the university, the last-named, the county of Derby1,
and all three having been selected as moderate Episcopalians,
invited to assist at that ' more perfect Reformation ' of their
Church, which it was the prescribed task of the Assembly to
devise2. But before June was over, Brownrig had again
been elected vice-chancellor ; and when the Assembly opened,
failed to appear, pleading the ties of office, as ' too large a
complement3'; he had, undoubtedly, heavy burdens resting
at this time on his shoulders, for he continued to fill the
mastership of St Catherine's for four years subsequent to his
promotion to the see of Exeter in 1641. But in the mean
time, the occurrence of other events had still further strained
the relations between the House and the university. Bereft .APPe?J ,
J for relief
of its Head and sorely burdened with heavy exactions, J^S?1"*
Cambridge had ventured, early in June, to address to Lords "ariiament
and Commons a pathetic remonstrance, detailing its woes university:
and petitioning for relief: 'our schools,' it pleaded, 'daily
grow desolate, mourning the absence of their professors and
their wonted auditories ; in our colleges our numbers grow
thin and our revenues short ; and what subsistence we have
abroad is, for the most part, involved in the common miseries ;
frighted by the neighbour noise of war, our students either
quit their gowns or abandon their studies; our degrees lie
disesteemed and all hopes of our public Commencements are
1 Fuller-Brewer, vi 247. Dr Love copy of Scobell (i 42) in St John's
was at this time rector of Eckington, College Library. On the 14th July
in East Derbyshire, having been pre- Brownrig's letter was read before the
sented to the living by king Charles Assembly, ' wherein he excuseth his
in 1629. non-appearance in the Assembly,
2 See the List, with the preamble, from the tie of the vice-chancellor-
in Scobell, Acts and Ordinances, i ship in the university, that lay upon
42-44. him.' Journal of the Assembly in
3 MS. note by Thomas Baker to Lightfoot-Pitman, xin 5.
248 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. blasted in the bud.' The petition concludes with the humble
prayer that the Lords will be pleased to exempt 'our poor
estates from all such rates and impositions, and to vouchsafe
such freedom to our persons, not giving just offence, as may
refermfto a enable us the better to keep together1.' This petition was
SCTre'afso referred by the Lords to the Commons; the Commons
investigate ° referred it to a Committee, who were especially instructed
the charges -11 T\ TT 111 r
against to consider the case 01 Ur Holdsworth and the state of
Holdsworth.
Emmanuel College, — 'by what means he came into that
place' (the mastership) 'and whether by his demeanour
since, he hath not forfeited the said place,' — his 'delinquency
in licensing books to be printed in prejudice and to the
scandal of Parliament,' — also ' a letter written by him touch-
ing the bishop of Yorke's books, bestowed many years since
by him upon the College of St John's in Cambridge2.'
' They are likewise to consider what governors of the univer-
sity, colleges, or others, have sent plate to the king'; and
are finally empowered ' to send for parties, witnesses, papers,
records3.' An incomplete entry in the Commons' Journals
leaves us altogether in the dark with respect to the subse-
quent action of this Committee, — the Committee of Religion
university as ^ was termed; but the disorganisation and depression
(fraee for which now weighed down the whole academic community are
withthecoin- painfully attested by a Grace, passed a few days before, for
mencement -
ceremonies: dispensing with the usual Commencement ceremonies. ' At
12 June 1643. r
a time,' says this document, ' when studies are at an end and
men's minds are so deeply stirred and dejected, when our
vice-chancellor has been torn from us, and when no inceptor
in theology presents himself to afford occasion to the pro-
fessors for taking their wonted places on the benches ; when
the hope has vanished of assembling those whose presence has
been wont to shed lustre on your comitia, and the unhappy
times offer no prospect of our being able to observe the
customary ceremonies, may it please you that all creations
both of inceptors in the respective faculties (should there be
1 Lords' Journals, vi 80; Cooper, Holdsworth's tutor at St John's. Of
Annals, in 347-8. the 'letter' referred to, nothing is
2 The archbishop of York is, of now known.
course, John Williams, who was 3 Commons' Journals, m 124, 134.
CROMWELL AT CAMBRIDGE. 249
any) and of masters of arts, and all proceedings appertaining VCHAP.
thereto, be privately held in the New Chapel1 on the 3rd
and 4th of July and that on this occasion the public celebra-
tion yield to public calamities2.' It was in anticipation of
the action of the Assembly rather than of Parliament, that
John Pearson, at this time a resident fellow-commoner of JOHN
PEARSON
King's College and scarcely thirty years of age, now ascended £fre°tfer-
the pulpit of St Mary's, and delivered an eloquent and cogent a'. Jest,
defence of ' Forms of Prayer.' It was no ' new sin, though "de^
great,' urged the preacher, that ' the functions of the clergy p^sro
should be irreverently invaded and the ministry of reconcilia-
tion profaned by a promiscuous intrusion,' — to 'conspire to
disrobe the Spouse of Christ, to disinherit the Church,' was
' as old as Edom, and Moab, and Gebal, and Amalek,' — even
those who ' studied to rob them of their learning ' might
point to ' the apostate Julian as their predecessor,' — ' but
that they should take away our prayers too, the proper
weapons of our Church, this is beyond all precedent!' 'Did
reverend Cranmer therefore first sacrifice his hand, because
it had a part in the liturgy ? If nothing else, methinks
Master Calvin's approbation should keep it from an utter
abolition ; or it must be a thorough reformation indeed, that
must reform Geneva, from superstition3.' Foreboding the
decision of the Assembly, he concluded with a peroration of
solemn irony: ' What if the Council of Toledo enacted a day's
repetition of the Lord's Prayer? Alas, they pretended but
to one Holy Ghost among them all. We are like to have
divers spirits in one. They were chosen but by the clergy.
1 ' in novo sacello,' more ordinarily in them," and the two are frequently
termed 'novacapella.' 'The ancient spoken of together as "The Regent
Graces of the Senate are invariably House." ' Willis and Clark, in 19-
dated from the "New Chapel of the 20.
University" (nova capella Universi- 2 Baker MSS. xxv 167.
tatis), and though the Reformation 3 Sermon on 'The Excellency of
put an end to its employment as a Forms of Prayer, especially of the
chapel, the ancient name "New Lord's Prayer,' printed in The Minor
Chapel ' ' was retained until the Theological Works of John Pearson
eighteenth century. The room was (ed. Churton), n 97-111. On the
divided into the Regent House and probable date of this sermon see the
non-Regent House, which Fuller editor's note, Ibid. p. 97. Pearson
characterises as "having something had resigned his fellowship at King's
of chapel character and consecration in 1640. ,
250 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. These shall be elected by a representative body of a whole
kingdom. Besides, they never had any yet out of America.
We shall have some of Columbus 's discoveries, and of the spirit
which moves upon the Pacific waters. Therefore, to conclude
in a word, whosoever will not freely submit his judgement
with all the obedience of faith to the determination of such
a synod, he deserves no better than — to be counted a member
of the catholic Church1!'
of°theletion In the mean time Cromwell was pushing on the con-
ty croSweii. struction of the defences, and a month later was able to
report to Parliament that ' our town and Castle are now very
strongly fortified, being encompassed with breast-works and
bulwarks2 ' ; while intelligence that the royal forces were again
advancing to the attack caused the Commons to issue a fresh
summons to the Associated Counties for a contribution of
two thousand foot to the defence of the town. This, in turn,
was quickly succeeded by an ordinance for the raising of
6500 horse under the command of Manchester, by whom
the colonelcy of the Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire
division of this fine body of cavalry had been conferred on
Cromwell. The commander and his colonel, who was only
three years his junior, must have been well known to each
other, belonging as they did to old families of the same small
county of Huntingdon, and educated at the same Cambridge
college; while, although the former was supposed at this
time to incline rather to the presbyterian party, the latter to
the Independents, there was at present no divergence, either
He sets out political or religious, between them. On the completion of
for Gains- r
borough. the works at Cambridge, Cromwell found himself free to
advance to the aid of Willoughby at Gainsborough. After
capturing Burghley House and expelling the royalists from
1 Pearson- Churton, n 110-1. The mentsof the poorer classes, for which
allusion in the last sentence but one the occupants were afterwards corn-
to the returning exiles from New pensated. See State Papers (Dom.},
England (supra, p. 198, n. 2) is 1649-50. Vol. n. Peterhouse was
especially deserving of notice. mulcted ' for the fortification of ye
2 MSS. Bowtell, n 135 ; Cooper, Castle ' in no less than 1108 feet of
Annals, m 350. The work of for- ' hewen timber ' which the college
tification appears to have involved valued at £55. 8s. See Walker,
the destruction .of some of the tene- Peterhouse, p. 214.
CROMWELL AT CAMBRIDGE. 251
Stamford, he hurried northwards. In the skirmish which CHAP.III
took place near Gainsborough with the regiment commanded ^aTthk'T
by Charles Cavendish (the younger scion of that illustrious deatha°fd
House, whose oft-repeated generosity has inseparably asso- cavendish:
ciated its name with that of the university), Cromwell
achieved a brilliant victory. The royalist force was not only
put to flight, but its gallant commander fell, slain in the
morass by one of the enemy's officers. Brief as was the
advantage that resulted, this episode, in Gardiner's opinion,
really proved the turning point in the war, from the evidence
which it afforded of the excellence of the parliamentary
cavalry and of Cromwell's resources as a general1. The T'ie «*«»t
• before the
advance of Newcastle's army, however, temporarily changed ^l^t°J
the aspect of affairs. On the 30th July, Cromwell abandoned
Gainsborough, which on the following day capitulated to the
royalist forces. Finding Stamford untenable, he fell back on
Peterborough, while the captured defenders of Burghley Th.e
O » prisoners
House were sent on to Cambridge. Here the Committee Cambridge.
had already received from him an urgent summons, — ' Out, ^Sa to1'8
instantly,' said the missive, 'all you can... there is nothing iau™b6!dge :
to interrupt an enemy but our horse, that is considerable
...Neglect no means2.' ' It was not merely the fortune of the
associated counties that was at stake,' observes Gardiner ; ' if
Newcastle could break through Cromwell's scanty band of
troopers, London, and with it the whole Parliamentary cause,
would be gravely imperilled3.' At such a crisis, the measures
taken by the Committee were not characterised by much
consideration for the enemy within the gates. The captives
in St John's College4, on the other hand, numbering over
two hundred, were many of them men of good family,
and exhibited a sang-froid and ' insolence ' which somewhat
embarrassed their custodians ; while, according to the com- lu'fuhem o
plaint of the Committee to Lenthall, audacious scholars tile scholars.
held converse with them in the street from beneath their
windows, or even made their way into their chambers,
1 Gardiner, GreatCivilWar, 1 221-4. are several times described as 'wholly
2 Letters, Carlyle-Lomas, i 147-9. ruinated ' ' when this Court was
3 Gardiner, u. s. i 225. made a prison.' St John's Prising
* In 1647, rooms in the first court Book, pp. 115, 154, 161, 163.
252 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. bringing intelligence, from time to time, of all that went on
without1. In the first court of St John's, Dr Ward shared
the hardships of captivity with the more buoyant spirits by
whom he was surrounded, — the tedium of his confinement
being alleviated by the companionship of his servitor, Seth
Ward, his devoted disciple and friend, and afterwards bishop
of Salisbury, who had voluntarily accompanied him thither2.
Drasamuei But the privations which he underwent, combined with his
1643. advanced age and the intense summer heat, eventually broke
down his health, and when, at last, the feeble old man was
permitted to retire to his own college, it was only to die, and
there, in the following September, he passed gently away.
Not a little pathetic, this, the closing scene ! Rudely roused,
in his last days, from solemn musings on prophecy and such
concern as a mere onlooker might take in the fierce conflict
which shook the realm, to hear the very din of battle in the
usually tranquil streets and to expire under the surveillance
of a rude and hostile soldiery ! Such, however, was the fate
of Samuel Ward, of whom it may without exaggeration be
affirmed that, whether regarded as an administrator in his
own college3, as an influence in the university, or as a divine
whose reputation extended far beyond the academic limits4,
he was surpassed by none in his generation. Fuller, to
whom both Sidney Sussex College and its master were alike
cherished memories5, cannot record the story of such an end
1 MSS. Baker, xxxiv 102. fortuity in caps and diligent perform-
2 Pope (Sir Walter), Life of Seth ance of exercises; which endeared
Ward, p. 13. Under Dr Ward's long this place to him. Thus the ob-
and paternal rule, Sidney College, serving of old statutes is the best
says Mr Edwards, had 'reached the loadstone to attract new benefactors.'
zenith of its prosperity... The total Fuller, Worthies, i 173.
number of residents at this time must 4 The ability he displayed at the
have been about 150. The entry of Synod of Dort led Episcopius to
46 in 1632-33 is the largest in the pronounce him the ablest divine of
whole history of the College.' ' It that assembly. Racket's Sermons,
may be noted,' he adds, ' that these ed. Plume, p. xxvi.
46 students were distributed among 5 Fuller himself never succeeded
13 tutors.' Sidney Sussex College, in 'gaining a fellowship, having
p. 94. missed one at Queens' College owing
3 ' I have been informed that to the restriction then existing as
Sir Francis [Cleark] coming privately to counties ; while at Sidney, his
to Cambridge, to see unseen, took uncle, Dr Davenant, although on ex-
notice of Doctor Ward's daily presence cellent terms with Dr Ward, was
in the hall, with the scholars' con- unable to get his nephew elected a
CROMWELL AT CAMBRIDGE. 253
unmoved. ' As high winds,' he concludes, ' bring some men CHAP,
the sooner into sleep, so I conceive the storms and tempests
of these distracted times invited this good old man the sooner
to his long rest, where we fairly leave him, and quietly draw
the curtains about him1.'
The election of Ward's successor in the mastership, which Election of
,...„,,. i/v-11 i • '"s successor
took place in the following week, anorded another opportunity "> the
» mastership.
for the exercise of tyrannous interference on the part of
Cromwell's soldiery. The statutes of the foundation, as we
have already noted 2, provided that, in the event of its appear-
ing undesirable to elect to the office any one of the existing
fellows, choice should be made, in the first instance, from
among those of Trinity College. In pursuance of this statute,
a majority of the fellows of Sidney now brought forward the
name of Herbert Thorndike, who, as having formerly filled HERBERT
P 11 1*1 m • • • THORNDIKE:
the omces ot college tutor and senior bursar at Irmity, might &• i«»-
reasonably be assumed to be well qualified as an adminis-
trator ; while his reputation as a writer had been established
by the publication of an able tractate Of the Primitive
Government of Churches, which had galled Puritanism to the
quick. At this time, however, he was living in comparative
retirement at his rectory of Barley to which he had been
instituted by Laud, in succession to Ralph Brownrig, on the
presentation of the Crown3. Among his adherents was
Seth Ward, to whom we are indebted for a knowledge of
some of the incidents of the election. Thorndike's nomina-
fellow (see Life of Fuller by Bailey, cause of his martyrdom had been
pp. 94-96). Fuller, who entered written in golden letters upon his
at Sidney 21 Oct. 1628, resided heart) were breathed up to heaven
there as a fellow-commoner (Searle, wi th his parting soul, GOD BLESSE THE
Hist, of Queens' College, p. 425). KING.' Querela, p. 9. ' He was the
Subsequently, according to his anony- first person buried in the chapel
mous biographer, he was offered a of the college which he had ruled
fellowship but preferred a prebendary wisely and well for thirty-three years. '
stall at Salisbury, offered him about Edwards (G. M.), Hist, of Sidney
the same time: 'they were both Sussex College, p. 111.
eximious preferments as the times 2 Vol. 11 362.
then were, the estimation of either 3 Thorndike was the third of three
beingequally great mutatis mutandis; remarkable men who filled in sue-
but the doctor's inclination biassed cession the incumbency of Barley, —
him to the more active and profitable Andrew Willet (f. of Christ's Coll.),
incumbency ' (Fuller-Brewer, i vi). author of the Synopsis Papismi,
1 Fuller-Prickett and Wright, p. Brownrig, and himself. Letter from
320. — ' whose dying words (as if the Rev. J. Frome- Wilkinson.
254
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. in.
Arrest
of John
Pawson :
13 Sept. 1643.
RICHARD
MINSHULL,
master of
Sidney
College,
1643—86.
Thorndike's
supporters
appeal to
Charles.
The royal
vacillation.
tion was opposed by a minority who brought forward the
name of one of their own number, — Richard Minshull, neither
then nor subsequently in any way known to fame, and who,
although he had voted for himself at the nomination, it was
foreseen would be in a minority1. Such elections, in those
days, were regarded in the light of a religious ceremony, and
it was usual for each elector, before recording his vote, to
receive the communion. John Pawson, the first of those to
vote for Thorndike, was already, in compliance with this
custom, on his knees before the altar rails of the chapel,
when a body of soldiers forced their way in and hurried him
off to prison2. The number of those who would have voted
for Thorndike was thus reduced from nine to eight, the
number for Minshull being the same. Cowed by this sudden
exhibition of physical force, Thorndike's supporters decided,
however, to carry the contest no further; and, without
entering the chapel, took their departure, contenting them-
selves with a formal protest against the legality of the
proceedings. Minshull was accordingly declared elected.
An appeal was forthwith made by the defeated party to the
king at Oxford, and a royal mandamus presently appeared
on the chapel door. But among Minshull's supporters was
Robert Bertie3, a brother of the earl of Lindsay, and the
influence which he was able to exert through that nobleman
at Court was sufficiently potent to bring about the with-
drawal of the mandamus. The election was accordingly
1 Mr Edwards notes that Minshull
' was a student with Cromwell and
now espoused his cause.' He also
cites from the A eta of the College
some interesting details. Sidney
Sussex College, pp. 117-8.
2 Walker bluntly sums up the
proceeding as 'a horrible outrage,' —
' haling Mr Pawson from the sacra-
ment, and throwing him into prison,
which was to make way for the
election of Mr Mynshull into the
mastership.' Sufferings, etc. in Hey-
wood and Wright, n 502-3. 'Though
since he hath proved himself an
arrant honest man and is rewarded
for it with a fellowship in St John's.'
Querela, p. 18. Walker, on the
other hand, who gives Pawson's
Christian name as ' Samuel ' (in-
stead of John), implies that he ob-
tained his later preferment by sub-
mitting to ' the plunderers. ' Pawson
was elected to a fellowship at St
John's by order of Manchester 11 Nov.
1644 (Baker-Mayor, p. 296). In
1645 he was treasurer of the society.
Bursar1 s Books.
3 ' Of whom I find this note, Regis
mandato admissus, temporum injuria
pulsus. He was ejected by the earl
of Manchester, 8 Apr. 1644. ' Walker,
Sufferings of the Clergy, n 159; see
also Collins, Peerage, n 15.
HOLDSWORTH ELECTED PROFESSOR. 255
confirmed, Thorndike himself withdrawing from further .CHA5 m:
opposition on his successful rival's consenting 'to pay him
and the fellows the charges they had been at, in the manage-
ment of that affair, amounting to about an hundred pounds1.'
For forty-three years, accordingly, Richard Minshull continued
to guide the affairs of his college.
The Lady Margaret professorship, as well as the master-
ship of Sidney, had fallen vacant by the death of Dr Ward ;
and the appointment being by election and vested in those
doctors and bachelors of divinity who had also been regents
in arts, was practically in the gift of the university. But
the stipend was slender, and, as we have already seen2, king
James had sought to augment the endowment by appropri-
ating to it the rectory of Terrington in Norfolk3. His design,
never having been confirmed by parliament, had failed to
become operative, and one Alice Davers, a Cambridge lady, MM Davers'
• endowment
' out of her pious disposition to advance learning and religion,' °^ie chair:
had sought, somewhat later, to remedy this defect by making
over to Dr Ward and his successors a piece of garden ground
in the parish of St Edward's. In the quaint language of the
legal grant, it was her aim 'to encourage as well the said
Samuel Ward as his successors, readers of the said lecture
1 The ' charges ' were probably lecture ' which shal be the Chan-
those attendant upon the appeal at celors lecturer which will bring the
Court and the procuring the man- Chancelorshipof Cambridg into some
dumux. The late A. W. Haddan was proportion with that of Oxford for
of opinion that on this occasion ' as that Chancelor bestowes all dignities
on other matters of more general himselfe and this of Cambridg gets
importance, Charles sacrificed his none....' 'my lord Cooke,' the pe-
friends in the vain hope of con- titioners go on to say, ' hath promised
ciliating his enemies.' Life of Thorn- the Bedells to direct there a course
dike in Thorndike's Works (ed. for settling this annexacion without
1866), vi 190. The whole narrative, overthrowing the foundation of the
which Walter Pope maybe assumed lady Margrette.'...'my lady Mar-
to have had direct from Seth Ward, grett's lecture wold be kept for young
is to be found in his Life of that divines pro Tirocinia to make them
divine, p. 14. sitt after for ther other lecture; soe
2 Vol. n 505. shall ther be 3 divinity lectures
3 See Cooper, Annals, m 18-19 ; everyone 2 a week whereas nowe
Endowments of the University (ed. divers dayes wante lectures.' AsLaud
1904), pp. 57-58. Vol. DXX of State did not succeed to the chancellorship
Papers (Dom.) of Charles I, no. 64, of Oxford until 1629 and Coke died
gives an undated petition to the in 1634 this petition must have been
Crown suggesting that the revenues prior to the latter date although
of the rectory of Terrington should registered in a volume relating to
be appropriated to establishing a new 1648-9.
256 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. for the time being, in his and their painful discharging of
the duties belonging to the said lecture, by adding some
small means of livelihood towards the better maintenance of
the said Samuel and of his said successors, as also for divers
Election of other valuable considerations1.' With more courage than
Holdsworth
Marga^eatdy discretion, the university now elected Holdsworth to the
professor- vacant chair, notwithstanding that he was actually still in
Endeavour confinement in Ely House ; while an attempt was at the same
oTthe6 part time made to carry into effect the royal grant of the rectory
to give effect of Terrington, by entering a caveat with the bishop of
James's Norwich, ' for the preserving the universities right and title
endowment
tnVp^tro'n* t° the said rectory indemnified,' — ' his lordship to be at the
ratoiy'of same time desired... not to give admission to the same to any
other ' [i.e. than Holdsworth] ' upon what claime or title
JOSEPH soever2.' With respect to bishop Hall's cordial co-operation,
HALL, bp. of .... . .
Norwich: so far as it lay in his power, the university could have little
d. 1666. misgiving, for his loyalty and unselfishness were beyond
question. But he had himself only recently been liberated
from the Tower, and was now, in his new diocese of Norwich,
sufficiently occupied in offering such resistance as he was
able to the officials on whom it devolved to put in force the
SEQutsTE°AF- Act °f Sequestration3, — efforts fruitless to avert that ejection
27°Mar. 1643. which was soon to follow4.
By parliament, Holdsworth's election was regarded as a
highly contumacious act, and he himself wa^ the first to pay
university is the penalty, being forthwith removed from the comparative
forbidden to _,, TT . „ .
admit freedom of KAV House to strict confinement in the Tower5.
Holdsworth *
MatrgeaJeady Three days later, it was ordered ' that neither vice-chancellor
nor deputy vice-chancellor, nor proctor; nor any other, to
1 See Trusts, Statutes, and Di- Great Civil War, 1 116) must appear,
rections, etc. (Camb. 1857), pp. 15- to those familiar with the evidence
17. for the sufferings of the royalist
2 Baker MSS. xxv 168: for cir- party at this crisis, hardly to suggest
cumstances which led to the aban- the actual scope of its application,
donment of this project, see infra, 4 See Hall's pathetic account of
p. 279. Holdsworth, although elec- his own treatment in his Hard
ted, was never admitted to his office Measure (ed. 1660), pp. 56-62.
as professor. Le Neve, in 655. 5 According to Shuckburgh (p. 93),
3 Gardiner's description of this ' in order that no officer of the uni-
measure as ' an ordinance seques- versity should have access to him to
trating the estates of all who gave tender the oath of admittance to the
assistance to the King' (Hist, of the office.'
HOLDSWORTH ELECTED PROFESSOR. 257
whomsoever it may belong, according to the statutes of the ,CHAP. m.
university, do presume to admit him, or suffer him to exercise
that place or receive any profits thereunto belonging until it
appear from this House that he hath satisfied the justice of
parliament1.'
By none of the colleges similarly bereaved, was the loss
more keenly felt than by Emmanuel. 'Be assured, Sir/
wrote William Bancroft to Holdsworth, after an interval of
more than a twelvemonth had elapsed, ' even in the midst of
all this silence I have continued one of those many, who
mourn in secret for your restreint and begin to be out of
conceit with their owne liberty, when they observe that an
eminent and indeclinable goodnesse is crime enough to make
its owner obnoxious to a prison2.' A few months later, he
wrote, ' — proud Tarquin's riddle is now fully understood ; we
know too well what it is summa papaverum capita demere.
But I had not thought they would have beheaded whole
colleges at a blow; nay, whole universities and whole
churches too ; they have outdone their pattern in that, and
'tis an experiment in the mastery of cruelty far beyond
Caligula's wish3. Ah ! Sir, our Emmanuel College is now an
object of pity and commiseration A small matter would
prevail with me to take up the resolution to go forth any
whither where I might not hear nee nomen nee facia Pelopi-
darum*.' It was not until October 1645, that Holdsworth
obtained his release, ' in regard of his great indisposition of
his health,' and under promise not to go more than twenty
miles from London. His university consequently saw him
no more; but in 1647 he was permitted to visit Charles at
Hampton Court, when the king conferred on him the
deanery of Worcester. It proved an empty honour, for he
died in 1649 ; bequeathing his fine library, numbering over
10,000 volumes, to the college, on condition, however, that
a fitting room was provided for their reception. It ' was
the expectation of acquiring them,' says the late librarian of
1 Commons' Journals, m 265. * Tanner MSS. LXI 267 ; words of
2 Tanner MSS. LXI 64. a tragic fragment, thrice cited by
3 Suet. Calig. c. 30. Cicero. See Ribbeck, no. 119.
M. III. 17
258 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
VCHAP.III., Emmanuel, ' which first gave Sancroft the idea of providing
a new library1.' Ultimately, however, but not until after the
Restoration, the bulk of them went to the university, under
circumstances to be narrated iri a subsequent chapter.
ofpth™A°cnt The clause in the Act of Sequestration relating to colleges,
university: hospitals and schools, involved the forfeiture alike of lands
and revenues by those colleges which had sent plate to the
king2, and the hand of the sequestrator now bore hardly on
Petition most of the foundations at Cambridge. Another petition
against the
!uTheorftie^.e from the university, in the following October, addressed to
Lords and Commons and signed by the incarcerated vice-
chancellor, gave expression to the general dismay. It
described how ' certain men,' ' upon pretence of some
authority committed to them from the honourable Houses of
JndeothSries Parliament, had begun to sequester the libraries and other
fomdeso°ffthe goods of some masters of Colleges and the revenues of their
sequestered, colleges,' ' so that,' say the petitioners, ' there will be no
means of subsistence left to any of the members of the said
colleges though never so innocent.' They entreat, accord-
ingly, that the action of a small minority, — designed as it
was, only 'as an acknowledgement of duty to his Majesty, to
whom some of them are obliged as to their royal founder,
others as his sworn chaplains, — may not redound to the
depriving of the members of the several colleges of all
possibility to continue in this university3.' , These plaintive
appeals met, however, with no response, and Cambridge had
by this time become the head-quarters of the parliamentary
forces in the eastern counties. Early in September, Crom-
well himself was for a short time again seen in the town, but
on the 5th he set out, by the orders of Manchester, for the
north, and was next heard of as having effected a junction
with the two other parliamentary generals at Boston4. Thither
some five thousand troops had been sent from Cambridge to
join him, and the royalist party in the town, deeming the
1 Shuckburgh, Emmanuel College, the Parliament.' Scobell, Acts and
p. 189. See also pp. 189-192. Ordinances, i 40.
2 'Exemption could only be gran ted 3 Lards' Journals, vi 246 ; Cooper,
to those whose revenues or any part Annals, in 359-360.
thereof have not been employed for 4 Gardiner, Civil War, i 280-1.
the maintenance of the war against
THE PROCESS OF SEQUESTRATION. 259
moment auspicious, resolved on a rising. Seizing the arms VCHAP-
which they had secreted, they attacked the prison and liber- ^nlt the
ated the inmates, and then proceeded to attack the houses of ary panyVy
the townsfolk. It was with difficulty, and not without blood- towmmen:
Oct. 1643.
shed, that they were driven off1. But before November had
passed, Manchester reappeared. The royalist forces in the
surrounding counties failed to march to the relief; and all
further apprehension of their so doing had so far been re-
moved that a garrison of little over five hundred was deemed
sufficient to hold the place2.
To this state of affairs, Oxford presented a complete and contrast
L -1 presented
singular contrast. It there devolved on the university to ^oxford-
garrison the town and to restore the fortifications which the 1643—6-
parliamentary forces had destroyed in the preceding year;
while the colleges, in compliance with the reiterated and
pressing behests of royalty, sent in their ancient plate almost
without reserve and lost it beyond all hope of recovery3. In
July 1643, Charles and his queen made a state entry into
the city, where the monarch set up his court at Christ Church
and opened Parliament; Oxford, in short, now became the
centre of the royalist resistance in the midland counties.
The enthusiasm of the besieged was at first unbounded.
The chancellor, Pembroke, as a proved traitor, was compelled
to give place to the marquis of Hertford ; the students, in combined
the trenches, plied mattock and spade side by side with the Town and
» Gown.
townsmen; and before 1644 had passed away, most of the
1 Parliament Scout, no. 23; 2 Cooper, u.s.
Cooper, Annals, in 361. At Oxford, 3 Wood's Life and Times (ed.
on the other hand, the dominant Clark) , i 94-95 ; as regards the scanty
royalists had to contend against an portions that escaped, see The Colleges
element of disaffection among the of Oxford (ed. Clark), 1891, pp. 89,
townsmen, who, as Wood tells us, 125, 218, 341, 359, 387, 394, 414.
' notwithstandinge all the faire pre- Corpus Christi appears to have suffered
tences they had made of joininge least, but ' how the College contrived
with the Universitie and the Kinge's to retain its splendid prae-Reforma-
troopers ' . . . ' nowe were altered and tion and Elizabethan plate is a
had made meanes to informe the question often asked, which cannot
parliament that whatsoever they had be definitely answered.' Fowler
done in semblance to take part with (the late Dr Thos.), Corpus Christi,
the Kinge against the parliament's p. 124. A summary of the plate sent
forces it was all at the sollicitation is given in Tanner MS. cccxxxvm,
and instigation of the Universitie no. 26, and has been printed in John
more then of theire owne proper in- Gutch's Collectanea Curiosa (1791),
clination.' Wood, Life and Times 1 227.
(ed. Clark), i 59.
17—2
260 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. « Academians,' to quote the language of Anthony Wood, 'had
exchanged the gown and cap for the helmet1.' Plague and
conflagration visited, in turn, the devoted city; and, through-
out the following year, ' the Acts ' of the university consisted
of little more than ' the conferring of degrees on those that
were recommended by the chancellor.'... 'No exercises per-
formed in the Schools, they being employed as magazines for
several commodities, or else used by the Lords and Commons
assembled in Parliament by the King's command. In which
time those lectures, disputations, examinations, etc. that
were performed, were mostly done in the north chapel, joining
to St Mary's Church2.'
wntSnues From all this disorganisation and confusion, it is a relief
bothVsa™ to turn to note the activity of Ussher, tranquilly pursuing
ane£ditor.an his wonted studies. When, in 1642, Charles repaired to
York, the archbishop had obtained leave to retire to Oxford,
where his admission to the degree of D.D. dated as far back
as 1626. Resolutely declining the summons to the West-
minster Assembly, he now settled down, under the shadow of
Exeter College, to carry on his researches at the Bodleian,
preaching also regularly either at St Olave's or All Hallows,
where the chaste and sober character of his discourses afforded
a marked contrast to the forced imagery and fantastic rhetoric
then fashionable in the pulpit. His chief literary labour, at
this time, was that of superintending the printing, at the
university press, of his edition of the Epistles of Ignatius3.
FERN!: Towards the close of the year 1642, Henry Feme, fellow
d. leet of Trinity College and one of the royal chaplains, had published
his memorable discourse, The Resolving of Conscience, wherein,
after passing under review the chief points in dispute between
the king and his subjects, he pronounced that precedent and
1 Wood-Gutch, n 470. Epistles, then printing in Oxford.'
2 Ibid, ii 475. Wood-Gutch, n 474. The engraving
3 See Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers was, however, eventually inserted in
(1885), Pt n 231-4. ' ...certain doc- Ussher's treatise De Symbolo. Life
tors and masters were... appointed to hy Ebrington, Works, i 235-6. The
take care and see that the effigies of order appears to have been given
the most learned Dr James Usher, when Ussher's departure, in antici-
archbp. of Armagh and primate of pation of the siege, had already been
Ireland, be cut on a brass plate, with decided on, for he quitted Oxford in
an elogium under it, to be prefixed the same month, along with prince
to his Annotations upon Ignatius his Charles.
THE OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE PRESSES. 1642-1646. 261
equity alike were on the side of the former1. Holdsworth, ^CHAP.
as vice-chancellor, had authorised the printing of the pamphlet ms
, i • • , i-r. -r\ • ^ ii • i Resolving of
at the university press; and Koger Daniel, the pnnter, who conscience
appears to have also had a place of business in London, on f^rsity
being taken into custody by the sergeant-at-arms and brought De&si64i
before the House of Commons, was able accordingly to produce ^0Hc!nser,h'
his warrant. He was consequently allowed to go free ; but andum'
Holdsworth, already obnoxious from the fact of his having
dared to authorise the reprinting of His Majesty's 'Answer
to the Declaration of Parliament2,' had now become a marked
man. In the month of May, he was brought up to London
from Cambridge and confined in Ely House, and saw his
university no more. Dr Feme, apprehensive of sharing his Feme
fate, fled to Oxford, where he could indulge, with impunity, to oxford,
his royalist sympathies, through the medium of an unfettered
press. The activity of the Press, at the sister university, The fortunes
J ' J ' of the two
during the time that the royalists held the city, was preJseesSiaT
indeed almost phenomenal, — presenting, on the one hand, compared*!116
the strongest contrast to the sterility of the corresponding
institution at Cambridge3, and to the enfeebled condition,
amounting almost to paralysis, of the work of instruction, in
Oxford itself, on the other. Anthony Wood, it is true, tells At oxford
J . the students
us little more than that ' the scholars were put out of their ^"g^t
colleges : and those that remained bore armes for the King tn
in the garrison4'; but his concise statement has recently
received considerable illustration at the hands of those
1 Cooper, Annals, m 336-7 ; Bowes, thenes ; in poetry, Giles Fletcher and
Cat. of Cambridge Books, pp. 27, 82 ; George Herbert ; in philosophy, Eus-
Biographical Notes on the University tachius, Magirus and Henry More.
Printers, p. 305. Between 1643 and 1646, the total
2 The ' Declaration ' (2 Aug. 1642) dwindled to 20, among these being
of both Houses, of their reasons for two editions of Bede, and a quarto
taking up arms, — characterised by volume entitled Catalogue of remark-
Gardiner as ' a most inadequate de- able mercies bestowed upon the seven
fence.' Hist, of England, x 215 ; Associated Counties. (See Mr Jen-
Bowes, p. 28. kinson's List in Bowes, pp. 514,
3 Between the years 1639 and 1643 515.) On the other hand, the con-
the Cambridge Press had put forth troversial and theological treatises,
58 separate publications, among as enumerated by Dexter, printed in
which we find, in theology, the names England, amount in 1645 to 113, in
of Andrewes, Davenant, John Dury, 1646, to 124. Congregationalism, Ap-
Thomas Fuller, Thomas a Kempis, pend. pp. 55-64.
Thomas Morton, Spelman and Thorn- 4 Life and Times (ed. Clark^, i 69.
dike ; in classics, Ovid and Demos-
262
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
Balliol,
Hart Hall,
Lincoln,
Oriel,
New,
All Souls,
Corpus
Christi,
Christ
Church,
different scholars who have undertaken the task of specially
investigating their college archives. ' From the date of the
King's arrival in Oxford/ says the historian of University
College, 'to the surrender of the city, there are but few facts
to record specially bearing on the history of the College.'
The keeping of the Register 'was never abandoned' but it
'gives little or no information on the events of the time.'
There is, however, 'no evidence of any interruption in the
life of the society, even of a temporary kind,' although
'numbers ran down to a very low ebb1.' Balliol 'was used
almost as a tavern by the Court and the soldiery'; and the
Master, Dr Lawrence, 'fell into a settled state of melancholy2.'
Hart Hall was 'practically deserted3.' Charles himself did
not attempt to conceal from the Rector and fellows of Lincoln
his conviction that the 'college was not likely to outlive him
if he should be destroyed in the Rebellion4.' Oriel postponed
its Audits, and gloomily noted down in its Register, 'how
crime stalked abroad unchecked and lawless rapine had
usurped the place of law5.' At New College the tower and
cloisters were turned into a magazine; while 'it was found
impossible to prevent the boys getting out of the choir school
to see the university train-bands drill in the quadrangle6.'
All Souls, depleted by royal rapacity on the one hand and by
non-paying tenants on the other, and unable to borrow, made
shift with 'one meal a day' and solaced itself with the glorious
death of Henry 'St Johns,' who fell, according to the Register,
'fighting contra KVK\oKe$d\as 7.' 'During this period,'
writes the late president of Corpus Christi, 'we hear nothing
especially of Corpus8.' 'In the deanery garden of Christ-
church, Mrs Fell buried the silver and gilt maces of the
university bedels, which have never been recovered'; the
1 Carr, University College, pp. 108
-9.
2 Carless Davis, Balliol College, p.
132
3 Hamilton (S. G.), Hertford Col-
lege, p. 31.
4 Andrew Clark, Lincoln College,
p. 60.
8 ' ...miseria temporum ingravas-
cente ut ubique scelus impune gras-
setur atque Bapina sancitae legis
rationem induat.' Eannie, Oriel
College, p. 102.
6 Kashdall and Bait, New College,
p. 164.
7 Grant Bobertson, All Souls Col-
lege, pp. 119, 120.
8 Fowler (the late Dr Thos.),
Corpus Christi College, p. 124; ed.
1893, p. 201.
OXFORD DURING THE SIEGE. 263
great quadrangle became a drilling ground1. We hear of CHAP. IIL
Dr Kettell, the president of Trinity, as 'much grieved,' — Trinity,
having been 'wont to be absolute in the Colledge,' — now 'to
be affronted and disrespected by rude soldiers'; and very
imperfectly consoled by the fact that 'the nobility and gentry'
made his college grove 'their rendezvous.' In 1644 and '45
there were here no entries whatever2. St John's, which st John's,
'still preserves the cannon shot which lodged in its gateway
tower,' decided to send its Merchant Taylors' scholars to
Cambridge3. Jesus College, 'dismantled into part of a Jesus,
garrison,' while it appears to have given shelter to Ussher,
saw its Principal discharging the duties of bursar, and the
fellows got their meals in the buttery4. At Wadham even wadham.
scholars elect were excluded by the soldiery, and in 1645 not
a single freshman was entered on the books5.
The distractions at Oxford had by this time risen to Progress
^ m . of events
such a pitch, that certain members of that university deemed at °xf°rd.
themselves justified in petitioning the Assembly at West-
minster to take into consideration 'the contrival of a college Proposed
hall of
some where about London,' where provision might be made j^'oxford
for 'the godly and scholastic education' of younger students. London!111
They might thus, it was suggested, at once ' go on in their
studies ' and ' their time go on for their degrees6.' The
petition received a favourable response from the Assembly,
and, when elaborated for presentation to the Lords, further
suggested the appointment, in connexion with the projected Residence
, ' . -TIT, at the same
college, of 'a sage and religious governor, aided by 'twelve to be new
graduate scholars or more,' and that those who should be a° gfther"06
'instituted by them' should be permitted to reckon -their Cambridge
time for the taking of their degrees .from their several fo
1 Thompson (Hen. L.), Christ that the Buttery Books from 1642
Church, pp. 55, 56. -51 'are missing.' 'In 1652,' he
2 Blakiston, Trinity College, p. 128. says, ' his name regularly occurs, but
3 Hutton (W. H.), S. John Bap- without entries for battel.' Ussher,
tist College, p. 155. he thinks, was probably attracted to
4 Hardy (E. G.), Jesus College, the college by his 'deep interest in
pp. 103, 104. Mr Hardy, while con- Welsh.' Ibid. pp. 100, 101.
sidering that 'it may be true' both 5 Wells, Wadham College, p. 56.
that 'Ussher was a member of Jesus,' 6 Lords' Journals, vi 319; Cooper,
and that 'he resided at various times Annals, m 361-2; Lightfoot-Pitman,
in the college,' is baffled by the fact xin 57.
264 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. iiL admissions thither, ' whenever,' says the petition, ' through
the mercy of God, they shall with freedom repair to either
of the universities.' It was on the occasion of the reading
Bur^esf °f this petition before the Assembly that Anthony Burgess,
It john*8at a former member of St John's College, and subsequently
less? " fellow of Emmanuel, rose from his seat, and suggested that
the petition was one deserving of prompt attention. According
to Lightfoot, he even took upon himself further to propose
that 'some collops might be cut out of deaneries and chapters
for the cherishing of young scholars1.' The response of
parliament to this appeal is not on record, but about the
Trinity" °f same time the society of Trinity College, sorely aggrieved
(Cambridge) : by the operation of the Sequestration Act, ventured upon a
' separate appeal to the House of Lords, urging that the
wrongs which they deprecated arose mainly out of ' a mis-
understanding of the ordinance of parliament.' No ordinance,
thus far, had authorised the sequestration of college lands,
but already the sequestrator was in their midst driving even
their cattle away ! A proviso had enjoined that even the
sufferings greatest delinquents were to have 'allowance for their main-
resultuig
tratu>nesques tenance,' but already the revenues derived from the lands,
'which are now our only relief,' were proving insufficient ' to
afford food and raiment,' — ' we paying out to the three pro-
fessors of Divinity, Hebrew, and Greek, and to poor, aged and
impotent men, by our Benefactors appointment, near the
sum of three hundred pounds per annum, and being about
one hundred and sixty persons that depend upon the College
for our livelihood2.'
EDWAKD Edward Montagu, second earl of Manchester, and nephew
Ban of ' of the founder of Sidney College, had been admitted a
Manchester: . . J
bd iml pensioner there in 1618, — two years later, that is to say, than
Cromwell, to whom he was well known3. He had represented
the county of Huntingdon in three successive parliaments,
and in 1626, when but twenty-four years of age, had been
raised to the peerage, through the influence of Buckingham,
1 Lightfoot-Pitman, Ibid. supra, p. 48, n. 3) in 1616; Montagu,
2 Lords1 Journals, vi 327. 27 Jan. 1618, at which date the
3 Cromwell was admitted (see former had gone down.
THE COLLEGES AND THE ICONOCLAST. 265
with the title of baron Montague of Kimbolton. But by a CHAP; 1IL>
second marriage he had become connected with the family of
the earl of Warwick, and thus contracted those Puritan
sympathies which led him to abandon the royalist traditions
of his house and, ultimately, to his impeachment (along with
the Five Members) for high treason. On the death of his
father in 1642, he had succeeded to the earldom, and was at
this time not only major-general of the parliamentary army
in the eastern counties, but also lord- lieu tenant of Hunting-
donshire and one of the ten peers who sat, as lay members,
in the Westminster Assembly; and into his hands parlia-
ment now consigned the chief direction of the affairs of the
university. But even Manchester could not withhold his £etter °f ,
» the Earl of
sympathy from his university at this ominous juncture, and ^Nov^i'&Ia.
in a letter to the House of Lords, dated from Cambridge, he
ventured, while disclaiming all thought of suggesting any
line of action on their part, to express his conviction that
their lordships would deem it better to endeavour the
reforming of the university rather than to hazard the dis-
solving of it1. It was on a dark December day that the Presentation
• of same
petition of Trinity and Manchester's letter were both pre- fiefrhli*
sented at the House of Lords, and the remonstrance which Fc^ie^.
they conveyed appears to have been so far effectual that,
on the sixth of the following January, a Declaration was Declaration
•* of Lords and
promulgated by the two Houses to the effect ' that the £0°™™°?ns
estate, rents, and revenues of the university and of the estitlf:
colledges and halls of the university ' were ' in no wise 6 '
sequestrable or to be seized on.' Such revenues, it went on
to say, were to be handed over 'to receivers or treasurers
approved by Edward earle of Manchester2, serjeant major Manchester
generall of the parliaments forces in the county of Cambridge £°*™j^r
and the other associated counties, to be imployed for the ^,1^^
respective maintenance of the said university, colledges, and
1 Lords' Journals, vi 327 ; Cooper, part of the time,' and occasionally
Annals, in 363. acted by commissioners ' who pre-
2 Manchester's direct responsibility pared the matters for him, to which
is strongly insisted on by Walker as he afterwards put his fiat.' Suffer-
regards Cambridge; but he qualifies ings, etc. Preface, p. xliii ; cf. Gar-
his statement by admitting that the diner, Hist, of the Great Civil War,
Earl was at Cambridge 'only some n 21.
266 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, ni.^ halls/ The protection thus apparently vouchsafed was how-
ever to a great extent vitiated by an ensuing clause, which
provided that ' neverthelesse ' all rents or dividends ' payable
to any Head, fellow, schollar, or officer of the said university,
or of the said colledges or halls, being, or which shall be, a
delinquent,' were to be handed over ' either to the Committee
for Sequestrations sitting at Cambridge, or otherwise, as it
shall be ordered by the said earle of Manchester1.'
In the mean time, moreover, the more intolerant section
of the Puritan party were conciliated by the knowledge that
the suppression of abuses in matters of religious worship
and ritual had been entrusted to far less scrupulous hands.
ordinance^ Towards the close of the preceding August, the two Houses
«ma!tajjng> nad already paved the way for a more direct and summary
away^of afi interference with the discipline of the university than that
of super- grounded upon established proof of delinquency. It had
28°Aauryi643 been decreed that throughout the kingdom ' all monuments
of superstition or idolatry ' should be overthrown, — a measure
from which 'chappels, cathedral and collegiate,' were to be
allowed no exemption ; all altars and tables of stone that had
not been removed ' before the first day of November in the
year of our Lord God 1643,' were to be 'utterly taken away
and demolished'; communion tables were to be moved from
the east end and placed in the body of the church ; and the
rails about them to be taken away ; the raised chancel was
to be levelled with the ground ; all tapers, candlesticks, and
basons, all crucifixes and crosses, all images, and 'pictures
of any one or more persons of the Trinity or of the Virgin
Mary,' together with all superstitious inscriptions, were not
The sole only to be taken away but also to be ' defaced.' The sole
exception to .
the same, exception to this iconoclastic edict was a proviso that it
should ' not extend to any image, picture, or coat of arms in
glass, stone or otherwise, in any church, chappel, or church-
yard, set up or graven onely for a monument of any king,
prince, or nobleman, or other dead person which hath not
been commonly reputed or taken for a saint2.'
1 Heywood and Wright, n 458-60.
2 Scobell, Acts and Ordinances, i 54.
THE COLLEGES AND THE ICONOCLAST. 267
For the putting in force of these enactments in Suffolk ,CHAP. IIL
and in Cambridge, parliament found an energetic if not a wiiiiam
. . . . Dowsing at
very discriminating agent in the person of one William £1™^!^
Dowsing1, a Suffolk yeoman, now verging upon fifty years of Jan- 164J<
age. At the very time that parliament was extending its
protection to the revenues of the university and the colleges,
the said Dowsing, armed with plenary powers, filled with
zeal, and in possession of a very elementary knowledge of
Latin, was reducing to irretrievable destruction whatever in
the churches and chapels at Cambridge appeared to him
either to symbolise or express aught that was ' Romish,'
whether in sentiment or observance. His own Journal, still
preserved, affords incontrovertible evidence of the spirit in
which he discharged his mission2. To each record of his
Vandalic fury, he prefixes references to certain texts from
the Old Testament, fortifying himself with that fancied
analogy (so dear to the later Puritan) between the assumed
mission of the party which he represented and that of Israel
and Judah when marching against the idolaters whom they
overthrew.
As early as the 20th December, John Worthington noted y^ITATIOS
down in his Diary, that ' this week pictures began to be taken COLLEGES.
down in Cambridge by an order from the earle of Manchester3';
on the following day Dowsing, accompanied by ' officers and
soldiers,' made his appearance at the ancient gate of Peter- His
' . rr . & . dealings with
house. Cosin, doubly obnoxious as not only chief promoter
of those ' Romish ' innovations which so deeply moved the
1 According to Southey, Doctor Append, to The Schismatics delineated
(ed. 1848), p. 310, Dowsing's action from Authentic Vouchers, etc. By
on this occasion was conjectured by Philalethes Cantabrigiensis [Zachary
' a learned critic ' to have given rise Grey]. London, 1739. Grey, in his
to the expression ' to give anyone controversy with Neal, the Puritan
a doicsing,' in the sense of giving historian, cites Dowsing's achieve-
him a liard blow. This etymology ments as of special value in relation
is, however, sufficiently disproved by to his main argument : ' Be pleased,
the fact that the word, used in this Sir, carefully to read over the Journal
sense, is to be found in the Mirror of Will. Dowsing, the famed demo-
for Magistrates (ed. 1559), but this, lisher of superstition in the university,
Professor Skeat informs me, is almost town and county of Cambridge, and
a a.ira.% \ey6[j.ti>oi>, and no such use if his account of the terrible havoc
is cited in Murray's Dictionary. he made will not convince you. ..I
2 Baker MS. xxxvm [not XLH, as in don't know what will,' pp. 22-23.
D.N.B.] 455-8, 471-3. Printed in 3 Heywood and Wright, n 566.
268 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. m wrath of Prynne, but also as prominently participant in the
yet more recent offence of forwarding plate to the king, was
presumably not in residence, for he is unmentioned in
Dowsing's record. It was probably by his instructions that
the east window, containing a Crucifixion after Rubens, had
already been taken down and was thus saved from destruc-
tion1. The president, Francis, and others of the fellows were,
however, spectators of the destruction which ensued. ' We
pulled down,' says the narrator, 'two mighty great angells
with wings, and divers other angells, and the four Evan-
gelists and Peter with his Keies on the chappell door
and about a hundred chirubims and angells and divers
superstitious letters in gold.' Possessed of but slender
knowledge of the language which he terms ' Lating,' he
nevertheless parades his knowledge, or rather his ignorance,
with much complacency : ' about the walls,' he continues, ' was
written in Lating, We praise the ever; and on some of the
images was written Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus', on others,
Gloria Dei (sic) and Gloria Patri, and Non Nobis Domine on
others.' At Pembroke College, on the following day, in the
presence of some of the fellows, ' we broak,' he says, ' ten
cherubims; broak and pulled down eighty superstitious
His dispute pictures.' A warm altercation ensued. 'Mr Weeden told
with some *
Pembroke me ne could fetch a statute book to shew that pictures were
the0iegiS?ty0 not to be pulled down. I bad him fetch and shew it and
proceedings, they should stand. And he and Mr Baldero told me, the
(a) sic for clargie had only (a) to do in ecclesiastical matters, naither the
'only had.' *
magistrate nor the parlament had anything to doe. I told
them I perceived they were of Cuzen's (Cosin's) judgment,
and I would prove the people had to do as well as the clargie,
and alleged (Acts i 15, 16, 23) the 120 believers [who] had
the election of an Apostle in the rome of Judas.' He cited
Calvin and the Institutes ; and adduced the example of king
Josiah. The fellows, on the other hand, defended the presence
of the cherubim by the example of Solomon in the temple.
1 See Britton and Bingley's Beauties given rise to the legend with respect
of England and Wales (1801), n 36. to the windows in King's College
This fact may very possibly have chapel. See infra, p. 272.
THE COLLEGES AND THE ICONOCLAST. 269
Then a dispute arose as to the legality of the entire proceed- VCHAP. in.^
ings, — one of the fellows, named Ashton, maintaining that
' laws made in time of warr were not of force.' ' I alleged
Magna Charta, made in time of warr between Henry in and
barrons, that was in force still, and Richard the Second's
tyme the like. Ashton said the Parliament could not make
laws, the King being away and so many members. I told
them, their practice proved it, that chose fellowes by the
greater number present, and that the King had taken an
oath to seal what both Houses voted.' Caius College, on ms
the same day, saw carried off, in the presence of the master at cams,
Queens', and
(Batchcroft) and some of the fellows, no less than sixty-eight st cathe-
cherubim, ' with divers superstitious inscriptions in letters of
gold.' At Queens' College, four days later, the record goes
on to say, 'we beat down about 110 superstitious pictures,
besides cherubim and ingravins1. And there none of the
fellowes would put on their hats all the time they were in
the chapell ; and we digged up ther steps for three howers,
and broake down ten or twelve Apostles and saints' pictures
in ther hall.'
At St Catherine's, Dr Brownrig, who now combined in Growing
0 reputation of
his own person the triple dignities of bishop, vice-chancellor, J>r
and master of the college, awaited the destroyer with
dignified composure. No Head, at this time, commanded
more general respect from both parties, his administration
during his previous tenure of the office of vice-chancellor2
1 By 'ingravins,' Mr Searle con- ye university. Not a scholler could
siders, we may probably also under- I see at any taverne. Luxury is
stand ' some of the brasses on the much restrayned from walkinge ye
slabs in the floor.' Hist, of Queens' streetes and rovinge openly as it
College, p. 526. hath done. He preached an admi-
2 He had been elected to the office rable sermon upon John 3. 19. last
in 1637 and again in 1638. In the Christmas Day. If his notes come
latter year, we find one 'W. S.' (pro- to my hands I will send them to
bably William Spurstowe, the Smec- you.' (Letter from W. S. to Morton,
tymnuan, one of the fellows of St State Papers (Dom.) Charles I, 1638 ;
Catherine's who had elected Brown- Morton Papers, no. 31.) Three years
rig to the mastership and himself later Brownrig was installed as
succeeding him in that office), writing Morton's chaplain and was presented
as follows to Morton, bishop of by him to a prebendal stall in Durham
Durham, who in his distant see still Cathedral. His sympathy with the
cherished a deep interest in every- moderate party went, however, much
thing relating to the university : beyond that of his patron, as is
' Dr Bromwiche hath much reformed evident from the following extract,
270
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
Dowsing's
visit to
Corpus
Chrijti.
The chapel
spared,
while
St Benet's
Church
(owing to
Dr Love's
supineness,
according to
Masters)
suffers
severely.
having won for him especial esteem. Moderate as was his
episcopalianism, the master of St Catherine's did not hesitate,
however, to make known to his unwelcome visitor that he
still deemed a church entitled to more reverence than any
ordinary building, and even held that the communion cup
was, as Dowsing phrases it, ' not to be used for no other use
in any civil act.' Dowsing contented himself with pulling
down ' St George and the Dragon, John Baptist, and Popish
Katherine, St. to which the Colledg is dedicated.'
The following day was a Sunday ; but on the Monday he
resumed his work with renewed vigour. At Corpus Christi,
the chapel, erected in 1578 but still unconsecrated1, pre-
sented to his eye ' nothing to be amended ' ; but he paused
when, on turning his attention on Benet Church, he heard
that building designated a ' temple.' He was blandly assured
by Dr Love that the word ' was a common name given to
publique places set apart for worship, both among heathens
and Christians,' and that ' in the churches of France they used
not the word ecclesia for a church, but the other word, —
templum2.' The churchwarden of St Benet's, one Russell,
was friendly to the parliamentary party and had already
advanced money to Cromwell, but notwithstanding, Dowsing
discerned ' seven superstitious pictures, fourteen cherubims
and a superstitious engraving'; 'one was to pray' too, he
observes, ' for the soul of one John Canterbury and his wife.'
His attention was next directed to ' an inscription of a mayd
praying to the Sonn ' (for Son) ' and Virgin Mary ; 'twas in
written when Morton's treatise (De
Eucharistia Controversia Decisio.
Cantabr. 1640) was passing through
the press at Cambridge : ' I am
much grieved for his booke...For
both the Bish. of Lincolne and Dr
Hacket told me from the mouth of
him that corrects it (an accurate and
judicious Schollar) that it was a
very invective and bitter writing
against the Lutheran tenets in that
pointe in so much that Dr Brownrig
had written unto his Lordshp. about
it, to put all into a milder straine.'
Hartlib to Sir Thomas Roe, 10 Aug.
1640. S. P. (Dom.) Charles I. vol.
ccccLxm.
1 See supra, p. 140, n. 2.
2 This interesting fact, according
to Love's own statement, had been
communicated to him ' in the Bochell
and in the churches of France being
ther when Rochell was besieged.'
This seems to shew that in the
summer of 1628, when a fellow of
Clare College, he had made a voyage
to the French coast. His reference
to what was then regarded as one
of the strongholds of Calvinism as
affording a precedent in the matter
of usage, was probably not without
effect. See Cooper, Annals, in 365 ;
Masters-Lamb, p. 171.
THE COLLEGES AND THE ICONOCLAST. 271
Lating, " Me Tibi Virgo Pia Genitor commendo Mariae," VCHAP-
A maid was born to me which I commend to you oh Mary!'
(1432). 'Richard Billinford,' the sapient censor explains, 'did
commend this his daughter's soule1.' Dowsing's Journal con-
tains, however, no mention of any consequent process of
destruction like those above described, although it is certain
that St Benet's itself suffered severely. We find, indeed, the
historian of the college, when more than a century later he
had occasion to refer to this episode, imputing something
like remissness to Dr Love : 'it is much to be wished,' he
writes, ' that the Master had used his interest with Dowsing
whilst he was employed here in demolishing superstitious
monuments, to have desisted from doing it in St Benedict's
Church where so many of his predecessors were interred : or
if this could not have been obtained of the enraged rabble
who assisted him in the execution thereof, that he had at
least preserved in writing what monuments of antiquity were
then in it, which might have been of no small service in this
undertaking2.'
A heavier hand was laid on Jesus College, Clare, and atejSio
Trinity Hall3, although the dates are not given with the TrirityHai
same precision. In each instance a solitary fellow looked
on4, while chancel steps were dug up, and saints, angels,
apostles and fathers rudely deposed. At Trinity College, ^fj^
the sole entry (Dec. 29) — ' We had four cherubims, and steps '
levelled,' — implies that the injury done was slight. St John's
does not appear to have suffered materially, but certain
1 Bead Me tibi Virgo pia Gene- lege, pp. 33-34.
trix commendo Maria. ' Dowsing's 2 Masters, Hist, of Coll. of Corpus
acquaintance with "Lating,"' ob- Christi, pp. 149-50; Masters further
serves Mr Goodwin (art. DOWSING in observes, in a footnote, that Dr Love's
D. N. B.) ' led him to metamorpho- ' tenant at Ickleton assisted Dowsing
sise Dr Billingford into a maid re- in levelling the chancel there' (ib.)\
commending her daughter's soul to Masters-Lamb, p. 178.
the Virgin Mary.' Billingford was 3 'The fine brass of Dr Hewke
chancellor of the university, and still exists, so perhaps was put out
Master of Corpus Christi from 1398 of the way. '...'But it is probable
to 1432. According, however, to that some of the old glass was bro-
Cole, the publication of Dowsing's ken.' Maiden, Trinity Hall, p. 140.
journal in 1739 led to the resto- 4 At Jesus 'Mr Bogleston,' at Clare
ration of Billingford' s tomb 'from 'Mr Gunning,' at Trinity Hall
the oblivion it had laid in ever since.' ' Mr Culiard.' Journal, p. 51.
See Dr Stokes' Corpus Christi Col-
272
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
Parlia-
mentary
ORDINANCE
FOB. REGU-
LATING THE
UNIVERSITY :
22 Jan. 164f.
The Earl of
Manchester
appointed to
give effect to
its decrees :
22 Jan. 164J.
inscriptions desiring prayers for the departed were demo-
lished1. King's College, menaced in ambiguous utterance
worthy of some ancient oracle2, is also without any positive
record of injury; although Austen Leigh admits that ' how
the glass escaped remains a mystery'; but he considers that
' the popular legend which attributes the preservation of the
windows to their having been taken down and buried in a
single night, has neither historical evidence nor intrinsic
probability to entitle it to any serious attention3.' At
Magdalene 'we brake downe about forty superstitious pictures,
Joseph and Mary stood to be espoused in the windowe/
Sidney and Emmanuel, with their two unconsecrated chapels4,
alone remained intact, as presenting nothing that ' needed to
be mended5.'
Before January had passed, an ' Ordinance for Regulating
the University6,' entrusted to Manchester the task of carrying
its decrees into execution: he was instructed to appoint a
Committee with power to summon before them any member
of the academic body and examine any complaint or testi-
mony against him ; and further, on sufficient evidence
tendered by witnesses on their oath, to report such member
1 The entry relating to St John's
is scarcely intelligible (see Baker-
Mayor, p. 639) ; and the following,
in Mr Scott's opinion, have reference,
not to the iconoclast, but to the Col-
lege Auditor, whose name occurs
annually. 164f : ' Jan. for Mr Dow-
sings supper, Is. ; for candles id. Ib. ;
for bedmaking, 2s. Gd.' ; in the ' Audit
allowance' he appears as receiving
30s. St John's Rental Book, 1634-
1649. The following entries in same
during the same year, — 'for new
binding the great old Bible in the
Hall,' 'to the glazier for mending
and altering glasse in the windowes,'
— probably refer, in the former case,
to the removal of ' Eomish ' devices
from the cover; in the latter, to
making good certain like reforms
in hall or chapel.
2 ' Steps to be taken' (i.e. removed)
' and one thousand superstitious pic-
tures, the ladder of Christ, and theves
to go upon many crosses, and Jesus
writ on them.' Ibid.
3 Hist, of King's College, p. 130.
4 See supra, p. 140, n. 2.
5 Dowsing's Journal, pp. 51-52.
The destruction wrought in the parish
churches of Cambridge is described
Ibid. pp. 52-53. Cooper has printed
the portion relating to the colleges
(Annals, m 364-367) from Baker, u. s.
p. 267, n. 2, apparently unaware that
it had already been published by
Zachary Grey whose text is, in some
respects, more accurate.
6 This ordinance also extended to
the seven Associated Counties of
Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Hertford,
Cambridge, Huntingdon and Lin-
coln, in each of which Manchester
was directed to appoint ' one or more '
similar Committees; while he, or
the Committee, was empowered to
administer the Covenant 'to all
persons in any of the said associated
counties and the isle of Ely, upon
such penalties as are or shall be
assigned by the parliament in this
behalfe.' Heywood and Wright, n
460-462.
PARLIAMENT AND THE UNIVERSITY. 273
to the said earl, who was authorized, in turn, ' to eject such VCHAP.
as he shall judge unfit for their places and to sequester their
estates, means and revenues, and to dispose of them as he
shall thinke fitting, and to place other fitting persons in their
roome, such as shall be approved of by the Assembly of
Divines sitting at Westminster.' In dealing with such
sequestered estates, he was authorized, however, ' to dispose
of a fifth part for the benefit of the wives and children of
any of the aforesaid persons1.'
On the 5th February, the earl was further 'recommended
by both Houses to take special care that the Solemn League The LEAGUE
J and COVBN-
and Covenant be tendered and taken in the university of
CambridgeV
In pursuance of these instructions, Manchester now re-
paired to Cambridge, taking with him his two chaplains,
Simeon Ashe, of Emmanuel College, and one William Goode,
both of whom afterwards distinguished themselves as active
pamphleteers in vindication of his policy during his troublous ^
official career. On his arrival, he opened his Court in Trinity, ^£b.ei64i..
and warrants were forthwith issued calling upon each of the
Heads ' to send unto me the Statutes of your College, to-
gether with the Names of all the Members of your Society,
whether Fellowes, Schollars, or other Officers, and also now to
certifye me who are now present and who absent3.' This The
... residential
behest was closely followed by another, enjoining all absent fl6"16?,* "eg
members of each college to return to residence before the
tenth day of March. When that day had passed, warrants
were immediately sent to each Head, requiring him to certify
the extent to which the members of the society over which
he presided had yielded compliance with the foregoing com-
mand. Two days later, the Heads of Peterhouse, St John's, Ejection of
J ' ' ' five Heads:
Queens', Jesus and Pembroke were formally ejected, the 13 Mar- 1(54*
grounds of each ejectment being described in Manchester's
warrant as ' the opposing the proceedings of Parliament and
other scandalous acts in the University of Cambridge4.' As
1 Heywood and Wright, n 462. instruction in compliance with which
2 Cooper, Annals, in 370. Manchester's officials proceeded to
3 Ibid. rn371. eject the non -compliant Heads: I do
4 The following was the form of eject Dr — from being Master of —
M. ill. 18
274
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
Experiences
of Cosin,
Beale,
Martin,
Sterne and
Laney.
Sancroft to
Dillingham :
20 Mar. 164}.
Appointment
of Com-
missioners :
15 Mar. 164}.
regards the above sentences of deprivation, it is probable
that they are to be looked upon as formalities rather than
as the outcome of proceedings subsequent to Manchester's
arrival, and it is doubtful whether any one of the five Heads
was in Cambridge at the time. Cosin, already sequestered
from his ecclesiastical benefices at York and Durham, stood
condemned by the fact of his undeniable activity in forward-
ing the college plate to the king, and, according to Walker,
he became henceforth a wanderer on the face of the earth, —
'continually harassed with pursuevants, messengers, im-
prisonments, etc., till they had quite hunted him out of the
kingdom1.' Beale, Martin and Sterne were all in close
confinement at Ely House. Dr Laney, who is not named by
Dowsing, was possibly a virtual prisoner in his own lodge at
Pembroke ; but it is certain that he soon after joined the
king at Oxford. In the provinces, the expectations of the
royalists that the leaders of the university would not fail to
set the example of courageous resistance were thus to a
great extent disappointed. ' God make our Mother wise
and resolute,' wrote Sancroft from Fressingfield to William
Dillingham at Emmanuel. ' The Covenant is here universally
taken, and ye good people in Suffolk have so fully learnt the
mystery of As farre as lawfully I may1*, that now nothing
can come amisse to you, were it Mohammed's Alkuran3.'
A more summary process sufficed for the eviction of the
other college residents. On the 15th March eleven Com-
missioners4 were appointed by Manchester to tender the
in Cambridge, for his opposing the
proceedings in Parliament and other
scandalous acts in the University of
Cambridge, and I require you to
sequester theprofits of his Mastership,
for one that I shall appoint in his
place, and to cut his name out of
the Butteries, and to certify me of
this your act in one day. Given
under our hand and seal this 13 day
of March 164|. The ambiguity in-
volved by the neglect to repeat the
preposition is sarcastically com-
mented on by the authors of the
Querela, who observe that the Heads
appear to have been ejected not '/or,'
but for 'opposing,1 'scandalous acts..'
Pref. A 4 v.
1 Sufferings of the Clergy, n 60.
2 These words are from the Protes-
tation of May 1641. See Gardiner,
Documents (ed. 1899), p. 156; also
his History of England, ix 353.
Bancroft's meaning is, that those
who have already swallowed the Pro-
testation are not likely to strain at
the Covenant.
3 Tanner MS. LXH 641.
4 Their number was shortly after
increased to 38 ; the names are given
in Cooper, Annals, in 372.
PARLIAMENT AND THE UNIVERSITY. 275
Covenant and receive the signatures, and on the same day VCHAP. IIL
Stephen Hall1, a senior fellow of Jesus, and John Otway2, a COVENANT
recently elected fellow of St John's, atoned for non-compliance Re^se*™'''
by ejectment. But it was soon evident that considerable eje°
opposition was to be anticipated, and the number of Com-
missioners was accordingly more than trebled. They sat at
the White Bear3, opposite to Trinity, and here exciting scenes
were occasionally to be witnessed, as a certain proportion of
the absentees who had been summoned (with only twelve
days' grace) to return into residence, presented themselves.
Apprehensions of intervention by the royalists without, on
behalf of the malcontents, were indicated by the mounting of
a cannon on the Great Bridge, and on the 3rd April a second
summons was sent round to the colleges. The net was now
spread more widely : the Covenant could not be tendered to
the absent, and absenteeism, accordingly, was declared to
be adequate ground for ejection ; resident fellows, already
marked out as obnoxious, might evade expulsion by taking
the Covenant, and the ordinance was accordingly now made
retrospective in its operation, — any who were 'scandalous
in their lives or doctrines' being declared liable to a like
sentence ; while mere ' opposition to the proceedings of
Parliament' continued to afford a third but equally valid
reason. Should any of those who were expelled subsequently General
11 111 ejection of
return, their stay was not to be prolonged beyond three days, j^8^®8,
otherwise they would incur the penalty of imprisonment. ofthd?ent
The names of the ejected were to be cut out in the butteries, suspension
while their ' profits ' were to be sequestered and reserved for stipends,
their successors on their appointment.
But even this variety of reasons might leave a loophole ;
and, according to Walker, others had to be ' discovered, for
turning out those who could not be gone,' and here the
zealous apologist brings a serious indictment against the
Commissioners, — a charge, it is to be observed, resting solely
on the authority of the Querela. The fellowship oath, then
1 A native of Middlesex. ' 1612. 2 A Yorkshireman, adm. fell.
Aulae Pembroch: alumnus, collatione 24 Mar. 16|f. Baker-Mayor, p. 295.
R. P. Lancelot! EpiEliens: fit socius.' 3 For the Bear Inn, see Smith
Jesus Coll. Eegister. (J. J.), Camb. Portfolio, n 389, n. 40.
18—2
276
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
The story
rejected by
Fuller.
Statement
of Simeon
A she.
as now, bound the fellows of each society not simply to
loyalty to the college but also to mutual fidelity one to
another, — they were to do nothing which might result in
harm or loss to the society in its corporate capacity or to
any of the fellows individually. According, however, to the
authors of the Querela, the Commissioners, in direct contra-
vention of any such oath, now tendered to each fellow 'a new
legislative fangle called an Oath of Discovery, but [what]
indeed was an Oath of Treachery, — a wild unlimited devise
to call whom they would before them and make them accuse
their nearest and dearest friends, benefactors, tutors and
Masters, and betray the members and acts of their several
societies, manifestly contrary to our peaceable statutes
formerly sworne unto by us1.' That the Commissioners,
notwithstanding their strong sympathies, should have acted
in a fashion which recalls to us the methods of the Spanish
Inquisition, appeared to Thomas Fuller so highly improbable,
that some ten years later he ventured to write to Simeon
Ashe, — who, as Manchester's chaplain, was likely to be well
informed on such a point, — to ask whether he had any know-
ledge of any such proceeding. Ashe himself had, in former
days, been ejected from his living in Staffordshire on account
of his refusal to read the Book of Sports, but his puritanism
was of a moderate type, and when the Restoration drew near
he was one of the divines who went to meet Charles II at
Breda. In replying to Fuller, however, he distinctly disclaims
all knowledge of any such oath having ever been tendered at
Cambridge2; and 'for my own part,' says Fuller, 'I am
satisfied no such oath was tendered by him, charitably
believing that he would not cross his own doctrine, when,
preaching to the Parliament 1640, he complained of the
1 Querela Cant., p. 20; Heywood
and Wright, n 497-8. The use of
the plural points perhaps to the joint
authorship of this production.
2 ' Truly Sir, I am so great a
stranger to that oath of discovery
which you mention, that I cannot
call to mind the moving of any such
matter, by the Lord of Manchester,
or any who attended him. And as
for myself, having been a sufferer
upon the dislike of the oath ex officio,
I have all along my life been very
tender in appearing as an instru-
ment in any such matter.' Ashe to
Fuller, 10 July 1654. Fuller-Prickett
and Wright, p. 320.
CROMWELL AND THE UNIVERSITY. 277
strictness of university oaths1,' — a candid conclusion which CHAP. in.
few critics will probably now care to challenge.
On the tenth of March, Cromwell had again been seen in
Cambridge, fresh from the capture of Hillesden House in
Buckinghamshire, and here, probably, he received the news
of the death of his eldest surviving son, who had fallen a Death of
• ,. ., „ , . . , young Oliver
victim to the small pox when serving in the garrison at ^fareh 164*
Newport Pagnell2. The young Oliver, who was one of the
combatants at Edgehill, had entered St Catherine's only
three years before3, attracted (it may be supposed) by the
reputation of Dr Brownrig, under whose discerning rule the
numbers of the college were at this time rising considerably
above their normal level4. ' A civil young gentleman and
the joy of his father,' — such is the account given of him by a
contemporary pen ; and it must have been with a heavy
heart that Cromwell again left Cambridge to besiege Lincoln
and win the battle of Marston Moor. It was after that
decisive success that it devolved upon him, in turn, to send
to his brother-in-law, Valentine Walton, that characteristic
letter which told at once of the 'great victory' and of the
death of young Valentine Walton on the battlefield, — 'a
gallant young man,' wrote the bereaved to the bereaved,
' exceeding gracious. God give you his comfort5.'
In Cromwell's absence, one William Danes6, formerly a
member of Emmanuel, was entrusted with the direction of
affairs at Cambridge, and again the Querela, in tones of
vehemence which shake the credit of the writer, tells of a
1 Fuller, M.S. p. 321. Walker's ac- Huntingdon.' 1641. St Catherine's
count of this correspondence (Suffer- Register .
ings of the Clergy, i 113) will hardly 4 ' The numbers of those who en-
commend itself to the impartial en- tered were much above the average
quirer. Baker, with his usual can- from 1637 to 1646. ' Letter from the
dour, evidently inclines to a like Master of St Catherine's, 8 Nov. 1895.
conclusion with Fuller. See Baker- At Trinity, on the other hand, from
Mayor, pp. 225-6. Cooper, however, 1638-9 and 1639-40 the admissions
holds that the story ' appears correct, ' declined to 19 and 18 respectively,
but thinks it probable that ' the oath and in 1642-3 went down to 13,
was administered without the di- probably the lowest on record. ' Ball,
rection or knmcledge of the earl of Notes, etc., pp. 91-2.
Manchester and his chaplains' ! An- s Gardiner, u. s. i 450; Carlyle-
nals, m 374. Lomas, i 176-7.
3 Gardiner, Great Civil War, i 369. 6 A.B. 1635 ; A.M. 1639. Lib.
3 ' Oliverus Cromwell, pensionar: Grat. Z. 1620-1645.
278
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
The
tendering
of the
COVENANT.
Ejections
consequent
upon tin:
refusal of the
same to be
distinguished
from those
consequent
upon the
KNOAOE-
MBNT.
tyrannical exercise of authority, which, we are bound to note,
is recorded by no other pen1. Pressure, it would seem, had
been used to induce the Senate to confer a degree upon a
candidate who is described as 'such a man as the whole
university in their consciences judged unworthy of it,' and
'because wee would not vote as they would have us, one
Master Danes, formerly a member of that House which he
then so abused, adding perjury to his former sinnes, came in
a terrible manner (contrary to his oath formerly taken to his
mother the University) and flatly denied the vice-chancellor
leave to dissolve the congregation, unlesse he would first
promise that the matter should be voted as they required.
Whereupon sundry members of that Senate, being observed
to make use of that statute-liberty and freedom which was
essentiall to that assemblie, were forthwith seized on and
imprisoned by the Committee in no better lodgings than
the common court of guard2.'
Under such auspices and with grounds of offence thus
multiplied, the process of ejection amounted almost to a
revolution. Walker eagerly records how 'five masters were
ejected in one day and sixty-five fellows in another,' while he
estimates the total of Heads and fellows expelled by Man-
chester as nearly 200, 'besides scholars, exhibitioners, etc.
which probably might be as many more3.' To these vague
estimates, the researches of Cooper long ago supplied a
certain corrective, while his account has been in turn modi-
fied by the investigations of the historians of their respective
colleges. Generally speaking, however, the important dis-
tinction between those who were expelled (mostly in the
years 1644 and 1645) on their refusal to subscribe the
Covenant, and those who were ejected five years later, on
their refusal of the Engagement, has not been sufficiently
observed, — although, inasmuch as the former was mainly a
religious, the latter, a political, test, they dealt with convic-
1 Not even by Peter Barwick ;
John, however, it is to be noted, had
left Cambridge just before. See Life,
p. 45 n.
2 Querela, p. 10.
3 Sufferings of the Clergy, etc.,
pt. i 114 ; Heywood and Wright,
Cambridge University Trans, n 501.
CAMBRIDGE AND THE COVENANT. 279
tions materially differing in character1. The features which
contributed to render the Covenant peculiarly obnoxious to
both the English universities have also to be borne in mind,
if we would adequately estimate the motives which actuated
their stubborn resistance. As tendered at Oxford and at
Cambridge, it called for the renunciation, not merely of The taking of
1 •'the Covenant
episcopacy, but of all those grades of ecclesiastical office and J
dignity which culminated in the bishopric2, and thus ran
directly counter to the requirements of that notable Etcetera
oath3 which had been formally imposed on the resident
members of the university only four years before. The great
majority of the residents in 1644, consequently, found them-
selves summoned to commit, what they could only regard as
a deliberate act of perjury; and it can hardly surprise us to
find that such a demand was met, in most cases, either by
evasion or by a direct refusal. In anticipation, probably, of
the ordeal to which they were to be subjected, a large num-
ber of the fellows of colleges had already quitted Cambridge.
Manchester now summoned them to return ; and, on their
failing to do so, their non-compliance w/is construed into a
1 As an illustration of this im- only to 'the reformation of religion
portant distinction, I may cite the in the Church of England according
fact that a fellow, installed as sue- to the Word of God, and the example
cessor to one who refused the Cove- of the best reformed churches'; and
nant, was, in not a few instances, the Westminster Assembly ' evidently
himself afterwards ejected for de- intended to reserve to itself perfect
clining to comply with the later test. freedom as to the form of church
At Peterhouse, for example, we find government which was to take the
Howard Becher (intruded June 1644), place of the old Episcopacy.' Ibid.,
Gabriel Major and James Ball (both Hist, of the Civil War, i 273.
intr. 164*), were all three ejected 2 'That we shall in like manner,
as refusers of the Engagement. In without respect of persons, endeavour
drawing this distinction I may further the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy,
observe that it in no way contravenes (that is Church Government by Arch-
the observation of Gardiner, that to bishops, Bishops, their Chancellours
Charles, ' the Scottish Covenant was and Commissaries, Deans, Deans and
much more than an assertion of Chapters, Archdeacons, and all other
Puritanism ' ; and, ' by its appeal Ecclesiasticall Officers depending on
from himself to Parliament and As- that Hierarchy),1 etc. See Reasons
sembly, was in his eyes something very of the present judgement of the Uni-
like a declaration of republicanism.' versity of Oxford. Concerning The
He had even been heard to declare Solemn Leagtie and Covenant. The
that all who took the oath ' would Negative Oath. The Ordinances con-
be glad of his ruin.' Hist, of England, cerning Discipline and Worship. Ap-
vm 338; Hist, of the Civil War, proved by generall consent in a full
i 235. As tendered in England and Convocation, 1 Jun. 1647. And Pre-
at Cambridge, however, the Solemn sented to Consideration, A 2 v. 1647.
League and Covenant required assent 3 See mpra, p. 144, n. 3.
280 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. refusal of the test. In this there was no great injustice ; for,
as the evidence shews, ample notice was given; and it is
difficult not to infer that, with but few exceptions, their
eventual return was purposely delayed. Of those who had
remained in residence, the majority appear to have resolved
to follow the example set by their respective college heads ;
and the refusal of the Covenant was followed by the ejection
of the greater number and the confiscation of their property.
official With respect to this latter process we have interesting docu-
REPORT OF
THE SBQDBS- mentarv evidence in a small quarto volume preserved in the
TRATIONS : • •*
i Mar. i64£. Record Office1. It is dated March 1, 164f, and represents
the official Report of the whole process of confiscation, from
January the first, 1645, to Lady Day 1646. Under each
college there is given a brief schedule of the contents of the
room or rooms of each ejected occupant, — his books and his
furniture, together with their estimated values, as appraised
by appointed agents, whose names are duly appended. It is
The owners however clear that the owners were not only permitted to
ofbooks . J J .
re10uTchas°e repurchase their property at the prices thus set upon it, but
estimated116'1 that a large proportion of them actually did so, either from
their private resources or with the assistance of friends. The
confiscation was, consequently, in not a few cases, reduced
practically to the infliction of a fine, — a feature which makes
it difficult not to demur to the wrathful language of the
Querela, when it asks whether ' if the Goths and Vandals, or
even the Turks themselves, had overrun this nation they
would more inhumanely have abused a flourishing uni-
versity ? '
But even with these mitigating features, the amount of
confiscation carried into effect must have come as an almost
irretrievable calamity to scholars whose scanty incomes had
PBT»- been largely devoted to the acquisition of a library. The
Expulsion of master of Peterhouse, who, according to Walker, was 'the
Dr Cosin. '
13 Mar. 164}. Very first victim,' suffered a peculiarly trying loss. Cosin's love
1 State Papers (Dom.) Charles the completed ; it consequently by no
First, Vol. DXL, pt. iii. This Eeport means implies that a certain pro-
was probably sent in when the se- portion, probably by far the larger,
questrations following upon the re- had not been carried out some time
jection of the Covenant were finally before 1647.
EXPULSIONS AND SEQUESTRATIONS. 281
of books, — fostered as it had been by his tenure of the office CHAP, in.
of librarian to Overall, after the promotion of the latter to
the see of Coventry, and signalized as it subsequently became
by the library at Durham which bears his name, — had re-
sulted in the formation of a collection which the sequestrators
valued at no less than £247. 10s., or more than seven times
the amount of Thorndike's collection which stands fourth in
value in the list1. At the first alarm, he would appear to .Hii>
ineffectual
have stowed away these treasures in the recesses of his f° c^ncea'
college ; but the secret of their whereabouts was soon be- !ibra?yuable
trayed, and the sequestrators thereupon caused them to be
' carried out of Peterhouse2.' The entire collection was thus
threatened with irrevocable dispersion, when Lazarus Sea-
man's ingenuity suggested a means of recovery. If some
might hesitate to censure his predecessor's profuse expendi-
ture on his private library, there could be no question, in
Seaman's mind, as to the scandalous extravagance, — involving
an outlay of considerably more than £500, — which had been
going on in connexion with the new chapel3. The incoming
authorities had already been gloomily pondering over the
record, in Cosin's own handwriting, which exhibited the
reckless outlay on both the exterior and the interior of the
consecrated structure, — 'the organs4, the painted window, the
Angells, the cherubim's heads, and the four statues of the
Evangelists,' which along with ' other gaudies gone and lost,'
had been swept away on the occasion of Dowsing's visit !
It now occurred to Seaman, that the ends of justice would seaman
11111 > i • i i -i succeeds in
be best consulted by the late masters library being made effecting its
• f ° transference
over to the college from which he had been ejected. The {?0jihCe
former owner would thus be mulcted in a manner which
1 ' It. a parcell of bookes of Mr series of memoranda labelled ' Pas-
Thorndike of Trin. Coll. prized by sages concerning Dr Cosin's Library,'
(Willm Crane ,,00 4. n > TV, drawn up at the time and preserved
JAnth. Nicholson in the College Treasury, are printed
libraries which stand second and in full.
third in the valuations, are that of 3 See Ibid. Append, v (pp. 207-
Edmund Lincoln of Jesus (£80) and 10). 'The Building of the Chapel.'
that of Nicholas Hall of Emmanuel Among those who ' donaria sua pi£
(£40). State Papers (Dom.) Charles contulerunt,' Cosin himself appears
the First, DXL, pt. iii, pp. 27, 23 as a donor of £300.
and 34. 4 The 'organum pneumaticum,'
2 Walker (Dr), Peterhouse, Ap- without its case, had cost £140.
pendix vn (pp. 213-218), where a Ibid. p. 209.
282
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
Order given
by the
Committee of
Sequestra-
tion*.
The informer
as to the
place of
concealment
to be
rewarded.
Election of
LAZARUS
SEAMAN as
Master :
11 April 1644.
Gradual
ejection of
the Fellows :
Apr. 1644—
Apr. 1645.
JOSEPH
BEAUMONT:
6. 1616.
d. 1699.
RICHARD
CRASHAW :
6. 1631.
rf. 1649.
would be to him the severest punishment1, while the society
itself would be, in no slight measure, compensated for the
squandering of its resources. Representations to this effect,
signed by Seaman and the fellows, were, accordingly, laid
before the Lords; and supported, as they appear to have
been, by the recommendation of Manchester, met with
prompt and effective response, — an order to the Committee
of Sequestrations shortly after arriving, wherein it was di-
rected that ' the library of Dr Cosens may be employed and
annexed to the said Peterhouse2.' Nor was it forgotten to
suggest ' that right bee done unto the scholer whoe enformed
where the bookes were... and that he have his allowance made
unto him3.'
It was on the thirteenth of March that Cosin was ex-
pelled, but Lazarus Seaman was not installed until the
following April. In the interval, order had been given for
the ejection of five recalcitrant fellows, — John Tolly, Joseph
Beaumont (the future master), Richard Crashaw, Holder,
Pennyman, and also of a bye fellow, Christopher Comyn'f;
the ejections of Tyrringham and Blakiston, a bachelor, fol-
lowed in the ensuing June, — those of Patrick Maxwell,
Synserfef, Collettf, Sandys f, Aucherf and Warref, on the
1 In illustration of this, I venture
to quote the language of George
Vernon, the biographer of Peter
Heylyn, when the latter, on joining
the king at Oxford in 1642, was
punished by the sequestration of his
library, along with his other goods,
all of which lay unprotected at his
' parsonage-house ' at Alresford : ' the
plunder of which he took deeply to
heart, and ever accounted it the
greatest of his losses : for nothing
is dearer to a good scholar than
books, that to part with them goes
as much against his nature and
genius as to lose his life; for he
spendeth his days wholly in them,
and thinketh that a horrible night
of ignorance, worse than Egyptian
darkness, would overshadow the
world without their learning. Omnia
jacerent in tenebris, saith Cicero,
nisi litterarum lumen accederet.' Life
of Heylyn by Vernon (ed. 1682),
pp. 125-6; Cicero, Pro Archia, vi
14; Life of Dr Peter Heylyn by
J. C. Eobertson, prefixed to Heylyn's
Ecclesia Restaurata, i cxli.
2 Lords' Journals, vn 94 ; Cooper,
Annals, nr 375.
3 Walker, u. s. p. 217. ' Cosin's
Library,' says Dr Walker, 'came back
to Peterhouse. But it is probable
that there was some leakage. Cosin
himself, at a later time, reckoned his
books in Peterhouse at 1,100. A
MS. list in the Treasury, endorsed
"Dr Cosin's Library," records 814
volumes, a number being marked as
missing.' Ibid. p. 218. Dr Walker
hints, darkly (p. 64, n. 1), at the illicit
processes by which certain volumes
found shelter in the libraries of
St John's and Magdalene !
t Names thus distinguished are
those of fellows on the ' Parke ' or
' Perne ' or Ramsey foundations and
who, as such, had no votes. MS.
note by Dr Walker.
EXPULSIONS AND SEQUESTRATIONS. 283
third of the following January, — those of Isaac Barrow (the ,CHAP. m.
uncle of the master of Trinity of the same name), John
Bargrave and John Wilson, in the course of the same month.
In the following February, the statutory authority of the
bishop of Ely, as visitor, was abolished by the promulgation
of an order for the election and admission of fellows 'without
presenting any names to the Bishop1.' On the first of the
ensuing April, Christopher Bankes was ejected, and order
was at the same time given that the names of the ejected
should be 'cut out' in the butteries2. Bankes's place was
filled by John Knightbridge, a newly arrived bachelor from Election of
Wadham College, Oxford, afterwards the founder of the KNIGHT-
B RIDGE I
Knightbridge professorship of moral philosophy.
The foregoing details of the results which followed upon
the tendering of the Covenant at our most ancient college,
may be looked upon as exemplary of its most marked effects
throughout the university, followed, as it was, by the expul-
sion of all the fellows save one. That solitary exception was
Dr Adam Francius, a refugee from Silesia in those appalling Dr
days which preceded the Peace of Prague. Since his election expulsion.
to his fellowship in 1628, the unhappy exile had been earning
a livelihood by practising as a physician in Cambridge ; but
he appears to have betrayed a want of sympathy with the
Anglican party which soon drew upon him the suspicions of
Laud, by whom, in 1639, he had been denounced to the vice-
chancellor as a 'desperate Socinian,' who was seeking 'in a
sly manner, to pervert the younger sort3.' The archbishop's
hostility, however, now stood Dr Francius in good stead,
1. 'Seaman's Journal' (1645-1647), the bottom of the list, like those
MS. in Peterhouse Treasury. Mat- elected in the ordinary way, but
thew Wren, the bishop of Ely, was came in at once as seniors, being
at this time undergoing his second sometimes treated simply as sub-
imprisonment in the Tower, and, but stitutes for those ejected.' Bio-
tor this Order, might have continued graphical Hist, of Gonville and
to assert a certain authority as Visitor Caius College, m 89. I have met
of the College, as, in fact, he con- with no evidence to shew that this
tinued to do in connexion with his does not hold good with respect to
diocese. See D. N. B. Lxm 95. the other colleges generally.
2 In pursuance of the general 3 Laud's Remains, n 175, 176 ;
instructions given by Manchester, Walker (Dr), Peterliouse, p. 109.
8 April 1644. See Cooper, Annals, Under Dr Seaman, Francius became
m 374. Dr Venn observes, in con- deputy-bursar, but managed also to
nexion with Caius College, that 'the keep up a correspondence with Cosin.
intruded fellows were not placed at
284
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
ISAAC
BAKROW :
b. 1614.
d. 1680.
Crashaw's
life at
Pembroke.
expulsions came thick and fast around him. Among
them, the most noteworthy are those of Isaac Barrow (after-
wards bishop of St Asaph) and the two poets, Joseph Beau-
mont and Richard Crashaw, of whom the former lived to
become master of Peterhouse and regius professor of divinity,
the latter, to enjoy in his own day a popularity, as remark-
able, perhaps, as his real merits, but almost as brief as his
own career. Barrow, however, had already fled, along with
Peter Gunning of Clare, to New College, Oxford, where he
was befriended by Dr Pink, the Warden, who appointed him
chaplain of that society1. Crashaw, although he inherited
the literary tastes of his father (the puritan poet of St John's),
had already diverged widely from the paternal example in
matters of religious belief. William Crashaw, the father,
had been the follower and executor of William Perkins, and
had edited some of his works2 ; Richard, the son, already
stood identified with the opposite party. As an under-
graduate at Pembroke, he had been distinguished by his
love of art, his deeply devotional spirit, and not less by his
fine poetic taste, fashioned mainly on classic models but also
perceptibly influenced by that sensuous spirit which cha-
racterized the writings of certain contemporary authors (much
studied by English scholars at this time) in both Italian and
Spanish literature3. While still at Pembroke, he had ofbtimes
crossed the street to gaze on the ornate splendour with which
1 See Life of Rev. John Barwick
(London, 1724), pp. 34, 35 n., where
Gunning's Journal is quoted : ' I went
with my friend Mr Isaac Barrow to
Oxford where I continued to the
year 1646.' ' The sojourn of these two
men ' [i.e. Gunning and Barrow] 'in
the College must have been brief, as
their names do not occur in the
' ' Visitors' Register. ' ' ' Rashdall, New
College, p. 169. In referring to Isaac
Barrow, Mr Rashdall considers it
' unfortunate ' that the society ' can
claim only so slight a connexion with
perhaps the greatest man, who was
ever on the foundation of New Col-
lege ' (ib.). Without venturing to call
in question Barrow's claims to be
thus estimated on a comparison with
the long array of names that adorn
the annals of the college of William
of Wykeham, I would observe that
this was not the 'eminent mathe-
matician' (as Mr Eashdall supposes),
but his uncle.
2 Cooper, Athenae Cantab, n 340.
3 See the article in the D. N. B.
where Mr S. L. Lee also takes occa-
sion to point out the influence of
Crashaw's genius on Milton, Pope
and Coleridge. The late Dr Garnett,
in his criticism of Marini, says: 'In
some respects he might be compared
to the Cowleys and Crashaws of
Charles the First's time; but he is
physical, while they are metaphysical ;
his conceits are less far-fetched and
ingenious than theirs.' Hist, of
Italian Literature, p. 275.
EXPULSIONS AND SEQUESTRATIONS. 285
the zeal of Matthew Wren had adorned the interior of Little ,CHAP. in.
St Mary's, and there to derive in prayer and meditation a loftier
inspiration for his muse l. On his election to a fellowship at ms career at
Peterhouse in 1637, he found no less delight in contemplating and
1 .r & afterwards.
the gorgeousness of the new chapel, a work which his muse
had been employed to urge on with pathetic suasiveness2.
His expulsion now drove him, along with four of the other
fellows, to take refuge in communion with Rome. He re-
paired, in the first instance, to London, but ever haunted, it
would seem, by the memory of those scenes of havoc and
desecration which he had left behind ; and in his Steps to the His .
description
Temple, published in the following year, gave utterance to £frough?byc
an impassioned prayer that the time might yet return, when Dowsing-
God's services no longer shall put on
A sluttishness for pure religion :
No longer shall our churches' frighted stones
Lie scattered like the burnt and martyr'd bones
Of dead devotion, nor faint marbles weep
In their sad mines, nor religion keep
A melancholy mansion in those cold
Urns. Like God's sanctuaries they lookt of old ;
Now seem they temples consecrate to none,
Or to a new God, — Desolation3.
1 See Preface to the Steps to the authorities in building a chapel;
Temple (eA. 1646). The editor, whom among these are the inconveniences
Mr Lee conjectures to have been arising from the use of the neigh-
Thomas Car, gave the collection its bouring church ; the irksomeness of
name, ' Reader, we stile his Sacred being obliged to go beyond the college
Poems, Stepps to the Temple, and precincts in winter before sunrise,
aptly, for in the Temple of God, and after sunset in the evening ; and
under His wing, he led his life in finally, the facilities afforded, under
St Maries Church neere St Peter's such conditions, to the more dis-
Colledge.' A 4 v., ed. A. R. Waller orderly members of the college (male
(Camb. 1904), p. 68. feriatis tenebrionibus) of extending
2 ' Nuper extructum et conse- their rambles through the town
cratum Martii 17 Anno D. 1632.' during the rest of the evening. See
Peterhouse Register (1646-1719). Cf. Smith (J. J.), Cambridge Portfolio,
Willis and Clark, i 31, 40-45. ' Co- n 486-7, who also notes that the use
sin,' says the latter authority, 'intro- to which Peterhouse had put the
duced a gorgeous ritual into the Church of St Mary-the-Less was not
chapel, together with the use of without precedent, the students of
incense.' A full account of the cere- Gonville Hall having formerly, in
mony of consecration is preserved like manner, been accustomed to
in a MS. in Caius College Library pay their devotions at St Michael's
(copied in Baker MS. v 245-248). Church. So again the chancel of
On this interesting occasion, the St Benet's once served as a chapel
bishop of Ely (as Visitor) was pre- to Corpus Christi. See Masters,
sented by the Master (Dr Wren) with p. 55.
a formal statement of the reasons 3 See the lines, ' On a Treatise of
which had weighed with the college Charity,' in Steps to the Temple
286
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
His death
at Loretto.
John Tolly.
Ejections at
CLARE
HALL:
Dr Paske.
Barnabas
Oley.
We hear of him next as alone and penniless in Paris, —
where he was only saved from actual starvation by the gene-
rosity of his old Cambridge friend, Abraham Cowley, — and,
finally, as dying a sub-canon of the church of ' Our Lady at
Loretto.'
Among the other fellows of Peterhouse expelled at this
time, John Tolly appears, in the schedule above referred to,
as the owner of furniture valued at five pounds, the items of
which afford a glimpse into the economy of a fellow's rooms
in those days1.
The society which had nourished so remarkably under
the auspices of Barnabas Oley, now sustained a serious blow
through the ejection of its master, Dr Paske; and seven of
the fellows, Oley, Peter Gunning, George Carter, John Hick-
man, John Heaver, Edward Byng and Thomas Fabian, shared
his fate2. Oley himself, forfeiting beyond redemption the
furniture of his ' study and bedroom,' succeeded in evading
the extreme penalties which might have followed upon his
notorious services as a royalist. But for the next seven
years, the accomplished scholar and famous college tutor
was a wanderer, now in London and now in the northern
counties, often at hard shifts for a livelihood, and fain, at
times, to attire himself in 'a cloak and grey clothes' in order
to disguise even his sacred profession. But in the mean time,
a not less able and courageous royalist, his former pupil,
Gunning, well supplied his place. The latter had found a
(ed. 1646), p. 87; ed. A. K. Waller
(Camb. 1904), pp. 111-2.
1 ' Item Mr Tollyes bookes in his
Study, ffolios twenty and odd, three
octavos,
' One table,
' One carpett,
'One chare.
'In the chamber he kept in,
' One table,
' The hangings,
' Two chaires,
' One fire shovell and tongs.
' In a little chamber,
' One trunke with one gowne and
foure other clothes,
' One candlestick.
'For his bed chamber,
'One bedsted (Ms),
' One quilt,
' One boulster,
' One blankett, one coverlid,
' Two stooles,
' A chamber pott. '
State Papers (Dam.) Charles I,
Vol. DXL, pt. iii. Tolly was ejected
' for not being resident when re-
quired.' Walker (Dr), Peterhouse,
p. 109.
2 '...from being Fellows of Clare
Hall, within the said College, and
not returning to the places of ther
several residence there, upon due
summons given to that purpose, and
for severall other misdemeanors by
them.' Baker MS. XLH 461.
EXPULSIONS AND SEQUESTRATIONS. 287
new sphere of activity in the Oxford to which he had betaken CHAP,
himself, and where he had been incorporated M.A. soon after <j"BHEISO:
his arrival. He had by this time become especially obnoxious £ ^
to the parliamentary party, as one who had not only refused
the Covenant but had actually preached against it, — first,
from the university pulpit, and subsequently at Tunbridge,
where, when delivering a like discourse, he had seized the
opportunity to call upon his congregation to contribute to
the aid of the royalist forces, — an act of daring which had
involved him in a short term of imprisonment1. To Gunning
we may partly attribute it, that the voices which had been
silenced at Cambridge now succeeded in making themselves
heard at the sister university, which, sheltered for the time
by the royal occupation, was destined, with the Surrender in
1646, to undergo the same ordeal as that which was then
virtually at an end on the banks of the Cam. Shortly before The royalist
, i ,1 i • • i • -, appeal of the
Gunninp- s departure, the royalist party in the Associated Associated
r J \ J Counties to
Counties, — hoping to stem the tide already surging so
strongly around them, — had addressed to the Heads and
fellows of each college of the university an urgent ' Remon-
strance.' ' The eyes of the whole land are now fixed upon
you,' said the appeal, 'wee conjure you to make a timely
and generall Declaration of your unanimous dissent from
the taking of this Oath, so derogatory to the Honour of
God, so destructive to the peace of the Church, and so
prejudiciall, in the consequence, to His Majesties just
rights and power2 ' ; while a request was preferred ' that
this our "Remonstrance" be read in your Chappel, and (so
far as without danger it may) imparted to the rest of the
University.' This appeal was not destined to be without consequent
appearance of
effect. No less than seven well-known members of the *$,$£$?"
academic body3 now came forward to champion the cause of 'oifo'rcuefl
1 Wood's account excites our com- moved a neighbouring congregation
miseration: ' And being occasionally to by two sermons. ' Athenae, n 763.
about that time in Kent (upon a 2 Printed after title of the Certain
short visit to his mother lately then Disquisitions.
a widow) he was hunted about and 3 ' They who joined in the writing
forced to lye in woods, and at length of this paper, besides Mr Barwick
was imprison'd for having assisted and Mr William Lacy of St Johns
some forces, belonging to the King at College, were Mr Isaac Barrow of
Tonbridge, with the charity he had Peterhouse, Mr Seth Ward of Sidney
288
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. the Church, by contributing to the compilation of another
manifesto1, wherein each writer took his assigned part in
endeavouring to bring home to the understanding and con-
science of every educated Englishman the arguments which
served to establish some special main point, and thus make
it clear that the repudiation of the Covenant was an impera-
The certain tive duty. According to Anthony Wood, Gunning had
Disquisitions • •*• • •
arod™cuodnge already, in hig above-mentioned discourse from the pulpit
rfHedrbyably of St Mary's, urged the university to authorize the publica-
oxford!gat tion of the manuscript2 ; but to such publication the sanction
of the vice-chancellor was indispensable, and Dr Brownrig,
who had by this time succeeded Dr Beale, interposed his
veto3. The Cambridge press was consequently out of ques-
tion, and there was not the slightest hope that such a
College, Mr Edmund Baldero and
Mr William Quarles of Pembroke
Hall, and that incomparable disputant
against the schismatics, Mr Peter
Gunning of Clare Hall, each of whom
undertook his particular share of
this wicked Covenant to confute;
and bringing his part of the work to
Mr Gunning's chamber, there they
all conferred and agreed upon the
whole' — Life of Barwick, p. 40;
Lichfield's Postscript clearly indi-
cates that the book was written at
Cambridge : ' I cannot but admonish
thee this one thing, viz. That I have
gone exactly according to the copy,
even in those phrases ivhich resemble
the genius of the place where it was
composed more than where it is pub-
lished, only the faults which have
escaped, I desire may be imputed to
me and those many transcribers
through whose hands it passed before
it could come to mine.' 'Postscript
to the Header.'
1 The complete title is as follows :
Certain Disquisitions and Considera-
tions representing to the Conscience
the unlawfulness of the Oath, en-
tituled, A Solemn League and Cove-
nant for Reformation etc. As also
the insufficiency of the Arguments
used in the Exhortation for taking the
said Covenant. Published by Com-
mand. Oxford, Printed by Leonard
Lichfield Printer to the University.
1644. Mr Madan, in his List of the
Thomason Tracts, gives 'April 17'
as the exact date of publication.
Overton in his ' John Barwick '
(D. N. B.) implies that the book
-was printed before Bar wick left Cam-
bridge, but Mr Jenkinson has no
hesitation in pronouncing that it
is not a production of the Cambridge
press, while Mr Madan is equally
convinced that it was not printed at
Oxford.
2 — ' he vehemently and convinc-
ingly urged the University to publish
a formal Declaration against the
rebellious League.' Wood, Athenae
Oxon. ii 764. This rests on Gun-
ning's own statement : ' I was ex-
pelled the University of Cambridge
for preaching a sermon in St Mary's
against the Covenant, as well as for
the refusing the Covenant.' See Life
of Dr John Barwick, pp. 33-35.
3 The book, to quote the account
of Dr Humfrey Gower (forty years
afterwards), 'could not be... published
at Cambridge, because one man, who
alone could hinder it, would not
permit it to be done. But I have
not only charity enough to hope,
but sufficient reason to believe, that
he soon repented of the opposition
he had made and became quite of
another mind. ' A Discourse preached
in the Cathedral at Ely, Sept. 1684,
p. 17 [a funeral eulogy on Gunning].
EXPULSIONS AND SEQUESTRATIONS. 289
volume would be allowed to see the light by the censor of VCHAP-
the press in London. On the 15th of the preceding October,
the ten peers who remained at Westminster, and sat in the
Assembly, had all taken the Covenant1; while Charles, on
the other hand, had just been compelled to raise the siege
of Gloucester, and doubts might reasonably be entertained
as to how long he would be able to hold Oxford. It was
resolved accordingly to print the volume in London ; and to
evade the licenser by publishing it at Oxford. It so happened
that a trustworthy agent was at this time resident in the
capital, in the person of John Barwick, who, having quitted
Cambridge towards the close of the year 1643, was ' lying
conceal'd,' to quote the expression of his biographer, ' in the
great city, as in a great wood,' — having ' the management of
the Kings affairs ' and carrying on 'a private correspondence
between London and Oxford.' Aided by Royston the book-
seller, Barwick so far succeeded as to get the Disquisitions
through the press, and the volume, with its Oxford imprint,
was only awaiting the binder, when the parliamentary spies
became apprised of what was going on, and the greater part
of the impression was suddenly seized and burnt2.
The society which had educated Matthew Wren and T.he
» ejections at
Richard Crashaw, and had recently condoled with the former co
in his imprisonment3, was not likely to find much mercy at
the hands of the Committee, and eventually suffered almost
as severely as Peterhouse. The master, Dr Laney, described £jj
by Prynne as ' one of Laud's creatures to prosecute his
designs in the university of Cambridge4,' had already fled.
' I find,' says Baker, in a letter to a correspondent at Pem-
broke, ' he was a friend or acquaintance of Dr Cheyney Row
of Trinity College, a bold and brave man, and so must your
doctor have been, if he were like his companion5,' and all
1 Gardiner, Great Civil War, 1 287. Master (Attwood, n 31) appears to
2 Life of Barwick (u. s.), pp. 33- have been presented to Wren on
41; 45-47. his liberation from the Tower.]
* 'Memineris Eidleium, Brad- 4 See Canterburie'sDoome,ff. 177,
fordium, utrumque Pembrochia- 359.
num.' 'Societas Pembrochiana ' 6 Register of Masters in Pembroke
' pridie Nonas Maii 1642.' [This Coll. MSS. Baker cites the Nalson
Address from the fellows to their MSS. as his authority.
M. III. 19
290
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. IIL
Walter Bal-
canquhall :
b. 1586 (?).
d. 1645.
His tomb at
Chirk.
MARK
FRANK :
b. 1613.
d. 1664.
Master of
the College
1(562-4.
ROBEET
MAPLETOFT :
6. 1609.
d. 1677.
Master of
the College
1664-77.
that we know of Laney tends to favour the historian's infer-
ence. It is certain, at least, that the master's expulsion was
closely followed by that of nearly all the fellows, while the
two exceptions, — Edward Sterne1 and Walter Balcanquhall, —
obtained only a brief respite. Balcanquhall, after a few
months, was also driven forth, and fled to Oxford. He had
already been ejected from the mastership of the Savoy, and
being, in the language of Walker, still ' shifted from place to
place,' fled next to Wales (probably to join the royalist army),
and at length found shelter, in the depth of winter, within
the walls of Chirk Castle in Denbighshire2. It was there
that, worn out by fatigue and exposure, he succumbed to his
sufferings on Christmas Day, 1645. Sir Thomas Myddelton,
the parliamentary general in North Wales, a man of humane
and tolerant nature, who knew his worth and pitied his fate,
long afterwards erected in the church at Chirk a handsome
monument to his memory, for which, at his request, John
Pearson, then master of Trinity, composed the touching
epitaph thereon inscribed3. Among the other expelled fel-
lows, it is to be noted that Mark Frank and Robert Mapletofb
each, in turn, succeeded to the mastership of the college after
the Restoration. The former, at this time, must have seemed
already doomed, owing to a sermon preached at Paul's Cross
three years before, wherein he had held up the Rechabites
to admiration as examples of that loyal obedience incumbent
on all subjects, while he had denounced in trenchant terms
the attitude already assumed by many alike towards the
king and the clergy4. As regarded Mapletofb, a former sizar
of Queens' College, it might have seemed sufficient that he
had been Wren's chaplain, as he continued throughout life
to be his devoted adherent. Against him, as against Frank,
1 '...hie solus, praeter Magr Bal-
canqual (eum, si tanti quidem erit,
addas), non ejicitur Ann. 1644.'
Attwood, n 70.
2 Charles had quitted the castle
on Sept. 23. Gardiner, Civil War,
n323.
3 Pearson-Churton, i cxxxiii.
4 'But if you will return,... and
submit to your ancient Fathers, your
King and Church, your magistrates
and clergy, — observe and keep, and
do, your ancient laws and customs,
I dare warrant you, what God pro-
mises to the Eechabites, he shall
perform to you.' Frank's Sermons
(in Library of Anglo- Catholic Theo-
logy), n 443. Charles was so well
pleased with the sermon that he gave
orders that it should be printed.
EXPULSIONS AND SEQUESTRATIONS. 291
special allegations were made, but these having broken down1, CHAP. in.
he was ejected simply as a refuser of the Covenant. Edmund EDMUND
Boldero, if we may credit the Querela (p. 25), was invited by £ ^|-
Manchester to make a statement of the grounds of his •KcoUeg*
refusal ; but, on his compliance, was forthwith declared con- 1&
victed out of his own mouth, and ' without further hearing
committed to prison, where he continued a long time at
excessive charges.' Of the remaining fellows, there were Fortunes of
five, — John Kandolph, Thomas Weedon, Roarer Ashton, John ejected6'
Fellows.
Keene, and Anthony Bokenham, — who lived to be reinstalled
at the Restoration; but John Heath and Henry May died
before 1660 ; Thomas Lenthal (formerly of Christ's College)
defected to Rome ; while of John Vaughan, George Debden,
William Quarles, and John Groot, no further record appears
to exist2. Of the others, if such there were, Attwood, the
chronicler of Pembroke, himself makes no mention. We only
know that when Richard Vines, at the instance of the Com- installation
of RICHARD
mittee, reluctantly accepted the mastership, he found it in
a very depressed condition, the buildings dilapidated, the M
scholars mostly fled3. Among those who remained, however,
there was a commencing bachelor, one William Moses, who WILLIAM
had recently carried off one of the seven Greek scholarships *• was.'
J r d. 1688.
founded in the college by Thomas Watts4, and had already
won the esteem of the society by his marked ability and
studious disposition ; while he was still further recommended F(
to his Puritan seniors by his serious religious views, which
1 '...I have heard him say that ment, if correct, is of value as
there were several frivolous Articles indicating that the Committee pre-
objected against him, such as his ferred that the question of ejection
permitting Mr Tho. Wren (ye Bp's should not appear to turn exclusively
son) to were Prince Eupert's colors on the acceptance or rejection of the
etc. But there was one Article that Covenant.
had weight in it if true, but being 8 Pembroke Coll. Eegisters: Att-
notoriously false he denied it, and wood, n 58-75.
desired to see, or know his Accuser, 3 Clarke, Lives, i 48.
whom the Parliament Commissioners 4 Thomas Watts of Christ's Col-
would not produce, but asked him lege, who died dean of Booking in
if he had, or would take ye Covenant, 1577. ' He conveyed estates at
which he refusing, they said it was Ashwell Hertfordshire and Sawston
enough, and so cast him out.' Letter Cambridgeshire to Pembroke Hall
of H. Mapletoft of Huntingdon, for the endowment of seven Greek
dated May 19th, 1709, to his Cousin, scholarships in that college.' Cooper,
' Mr John Mapletoft, Fellow of Pern- Athenae, i 364-5.
broke Hall.' Attwood, n. Thisstate-
19—2
292
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
The
Ejections
at CAIDS
COLLEGE :
Batchcroft
retains his
post
Additional
grounds for
ejection.
dated back to the time when, as a schoolboy at Christ's
Hospital, he had pondered over the pages of that notable
treatise, the Institutes of Bucamis1. One of the new master's
first acts was to recommend Moses to the Committee for
institution to a fellowship2.
At Caius College, Dr Batchcroft succeeded for a time in
evading expulsion. His unostentatious but real services as
an administrator, during the eighteen years that had elapsed
since his election, had fully justified the unanimity with
which the fellows had maintained their decision against the
adverse influences of Court3; and, according to Dr Venn, 'he
had achieved the rather rare distinction of never being in-
volved in anything approaching to a quarrel with the fellows
of the College4.' The number of fellows here ejected as
absentees or actual refusers of the Covenant, does not appear
to have been more than eight or nine; but it is evident
that, as investigations went on, Manchester gradually ar-
rived at the conclusion that formal compliance, as regarded
the Covenant, ought not to be allowed to shield those who
were known sympathisers with the former regime. In June,
accordingly, a further requisition was made, for 'the names
of all such in your Colledge as have practized bowinge at
the name of Jesus, adoration towards the East, or any ceri-
mony in divine service not warranted by lawe5/ and Batch-
croft was at the same time called upon to furnish a list of all
the fellows. After the lapse of a month, he complied with
1 The Institutiones Theologicae,
seuLocorum Communium Christianae
Religionis... Analysis, in the form of
question and answer, by William
Bucanus, Professor of Theology at
Lausanne (Genevae, 1617). A manual
designed to supply the religious en-
quirer with authoritative solutions
of every difficulty that might present
itself to the mind engaged on the study
of Eevealed Truth ; the answers being
taken mainly from Holy Writ itself,
with occasional references to certain
' praestantissimi theologi.' E.g. Cur
Deus non citius condidit Mundum?
Quid faciebat antequam hunc Mun-
dumfaceret? p. 59.
2 D.N.B., Calamy's Account (with
Thomas Baker's MS. notes), n 83.
3 See supra, p. 32.
4 Venn, in 86. Batchcroft's goods,
in his chambers, had however already
been valued and were redeemed by
himself, the amount being only £20.
Dr Venn has printed the inventory,
Annals, ni 90. Walker states that
Batchcroft had 'presented a cer-
tificate from leading Parliamen-
tarians testifying to his affection to
Parliament, — to his refusal to send
any College plate to the King, — and
to his contributing large sums of
money to the Parliament.' Suffer-
ings, etc., n 145.
5 Venn, in 88.
EXPULSIONS AND SEQUESTRATIONS. 293
the demand ; and, according to his statement, eight fellows VCHAP. HL
had, by that time, been ejected, ten were absent, and eight
still retained their places1. Among those ejected at this
time, and reinstated at the Restoration was Richard Watson, Richard
Watson:
who had already been deprived of his mastership of the *• ]JJ|-
Perse School in 1642. He had rendered himself especially
obnoxious to the Presbyterian party, by a virulent discourse
on Schism, delivered from the pulpit of Great St Mary's;
and now ' to avoid their barbarities,' fled to Paris, where his
controversial spirit found fresh employment in disputations
with the Romanists concerning the visibility of their Church2.
William Moore, now a senior fellow, succeeded like the waiiam
Moore:
master, in postponing for a time his eventual retirement, *• H®O-
shielded by his reputation as a scholar and already distin-
guished by those sterling services to learning which after-
wards led to his appointment as university librarian, — 'the
model librarian,' as he was styled by his not less eminent
successor, Henry Bradshaw. It is probable, however, that
Moore's expulsion had been already contemplated, for his
books and furniture had been appraised at £5. 10s. Od., of
which the books constituted more than the moiety. And as
his voice is said to have been the last to be heard reading
the Liturgy in chapel before its discontinuance was enjoined
by Parliament, so, ten years later, the reader himself was
fain, eventually, to send in his resignation and voluntarily HIS
» _ * resignation
withdrew from the college in anticipation of the changes °efi}^ship.
that were manifestly impending in the realm3.
At Trinity Hall, Dr Eden, the representative of a society
which was composed chiefly of laymen, and whose own sym- HA
pathy with the parliamentary cause was a matter of notoriety,
found no difficulty in taking the Covenant. He consequently
not only retained his mastership, but his influence appears
to have availed to secure the whole body of fellows from
ejection4. In the following year he was nominated one of
1 Venn, u. s. m 89. 4 Eden had originally entered at
2 Ibid, i 286; Walker, Sufferings, Pembroke, but, to quote Mr Maiden,
ii 145; D. N. B. ' the son by adoption had made " the
3 Venn, i 192; Bradshaw, The Hall " peculiarly his own. This af-
University Library, pp. 20-21. fection redounds the more to the
294
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
Death of
Dr Eden :
18 July 1645.
John Selden
declines the
mastership.
Election of
ROBEHT
KINO
(Master
1660—76) :
Nov. 1645.
the eighteen Commissioners appointed to direct the affairs
of the Admiralty. He had, however, been for some years in
failing health, and died within a few weeks of his appoint-
ment. The fellows of the Hall thereupon proceeded to elect
the eminent John Selden as his successor, but before their
choice could be formally sanctioned1, further proceedings
were stayed by an ' order of restraint ' from Parliament ; and
it was not until the following October that the restraint was
removed and Selden's election ratified, should he himself be
willing to accept the office2. The great scholar, however,
at once declined the appointment, — a decision which probably
surprised none, it being well known that not only was the
mastership very slenderly endowed3, but that, in other
respects, it could offer but few inducements to one whose
sympathies were mainly with his ' mother Oxford.' Selden,
moreover, was now keeper of the records in the Tower, — that
same Tower wherein, six years before, he had suffered a
rigorous confinement ; and although exultation over a pros-
trate foe was foreign to his nature, he cannot but have
smiled as he pondered on the nemesis which had overtaken
his former persecutors. In their perplexity, the fellows now
reverted to one of their own society, and in November,
Robert King, doctor of the civil law and a late fellow4, was
elected, with respect to whom they reported to the Lords
that he was 'such a one whose former services and good
demeanour in the said College have made him very fit and
capable of the government of the same5.' The Lords raised
credit of Master and society,' he
further observes, ' because politically
they were a good deal divided.'
Trinity Hall, p. 137. For an ac-
count of Eden's benefactions to the
college, see Ibid. pp. 141-3.
1 The letter from the fellows to
Lord Holland soliciting his confir-
mation of the election as chancellor
is among the Trinity Hall MSS.
no. 20.
2 '...Provided that John Selden
esqr who was elected to the said
Mastership, before the sd. order of
restraint, have free liberty to accept
thereof, if he will. And in case he
shall refuse, that then the said Fel-
lowes may elect such a one, as shall
be both fitt and capable by the said
Statutes of the said Hall ; and shall
be allowed by both Houses of Par-
liament.' 15 Octobris 1645. Baker
MS. xxv 384.
3 In 1650 the master was in re-
ceipt of an income valued at only
£47. Ibid, xxv 398.
4 King had graduated M.A. from
Christ's College in 1624 and his
election to a fellowship at the Hall
had taken place in the following
year. Maiden, Trinity Hall, p. 145.
5 Lords' Journals, vn 678.
EXPULSIONS AND SEQUESTRATIONS. 295
no objection, but again the Commons interposed and refused CHAP. m.
their assent ; nor was it until the following year, that the
Hall found itself again possessed of a Head in the person of com
John Bond, a former fellow of St Catherine's, to whom, as a that oF
known Puritan and a member of the Assembly of Divines, <*. uwj!
Parliament took no exception whatever1. The only sequestra-
tions at this college (if such they were) appear to be those of
two members who were not fellows, — a ' Mr Hatley's ' pro-
perty, including ' bookes, 2 trunkes and other lumber,' being
valued at £2. 10s. Qd., and that of a ' Mr Lynne,' ' bookes and
goods,' at £1. Is. Od.2
At Corpus Christi, Dr Richard Love presents the solitary Proceedings
* _ ... at CORPUS
instance of a Head who maintained his position down to the 9HR.ISTI-
Dr Love
Restoration. His unique experience becomes all the more
remarkable when we note, on the one hand, that he had paigr
been chaplain in ordinary to Charles I and had been pre- ejerted
sented by him to the living of Eckington in Derbyshire, fellowships,
while, on the other, he appears to have been largely indebted
for his exemption from the general fate to the influence of
colonel Walton, the regicide, who was his personal friend3.
It was beyond the master's power, however, to shield, in like
manner, the society over which he presided ; and the two
senior fellows, — Robert Tunstal, a Nottinghamshire man,
who had held his fellowship some twenty-four years, and
Edward Palgrave, of Norfolk, who had been elected only two
years later, — were both ejected in April 16444; and along
1 Baker MS. xxv 381-397. where, along with Bainbrigge of
2 The lists of fellows contained Christ's, he is described as one of
in the ' Warren ' Collections, ' do not ' the two learned neutrals of Cam-
include the name of Hatley, and bridge that have been taking a nap
the only Lynne recorded is at a and sleeping at our distractions,'
very different date.' Letter from probably points to his leading cha-
Dr Dale. The materials collected racteristic as a mediator between
by William Warren (a fellow of the opposing parties.
Hall in the first half of the eighteenth 4 '...under the pretence of non-
century), although of value in re- residence,' says Masters, 'being, I
lation to general details respecting imagine, the only crime that could
the society, rarely supply much of be laid to their charge ; for although
personal interest. See Mr Maiden's they are taxed with several other
observations in his History, pp. 168 misdemeanors, yet as these are
-9. not specified, so they were probably
3 Masters-Lamb, p. 177. The sar- unknown.' Masters-Lamb, p. 176.
casm directed at Love in the Mer- One Thomas Briggs, who was ejected
curius Britannicus (no. 22, p. 172), in the following January, incurred his
296
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in.
Appointment
of Second
Emmanuel:
d. was.
career.1 ie
with them went George Heath1, a son of Sir Robert Heath,
chief justice of Common Pleas. The father, who had been
educated at St John's, was a warm patron of learning, a
circumstance to which we may perhaps partly attribute the
fact that both the master of Corpus and Whichcote are to
be found coming forward to redeem the son's sequestered
property2; and it seems reasonable to infer that the son
inherited the paternal regard for letters when we note that
while his books were valued at £14, 'his bed and other
things' amounted to only £2. 10*. Od.3
A year had elapsed since the appointment of the Com-
mittee, whose chief function it had been to expel those who
refused the Covenant, and a second Committee was now
appointed to take its place4, especially instructed to enforce
a like requirement on those who should be elected to fill the
created vacancies, — a certificate under their hands to such
effect being made an indispensable pre-requisite in the ad-
mission of the new comers5.
In the midst of all the bitterness of feeling and deep
depression consequent upon such changes and such spoliation,
*ne benign influence of Whichcote stands out in bright
relief. His distinguished merit had early attracted the notice
of bishop Williams, who, according to the former's biographer,
had ordained him deacon and priest on one and the same
day6. This was in 1636, and before the year elapsed
fate on the more definite ground of
' a scandalous life and conversation,
for swearing and drunkenness,'
'which partie,' says the Earl, 'is
hereby required not to continue in
the said University above the space
of three dales, upon paine of im-
prisonment and sequestration of his
goods.' Masters-Lamb, p. 351.
1 In Masters' s List of Members
(p. 26), Heath's election to his
fellowship is given (note K) as in
1649 instead of 1641, but the error
is corrected in Masters-Lamb, p. 355.
He was shortly after sequestered from
his living of West Grinsted.
2 'Bee. of Dr Love for the bookes
of Mr Heaths by him redeemed, £14.'
4 Rec. of Mr Whichcott for some goods
by him redeemed of Mr Heaths of
Bennett Cott. £3.' State Papers
(Dom.) Charles I, DXL, pt. iii, p. 33.
3 ' In the places of the three fellows
thus ejected, Mess. Johnson, Kennet,
and Fairfax, all of whom were Presby-
terians, were elected.' Stokes (Dr),
Corpus Christi, p. 104 ; Masters-
Lamb, pp. 357-8.
4 The original ' Ordinance for
Eegulating the University ' ordained
that ' the present committee for the
association sitting at Cambridge shall
cease when the Earle of Manchester
shall have appointed another under
his hand and scale.' Heywood and
Wright, n 462.
5 Ibid, n 463.
6 See Salter's Preface to Which-
cote's Aphorisms (ed. 1753).
EXPULSIONS AND SEQUESTRATIONS. 297
Whichcote had been appointed afternoon lecturer at Trinity VCHAP. ni^
Church. In that capacity he had already gained celebrity,
when in 1643 he was presented by his college to the living
of North Cadbury in Somersetshire. From thence, within
little more than a year, he had been summoned back to the
university by Manchester, to assume the provostship of King's ™snt to'the"
College from which Collins had just been ejected, and it orSn^Sship
attests the profound respect which his character inspired, jan.ei645.
that he appears to have been admitted to that important
office without being required to take the Covenant. He
hesitated painfully before he could consent to occupy the
place of Collins1, whom he had so long known and revered ;
and his assent was finally given only on the understanding
that his predecessor continued to receive half the income of sis
* generosity
the provostship. A ' small parcel of books,' valued at £5, to ColliM-
appears to have been all that the sequestrator could appro-
priate of Collins' worldly goods, and that distinguished
scholar now retired into comparative obscurity. Whichcote's
generosity, combined with the slender stipend (dissociated
from the rectory of Somersham) which Collins continued to
receive as regius professor of divinity, enabled him to pass
the remainder of his days in comfort2. We hear of him as subsequent
J career of the
resident in a large red brick house in Jesus Lane, facing the latter-
college, where he died, in 1651, at the age of seventy-five.
With his removal, the society at King's College can hardly
but have felt that they had lost their greatest living orna-
ment. His administration, it is true, had once been chal- His eminence
as an _
lenged, but the Visitor, on enquiry, could discover ' neither ^"amu*"
carelessness nor covetousness ' ; between the two great con- scl
tending parties in the university he seems, to a calmer age,
to have held a just balance ; his clear intellect discerned the
value of the vast service rendered by the immortal Verulam
to knowledge; he was the correspondent of the greatest
1 Salter's Preface, u.s. 'The au- when the position of a bishop was
thor,' says his editor, 'drew up a becoming very precarious; but he
paper containing the reasons pro and preferred to live on in the town of
con for his acceptance or refusal.' Cambridge.' Austen Leigh, King's
2 'He was offered by the King the College, p. 131.
bishopric of Bristol in 1646, a time
298
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
Ejections
at King's.
QUEENS'
COLLEGE :
treatment of
Dr Martin.
Sequestra-
tions and
ejections.
scholars of his time, — Vossius, Casaubon, and Sir Henry
Wotton, — and to his friendship with the last his college
owed the fine portrait of Father Paul which, until about the
middle of the eighteenth century, continued to adorn its
walls1.
At King's College, contrary to expectation, only five
fellows were ejected2, a fact in which the influence of Which-
cote may again, perhaps, be discerned ; and only one seques-
tration, besides that of Dr Collins' books, is recorded, — that
of 'Mr Young,' whose 'bookes, goods and furniture' were
valued at £4.
Very different was the treatment which awaited the
three colleges whose Heads, — Dr Beale, Dr Martin, and
Dr Sterne, — had been doomed to a twelvemonth's imprison-
ment, first of all in the Tower and subsequently in Ely
House or in the mansion of lord Petre. Their property had
already been confiscated, they themselves were unable, even
if willing, to appear, and a formal deprivation of office was
accordingly the only remaining penalty left for the Commis-
sioners to inflict. Dr Martin's pathetic description of his
sufferings, drawn up three years later, proves that, beyond
sparing his life, little mercy was shewn him3. A like severity
seems to have characterised the treatment of his college,
although only two sequestrations are specified in the
schedule, — Dr Cox's 'bookes and goodes,' 'prized together*
1 ' It was carried off about 1746
by the Eev. P. Montague to his
college living, and it has not been
possible to trace it since ' (Letter from
Provost of King's, 15 Feb. 1898).
[Phil. Mountague, M.A., 1732.] See
also Cole MS. Brit. Museum, Add.
MSS. 5815, p. 212.
2 Bancroft, writing to Robert
Sorsby, fellow of Emmanuel (13 Feb.
164£), says, 'At King's 30 sum-
oned at once, all refusers, and daily
expect their doom.' Tanner MS.
LXI 271. Cooper (Annals, m 377)
says ' six ' ; but he erroneously in-
cludes Christopher Wase, who was
only admitted a scholar in 1645.
See Austen Leigh, u. s. p. 132.
3 See his letter to Sir Philip
Stapleton (the original of which is
preserved in Queens' College) written
in July or August 1647 ; printed in
Searle's Hist, of Queens' College,
•pp. 480-1. Searle points out that
' Dr Martin was not only obnoxious
for his warm zeal for episcopacy and
church order, and for his activity
and vigour on the royalist side, but
also for the old story of his licens-
ing the ' ' Historical Narration ' ' '
(Ibid. p. 473). That he ' had stolen
wheat-sheaves out of the field in
harvest, and laid them to his Tithe-
Shock,' we may fairly, with Walker
(Sufferings, n 154), dismiss as mere
scandal.
EXPULSIONS AND SEQUESTRATIONS. 299
at £9; and John Coldharn's1 books, which, in marked con- JCHAP. in.
trast to his furniture (valued at only £2), are appraised at
£10. In no society, however, was the process of expulsion
more summary. On the 8th of April, four fellows were
ejected 'for not becoming resident in the said Colledge and
not returning to the places of their usual residence there
upon due summons given to that purpose.' On the following
day, four more were ejected ' for refusing to take the Cove-
nant and for other misdemeanours committed by them.' On Ejections on
account of
the llth of July, Thomas Marley was ejected for the same ' otner mis-
J ' J J demeanours
reason. In August Dr George Bardsey, Thomas Cox and t^a^e."
Michael Freer were ejected 'for non-residence and not appear- __
ing on summons! September saw the ejections of WTilliam
Wells and Arthur Walpole for refusing the Covenant; and
in 1646 and 1647 seven more fellows were intruded, of whom
three succeeded to vacancies resulting from ejections, while
four appear to have been added by Manchester to the fel-
lowship list, — the total number of ejections amounting to
eighteen2. As, moreover, all the scholars appear to have
been ejected, it is probable that, in this instance, Walker's
assertion, that the fellows' property in their rooms had been
seized long before, holds good. So eagerly, indeed, did the
sequestrators carry on their work, that we find that they
even carried off a piece of plate the value of which they
were subsequently required to refund3. 'According to the account
laws of the Admiralty,' says Fuller, his thoughts doubtless
reverting to the pleasant days of his undergraduate career
passed under the rule of uncle Davenant, the college ' might the™ew Ol
seem a true wreck, and forfeited in this land tempest, for lack thTcoiiege.
1 A.B. 1627, A.M. 1631, S.T.B. Walker puts the number of those
1638. Grace Book Z. ejected at 19 (see Ibid, n 143 n.),
8 Searle, Hist, of Queens' College, but Dr Capel's ejection (p. 157) was
pp. 529, 530, 540, 547,549-50; Gray, owing to an illicit connexion (see
The Queens' College, p. 172. 'They Searle, p. 549); while the name of
made,' observes Walker, 'a Thorough 'Chandler, B.D.' is not in the list
Reformation in this House, leaving of Fellows of this society,
neither Fellow nor Scholar. There 3 ' Paid back to Queenes Colledge
are besides in this College 12 Bible- for a peece of plate by us seized
Clerks and four Exhibitioners. Whe- £2. 12s. Wd.' State Papers (Dom.),
ther they turned out any of them Vol. DXL, pt. iii, p. 47. See also, on
also (as is not improbable) I do not this point, Wardale (J. B.), Clare
find expressly said.' Sufferings, n!58. College, Letters etc., pp. 8, 9.
300
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
Herbert
Palmer :
President
Apr. 1644—
Sept. 1647.
Nathaniel
Ingelo :
b. 1621 (?).
d. 1683.
of a live thing to preserve the propriety thereof1.' His sadly
jocose description is, however, challenged by Simon Patrick,
who asserts that 'there were about a dozen schollars and
almost half of the old fellows, the Visitors at first doing no
more than putting in a majority of new to govern the college2.'
As regards this ' new ' element, again, Fuller's comment, that
they were ' short of the former in learning and abilities3,' also
calls for some modification. The mathematical genius of
John Wallis probably lay somewhat beyond the range of the
historian's observation, but the Discourses of John Smith,
the Platonist, and the high reputation of Herbert Palmer,
Dr Martin's successor in the presidency, might fairly have
induced him to reconsider his verdict. A man of good family,
unfeigned piety, considerable oratorical ability and great
benevolence, Palmer presented a combination of fine qualities
to which a poor personal presence constituted almost the
sole drawback. But unfortunately his rule at Queens' was
destined to last but three years, when he was removed by
death and his place was filled by Thomas Horton4. Nathaniel
Ingelo, ' a highly skilled musician,' is also justly regarded by
the latest historian of the college, as entitled to rank as a
fourth exception. He was transferred from his fellowship at
Emmanuel to be Greek lecturer to the college; was the
friend and correspondent of John Worthington ; and author
of Bentivolio and Urania, a fantastic romance in folio which
reached its fourth edition, being written with a strong moral
purpose and designed to counteract the growing scepticism of
the polite world in the years which followed the Restoration5.
No society was at this time regarded with less favour by
1 Fuller-Prickett and Wright, p.
322.
2 Autobiography, MS. in Patrick
Papers, p. 14 (Univ. Lib.) ; Searle,
Hist, of Queens' College, p. 541.
3 A somewhat similar observation
is made by Dr Peile, in relation to
his own College (Christ's College,
p. 165) and admits of less dispute.
4 Mr Gray, in his interesting sketch,
notes that Palmer was ' the son of
Sir Thomas Palmer of Wingham,
near Canterbury, had been carefully
educated at home by an accomplished
father and a very religious mother,
learnt French almost as soon as he
could speak, and could, as he after-
wards proved, preach in French as
well as in English.' The Queens'
College, pp. 172-3. Clarke in his
Lives (1677), p. 183, says that Palmer
was also distinguished as a College
tutor and ' catechist.'
5 D. N. B. xxvm 432 ; Gray, M.S.
p. 178; Worthington, Diary, etc.,
i 36 ; n 269, 270, n. 1.
EXPULSIONS AND SEQUESTRATIONS. 301
the dominant party than Jesus College, which had, for years ^CHAP.
past, been a noted centre of Laudian influence and had
COLLEGE.
flourished conspicuously under the able administration of
Dr Richard Sterne. Its new range of buildings on the north nourishing
condition of '
side of the entrance court had recently been brought to atuiulfm^.
completion; the college was free from debt; its numbers
were increasing. The skill with which Alcock had adapted
the conventual structure to collegiate requirements still left
much that appealed to aesthetic taste ; while the chapel
services were noted for their good music, elaborate solemnity
and attractive decency. Fellow-commoners had recently
multiplied ; and half the existing fellows were men who had
migrated from other colleges, but whom the societies which
they quitted would gladly have retained. Charles Fotherby,
a nephew both of Laud and of Martin Fotherby (a former
bishop of Salisbury), came from Trinity ; Edmund Lincoln,
from Magdalene; Anthony Green and John 'Birlstone1,' both
from Christ's; Charles Bussey, vicar of All Saints, from
Pembroke ; Thomas Robinson, another nephew of Laud's and
also brother of the keeper of the Tower, from Queens' ;
Richard Mason, from Corpus. A tame submission from a
society thus composed was hardly to be looked for, and
Ralph Blakestone, another of the fellows, had already been Ralph
' . * Blakestone.
conspicuous by his bold denunciations of the enemies of the
royal cause throughout the diocese of Norwich ; while the
president, Stephen Hall, on the arrival of Manchester in ^j>hen
Cambridge, assumed an attitude of defiance which gained for
him the distinction of being the first member of the univer-
sity to have his property sequestered, the process having
taken place on the 15th of March2. It was four weeks later,
1 For Boylstone see supra, p. 271, the entry renders it somewhat im-
n. 4. In Register of Jesus College probable that either Allen (another
his name stands as 'Joannes Boyl- fellow) or Boylestone had, as Mr Gray
ston,' elected fellow in 1633. But conjectures, 'accepted the Covenant '
in the vol. of Subscriptions (Univ. (Jesus College, p. 112), although nei-
Registry) we find ' I do willingly and ther of them were expelled until
ex animo subscribe to these articles 1645. They may however have led
before mentioned and to all things the Committee to entertain hopes of
therein contayned. John Boilston their ultimate submission.
B.D. JuniilO°1640.' In the schedule 2 'He was also imprisoned three
of the sequestrations, the name ap- years in the Compter in Southwark.'
pears as 'Birlston' ; the mere fact of Walker, Sufferings, n 22.
302 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. that Manchester, in the college chapel, put the new master
in formal possession. Thomas Young, whose name survives
chiefly as that of the preceptor and friend of Milton, was
better known in his own day as the author of the Dies
Dominica, and also the Coryphaeus (the ' TY ') of the five
writers who, three years before, had made their appeal to the
theological world under the collective pseudonym of SMEC-
TYMNUUS1. Under his auspices, Jesus College soon became
a totally changed society. Fifteen fellows were ejected, and
their property sequestrated ; the valuations ranging from
£50 2, the price originally put upon ' Mr Lincoln's ' library,
down to 20s., the assessment of the modest furniture of
'Mr Mason.'
CHRIST'S At Christ's College, Dr Bainbridge managed to hold his
ground as master, but his 'nepotism was unavailing to main-
tain his relative, Christopher Bainbridge, in his fellowship,
and along with the latter went Thomas Norton, William
Brearley, and Thomas Wilding; while four junior fellows3,
none of whom were of three years' standing, shared their
fate. A sentence of ejection was also passed on Power4, but
his advanced years pleaded in his favour, and Dr Peile
inclines to the conclusion that the aged divine died within
the college walls. The only other fellows who were not
ejected were William Moore (or More), Ralph Widdrington,
1 ' Young was a Scotchman, and humble tradesman, to avoid the
had not graduated at either of the haggling with Manchester's func-
English universities. Such a man tionaries as to what he was to pay
might seem to the divines ' [at West- to rescue his library from their
minster] 'eminently calculated to clutches, and profiting, apparently,
carry out that reformation, " as well to the extent of £10 by the efforts of
of the statutes as of the members of the negotiator.
the College," of which the Earl of 3 These were Gerard Wood, Ea.
Manchester gave warning in the Tonstal, loh. Potts (?) and Tho.
mandate for his admission. Singu- Huxley, all elected between 1640-42.
larly little is to be gathered of his ' Potts died before the end of 1644,'
career as Master.' Gray (Arthur), but Brearley 'was certainly a fellow
Jesus College, p. 115. 19 Nov. 1644,' and as 'nine fellows
2 ' Eec. of Mr Briant Confeccioner had been appointed before 8 March
for Mr Lincoln of Jesus Cott. his 164f,' the period of expulsions may
bookes by him redeemed £40. 00.' be assigned as within the limits of
State Papers Charles I (Dom.), Vol. the two later dates. Letter from
DXL, pt. iii, p. 34. An entry which Dr Peile, 23 Nov. 1907.
brings home to us the patrician 4 See supra, pp. 245-6.
of Magdalene College employing a
EXPULSIONS AND SEQUESTRATIONS. 303
and Henry More, the Platonist1, whose first work, The Song CHAP, m.
of the Soul, had recently been given to the world. The
sequestrations recorded are those of the goods of Norton,
William Brearley, Wilding, and Michael Honywood. Of Michael
these the last, only, calls for notice. Honywood, who was, at *>• ^j*-
this time, residing at Utrecht, had quitted Cambridge in
1643; and his absence must have been no slight blow to a
society of which he had not only been the President, but, to
quote Dr Peile's expression, ' the mainstay.' It was owing
chiefly to his energy that the new ' fellows' Buildings ' had
been erected, and the college was at this time in his debt to
a considerable amount for monies advanced2. His library,
valued at £20, was now redeemed by his brother Henry3.
His living, the valuable rectory of Kegworth in Leicester-
shire, was also sequestrated.
At St John's College, on the llth April 1644, the ST JOHN'S
. COLLEGE.
society was called upon by Manchester to admit John Arrow- JOHH
smith as Dr Beale's successor. He was a Durham man, and
had formerly been a member of the college, but had migrated d- 1659>
to St Catherine's in 1642 on his election to a fellowship on
that foundation, and was at this time a member of the West-
minster Assembly, being especially employed in writing (at
the request of that body) against the Antinomians. In the
month following upon his installation (which took place in His
installation
the college chapel) we hear of him as one of the preachers at «* Master.
Westminster on that memorable day of humiliation (17 May),
when, as Baillie relates, the whole Assembly passed the hours
from nine to five in praying and singing psalms and hearing
sermons. Arrowsmith himself, on that occasion, preached
for a whole hour. Notwithstanding a serious physical defect,
— he had a glass eye ' in place of that which was put out by
ane arrow/ — he discharged the office of vice-chancellor in the
academic year 1647-8 ; while he appears throughout to have
been an indefatigable student, his attainments as a theologian
1 The statement of Widdrington LXI 271. See Peile, Hist, of Christ's
that both the Mores accepted the College, p. 165.
Covenant, is confirmed by that of 2 Letter from Dr Peile, October
Bancroft, who, writing to Sorsby 1907.
in Feb. 164$, expressly says, ' the 3 State Papers (Dom.) Charles the
two Mores comply.' Tanner MS. First, DXL, pt. iii, p. 35.
304
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
Expulsions
of Thornton,
Bodurda, the
Barwicks,
W. Lacy,
Bulkeley and
John Otway.
Courageous
opposition
of the last
to the
Association.
Expulsion of
Cleveland,
already fled
to Oxford.
Recorded se-
questrations.
being held in the highest esteem. His installation was pre-
ceded and followed by numerous ejections among the fellows
of St John's, — the president, Thomas Thornton, William
Bodurda a Welshman, and chaplain to bishop Williams, the
three Barwicks, John, William and Peter, William Lacy, a
Yorkshire man, who subsequently joined the army and became
chaplain to prince Rupert; Richard Bulkeley, a native of
Anglesey, who, indebted to a royal mandate for his fellowship,
subsequently gave good proof of his gratitude by securing
Anglesey for the royal cause, and finally himself falling in
the fight in North Wales. A no less enthusiastic royalist
was John Otway, on whom Peter Barwick bestows frequent
encomiums, as one who 'first, of all the university of Cam-
bridge, was not afraid publickly and learnedly to defend the
royal cause against the wicked association of those which
were thence called the Associated Counties... first of all was
thrown into prison for that heroick action, and being first of
all expelled the university, courageously led up the first
rank, as it were, of academick combatants1.' Equally con-
spicuous, although in a different manner, was John Cleveland.
The satirist of ' Smectymnuus2 ' and of Cromwell himself,
could hardly hope for mercy ; and abandoning his furniture3,
valued at only £3. 7s. Qd. (we find no mention of books), had
already betaken himself to Oxford. We find only two other
sequestrations recorded at St John's — (those of Dr Beale's
property and Mr Bodurda's, amounting to £10. 15s. Qd. and
£3. 18s. 8d. respectively) — a fact which may perhaps be ex-
1 Life of Barwick, pp. 140-1.
Otway was a Yorkshireman, who had
been educated at Sedbergh School
(see Platt's Sedbergh, pp. 35, 36,
71-75, 93, 98, 100-2, 106, 108, 111,
119-21, 193). On the occasion of
his election to a fellowship at St
John's, to which he was admitted
24 Mar. 1640, we find Gilbert Nelson,
the master of Sedbergh, writing to
the college authorities to thank them
for their ' free election of Sir Otway
as fellow' (Baker- Mayor, pp. 295,
510). ' Sir Otway ' became, after the
Eestoration, Sir John Otway, in
recognition of his distinguished ser-
vices to the royal cause.
2 See ' Smectymnuus ; or the Club
Divines' (Works, pp. 27-30), one of
Cleveland's most trenchant pieces
of satire.
3 'Perceiving the ostracism that
was intended, he became a voluntier
in his academic exile.' Life prefixed
to Works (ed. 1687). The statement
of Walker (Sufferings, n 150) that
Cleveland died from the effects of
his imprisonment is not corroborated
by the writer of the Life, who (p. 4)
distinctly refers the poet's death,
which occurred two years after his
release, to ' a disease at that time
epidemical.'
EXPULSIONS AND SEQUESTRATIONS. 305
plained by the condition to which the whole college had CHAP. in.
been reduced by its conversion into a prison. ' There were
but nine admitted of that great college that year,' says
Henry Newcome, after recording his admission under Zachary
Cawdrey (10 May 1644), ' and when I commenced master of
arts there was but three commencers in our college1.' At
Emmanuel College in the same year, the admissions were 81,
the record entry of the century on that foundation2.
At St Catherine's, Dr Brownrig's services and known ST CATHE-
moderation sufficed to postpone his ejection, but only for a DrpBrownrif
year3. He was then supplanted by another of the Smectym- in 1645-
nuans, William Spurstowe4, a divine of considerable eminence WUUAM
•*• SPURSTOWE :
in his day, who had been educated at Emmanuel, but had bd l®j:
migrated from thence to St Catherine's, where he was elected
to a fellowship which he continued to hold until his prefer-
ment in 1637 to the rectorship of Great Hampden in Buck-
inghamshire. Here he necessarily became acquainted with
the squire of the parish, John Hampden, — at that time
deeply interested in the foundation of the new settlement at
Connecticut and also fighting his famous battle against the
payment of ship-money, — and the friendship that resulted is
said to have materially influenced Spurstowe's subsequent
career ; nor is it unreasonable to suppose that it may have
been contributory to the decision of the Westminster As-
sembly in 1645 (when Hampden himself was no more) to
nominate Spurstowe, himself a member of their body, to the
mastership from which Brownrig had eventually been con-
1 Autobiography (Chetham Soc.), sureties. Biog. Brit., ed. Kippis, n
p. 7. 674-6.
2 Abstract of Admissions, etc. ,1584 4 The UUS representing his ini-
-1750. tials. ' It is an interesting fact that of
3 The ostensible reason of his the other authors, Edmund Calamy
imprisonment and ejection was ' the sent his second son Benjamin to
preaching the inauguration sermon St Catharine's, where he became a
of the King, wherein many passages very successful tutor, and also his
were distasted by the parliament third son James ; and Matthew New-
party.' Fuller-Prickett and Wright, comen, who was protected by the
p. 322. Brownrig was vice-chan- influence of John Knowles our Tutor,
cellor at the time and had to give sent his son Stephen to the College
heavy bail for his appearance, on in 1660. Newcomen and Calamy
being temporarily released in order had married two sisters.' Bishop of
that he might give up his accounts. Bristol (Dr G. F. Browne), St Catha-
Two London merchants were his rine's College, p. 111.
M. in. 20
306 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. in. strained to retire1. For the present, however, no further
changes took place, and the sequestrator passed by the gates
of the college hallowed by the memory of Sibbes.
Very different were the experiences of Magdalene College
RAINBOW™ under Dr Edward Rainbowe, afterwards bishop of Carlisle.
rf.iS The son of a Lincolnshire vicar, he had received his earliest
education from a mother who is said to have been acquainted
with Latin, Greek and Hebrew; had subsequently studied
under John Williams at the time when the latter was a
prebendary of Peterborough ; had followed him, on his pro-
motion to the deanery of Westminster, to become a scholar
at Westminster School; and in 1623 had entered at Christ-
church, Oxford. Two years later, however, the countess of
Warwick presented him to a scholarship at Magdalene Col-
lege, and Rainbowe's academic career was thereby diverted
to Cambridge. From 1630 to 1633 he was absent from the
university and filled for a time a curacy in the Savoy Chapel
in London, but was recalled in the latter year by the offer of
a fellowship at Magdalene; here he was soon after appointed
tutor and in that capacity achieved a marked success. In
1637 he became dean of the college and was also presented
to the living of Childerley, near Cambridge. The earls of
Suffolk were hereditary Visitors of Magdalene ; and among
Rainbowe's pupils were two sons of Theophilus, the second
earl, who, according to Mr Purnell, also appointed him
' trustee of a settlement which he executed in 1640.' In
1642 he succeeded to the mastership, on the nomination of
James, the third earl, ' who was thereby carrying out a
promise made by his father2.'
His success Rainbowe's appointment must be regarded as a turning
tutor. point in the history of the college, suffering, as the society
had long been, from the depression consequent upon the
alienation, in the preceding century, of the college property
1 Gardiner's estimate of the West- do justice to the fact that the House
minster Assembly as, ' the creature was often materially influenced by
of Parliament, and only authorised the representations of the Assembly
to give advice upon subjects on which and sometimes received petitions
Parliament desired its assent ' (Great from it.
Civil War, i 272), appears hardly to 2 Hist. of Magdalene College, p. 109.
EXPULSIONS AND SEQUESTRATIONS. 307
in London1. By his tact and ability, those influential con- CHAP. IIL
nexions, which have ever since been one of the leading
distinctions of the society, were developed and extended, —
especially with the noble houses of Northumberland, Suffolk,
Deincourt, Warwick and Orrery. Nor do such associations
appear to have been in any way prejudicial to the growth of
that genuinely studious element for which Magdalene was
already noted. 'The scholars of this college,' says Fuller, Fuller's
• i i testimony to
' though furthest from the schools, were in my time observed tue high
reputation of
first there and to as good purpose as any. Every year this {J}*™^6'11
house produced some eminent scholars, as living cheaper and
privater, freer from town temptations by their remote situa-
tion.' And he adds that, in 1635, when he was about quitting
Cambridge, the society numbered 140, including 'officers
and servants,' there being eleven fellows and twenty-two
scholars, — the rest apparently (excluding the servants) being
represented by a considerable number of pensioners, mostly
of good family2. Manchester, who had recently, for the
second time, contracted a matrimonial alliance with the
Rich family3, can hardly have been disposed to deal harshly
with an institution under the especial patronage of the house
of Warwick, but the society had been convicted, beyond all
denial, of compliance with the royal demand for the college
plate, and it was necessary to make an example. No less
than nine of the eleven fellows were consequently expelled, Rainbowe
m. , continues
among them John Howorth, who became master after the master but
nine of the
Restoration, and also vice-chancellor; his 'bookes,' valued at expeiied.re
13s. 4d., and 'other goodes/ £3. 16s. 8d., together with the
goods of Mr Pullen, £7. 10s. Qd., — subsequently 'redeemed
by his brother,' — are the only two sequestrations at this
college recorded in the schedule. How Dr Rainbowe himself
'got over the Covenant,' to quote Mr Purnell's expression,
1 See Vol. ii 195-6. The whole we lost it.' Magdalene College, pp.
story of the process whereby ' some 65-77.
seven acres in the heart of the City 2 Fuller-Prickett and Wright, p.
of London ' were lost to the college 132.
and of the unsuccessful endeavours 3 See Burke's Peerage; or the
made to recover this magnificent pro- more concise account of Edward
perty is told by Mr Purnell in his Montagu's five marriages, by Miss
chapter ' Our City Property, and how Porter in the D. N. B. xxxvm 231.
20—2
308
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
TEINITY
COLLEGE :
expulsion of
Dr Comber.
Testimony to
his merits by
Boreman
and Henry
Paman.
'is not known1.' For the present, he managed to retain
office, as also did Richard Perrinchief, a recently elected
fellow, of whom we shall hear again. In the mean time,
John Saltmarsh, a former member (although not a fellow),
and once a zealous defender of the etcetera oath, had assumed
an attitude of complete tergiversation, assailing with his pen
even the tolerant Thomas Fuller, and advocating, as we shall
shortly see, the cause of unrestricted freedom both in the
press and in matters of religious belief.
At Trinity College, the master, Dr Comber, notwith-
standing his beneficent and irreproachable rule and generally
admirable character, was summarily ejected to make way for
Thomas Hill. His offence, as a refuser of the Covenant, was
aggravated by the fact that he had recently been detected in
forwarding to the king the residue of the college plate, only
some half-dozen pieces of any value having been kept back2.
He was consequently treated with exceptional rigour, and,
although in his seventieth year, was not only removed but
imprisoned. Little is known respecting this amiable scholar's
subsequent experiences. He died in 1654, and was interred
in St Botolph's Church in Cambridge, where no monument
has ever been erected to his memory; but his funeral sermon,
preached by Dr Robert Boreman, — a former fellow, and for
some time Hebrew lecturer in the college, — although couched
in terms of somewhat excessive eulogy, embodies facts which
attest his genuine merit3. 'Dr Comber,' wrote Henry
1 Hist. ofMagdaleneCollege, p. 109.
2 Ball (W. W.E.), Notes on Trinity
College, pp. 92-93. I am indebted
to the Eev. A. H. F. Boughey, Senior
Dean and late Tutor of the College,
for the following additional memo-
randa : ' Plate was sent to the King
on June 29 and again on July 24.
How much was sent is unknown,
but it was probably a large quantity.
Accusation was brought by the Earl
of Manchester's Commission, against
Dr Eowe, fellow of Trinity and rector
of Orwell, that he. ..was mainly in-
strumental, "going round to the
Fellows' chambers with the College
servants to fetch their plate to the
end that it might be in readiness."
The Bursar's accounts have an entry :
' ' Bestowed on the souldiers and those
that watched the plate in the New
Court" [i.e. Nevile's Court].'
3 The Triumph of Faith over Death,
or the Just Man's Memorial : com-
prised in a Panegyrick and Sermon,
at the Funerall of the Religious, most
Learned Dr Combar (sic), late Master
of Trinity Colledge in Cambridge, and
Deaneof Carlisle. Delivered in Trinity
Colledge Chappell. ByE. B. B.D.,
the 29 of March 1653 (?). London,
Printed by J. G. for E. Eoyston, at the
Angel in Ivy-Lane, 1654. Dr Comber
is to be distinguished from his cousin,
the dean of Durham and also named
Thomas. See D. N. B.
EXPULSIONS AND SEQUESTRATIONS. 309
Paman of St John's to William Sancroft, ' had leave to be CHAP. m.
buried in his own vineyard : and, though he might not live
upon his own ground, he may sleep and rest there. He
showed so much gentleness while he lived, there is no fear
of an angry tormenting ghost1.'
But however sincere may have been the sympathy which
followed the master on his expulsion, the treatment which
Herbert Thorndike was called upon bo encounter probably He^rt
* ' Thorndike.
excited deeper interest and wider commiseration. His defeat
in the candidature for the mastership of Sidney2 was still
fresh in men's memories ; and two recent tractates from his impression
E reduced by
j,^ , ^rr^ v, .^r^ -.^^^-^ r— v """ trla«7estW°
the hope that his views on the burning question of Church
government and discipline might prove not altogether irre-
concileable with their own4. Over such a convert, should he
become one, they might well rejoice. Thorndike's conspicuous HJS previous
abilities had led John Williams to promote him to a pre-
bendal stall in the cathedral at Lincoln5; George Herbert
had appointed him his deputy in the office of Public Orator ;
the duke of Lennox, a discerning benefactor, and one of his
former pupils, is supposed by Haddan to have given him
effective aid at Court6. In Trinity itself, he had discharged
in succession the duties of Greek reader, lecturer in Hebrew, and oriental
studies.
tutor and senior bursar; and his reputation was already
established as an Oriental scholar and the compiler of a
lexicon of the Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic languages. He His
' J o o expulsion
was now sequestered, in the first instance, from his living at fe°ii™shi'pllis
Barley, and subsequently from his fellowship, was deprived uvu^!8
1 Harl. MSS. 3783, p. 124. presented to the Crown living of
2 See supra, pp. 253-5. Claybrook in Leicestershire, which
3 (i) Of the Government of Churches: had been before held by George Her-
A Discourse pointing at the Primitive bert, the statutes of Trinity not
Form. 1641. (ii) Of Religious As- allowing a fellow of the society to
semblies and the Publick Service of hold two pieces of preferment con-
God : A Discourse according to Apos- jointly with a fellowship. See Thorn-
tolicall Rule and Practice. 1642. dike-Haddan, vi 179, notes y and a.
Both printed by 'Roger Daniel 6 Ibid, n 179-80. The duke of
Printer to the Universitie.' See Lennox, subsequently of Richmond,
Bowes, pp. 26 and 29. son of Esm6 Stuart ; a staunch loyal-
4 See Thorndike-Haddan, vi 183- ist whose own end was hastened by
186. his sorrow at Charles's execution.
5 This he resigned in 1640, on being Peck, Desiderata Curiosa, n, bk. xiv.
310
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
Valuations
of the
property of
S9me of the
ejected from
Trinity.
Mr Nevile.
Dr Cheney
Row.
Dr Meredith.
Abraham
Cowley.
Sir Thomas
Sclater:
his
subsequent
benefaction
to the
college.
also of the greater part of his choice library, while his
regular income was, for some years, limited to the prescribed
'one-fifth' of his former incumbency. This, however, Calamy
assures us, was 'punctually paid' him by his successor,
Nathaniel Ball1, and, according to Kennet2, was supplemented
by occasional bounties from his college as well as by the
generous hand of his friend, lord Scudamore3. His books, as
estimated by the despoiler, amounted to £32. 4s. Qd., his
other goods, to £2, — a contrast completely inverted in the
case of ' Mr Nevill,' whose books amounted only to eleven
shillings, while the other goods, inclusive of that rare luxury,
a feather bed and bolster, valued at £2, attained to a total of
£11. 2s. 2d. Dr Cheney Row, who lay under the twofold
charge of having been not only accessory to forwarding the
plate to the king but also of having sought to recover the
arms wrested from the university by the parliamentarians,
was deprived both of his fellowship and his living, — the rich
rectory of Orwell. His furniture (no books are mentioned)
was valued at £5. 6s. 8d. A certain Dr Meredith, of whom,
says Walker, ' I know nothing more,' was mulcted of books
and goods 'prized att' £10. Altogether, some forty-seven
fellows and three conducts were ejected, and among the
former there are yet two more names which cannot be
passed by unmentioned, — that of Abraham Cowley, who
retired, in the first instance, to St John's College, Oxford,
and from thence to Paris. The second was Thomas Sclater,
a fellow of the society, who was afterwards made a baronet
and approved himself a generous benefactor to the college.
A quarter of a century after his expulsion, we find Sir Thomas
advancing the funds whereby Trinity was enabled to erect
four additional arches on the north side of Nevile's Court,
1 Life of Baxter, n2 362. Na-
thaniel Ball of King's College, after-
wards one of Walton's chief assist-
ants in his Polyglot. Calamy speaks
of Thorndike as 'Dr,' which, says
Baker, 'he never was, tho' he had
the King's mandat to that purpose.'
MS. note ad loc.
2 Chronicle, p. 861.
3 Calamy's statement as to Ball's
1 punctual ' payment, is somewhat at
variance with that of Thorndike
himself, who, writing to William
Bancroft in Dec. 1657, speaks of
' troubles ' . . . ' calling in question a
great part of my subsistence. ' Thorn-
dike-Haddan, vi 127, 195.
EXPULSIONS AND SEQUESTRATIONS. 311
thus prolonging that side of the court so as to bring it into CHAP, nr.^
contact with the newly erected Library. He further defrayed
the expense of erecting two chambers over the said arches,
of which the society, in grateful recognition, gave him ' the Recognition
free disposeing ' during his lifetime ; and also provided that, by Trinity,
after his decease, ' the said two chambers ' should ' be in-
habited and enjoyed freely by one of the relations of the
name and nearest of bloud of the said Sir Thomas Sclater,
being of the degree of a master of arts or fellow commoner
then liveing in the said Colledge during his stay' therein1.
Of the eight seniors on whom the government of the
society properly devolved, but one now remained, a state of
affairs which it was before long found necessary to bring
under the notice of parliament, and in the following year an The state
r . . of the ad-
ordinance of the House of Lords gave direction that. ' the ministration
necessitates
well-managing of the many affairs of that great college being feWn^of
much hindered,' 'Dr Medcalfe, Hebrew professor in Cambridge, o?dilZce of
be, according to that indulgence which the statute of that of Lori*:
5 ... . 22 Sept 1645.
college allows him 2 upon the relinquishing of his professor's Medcair
place, put into one of the fellowships of Trinity College ; and appointed
-ITI • • i TII • i ii to senior
that Dr Pratt be likewise put into the Physic place ; and that fellowships
J r with the
these two doctors may, by the Master and fellows of Trinity Paiges'1
College, be received into two of the fellowships vacant by eject- t^e
ment, — videlicet, Dr Medcalfe into Mr Marshall's fellowship,
and Dr Pratt into Mr Nevill's fellowship, — and that they, en-
joying the benefit of seniority according to the seniority in the
university, be likewise admitted into two of the places of the
eight seniors, to exercise the power, receive the profits, and
enjoy all the privileges belonging to the place of a senior in
Trinity Colledge3.' A similar enactment, in the following
year, relating to scholarships which had become vacant owing ?
to ejections on like grounds, resulted in corresponding changes jJ
among the junior members of the society4. But the new
1 Willis-Clark, n 519-21. all intents and purposes.' Cooper,
2 Documents, in 461-3. ra 396.
3 Lords' Journals, vn 575 ; Com- * Order presented to the House of
mons' Journals, iv 281. In No- Lords a third time and approved,
vember 1645, four names are given of Feb. 1645-6, 'for putting divers
individuals, as ' made senior fellows Scholars into those places in Trynity
of Trinity College, to act as seniors to Colledge in Cambridge, as have been
312 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP.m. element throughout the college was so far inferior numeri-
cally to the old, that the empty chambers began to be a
matter of serious concern to the authorities, — a fact for which
Mr Ball can only account by supposing that those admitted
as pensioners resided for an exceptionally short time. Other-
wise, he observes, 'after the violent fluctuations of 1638 to
1643 the entries had become fairly constant, averaging some-
where about fifty a year.' So that ' if on an average they
had stayed up only three years the residents in college,
including fellows, would have exceeded 200 V It is evident,
however, that, both within and without the college walls,
Joim Peii: there was commotion, changes and turmoil, so that John
a. 1685. Pell, now lecturing at Amsterdam on Diophantus, may have
found in that once stormy centre, exile though he was, a
sphere of labour preferable to that which he had abandoned
at his own college, some thirteen years before.
EMMANUEL At Emmanuel College, Holds worth, now sickening in the
COLLEGE :
iSruded in Tower, was formally deposed from the mastership to make way
Hoili'sworth. for Dr Tuckney, a cousin of John Cotton, wrho had succeeded
Apr. 1645. k^ ag vjcar of Boston. In anticipation of the revolution which
he had foreseen and predicted, Holdsworth had sought to set
his house in order; and in a letter to his 'much esteemed
friend,' Whichcote, had done his best to propitiate the com-
The latter missioners by offering to surrender a portion of his library
offers to give . . . , . ./
UP his and consigning his furniture to his successor as a free gift,
furniture
Msdiipbarrarvf anc^ a^so ^J ma^ing good the college plate which he had
Manchester sent away2. In April, 1644, we accordingly find Manchester
forbids the ' T° •;
of thetetter n writmg to forbid the sequestration of Holdsworth s library
on the ground that, as ' I am informed by some of the fellows
of Emmanuel College,' 'he hath given it, or a great part
put out by Ordinance of Parliament.' be supply'd whatever else miscarry ;
Lords' Journals, vm 146. if other fellows liave not restored
1 Notes on Trinity College, p. 94. theirs, it is no example for me nor
2 ' The college hath a share of my credit for them. There is as much
books which I hope will preserve the plate as will satisfy left behind as a
whole. The furniture of my lodging pawn. I pray take it into your
it must needs go, it will please the custody, and now account it not
better if they give it to my successor mine but the college's.' 'Feb. 13,
than to a sequestrator. The college 1644.' Emmanuel College Bennet
plate for which I stand engaged must MS., p. 75.
EXPULSIONS AND SEQUESTRATIONS. 313
thereof, to the college1.' In fact, all that the sequestrator CHAP.HI.
was eventually able to lay hands on was the hay and wood
stored up in the master's outhouses and valued at only
£2. 15s. Od. The valuable library of Nicholas Hall, one of Nicholas
Hall redeems
the fellows, appraised at £45, was redeemed by himself, sub- !'.;s own
' *» «/ library.
ject, however, to a reduction of £5, to which he was entitled
as the ' fifth ' which was left to him on the sequestration of
his rectory at Loughborough. His ' other goods ' amounted
to only £5. The sequestrations of two other fellows, — ' Mr
Sowersby2' and 'Mr Welles,' — amounted to £8. 5s. Od. and s<>»i>y
* _ AY ells.
£5 respectively ; the former including ' folios and a quarto '
valued at £3, and the latter, ' bookes ' valued at £2. Another
noteworthy name, included by Cooper among the ejected,
that of Thomas Holbech, who succeeded to the mastership in rriiomas
r Holbech.]
16753, can hardly be classed among the 'sufferers' by the
Covenant.
At Sidney College, the solitary recorded sequestration of SIDMSY
the goods of one ' Mr Dendreth,' valued at only 13s. 4>d., gert™and °f
might lead us to infer that Cromwell's own college was Seth Ward-
shielded by his influence. This, however, was very far from
being the case ; and neither Seth Ward's exemplary devotion
to the late master, nor Robert Bertie's active support in the
election of Dr Minshull, availed them anything. Bertie was
forthwith ejected ; of whom, says Walker, who describes him
as ' a charitable good man,' ' I find this note, Regis mandato
admissus, temporum injuria pulsus*' but respecting whom we
hear nothing more. The other ejections were those of
1 Shuckburgh, Emmanuel College, besides Holdsworth.' ' The determi-
p. 94. nation of the fellowships of Holbech,
2 ' Apr. 8, 1644. Mr Sorsby's Hall and Wright in 1642,' he adds,
name was cut out of the Butteries, [referring perhaps to Walker's ob-
by command from the Lord Man- servation (Sufferings, n 144 r)],
Chester.' Worthington's Diary (ed. ' cannot count as ejection; they were
Crossley.), i, p. 20. For the circum- merely declared to be superannuated
stances of his ejection, see Shuck- according to the de mora statute'
burgh, pp. 95, 96. (Emm. College, p. 95). It is how-
3 ' Holbeche ' is the only name ever evident that neither Sorsby nor
mentioned by Cooper (Annuls, m 379) Hall were able to escape confiscation
' amongst the ejected fellows ' at Em- of their property. Of Holbech's per-
manuel. Shuckburgh, however, ob- sonal property there is no mention
serves that 'R. Sorsby' (Sowersby), in the schedule. For statute de
' who had been acting as deputy Mora Sociorum see author's History,
Master during the sequestration,' n 315-8.
was the ' only other case of ejection 4 Sufferings, etc., n 159 I.
314
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
his
appearance
along with
Edward
Gibson
before the
Commis-
CHAP. in. Edward Gibson, John Lawson and John Pawson ; and
Sancroft, writing to Sorsby of Emmanuel on the 13th of
February, states that there were ' none left but Covenanters.'
Of Lawson, he says that ' he died presentely after, and was a
dying man long before, not being able to carry his answer to
seth ward : the Comittee, but forc't to send it in in writing1.' Seth Ward,
on the other hand, achieved a reputation which still lives in
history. As one of the authors of that already notorious
protest against the Covenant, — the Certain Disquisitions, —
he had small expectation of clemency, and it was in his
absence from the university, in August 1644, that he ' received
the news that his ejection was voted and put into execution.'
Along with Edward Gibson, another fellow of Sidney, he had,
prior to his departure, appeared before the Committee, and
the two had made a joint protest against the ambiguous
terms in which the order for their eviction was couched2.
Long after, when he himself was bishop of Salisbury, Ward
^a(j ^Q pleasure of presenting his friend to 'a good living in
Hertfordshire.' Notwithstanding his attainments, he was no
mere academic recluse, and, although he remained single
throughout his life, might, his biographer assures us, have
easily placed himself beyond all fear of want by marriage3.
We hear of him as spending a pleasant time with some
relatives of his late beloved master near London, and next,
as the guest of Oughtred of King's College at his rectory of
Albury in Surrey, where their joint devotion to mathematical
studies served not a little to divert their thoughts from
the distraction that reigned around. We find him next at
Aspenden (his native village in Hertfordshire), educating the
sons of his friend Ralph Freeman; then the guest of lord
subsequent
experiences,
1 Tanner MS. LXI 271.
2 — ' they desired to know if the
Committee had any crime to object
against them. They answered they
had not; they declared the reason why
they asked was that they understood
some were ejected for not taking the
Covenant and others for Immoralities ;
to which they received this answer,
that those were words of course put
into all their Orders of Ejection.'
Pope (Walter), Life of Seth Ward
(1697), p. 16. Cf. John Barwick's
complaintin the Querela Cant. (pp. 27,
28) — ' they have also robbed us of
our good names, branding all of us
in our severall writs of Ejectment
with a black Character of misde-
mean ers in generall . ' See also supra ,
p. 275.
3 Pope, u. s. p. 17.
SETH WARD AT OXFORD. 315
Wenmore, at his seat near Oxford ; and, finally, entering the CHAP. HI.
haven of the professorial chair in that university as successor
to his friend, John Greaves. The latter, at this time a fellow J°lm
Greaves of
of Merton, although only recently -promoted to the Savilian ™\w£'
professorship of Astronomy, was already anticipating his ^l^
ejection from the post, for in addition to his own determina- bTw^fas
tion not to take the Covenant, he was well known to have professor,
given active support to the royal cause by a loan from the
college treasury1. Despairing, accordingly, of being able to
maintain his tenure of his chair, he strongly urged upon
Ward that he should become a candidate for the appoint-
ment. ' If you refuse it,' he said, ' they will give it to some
cobler of their party who never heard the name of Euclid or
the mathematics, and yet will eagerly snap at it for the
salaries sake.' His friend yielded to this appeal, and was
shortly after inducted into the chair which Henry Briggs of
St John's had been the first to fill. ' So that,' continues the
narrator, ' the very same thing that caused his ejection out
of Cambridge was the cause also of his preferment in
Oxford2.'
The warden of Wadham, at this time, was the famous i>r JOHN
WlLKINS *
Dr Wilkins, and, to use Anthony Wood's expression, it was * ^w.
' for the sake of Wilkins3,' that Ward, at the former's express His
r friendship
invitation, now took up his residence in the college. It was JJleh- joS?'
a somewhat singular conjunction between remarkable eccen- w^dh"mat
tricity and exemplary sobriety in relation both to scientific ISIS-K*.
and religious thought. Wilkins, whose practical sagacity
may be presumed, when we note that he subsequently
married Cromwell's sister and became, for a brief period,
master of Trinity at Cambridge, was a scholar who transferred
to science the fanaticism which he condemned in theology ;
1 A further aggravation of his Cambridge for refusing the Covenant,'
offence was that he had drawn up was removed, according to his bio-
and procured signatures to a petition grapher, by the influence of Sir John
for the deposition of Nathaniel Brent, Trevor (the elder), ' who tho' of the
the Presbyterian warden of Merton Parliament Party, was a great lover
at that time. See Clark (Andr.), The of Learning' and 'preserved' him
Colleges of Oxford (1891), p. 64. ' in the Professor's chair '...' without
2 Pope, u. s. pp. 19-20. The diffi- taking the Covenant, or Engage-
culty presented by the fact that Ward ment.' Ibid. pp. 20-21.
himself had 'been turn'd out of 3 Athenae, n 827.
316 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. and while he must, we cannot but think, have somewhat
astonished the new professor in their conversations, by his
daring speculations on the habitableness of the moon and
the best way of getting there, or by the confidence with
which he demonstrated the practicability of stowing away
the original prototypes of animal life on the globe in the
recesses of Noah's Ark, may also have edified him by his
forcible pleadings for toleration and comprehension in matters
of religious belief1. It is certain that the warden in his
Lodge, and Ward in his rooms over the gateway of the
college, worked harmoniously together, and that their joint
Prosperity term of residence was signalized as one of the most pros-
of Wadham
period. this Perous periods in the history of Wadham, and one which
might well have reminded the professor of those record entries
which marked his earlier years at Sidney2. It was at this
time, moreover, that Wadham not only saw its numbers mul-
tiplied tenfold and its reputation materially increased3, but
also, by the extent to which it fostered the first beginnings
of the Royal Society, rendered a lasting service to the pro-
gress of science throughout England. Among other Cam-
Lawrence bridge men thus attracted to the college, was Lawrence
Rookeof & . .
Piell : Rooke, the son of a niece of bishop Andrewes and formerly
d. 1662. a feuow of King's. In 1650 he entered Wadham as a fellow-
commoner, bringing with him two of his own pupils, and
proceeded to follow up his previous studies with such success
that, two years later, he received the appointment of professor
of Astronomy at Gresham College in London. His prema-
ture death, at the age of forty, was widely lamented, and
most of the fellows of the Royal Society were present at his
funeral, — according, indeed, to Walter Pope, he had already
acquired the reputation of being ' the greatest man in
England for solid learning4.' His sense of his obligations to
1 His Essay towards a Real Cliarac- ' . . . there are fifty-seven admissions in
ter and a Philosophical Language Mr Gardiner's Register for the year
(1668) embodies, it has been said, 1650, and they average twenty-eight
the most scientific conception of the for the next three years.' Wells (J.),
subject, down to that of Esperanto. Merton College, pp. 56, 67. See also
2 See supra, p. 252, n. 2. Burrows (Mont.), Register of the
3 '...only seven admissions are Visitors of the Univ. of Oxford (1647-
recorded at Wadham in 1643. ..in 1658), Introd., p. cxxi.
1644 there are three, in 1645 none.' 4 Life of Seth Ward, p. 111.
THE EJECTED AND THE INTRUDED COMPARED. 317
Seth Ward as his instructor, may be inferred from the fact ^CHAP. m.
that, on his death-bed, he appointed him his sole heir1; while "iwaKitude
Ward's sense of his own indebtedness to Greaves was shewn
in a not less practical manner2.
If Fuller's estimate of the comparative merits of the The expelled
* t and their
ejected and intruded, in connexion with a single college3, ™£e*sr°£
can hardly be accepted without demur, that of Walker,
pronounced half a century later, with respect to the same
parties throughout the university, may well seem yet more
questionable. He declares, without qualification, that those
who now succeeded to office and emolument in the university
of Cambridge, 'were in every way and in every degree inferior
to those who went out4,' — an assertion more easily under-
stood when we bear in mind that his laborious folio appeared
in the year 1712, — a time when High Church feeling was at
its highest. But it is probable that his estimate of the
comparative merits of the ejected and the intruded was also
that of the majority of their Cambridge contemporaries. As
regards Oxford, Montagu Burrows cites as 'a remark which
has often been made,' and one which, he considers, has 'truth
in it,' the more moderate verdict, — that ' the persons
intruded by the Visitors were quite as good men as those
ejected5.' Unfortunately he, also, fails to recognize the considera-
important difference between those who accepted the Cove- ^Sdh,"
nant and those who, five years later, swore to the Engage- suchmpting
ment. In either case, however, such a judgement on the c°
comparative merits of individuals was materially, perhaps
inevitably, biassed by the critic's own prepossessions with
respect to the question at issue. Otherwise, it would seem
probable, a priori, that a specially selected body of men,
drawn from different colleges and chosen with respect to
their ascertained qualifications, would be likely to represent
a higher standard of efficiency than would a corresponding
1 Ward (Jo.), Lives of tlie Gresliam which county was in the power of
Professors, pp. 90-95. the Parliament, who withheld the
2 '...for whom he procur'd the money, etc.' Pope, Life, u. s. p. 21.
full arrears of his salary, amounting 3 See supra, p. 300.
to five hundred pounds, for part, if 4 Sufferings, etc., 1 114 I.
not all the land allotted to pay the 5 Register (M.*.), Introd.p. Ixxxiii.
Savilian professors lies in Kent,
318 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CRAP, in. number whose training had been, for the most part, limited
to that imparted by one particular society. As regards the
The oid and estimate formed by contemporaries, we have also to remem-
New Heads *
contrasted: ^^ that Whichcote, at this time, was not much over thirty
and had not yet exhibited his full powers ; while Cudworth,
at Clare, was seven years his junior and still only master of
arts; that Lazarus Seaman must have seemed a poor substi-
tute for Cosin, whether in respect of scholarship or of ability;
and that to all sympathisers with the Anglican school of
Laneyaas theology, Richard Vines, notwithstanding his reputation as
crashaw? by a Greek scholar, could hardly have appeared comparable to
Dr Laney. Richard Crashaw when, at Pembroke, in 1634,
he published his Epigrammatum Sacrorum Liber, — Vines,
being then still a schoolmaster at Hinckley, — ushered in his
Epigrams with no less than three dedications, — the first to
Laney, as master of his college; the second to Tournay, his
tutor; the third to Brook, who had been his master at
Charterhouse, — approaching each, in turn, with skilful adula-
tion, which culminated with the Master, — himself, we can
well understand, never dreaming that the Head of Pembroke
would one day be called upon to yield place to the school-
master of a remote little Warwickshire township. As an
impressive personality, and one whose tolerant and generous
nature won upon all with whom he came in contact, Laney
must at this time have appeared, to most, greatly the superior
of the newly-elected member of the Assembly, and to do Vines
justice, it was with no little reluctance that he entered on
the duties of the mastership, more especially when he noted
the scanty remnant of scholars and the half-ruinous condition
Hoidsworth of the college buildings ! Of Holdsworth, again, it may be
Tuckney. said, that while fully Tuckney's equal in scholarship and
intellectual force, he impresses us as a man of far finer spirit;
while to dispassionate judges, a similar, if not so marked, an
inferiority can scarcely but have suggested itself when they
contrasted the signal merits and approved experience of a
Brownrig, a Sterne, a William Beale, and a Comber2, with
1 Epigrammatum Sacrorum Liber: berrimo typographeo, 1634.
Cantabrigiae, ex Academiae cele- - '...a very treasury of knowledge,
ELECTIONS OF NEW FELLOWS. 319
the presumed qualifications of William Spurstowe1, Thomas CHAP. in.
Young, John Arrowsmith*, and Thomas Hill3, — the most
that can be urged in favour of any one of the latter four,
being, perhaps, that he did not discredit his election.
It must, however, be noted that Manchester, in making Method of
• procedure in
less important appointments, deserves the credit of having ""^tup the
apparently done his best to consult the feelings of the fellowships:
respective societies into which entirely new elements were
thus intruded. In a letter printed by Masters, a copy of
which appears to have been sent round to each of the
colleges, he instructs the master and fellows of Corpus
Christi College to send him ' the names of such schollers in
your colledge whom you judge most capeable of fellowships,
that they may be examyned and made fellowes, if upon Examination
examination they shall be approved*' Three months later, candidates.
a second letter informs the same body that 'Mr Daniel
Johnson and Mr Richard Kennett have been examined and
approved by the Assembly of Divines now sitting at West-
minster as fitt to be fellowes5.' Each fellow, thus ex-
amined and approved, made formal promise 'to labor to
both in the Greeke and Latine Fa- der'd it very acceptable. He was of
thers, together with the Schoolmen a very peaceable disposition,' — vir-
and Councells, Church history, and tues which, however much they
moderne writers. Adde to this his in- might win personal regard for the
comparable dexterity in the Easterne possessor, by no means involved ad-
and Westerne languages, as Hebrew, ministrative capacity or profound
Arabick, Cop tick, Samaritane, Sy- acquirements.
riack, Caldee, Persian, Greeke and 2 Both Whichcote and Thomas
Latine, in which he was most ex- Baker, while testifying to Arrow-
cellent; likewise the French, Spanish, smith's high worth, lay the chief
and Italian which he understood and stress on his amiable character. See
could speake.' The Triumph of Faith author's History of St John's, p. 131.
over Death, p. 8. [Funeral sermon He succeeded Hill in the mastership
for Comber, preached in ' Trinity Col- of Trinity, and, according to Mr Ball,
lege Chappell. ByK. B. B.D. (Bore- 'was almost as unpopular, though
man), the 29 of March, 1653. Printed a trifle less intolerant.' Notes on
by J. G. for E. Eoyston, at the Angel Trinity College, p. 96.
in Ivy-Lane. 1654.'] Theabovequo- 3 'Hill,' says Mr Ball, 'was a
tation is from the Life and Death bitter Calvinist, and was detested in
prefixed to the Sermon. the college.' Ibid. p. 94.
1 Of Spurstowe, Calamy tells us 4 Masters-Lamb, p. 357. 'DrHoyle
(Life of Baxter, i 281) that he was reported the names of some that had
' a man of great humility and meek- been examined for fellowship in Cam-
ness, and great charity, both in bridge.' Journal of Assembly of Di-
giving and forgiving. He always had vines (Sept. 17, 1644), Lightfoot-
an innocent and grateful chearful- Pitman, xm 311.
nesse in his converse, which ren- 6 Masters-Lamb, p. 357.
320 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. in. promote piety and learninge in my selfe, schollers and stu-
dentes that doe or shall belong to the saide colledge, agreable
solemn notionall LEAGUE AND COVENANT by me
sworne and subscribed with respect to all the good and
wholesome statutes of the said colledge and of the university
correspondent to the said Covenant1.' Although, however,
the existing Head and fellows were thus allowed a certain
voice with respect to the choice of those who succeeded in
the places of the expelled, it is evident that the change
which resulted must have been accompanied by much that
They each was prejudicial to real harmony and good feeling. Dr Venn
the status, calls attention to the fact that 'the intruded fellows were
as regards
the"e?]ctedf no^ P^ced at the bottom of the list, like those elected in the
ordinary way, but came in at once as seniors, being some-
times treated simply as substitutes for those ejected2.'
conditions With regard to the Covenant itself, it might of course be
which ' &
that, as its acceptance had already been made obli-
gatory on every Englishman over the age of eighteen, there
was no special hardship involved in its imposition on the
members of the universities3; and Gardiner observes that
'the excluded fellows were treated as Puritans had been
treated before, and as Catholics had been treated earlier
still.' ' As long,' he adds, ' as the State is allowed to decide
what religion is to be taught, it must begin by laying a
heavy hand on the school and the college4.'
That the demands involved were found 'heavy' by the
great majority of educated Englishmen in those days admits
1 Masters-Lamb, p. 356. those that are or hereafter shall be
2 Biog. Hist, of Gonville and put in by me.' Quoted in Registers
Gains College, in 89. More generally of Pembroke College, n 72.
the intruded fellow took his place 3 5 Feb. 1644 ; see Gardiner, Hist.
according to ' seniority as in the Uni- of the Great Civil War, i 354. Man-
versity Eegister' (see Baker-Mayor, Chester's instruction to the Cam-
p. 297 Z. 10; Masters-Lamb, p. 358), bridge Committee, — 'that you for-
but in some cases, as in Trinity Col- beare to admit any person or persons
lege (supra, p. 311), he appears to into any office within your colledge
have at once succeeded to the po- fore you shall receive a certificate
sition in the college itself formerly under our hands that such person
held by the fellow whom he dis- hath taken the national league and
placed. Manchester's instructions covenant,' — is dated 18 Jan. 164|.
were to 'give each of the new fellows See Heywood and Wright, n 463.
his place according to his seniority * Gardiner, u, s. i 356.
in the Universitie in reference to all
JASPER MAYNE. 321
of no doubt ; and of this we can hardly perhaps cite more CHAP, in.
convincing proof than is to be found in the treatise in which,
in the year 1647, Jasper Mayne, doctor of divinity and senior JASPER
student of Christ Church, sought to vindicate himself from «j.n°n°f
Christ
the ' causeless aspersions ' cast upon him by Francis Chey- ^^ :
nell1. Cheynell, who at this time, was both fellow of Merton d-1672-
and Lady Margaret professor, was especially active in urging
that the acceptance of the Covenant should be made im-
perative on every holder of office or emolument in Oxford.
He was indeed the incarnation of Presbyterian intolerance,
and it was still fresh in the memory of every master of arts
throughout the university how his merciless importunities
had harassed the dying hours of the ablest defender of the
cause of toleration that the seventeenth century produced,
and how he had hurled the Religion of Protestants into the
grave of Chillingworth, ' to rot with its author.' It can
hardly be said that the mantle of Chillingworth had descended
upon Jasper Mayne, who certainly was not a profound theo-
logian : but he was nevertheless by birth and attainments HIS attitude
J in relation
no unfitting representative alike of that great party in both covenant
the universities which regarded fanaticism like that of Chey- exl^ie
nell with aversion not unmingled with contempt, as well of manyaTf
as of that illustrious society of which he was a fellow. Al- scholar at
though in orders and subsequently archdeacon of Chichester,
he composed more than one English comedy; his critical
discernment made him an admirer of Lucian, whose Dia-
logues he partly translated ; while his poetic fancy and power
of felicitous expression gave to the productions of his muse
an undeniable charm. But most of all he loved the recondite
learning, the traditions of art, and the historical associations
which adorned the National Church, — the proposal to abolish
forthwith both the episcopal office and the English liturgy
filling him with absolute dismay. He looked upon it, indeed,
as simply a kind of barbarism to call for the destruction of
everything that in statuary or stained glass brought back
1 A late Printed Sermon against Mayne, D.D., the mis-understood
False Prophets, vindicated by Letter Author of it. Printed in the yeare
from the causeless Aspersions of 1647.
Mr Francis Cheynell. By Jasper
M. III. 21
322
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
His reason,
in briefest
CHAP, in. memories of a Past when Luther and Calvin were still un-
known names ; and although attaching but slight importance
to those details of ritual and ceremonial which Laud had
sought to revive, he regarded that long succession of prelates
of whom the murdered prelate seemed likely to be the last,
with a reverence which did credit alike to his intellect and
his heart. ' In short,' he wrote, ' let the King and Parliament
agree to burn copes and surplices, to throw away the Common
prayer Book, or to break our windows, I shall not place so
much religion in them as not to think them alterable, and
this done by right authority. But as for the Covenant, 'tis
a pill, Sir, which no secular interest can so sweeten to me,
that I should think myself obliged to be so far of any man's
religion, as to swallow both parts of a contradiction in an
oath, if it appear to me to be such V
It is evident indeed that, as applied to the two univer-
sities, the Covenant was an intrusive and not a merely
defensive formula, calling upon men, mostly divines and
exceptionally impressed by a sense of the sanctity of an oath,
to renounce what they held most binding on their conscience
and their honour as pledged to uphold the traditions of a
learned community.
When Commencement time again came round, it was
.-n i • • , <*• i • j
still deemed impracticable at Cambridge to hold the cus-
tomary solemnities, — students being liable to be tempted
away, at any moment, to join the levies that were taking
place all around and even at sea2. The author of the Burning
Bush complacently records that, in default of the customary
academic festivities, Sturbridge Fair was 'goodly and full,
with free trade and comfortable commerce as was formerly
accustomed in our most peaceable times3.' The more dis-
The com-
mencement
of 1645.
1 Sermon, u. s., pp. 21, 23, 55.
2 They were exempted, however,
from impressment (see Husband's
Ordinances, ser. n 662). With the
establishment of the Common wealth,
such service appears to have been
regarded as discretionary, but was
distinctly encouraged. In April 1649,
an order from the Council of State
to Dr Hill, ' master of Trinity House
[i.e. College] Cambridge,' enjoins
that ' such students of that society
as are willing to go in the summer's
fleet' may not be prejudiced ' in their
election to fellowships to be made
about Michaelmas.' State Papers
(Dom.), 1649-50, 14 April 1649.
3 Vicars (Jo.), The Burning Bush
not consumed. [4to. 1646] p. 25.
Vicars, who was of Queen's College,
CHANGED CONDITION OF HEADS. 323
cerning minds could not, however, but be aware that an jcnAiMir
all-important crisis in the history of both universities had
commenced and that the difficulties which confronted the
' reformers ' in Cambridge were of no ordinary magnitude.
Even, indeed, at this interval of time, the resolute and
doubtless conscientious policy of the new administrators of
the university, aided as it was by both Houses of Parliament
with unwonted unanimity, cannot but be followed by the
student of history with considerable interest ; and he will
recognise that the earlier measures now taken under con-
sideration,— the compensation of Heads of colleges for the
losses involved in the late changes, the lightening the
burdens which weighed on the whole academic community,
and the protection of the university from the arbitrary inter-
ference of the town authorities, — were both wise and politic.
The letter which Manchester had addressed to the House 8 NOV. 1644:
of Lords, in connexion with the first of these measures, Sfnsby
e> 1-1 Manchester
affords a good illustration of the point of view from which *« "»« House
-1 of Lords with
Heads of colleges had hitherto regarded their acceptance of ^S^on116
canonries or benefices tenable conjointly with their office, j^oiuments
The object of his letter is to plead that, under the changed tothe"
mastership
conditions which now presented themselves, the holders of of » college,
consequent
masterships may receive more liberal stipends, these being ^P™"^
places, as he observes, ' of great credit and of manifold Snecu
weighty employments,' and involving ' many extraordinary
expences, not only in regard of books, apparel, and servants, having been
but also in often entertainments of persons of divers qualities |Jfen>tarlia~
visiting the university.' ' The smallness of outward means,'
he observes, ' will much lessen their authority among many,'
and he accordingly suggests three hundred per annum as
' the least that can conveniently be conferred.' For while
formerly, he points out, ' these places were steps to ecclesias-
tical dignities and preferment,' ' their maintenance ' having
been 'augmented by deaneries, archdeaconries, preben-
daries, and such like means, which you have judged fit to
Oxford (where he does not appear to in the controversy which was now
have graduated), was a virulent con- impending between his party and
troversialist on the Presbyterian side the Independents.
21—2
324 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. condemn, in your endeavours of Church Reformation,' it would
be ' an unhappy necessity ' if the present holders should be
compelled, in order to eke out their incomes, ' to take pastoral
charges in the country.' If that were to come about, he
goes on to shew, non-residency would necessarily follow, and
their service to the colleges and the university would suffer
wSlfe ^ proportion- He concludes with the suggestion that the
suggests. deficit might fairly be met 'out of that yearly revenue
which was wont to be paid to the bishop of Ely out of the
Exchequer1.'
The Heads The resources, not only of the university, but of all
petition that ; . J . .
the colleges the colleges, had, indeed, by this time become so seriously
frxoempted diminished in consequence of the war, that, five months
taxation. iater, a deputation, composed of the Heads and other leading
members of the university, with Palmer, the new president
of Queens', as their spokesman, appeared before the Commons
to represent the critical state of affairs, — urging that, ' unlesse
these societies may be freed and exempted (according to
their charter and the indulgence of former parliaments) from
all military taxes and other contributions to the publike
service,' they would no longer be able to support their
ordinance to students. This appeal met with immediate response — and
that effect, i • t_ i • i
11 Apr. 1645. Was granted with only one proviso, namely 'that the tenants
who enjoy leases from the said University and Colledges
respectively doe claime no freedome, exception, or advantage
by this ordinance2.'
The divisions It was now that the Presbyterian party in the university,
between . . . ,
PRESET- its victory well assured, began to discover in the growing
EiANand * 6 &
e strength of the Independents a scarcely less formidable
opposition than that which it had overthrown. The quarrel
Ion< between Manchester and Cromwell, who respectively repre-
sented the two bodies, had terminated in a complete
rupture3; while the Self-Denying Ordinance, passed in
April 1645, had materially diminished the earl's influence
by rendering it necessary for him to resign his military
1 Lords1 Journals, vn 52; Cooper, 3 Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,
Annals, m 382-3. ed. Carlyle-Lomas, i 184-7.
2 Hey wood and Wright, n 464-5.
DIFFICULTIES OF MANCHESTER'S POSITION. 325
command. It was already a moot question whether this JCHAP. m.
same Ordinance would not compel him also to resign the
authority with which he had been invested fifteen months
before, as head of the Committee for regulating the uni-
versity. At this juncture the Heads at Cambridge rallied Manchester
. supported by
to his support; and notwithstanding that the petition pre- Cambridge8'
sented by his officers in the army against his removal as
their chief had proved ineffectual1, Arrowsmith, the master
of St John's, was now deputed to present to the Commons
a petition signed by ' divers Masters of several Colleges,'
expressing their hope that the Self-Denying Ordinance
might not be interpreted by the House as involving Man-
chester's 'resignation of the authority he hath over the
University of Cambridge.' Before assenting to this request, Manchester
_, J . . °. ' compelled to
the Commons intimated that they should like to be assured
»
commission :
that the Lords would be ready to agree that the Provostship ^"^the1
of Eton College should not be included in the operation of [heeadship of
the Ordinance, — the provost at that time being Francis committee
Rons, who had already taken the Covenant and subse- by the
• Commons
quently joined the Independents2. The Lords, however, *oane£
w & f * LfODlUllttBC,
intimated, in turn, that they should first like to know what UJune1645-
the Commons meant to do with respect to Manchester. And
ultimately, on the 14th of June, the Commons decided on
the appointment of a Committee, ' to consider of a fitting
power to be intrusted and settled in a Committee for the
Regulating of the University of Cambridge, and to prepare
an Ordinance to that Purpose3.'
The 14th of June was the day on which Charles was Battles of
defeated at Naseby, and the tidings was before long followed a* June)
1 Manchester had resigned his army ' to Independency were, of
commission on 2nd April 1645, the course, regarded with no favour by
day before the Self-Denying Ordi- the Presbyterian Heads at Cambridge,
nance passed the House of Lords; See Baillie's Letters, n 185; Man-
his officers' petition, presented in the Chester's Quarrel with Cromwell
preceding January, had deprecated (Camd. Soc.), p. 76.
his removal on the ground that it 2 Rous was chairman of the Par-
would ' breed a great confusion liamentary Visitation of the Uni-
amongst them by reason of the versity of Oxford in 1647. Burrows,
differences between Presbyterians Register of the Visitors, p. Ixii.
and Independents.' Whitaker (Jer.), 3 Commons' Journals, iv 174;
Diary, p. 185; D. N. B. xxxvm 229. Cooper, Annals, ra 385.
Cromwell's efforts 'to seduce the
326
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. III.
Visit of
Richard
Baxter to
Cromwell's
quarters at
Leicester :
June 1645.
His regret
at having
declined the
chaplaincy.
by that of Goring's defeat at Langport and the surrender
of Bridgenorth, — intelligence which gave rise to no little
exultation among the newly elected Heads and fellows at
Cambridge, the claret flowing freely at St John's in honour
of the second event *. ' When Naseby was won,' says Masson,
' a sense of departing superiority sank on the spirits of the
Presbyterians,' while he sums up Richard Baxter's oft-quoted
description of his visit to Cromwell's quarters at Leicester,
in the following week, as bringing home to us, ' a ferment of
Anti-Presbyterianism, Anti-Scotticism, Independency, and
Tolerationism, passing on into a drift of universally demo-
cratic opinion2.' Only two years before his visit to Leicester,
that zealous young Presbyterian divine had received from
Cromwell, then at Cambridge, the offer of the chaplaincy to
his forces. He had declined the proposal, but as he now
noted the war of creeds in the camp around him, and was
conscious of Cromwell's chilling reception, he could not but
ask himself whether, if he had recognised the call, he might
not have been an instrument in averting, in some measure,
the deplorable results which had actually ensued3.
In the course of a few more days, it became evident
that the ascendancy now acquired by the parliamentary
The Town
emboldened
by these
events seeks . 1-11 <«/-<« i • i
tbeaancient party, was being construed by the townsmen of Cambridge
itself in a sense which even the newly appointed Heads
£oun(j far from acceptable. The enfeebled condition of the
university, its poverty and disorganization, seemed to favour
a revival of the ancient aggressions of the town ; and once
again the academic liberties, jurisdiction and immunities
university.
1 The 27th of June was made a
day of thanksgiving for Naseby,
when ' by Mr Maior's [i.e. John
Lowry's] appointment, wine was
ordered and the soldiers in Cam-
bridge received a gratuity. ' See the
Accounts of the Town Treasurers,
quoted by Cooper, in 395. ' For
6 quartes of clarett wine in the Hall
at dinner upon the day of Thanks-
giving for the routing of the Lord
Goring' s forces at Langport. July 22 ,
1645.' St John's College Rental Book.
1634-1649. [Langport in Somerset-
shire, not ' Lamport ' as Masson prints
itm2338.] SeealsoBond(John),B.L.,
Ortus Occidentalis (1645), p. 33.
2 Life of Milton, m* 384, 386.
Among the papers which fell into
Cromwell's hands at Naseby was
one which proved that Charles pro-
posed to treat with Parliament be-
cause ' he expected Presbyterians and
Independents to fall out and so help
him tohisown.' Gardiner in D.N.B.
x82.
3 Calamy, Life of Baxter (1702),
pp. 87-88.
AFTER EFFECTS OF NASEBY. 327
were distinctly perceived to be in peril. The mayor himself, CHAP. in.
John Lowry, flung down the gauntlet, by refusing to take Refusal of
the customary oath whereby all his predecessors had sue- to°take tiTey
. , customary
cessively bound themselves to respect those traditional rights • 9?thas
-1 O ' Mayor.
and the letter is still extant, wherein, after detailing the
pains he has been at to serve the cause of the Commons,
he appeals to Lenthall, the Speaker, not to pronounce upon
the merits of the question until he or Cromwell shall have
been heard in his defence1. As he had himself represented
the Town in the Commons, along with Cromwell, ever since
the opening of the Long Parliament, he could claim to be
heard as not only mayor of the borough but also a member
of the House. The Heads, however, were on the alert ; and, The Heads
' appeal both
four days after Lowry 's letter was penned, we find seven of commons*"*1
their number2 presenting a lengthy appeal3 to Lords and 5 Aug' 1645'
Commons conjointly, urging that, after due consideration,
the grievances which are therein set forth may be redressed.
These grievances were certainly of no sentimental order.
John Lowry, by omitting to give notice to the vice-chancellor
of the ceremony, at which, in the ordinary course, the oath They
' J represent the
would be administered to himself and the bailiffs, and a"ni(jrllege8
openly refusing to take any such oath whenever it might oT Semties
be proffered, had placed in jeopardy a series of academic endangered*3
liberties, privileges and immunities on which, to quote the action,
language of the petitioners, ' the just and fitting security
for the peace of the university' largely depended, — 'the
survey of weights and measures,' ' the assize, assay and
government of bread, beer and victuals,' ' the licensing and
disallowing of public ale-houses and victualling houses,' and,
what was perhaps valued as much as all these, 'the juris-
diction' which enabled the vice-chancellor to institute enquiry
1 ' If their should be anie thing 2 These were Drs Anthony Tuck-
moved, that consernce the Town and ney, John Arrowsmith, Thomas Hill,
the Universitie, I pray you let it Lazarus Seaman, Herbert Palmer,
be put ofe, untill either Mr Cromwell Richard Vines, and William Spur-
my Partner or my self be theare, stowe.
that their may be nothing done to 3 Lords' Journals, vn 525-7. [Print-
the preagedise of our Towne, who ed at length in Cooper, Annals, m
are so faithful and leall for you.' 389-392.]
MSS. Baker, xxxv 57.
328 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
^ at Great St Mary's into all cases wherein a scholar, servant,
or minister of the university alleged himself to have been
arrested or ' vexed ' by a member, or members, of the town
community1. The suppliant Heads, accordingly, 'in the
behalf of themselves and the whole university,' now besought
the two Houses to be pleased to order ' that the said mayor
and bailiffs may forthwith take their oath, as their prede-
Response of cessors have done for well near three hundred years2.' The
the Lords to •*
ofeti?eHeads resP°nse °* the Lords to this appeal was eminently re-
assuring, in that it conveyed a provisional assent to all the
demands of the petitioners, the ' Committee of the Asso-
ciation ' at Cambridge being enjoined to maintain the uni-
versity in full possession of its liberties and privileges until
the whole question should have been decided by both Houses.
The said Committee was further instructed ' to tender the
Oath usually taken by all former Mayors to the present
Mayor of Cambridge ' ; ' and in case,' says the Order, ' he shall
refuse to take the said Oath, to certify unto this House upon
what grounds he doth refuse it3.' The Committee appointed
by the House of Commons appears, at first, to have fully
concurred in this decision, and had arranged a day, the
15th of August, for the consideration of the petition of the
counter Heads. But on the 14th, a petition from Lowry himself
petition of r J
was Presented, and order was thereupon given by the whole
House, that, so far as the petitioner and his refusal to take
Cambridge the Oath were concerned, the devolution to the Cambridge
a committee Committee should be rescinded, and that the question should
of the House. I/-N • i • i i
be dealt with by the Committee entrusted with 'the con-
sideration of the Petition presented from the Heads of the
Colleges of the University of Cambridge4.' When, accord-
ingly, the Committee at Cambridge, in pursuance of their
instructions, sent to Lowry, ' to give account of his refusal
to take the Oath,' he produced a copy of the Order whereby
his case was ' referred to a Committee of Parliament men5,'
and his petition and that of the Heads were now dealt with
1 Cooper, Annals, m 391. 4 Commons' Journals, rv 241.
2 Ibid. 392. 5 Cooper, Annals, ra 393.
8 Lords' Journals, u. s.
APPOINTMENT OF A COMMISSION. 329
by the two Houses, for the most part concurrently, but inde- CHAP.J.II
pendently of each other ; while, six weeks later, we find
that Cromwell and Lowry himself were added to the ' Com-
mittee concerning the business between the University of
Cambridge and the Town.' As it was at the same time
enacted that any member of the House should be entitled
to vote, we can well understand that the discussions now
assumed an importance which led the Grand Committee for
Religion to hold a sitting at which it assumed to itself
' the consideration of the Ordinance for regulating and re-
forming the University of Cambridge ' ; and that, eventually,
it was determined to appoint a COMMISSION, to be nominated Appoint-
bv both Houses, with instructions ' to view the laws and COMMISSION
•f _ ,10 view the
statutes of the University ' as well as of ' particular Colleges ^{£tes
and Halls ' and to suggest ' alterations and remedies.' At i7no
the same time, two new Committees were nominated, — the Also of two
„,,. „ Committees.
first, to take into consideration the filling up of the vacant
fellowships and scholarships, — the second, ' to consider how
godly and religious preaching may be established, both in
the University Church and in the other parish churches in
the town1.' It was, however, the powers vested in the Com-
mission that chiefly struck dismay into those of the royalist
party who, having purchased a precarious prolongation of
tenure of fellowships and office, by their acceptance of the
Covenant, still held on at Cambridge ; for it was now evident
that it was the design of Parliament to arrogate to itself that
royal and exclusive prerogative of Visitation, which Laud, it significance
J L of the parlia-
is true, had claimed as metropolitan, but never actually exer- ^£^[0 Visit.
cised2, and which, in the following year, the authorities at
Oxford maintained, in their untiring resistance to the newly
intruded Visitors, to be inalienable from the Crown. Had it
been known at Cambridge, that Charles was at this very
time negotiating with the Independents, and also con-
sidering a scheme for the landing of French troops, the
enthusiasm for the defence of his prerogative would pro-
bably have undergone a certain diminution3. As it was, the
1 Commons' Journals, iv 312. 3 See Gardiner, Great Civil War,
2 Supra, pp. 123-5. n 375-9.
330 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP. IIT.^ royal right to visit was now destined to lie dormant for
nearly forty years, until re-asserted, with such deplorable
results, by Charles's second son.
^n ^ne mean time, the contest between the vice-chancellor
an^ the mayor continued to be waged, although on the
aiindvthrelty narrower question of precedency, but destined, ultimately, to
be brought to a conclusion by an act of unusual arrogance
on the part of the town dignitary. The employment of the
poor was then, as now, a constantly recurrent question at
Bequest of Cambridge ; and in the year 1642, a certain Roger Thompson,
£r°t™e poor : following the example set by Hobson, the carrier1, had be-
queathed a sum of two hundred pounds as a further en-
dowment of the premises, or ' workhouse,' which had already
deed of been erected. With this money, Thompson's executors had
purchase of
164& purchased an estate at Westwick (in the parish of Oakington),
but in the deed conveying the same, it was found that the
vendors had placed the mayor's name before that of the
Affront vice-chancellor. The executors, indignant at this affront to
offered the university, had consequently refused to pay the legacy,
university, whereupon proceedings in Chancery were commenced against
them by the Corporation2. The House of Commons, per-
ceiving its opportunity, had forthwith appointed a Com-
mittee to take into consideration ' the several Oaths that are
taken either in the Universities or by sheriffs, or in any
city, borough, or town corporate3.' But in the following
January, the Lords, at the petition of Dr Hill (now both
vice-chancellor and master of Trinity), gave order that the
The question question of precedence, between the vice-chancellor and the
of precedency • i
between the mayor, should be argued, by counsel on both sides, before
the House on the third of thel following February4. The,
mayor, in the mean time, received a copy of the petition, and
Lords: at a meeting of the Town councillors it was resolved that
' the dignity of the Corporation should be defended to the
uttermost and that the Mayor's charges should be borne by
1 For the 'Benefaction of Thomas Annals, in 402.
Hobson,' see Endowments (1904), pp. 3 Commons' Journals, iv 736 ;
559-565. Cooper, Ibid.
2 Corporation Day Book ; Cooper, 4 Cooper, Ibid, in 403-4.
VICE-CHANCELLOR AND MAYOR. 331
the Town1.' When, however, the cause came on for hearing, CHAP. nr.
the counsel for the university was able to cite precedents
and call witnesses whose evidence as to ' rights, custom and
usage ' was decisive in his favour ; while the mayor's counsel,
although stoutly affirming that it was in his power to adduce
evidence to prove the contrary, was fain to ask for time to
bring up his witnesses, they being, according to his repre- The
sentations not only ' very old,' but, some of them, ' very sick2.' ,0
The Lords, accordingly, after staying the proceedings in
Chancery, consented to adjourn the further hearing of the
cause for three months. The case came on again on the 5th
of May, and on the same day the witnesses were dismissed from
further attendance. At the next hearing, order was given orders
0 ° finally given
that ' the Deed ingrossed, wherein the Mayor of the Town ^/ufe rds
of Cambridge caused his name to be written before the
Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, be cancelled and made void';
and at the final hearing, which took place five days later,
further order was given, ' that the Mayor, upon sight of this
order, cause a new Deed to be made, wherein the Vice-
chancellor's name shall be placed first, as of Right it ought,...
that so things in reference to the Workhouse may be exe-
cuted jointly by the Vice-chancellor and Mayor, according
to the Tenor of the Will and the Intention of the Donor3.'
Before another week had elapsed, the Lords again took
under consideration the petition of the Heads, and, after
adverting, in a preamble, to the fact that the Committee and for the
maintenanc
of Association now no longer existed, and that, since the Jjyjwnito i
dissolution of the same, ' the university privileges had been pri
divers ways infringed,' gave order to the following effect : —
' That the Mayor of Cambridge and his Successors, and his several
Officers, shall from time to time, and all times hereafter, suffer the
University of Cambridge quietly and peaceably to use and to enjoy all
such Liberties and Privileges as to them belong by Grant, Charter, Com-
position, or othenoise, whereof they were possessed at the beginning of
this Parliament, until further Order be taken by this House*.'
1 Corporation Day Book ; Cooper, 3 Lords1 Journals, rx 188 ; Cooper,
Annals, m 404. m 409.
2 Lord*' Journals, vm 698; Cooper, * Lord*' Journals, rx 197; Cooper,
Ibid. m 410.
332 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
JCHAP. in. The subsequent tendency of events, however, was but
c°ntempt little calculated to enhance the respect with which orders
with which
tr<£t°eddbyis emanating from the Lords were regarded throughout the
^Ssor: country; and on the 29th of September, — the day following
' upon that on which alderman Warner, ' a determined Inde-
pendent,' was elected to the Lord Mayoralty in London, when
the Guildhall itself and the approaches to the building were
guarded by a strong body of soldiers1, — Mr Kitchingman,
the successor to John Lowry, assumed the office of mayor
in Cambridge. Prior to so doing, he had plainly declared
to the councillors, that he would accept office and take the
oath to the university, only on condition that ' the Corpora-
tion would agree to save him harmles and indemnified
against the Universitie in case any trouble or charge shall
hereafter happen upon and for such his refusal of the said
oath to the Universitie or doing any other act concerning
the Towne2.' In more modern and less technical English,
what Kitchingman meant to say was, that he held the
required Oath more honoured in the breach than in the
observance, and intended to disregard it, and possibly decline
again to take it, on a future occasion, if only the Corporation
would hold him indemnified for so doing, — a condition to
which the Corporation, then and there, and again in the
following year, cordially assented3. In all probability, how-
ever, this apparently stolid and unreasoning repudiation of
the required Oath was mainly designed to serve as an
Growing expression of the growing contempt with which an Oath,
f°/acticaiias generally, was coming to be regarded throughout the realm, —
binding. a ginigter feature which led Butler, in his Hudibras, to
designate perjury as 'a saint-like virtue,' and the numerous
conversions to Presbyterianism now taking place as those
of men who
...to the Glory of the Lord
Perjur'd themselves and broke their word4.
In short, it was almost as notorious in the Town as in
1 Gardiner, Great Civil War, in 3 Corporation Day Book ; Cooper,
205. in 424.
2 Corporation Day Book', Cooper, 4 Butler (Sam.), Hudibras (ed.
ni 416-7. (1822), i 367; Cant, n 136-7.
GROWING AVERSION TO THE OATH. 333
the University, that those members of the latter body who CHAP, in.
had taken the Covenant, had already, to quote the language
of Zachary Grey, ' taken two several oaths to maintain that Perjury
Church government, which the Covenant obliged them to acceptance
extirpate : namely, when they took their degrees in the Srveenrtityby
university, and when they entered into holy orders ; and graduates-
some of them,' he adds, 'when they became members of cathe-
dral churches1.' The most probable interpretation, accord-
ingly, of the fact that Lowry's successor in the mayoralty, spirit in
when intimating, in the same breath, his intention of both KitcWngman
declared his
taking the usual oath and forthwith breaking it, would seem J^huoath
to be that it was simply to shew, — not a little to the amuse- M Mayor<
ment of his fellow-councillors, — how fully he sympathised
with that general contempt for the taking of oaths which
was becoming, day by day, more prevalent.
It was, however, in a very different spirit from that of
the bluff councilman of the town, that, — in the interval
between the petition of the Heads in relation to Lowry's
refusal of the Oath and his successor's scornful acceptance of
the same, — Thomas Hill, master of Trinity, before entering Dr Thomas
upon the duties of the vice-chancellorship, had contemplated ^™P!|| ^
the obligations involved in the Oath which would be tendered j£ visc£.ath
to him on the assumption of office. Highly esteemed as a chancellor-
divine, and not less celebrated as a preacher, he was espe-
cially distinguished by the fervour with which he insisted
on that emotional form of religious belief which has been
somewhat irreverently designated as 'pectoral theology2.'
And it was, consequently, with a feeling approaching con-
sternation, that he now contemplated the fact that it would
devolve upon him, as a solemn duty3, at the end of term, to
grant absolution to the regents and non-regents ' in nomine
Patris, Filii, Spiritus Sancti, they kneeling upon their knees.'
He neither claimed, nor would he admit, that any such power
1 Butler, Hudibras (u.s.), 1 404; cf. Hunter (J.), Life of Oliver Heywood,
Fuller-Brewer, vi 171-2. p. 44.
2 ' He would sometimes lay his 3 ' Jurabis quod bene et fideliter
hand upon his breast and say with praestabis omnia quae spectant ad
emphasis, "Every Christian has officium procancellarii hujus Aca-
something here that will frame an demiae.' Liber Statut., p. 528.
argument against Arminianism.'"
334 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. was vested in him, either by virtue of his office or of his
profession, and he, accordingly, sought himself to be absolved
His petition from the obligation involved in his oath, not only by peti-
to the House * J r
i9N°or^si645. ^raring the House of Lords to grant him release, but even
venturing to suggest the following sentence, — Hoc in me
recipio, in quantum statutis et ordinationibus Regni non
repugnat, — as a clause which, if appended to the oath, would
Their prompt serve to relieve his conscience. The response to his prayer
response, in- c _
was singularly prompt; for on the following day it was
ordained by the Lords and Commons conjointly, that ' for the
present, till the statutes of the University of Cambridge can
be surveyed,' the vice-chancellor of the university of Cam-
bridge should take the customary oath, but with the above
committee clause subjoined1. The appointment, in the following Sep-
tember, of the Committee instructed to consider the whole
3osept:i646. question of Corporate oaths 2, must consequently, in all proba-
bility, be attributed quite as much to the conscientious
scruples of the vice-chancellor, as to the captious objections
of the mayor.
Reports of Towards the close of the year 1645, the two recently
the two J
No"Jui645es: appointed Committees having sent in their reports, the Com-
mons gave order that, in Trinity, St John's and King's, the
master and seniors should forthwith be empowered to exercise
Elections to their statutable authority for the nominating and electing of
fromthede feH°ws- Their choice, in the first instance, was to be limited
such scholars as are, by the statutes of the College,
b°u"?shouid capable to be chosen,' but, should there not be ' a sufficient
of time be number of such,' they were empowered 'by authority of
insufficient, it . L
is to be sup- Parliament, 'to chuse and make up the number of their
plemented
from outside, fellows elsewhere,' — a proviso which brings home to us, very
forcibly, the depleted condition of these societies at that time3.
In the following February, a new ordinance extended this
freedom to other colleges generally, while both Jesus and
Peterhouse were to have power to elect ' without presenting
names to any bishop4.' The recommendations of the second
1 Lords' Journals, vn 712; Cooper, 4 'As if the Fellows ejected had
Annals, m 397. been dead or resigned their fellow-
2 Supra, p. 330. ships.' Lords' Journals, vm 165;
3 Cooper, Annals, in 396. Cooper, Annals, ni 398-9.
THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY. 335
Committee imposed upon the Heads a somewhat novel obli- CHAP. 111^
gation, — that of themselves personally supplying the ' morn- The
ing course' at Great St Mary's 'on the Lord's Day'; and g^**.,
also of providing for good preaching there in the afternoon,
as well as on fast-days and days of thanksgiving, ' in order
that there may be a constant course of orthodox and edify-
ing Sermons1.'
The labours of the Commission charged with the ' survey'
of the statutes demanded, necessarily, a longer period for
their completion : but in the mean time the more practical Practical
good sense
minds in the university were turning their attention to ™f Ulf^"
certain minor reforms and improvements the desirability of imfortance-
which could not well be called in question. Among other
matters, it was now suggested that the present juncture was
no unfavorable one for acquiring possession of archbishop
Bancroft's Library. By the conditions of the donor's will,
that valuable collection had, some thirty years before, become
the rightful property of the university, but was still lying
piled up 'in the study over the cloisters' at Lambeth. It
had, moreover, since Bancroft's time, been augmented by
volumes given by archbishop Abbott and others, with the
design of rendering the collection more complete2. A peti- Petition
tion was accordingly now drawn up that the whole might be ^°tversity
transferred to the care of the university3. The Lords referred
the question to five of their number4 for consideration, to Cambridge:
whom was added Mr Justice Bacon, to advise on any legal 17
points that might arise ; while all the five were desired ' to
go to Lambeth and peruse the library there, and report to
the House5.' A year, however, elapsed before the assent of Tardy
• •*• assent of
Parliament was given ; and it may be conjectured that the Par'""116111-
employment of a certain amount of interest was necessary,
1 Heywood and Wright, n 469 ; library, from which they cannot now
Lords1 Jounuils, vin 165. be severed without much prejudice
2 'Whereas there are divers books thereunto, etc.' Lords' Journals, ix
in the study over the cloisters in 102.
Lambeth, amongst those of arch- 3 Heywood and Wright, n 467.
bishop Bancroft's... which said books 4 The earls of Manchester and
were added to those of archbishop Lincoln and the lords Robertas,
Bancroft's by his successor arch- North, and Montague. Lords1 Jour-
bishop Abbott and others, for the nals, vm 171.
perfecting and completing of that 6 Ibid.
336
A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
tary grant
CHAP, iii as we find the university addressing special letters of thanks
to Manchester, Lenthall and John Selden1 for their good
offices in the matter. ' We gaze with exultation at the vast
collection/ said the letter2. But with the arrival of the
volumes, the former question recurred of how to provide for
their reception ? The generous design of Buckingham3 had
collapsed with the death of its author ; the university had no
funds ', and it was only after long delay that Parliament
_ • *
came *° *ne rescue with an order that the sum of two thou-
sand pounds should be granted ' for the building and finishing
24Mar.i64j. of ^he pubiic library' at Cambridge. It would perhaps be
unjust to say that those who supported the grant thought to
discern in it an opportunity for giving the friends of learning
a useful political lesson, but there must have seemed some-
thing of grim irony in the proviso that the money was to be
' paid out of the estates and lands of deans and chapters4,' —
an appropriation certainly little in harmony with the prin-
ciples and views of the departed scholars to whom the uni-
versity was indebted for those literary treasures which, for the
next fourteen years, added to the enrichment of its shelves6.
1 To Selden, indeed, who had
shortly before declined the master-
ship of Trinity Hall, the thanks of
Cambridge were especially due as
to one who had been educated at
the sister university. But it would
have been difficult in 1645 to have
pleaded on behalf of Oxford.
2 'Joanni Seldeno. Cum te nuper
cuperemus academiae nostrae partem
et in parva praefectura magnum prae-
sidem, ambitioni nostrae datum est
non consultum tibi, intulisses enim
in Cantabrigiam illud nominis et
literarum quod ab ilia vicissim ac-
cipere non potuisses. Sed id nobis
ut succederet, cum multa non pate-
rentur, quod proximum potuisti de
bibliotheca nobis prospicis. Vim li-
brorum ingentem agnoscimus et glori-
amur.' Wilkins, Vita Seldeni, in
Selden's Works, i xli. Heywood and
Wright, n 518-9. It was in con-
nexion with his efforts on this
occasion that Selden's name was
placed in the Commemoration Ser-
vice as a benefactor to the Library.
The expense of bringing the books
to Cambridge was defrayed by a con-
tribution levied on the Colleges ; e.g.
' To Mr Hughes, one of the Esquire
Bedles, for the Colledg proportion of
charges for bringing home to the
Universitie the books given by the
Parliament, £3. 8. 0.' Venn, ra 93.
' To Mr Hughes, towards the charges
in bringing downe Lambeth Library,
£12. 6. 8.' St John's College Rental
Book, 1646.
3 See supra, p. 74.
4 Commons' Journals, v 512.
5 'A body so loyal to the Crown,'
observes Bradshaw, ' as the univer-
sity shewed itself after the Restora-
tion, was, of course, bound altogether
to ignore any act of munificence
displayed towards it by the Parlia-
ment during the Civil War ; though
they did not feel bound to disgorge
all the good things they had become
possessed of thereby ' (The University
Library, p. 20). The books were
sent back to Lambeth after the
Restoration. See Chap. V.
THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY. 337
The Committee for the University was instructed to see CHAP, in.
to it, that the above £2000 ' be forthwith raised and issued
accordingly,' but the Lords withheld their assent : they con- The Lords
0 J . J having
curred, however, in an order which was at the same time given %&™ £omie
for the payment of five hundred pounds ' out of the receipts moneyeishe
at Goldsmiths' Hall, to Mr George Thomason, stationer, for Withhold
i • i mi TI 11 f i i their assent
buying oi the said Ihomason a library or collection 01 books but concur
in a grant
in the Eastern languages, of very great value, late brought 5^^
out of Italy, and having been the library of a learned Rabbi l Thomason of
there, according to the printed catalogue thereof; and that of°He^wn
the said library or collection of books be bestowed upon the
public library in the university of Cambridge2.' To Selden
and Lightfoot it was entrusted to carry out these instructions,
and ' the books,' says Bradshaw, ' were brought down and
soon made available for use. This was the foundation of our </
Hebrew library3.' It must not be left unmentioned that
Thomason himself received the thanks of both Houses, for
' his pains in bringing over the collection from Italy ' and
' his good affections therein to the encouragement of learning
in this kingdom.' Although, indeed, the worthy collector's
sympathies were well known to be with the royalist party, it
appears to have been generally understood that his services
were impartially bestowed on all that tended to the preser-
vation of good literature, irrespective of politics4.
In 1645 it had been enacted that all who should in future important
be admitted to any degree should not only take an oath that j,n,t^uced
they had been observant of the statutes of the university in j^oaths'of :
the past, and would continue to be so in the future, but also d^^,on '
that they should at the same time admit (which had not of the
. . finances,
been previously required) their liability to such pains and l™£™ on
penalties as were imposed for non-fulfilment of their oath8. Su^uy
In October 1646 an important financial reform was intro- Md'dStk-s8'
duced. It appeared that the funds of two of the university re
1 Isaac Pragi. Lightfoot's own also Mercurius Pragtnaticus, No. 1
collection of Oriental MSS. was be- (Mar. 28— Apr. 4, 1648), sign. A 2.
queathed by him to Harvard College 3 The University Library, p. 19.
and was destroyed by the fire. See 4 See N. and Q. ser. 3, rv 413.
fitpra, p. 200. D. N. B. xxxm 230. 6 Dyer, Privileges of the Uni-
2 Commons1 Journals, u. s. See versify, 1 242.
M. in. 22
338 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. chests, — those of Fenn and Neel, — had for the last five years
been expended without any account having been rendered.
It was now enacted that an audit should take place and an
account be drawn up1. In the same year order was given
that the ' Regius reader in medicine ' should resume his
anatomical demonstrations, the statute at the same time
animadverting severely on the neglect into which, through
a paltry economy, the study of practical anatomy had been
allowed to fall'2. Further investigations brought to light the
fact, that as far back as 1620 a Syndicate had been appointed
to inspect and put in order the muniments of the university,
but that it had failed to carry out its instructions. A new
Syndicate was accordingly now appointed, in which the
names of Love, Rainbowe, Duport, Cudworth, Whichcot,
Wheelock, Hobart, Worthington and Minshull (the personal
friend of Cromwell), gave promise of more effective service3,
measures of -A- few months later, in February 1647, it was further ordered
1647""' that the Proctors' Books, described as almost illegible through
lapse of time, should be transcribed afresh and reduced to
proper sequence4. On the 29th of April a Grace was carried,
enforcing a more efficient performance of the duties of the
Registrarship, the stipend of that office having been recently
increased*,
'invitations' The riotous 'feasts or banquets' usual among students,
on the part
foVbfddenaty8 wn^n their disputations were over, were now prohibited by a
29FApr. 1647. Grace of the Senate, and those either giving such entertain-
ments or accepting invitations to them were made liable to
a fine of twenty shillings or suspension from their degrees.
It is to be noted that these ' invitations ' are described as of
comparatively recent growth, and their abolition is especially
grounded on the fact that they did a great deal to contri-
bute to that expensiveness of the two universities of which
parents, at this time, were so loudly complaining6.
1 Dyer, Privileges, i 242. For in 405-6.
particulars relating to these Chests, 5 Cooper, Ibid, m 407.
see Endowments (1904), pp. 556-7. 6 ' Cum pessimo more candidati,
2 Dyer, Ibid, i 243. post disputationes in Scholis, pri-
3 Ibid, i 242-3. vatas, et majoribus nostris penitus
4 Ibid, i 245-6; Cooper, Annals, ignotas, invitationes induxerint; ad
OPPOSITION TO MANCHESTER. 339
Notwithstanding the numerous expulsions and departures, CHAP. HI.
there was still, in the language of a Report sent up to the
Lords. ' a great store of malignants ' both in the university Renewed
. ^ J demonstra-
and the town ; and, in concert apparently with Oxford, t'.on8 of
» ' discontent.
another strenuous effort was made to shake off the newly-
imposed restrictions. In this endeavour St John's College
took an active part. Two of its leading fellows. — Zachary consequent
* proceedings
Cawdry (afterwards well known as the author of the Discourse fg£,°8'
of Patronage), and George Hutton, — were now denounced as amufeorge
contributors to the funds of the royal cause and infringers H
of the ordinances. The former, it was alleged, had recently
on various occasions used the Book of Common Prayer,
married with the ring, and baptised with the sign of the
Cross; the latter had sanctioned the use of the Burial
Service at the funeral of one of his pupils. Cawdry was con-
sequently deprived of his office of proctor1; and in the year
1649, on being presented to the rectory of Barthomley in
Cheshire, finally quitted Cambridge. Hutton was suspended
from the important function of Senior Regent2. Recurrence
In the autumn, the recurrence of the plague again gave pi^fe:
piroof of the insanitary condition of the town, and strangers D^'IS. to
grandem Academiae infamiam, et ing : where Manchester (that Uni-
gravissimas expensas et damnum eorum versity Cankerworme) took care that
qui summo labore suo et cura stu- there should be no justice, as ap-
diosos alunt,' etc. Dyer, Privileges, peares by the sequel, in voting these
i 247. gentlemen out of office to make
1 No exercise of arbitrary power roome for creatures of his owne con-
evoked more disapprobation : ' that stitution. But what that is, neither
ingenuous, learned and pious man, he nor any body else knowes, because
Mr Zachary Cawdrey.' H. New- it changes of tener than the moon, and
come, Autobiography, p. 7. — 'that varies with the weather.' Mercurius
darling of men, Mr Zachary Caw- Pragmaticus, No. 16 (Dec. 28, 1647
drey, so famed then for loyalty, to Tuesday, Janu. 4, 1648), sign,
learning and ingenuity, and after Q 3 v. Cawdry, a Leicestershire
so noted in Cheshire for his singular man, and Hutton, a native of Dur-
zeal, piety and moderation.' Life of ham, had been admitted fellows of
Matthew Robinson (ed. Mayor), p. 16. the college at the same time, —
— ' who (i.e. Cawdry) having been 15 Apr. 1641. Baker-Mayor, p. 295.
newly elected, and being ready to 2 This office, whereby a certain
make his first speech to the uni- elected master of arts was constituted
versity, was seized by a Catchpole, a member of the Caput, was filled
together with one Master Hutton, by annual election from those who
senior Regent of that Universitie ' . . . were of not more than five years'
' and brought to London before the standing. Wall, University Cere-
Committee of Sequestrations, upon monies (ed. Gunning), pp. 29, 30 ;
suspicion of much loyalty and learn- Lords1 Journals, DC 555.
22—2
340 A.D. 1640 TO 1647.
CHAP, in. visiting Cambridge were struck by the ill-paved and mal-
odorous state of its streets. Representations on the subject
having been made, however, to the House of Lords, orders
were given for the speedy and effectual removal of these
defects ; and Arrowsmith, the vice-chancellor, who appears to
have especially exerted himself in the matter, in making his
final report ventured to express his belief that no further
complaints would reach their lordships at least in his time1.
1 Cooper, Annals, rn 422-3.
CHAPTER IV.
THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE PROTECTORATE.
ALTHOUGH monarchy, as an institution, was still to linger CHAP, iv.
on for another year, the close of 1647 saw the Commonwealth
virtually established in both universities. On the occasion Abduction
of the King
of the royal arrest at Holmby, as cornet Joyce himself relates ^^f6^7
the story, Charles demanded of his captor whither he was to
accompany him ? ' To Oxford,' was the reply. The king Alleged
r J * J ° disinclination
objected, — he thought Oxford 'unhealthy.' Then Joyce of^»|*s
suggested Cambridge. And again the monarch objected, university,
intimating that he preferred Newmarket; and to Newmarket,
accordingly, it was arranged that he should be escorted1.
The royal disinclination again to be seen at either seat of
learning might well seem, indeed, to require no explanation,
and we might easily believe that, however devoid of real
sympathy with the nation at large, Charles could have had
little desire to be the helpless spectator of the changes that
had taken place at Cambridge since his memorable visit to
the university some five years before, when, amid deafening
cheers and demonstrations of the profoundest loyalty, he had
mounted his coach at St John's gate on his departure for
Huntingdon2. So far, however, was this from being really
the case, that when, on the day following upon that of his
conversation with Joyce, he was released, by the command of
1 A True and Impartial Narrative, The latter's suggestions to the king
etc. (Kushworth, vi 513), a compo- were probably only made with the
sition which Masson (Milton, m 542, design of sounding the royal in-
n. 1) and Gardiner (Civil War, m tentions.
189) concur in pronouncing to be 2 Supra, p. 222.
Joyce's own account of this episode.
342
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Growing
ascendancy
of the In-
dependents.
Appearance
of the
Judgement
of the
University
of Oxford:
June 1647.
Fairfax, from the cornet's dictation, he proceeded to take up
his residence at Childerley Hall, the seat of Lady Cutts,
about three miles west of Madingley, and was only deterred
from passing through Cambridge by Fairfax's express refusal
to allow him to do so1. At Childerley he had an interview not
only with Fairfax but also with Cromwell ; while, if we may
credit the pamphleteer, both university and town flowed out
' apace to behold him.' ' He is exceeding chearfull,' the
account goes on to say, ' and commands that no scholler be
debarred from kissing of his hand : and there the sophs are
(as if no farther then Barnwell) in their gowns and caps : it
was mirth to see how well yesterday they were admitted into
the presence2.'
In the mean time, while the Independents, alike by their
astute policy in the provinces and in debate at Westminster,
were gradually asserting their ascendancy in opposition to
the Presbyterian party, Cromwell himself appeared at
Newmarket ; and the Solemn Engagement of the Army,
signed at Kentford Heath close by, gave distinct intimation
of his resolve to encourage, if necessary, military resistance
to the authority of Parliament3.
It was precisely at the same time that this momentous
change was taking place in the relations of the two religious
parties now contending for the government of the State, that
a notable manifesto appeared at Oxford. Since the surrender
of the city in 1646, — although scholars might derive consola-
tion from the reflexion that Mazarin's hopes of being able to
transfer the treasures of the Bodleian from the Isis to the
Seine had been baulked, and that the demoralizing influences
of barrack life were at an end, — it was regarded as certain
that innovations, like those in process at Cambridge, would
1 ' Fairfax . . . refused to allow him to
pass through Cambridge, lest the
members of the university and the
townsmen should give him too enthu-
siastic a reception.' Gardiner, Great
Civil War, m 106.
2 As regards the ' townsfolkes, ' the
same writer tells his correspondent,
that they 'had in all those streets
through which it was conceived he
would passe, deckt their stalles and
windowes with green boughs and
whole rose-bushes, and the ground
all along with rushes and herbes.'
See An extract of certain papers of
intelligence from Cambridge, concern-
ing Ms majesty and the army (Cam-
bridge, June 7, 1647), printed in
Heywood and Wright, n 521-2.
3 Gardiner, u. s, m 100.
OXFOKD IN 1647. 343
soon be put in force. In May it became known that a VCHAP. iv.
Visitation had been actually decided upon, and that the
arrival of certain Visitors, as a kind of advanced guard, might
shortly be expected, before whom the university was cited to
appear in Convocation ' between nine and eleven a.m.' on the
fourth of June. But before the Visitors themselves could
appear, it had become sufficiently plain that the opponents
of a Presbyterian regime had not altogether lost heart. A
volume came forth, drawn up chiefly by Robert Sanderson,
the Regius professor of Divinity, and entitled ' Reasons of
the present judgement of the University of Oxford concerning
the Solemn League and Covenant, Negative Oath, and the
Ordinances concerning Discipline and Worship, approved by
general consent in a full Convocation 1 June 1647, and pre-
sented to consideration1.' This Judgement of the University,
as it was subsequently more briefly designated, had been
subscribed by a large proportion of the scholars and divines
who still remained in the city, and was designed as a formal
protest against the impending Visitation. It was, of course,
regarded with grave displeasure by the Puritan world, who
discerned in it an endeavour, — to quote the language of
Anthony Wood, — ' to oppose all Reformers, both the Parlia-
ment and Visitors, and hinder a just and necessary
reformation ' ; while their anger was still further increased
when a Latin version of the obnoxious volume also issued
from the Press, soon to be translated into French, Italian
and Dutch, — ' to the end,' as Wood expresses it, ' that other
nations might be sensible of what had passed2.'
Appointed, as the Visitors had been, at a time when
Presbyterianism still held its own at Westminster, they
represented, without exception, the party against whom the
above tractate was especially aimed, and, on the eve of their
arrival, a fresh event had still further contributed to mar
the prospects of their peaceable reception. On his way to
1 'Printed in the yeare, 1647' [no repertory of materials for the answers
place]. afterwards made by individual col-
2 Wood-Gutch, n 509. 'The mo- leges, and earned the special thanks
deration and ability of this statement of the Parliament held at Oxford in
did much to consolidate the oppo- 1665.' Brodrick, University of Ox-
sition to the Visitation, furnished a ford, p. 141.
344
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv.
conflict
between the
soid1eryTnan
2 June 1647.
The
appearance
visitors
proceedings:
Parliament
fails to inter-
behalf0 their
Holmby, Joyce had passed through Oxford, the bearer of
instructions from Cromwell which ran altogether counter to
those of the Presbyterian Committee in London. The Com-
mittee had sent instructions that the artillery in Oxford was
to be seized, and that £3500, which had been sent to pay off
the garrison, should be sent back to London. Those in
possession, however, refused flatly to yield compliance to
these instructions ; and, as soon as Joyce had taken his
departure, a fight took place in the High Street between the
soldiery who guarded the treasure and a body of Presbyterian
dragoons. It was not until the tumult which ensued had in
some measure subsided that the Visitors deemed it prudent
to appear in the city1. On the 4th of June, however, they
made their entry; but only to find a population, largely
hostile, both academic and civic, to them and to their mission,
— the latter, indeed, being destined to prove temporarily
abortive. ' The Visitors,' says Gardiner, ' proceeded to
St Mary's, where one of the number preached at so inordinate
a length, that before they could reach the Convocation House,
the last stroke of eleven had sounded. The time mentioned
in their summons having thus elapsed, the vice-chancellor,
Dr Samuel Fell, dean of Christ Church, dissolved the House in
literal obedience to their orders. As the throng poured out,
the two processions met face to face. " Room for Mr vice-
chancellor ! " shouted the bedell, and the Visitors, — as was
long remembered with glee in the university, — shrank aside
to allow those very men whose conduct they had come to
arraign to pass in triumph. " Good morrow, gentlemen ! "
said Fell, with polite sarcasm, as he swept by, "'tis past
eleven o'clock2." '
The day on which the Visitors were thus baffled, adds
Gardiner, ' was that on which the King was removed from
Holmby, and for nearly three months nothing was done at
Westminster to enable them to resist the successful efforts
of the university authorities to obstruct their proceedings.'
' It can hardly be wrong,' he adds, referring to the above
Gardiner, Great Civil War, m 88.
2 Gardiner, Ibid, in 140-141.
THE VISITATION OF OXFORD. 345
semi-comic incident, ' to trace the cause to the growing CHAP,
influence of the army, and to the hope which the military Tim
leaders entertained of settling the institutions of Church and ^t[j]eutkble
State on some basis which would not involve the complete lnflruee^cegof
submission of either religious party1.' He omits, however, thl
to note that the royal arrest had supplied the Heads at
Oxford with a valid reason for demurring to the authority of
the Visitors which they forthwith turned to practical account ;
and it was at this juncture that Jasper Mayne of Christ Appearance
• •'of Jasper
Church, clearly discerning that the contest at issue was 'not,' — %?y™sa t<a .
to quote his own words, — 'whether the subject of England shall June 16"-
be free,' but whether ' this freedom shall not consist in being
°no longer subject to the King,' put forth his 'O^Xo/ia^t'a, in
which he indicated the underlying causes with admirable
insight. In common with other keen observers, his penetra- ^fh<^mate
tion enabled him to discern that what the 'freedom' which the
contending malcontents called for really implied, was nothing
less than 'a freedom of condition,' in which 'we are to live
together like men standing in a ring or circle, where round-
nesse takes away distinction and order. And where everyone
beginning and ending the circle, as none is before, so none is
after another.' ' This opinion,' he goes on to say, ' as 'twould
quickly reduce the House of Lords to the House of Commons;
so 'twould in time reduce the House of Commons to the same
levell with the Common people, who being once taught that
Inequality is unlawfull, would quickly be made docile in the
entertainment of the other arguments, upon which the
Anabaptists did heretofore set all Germany in a flame2.'
It was not until the 30th September that the real work
of the Oxford Visitors commenced, as ' a special Commission commence-
* ment of the
under the Great Seal of England to reforme and regulate the vot
Universitie,' — labours destined to extend over a complete
decade and affording invaluable illustration of the views and
aims with regard to the higher education that mainly pre-
vailed at both Oxford and Cambridge during that period.
1 Gardiner, u. s. 141-142. of the most Plausible Pretences of
2 'OxXo-/*ax*o. Or The People's if.. ..By Jasper Mayne, D.D. one of
War, examined according to the Prin- the Students of Ch. Ch. Oxon.
ciples of Scripture and Reason, in Two Printed in the Yeare, 1647. pp. 5, 19.
346
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Importance
of the work
which it ac-
complished.
Powers with
which it was
invested.
The
Judgement
of the
University
denounced
to the
Visitors.
In the opinion of the late professor Burrows, however,
Parliament had committed a ' fatal error ' in ' suffering nearly
a year to elapse after the Surrender before commencing the
Visitation of the University,' inasmuch as the Visitors now
found the latter 'completely organized against them1.' But
he, at the same time, concedes that no other Visitation or
Commission during the whole long and eventful history of
Oxford university ever had such a task to accomplish.
Perhaps, he adds, ' it is not too much to say that none, if we
consider the circumstances of the times, ever did the work
entrusted to them better2.' The ample powers with which
the Visitors were invested contributed, indeed, not a little to
aid them in their formidable task, extending as they did to
the government and affairs alike of the university and the
colleges, and providing that all documents relative thereto
might be demanded and examined, that contumacious officers
might be imprisoned : and that all officers, as well as other
members of the university, might be impannelled and bound
over to aid the Visitors in their enquiries, while the latter
were guaranteed complete immunity ' for whatsoever they
should act or execute in pursuance of the said ordinances3.'
At the outset of their labours, the Judgement of the
University was formally denounced to the Visitors by the
Puritan party as breathing opposition to their mission and
to themselves, — 'to oppose whom, we consider, is to rebel
against the Houses ; while to maintain . prelacy is to uphold
tyranny, — to contend for the Common Prayer Book is to
contend for a false translation of the canonical Scriptures,
to magnifie those bookes that are not canoiiicall and justifie
the court of Rome, not only in admitting dangerous ceremonies
to corrupt the purity, but in submitting to the Romane order,
1 ' If the Heads, now that they
saw the Visitation commenced like
any former Visitation, would recog-
nise the power of the Parliament de
facto, the reformation might yet be
worked through their hands. But
this was precisely what they felt
they could not do. The King was
a prisoner; no Visitation not sanc-
tioned by him could possibly be
legal ; and they would admit nothing
short of his own order.' Burrows
(Mont.), Register of the University of
Oxford from A.D. 1647 to A.D. 1658.
Camd. Soc. 1881, Introd. pp. Ixvi-
Ixvii.
2 Ibid. p. cxxxiii.
3 Wood-Gutch, H ii 513-6.
THE VISITATION OF OXFORD. 347
which would overthrow the piety of our common and publicke CHAP, iv.
service1.'
In the same year that the Visitors appeared in Oxford,
Anthony Wood, then fifteen years of age, matriculated from WS0T0HDONY
Merton College8, and may possibly himself have witnessed ^aj^y \a6^7s;
their bootless errand to St Mary's. His cynical ' Character-
istics ' of both Presbyterians and Independents3, penned long
after, contain, amid a stream of unqualified depreciation and
invective, some concessions which gain correspondingly in
value ; but in the Commissioners themselves he could scarcely HU^ ^^
discern a single redeeming feature, and his criticisms of both £hf "JSSdjLi
them and their policy present a singular travesty of the e^fw
estimation in which they were held by their own party. It
must, however, be admitted that the proceedings of this
select body, — exclusively Presbyterian and mainly under the
direction of John Reynolds, — would have been less liable to
be challenged if three of the most active of their number
(the Wilkinsons) had not been closely related to each other,
and if four of the seven originally appointed had not repre-
sented the same college foundation4. As it is, the personal
antipathies and habitual ill-temper of the historian find
expression in a series of caricatures, sufficiently amusing to
the dominant party after the Restoration, but none the less
offensive to many who could recall the contemporary Oxford.
Sir Nathaniel Brent, for example, the warden of Merton and |^en*thaniel
president of the Commission (to whom Wood himself was
under no slight personal obligation), is described as of no
other use than ' a weathercock, indicare regnantem5 ' ; of
Dr John Wilkinson, principal of Magdalen Hall and nephew John
of Henry Wilkinson, the subsequent president of Magdalen (the eider),
College, we hear as one who was 'generally accounted an
1 Wood-Gutch, ii ii 509. Reynolds fellow and afterwards Presi-
2 Life and Times (ed. Andrew dent of Merton (Dean of Christ Church
Clark), i 131. 1648-51). Burrows, Register, pp. 520
3 Ibid, i 296-301. -523. Henderson (B. W.), Merton
* Sir Nathaniel Brent (President of College, p. 125.
the Visitors and Warden of Merton), 8 Brent, in the opinion of the latest
Edward Corbet fellow of Merton annalist of his college, 'chose his
(afterwards Canon of Christ Church) , side when final choice was neces-
Francis Cheynell fellow of Merton sary, and clave to it stoutly like a
(afterwards Margaret professor and man.' Ibid. p. 107.
President of St John's), Edward
348
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
John
Wilkinson
(the
younger),
Kdward
Reynolds,
Christopher
Rogers,
Francis
Cheynell,
Henry
Wilkinson.
(a) i.e. ' in
order to
produce an
impression.'
illiterate, testy old creature, that for forty years had been
the sport of the boys,' ' a person more of beard than learning';
his nephew John, also of Magdalen Hall, is briefly dismissed
as ' a physician and no writer ' ; Edward Reynolds, dean of
Christ Church, who subsequently refused the Engagement,
although admitted to be 'a good scholar and excellent
preacher,' is 'that dfj.<f)i{3iov, which not long since hung in
aequilibrio and waited only for a graine of success to turne
the scales ' ; Christopher Rogers, of Magdalen Hall, appears
as an ' old Puritan ' with neither ' parts nor soul,' but able to
please, ' by his puling, praying and preaching, simple women
and children.' Of Francis Cheynell of Merton, afterwards
Margaret professor of Divinity, we are told that 'by his
perplexed studies ' he ' had disturbed his head so much, that
he was forced (as 'tis said) to be kept in the dark and
whipt into his wits by the care of his mother at Salisbury1 ' ;
Henry Wilkinson, a former tutor of Magdalen Hall, is de-
scribed as ' Cheynell's stout second,' ' violent, and little else
but confusion in his preaching,' one who 'could willingly
dispense with a cap or a congee to gain a proselyte, and
affected treading softly in his going through the public streets
" to procure an opinion " (a) (as the Academians imagined)
" of cordial integrity2." '
Wood's descriptions of personages hardly admit, however,
of being taken seriously, and it is moreover to be borne in
mind that the first Visitors had yet to prove their fitness for
their work, while before long the Commission itself underwent
1 On Cheynell it devolved to draw
up the Account presented to Par-
liament by the Visitors. Wood, who
makes no reference to his services
in the cause of orthodoxy rendered
by his treatise against the Socinians,
also affirms that he ' was little better
than distracted towards the close of
his life.' ' But by that,' says Calamy,
1 in his phraseology, no more perhaps
may be intended than that he was
seriously and closely thoughtful of
that other World into which he was
passing, which to one of his [Wood's]
complection seem'd little better than
distraction.' Calamy, Abridgment of
Mr Baxter's History of his Life and
Times (ed. 1702), i 288.
2 Wood-Gutch, ii ii 614-8. Com-
pare his more deliberate estimate of
the six Presbyterian preachers sent
by Parliament after the Surrender,
' to settle their doctrine there ' :
' Cornish and Langley, two fooles ;
Reynolds and Harrys, two knaves;
Cheynell and rabbi Wilkinson, two
madmen.' Life and Times, ed. Clark,
i 130-1. 'But for Cheynell,' says
Brodrick, referring to this occasion,
'it had gone hard with the Presby-
terians.' Merton College, p. 125.
THE VISITATION OF OXFORD. 349
considerable modification. As it was, John Conant the elder, CHAP. iv.
perhaps the ablest administrator in the university and an John
. . . ... Conant
admirable scholar1, on being nominated a Visitor declined i^jr68.
Oxford.
to act, and withdrew from Oxford, resigning his fellowship
at Exeter. He left behind him a valuable library which, on
his return, he found to be irrevocably lost. Defections to Numerous
'. . . . defections
Rome now became numerous, and comprised influential names to Rome-
whose example could hardly but incite others to imitation.
' They had witnessed,' says Churton, apologetically, ' the ruin
of their hopes, when their altars were usurped by intruders,
and the timid and inconstant surrendered their Liturgy, that
they might continue on hard terms still to exercise the priest's
office2.' For the next four years it was left to John Reynolds
and to John Owen, — the respective leaders of the Presbyterians
and the Independents, — to carry on a conflict which largely
engrossed the attention of the whole community. The super-
vision of the two University Presses was now vigilant and stringent
complete : but before the year 1647 had closed, John Barwick, the two
J University
with the aid of Richard Royston, the courageous royalist Presses-
printer in London, had succeeded, as in the case of the Certain
Disquisitions, in obtaining the services of a private press, and
brought out the reprint of the Querela Cantabrigiensis3.
It was at this juncture, when the sympathisers with the ^^Swa01
royal cause on the Cam and the Isis were alike plaintively S^ldon.
making known their own pitiable condition, that a citizen of
London deemed it an opportune time for bringing forward a
proposal, — suggested probably by the petition of the West-
minster Assembly four years before, — that instead of the
proposed temporary hall of residence for Oxford students in
the capital4, there should be an entirely new and permanent
foundation, — a University in London5.
1 ' Of Greek he was so great a peared (in the preceding year) as part
master that he many times disputed of the Mercurius Rusticus which was
publicly in that language.'...' He had printed at Oxford, 'because,' says
also a good knowledge of Hebrew, Mr Madan, ' it helped out our plaint,
Arabic and Syriac.' Such at least not because it aided' Cambridge,
is the statement of Conant' sown son. Letter, 18 Dec. 1906.
See Stride, Exeter College, p. 60. * Supra, p. 263.
2 Life prefixed to J. Pearson's 5 See Motives for the present found-
Minor Theological Works, i xxvii. ing an University in London, with
3 The Querela had originally ap- Answers to Objections, humbly pre-
350
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV
JEBEMY
TAYIOB,
fellow of
Caius :
b. 1613.
rf. 1667.
Special
importance
of his
Liberty of
Prophesying.
From this ceaseless clamour of warring creeds, it is a
relief to turn to where, in his retirement at Golden Grove,
Jeremy Taylor, mainly occupied with the toil of preparing
Welsh lads for the universities, was beguiling his leisure by
composing his immortal plea for the toleration of diverse
beliefs. As one whose career, begun at the Perse School,
had been that of a fellow of Caius College1, then a fellow
of All Souls', and afterwards a prisoner of war, the future
bishop of Down might well seem exceptionally qualified
by personal experience, not less than by profound acquire-
ments, to estimate the advantages of that freedom of doctrine
for which he pleaded, and even to adjudicate between the
intolerance of Laud and the fanaticism of not a few of those
whom the primate had sought to silence. A passing notice
is all that our limits have permitted us to bestow on theories
such as those maintained by a Henry Ainsworth, a Henry
Burton, a Roger Williams, or a John Goodwin, and still less
are we able to do more than refer to the better known writings
of Chillingworth and John Hales at the sister university ;
but it may here be observed that, while the significance, and,
in some cases, the importance of the theories which those
authors advocated is undeniable, the Liberty of Prophesying*
still remains, what Hallam asserts it to have been, ' the first
famous plea in this country for tolerance in religion, on a
comprehensive basis and on deep-seated foundations3.' Its
author, indeed, was probably a gainer by his very remoteness
from either university, — sheltered, to quote his own expression,
from the storm which ' had dashed the vessel of the Church
to pieces.'
sented to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen,
etc., by a Lover of his Nation, and
especially of the said City. London,
1647.
1 ' Tailor, Jeremy : son of Na-
thanael Tailor, barber. Born at
Cambridge (bapt. at Trinity Church,
Aug. 15, 1613).... Admitted, Aug. 18,
1626, sizar of his surety, Mr Batch-
crofts.' Venn, Admissions, i 278.
2 QfoXoyia'ExXeKTiKri. A Discourse
of the Liberty of Prophesying. 1646.
3 Literature of Europe, n7 442.
Masson (Life of Milton , m2 109, n. 1),
in accusing Hallam of here doing
' injustice to a score or two of pre-
ceding champions' of toleration,
appears to me himself unjust to
Hallam, whose words which I have
italicised above he altogether omits.
Hunt (Religious Thought in England,
i 353) says, 'It was not the first
plea ' (for toleration) ' but it was the
first treatise on the subject that had
any interest. ' See also Gosse, Jeremy
Taylor, pp. 45, 46.
JOHN HALL OF ST JOHN'S. 351
Among those who encountered the full effects of that ^CHAP. iv.
storm, while seeking to steer the fragile bark of individuality
through the opposing currents at Cambridge, was the poet,
John Hall. He had been admitted a pensioner at St John's ^6n27Hall:
College under Mr Pawson in 1646, and, in the same year, his *• 165b'-
subsequent biographer, a young Welshman named John
Da vies, was also entered on the college lists. ' It was the
pleasure of Fortune and the times,' says the latter, ' to shuffle
us from the contrary cantons of England and Wales... into
the same college and after a while under the same tutor.'
Hall was, at this time, nearly nineteen years of age, and had
been spending the preceding six years in rather multifarious
reading in the library at Durham, where whatever acquire-
ments he possessed, as a classical scholar, were chiefly attained.
With the self-complacency which solitary study often en-
genders, his first year at St John's was still uncompleted,
when he ventured to dedicate to the master, Dr Arrowsmith
(like himself, as already noted, a Durham man), a volume of
Essays, after the manner of Bacon, entitled Horae Vacivae1, — t^s Horae
Vacivae :
' faint breathings,' as he describes them, ' of a minde burthened 1646-
with other literary employments.' ' Let them, Sir,' he says,
'receive the honour and shelter of your name, since borne
under your government and cherisht by your candour.' The Generous
• » recognition
volume received kindly notice from several well-known scholars «5e0^nite
in the university. John Pawson wrote an Address ' to the of t™eembers
Reader,' in which, while testifying to his pupil's, attainments
in French, Spanish and Italian literature, he also expressed
his conviction that the Essays were throughout original work
and that the author had ' nowhere stretch'd his own meaning
to make way for another's fancy.' Henry More, the Platonist,
contributed some complimentary elegiacs. Thomas Stanley,
already known as the generous patron of struggling authors,
who had recently graduated as a fellow-commoner from
Pembroke, and of whose achievements in the fields of
philosophy and scholarship we shall hereafter have frequent
occasion to take note, together with his uncle, William
1 Horae Vacivae, or Essays. Some occasional Considerations. 1646. 12mo.
352 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. Hammond, sent like contributions in English. So too, did
Thomas Goodwin, fellow of St John's, and James Shirley.
Altogether there rose up a chorus of commendation, destined,
however, soon to evoke in turn, what Pawson, anxious to
defend his pupil, subsequently described as a crowd of
Han turns ' ignorant detractors ' : while Hall himself, elated by success,
satirist. J
now assumed the part of a satirist and turned upon his
assailants. That the Essays were of genuine merit cannot,
indeed, be gainsaid ; they attained to considerable popularity
and were translated into French ; and, in the language of
the too partial Da vies, ' amazed not only the university but
the more serious part of men in the three nations1.' But
HiVPoem*: fae p0gm§) of which the first volume appeared in January
Ditto-. 1647. 1(54^ an(j issued from the University Press2, with a dedication
to Stanley, notwithstanding the evidence they afford of
undoubted genius, are at once so virulent in their abuse,
so fulsome in their adulation, and afford such melancholy
glimpses of the author's own despondent misgivings, that
they become rather a study in psychology than for the
ordinary lover of good literature. Dr Thomas Bambrigge
(or Bainbridge) of Christ's had died in the preceding year, —
a Head with respect to whom Dr Peile describes his own
impression as that ' of a slow methodical man who did his
work to the best of his ability3,' and who was confessedly
much too partial to his own Westmorland kinsfolk4, but
beside whose tomb, Hall, in the attitude of a professional
mourner, soliloquizes as follows : —
His eulogy ' As ample knowledge as could rest
Dr'sam-6 Inshrined in a mortal's breast,
brigge. Which ne'erthelesse did open lie
Uncovered by humility.
A heart which piety had chose
To be her Altar, whence arose
1 In the account of the 'manu- p. 45.
script remains' of Oliver Heywood 2 Poems by John Hall. Cambridge,
given by Hunter, we find ' a com- Printed by Eoger Daniel, Printer to
plete transcript of the Horae Vacivae the TJniversitie 1646. For I. Both-
of John Hall, the youthful poet of well at the Sun in Pauls Church -
St John's, first published the year yard.
before Mr Heywood went to the uni- 3 Hist, of Christ's College, p. 131.
versity.' Life of Oliver Heywood, * Supra, p. 15, n. 2.
JOHN HALL OF ST JOHN'S. 353
Such smoaking Sacrifices that CHAP. IV.
We here can only wonder at ;
A honey tongue that could dispense
Torrents of sacred eloquence,
And yet how far inferior stand
Unto a learned curious hand.' Poems, p. 57.
Dr Arrowsmith, whom we have already noted as returning
to St John's to assume the mastership1 and busied with his
refutation of Antinomianism2, found himself apostrophized
as follows: —
Divina Syren, cygne caelestis, tuba His
Evangelizans, nectaris flumen nieri, Arrowmith.
Jubar salutis, praeco foederis novi,
Jam sic redistil teque in amplexus pios
Iterum dedisti! ...... 3.
As the spring advanced, and apprehensions with regard Reas-
6 sembling
to the plague died out. parents became in some measure °Tft.he .t
University
reassured; while the town, cleansed and repaved4, presented cessation of
another aspect and students began to come up. The
matriculations for the year, however, amounted to only 242 ;
while those for 1647 had been 493; and Cambridge continued Predomi-
0 nance of
to be a military centre, where troops were levied and quartered. [^^^a
The sectarian zeal of Cromwell's soldiery, fanned, from time
to time, by some animated discourse from the pulpit, served .
to keep alive a ferment such as, perhaps, prevailed in no other
town in the kingdom, of the same size. In the month of
June, a fray, — ' occasioned by some disgraceful expressions in Fray
the schools against the parliament and Army,' — broke out tngdsej]dsiear"d
between the opposing parties. On this occasion, the scholars
of Trinity are said to have distinguished themselves by their
' gallantry,' but the victory remained with their opponents.
The conflict, indeed, appears not to have terminated without
bloodshed and loss of life5. 'You would not imagine,'
1 Supra, p. 302. 3 Poems (1646), p. 60.
2 The reproach of Antinomianism 4 ' ...and that all Vice-chancellors
continued however long after to be and Mayors for the time being, do,
cast upon the Presbyterians them- from time to time, take effectual
selves. See Thorndike-Haddan, iv care for the keeping the streets well
897, 921. In 1659, Thorndike could paved and clean, as they will answer
describe this 'damnable heresy' as the neglect thereof to this House.'
' now overspreading the land.' Ibid. Lords' Journals, x 166.
rv 895. 5 Cooper, Annals, in 423.
M. in 23
354 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. wrote a correspondent (apparently a townsman) of the
Moderate Intelligencer, who tells the story, ' to what a height
we are grown unto here, — we, who upon little or no alarms
were use to ride and run, are become the sons of Mars ' ; and.
intervention on the twelfth of the same month, the Commons deemed it
ofParlia-
i2June 1648 necessary *° giye order, ' that it be referred to the Committee
for the University of Cambridge to consider of the tumult
and insurrections in the Town, and of some effectual course
for suppressing thereof, and to prevent the like for the
Temerity of future1.' A young bachelor of arts, one Edward Byne, further
Edward ..../. ° . .. . J '.
Byne: disquieted the civic community by descending into their midst
M*t- and delivering a fiery invective against the received canon of
f. ofCaius . J
1645—52. Scripture and ' the labour of our best commentators, — a
foolish temerity for which he was punished by the authorities
by the refusal of his master's degree, until he had formally
acknowledged and recanted his error2.
v.ehemence Defeated in the fray, and silenced in the Cambridge
of the pulpit : J
Paul Kneii pulpits, the loyalist divine still cried aloud elsewhere. In
before the r r ' J
GrnaVsrinnf April the benchers of Gray's Inn had listened to a violent
tirade from a master of arts of Clare Hall, who had once been
a chaplain in Charles's army. Paul Knell, evidently with
the design of widening the divergence between Presbyterian
and Independent, sought to recall his audience to sympathy
'with him that is in bonds,' — 'a prudent and most pious
Prince, a King for his faith and life unspotted from the
world.' Then he turns to apostrophize what he terms that
' silly schismaticall Assembly,' ' you that, out of mere opposi-
tion, preach in cloaks, you that are no legall Synod, but
rather the Synagogue of Satan; you, that for a pious Liturgy
would give us a pure piece of non-sense ; you that would
banish the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed3.'
1 Cooper, Annals, m 423. honorable Society of Grayes-Inne, upon
2 Byne's confession was formally Sunday in the afternoon, Aprill 16,
recorded, with the following post- 1648. By PAUL KNELL. London,
script: ' ...ut praescriptio praedicta Printed in the Yeare 1648. The
per manum Edwardi Byne regis- Westminster Assembly did not long
tretur, tft penes Eegistrarium Acad. survive Knell's attack, its last two
custodietur.' Grace, 20 June 1648. sessions being held in the following
Baker MS. xxv 182 ; Venn, i 354. May, after which time it became
3 Israel and England Paralelled, little more than a Committee for the
in a Sermon preached before the examination of ministers, and, to
VEHEMENCE OF THE PULPIT. 355
In the following September, one ' R. P.,' of St John's VCHAP. nr.
College, in what he himself designated as ' an old fashioned tjy™°p. of
sermon,' adopting a wider view and a more scholastic treat- st John>s-
ment of the whole question, descanted on the evils of war
in general and on those of civil war in particular. 'The
Pestilence,' he observes, ' is but a private plague in respect
of warre : that taketh away part of a family or of a citie ;
this disperseth over a countrey and destroyeth a kingdome.'
Along with Peace, he then avers, Truth also had well-nigh
altogether disappeared. ' As the world did sometimes groan
under the burden of Arianism, so this land may now groane
under the burden of lying. This country is now come almost
into the condition of Crete, del ^eva-rai (Tit. i 12).' The Peace he
proclaims
indispensable remedy is Peace. ' Inter arma silent leges, i^pentabi
what truth can we heare, as long as the beating of drums, remedy-
the clattering of armes, and the roaring of guns do fill our
ears ? ' He cites the assertion of the author of Gangraena, —
that 'two hundred heresies, or thereabouts/ had 'appeared
in the space of little more than foure yeares.' ' As the over-
flowing of the Nile,' the preacher goes on to say, ' by stirring
up the mud doth cause many strange serpents to be bred out
of the slime, so the overflowing of these warres have bred
and forstered almost innumerable and strange opinions among
us.' ' Let us come to our churches,' he continues, ' we looked
that a Reformation would have swept all clean, but we see
it farre fouler than before. They sought to sweep away
ceremonies and superstition, and have fouled it with sacrilege
and confusion. They pretend to pull down Popery and have
set up heresie, and so while they thought to put the Pope
out at the fore-door they have let in the Devil at the back-
door1.'
The earnestness with which the preacher descanted on
quote Dr Shaw, 'melted away into Cant.... Printed October 1, 1648.
oblivion, with its claim of the jus pp. 7, 10, 11. Thomas Baker,
divinum still upon its head dis- whose copy in the College Library
honoured and unsubstantiated.' Hist. [Br. 10. 45] I have used, makes no
of the English Church, i 313. reference to the personality of 'B. P.';
1 The Cure of the Kingdome, an possibly Bi. Pooly (adm. sizar 1634),
old-fashioned Sermon treating of afterwards the sequestered rector of
Peace, Truth, and Loyaltie....'Bj Essendon, Herts. Mayor, Admis-
B. P. 4?i\a\e£av5pos, Coll. St Jo. sions, i xx and 271.
23—2
356 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. the desirability of peace, can hardly have been dissociated in
the minds of his hearers from that great reverse of fortune
which his party had just sustained. After the victory of
Cromwell over the Scotch at Preston, which had taken place
in the preceding August, 'every royalist in England,' says
Gardiner, ' knew that the blow had crushed his last hopes1/
There was at this time no divine in Cambridge who stood
Samuel higher in the esteem of the townsmen than Samuel Hammond.
Hammond: ° . . .
d. 1665. < jt was the general opinion, says Oliver Hey wood s biographer,
' that there was not a more convincing and successful minister
at Cambridge from the time of Mr Perkins'; and Oliver
himself, now in his second academic year, found the dis-
courses of the preacher 'a profitable instrument for much
good to his soul2.' A man of humble origin, Hammond had
gained a fellowship at Magdalene, and was now vicar of the
neighbouring church of St Giles. And thither, on the
His sermon Sunday following upon the news of Cromwell's great victory,
victory at both gownsmen and townsmen nocked to listen to a discourse
Preston :
Aug. 1648. in which the exultation of the Independent party found
eloquent and adequate expression. The burgesses, to mark
their approval, awarded Hammond the handsome fee (as it
was then regarded) of ten shillings3.
The Peace of Before another month had passed, that cessation of armed
Westphalia.
strife for which most Englishmen were now sighing had been
brought about in Germany by the Peace of Westphalia, and the
Thirty Years' War had been ended. 'R. P./ when descanting
on the evils of war, might well have clenched his argument
with a reference to the appalling loss of life and the countless
horrors which had attended that protracted contest abroad.
It is, indeed, somewhat surprising that he should have failed
to do so; for among the Teutonic cities few had suffered
more severely than those which were the seats of universities;
and of these, in turn, Marburg, — the earliest of the universities
of Protestantism, — might almost dispute the supremacy in
sorrow with Heidelberg itself. Oxford and Cambridge might
1 Great Civil War, m 449. ye Victory over the Scotts,...10s.'
2 Heywood and Wright, n 516-7. Town Treasurer's Accts. in Cooper,
3 ' Item, to Mr Hamondfor preach- Annals, in 425.
ing on the day of thanksgivinge for
GERMANY AND ENGLAND. 357
well have been moved to sympathy as they heard how, year VCHAP. IT.
after year, the Hessian Athens had seen, to quote the language u£fvergity
of one of her historians, her youthful sons returning in winter dLring^h?
to their homes not only with their memories bereft, amid the Yekrs- war.
distractions of the camp, of the very learning which they had
once painfully acquired, but unable, apparently, again to
assimilate it; and still more unable to shake off the brutalizing
influences of the life they had been leading 1 1 But Marburg
was Lutheran, while the English universities were still largely
Calvinistic ; and it was probably with a very qualified satis-
faction that the divines now in authority at Oxford or
Cambridge received the intelligence that the Peace in ^H^OUS
Germany had resulted in the admission of all Protestants [Calmed
to equal religious rights, and that henceforth the ruler of Germany
each State would be debarred from interference with his a°
subjects' exercise of their traditional belief, or with the
religious conditions which, at the conclusion of the negotia-
tions, had obtained in the universities, colleges and schools
of his dominions2. Before the year 1648 had closed, the
Agreement of the People3 had put forward corresponding
limitations on the power of Parliament, which, although
invested with ' the highest and final judgement concerning
all natural (a) things, was to be interdicted from interfering (a)/. e. not
with the worship of such Christian societies as did not disturb
the public peace, with the wide exception of those addicted
to "Popery and Prelacy4."' The conclusions formulated at
Miinster and Osnabriick thus found an echo in England.
1 'Auch aus hessischen Landes- more inequitable than our Justice.'
ordnungen sieht man, dass nach See his letter in Moser, Patristischen
dem westphalischen Frieden noch Archiv, vi348. On the evils resulting
Pennalismus der Schiller und Wort- from the War, see also Dr A. W.
kramerei der Lehrer die Klassische Ward's observations in Cambridge
Methode des offentlichen Unter- Modern History, rv 418-424.
richtsinden Zeiten der Melanchthon a Ibid, rv 411-8.
und Sturmius verderbt hatten.' 3 The Agreement of the People, as
Koch (C.), Gesch. des Academischen presented to the Council of the Army,
Paedagogiums und nachherigen Gym- Oct. 28, 1647. On the Agreement
nasiums zu Marburg. Marburg, 1868. and its fate see Gardiner, u. s. m
'From my own experience,' wrote 567-8; also 607-9, where it is printed
Valentine Andreae in 1648, 'I have in full.
learned that there is nothing more * Ibid, m 546-7; Kanke, Hist, of
profane than our Beligion, more dis- England (tr.), m 7.
creditable than our Medicine, or
358 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv.^ In the mean time, the victorious party had extorted from
Charles, at Newport, a series of concessions involving the
abolition of episcopacy and the Prayer Book, and the substitu-
tion of the Presbyterian system and the Directory1 in their
universities, place. He was also required to give his assent to an ' Act
for the regulating and reforming of both the Universities'
which was to be framed and agreed upon by both Houses of
Parliament2. But before another six months had elapsed
both King and House of Lords had ceased to exist, and the
House of Commons itself was contemplating the transference
of its powers and authority to the newly-created Council of
State.
Acceptance After the tragedy in front of the Banqueting House at
Engagement, Whitehall, and the abolition of monarchy, it was indispensable
of°state: that a new declaration of allegiance should be required of
Feb. 1649. ^nose wno composed the new Council of State, whose members
were accordingly bound over to concur in ' the settling of the
government of this nation for the future in the way of a
scruples of Republic, without King or House of Lords3.' No less than
Puritanism r . °
therKhii0'n to fifty-seven ministers had had the courage to petition against
execution. ^e Baking away of their monarch's life, — among the number
being Samuel Clarke, a member of Emmanuel College and
the author of the Lives. It is even asserted that certain
' lecturers ' in the counties of Oxford and Northampton had
entered into a Covenant for the restoration of 'Charles
Stewart.' In a very different spirit, three students of Trinity
College, within a week of the King's execution, hastened to
publish a justificatory plea in defence of the whole proceedings,
declaring themselves ' abundantly satisfied ' with the final
result4. The ' Engagement,' as the new form of obligation
1 See Cambridge Modern History, 8, 38, 347.
iv 361. ' As Charles himself had no 3 See Gardiner, The Common-
expectation that an understanding icealth and the Protectorate, i 5-8.
would ever be reached, he was thus 4 The Parliament justified in their
enabled to promise whatever he found late Proceedings against diaries
convenient, without regarding him- Stuart, or a brief Discourse con-
self as in any way bound by his cerning the Nature and Rise of
words.' Gardiner, Great Civil War, Government, together with the Abuse
m 472-3. of it in Tyranny and the PEOPLE'S
2 Parl. Hist, of England, xvni 4, Reserve. As also an Answer to a
EXECUTION OF HOLLAND. 359
was designated, itself underwent more than one revision, and
it was not until after the campaign in Ireland had been o
brought to a virtual conclusion by the storming of Drogheda
and Clonmel, that the return of Cromwell seemed to render temporarily
it opportune to require of the two universities their formal P°
assent to the new rdqime. The execution of the chancellor Execution of
y the Earl of
of Cambridge had, however, followed that of his King at but Holland:
9 Mar. 164f .
a brief interval. Holland's career, indeed, had very imperfectly
justified Charles's high eulogium when he recommended him
for the office1. And heavily weighted as he was, to quote the
words of Gardiner, ' by his frequent tergiversations and his
position in the very centre of the royalist movement in the
preceding year2,' he could hardly have hoped for mercy,
although Fairfax pleaded in his behalf and his sentence was
carried by only a single vote. He was attended on the scaffold
by Samuel Bolton, who had succeeded Bainbridge in the
mastership of Christ's3. In the few words which the un-
happy nobleman was there permitted to utter, he made a
last effort to vindicate his reputation by declaring that ' the
principles he had ever gone upon ' had been ' to serve the
King, the Parliament, Religion.' Then turning to what he
termed that 'particular relation' which he held as 'Chancellor
of Cambridge,' he concluded as follows : ' and truly I must HU prayer
here, since it is the last of my prayers, pray to God that that ^n'ed
university may go on in that happy way which it is in ; that University.
God may make it a nursery to plant those persons that may
be distributed to the kingdome, that the souls of the people
may receive a great benefit... and I hope God will rewarde
them [i.e. the university] for their kindnesse and their
affections that I have found from them4.' ' I have been the
certain Paper, entituled The humble 3 'A very able man whose early
Advice of the Lecturers of Banbury marriage had excluded him from a
in the county of Oxon, and Brackley fellowship.' Peile, Christ's College,
in the County of Northampton. By p. 169.
J. Fidoe, T. Jeanes, W. Shaw, 4 See The Several Speeches of
Students in Trinity Colledge in Cam- Duke Hamilton Earl of Cambridg,
bridge. London, printed for Giles Henry Earl of Holland, and Arthur
Calvert, at the Black Spread-Eagle Lord Capel, upon the Scaffold imme-
at the West end of Pauls, 1648. diately before their Execution, on
1 Supra, p. 90. Friday the 9 of March. Also the
2 Gardiner, u.s. i 12. several Exhortations, and Conferences
360
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Election of
Manchester
as Holland's
successor :
15 Mar. 1641,
Value of his
personal
influence to
protect the
University.
The
University
Printers
bound over
not to print
unlicensed
books.
more large in relating the sufferings of this gentleman, the
earl of Holland,' says Whitelock (to whom we are indebted
for these details), ' because he was my particular friend, whose
memory I honour1.' Along with Holland, suffered Hamilton,
who had commanded the force which Cromwell scattered at
Preston2, and the dauntless Capel, bearing himself 'much
after the fashion of an ancient Roman,' and made declaration
on the scaffold that his religion was that of the Thirty-nine
Articles, ' the best,' he added, ' that I know of3.'
On the 15th of March, Manchester succeeded Holland in
the chancellorship. His election was uncontested ; there
being, probably, a very general feeling that his practical
knowledge of the affairs of the university, combined with his
temporizing disposition as a politician, rendered his election
as expedient as it was, for the most part, acceptable to the
Presbyterians. To his influence we may perhaps attribute
the fact that when, on the 30th of the ensuing April, an
Ordinance was passed for the abolition of Deans and Chapters,
in order to raise £300,000 for the pressing needs of the
Commonwealth, the clause exempting the centres of learning
and education was introduced4.
The necessity of imposing certain restrictions on the
Press next engaged the attention of the Council ; and, about
the same time, the university printers, Thomas5 and John
Buck, were each of them bound in two sureties of £300 each,
icith them, upon the Scaffold, by
Dr Sibbald, Mr Bolton, and Mi-
Hodges. London, 1649. pp. 17-36.
1 Whitelock (Bulstrode) , Memorials
of English Affairs, p. 387.
2 — 'poor versatile Hamilton.'
Carlyle-Lomas, i 420-1.
3 Ibid. ; Gardiner, u. s. i 13.
4 See supra, p. 107, n. 6.
5 Thomas Buck, who was also one
of the Esquire Bedells and a fellow
of St Catherine's, appears to have held
the office of university printer, 'or
to have retained some interest in it '
for upwards of forty years. He did
not apparently work quite harmo-
niously with his fellow-printer, Eoger
Daniel, who tried to induce the Uni-
versity to authorize the establish-
ment of a second press, urging that
' parting of the printers will beget in
them a laudable emulation which of
them shall deserve best either in the
books set forth, or the manner of
their setting forth, or the materials.'
But whatever wealth Thomas Buck
may have acquired, he set an example
in the bestowal of it on his own
College, where the cost of erecting
the fine range of chambers nearest to
King's, forming part of ' Bull Court,'
was entirely defrayed by him, and,
according to Dr Forrest Browne, ' his
benefactions never ceased for many
years after he had ceased to be a
Fellow.' St Catharine's College, pp.
95, 132 ; Bowes, Notes, etc. pp. 300-4;
Wordsworth (Chr.), Scholae Aca-
demicae, p. 381.
CIVILIANS AND COMMON LAWYERS. 361
not to print any seditious or unlicensed books, pamphlets or JCHAP. iv.
pictures, nor suffer his presses to be used for any such
purpose1. In order still further to strengthen its powers of Restrictions
imposed on
supervision, Parliament enacted, in the following September,
connexion.
that no printer should anywhere ply his craft, without the
licence of the Council, save in London, the two universities,
York and Finsbury2.
As far back as the year 1567, the spirit of rivalry between £*I
the civilian and the common lawyer, which has already come
under our notice 3, had led ' one Henry Harvye, doctour of the °f$£T
Civill Lawe,' and master of Trinity Hall, to acquire from the
chapter of St Paul's in London a ninety-nine years' lease of
a dilapidated structure, known as Mountjoy House, and
certain adjacent buildings, near Paul's Wharf4. These, as
subsequently rebuilt, became known as Doctors' Commons ;
and Dr Harvey's motive in acquiring them, although singular
in character, was sufficiently intelligible to his contemporaries.
' If Trinity Hall,' says Mr Maiden, ' were to be worthy of its
place as a training-school for civilians and canonists, whose
sphere of action extended into diplomacy and politics, or
whose judicial abilities might be utilized in the Admiralty
Courts or in Diocesan Courts all over England, it must have
some connexion with the world of London. A small college
in Cambridge could no longer hope to be an influential body
in two large professions in the outer world, unless it could
influence some organization in the centre of national life5.'
Such was the design whereby it came to pass that, in after
times, the master of Trinity Hall often appears as the Dean
of the Arches, while he always possessed a right to rooms in
Doctors' Commons ; and although married men were allowed
to be members, neither their wives nor their children were
permitted either to board or to lodge with them ; while the
whole control of the occupation was in the hands of the
society in Cambridge6.
1 State Papers (Dow.), Addenda, (ed. 1598), was 'a noted Stairs for
Vol. i, Apr. 1649, Calendar (Doin.), Watermen, and on each side of the
iii 344. Stairs a very handsome house.'
2 ScobelPs Ordinances, n 42. s Trinity Hall by Henry Elliott
3 See Vol. n 526-9. Maiden, A.M., pp. 101-5.
4 Paul's Wharf, we read hi Stow 6 Ibid. p. 105.
362
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Encroach-
ments of the
latter on the
province ef
the former.
Application
of Cromwell
fora
chamber
in Doctors'
Commons for
Dr Dorislaus:
18 Dec. 1648.
Career of
Dorislaus
subsequent
to his
dismissal
from the
History
Chair at
Cambridge.
The position of the civilians, at this time, was one of
peculiar difficulty. They had, for many years, and especially
since the ascendancy of Laud, been regarded with no favour
by the Anglican clergy, as rivals with respect to that
ecclesiastical jurisdiction which the latter were desirous of
keeping as much as possible in their own hands. And now
that the ecclesiastical courts were closed, the civilian was
watching, with no less apprehension, the establishment of
the Commonwealth, — for ever since the opening of the Long
Parliament, the common lawyers had been encroaching more
and more on his province. At the same time he must
have been well aware that it was his best policy to con-
ciliate, as far as possible, the great statesman whose authority
in political affairs was already approximating to that of a
Dictatorship. When, accordingly, towards the close of the
year 1648, the authorities of Trinity Hall received the letter
(of which they possess a transcript1) addressed to them by
Cromwell, requesting that a certain chamber in Doctors'
Commons, being vacant, might be allotted to Dr Dorislaus, —
who ' now,' says the writer, ' desireth to be your tenant,'—
the recently installed head, Dr Bond, along with the fellows,
appears to have given an unhesitating assent2. The eminent
jurist of Leyden, ever since the time when his voice was
silenced at Cambridge, had been mainly engaged in carrying
on negotiations as a diplomatist between England and
Holland, — to quote Cromwell's own language in the above
letter, he had 'done service unto Parliament from the
beginning of these wars,' had been ' constantly employed by
the Parliament in many weighty affairs,... and especially
beyond the seas, with the States General of the United
1 Warren MSS. p. 427.
2 Cambridge Portfolio, p. 390;
Carlyle-Lomas, i 403-4. The de-
ceased occupant of the chamber had
been Sir Arthur Duck, a fellow of
All Souls, Oxford, who in the pre-
ceding June had dedicated to the
marquis of Dorchester a learned trea-
tise de usu et authoritate luris Civilis
which was not published until 1653.
Sir Arthur's reputation as a jurist
was such that Charles, when in the
Isle of Wight, was anxious to avail
himself of his advice in the nego-
tiations with Parliament. Crom-
well's request that Duck's rooms
might be placed at the service of
Dr Dorislaus cannot consequently but
have seemed almost a designed in-
sult, to royalists familiar with the
circumstances, Duck having died
suddenly in Chelsea Church only two
days before Cromwell's letter was
penned. See D. N. B. xvi 88.
LAST DAYS OF DORISLAUS. 363
Provinces1.' His lengthened researches among the State VCHAP. iv.
Records in London had further enhanced his reputation as
a civilian, and during the wars he had twice been appointed
judge advocate; in the preceding April he had been made a
judge of the Court of Admiralty ; and, finally, as a member P* share
of the High Court of Justice, had taken part in drawing up ^eTate*
the charge whereby the late king had been impeached as King'
' a tyrant ' and ' a traitor,' and ' a public and implacable enemy
of the Commonwealth of England.' Time, indeed, might
well seem to have avenged the cause of liberty, when the
scholar who had been driven from Cambridge for daring to
descant on the power of the Roman people ' under the Kings
and afterward2' found himself called upon to act as adviser
in the abolition of monarchy in England. Although, ac-
cordingly, Dorislaus' name is absent from the List of the
signatories to Charles's Death Warrant3, few were regarded
as more deeply involved in their guilt; while, by the Common-
wealth, his services were honored by the highest recognition
when, in the following April, he appeared as its selected
representative at the Hague, especially instructed to cultivate
a good understanding between the two Republics. But
Charles the Second himself had already set up his Court in
the Dutch capital, whither royalist refugees were also repairing
in large numbers ; and, within three days after his arrival, His assassi-
» ' nation at the
the envoy of the Commonwealth was assassinated in the inn "M^IMQ
which he had chosen for his residence4. The intelligence was
received by the Cavalier party in England with undisguised
exultation, while the assassins successfully evaded pursuit;
and all that the Council of State could do was to make such
reparation as was in their power to the family of the ill-fated
scholar. His body was brought to England and interred in Honour
Westminster Abbey ; the ' lodgings ' in Doctors' Commons {J£™£|2nand
which he had occupied were granted to his three children, ^hMerenr hls
'to enjoy for some convenient number of years5'; the two
daughters each receiving £500, and the son (whose name
1 Carlyle-Lomas, Ibid. * Gardiner, Hist, of the Common -
2 Supra, p. 87, n. 1. wealth, i 72, 73.
3 Gardiner, Great Civil War, ra 8 State Papers (Dom.), 1649-50,
583. n, no. 94.
364
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
WILLIAM
DELL:
d. 1664.
His election
to the
mastership
of Caius
College on
the ejection
of Dr Batch-
croft :
4 May 1649.
Batchcroft's
qualifications
for the post
contrasted
with those
of his
successor.
Circum-
stances of
his election
in 1626.
was also Isaac) a pension of £200. At the same time, the
Council addressed to lady Brooke a formal request that her
ladyship would pay over ' some arrears in your hands due to
Dr Dorislaus upon the pension granted him by lorde Brooke,
for the history lecture in Cambridge,' 'as we doubt not/ the
missive continues, ' you will be sensible for the condition of
the children, and order what remains due to them to be paid
with convenient speed, suitable to their necessities1.'
The election of William Dell2 to the mastership of Caius
College at this juncture affords an excellent illustration of
the crisis through which the whole university was at this
time passing. In every respect, this eccentric character
offers the strongest contrast to his predecessor, Dr Batchcroft,
who was ejected to make way for him. The latter, whose
election dated as far back as 1626, had been unanimously
elected to the office and offered a happy combination of the
qualities which have, at all times, most conduced to harmonious
relations between a Head and the rest of the governing body.
He was rarely non-resident, was an excellent man of business,
of courteous manners, and possessed of an ample private
fortune ; while, to quote Dr Venn's description, ' though not a
brilliant man, or in any way distinguished as a scholar, he
was devoted to the interests of his college and bore the
reputation of an unusually able and efficient bursar3.' His
election, however, had not passed unchallenged, a strenuous
opposition having been organized by the Anglican party in
the university, at the instigation of Dr Lane of St John's4, —
the latter, a noteworthy example of that anomalous but by
no means infrequent combination, an obsequious regard for
the favorable opinion of the outside world with a corre-
spondingly cynical disregard for the maintenance of good
discipline and studious life within. But of those who had so
1 State Papers (Dom.) u.s., H, no.
102.
2 The author, in his account of
Dell in the D.N.B., fell into the
error of identifying Dell with the
William Dell who was secretary to
Archbp. Laud. Venn, i 375.
3 Venn, m 85.
4 Ibid, in 85, n. 1. Mead writes,
'The courtiers, doctors Maw, Wren,
and Beale, over furious against him '
[Batchcroft], but adds that ' he was
chosen with unanimous consent of
all the fellowes, one onely that was
absent sent, notwithstanding, his
consent under his hand." Heywood
and Wright, n 350.
WILLIAM DELL. 365
warmly supported Batchcroft's election twenty years before, CHA.P. iv.
some were dead ; others had quitted Cambridge or had been
recently ejected; while few of their successors entertained
very friendly sentiments towards one who, although he had
refused to send the college plate to the king, had sent money,
and whose estate, moreover, had already been sequestrated.
The Committee, accordingly, gave order, after ' serious con-
sideration of matters alleged,' ' that the said Dr Batchcrofb
be discharged from his place and employment as Master1.'
He yielded uncomplainingly, and shortly after withdrew from "^retires
Cambridge to reside with some relatives at Wangford near cambridge.
Brandon. His successor, who was at this time a married Cell's
previous
man about four and forty years of age, had been educated at career-
Emmanuel and had at one time been a fellow of that society.
To the Puritan army, as a chaplain of the forces, he must
already have been well known, for he had not only been
present at Naseby and Langport, but had also been one of
those who entered Oxford on the surrender of the city to
Fairfax, being himself the first to announce to parliament
the news of that event2. He had also been the officiating His
• • • f T ' /~A 11 > relations
minister on the occasion of Ireton s marriage with Cromwell s ™tn
Cromwell.
daughter, Bridget. In addition to this. William Dell had singularity
0 of his views
already acquired a certain reputation as a divine of highly JJJ ™^t™
original views. Two years before, he had given to the press the J^"™
Discourse which he had preached before Fairfax at Marston3,
— in which his ' Address to the Reader ' sufficiently attests the
opposition aroused by his highly aggressive method of advanc-
ing very novel opinions4, — among them, a sweeping repudiation
1 Venn, m 91, n. 1. lency Sir Tho. Fairfax and the General
2 'Resolved that Mr Dell, being Officers of the Army... At Marston,
the General's chaplain, who brought being the Head-quarter at the Leaguer
the Articles for the surrender of before Oxford, June 7, 1646.... Pub-
Oxford, shall have the sum of £50 lished by Authority. London, 1647.'
bestowed on him for his pains.' 4 Dell describes his enemies as
Entry in Journal of H. of Commons, becoming ' exceeding angry and heady
Venn, Ibid, in 94. ' The Parlia- against the plain and clear truth of
mentary Army,' observes Dr Venn, the Gospel delivered in this following
'was the only institution for which exposition '...and 'becoming suddenly
Dell appears to have had a hearty fierce and furious, contradicting and
admiration.' blaspheming, yea some of them
3 See ' The Building and Glory of speaking the language of hell upon
the truly Christian and Spiritual earth." Address to the Reader.
Church.... Preached to his Excel-
366
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Probably
elected as
having
influence
in high
quarters.
Significance
of two
subsequent
ejections at
Caius.
William
Blanckes,
f. of Caius,
ejected Lady
Day, 1649.
of all such divisions in the Christian Church as those repre-
sented by Presbyterians and Independents, which he had the
hardihood to stigmatize as mere inventions ' of man's making.'
He however regarded Episcopal] anism with yet greater
aversion ; and, in the presence of the ' two hundred heresies '
alleged by the author of Gangraena to have sprung into
existence during the last quinquennium, it is probable that,
to the fellows of Caius College, such heterodoxy may have
appeared of minor importance when compared with the
advantages to be derived from the advocacy of one who was
evidently in favour with those who sat in high places1. The
sympathies, again, of William Dell, — if such an expression
can be used in relation to a divine whose best energies were
given to proclaiming his antipathies, — were decidedly with
the Independents, and, thus far, he appears to have been in
full accord with the innovations which the Committee were
already contemplating. Caius College, accordingly, antici-
pated by some eighteen months, most of the changes involved
in the promulgation of the Engagement, — subscription to the
new test, although formally demanded as early as October
1649, not being generally put in force until a year later a.
Two ejections, however, which took place in this year, call for
special notice, as those of two highly estimable men, whose
previous acceptance of the Covenant was no virtue whatever
in the eyes of the new master. The first was that of William
Blanckes, one of the senior fellows, and took place a few
weeks before Dell's instalment, but evidently under con-
current influence. He had filled with credit a succession of
college offices, including that of lecturer in Greek and Latin,
and also the presidency. He lived to be re-elected at the
Restoration, but the circumstances of his expulsion were
indelibly imprinted in his memory ; and his will when opened
after his death was found to include a legacy of 20s. to a
1 At this time ' the number of
senior fellows had, owing to ex-
pulsions, been reduced to nine, of
whom four had been intruded by the
Parliamentary Committee. As two
of these (French and Harrington)
had served in the army, they must
have been well acquainted with the
character of Dell.' Venn, M.S. ni 95.
2 Gardiner, Hist, of the Common-
wealth, i 215-6, 269, 275.
WILLIAM DELL. 367
former pupil, ' for his kindness showed to me when I was JCHAP.
turned out of the College1.' The other ejection, in 1649, was
that of Charles Scarborough, which took place probably at
Michaelmas. He took refuge in Oxford, carrying with him |j
the reputation of a scholar of wide culture and high attain- subsequent
ments; and in Merton College, now a recognized centre of
Puritan influences, appears to have met with a cordial welcome.
William Harvey, however, who, as a former member of Caius2, w^Vg*
was probably already known to him, was no longer Warden, c^usT °f
his tenure of office having lasted little more than a year. d. wW.
The society, indeed, had from the first resented the intrusion
of the royal physician at the royal command, and in 1645
had reinstated Sir Nathaniel Brent, whom the monarch had
described as ' a man unworthie and no longer capable of that
imployment3.' Harvey, on the other hand, had retired to
London as soon as Oxford surrendered, and his notable treatise,
the Exercitatio anatomica de Circulations Sanguinis, now
appeared from the Cambridge Press. John Greaves, another
Mertonian, the same who so ingeniously contrived the appoint-
ment of Seth Ward as his successor4, had also betaken himself
to the capital, on his ejection alike from his professorship of
astronomy and his fellowship, accompanied by the loss of
the best portion of his library ; while Seth Ward, to whom
Scarborough was well known, would seem to have been living,
at this time, with lord Wenman, at his seat some ten miles
distant from Oxford5. It was not long before Scarborough
himself left for London, where a distinguished career awaited
him, including his appointment as royal physician, his election
to a seat in parliament, and the honour of knighthood.
In the month of March, we find Milton emerging from Mm°n
becomes
his comparative obscurity as a pamphleteer to enter upon J^t^y to
the duties of official life, as Secretary for Foreign Tongues to ofsSe"0"
the Council of State, — that is to say, to draw up from the
instructions given him, letters to other states. ' Hitherto,'
says Gardiner, 'those letters had been couched in two
1 Venn, i 204. » Henderson (B. W.), Merton Col-
2 Ibid, i 149, where the great lege, pp. 121-3.
physiologist, admitted in 1593, ap- 4 See supra, p. 315.
pears as 'William Harvie.' 8 Pope, Life of Seth Ward, p. 18.
368 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
languages, — in French to the French government and to
other governments such as that of the Dutch Republic to
which the French language was familiar, and in Latin
to governments like those of Spain and the Empire, whose
own diplomatic correspondence was carried on in that tongue.
The Council of State, — very likely at Milton's suggestion, —
resolved that all their, communications with foreign powers
should henceforth be carried on in Latin, and Milton was,
therefore, familiarly known as the Latin Secretary1.' It is
difficult not *° suppose that a decision of the ' Committee for
Regulating the Universities,' passed in the following July,
universities, to the effect that only either Latin or Greek was thence-
forth to be used in colloquial discourse among the students
in the colleges, stood in close connexion with the above
innovation, especially when we note that the grounds on
which the latter measure was justified, as stated in the
Visitors' Register at Oxford, were 'the complaint made by
divers learned men of the defect that English scholars labour
under, both in their private and home exercises and in their
publique discourses with forrayners, by their speaking English
in their several colledges and halls in Oxon.' The Visitors
are accordingly enjoined by the Committee 'to see either the
Latin or Greeke be stricktly and constantly exercised and
spoken and that noe other language be spoken by any
fellow, scholar or student whatever2.'
When the tidings of these new requirements reached
Cambridge, not a few of the senior members must have
recalled to mind that extraordinary influx of students from
Oxford that had followed upon the enforcement of a like
requisition in the sister university by Laud3. 'New presbyter'
might, indeed, well seem but ' old Priest writ large.' Two
months later it became known that a Visitation, such as
Laud had contemplated, but never been able to carry into
effect, was now on its way ; and in less than another month,
the Committee received instructions from Parliament4 to
1 Hist, of the Commonwealth, i 41. 3 Supra, p. 136.
2 Register of the Visitors (ed. 4 State Papers (Dom.), 1649-50,
Burrows), p. 249 : Baker MS. xvn m, no. 9.
112.
THE ENGAGEMENT. 369
cause the following ENGAGEMENT to be subscribed by all ^CHAP.
Heads of Houses, fellows, graduates, and officers of the
university, and by all who were proceeding to any degree
in any faculty :
/ do declare and promise, that I will be true and TUB
r _ Engagement:
faithful to the Commonwealth of England, as the same is 120ct- 1049-
now established, without a King or a House of Lords1.
It was further directed that no person should be admitted
to take any degree or bear any office in either of the uni-
versities until he should have thus pledged himself. But, The ancient
Oath now
it is to be observed that the customary oath, involving a ^"^
concurrent appeal to the Deity, was now superseded by a i>roIUI8e-
mere formal declaration, — the point which John Lowry, on
his assumption of the mayoralty, and that which Dr Hill, on
entering upon his duties as vice-chancellor, had alike con-
tested, although in very different fashion, being thus decided
in their favour. There were to be no more 'Oaths.' But
while the ancient formula had been repudiated by the Puritan
divine on account of an expressed obligation, the Engagement Alarm
excited the opposition of the Anglican and the Puritan alike jj^f nite"
on account of an obligation which it left altogether undefined.
If vague as regarded the future, it was, however, sufficiently
explicit with respect to the past; and politicians representative
of almost every school or party at once discerned that the
obedience to a Republican form of government involved in
the new formula, swept away all the obligations which had
hitherto been associated with the ordinary conception of
1 I give the Engagement in the nificance of the opposition which it
exact words in which it was fatally encountered, should have described
made obligatory on the entire official it as ' the slightest test of allegiance
world, including ' all graduates and that any government could require '
officers in the Universities, the (Constitutional Hist. m11 236). Ireton
masters, fellows, schoolmasters, and more truly characterized it as 'a
scholars of the Colleges of Eton, test which every knave would slip
Westminster, and Winchester, all through,' while a conscientious sub-
ministers admitted to a benefice, and ject might well recoil from a declara-
finally all who received pensions from tion which involved his compliance
the State. ' Gardiner, Commonwealth with whatever enactments might be
and Protectorate, i 196-7. For its brought forward in the future by
earlier form, see Ibid, i 5-7. It is a government relying for support
noteworthy that Hallam, who seems mainly on the Independents and the
to have failed to recognize the sig- Army.
M. III.
24
370 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. ' loyalty.' By the Presbyterian, it was seen to be, as Masson
I»ea ement truty describes it, 'a, test, not positively repealing, but practi-
tiTcovenlnt ca% superseding, the ambiguous and obsolete Solemn League
thea^ptor and Covenant1.' Prynne, whose aversion from the Army was as
ofperjury. intense as his dislike of episcopacy, put forth a pamphlet2
denounced which materially conduced to bring about his three years'
imprisonment a few weeks later, in which he called upon all
' honest English spirits ' ' to avoid the danger of Perjurie ' by
taking this 'new oath3,' — which he goes on to denounce as
' a new Gunpowder Treason, blowing up the King and his
posteritie, Monarchy, the House of Lords, the constitution
and privileges of our English Parliament, our ancient
fundamental Government, Lawes, Liberties, and our three
Kingdomes at one crack.' He then sets forth ' eleven
reasons ' for rejecting it, at the same time predicting ' seven
results' which would follow upon its acceptance. Among
the latter, the third, he declares that ' it will necessitate our
new Governours. . .to seize and sell the lands of all Corporations,
Companies, Colledges, Hospitals, Schooles and Rectories of
Churches in the Kingdome to help pay the Soldiers4.'
Baxter Richard Baxter, opposing it, as he had opposed the Covenant,
but in yet stronger language, maintained the Engagement to
be 'mere juggling and jesting with matters too great to be
jested,' inasmuch as those who prescribed the formula were
also left to be its interpreters, and ' by such interpretations
and stretchings of conscience any treasonable oath or promise
might be taken,' and all ' bonds of society ' would lose their
significance5. Samuel Dillingham, writing from Emmanuel
(11 Dec. 1650) to Sancrofb, says, 'The divine hand of
vengeance has thus made itself notorious in paying home
1 Life of Milton, iv 124. 3 His meaning evidently being that
2 Summary Reasons against the those who took the Engagement
New Oath and Engagement. And an would very soon find themselves
Admonition to all suchas iiavealready called upon to attest their fidelity to
subscribed to it. With a Cautionarie the Commonwealth by compliance
Exhortation to all Honest English with enactments which they would
Spirits, to avoid the danger of Per- find running altogether counter to
jurie by taking of it. Printed in the their convictions.
yeere 1649. The copy in the British * Summary Reasons etc. u.s., p. 13.
Museum Library has a manuscript B Life, by Calamy (1702), p. 106.
note, 'Novemb. 22.'
HALL ON THE UNIVERSITIES. 371
our Covenant with an Engagement, where the daughter is CHAP, iv.
like to be too hard for its mother, and the first Beast must
give up its power to the second1.'
It was at this juncture that the poet. John Hall, the John iiaii
* demands a
honied accents of whose Muse had failed to lure the seniors *S££*aa>*
of St John's to adequate recognition of his merits2, deter- Umver*ttie* ':
mined to carry his appeal to another court. He had already,
in 1648, published a vigorous attack on Presbyterianism,
which can hardly have escaped the observation of Cromwell ;
and he now, prescient of the changes impending in the
university, put forth a yet more trenchant criticism which
calls for special notice. The Advancement of Learning and
Reformation of the Universities3, although occupying only
thirty pages, is undoubtedly one of the most noteworthy
pamphlets that appeared in an age exceptionally productive
of this form of literature; while its remarkable insight
becomes absolutely astonishing when we bear in mind that
its author had not yet completed his twenty-fourth year.
As an exposure of the limited range of academic studies in
England and their perfunctory methods of treatment, it may
indeed even compare with the criticism put forth, forty years
before and under a like title, by the great Verulam4; while and points
J out that they
the author would seem to have been the first among English f^ £|hnind
writers to recognize the fact that the continental centres of onth°se
learning were already gaining on both Oxford and Cambridge,
if not 'in outward magnificence and luxurious liberality,'
certainly ' in extent of knowledge and multiplicity of excellent
persons.' If, again, Bacon must be regarded as the superior HIS criticism
i • /> i 11 i • T i TT • • compared
in his grasp of the whole subiect, John Halls indictment is with that
& r . of Bacon.
certainly entitled to be considered the more valuable in
respect of precision, and as giving forcible utterance to
convictions already lurking in the minds of not a few who
had neither the courage nor the ability to set them forth
with equal force and plainness :
1 Heywood and Wright, n 533-4. mationofthe Universities. By J. H.
2 Supra, p. 353. London, Printed for John Walker
3 An Humble Motion to the Par- at the Starre in Popes-Head Alley.
liament of England concerning the MDIL.
Advancemejit of Learning and Eefor- * Ibid. p. 16.
24—2
372
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv.
The
inefficient
inadequate,
Absence of
any provision
for teaching
Anatomy,'
Mathematics,
' I could never yet,' he says, ' make so bad an Idaea of a true
university, as that it should serve for no nobler end, then to nurture a
few raw striplings, come out of some miserable country school, with a
few shreds of Latine, that is as irnmusicall to a polite ear as the
gruntling of a sow, or the noise of a saw can be to one that is
acquainted with the laws of harmony1. • And then possibly before they
have survayed the Greeke alphabet, to be racked and tortured with a
sort of harsh abstracted logicall notions2, which their wits are no more
able to endure, than their bodies the strapado ; and to be delivered
over to a jejune Peripatetic philosophy, suited only (as Monsieur
Descartes sayes) to wits that are seated below mediocrity, which will
furnish them with those rare imaginations of materia prima, privation,
universalia, and such trumpery ; which they understand no more than
their tutors, arid can no more make use of in the affaires of life, then if
3000 yeares since they had run through all the hierogliphicall learning
of the Egyptians, and had slept in their mummy and were now awaken.
And then, to be turned to graze in poor Ethicks ; which perhaps tell
them as much in harder words, as they had heard their mothers talke
by the fireside at home3.'
' Againe,' he continues, ' I have ever expected from an university,
that though all men cannot learne all things, yet they should be able
to teach all things to all men ; and be able either to attract knowing
men from abroad out of their owne wealth, or at least be able to make
an exchange. But how far short come we of this, though I acknowledge
some difference between our universities4 ? We have hardly professours
for the three principall faculties, and these b\it lazily read, — and care-
lessly followed. Where have we anything to do with Chimistry, which
hath snatcht the Keyes of Nature from the other sects of philosophy
by her multiplied experiences ? Where have we constant reading upon
either quick or dead anatomies, or occular demonstrations of herbes5 ?
1 ' ...we do amisse to spend seven
or eight yeers meerly in scraping
together so much miserable Latin and
Greek, as might be learnt otherwise
easily and delightfully in one yeer.'
Milton, Of Education, p. 2. I quote
from the rare first edition, ' To
Master Samuel Hartlib,' of 1644
[Univ. Library, 'Tracts BB*. 9. 47'],
as the only printed form in which
John Hall can ever have read it.
2 'And for the usuall method of
teaching Arts, I deem it to be an
old errour of Universities... that they
present their young unmatriculated
novices at first comming with the
most intellective abstractions of
Logick and Metaphysics.' Ibid.
3 Milton relegates Ethics to a place
among the finishing studies of Eco-
nomics, Politics, and Logic, by which
time 'they' (the learners) 'may with
some judgement contemplate upon
morall good and evill.' p. 5.
4 A frank admission of the supe-
riority of Oxford, at this time, in
relation to the subjects subsequently
named. ' We ' means Cambridge.
* 'They may procure' in their
study of ' meteors, minerals, plants
and living creatures... as farre as
Anatomy the helpful experiences of
hunters, fowlers, fishermen, shep-
herds, gardeners, apothecaries,' and
'in the other sciences, architects,
engineers, mariners, anatomists...
and this will give them such a real
tincture of natural knowledge, as they
HALL ON THE UNIVERSITIES. 373
Where any manuall demonstrations of Mathematical! theorems or CHAP, iv.^
instruments ? Where a promotion of their experiences, which if right
carried on, would multiply even to astonishment1 ? Where an exami- The critical
nation of all the old tenets ? Review of the old experiments and altogether
traditions which gull so many junior beliefs, and serve for nothing else
but for idle priests, to make their sermons more gaudy ? Where is Neglect alike
there a solemn disquisition into history 1 A nice and severe calculation and of
and amendment of the epochs of time 1 Where a survey of antiquities
and learned descants upon them ? Where a ready and generous
teaching of the tongues ? Free from pedantisme, and the impertinencies
that that kind of learning hath been pestered with 1 And all this done Absence of
competent
not by some stripling youngster, who perhaps understands that which and
he professes as little as anything else ; and mounts up into the chaire teachers,
twice or thrice a yeare, to mutter over some few stolne impertinencies,
but by some stayed man, of tried and known abilities in his profession,
allured by a competent encouragement to stay in the university2.'
The above remarkable passage alone suffices to shew how
clearly, brief as had been his Cambridge career, John Hall
had discerned the shortcomings of the traditional education
that still there prevailed, — the defective Latin, the superficial
Greek, the undeveloped ethics ; the excessive refinements of
logic, shrouding simple laws of reasoning from the appre-
hension by clothing them in technical ambiguities, — and all
this solemn trifling with the time and powers of the learner
still going on, while subjects of supreme importance were
altogether ignored, — the natural sciences and their practical
application ; the study of history, pursued concomitantly with
well-established conclusions in chronology, and accurately
ascertained antiquities, — the latter, in their broader accepta-
tion ; a more natural method in the teaching of the classic
tongues; and finally the lack of trained and competent
teachers in those ' idle pedantic brotherhoods3,' the colleges,
of men, that is to say, chosen for their aptitudes and adequately
rewarded for their toil, even if it involved the displacement
of some of the ancient drones in possession !
shall never forget but dayly augment printed in 1651 along with John
withdelight.' Of Education, pp. 4-5. Durie's Reformed School. London.
1 What Hall had in mind when 32mo.
writing these words, may probably 2 ' I believe that this is not a bow
best be gleaned from that rare treatise, for every man to shoot in that counts
An Idea of Mathematics written by himselfe a teacher.' Milton, M.S. p. 8.
Mr John Pell to Samuel Hartlib, 3 An Humble Motion, etc. p. 17.
374 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. Not less noteworthy are his comments on the designs of
benefactors, and the virtual wrong done, both to them and to
a present generation, by regarding their bequests as some-
thing too sacred to admit of a modified application under
changed conditions which the donors could not possibly
foresee : —
' Their Ordinances and cautions were, no doubt, in their times full
of excellent wisdom and deep reason. But since they ceased to be
mortall, it hath pleased the Sun of Righteousness to break through the
clouds which shadowed their ages, and to let us have more of day...
What means were used before, for a bare historical knowledge, must
now be turned into a censorious justice upon over old opinions, and
into severe and eager disquisitions of new truths ; for knowledge hath
no limits nor land-marks, but being ubiquitary, and therefore desirous
to diffuse itself, she endeavours by all means her promotion and
dilatation1.'
As Bacon's efforts towards bringing about a closer union
thecowwiby between the two countries north and south of the Tweed, had
been followed by his promotion to the solicitor-generalship,
so John Hall's endeavours to aid the cause of university
reform and intellectual freedom resulted in his receiving a
command from the Council of State, in the year following
He upon the appearance of the above treatise, to accompany
accompanies * l -1
icSuandta0 Cromwell into Scotland ; while his services as a writer were
iweivae°da shortly after recognized by a pension of £100. Although
^e°sl°r"'bable there is no reference to him in the great statesman's letters,
botlftoions it is difficult to suppose that the two were not already
to'HartHbd acquainted. Hall, living in Gray's Inn, and John Milton,
living now in High Holborn and then in Spring Gardens,
and both in the employ of Cromwell, with Hartlib for a
common friend, must also have frequently met. It was to
Hartlib, indeed, that Milton's Tractate on Education, which
had appeared some five years before Hall's treatise, was
personally addressed. And, as the contemned of Christ's
wrote to advocate ' the reforming of Education,' ' for the want
whereof this nation perishes,' so the outcast from St John's
pleaded for the most effectual advancement, not 'the bare
permissive propagation of Learning,' — the later appeal being,
1 An Humble Motion, u.s. pp. 18-19.
THE ENGAGEMENT ENFORCED. 375
as the preceding notes shew, often a direct echo of the CHAP, iv.
former.
Wintering at Edinburgh, after the ' crowning mercy ' of ^^n°{0
Dunbar, Cromwell there received the letter which apprised ^fioiship
him of his election to the chancellorship of the university of pebA^sf !
Oxford, where, in the opinion of Carlyle, — relying chiefly on
the evidence afforded by Neal's History of the Puritans, —
' the Querelas about Vandalism, destruction of learning, and
so forth, proved to be mere agonised shrieks, and unmelodious
hysterical wind, forgettable by all creatures1.'
Although Parliament, as already noted2, had given order ^ering
as early as the 12th of October 1649, that the Engagement AMWMM
should be subscribed by all resident graduates, the force of press8Jdnot
the blow had been broken for a time, in the first instance by university.
an agreement among the members of the London Committee
to suspend all recommendations of persons to fellowships or
scholarships in every college where there was the statutory
number of fellows to elect, — and secondly by the fact that
Cromwell himself, when on his way to the North, having o-omweirs
J . promise at
stayed for a few hours at the Bear at Cambridge, had given ^junlfil
the Heads an explicit assurance that the prescribed sub-
scription should be no longer pressed3. Forcible intrusions
and forcible ejections were consequently alike suspended for
a time. But when Presbyterianism in England had been tIJinsec^fe
smitten down by the campaign in Scotland, the victor's tone Dunbar-
underwent a decided change; and in the course of the
following November, the Engagement was again tendered
throughout the university, to be followed by startling
1 ' The known esteem and honour wait upon his Mightinesse that there
of this place,' wrote Cromwell to the should be no further proceedings
vice-chancellor, ' is such that I should against Non-Subscribers, that he had
wrong it and your favour very much, desired the Comittee of Regulation
and your freedom in choosing me, to petition the House in his name,
if either by pretended modesty in that we might be noe further urged,
any unbenign way, I should dispute But we know his Method well enough,
the acceptance of it.' See Carlyle- namely by courteous overtures to
Lomas, n 179-181. cajole andcharmeall parties when he
2 Supra, p. 366. goes upon a doubtful service; and as
3 ' Some assure me that Mr Crom- soon as ''tis over to his mind then to
well, when he was heere on Satterday crush them. ' William Bancroft to his
sevennight on his passage towards Brother Thos., 10 July 1650. Tanner
the North, told the Vicecanc. and MS. LVI 216.
DD1"8 who sneakt to the beare to
376
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv.
although widely varying results. According, indeed, to one
authority, a specious sophistry was now called into play, and
men began to argue that, as there must be a government, if
public order and security were to be maintained, it was
reasonable, at least, to assent to its enactments, until they
proved to be such as necessarily to evoke sufficient opposition
to allow of organized resistance1. The real explanation
was, as Gardiner has for the first time made clear, that
the royalist party were still buoyed up by the hopes which
were finally dissipated, eight months later, by the battle of
Worcester. At Peterhouse, three of the intruded fellows
who had been elected as Covenanters2 were now ejected;
and, shortly after, a fourth, Charles Hotham, was ex-
pelled on special grounds3. At Clare, where the eminent
Dr Cudworth had succeeded Dr Paske in the mastership,
Pembroke, only one royalist, Simon Potter, was ejected. At Pembroke,
Edward Sterne, a native of Cambridge, was fain, though sore
against his will, to depart4 ; and with him, probably, went one
Abraham Fowler, a Covenanter, whom Attwood notes as filling
the office of Praelector in 16465. Caius College sustained a
signal loss in the expulsion of two of the senior fellows, —
William Blanckes and Robert Sheringham, — both of whom,
however, lived to be reinstated in 1660. The former, a
Norfolk man, had been distinguished by his varied usefulness
as a college officer and was held in high esteem for his
attainments in Greek and Hebrew6. The other is described
ciare,
1 'I learnd from some of them
afterwards that they were of the same
judgment stil, and thought them-
selves only bound negatively, and
but so long til a party should appeare
against the present power, happy men
that can so construe it!... and soe it
was declared that we were to stand
ingaged, for said they, its no reason
that you should partake of the benefit
and fruit of the government, unless
you ingage to do your best to main-
tain it.' Sam. Dillingham to Wm.
Sancroft, 30 Dec. 1650. Tanner MS.
LVI 242. Comp. Gardiner, Common-
wealth and Protectorate, i 269, 445.
- Howard Becher, Gabriel Major,
and James Ball.
3 Dr Walker also notes several
changes in the Bye-fellowships during
1650-1651, which he inclines to
attribute to the same cause.
4 In Attwood 's time, he recoi'ds
that the following inscription was
still to be seen, scratched on a pane
(in fenestra quadam) in the College,
though whether in Sterne's former
chamber he omits to state : Longum
floreas \ Grandaeva Mater Pembro-
chiana \ Invidiae Odiisque Superstes ! \
Hoc Tibi ex animo precatur \ Imme-
rens immerito \ Ejectus Filiiis \ E. S.\
Oct. 29, 1650. Attwood, n 70.
5 'Fortasse ejectus est An. 1650.
Non enim ultra occurrit.' Ibid, n 75.
6 Venn, i 204.
REFUSERS OF THE ENGAGEMENT. 377
by Walker as ' a most excellent linguist, especially for the CHAP, iv.
Oriental and Gothick languages, also admirably well versed
in the original antiquities of the English nation, which fully
appears in his book de Anglorum Oentis Origine.' But
Sheringham, unlike Blanckes, who was a man of good private
fortune, was fain to take refuge in Rotterdam, where he
supported himself by teaching Hebrew and Arabic, and was
familiarly known as the ' Rabbi,' on account of his Oriental
learning1. Trinity Hall, to quote the expression of Dillingham, Trinity Haii,
' swallowed the new test roundly, all but their divine, Mr Owen,
and Mr Clark2.' Samuel Pepys, now seventeen years of age,
crept in, with the reputation of ' a great roundhead ' ; but
in the following March transferred himself as a sizar to
Magdalene.
At Corpus College, the changes were more numerous, no corpus
less than six of the fellows being ejected, — viz. Johnson,
Lamplugh, Ganning, Francis Golfer, Fairfax, and Kennet, —
not, however, says Masters, ' for any affection they had for the
royal cause, since three of them, at least, were Presbyterians
and had been put in the place of royalists, but because of
their refusing the Engagement3.' The three Presbyterians
to whom he refers, were Johnson, Kennet and Fairfax, who
had each subscribed a formal declaration4 wherein he pledged
himself to support, to the best of his ability, the principles of
the Covenant, — his inability to accept the new test being con-
sequently obvious. Josiah Lamplugh, however, who had been
elected a fellow as recently as 1647, does not appear to have
been a Covenanter, while his refusal of the Engagement was
apparently not resolved upon without some hesitation. Francis
Golfer and Nicholas Ganning, again, exemplify a third phase
1 Walker, n 146; Venn, i 243. in the presence of Almighty God,
2 Letter (dated ' Emm. Coll. 30 Dec. that during the tyme of my continu-
1650') from Samuel Dillingham to ance in that charge' [his fellowship]
William Sancroft. Tanner MS. LVI ' I shall faithfully labor to promote
242. John Clark, professor of the piety and learninge in my selfe,
Civil Law 1666-73. Ward, Gresh. schollers and studentes that doe or
Professors, p. 253. shall belong to the said Colledge
3 Hist, of Corpus Christl College agreable to the late solemne nationall
(1753), pp. 150-1. League and Covenant by mee sworne
4 This declaration is preserved and subscribed,' etc. See Masters-
among the College documents: 'I Lamb, p. 356.
doe solemnly and seriously promise
378
AJ>. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. of resistance. They were senior fellows, and, like the Master,
had succeeded in evading the Covenant, but now flatly re-
fused the Engagement. According to Masters, John Dobson,
Isaac Peckover, Richard Crofts, and William Wilkinson, were
the only fellows who continued to hold their charges 'through-
out the whole time of the Troubles ' ; and with respect to
these it is to be noted that Dobson, although he had been
presented to the living of Grantchester in 1644, was not
instituted until after the Restoration1, while Richard Crofts,
dying in 1655, did not live to witness the eventual triumph
of the principles which he maintained. Thomas Fuller,
writing shortly after his death, refers to him as 'my good
friend,' at the same time gratefully recalling the kindness
which in past years he had received from the society ' ever
since the time when they were pleased to choose me Minister
of St Benedict's Church,' — and how Crofts, more especially,
had aided him in his researches among the college archives,
with the consent and sanction of Dr Love2.
It is assumed by Masters, and also by his editor, that the
six divines who succeeded to the places of the above ejected
fellows were all Independents, and Dr Stokes presents us
with no evidence to the contrary3. 'Four years later,' he
observes, 'in 1654, there was another turn of the wheel, and
Messrs Golfer, Kennet and Lamplugh were restored, two of
them to fellowships that had become vacant, and the other
at the expense of one of the Independents, Mr Strode, whom
they ejected4.'
At King's College, although Whichcote retained his
position as provost, the number of those ejected from their
fellowships was considerable, a sentence which fell all the
heavier on the younger fellows in that, only two years before,
the society had determined that a dividend, proportioned to
status, should henceforth be distributed among seniors and
Their
successors
all Inde-
pendents.
KIHG'S
COLLEGE.
1 Masters-Lamb, p. 352.
2 Fuller-Prickett and Wright, p.
104.
3 None of the six can be said to
have attained to eminence; but re-
specting Thomas Whitehead, who
became rector of Little Wilbraham
in' 1654, we are told that ' he tran-
scribed the parish register from the
beginning, and continued it down in
a fair hand to the time of his death.'
See Masters-Lamb, pp. 359-61.
4 Corpus Christi College, pp. 105
REFUSERS OF THE ENGAGEMENT. 379
juniors alike. ' A few months later,' says Austen Leigh,
'the provost's salary was raised to £280.... The amount of
money treated as dividend in each year varied greatly; in
the seven years 1648-1654 it averaged £1680 ; but nothing
like this amount was maintained during the rest of the
century1.' Among the ejected juniors was Christopher Wase,
whom the provost's influence was unavailing to shield, for he f^U.
had been accused of endeavouring to raise men and horses
for the service of Charles II, and was shortly afterwards made
a prisoner at sea when bearing letters from the Hague to
France. Another noteworthy ejection was that of Henry y^il-
Molle, the Public Orator, who lost at the same time his office EtoJi/isSL
and his fellowship. ' The college records show,' continues the
late provost, ' that in the years July 1649 to July 1651 no
less than twenty -nine scholars were admitted. Possibly some
vacancies of old standing were filled up at this time, but
the recent ejections would almost account for the unusual
number of admissions2.' The following admission clearly
shews that the London Committee now claimed, in relation
to this royal foundation, — exempted, by special charter, alike
from the jurisdiction of the vice-chancellor and the examina-
tions of the university, — an authority in elections to
scholarships not inferior to that formerly exercised by the
Crown : —
Att a full and publique meeting in the Chappell, June the 10th Form of
1650, of the Provost of the King's College in Cambridge and of the Scholarship,
fellowes of the said College now resident in the same : They the said
Provost and fellowes did then and there in performance of and according
to an Order made by the honorable Comittee att London for regulating
the Universitie of Cambridge (bearing date the second day of May
1650), with our assent and consent receive and admitt ffrancis Scott,
the son of Thomas Scott esquire, compleat and full scholar of the said
College, and did order and agree that he shall have receive and enjoye
from this present time, his commons, senioritie, and all full profitts
and rights, as Schollar of the said College.
Ita tester OSBERTUS FOWLER, Not. Pub.3
1 King's College, pp. 148-9. 3 Liber ProtocolL (1627-1678),
2 Ibid. pp. 132-3. No. 129.
380
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Ejection of
two fellows.
ST CATHE-
RINE'S
HALL.
Spurs towe
succeeded
in the
mastership
by JOHN
LlGHTFOOT.
Combination
presented by
the latter of
profound
scholarship
with
enlightened
tolerance.
At Queens' College, Herbert Palmer's exemplary rule had
been succeeded in 1648 by that of Thomas Horton, another
fellow of Emmanuel. In 1641 Horton had been the
successful competitor with Whichcote for the Gresham
professorship in divinity; and, three years later, had sub-
scribed the Petition of the Ministers to Parliament in which
they urged the establishment of Presbyterian government
alike in congregational, classical and national assemblies. In
1649 he was elected to the vice-chancellorship, and it was
rumoured that, when called upon to subscribe the Engagement,
he might be relied upon to head the resistance to the new
test. The report, however, proved fallacious ; and only two
fellows of Queens' were ejected as refusers. These were John
Hoare and John Jackson, both of whom had been intruded by
Manchester from St Catherine's Hall in 1644. Their places
were filled by Thomas Hunt and William Gore, already
members of the society, and the latter an intimate friend of
Simon Patrick, who had been elected to his fellowship in
the preceding year.
At St Catherine's, William Spurstowe, his genuine con-
victions as a Presbyterian not permitting him to accept the
Engagement, gave place to John Lightfoot, and shortly after
quitted the university to reside in Hackney, where he
continued to live, in comparative obscurity, throughout the
Protectorate. The humility, for which, as we have seen,
he was commended by Baxter, is perhaps to be discerned
in the fact that at the Restoration, when Lightfoot offered to
resign in his favour, if he would consent to resume the
mastership, he absolutely declined to be re-installed in office.
By what process of reasoning the historian of the Westminster
Assembly found himself able to accept the office from which
the ' Smectymnuan ' was expelled, is not on record. It is
probable that his appointment by the Committee was designed
as a conciliatory measure, and it is unquestionable that in
scholarship and mental power he altogether surpassed his
predecessor. Gibbon declares that 'by constant reading of
the rabbis' Lightfoot had become 'almost a rabbi himself;
and we have evidence, throughout his career, of a spirit which
REFUSERS OF THE ENGAGEMENT. 381
rose superior to the sectarian influences of his time. Of this, CHAP. iv.
the oration which he delivered during his vice-chancellorship
supplies us with a signal example, when, while extolling
Cromwell, on the one hand, he had the courage and humanity
to deprecate, on the other, the sufferings and privations to
which the clergy of the Church of England were then exposed.
But it was no sinecure to which the new Master had Disorganized
condition of
succeeded, for in St Catherine's all was in confusion. The tlie society-
books for 1650 had never been audited, and for the quarter
from Michaelmas to Christmas no stipends were paid either to
Master or fellows. In the second week of November, all the
six fellows, Samuel Brooke, William Blake, John Savage,
Joseph Waite, Robert Thexton and William Hutchinson,
' disappear from the College books.' ' At Christmas, six new
fellows began to receive stipends, namely Daniel Milles (Suff.)
and John Duckfield (Ess.), who can scarcely be described in
the full sense as intruded, inasmuch as they had been prae-
elected on the same day with Hutchinson (ejected), but had~
not, like him, become actual fellows, and four others, George
Barker (Yorks.), William Green (Hunts.), John Slader ( Warw.)
and Thomas Rookby (Yorks.).' Of the above, it may be here
noted, Milles developed into an industrious student of the
society's archives, — ' making out lists of Masters, Fellows, etc.
from the books and papers,' and giving ' brief descriptions
of the Masters down to and including Sibbes's successor,
Brownrigg1.'
At Jesus College, Thomas Young, — who, as another of the JESUS
Smectymnuans, must have felt that he could not possibly ^?0rn
retain the mastership, — treated the summons to sign the p
Engagement with silent contempt, and was forthwith ejected,
John Worthington, of Emmanuel, being installed in his place. JOHN
WOBTHISG-
Four of the fellows, Bantoft, Whitfield, Tilney and Yarburgh, 5^^ted
followed their Master's example and shared his fate2. We 14 Nov- 165°-
1 Dr G. F. Browne, St Catharine's ab anno 1643 ad annum 1660 con-
College, pp. 130, 80 n. tinuo decurrit, multi in Coll. Regro
2 Gray (Arthur), Jesus College, conscribuntur Socii quorum nulla fit
p. 116. The absence of these names mentio in hoc nostro Chronico. Ve-
from the College Registers is ex- rum hoc consulto factum est, nobis
plained by the following entry : enim in animum induximus, eos so-
'...in illo temporis intervallo quod lum in Sociorum album conscribere,
. ;enan
element.
382
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
SHA
d. i67i.
Graf'sthur
CHAP, iv. can better believe Worthington's assertion (made ten years
later) than that of many, who, although giving utterance to
a formal nolo episcopari, have succeeded to like promotion,
when he declares that he ' never had any ambitious desires
to such a place,' and was ' far from seeking it.' The first of
*ne new fe^ows whom he was called upon to admit was John
Sherman of Queens', whose election was unanimous1. ' The
historian of Jesus College,' says Mr Arthur Gray, 'was a
native of Dedham in Essex. From one branch of his family,
which emigrated in the seventeenth century to the American
plantations, sprang the celebrated General Sherman. The
fact that he subscribed the Engagement casts a shadow of
suspicion on the fervid royalism which colours his Historia.
His partisanship is indeed a serious deduction from the value
of his work, so far as it relates to his own times. Conveniently
forgetting the manner of his own acquisition of a fellowship,
he passes over the interesting Commonwealth period with a
sneering mention of Young and Worthington as intruded into
the mastership authoritate, si Dis placet, Parliamentarian
He writes a pompous Latin which savours of the college
exercise ; but in questions of fact he may generally be relied
on. His materials were derived from a diligent examination
of college and nunnery documents, as well as from printed
sources, and for the times immediately preceding his own he
drew on the recollections of older residents of the college. He
became a canon and archdeacon of Salisbury, died in 1671,
and was buried in the chancel of the college chapel V
SOB. At Christ's College, ' it is doubtful,' says Dr Peile, ' whether
Smallness of /Y> • j i ' i • j_ i ix • I j
the royalist any were sufficiently royalist to be moved to resign ; and
although Henry More, in after life, gave expression to an
emphatic disclaimer of ever having taken the Covenant, he
HENRY'
qui legitimum, i.e. per statuta appro-
batum titulum sortiti essent. Quam-
obrem turn in dicto Eegistro nonnulli
numerentur qui Sociorum iniquitate
temporum 1644 amotorum locos primo
occupabant, eos in praecedenti tabula
plane omisimus tanquam solos occu-
patores sodalitatum.' It is conse-
quently probable that all the four
above-mentioned fellows were Pres-
byterians.
1 See Diary and Correspondence of
Dr John Worthington. Edited by
James Crossley, Esq. Cb.etb.am Soc.
1847. Vol. i 39, 42.
2 Gray, u.s. pp. 116-7. Sherman's
manuscript was edited and printed
in 1840 by J. 0. Halliwell, but with
numerous omissions and not a few
errors.
REFUSERS OF THE ENGAGEMENT. 383
makes no mention of the Engagement1. Dillingham, indeed, CHAP, iv.
writing to Sancroft, declares that More was one of the first
to submit, and describes the facile submission of the society,
generally, in somewhat contemptuous terms. Ralph Wid-
drington's assent, however, must have been an almost foregone
conclusion, inasmuch as he had been appointed to the Public pub6ifc'
Oratorship in the preceding month, and his brother, Sir Peso^ii
Thomas, had been made Serjeant for the Commonwealth,
some five months before2.
At St John's College, the royalist party, already in a ST JOHN'S
minority among the intruded Covenanters with whom they
were waging ' a bitter feud3,' began to dwindle pitiably, and
the example of Henry Paman, perhaps the ablest of their HESKY
number, but now one of the first to defect, proved disastrous. M.D.: '
. r 6. 1626.
Paman had originally been one of Sancroft 's pupils at pu^-
Emmanuel, from whence he had migrated to become a fellow i^-si.
of St John's. Writing, in 1649, to his old tutor, he describes ms letter to
the majority of the fellows as in a state of painful perplexity ff
and indecision, in which he himself at that time shared4.
1 '...as if I were either Presby- after the Restoration. He replied
terian or Independent ! When as my that he had not got Molle, his pre-
nearest relations were deep sufferers decessor, ejected ; on the contrary,
for the King, and my self exposed (by Molle resigned in his favour, and he
constantly denying the Covenant) to had paid Molle all the stipend of his
the loss of that little preferment I office for the remaining seven or
had before those times, as I never eight years of his life.' Christ's
received any employment or prefer- College, p. 173; see also Mayor,
ence in them.' Preface to the Te- Mattheiv Robinson, pp. 198-200. The
tractys Anti-Astrologica, or the Four latter cites a letter (p. 199) by Hen.
Chapters in the Explanation of the Darly, which shews that the Corn-
Grand Mystery of Godliness, which mittee appointed Widdrington as
contain a brief but solid Confutation early as Oct. 24, while Dillingham's
of Judiciary Astrology, etc. By Hen. letter is dated Dec. 30: I infer from
More, D.D., London, 1681. [Not this that the appointment of the
included in the Opera Omnia of the former must have preceded his ac-
author, which had already appeared ceptance of the Engagement by several
in 2 vols. fol. in 1679.] weeks.
2 'Mr Widdrington, More jun. and 3 See Newcome's Autobiography
Nichols of that Coll. did the like, (quoted by Mayor, Matthew Robinson,
and indeed were the first that lead; p. 29), p. 7. 'Most of the religious,'
the rest of Christ's gave in a paper says Newcome, ' were for the par-
miserably laughed at, Sir Thomas liament and of the new fellows'
Martin swearing they offered more party.' Ibid.
than the Parl'. required.' Tanner 4 'The subscription is every day
MS. LVI 242. Dr Peile, quoting from expected. I dare not say what I will
the Wall MSS. (Univ. Lib. Mm. v. do, nor ask the counsel of my best
48), says, ' This matter naturally was friends, what I ought to do. For I
brought up against him [Widdrington] confess I have slighted my own and
384 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv.^ But before the year closed he had yielded to what he deemed
the inevitable, and in the following April, no less than fourteen
admissions of new fellows completed the transformation of
HoMnsoV the society. Among the number was Matthew Robinson,
rf.i694. destined afterwards to develop into that noteworthy combina-
tion of the well-read divine, the discerning physician, the
courageous upholder of the new philosophy, and the benevolent
and hospitable country gentleman. His father had fallen
when fighting on the parliamentary side, and the Master,
Dr Arrowsmith (whose favour the young Yorkshireman had
not failed to gain), 'along with the majority of the seniors, chose
him,' he tells us, ' fellow with the first/ while ' by the proctor's
indulgence,' he ' had sent him unsought the seniority of all his
year1.' The only names recorded as those of fellows ejected
as staunch refusers of the Engagement, are Allen Hewman,
Robert Clarke, and Thomas Wombwell, although it would
appear that the governing body, after the Restoration, dis-
claimed all responsibility for their removal2. It was not an
episode, indeed, to which either party could afterwards revert
with much satisfaction, and Baker, who characterizes Arrow-
smith's government as ' almost a continued usurpation/
declines altogether to enter into details3.
MAGDALBNB At Magdalene, Dr Rainbowe, unable to sign the Engage-
DjreS-°f ment> on receiving an intimation that he must resign the
A^g! 1650. mastership, betook himself to London, and having there
obtained an audience of the Committee, professed his willing-
ness to live quietly under the existing government. This
installation partial submission proved, however, of no avail, and he was
6Ai6i5R: succeeded on the 31st of August by John Sadler4, with
Divergent respect to whose qualifications for office the accounts are
to 'his0merits. somewhat conflicting. ' He was, I am informed,' says Walker,
their counsel.' ' St John's, Nov. 23rd, was received and executed by the mr.
1649.' D'Oyly, Life of Saner oft, 1 50. and seniors 29 June 1660. But
1 Mayor, Matthew Robinson, p. 29. Mr Hewman was not removed from
2 Such at least would seem to be his fellowship by the mr. and f ellowes,
the necessary inference with respect with which they are in this writ
to Hewman, when, on 29 June 1660, charged, but by the committee for the
a writ from the King's Bench gave university.' See Baker-Mayor, i 297.
orders for his restoration, and the 3 Ibid. p. 226.
following entry in the Register of 4 Purnell, Magdalene College, p.
Admissions was made: 'This writ 109.
REFUSERS OF THE ENGAGEMENT. 385
*a very insignificant man1'; while Calamy tells us, on the CHAP, iv.
authority of a ' clergyman of the Church of England, who
knew him in the university,' that he was ' accounted not only
a general scholar and an accomplished gentleman, but also a
person of great piety, which he discovered when he resided
in the college, which was at some certain times in the year2.'
It is certain, however, that Dr Sadler had been educated at
Emmanuel, and that he was 'Town Clerk of London,' and
continued to fill this latter post as long as he was master of
the college3. Along with the master, were ejected two
fellows, — Richard Perrinchief and John Howorth. Of the Ejections
„ 111-1 M i T-» -i of Richard
former we altogether lose sight until the Restoration, when Pemnchief
° ... a"d John
his demonstrative loyalty gained for him considerable church ^m°iheu
preferment (including the archdeaconry of Huntingdon), — and fellowshiP»-
ultimately, a tomb in Westminster Abbey. Of his literary
activity we shall have occasion to speak in the ensuing
chapter. Howorth also survived to be promoted to the
mastership of the college in 16644.
The evidence with respect to Trinity College confirms TRINITY
the conclusion of Walker — that the ' greatest part ' had been
' turned out ' when the Covenant was tendered. The only
names, indeed, which he adduces in connexion with the
Engagement are those of Stacy, Nicholas, and Humfrey
Babington5; but a letter preserved in the muniment-room
of the college shews that to these must be added those of
Samways and Rhodes, of whom express mention is made as Peter
' proved delinquents for sending plate to the King ' and ' yet &• m*.
holding fellowships6.' As this letter is dated 1649, it might
be inferred that their expulsion followed soon after, but with
Samways this was certainly not the case. He would appear, it
is true, to have gone out of residence, the last payment of his
stipendium being dated Christmas, 16507, but as late as 1653
we find him styled 'Fellow lately resident in Trinity College8,'
1 Walker, n 151. 6 Communicated by Rev. A. H. F.
2 A Continuation of the Account, Boughey.
etc. (1727), i 116. 7 Ibid.
3 Ibid. s See List of Books appended by
4 Purnell, 110, 118. Richard Royston to Richard Sam-
5 Walker, n 162. ways' treatise, England's Faithfull
M. in. 25
386 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. an(j his expulsion probably took place in that year, for, on the
19th of January 1654, the Engagement itself was repealed
by the Protector1. Samways' subsequent career, so far as
known to us, as rector of three country parishes in succes-
sion, proves him to have been sincerely attached to the
Church, but not less so to the cause of civil and religious
liberty ; while it must not be left unmentioned that he was
on intimate terms with Isaac Barrow, the master of his
college, and also with Ussher and with Sancroft. The name
BabTngton- °f Humfrey Babington, second son of Humfrey Babington of
A i69i. Rothley Temple in Leicestershire, claims notice chiefly as
S.T.P. leek that of a benefactor of his college ; for, although a fellow of
the society, there is little evidence to suggest that he was
distinguished by his attainments. But he was a man of good
family, was possessed of ample means, and, when the Restora-
tion came, the fact of his having thus suffered in defence of
his principles necessarily enhanced the royal estimate of his
deserts. In 1669, accordingly, he was created a doctor of
divinity per literas Regias*, an honour which was, no doubt,
peculiarly acceptable, for the recipient was then in his fifty-
fourth year, and, as he had never proceeded B.D. (being
exempted by college statutes from the obligation to do so)3,
there was small probability that he would ever be disposed
onerous to acquire the degree by compliance with the conditions
character of . ^ ™? , .
the original imposed by the Elizabethan statutes, involving, as they did,
requirements r J o> J
degree
of B.D.
not only residence in the university for a certain specified
time, together with the keeping of certain 'acts,' but also the
Reprover and Monitour (London, vicar of Ilminster in Somersetshire.
Printed by E, Cotes, for RicJiard See D. N. B. L 242 ; Wood, Athenae,
Royston at the Angell in Ivie Lane, n 430-1.
1653), in which the work by Peter, 1 Gardiner, Commonwealth and
Devotion digested, etc., etc., is stated Protectorate, 11 316.
to be ' by Peter Samwaies, Fellow 2 GradiMti Cantabrigienses (1659-
lately resident in Trinity College, 1823), p. 18. He was thus absolved
Cambridge, in 12°.' The author of from the obligation of declaring that
the 'Eeprover' was a fellow of C. C. for five years subsequent to his ad-
College, Oxford. See Walker, n 112; mission as bachelor, ' omnia quae
Halkett and Laing, i 751. The ad gradum doctoratus in eadem facul-
evidence, such as it is, is not sug- tate suscipiendum perfecerit.' For-
gestive of any relationship ; Peter, a mulae, p. 2.
Westminster scholar, being described * On this exemption, see Monk's
as the son of ' a person about court,' Life of Bentley, c. vn.
while Eichard was the son of the
THE EXPULSIONS FROM TRINITY. 387
delivery of a sermon both at Great St Mary's and where CHAP.
'Paul's Cross' had once stood in London1. The statutable
requirements, in short, were so onerous, that the compilers of
the code had deemed it expedient to limit those for the
doctorate to the payment of a fee and to the propounding
and determining that single quaestio in the schools2, which
has since given place to the 'Dissertation.' The 'royal
letters,' of course, dispensed with all this, but it is not im-
probable that Dr Babington may, at times, have been
conscious of a certain desire to vindicate his right so to be
styled. In the year following upon his promotion to the
doctorate, the like honour had been bestowed by Charles on
Isaac Barrow, to be followed, two years later, by the pro-
motion of the latter to the mastership of Trinity. Of the
wisdom of the royal award, on this occasion, there could be
no question. Dr Babington himself would have readily
admitted that he was not Barrow, who had recently passed
away, in the prime of life, with the reputation of the finest
preacher in the English Church ; but the incumbent of the
parish of Boothby Pagnell in Lincolnshire may, none the less,
have been conscious of powers and of an erudition which
deserved a wider sphere for their adequate display. When, Dr
accordingly, his friend and neighbour, Thomas Harrington, ^Jf^at
the squire of that parish and high sheriff of the county, took fliers
upon himself to suggest that Dr Babington should preach
the occasional sermon at the approaching assizes at Lincoln
in 1678, the proposal was received with but a faint nolo
episcopari. The doctor's predecessor in his rectory, it was
true, had been a no less eminent divine than Robert
Sanderson, the late bishop of Lincoln. 'I have his table,
stool, and candlestick,' said Babington, as the vision of a
mitre swam before his eyes, — but he at the same time
averred that he held himself 'as unworthy to write after'
1 Documents, i 460. in publicis scholis, cujus ambigua et
2 'Post tantum laboris susceptum et dubitationes, dum in utramque
tot pericula atque examina nolumus pattern enucleaverint, definient deter-
pluslaborisdoctoribusimponerequam minabuntque sub poena quadraginta
ipsi volunt sua sponte suscipere nisi solidorum academiae solvendorum."
quod semel infra annum suscepti Ibid, i 461. Cf. Peacock, Observa-
gradus quaestionem ipsi sibi proponent tions, etc., p. 13.
25—2
388 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
BHAP. iv. Sanderson, as ' to succeed him.' He assented, however, none
the less, to the high sheriff's proposal1, and composed his
sermon for the occasion2.
for^arS at Among the innovations proposed while the Westminster
minster8*" Assembly still sat, there was one which had elicited the
^thTe|ard expression of very divergent opinions. We have already
oratory: noted the irreverent demonstration made by the townsmen
7 June 1644. . ...
of Cambridge when Dr Power was on his way to deliver his
Latin sermon at St Mary's3. There were those among the
Puritan party who held, not only that the use of a dead
language in the pulpit required to be altogether suppressed,
but that everything which was beyond the comprehension,
even of the uneducated laity, was out. of place in the sermon.
Palmer Such was the strong conviction of Herbert Palmer, the
objects to
!nU8traii0gneS president of Queens' and one of the compilers of the Directory
languages. Qf Py]^^ Worship ; and from his place in the Assembly he
had argued forcibly against 'any use of strange languages' by
preachers. To his influence we may probably attribute the
clause in the recorded proceedings prohibiting not only the
'speaking of Latin, Greek and Hebrew,' but also all 'citations
oYc^nt-ry" from the Fathers4.' Singularly enough, however, such instruc-
tCionsrf<frl tions were by no means popular with many of those-for whose
benefit they were expressly designed, — the admiration of a
rustic audience often rising in proportion precisely as the
discourse from the pulpit, both in diction and in ideas, soared
Experience beyond their comprehension. Such, for example, was the
of Professor »
chiidcrey.at experience of Edward Pococke, the eminent Oriental scholar,
whenever he left his chair in Oxford to preach to his rustic
1 ' This Sermon, which at first was as having gained the doctorate
the meer product of your earnest [S.T.P.=D.D.] as a reward for this
desires, and then. . .the subject of your loyal sermon which was not delivered
favourable and candid attention at until nine years afterwards ! The
Lincolne.' Dedication to Sermon. fact that Babington belonged to an
2 Mercy & Judgment. A Sermon ancient family, whose members were
preached at the Assises held at Lin- for centuries connected both with
colne; July 15, 1678. By Humfrey St John's and Trinity, would have
Babington, D.D., etc., etc. Cam- been quite sufficient, taken in con-
bridge. Printed by John Hayes, junction with his loyalist principles,
Printer to the University ; for Henry to recommend him for such recogni-
Dickinson, Bookseller in Cambridge, tion.
1678. The writer of Babington's 3 Supra, pp. 245-6.
Life in the D. N. B. (n 314), by a 4 Lightfoot-Pitman, xm 280, 281.
singular inadvertency, represents him
THE EXPULSIONS FROM TRINITY. 389
audience at Childrey. He had refused the Engagement ; ^-H
and being, on other points, much disposed to agree with
Palmer, he determined that his own sermons should be
couched entirely in plain and simple English. Greatly to
his disappointment, however, he soon discovered that he had
simply ruined his reputation among his parishioners as a
theologian ; for although they readily admitted him to be a
kind and honest man, they concluded that he was 'no
Latinist1.' The ornate discourses, teeming with learned
quotations, which, at nearly the same time, Jeremy Taylor
was delivering to his audiences at Golden Grove, would
probably, on the other hand, have moved the congregation
at Childrey to admiration, although the Latin, the Greek,
the Hebrew, and even the eloquence, would alike have been
altogether above their comprehension.
A sense of the wrong which he had once suffered at the Dr B
0 . ton's
hands of the Assembly, and a responsive contempt for their £js£
apparent contempt of learning, not unmingled with a desire
to justify his own claim to take rank as a scholarly divine,
were consequently all actuating motives with Dr Babington,
when he composed for his Assize audience his remarkable
sermon ; and rarely, since the Reformation, had so pedantic
a homily been delivered before a like congregation. The
worthy burgesses of the city and the graziers of the county,
who attended on the occasion, can hardly but have listened
with awe and wonder, as quotation after quotation from the
original Hebrew and the Targum, from the Greek Testament
and from the Greek Fathers, from Homer and Diogenes
1 While his sermons before the (Ibid. p. 93). Gardiner observes that
university at Oxford were, his bio- it was only 'the testimonies in his
grapher assures us, ' very elaborate, favour from Oxford ' that deterred
and full of critical and other learn- the ejectors in 1656 from ejecting him
ing,' those delivered in his parish from his living. Common, and Pro-
' were plain and easy, having nothing tect. in 233, n. 2. According to the
in them which he conceived to be candid admission of William Dell,
above the capacities, even of the in his bitter attack on Oxford and
meanest of his auditors.' Twells, Cambridge, the universities were
Life of Dr Edward Pocock (ed. 1816), 'of honorable esteem everywhere
i 92-95. It is evident, however, that in the nation, especially with the
the underlying cause of Pococke's ignorant and vulgar people.' Con-
unpopularity was his preaching futation of divers gross and Anti-
against ' those schisms and divisions, ' Christian Errors, etc. London, 1654,
then ' breaking in upon the Church ' sig. (a) .
390
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
He prints
it at the
request of
the Judges.
His
benefaction
to Trinity.
EMMANUEL
COLLEGE.
Temporary
return of
William
Bancroft :
circ. NOT.
1650.
His letter
from college
to his brother
Thomas :
Nov. 17.
Laertius, from the Latin Version and from Cicero, Ovid and
St Augustine fell in rapid succession on their ears. But, as
the high sheriff had invited the Doctor to preach, so ' the
honourable and reverend Judges ' pressed him to print ; and
from his rooms in Trinity, where he had long before been
reinstated in his fellowship, he penned the dedication of his
discourse to Thomas Harrington1, just as Sanderson had been
wont to dedicate his sermons to the squire's grandfather. In
1682, only a few months before his death, Dr Babington was
elected to the vice-mastership of his college, — an honour
partly designed, in all probability, in recognition of that
staunch loyalty to the Crown which breathes throughout his
memorable sermon, but still more to mark the sense of the
society itself of his active interest in its welfare, as attested
by his liberality in erecting those additional four arches in
Nevile's Court, which, along with their superimposed cham-
bers, marked another stage in the work of completing Sir
Thomas Sclater's design2 and served permanently to per-
petuate the name of Babington in the records of Trinity.
In the course of the year 1650, William Sancroffc re-
appeared at Emmanuel and became, in turn, the correspondent
of members of the society at a distance, especially his brother
Thomas, now at Fressingfield. For a long time his own fate
hung doubtfully in the balance, his high character, and
probably the influence of Brownrig, serving to protect him,
although he was mystified rather than reassured when he
learned that, while his name had been given in as that of a
' refuser,' it had not, as yet, been placed on the official black
list. The delay inspired him with fresh hopes, and he even
began to look upon Dr Love's ability to maintain himself in
his mastership at Corpus as in the greater jeopardy3, especially
1 'Trin. Coll., Sept. 17, 1678.'
' Your most faithful and obliged
Oratour, Humfrey Babington.'
2 Willis and Clark, n 522-5.
3 'I am not turn'd out yet; though
many have been, since you receiv'd
my last, as Dr Young of Jesus, Dr
Spurstow of Katherin Hall, & Mr
Vines of Pembroke hall, and some
fellowes of various colleges. Dr Love
is suspended, but not yet out, and
some say there is a way found out,
that he shall be thought to have
given satisfaction as to the Engage-
ment, & soe that he will be continued.
But unlesse he subscribe downright,
I hardly thinke he can escape, for
many gape for his place.' Tanner
MS. LVI 234.
EXPULSIONS FROM EMMANUEL. 391
when a correspondent in London informed him that certain CHAP. iv.v
petitioners for his own fellowship had been curtly assured
that ' they might as well think to remove a mountain as
Mr Sancroft1.' A month later, however, a notice from the His ultimate
ejection:
Committee was left at his chambers to the effect that, unless Juiyiesi.
he subscribed the Engagement within a month from that
date, his successor would be forthwith nominated, and some
time prior to the following August2, his expulsion took place.
It was at the instance of Thomas Brainford that the notice ™^™s of
had been served, and Brainford himself now succeeded elrter°rd'
Sancroft in his fellowship. Among the other intruded fellows m™gworth,
we find the names of Carter3, Illingworth4 and Moseley5. an
That of William Croone6, an alumnus of the society, will S,OOSR?
again claim our interest in a future chapter, as of one who d. im.
was both a benefactor to the university and to the cause
of scientific progress. He had been admitted in 1647 from
Merchant Taylors' School when only fourteen years of age,
but was now elected to a fellowship, and before another
eight years had passed, succeeded to the professorship
of rhetoric at Gresham College7. The election of John JOBS
° DAVENPORT :
Davenport, which did not take place until 1654, was one of B^g^43'
the latest consequent upon the refusal of the Engagement8. M.A. leso.
1 Shuckburgh, Emmanuel College, a life of idleness in the country with
p. 99. as much resignation as he can muster.
2 The order of the Committee was Tanner MS. LV 39.
as follows: 'That the senior fellow 3 Probably Martin Carter, matri-
in the said college resident, do cause culated as pensioner at Queens', July
notice to be left at the chamber of 1645.
Mr Sancroft,... that in case he does 4 James Illingworth, B.A. 1648-9.
not make it appear to this committee, 5 Probably Francis Mosley, B.A.
on this day month peremptorily, that 165£; M.A. 1654.
he has subscribed the Engagement,' 6 For William Croone (misprinted
' this Committee will without further 'Crosse' in Shuckburgh), see Birch
notice nominate another to succeed,' (Thos.), Hist, of the Royal Society,
etc. Cary, Memorials of the Civil iv 339-40; D. N. B. xra 207. He
War, n 269. That it must have himself appears to have written his
been in July that his ejection took name Croune. See note to p. 320 of
place is shewn by a letter to Holds- Ward's Lives of the Gresham Pro-
worth, dated ' Sept. 6, 1651,' in which fessors.
he says, 'I have been turned out of 7 Ward, Lives, u.s.
my fellowship these six iveeks; and 8 Shuckburgh, Emmanuel College,
yet have enough left me to please p. 100. Davenport (according to
myselfe in.' In a postscript, how- Bennett) had been elected a fellow
ever, he speaks of ' fearing a hectique in 1649. Letter from Dr Chawner.
distemper,' but resigning himself to
392
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Example
set by
Dr Minshull.
Ej ections of
refusers
of the
Engagement
as late as
1654.
Ejections
on other
grounds.
The rule-of
the earlier
Western
monasteries
and the
early
statutes of
Peterhouse
compared.
At Sidney the entire college made an early and complete
submission. Dr Minshull, indeed, could hardly have been
oblivious of the fact that it was to Cromwell that he was
indebted for his position as head of the society1. He accord-
ingly feigned a brief resistance; and then, to quote the
description of Samuel Dillingham, 'crept at night to the
lodgings ' of the Committee, ' and put his hand to the parch-
ment, his whole college ambling next day in the same steps2.'
This was towards the close of December, when, according to
the same authority, the great majority of the residents in the
university still held out. Throughout the years 1651 to 1653,
accordingly, we find ejections continuously going on, and it
was not until nearly the close of the latter year that an
' iniquitous clause,' as Gardiner justly terms it3, was expunged
from the Act, whereby refusers had been denied the benefits
of courts of justice. In the mean time, however, other
ejections were taking place which have sometimes been
erroneously ascribed to the operation of the Act but had
really no connexion with the Engagement. As an illustra-
tion of this, and also of the general conditions of college life
throughout the period of ejections, it will here be not a
little instructive to take note of a very remarkable episode
in the experiences of our most ancient society, a record which
for interest and fulness of detail is perhaps hardly to be
paralleled in the history of any other Cambridge foundation
down to the time of Bentley.
The early statutes of Peterhouse, as we have already
seen4, were, for the most part, little more than a transcript
of those given to Merton College by its founder, but the
conception which both societies represented is to be traced
back to a far more distant time, and the rule of the seculars
whom Walter de Merton and Hugh of Balsham alike designed
to educate for the service of the Church, was itself semi-
1 Dr Minshull and Cromwell had
been undergraduates together at
Sidney, and the former had supported
the Puritan party prior to his election
to the mastership. See supra, p.
254, n. 1.
2 Samuel Dillingham to Sancroft,
20 Dec. 1650. Tanner MS. LVI 242.
3 Gardiner, Commonwealth and
Protectorate, n 261, 316.
4 Author's History, etc. i 223-4,
n 236.
THE EPISODE AT PETERHOUSE. 393
monastic, and probably purely monastic in its origin. In CHAP, iv.
other words, it differed only as regards minor details from similarity to
• ° be noted
that of those early monasteries of western Christendom which, ^re^erihed
in the days of Theodosius the Great or of Justinian, were anne1'<Si°f
established under the auspices of Augustine of Hippo or of °
Benedict of Nursia, — a rule devised for a society governed
exclusively by its head, who had been elected to his office
by the other members of the community, subject only to the
approval of the bishop of the diocese. As at Hippo in Africa,
and as at Monte Cassino in Italy, so at Cambridge, in the
rule of the little House of St Peter without Trumpington
Gate, the royal charter, the distinctive dress, the ceremony of
election by 'the scholars1/ and the ratification of their choice
by the prelate at Ely2, preserve to us the evidences of a time-
honoured conservatism in matters of organization in singular
conjunction with a deep-rooted spirit of enquiry in the
interpretation of dogma.
In cases where the monastery or the college was small,
there was much to be said for thus investing its head with *jj
an authority which did not admit of being easily called in Autocracy.
question3; and we have to remember that at Cambridge, at
1 It may be as well here to recall divergence from the monastic rule,
that in the original code of Peter- 2 The Warden of Merton was to
house, as in that of Merton College, be chosen from three names presented
no distinction is drawn between to the Visitor, the Master of Peter-
scholarships and fellowships. ' All house from only two. Mr Henderson
were scholar es\ the "scholar," in adds, 'it was also held that the Visitor
the modern sense, was simply a must choose the first of the names
junior fellow, and the "fellow" a presented, and neglect by external
senior scholar.' Brodrick, Memorials authorities either of the statute or of
of Merton College, 1885 (p. 6, n. 3) , in this belief usually led to disturbances. '
which a translation of Walter de Merton College, p. 21.
Merton' s final code of 1274 has been 3 'Yet might that man not un-
printed by the late Warden. Mr fitly be thought capable of a junior
Henderson (Merton College, pp. 18- fellowship in St Johns Colledge,
19) finds the modern distinction where the government being onely in
between ' fellow ' and ' scholar ' fore- a few Seniors, he could not of many
shadowed in certain 'poor students,' years be capable of such considerable
scholares secundarii, provided for in trust: and yet the same man unfit
a note appended to the College code for a fellowship in Peterhouse; where,
of 1270, but never actually instituted. by the constitution, after one year, he
The ninth chapter of the code of 1274, is capable to participate as fellow, in
making attendance at the ' hours ' all points, both of profit and govern-
and at ' celebration of masses ' obli- ment, equally with the greatest
gatory on members of the college only Senior of the College.' True State
•as far as their leisure serves' (Brod- of the Case of Mr Hotham, etc. 1651,
rick, p. 322), marks a noteworthy 4to. p. 44; 24mo. p. 73.
394 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
time when the Elizabethan statutes were promulgated,
the fourteen existing colleges were smaller, for the most
part, than they were at the outbreak of the Civil War. In
Peterhouse, after the expulsion of Dr Cosin and his supporters,
*ne numbers were exceptionally small1; but it would appear
^negative ^^ ^ j^ £rom ^he first been found desirable, by the fellows
conceded at on that ancient foundation, to yield a practical assent to a
Peterhouse . *
after 1644 certain clause in the fiftieth statute of the above code whereby
each head of a Cambridge college had already been invested
with autocratic powers by virtue of his possession of 'a negative
voice2,' — or, in other words, whereby his assent was always to
be held essential to the validity of any election to an appoint-
ment in the society, whether it were a fellowship or scholarship
or any other office. At Peterhouse, moreover, another require-
ment served still further to strengthen the autocratic powers
of the head. The college code enjoined that every new fellow,
whether imposed on the society by mandate or elected in the
usual course, should, during his first year, be only a 'pro-
bationer,'— 'not intermedling with the government of the
college, not receiving any profits besides his commons in
hall8.' As, however, he could only be elected while still a
bachelor of arts, in arte dialectics baccalaureus*, the number
of those from whom the electors had to choose was exception-
ally small, the number of those who had any voice in college
affairs still smaller. They also represented the section among
whom the Master's influence was exceptionally potent. Each
junior fellow, whether a probationer or one whose election
had been confirmed, was well aware that the Master, had he
so willed it, could have stayed his election, and also its con-
firmation. And even when the period of suspense was over,
it again became clear that his chances of succeeding to any
1 The number of those on the cunque, necessario requirendus est
foundation in 1650 was only fourteen magistri sive praepositi illius collegii
fellows and the Master. Hotham, assensus et consensus.' Statuta
u. s. 4to. p. 25 ; 24mo. p. 50. Reginae Elizabethae, cap. 1. Docu-
2 ' In omnibus et singulis elec- ments, i 493.
tionibus tarn sociorum discipulorum 3 See Statutes of St Peter's College,
scholarium officiariorum lectorum no. 52, ' De anno probationis scho-
reliquorumque membrorum cujusque larium.' Documents, n 88; Hotham,
collegii quam in omnibus et singulis M.S. 4to. p. 28; 24mo. p. 55.
locationibus et concessionibus quibus- 4 Documents, 11 64.
THE EPISODE AT PETERHOUSE. 395
college office and thereby eventually obtaining a life-tenure VCHAP. IV-_,
of his fellowship, depended on the personal decision of the
same authority. To him, accordingly, it appeared an object
of primary importance to gain the goodwill of the Master;
and it now transpired that the new head of Peterhouse was
resolved to make it his first object to strengthen as far as
possible his hold on the support of the junior fellows. In
1644, when the new fellows had been intruded by Manchester,
the observance of the probationary system had, of course, been
found impracticable; for, to quote Charles Hotham's terse de-
scription of the situation/ We came into a depopulated colledge, £°n*'f1on of
all the old fellows but the President, and another, either actu- in 16*£-
ally turn'd out, or ready to be turn'd out for delinquency, as
fast as ever there could be got men to supply their rooms ;
not one of those left (the President excepted) would once in
publicke own the Master by coming to colledge meetings, or
otherwise1.' He is careful, however, to explain that ' we and Thenewiy
* elected
all others, put in by my Lord of Manchester, were not ad- ^"^ed
mitted till we were first publickly examined of our sufficiency SdmiM?o*eir
before the whole Assembly of Divines2.' With the year 1650,
when conditions allowed of a return to the normal mode of
conducting such elections, the senior fellows found themselves
embarrassed bv the manifest intention of Lazarus Seaman seaman
* endeavpu
not to revert to the system of 'Probations.' The reason of ^eabolish
his conduct was to them sufficiently clear. Conscious ofprobatwn-
having almost entirely forfeited the goodwill of the seniors,
he was intent on gaining that of the juniors by bringing
about the immediate entrance of all elected to fellowships
' upon an equal enjoyment of emolument ' and the right to
a like voice in the conduct of affairs. As, however, the
dividends hitherto withheld from probationers had gone to
augment those of the seniors, the latter naturally demurred.
To them it appeared that ' this sudden ascent of young
scholars from a state of minority, to the highest power of
command and equality with their superiors,' was not only ' a
1 A True State of the Case of Mr from pages 32 to 37 (inclusive) is
Hotham, 4to. p. 28 ; 24mo. pp. 56-57 misprinted as 40 to 45].
[in the quarto edition, the pagination 2 Ibid. 4to. p. 45; 24mo. p. 76.
ours
396
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Admission
of the
fellows of
Peterhouse
that the
Probation
system was
profitable to
themselves,
but they
plead that
they had not
petitioned for
augmenta-
tion."
Parliament
authorizes
an increase
in the
stipends of
the Heads
of Colleges.
Particulars
of the
distribution
of the sum
allotted.
strong temptation to pride and self-conceitedness, and of
great danger to procure disorder and misgovermnent in
colledge affairs,' but also likely ' to make the colledge
government contemptible to the younger students and so
ineffectual to those good ends to which it was ordained1.'
They did not, however, attempt to disguise the fact that the
unpaid dividends went to augment their own; and they
candidly admitted that they looked upon 'this profit accrew-
ing from Probationers ' as ' one of the rightful appurtenances
of our fellowships,' ' which,' Hotham goes on to say, ' are
poor enough, and this year, by reason of the taxes, like to be
much impaired. We fellows of colleges having been so
modest as to desire no augmentation of the State ; I hope,
therefore, you will not think it equal, those casual augmenta-
tions allowed us by our Founder should be taken from us2.'
The above reference to 'augmentations' relates to a clause
in an Act, passed fifth of April 1650, whereby the Committee
for regulating the Universities had been instructed ' to have
regard unto the number of Houses of Learning in each
university, and to make an assignment of maintenance unto
them accordingly.' This was to be done out of funds accruing
from ' certain tithes,' which, having been vested in trustees,
were now at the command of parliament, and, as the im-
mediate result, the heads of thirteen of the colleges found
themselves in receipt of grants which, in some cases, at once
more than doubled their incomes, and afforded material relief
in all3. In the imperfect List which has come down to us,
the actual values of the masterships at St John's, Emmanuel,
and Clare are left blank, so that the proportion of the new
grant to the previous income does not appear, but in each of
these three cases an addition of £100 was authorized. The
heads of St Catherine's and Trinity Hall, with incomes
declared at £22. 13s. 4id. and £47 respectively, received, the
former, an augmentation of £90, the latter, of £53 ; those of
Caius and Pembroke, with £70 and £72, received additions
1 True State, etc. 4to. p. 41 ; 24mo.
pp. 66-67.
'2 Ibid. 4to. p. 40; 24mo. p. 64.
3 See Values of Masterships and
their Augmentation as it was designed
at London, 1650. Baker MS. xxv
398.
THE EPISODE AT PETERHOUSE. 397
of £60 and £70 ; those of Jesus and Corpus, with £48 and VCHAP.
£50, received £90 and £70 ; those of Queens' and Christ's,
with £68. 3s. 3d. and £110. Is. 8d., received each an addition
of £50 ; those of Magdalene and Sidney, with £103 and £90,
augmentations of £47 and £40. As neither Trinity nor Neither
Trinity
Peterhouse is mentioned in the list, they may be assumed (-•oiiegenor
J J i*t Peter s
not to have applied for augmentation, — the former, probably, initnhceluded
as not requiring it ; the latter, as only too sensible that its allotment
head, by his habitual non-residency and parsimony in rela-
tion to the college, had forfeited his right to prefer any claim
to such external assistance1.
There is nothing to shew that Lazarus Seaman was Point of view
himself aware of anything in the college code which could seaman
J . . & probably
fairly be urged in contravention of his own theory of the ^"^sHion
powers vested in his office. In the statute relating to the
same, he is expressly styled the Gubernator or Governor;
the university statute, as we have seen, gave countenance to
his claims; and the right of intervention by a Visitor, as
formerly represented by the bishop of Ely, was now being
exercised by the London Committee. In addition to all this,
the Commission for revising the Statutes of the Colleges had
only recently begun its labours2, and he might reasonably
consider that any question affecting his autocracy would be
better deferred, at least until the commissioners appeared at
Peterhouse. It boded ill, however, for his pretensions, that. The times
L • ' not
as the year 1650 advanced, it became evident that autocracies
generally were less in favour, and that institutions and
societies desirous of commending themselves to public sup-
port were assuming a form of organization derived neither
from monastic nor monarchic precedents, but from those of
1 ' And for his Benefice ' [Seaman's enjoy the revenue of all three places
incumbency of All Hallows, Bread and bear the burden but of two. For
Street] ' and Assembly-man-ship, he hath all this time of his discon-
there's no reason either of them tinuance laid in a manner the whole
should be a protection to save him burden of his college office upon the
from an arrest for that debt of resi- President's back, not allowing him
dence he owes the college. ..for one of for his pains so much as one peny.'
them being a place (by common fame) The Petition and Argument of Mr
of one, if not two hundred pounds a Hotham, etc. 4to. pp. 25-26; 24mo.
year, the other, of four shillings a p. 84.
day, it seems not very reasonable, 2 See supra, p. 329.
that one so against pluralities should
398
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Circum-
stances
which led to
his adoption
of an
academic
life.
the newly established Commonwealth. In the mean time,
one of the senior fellows of the college, Charles Hotham by
name, with the design probably of appealing to the com-
missioners in person, had been diligently perusing the
manuscript of the statutes, and had already arrived at the
conclusion that, so far from their lending support to the
Elizabethan statute, they virtually contravened it. He was
a Yorkshireman of good family, with strong northern sym-
pathies, and among the members of his house had been that
John Hotham who, as bishop of Ely and chancellor of the
realm, had borne a prominent part in the conduct of affairs
in the reign of Edward n. But within the last few years a
dark cloud had obscured the fame and fortunes of this ancient
house. Charles's father, Sir John Hotham, and his half-
brother, also named John (a son of the Knight by his first
marriage), had both been executed on the scaffold as traitors
to the Commonwealth. He himself, probably foreseeing the
fate that was already menacing the royalist cause, had gone
over to the Presbyterian party some months before ; and, in
his zeal as a convert, he next began to preach vigorously
against the Engagement, only desisting when formally en-
joined to pursue the subject no further. His acceptance of
what he terms 'a poor fellowship at Peterhouse' had not
been concluded, according to his own statement, until some
persuasion had been resorted to by certain members of that
society and ' after near half a year's deliberation ' on his own
part1. Once enrolled, however, among the fellows, he became
one of its most loyal sons, and after seven years passed within
the college walls, he could conscientiously affirm that he had
'demeaned himself in that charge as becomes a Christian
and faithful member alike ' of his college, university and
Commonwealth2. Unlike his father, whom Clarendon de-
1 A True State of the Case, etc. 4to.
p. 1.
2 Ibid. Hotham 's own language
implies his sense of a twofold obliga-
tion to defend the interests of Peter-
house: ' ...there having been one of
my own name and family, the third, or
fourth successor to the bishop of Ely
that founded the College, a great
benefactor to it,... and myself coming
now in a more peculiar manner, and
by a strange cast of providence, to
partake of the good fruits of his
bounty ; I held it a double obligation,'
etc. Petition and Argument, 4to.
p. 8; 24mo. p. 45.
CHARLES HOTHAM. 399
scribes as a man ' of great pride and ambition,' Charles ,CH_AP. l-'
Hotham had little inclination for a public career, being, by HIS retiring
, . p • /> i I disposition
his own confession, or weak memory and prone to ' two »nd natural
•* _ indolence.
cardinal vices,' — ' a subrustick pudor and love of ease.' Still
less did he resemble Lazarus Seaman ; and although they LAZARCS
could now meet on a common platform as members of the ^
Presbyterian party, there was a total absence of sympathy
between the two. They differed, indeed, in their past careers,
not less than in their inherited sympathies and in character.
Seaman, the son of humble parents, had entered Emmanuel
career and
as a sizar, and, after being admitted bachelor and subscribing cojj{ro!a
what Baker terms ' the three Articles,' had been under the versialist-
necessity of leaving Cambridge and earning a livelihood as a
country schoolmaster. His remarkable energy and singular
aptitude for debate had gained for him the notice of Laud,
by whom he was instituted to a lectureship in All Hallows
Church in Bread Street, and he soon became widely known,
throughout London, as a dexterous controversialist, delighting
in disputation1, and ever ready to enforce his arguments, or
demolish those of an antagonist, by reference to a small
unpointed Hebrew bible which he always carried in his
pocket and with which he claimed an exceptionally thorough
acquaintance2. He was one of the earliest members of the His t
reputation
Westminster Assembly, where he was distinguished by the Westminster
fervour and length of his prayers, — prolonged at times to Assembly-
nearly two hours, — and still more conspicuous by his
pertinacity and self-confidence in discussion3, while his pre-
sumptuous assertions in connexion with questions of scholar-
ship occasionally drew forth a dignified demurrer from John
Lightfoot himself, who did not omit to record such incidents4.
1 See the story told by William 313, 319; also Introd. to Selden's
Jenkyn (of St John's) in A Sermon Table Talk (ed. Arber), p. 7.
preach't Sept. 12, 1675. By occasion * 'At last the text' [Matth. vu 6]
of the much lamented Death of that 'was putting to the question; and
Learned and Reverend Minister of then began Mr Seaman to plead
Christ, Dr Lazarus Seaman, late again,' etc. ' ...I denied the major,
Pastor of Alhallows-Bread-street, and Mr Burroughs and Mr Herle
London. London, 1675, pp. 51, 52. backed me in it. Mr Seaman, im-
2 Calamy's Account, n2 16. proving it, construed "to tread under
3 See Lightfoot-Pitman, xrn 240, foot," to neglect or slight. I answered
256, 272, 274, 297-8, 302, 303, 311, that neither the word in the Hebrew
400 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. He next appears as accompanying the commissioners sent by
parliament to the Isle of Wight to treat with King Charles,
when he won the monarch's favour by his readiness in
adducing precedents in questions relating to Church govern-
H1611^1. His succession to the mastership of Peterhouse had
preceded Hotham's intrusion as fellow by only two months,
and it is not improbable that, from the first, Hotham may
have felt some jealousy of this dictatorial divine, imposed as
ruler of a society of which he knew so little, while Seaman,
no less probably, eyed with suspicion the newly-elected fellow,
atoence from w^° nac^ PernaPs aspired to be the Master. If such were the
the college. caS6) ^ may partly explain why the Master found it convenient
to be much away (chiefly among his numerous admirers in
London), and thus laid himself open to the reproach of non-
residency, which the senior fellows did not fail to urge to his
disadvantage in the coming conflict. It was an additional
element in the dissatisfaction felt at Peterhouse, that he was
known to be, at the same time, endeavouring to assert his
influence in college, especially among the junior fellows,
through one of the former clerks, of the Westminster
Bdfie/dam Assembly named Adoniram Byfield2. After the Assembly
had ceased to sit, Byfield's services appear to have been
retained by more than one of the committees as a kind of
confidential usher, — an office to which he brought the twofold
qualifications of a good presence, in which a fine flowing
in the Old Testament, nor in the ments'(!), 'and so learnedly did he
Greek in the New, signifieth in that defend his Position that he repelled
sense.' See Ibid, xin 274-5. That all the Arguments brought against it
Seaman was 'thoroughly study 'd in with great strength and dexterity.'
the original languages' (Calamy, n See Sermon, u.s. (p. 399, n. 1),
16) is probably, like so many of that pp. 52, 53, 56. Hotham, on the
writer's assertions, a gross exaggera- other hand, declares that in respect
tion. Even William Jenkyn, while of learning the fellows of Peterhouse
he extols him as 'a profound casuist,' had found the Master 'most of all
'an ocean of theology,' and 'a living deficient.' See infra, p. 416.
body of divinity,' makes no such * See The Papers which passed
claim in his behalf, but prefers to between His Majesty,... and Mr Sea-
enlarge on his learned performance, man, concerning Church Government
' the Divinity-Act, which he kept [1649]. 8vo.
when he proceeded Doctor ' (1649) ; 2 See Lightfoot-Pitman, xm 285,
'the design of his Position which 314,343. Byfield subsequently joined
therein he maintained,' he adds, the Independents ; see Masson, Life
' was to assert the Providence of God of Milton, iv 392.
in disposing of Political Govern-
LAZARUS SEAMAN. 401
beard was a marked feature, and a certain adroitness in JCHAP. iv.
dealing with importunate petitioners. Although not a mem-
ber of the university, he was known to be in the confidence of
the Committee for Augmentations and consequently an adviser
in matters relating to Cambridge. Fellows of colleges, when
seeking an interview with a Committee, found on more than
one occasion that, after they had been required to withdraw,
this 'grave seignior, with the great beard1,' as Hotham styles
him, remained behind, free to exert a sinister influence over
the progress of events within ; and the seniors of Peterhouse
felt little doubt that it was owing to his machinations that
five of the junior fellows were in receipt, from time to time,
of 'private instructions' from the Master, of which they
themselves knew nothing2. If such were the case, it was
almost inevitable that dissensions should arise among the
little community.
It was, however, maintained by Seaman, that the ' true
original of all these commotions' was to be found in an
episode which Hotham, as being himself largely concerned
therein, proceeds to narrate at length in what he modestly
characterises as his ' rough Northern dialect3.' Among the The story
younger members of the college was Tobias Conyers, who had conyers :
J matriculated
been admitted under favorable auspices as being the son '
a godly minister in Yorkshire and one who had suffered Term> 1647-
much for the parliament,' and whose high promise, early
noted by Hotham, his tutor, had led the latter to interest
himself warmly in his welfare. He thus tells the story of his
pupil : ' I took him at his first admission into the Colledge
about the age of sixteen years to be my poor Scholar, in
which service he demeaning himself with all faithfulness and
diligence, and shewing himself, in the quick apprehension of
whatever was laid before him, one of extraordinary parts and
industry ; that his further proficiency might not be hindred
by those necessary diversions of service, I desired to promote
him to the degree of a Pensioner; in which way he being not
1 Petition and Argument of Mr mittee,' etc. Ibid. sig. A 4.
Hotham, etc. 4to. sig. A3, p. 46. 3 Petition and Argument, u.s. sig.
2 'To the Honourable the Com- A 4.
M. in. 26
402 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. able to maintain himself without some concurrent helps, I
"demurs was a suiter to the Master to confer upon him the Chappel
abouufis Clerks place then vacant.' Such were the circumstances out
promotion, of which the quarrel between the Master and the tutor first
arose. Although the former affected readiness to comply
with the tutor's suggestion, he raised difficulties and inter-
posed successive delays1; until Hotham, despairing of the
attainment of his object, took upon himself to represent the
case to the president and the deans, and they, after hearing
He obtains his statement of the whole business and being ' convinced of
for him the '
office of the poor lads deservings, concluded to elect Conyers to the
absence of office °f chapel clerk, 'a place of eight or nine pounds a year,'
the Master. w^hout awaiting the Master's presence or concurrence.
o? liftman" Seaman, naturally indignant, on his return to Cambridge,
return. behaved, according to Hotham, in a manner that was neither
magisterial nor forbearing. He coarsely abused the president
and did his best to eject Conyers from his new post. This,
however, he was altogether unable to do; and it must be
admitted that when that ejection did take place, it was
Conyers' largely the result of Conyers' own imprudence. Exhilarated,
conduct. as Hotham suggests, by his 'sudden promotion2,' he fell into
convivial habits. In those days, when a collegian wanted
to tipple, he either dropped in at the bar of one of the town
inns or into his college butteries. But a ' Bible clerk ' would
probably be chary of being seen either at the White Bull or
at the White Horse, and it was when he had one day been
drinking at the Peterhouse tap, that Conyers was there
joined by 'a rakel' from Pembroke Hall, when the latter,
under the influence, it may be conjectured, of the strong ale,
raising the pewter to his lips, astounded the bystanders by
drinking to the health of — 'the King'! Reports were already
current that Conyers had been seen keeping company with
certain 'malignants'; and it appears to have been undeniable
that, on this occasion, he had ' pledged the toast,' although
1 'The Master, as I was told by a tion to be my poor Scholer in his
third person, who made the motion place; but I being otherwise engaged,
to him, was willing to it, if I would could not do it.' The Petition and
have truck'd with him ; i.e. if I would Argument, 4to. p. 42.
have received one of his recommenda- 2 Ibid. 4to. p. 36.
TUTOR AND PUPIL. 403
' not upon his knees V There was, however, no help for it. CHA.P. iv.
Hotham summoned his pupil to his chamber and there
flogged him 'before two or three of the scholars2,' and then He is
10 . flogged and
sent him home to his father, ' with Letters ' to the latter, ^ down-
' informing him how the case stood/ but intimating that ' if
a real reformation should appear ' in his son, ' he should be
welcom to me again3.' Although, however, all due penitence HIS
0 _ m penitence.
was subsequently manifested by poor Tobias, no opportunity
of reinstating him as bible-clerk at Peterhouse presented
itself; and a kindly advocacy of his claims by Hotham to
obtain for him an appointment at St John's also failed. He ^em'ftted
was however admitted to his degree of B.A. and then was ^nt Term
fain to retire 'to a poor place' (apparently the village school), *&•
at Hapton in Norfolk. Here he remained for more than a
year, during which period his former tutor was to some
extent reassured by hearing, from time to time, how high
was the opinion formed with regard to his late pupil's
character ' by the religious and well-affected ' of the village ;
and eventually he was put in possession of a testimonial,
signed by the 'Pastor of the Church at Hapton' and other
residents in the neighbourhood, to the effect that Conyers'
life among them had been ' useful, painfull and industrious,'
while he had, 'from time to time,' given satisfactory evidence
of ' good affections to the present government and settlement
of the Commonwealth V
Among those fellows of Peterhouse who had looked on ^"^ria-
when William Dowsing was demolishing the angels and feupwlhip
evangelists in the college chapel, had been one William dl
Handscomb, who was himself, ultimately, to be there laid
to rest5. For nearly eight years, however, his fellowship
remained vacant, the Master alleging that the dividends
were required for ' the colledge necessities,' — ' but,' says
Hotham, 'as the fellows well knew, for the defrayment of
his double dividend.' ' This fellowship (he continues) Conyers,
1 Ibid. p. 42; see infra, p. 405, lor's degree; and, if so, we have here
n. 3. certainly one of the latest instances.
2 ' I corrected him publickly ' (Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4to. p. 43.
4to. p. 43 ; 24mo. p. 130) must, I * Ibid. 4to. p. 37.
think, imply whipping, — Conyers not 5 19 Mar. 165J. The East Anglian,
having at this time taken his bache- n 13.
26—2
404 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. iv. observing the Committee had before in a parallel case, taken
the disposal of such dormant vacancies into their own hands,
petition'd to have confer'd upon him ; whereupon the Com-
mittee ordered the Master and Seniors, or any two of them,
to certifie the true state of the case1.' The narrator's account
of the ensuing incidents affords a noteworthy illustration of
the difficulties with which those entrusted with the ad-
ministration of college revenues were in those days frequently
confronted, but, for the present, we must restrict our own
narrative to the fortunes of Conyers, whose petition, it may
reasonably be conjectured, had been drawn up at Hotham's
suggestion.
seaman and The kindly-hearted tutor next resolved to try what could
summoned be done by personal advocacy of his former pupil's cause in
cSnfmutee London, whither both he and Seaman had been summoned to
an audience by the Committee for the Reformation of the
Universities for the purpose of arguing the moot question
of the suspended fellowship, Hotham bringing with him
The latter Conyers' petition and also his testimonials. He first of all
any further drew the attention of the Committee to the fact that the
delay in
fhe "ITnt bishop of Ely himself, ' in whose power the Committee was to
[scontiary to a°t ' *n the case before them, was debarred, by the college
ute' statute, from assenting 'to the keeping vacant any fellowship
without the desire and counsel of the Master and major part
of the fellowes ' ; he accordingly urged that the fellowship in
question should no longer be kept void, and so far prevailed
that, on the 27th of March 1651, order was given that ' the
Master, or President and fellows ' should ' forthwith proceed
to election of a godly and learned Person into the place of
the said Mr Handscomb' and 'give an accompt thereof to
the Committee 'on this day fortnight2.' On the fifth of
April, the President and fellows of Peterhouse assembled to
discharge the not ungrateful duty imposed upon them. The
Master's locum tenens, Robert Quarles, was a near relation of
the poet and also the attached friend of Joseph Beaumont,
the recently ejected fellow. Quarles, indeed, had succeeded
1 Petition and Argument, 4to. p. 34. 2 Ibid. 4to. p. 37.
TUTOR AND PUPIL. 405
the latter as an ' intruder,' and his first act on being elected ,CHAP. iv.^
was to write to him to say that whatever dividends might
accrue should be regularly paid over to Beaumont by the
recipient, a promise which he faithfully kept ; while both the
ejected and the intruded, by the solicitude they alike evinced
for the interests and prosperity of Peterhouse1, exhibited a
singular contrast to its selfish and grasping Head. The
electors had already agreed among themselves that their
personal knowledge of Conyers' attainments exonerated them
from any obligation to examine him, and they now elected e,°^edrtosthe
him, as a probationer, to the vacant fellowship, — ' all the Lem°aTorityby
fellows/ says Hotham, ' consenting, excepting only three knows.
juniors brought in lately by the Master's interest in London2.'
Before another week had passed, however, Seaman and
Adoniram Byfield had made counter-representations at head-
quarters, and that too with such effect3 that the Committee
annulled the election in the following terms:
April 10. 1651.
At the Committee for Reformation of the Universities.
For as much as it appears to this Committee, that Tobias Conyers, The
elected by the Fellows of Peter- House into the Fellowship of Mr Hands- annul the
comb, hath been guilty of scandal and malignancy, therefore this
Committee adjudge him unfit for this Fellowship.
Resolved,
That this Committee will chuse a Fellow into the place of Mr Conyers
this day fortnight*.
1 Beaumont was more particularly according to his duty come down to
distinguished by the pains he took to be present at the election, nor so far
reduce the college records to order. own the Colledg, whose rights he is
The Kegister of Admissions, for many by the fundamentall Statute to be
years, is indexed in his handwriting. a Patron of, as to acquaint us with
Walker, Peterlwuse, p. 132. any exceptions he had against the
2 Petition, etc. p. 38. Authoritate person in view.' Seaman, according
mihi commissd, Ego Robertus Quarles to Hotham, through ' one of his own
Praetes hujus Collegii, admitto te creatures' caused Conyers to be re-
Tobiam Conyers in Socium hujus ported to the Committee in London,
Collegii, ex antiqua fundatione, ad as ' a malignant ' who ' had drunk the
annum probationis et convictum. Kings health upon his knees,' and
Aprilis 5, Anno Domini 1651. Con- had also been 'guilty of heresie and
yers received the votes of eight of the blasphemy.' Ibid. 4to. p. 41 ; 24mo.
eleven fellows present at the election. p. 127.
Ibid. 4to. pp. 40, 41; 24mo. pp. * Petition and Argument, u.s. 4to.
124-6. pp. 45-46; 24mo. pp. 137-8.
3 '...who [Seaman] would neither
406 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. TO Hotham it must have been somewhat galling that,
when the above specified time had elapsed, it became known
substitute that it was on 'Sir Heywood,' 'the under Butler,' and the
Master's former sizar, that the choice of the Committee had
Hotham fallen. In his irritation he declared that he was ready to
HeywoSPas prove that Heywood could be shewn to have used language,
' in the face of all the Colledge assembled together/ which
convicted him of flagrant 'malignancy,' and, moreover, that he
had never subscribed the Engagement ! Dr Seaman, accord-
ingly, himself stood convicted of violating not only a college
statute but also ' his engagement to be true and faithful to
the Commonwealth of England,' and it was apparent, con-
tinues the writer, ' that the great object of his distaste here
was not the malignancy, but only the person, now clear enough
from that disease1.'
A dispute of such a kind could not fail still further to
exacerbate the ill-feeling between the Master and his accuser,
and it was now that Hotham, perceiving that Conyers' case
hardly admitted of being reopened, determined to make an
and proceeds appeal to the educated community at large and on publish-
to publish his rr . J r.
inS the whole evidence relating to the 'negative voice' by
printing his Petition and Argument2. In this remarkable
manifesto the technical argument rests chiefly on two
maintains assumptions : first, that a university statute, passed in 1570,
of tbv£hdlty could not legally override a college code drawn up by the
statutes and founder himself two hundred years before; and, this point
design of conceded, it was easy to prove that Seaman's conduct and
Parliament . . L
an<5Hn°inting claim to a ' negative voice ' were directly in contravention
mission, of cert,ain clauses in the college statutes wherein the assent
of the fellows as a body, or at least that of a majority of the
seniors, was declared to be necessary to the validity of any
decision upon questions of importance. The writer then
proceeds to justify the course he has taken by an adroit
reference to the recently appointed Commission3, instructed
1 Petition, etc. 4to. p. 45 ; 24mo. publication might be misinterpreted
pp. 136-7. an appeal to others.' Ibid. 4to.
2 In order to disarm suspicion, sig. A 4 v. ; 24mo. p. 16.
however, the pamphlet is dedicated to 3 ' That order you were pleased to
the Committee, 'lest,' he says, 'the make that day, of having a view taken
THE MASTER IMPEACHED. 407
to revise both the university and college statutes, a measure CHAP, iv.
which he characterises as embodying ' a noble and generous
resolve.' Then follows an Address to the 'right worthy
senators ' themselves, wherein, after complimenting them on
the discernment manifested in what they had already done,
he proceeds to point out the obstacles which threatened,
notwithstanding, ultimately to frustrate their designs, — the J^* *xp£;sses
residence of the head of the college chiefly in London, the \*™a*{T
sinister influence exerted over the members of the Committee shoeuid°bl
themselves by a certain 'grave seignior1,' the far too deferen- Peterhouseat
tial attitude of the five recently elected fellows, none of Master
•* . and his
them as yet master of arts, and all likely to shew themselves supporters,
entirely amenable to the private instructions of their Head2,
— for Peterhouse, already depressed by misgovernment, will
hardly venture, he points out, to encounter the charge of
singularity by calling in question the authority of its Master,
when all the other colleges, having no reason for discontent,
manifest no disposition to rebel3. And, finally, he suggests the He
• represents
necessity for prompt action, seeing that, if the grievances of ^|^f^^
' poor Peterhouse ' are not to be redressed until the statutes farther
of all the colleges have been ' remodelled,' he cannot but a^ahfst10"'
Seaman.
deem her cause ' neer desperate, for the Master will be able
to exult over the ' drowning ' of their special liberties ' in
that unfathomable ocean of the universal View and Refor-
mation of the great body of our College and University
statutes4.' A shorter appeal, addressed to the fellows collec-
tively, follows next; and here Seaman is openly denounced
of the Statutes of the whole Univer- interest, have equal votes in this
sity and every particular College, was grand Transaction with us of an-
a noble and generous resolve ; and to cientest standing and experience,
suffer yourselves, from the represen- which must needs produce vast ob-
tation of a particular place's griev- structions and perhaps returns of
ances to be awakened into a positive contradictory opinions before your
activity towards an universal refor- tribunal.' Ibid. 4to. sig. A3 v.; 24mo.
mation, was a thing becoming men p. 12.
of enlarged spirits.' Ibid. 4to. sig. 3 'It being unlikely that you will
A2r.; 24mo. p. 6. finde in other Colledges, a number
1 Adoniram Byfield; see supra, p. considerable to the major part to
400. declare for any considerable mutation ,
2 ' who though utterly ignorant where no oppressive miscarriage of
of our Statutes, inexperienced in their chief Officer hath awakened
Colledge affairs, and besides, all but them into a distaste of their present
one of them, by their several relations absolute Monarchy.' Ibid.
to the Master, most devoted to his 4 Ibid. 4to. sig. A4; 24mo. p. 14.
408 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. as ' the true original of all those mischiefs ' and ' a patriar-
chiall pretender to religion/ who, having been ' entrusted
with the patronage of the colledge rights has sought to betray
them and us to his own corrupt design of new modelling the
Colledge and moulding up a party devoted to his own ends1.'
vu^efthe To these several appeals succeeds the Petition itself,
o?™reent wherein, after adverting to the 'great evils' which 'usually
provisions arise from the ' two [sic] exorbitant power of a chief officer, not
as regards TITTT-
the Master's annually elected to his trust, he prays that 'for the prevention
of future mischiefs,' the Committee may be pleased to ordain
' that from henceforth the Master shall not assume to himself,
or his President, such an exorbitant power but that he or his
President, or the senior fellow of those present at home,
shall at any time, upon the desire of two of the seven senior
fellows, left with him in writing under their hands, call a
meeting at some seasonable time, within forty-eight hours
after their desire so signified ; and shall at that, and all other
meetings propose to the Society such questions as the major
part shall think fit, and not dissolve any meeting without
consent of the major part. And, lastly, shall not assume to
himself any negative or distinct voice then' [i.e. than] 'as one
member of the assembly, and in the same manner as other
members have*.'
seaman The world at large now learned that the foregoing
suggests
^tiitfm petition had been presented to the Committee in London
deautuu on the 27th of March 1651, and that on that occasion
appointed y Dr Seaman, who was present, had urged, not without some
show of reason, that, as the question therein raised was one
which really concerned the university at large, it might very
well be left to be dealt with along with ' the whole bulk of
the Colledge and University statutes now under considera-
tion of the Committee of Visitors at Cambridge.' According
to Hotham, however, this suggestion was regarded as only
'a dilatory subterfuge,' and an Order, signed by James
Chaloner, was forthwith issued, assigning a day (the tenth of
April) for taking the Petition into further consideration,
1 Petition, etc. 4to. sig. Bt>.; 24mo. p. 20.
2 Ibid. 4to. pp. 1-2; 24mo. p. 31.
MASTER VERSUS FELLOW. 409
* granting me,' he adds, ' summons for such of the Society as CHAP, iv
I desir'd for witnesses in case of need.' Seaman also was
empowered to summon witnesses, but called none ; and when
the day came, he succeeded in getting the discussion of the
Petition postponed until 'a private business which he said
was the true original of all these commotions, was first
heard1.' It was then, accordingly, 'when the first clause of "Brings
the Petition was scarce read/ that the master of Peterhouse, ^"^0
shrewdly surmising that the evidence connected with the wh^iT*
Conyers episode could not fail seriously to prejudice his ejected. '
accuser in the good opinion of the Committee, brought
forward the whole matter, with the result that (as we have
already seen) Conyers was ejected from the fellowship to
which he had just been elected ; while, if we accept Hotham's
statement, the Committee were ' made believe ' that this
was the substance of the whole ' controversie ' and that,
consequently, ' there needed now no further hearing of the
publick Petition2.'
We can understand, therefore, that it was in no very Hotham
* resolves on
judicial frame of mind that Charles Hotham proceeded to ^ofe'storj
give to the public the true story of his young friend's lapse notice of6
from the path of duty and plighted allegiance, and subsequent
return to it, — to undergo, as his former tutor held, unmerited
obloquy and wrong. He tells the facts in his simple ' north
country' diction, but plainly and concisely, and occasionally
not without a certain dignified pathos ; and then passes on
to state, more at length, the arguments which it had been
his intention to urge upon the Committee in relation to the
conduct of the Master. In so doing, he dexterously avails He argues
himself of Seaman's suggestion, — that the main question in l$*£
dispute between them was one which really concerned ' the ^"aSdl*
whole university,' — while he now proceeds to adduce further statut^"
arguments, and those of a kind involving yet wider genera- university,
lisations. He commences, for example, by observing that
'every College being a distinct Corporation by itself, with
laws prescribed for its government by him that founded or
1 Ibid. 4to. pp. 3-4 ; 24mo. pp. 34-37.
2 Ibid. 4to. p. 4 ; 24mo. p. 38.
410
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
His
disparaging
estimate
of the
Elizabethan
Statutes as
having been
virtually
drawn up
solely by
the Heads.
endowed it,' it might reasonably be questioned whether such
laws could rightly ' be taken away or superseded by any
general statute of the university'; and then, after pointing
out that the Peterhouse statute is ' of a far ancienter stand-
ing than the university statute,' he contends that ' although
the latter seems to thwart it ' [the college statute], ' yet
being made without any clause of a non obstante, the college
statute lies unrepealed and therefore in full force1.' He next
takes occasion to speak in somewhat disparaging terms of
the Elizabethan statutes as an entire code, and, in his
opinion, marking a very undesirable and new departure in
the history of university legislation. In all our statutes
down to that time, he says, 'there appears no footstep of it';
and he considers it absurd to suppose that ' Cecil, Cook, and
Haddon ' were either willing or possessed the leisure ' to
labyrinth their brains with all the tedious anfractus ' which
it would have been necessary to traverse in the course of
such an enquiry; 'the real movers in this last new model/
he maintains, ' were the Heads of Colleges alone,' who,
' having now gotten this ample power into their own hands,
did, together with the public reformation, cunningly inter-
weave their own private advancement; and, in purging us
of Popery, did, like those medicamenta maledicta, emunge
the body of the University of some of their most essential
and fundamental privileges2.' Whether the late dean Peacock
ever consulted Hotham's pamphlet, it is impossible to say,
but, if he omitted to do so, it is perhaps all the more deserv-
ing of note that, in his criticism of our ancient body of
statutes, he had been anticipated, some two centuries before,
in the stress that he placed upon the fact of their being
largely pervaded by clauses and provisos calculated especially
to preserve and enhance the powers and authority of the
authors themselves8.
Of the other Heads, actually in office at the time when
he wrote, it is to be noted that Hotham speaks in terms of
high encomium, and he adverts with special approval to the
1 Petition, etc. 4to. pp. 14-15 ;
24mo. pp. 60-63.
2 Ibid. 4to. p. 15 ; 24mo. p. 63.
3 See author's History, n 230-2;
also Lamb (Jo.), Letters and Docu-
ments, 368-9, 384-5.
UNIVERSITY VERSUS COLLEGE. 411
new interpretation which they had recently placed on the JPHAP.
scope and purpose of University Oaths1. With regard to the HUcom-
excellence of their administration generally, he considers it generai?yads
to be sufficiently established by the fact that Peterhouse am- re? their
stands alone in its denunciation of its own Head. ' In other in the
collederes,' he says, 'where the Masters have, by statute or of a negative
fj » voice.
custom, a negative voyce, yet they have chose rather to wave
sometimes their own, not interest onely, but judgement too,
then make use of it, and in the very propositions of questions
to be swayed by the publick reason of their societies.' It is Peterhouse
J J offers the
in Peterhouse alone, he continues, that in the general course sole ..
exception.
of the Master's government, ' we have observ'd nothing of a
publike spirit aiming at the common good, but rather a
constant tenour of close dissimulation and greedy intentive-
ness upon all advantages, of not onely holding fast in every
punctilio but advancing still further the grand interest of his
power and profit,' ' the two great poles of his whole revolu-
tion' being 'dominion and covetousness2.' Revertinsr to his A college,
0 f rightly
theory of the college, as rightly to be regarded as a cor- ^^^a
poration, he further maintains that royalty, when ruling in £yation
conjunction with Council, Lords and Parliament, — or deans aTimited °B
of cathedrals, in concert with the chapter, — or mayors, along
with aldermen, — are all alike ' nothing but the general frame
of State-Government contracted into a narrower compass.'
And this, he adds, ' it was that fixt the love of monarchy so
fast in the affections of most Corporations, that had it not
been that the King had displeased some of the greatest of
them by hard impositions upon them by way of their trade,
and withall let loose his bishops to exercise their tyranny in
trampling upon the faces of their reverenc'd ministers, they
had never been brought to draw swords against their Proto- Dr seaman,
type.'... 'One word more I desire to add as an enforcement of MMtws.
J r least entitled
my Petition, — that of all masters of colledges in the town, ^Ey*"
there's least reason the Master of our Colledge should claim to reMence.
1 '...whereby men's consciences, the whole body of the university the
indanger'd to perjury upon every honour of alleviating this grievance.'
penal statute, were much eas'd, yet Petition, 4to. p. 18; 24mo. p. 69.
to my best remembrance, they did not a Petition, 4to. pp. 18-19; 24mo.
assume to themselves, but yielded to pp. 69-71.
412
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
His
recourse to
publication
resented by
the London
Committee.
His
expulsion
from his
fellowship :
23 May 1651.
Hotham's
censors and
supporters
compared.
to himself this grand prerogative of a negative voice, for the
whole burthen of the colledge government hath for all these
seven years layd wholly upon the shoulders of the President
and fellows. The Master hath held his place now for about
seven years, yet he hath never once, that I know of, resided
among us for six weeks, nay, not one moneth, seldom above
a fortnight together at one time; hath seldom or never visited
us, but when he was necessitated to do it, either to supply
his course in the university-church, or to audit our accounts,
and receive his money: all his short visits put together for
this whole seven years, will not mount to one year's con-
tinuance1.'
Notwithstanding, however, the vigour of Hotham's
defence, it is evident that the publication of The Petition
and Argument gave serious offence to the London Committee.
The regicides, James Chaloner and Gilbert Millington, could
no more endure to listen to a eulogium on Monarchy than
Matthew Wren and Richard Neale had been able to bear
with Dr Dorislaus, discoursing dispassionately on Republics2.
On the 23rd of May, accordingly, the consideration of the
obnoxious volume was referred to a Sub-Committee, and
with the following result:
Upon hearing the Report from Mr Millington, touching the book
entitled THE PETITION AND ARGUMENT OF MR HOTHAM, etc., and upon
long and serious debate thereof, it is resolved by this Committee that the
writing and publishing of the said book, which was this day publikely
owned before this Committee by the said Mr Hotham, is scandalous, and
against the priviledge of Parliament. Resolved by this Committee, that
Mr Hotham, Felloiv of Peterhouse in Cambridge, be deprived of his
Fellowship in the said Colledge from this time forward, and the President
of the said Colledge is to see that this be put in execution accordingly*.
The sequel can hardly be deemed surprising when we
note the composition of the Committee whose signatures are
appended to the above Resolution, together with the names
of those who, being present, gave their tacit sanction to the
Order ; of the former there were only two, namely Chaloner
1 Petition, 4to. pp. 21 and 24 ;
24mo. pp. 77 and 82-83.
2 See supra, pp. 86-88.
3 True State of the Case, 4to.
pp. 13-14 ; 24mo. pp. 28-29.
HOTHAM'S EXPULSION FROM PETERHOUSE. 413
and Millington, whose names are to be recognised as leaders in .CHAP- IV-.
their own time ; while among the latter, those of Sir Arthur
Hazelrig (Cromwell's well-known lieutenant) and Francis Rous
are certainly the two most conspicuous. Rous, indeed, is now
chiefly remembered as the author of a singularly uncouth
version of the Psalms, but he was notable in his day as one
of the many assailants of Richard Montagu's Appello1 and
also the impeacher of Cosin. He had recently defected
from the Presbyterian party to that of the Independents, and
was shortly to become Speaker of the ' nominated ' House of
Commons. If to these two names we add that of one ' Mr
Salloway/ recently intruded as incumbent of St Martin's in
the Vintry, we have the most noteworthy of the whole
number before us. Of all alike it may however be said, that
they were men to whom Cambridge was almost entirely v,
unknown ; while in the university itself there now rallied to
Hotham's defence a far more numerous body, mostly resident
fellows who had already achieved distinction or were destined
before long to do so. Ralph Cudworth had recently been
installed as master of Clare ; Henry More of Christ's was
Hotham's warm friend ; George Rust, long afterwards, suc-
ceeded Jeremy Taylor in the bishopric of Dromore ; Samuel
Fairclough, who had been educated at Emmanuel, was now
fellow and lecturer in Hebrew at Caius; William Outram,
who had been educated at Trinity, was a fellow of Christ's
and afterwards archdeacon of Leicester ; Dr Robert Metcalf
was vice-master of Trinity ; John Smith, who had been one
of Whichcote's pupils at Emmanuel, was now a tutor at
Queens' and attracting thither a band of devoted disciples,
at loss whether more to admire the intellectual powers of
their instructor or the geniality and skill with which he
interpreted each subject to themselves. Samuel Cradock,
fellow of Emmanuel2, and afterwards a distinguished educator
for the presbyterian ministry, had just proceeded to his B.D.
degree amid enthusiastic cheers in the senate house. Thomas
Fuller, at this time residing chiefly at his living at Waltham,
1 See supra, pp. 31-33. Cradock, the provost of Eton. See
2 An elder brother of Zachary D. N. B. xn 437, 438.
414 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CIUP.IV. may not improbably have ' come up ' for the express purpose
Formal Of adding his influential signature to the document which
testimony of
now appeared, wherein no less than thirty-three signa-
tories, having been invited to ' declare their opinion ' of the
ejected fellow of Peterhouse, made a formal statement to the
following effect : that Mr Hotham had been ' for many years
generally known and approved of by the most godly and best
affected men in the University, for a man of very great
eminency in learning, strictness in religion, unblamableness
in conversation, and good affection to this present Parliament/
— that he had, to their knowledge, 'as well in his private
converse as in his publick performances, fully answered, if
not exceeded, common estimation,' — that he bad ' in the
most dangerous times publickly asserted and in his place
zealously prosecuted the Parliament cause,' — that he had ' at
all times, as occasion offered, and especially in the year of his
proctorship, with good success endevoured the advancement
of religion and learning, and promoted the reformation of the
university,' — and as he had been 'a happy instrument of
much good' to the university, so, 'by the blessing of God
upon his further proceedings,' he would, they considered, be
' very serviceable to the Commonwealth in whatsoever place
the providence of God should call him unto1.'
Lautsiui£llled It ig evident, indeed, that Hotham's courageous conduct
efpectaSy1*7 of his ' case ' had already excited a large amount of sympathy
in the university, nor will our estimate of the value of the
foregoing testimony in his favour be in any way diminished
when we note that among the inscribed names are those of
the most notable representatives of what was afterwards
known as the Latitudinarian party, — a group of independent
thinkers whom a lofty conception of genuine morality often
served to free from the trammels alike of sectarian bigotry
and of academic tradition. Encouraged, doubtless, by this
reassuring testimony in his favour, Hotham not only reprinted
in 1651 both his Petition and Argument and True State of
the Case in a more portable form, but also put forth a third
1 True State of the Case, 4to. pp. 14-15 ; 24mo. pp. 29-31.
THE CORPORATIONS VINDICATED. 415
treatise, his Corporations Vindicated, in which he again CHAP, iv.^
advances the same views but with both a more general and ^m™ his
a more special application, — his appeal being now preferred rS^d'1*
not to the London Committee but to Parliament, or, as he kppeaiVto6
expresses it (comparing himself to the apostle Paul), ' from
the semipharis'd judgement-seat of Cesar's Deputy, to Cesar
himself.' ' I have thought it no ill wisdom,' he adds, ' to set
my cause afioating in the grand Ocean of your more publick
and supream cognisance'; and he forthwith proceeds to
expound at some length his theory of the college as an insti-
tution, insisting emphatically on the absolute necessity of
abolishing the ' negative voice ' of the Heads, and the desira-
bility of assimilating the organisation of each society to that
which had by this time obtained in relation to the nation at
large. That this is the primary object of his new manifesto
is made sufficiently clear by the fact that it is embodied in
the title-page of the work, — a tiny 24mo volume extending
only to sixty pages1.
The sting of his invective is, however, undoubtedly in its He rebuts
° •'the iraputa-
tail. Having heard that Dr Seaman has been endeavouring 3™^^?
to render him ' odious ' by representing him as a ' Leveller2,' tome jjro"
he hastens to repudiate the imputation, adroitly intimating agSt'0"
. . . , i • • i i • i Dr Seaman
that it might with equal justice be made against the Army asanad-
at large, — 'our faithful and valiant soldiery,' whose recent
declaration with regard to Parliament he warmly commends, —
and he then proceeds to retort upon his adversary3. If the
facts are examined, Dr Seaman, he affirms, will be found not
1 Corporations vindicated in their Supream Councel of the Nation, and
fundamental Liberties, froma Negative Common- Councel of the City of London.
Voice, and other unjust Prerogatives Argued first and more properly in
of their chief Officer destructive to the case of Peter-house in Cambridge,
FREEDOM. Or, A Discourse, proving but is of a general import to all the
that the chief Officer's assuming to bodies incorporated throughout the
himself the Power of 1. Calling or whole Nation; and of great conduce-
dissolving of Meetings. 2. Proposing ment to the sure and more firm estab-
or refusing of questions offered to the lishment of this Nation in form of a
debate. 3. Granting or denying of Commonwealth. By C. Hotham, late
assent to the conclusions of the major Fellow of that Colledge. London,
part of the Assembly. AT THE SOLE Printed for Giles Calvert, at the
PLEASURE OF HIS OWN PRIVATE Dis- Black Spread-Eagle neer the West-
CRETION, is of right to be abolish't end of Pauls. 1651.
in all other Corporations, as it hath 2 Ibid. p. 26.
been by this present Parliament in the 3 Ibid. p. 28.
416 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, rv. ' one whit more faithful to the interest of England than to
that of Peterhouse,' where he proceeds to denounce him as
'planting' the college with 'those of his relations and
interest,' but at the same time himself residing in London,
although ' bearing the title and reaping the wrhole profits ' of
the mastership, while another man is made to bear the real
burden of the office. Not ' very many years ' before he
attained that preferment, Hotham goes on to tell us, Seaman's
and exposes office had been that of a 'country pedagogue,' and yet,
as aCLatinfst. strange to say, ' he has not attained so much skill in our
Latin tongue as to be able rightly to pronounce our statutes.
For it has been a common observation, that when some
passages were to be read in publike, he would, upon pretext
of quereing upon the sense, get some one or other of us
privately to pronounce those places before him ; and that
when he hath adventured without this help, he hath most
grossly faltered.' 'Nay,' the informer goes on to tell us,
' though he has since a little mended his skil by his study of
the Porta Linguarum, yet has he, to the eternal disgrace of
our colledge, left such a miserable piece of Latine upon
publike record in one of our Colledge Howls' [rolls] 'as
posterity imagining it could not be written there without the
Auditors consent, will brand us for strange dunces1.'
It can hardly surprise us that, when a single college was
thus rent by division, and the university by controversy,
Parliament itself should begin to regard Cambridge as merely
exemplifying the unrest which then prevailed also in Oxford
and, in fact, in most of the universities of Europe ; and there
were probably not a few members of the House who looked
upon Hotham as simply addressing to the Army the adulation
tadinesto which Seaman had expended upon the Assembly. But a few
changes months later, we find Cromwell convening a conference to
gove?£Sent. discuss the future constitution of the Republic, himself unable
c. _,, to conceal his dissatisfaction with the existing form of gOVern-
^r Thomas
wMdring- ment Among those present was Sir Thomas Widdrington,
<?'i664620' a member and recent benefactor of Christ's College, who even
1 Corporations Vindicated, pp. 58-59.
THE CORPORATIONS VINDICATED. 417
went so far as to suggest that the young duke of Gloucester VCHAP. iv.
might be placed on the throne ; whereupon Cromwell ob- HU
served that ' a settlement of somewhat of a monarchical £jtt1},eegard
power' in the government 'would be very effectual1.' The ofmSlre
incident enables us to discern how closely Hotham's pleadings beatweln
and the state of Peterhouse reflected, as it were in miniature, ancuhelege
the broad features of the grave question which was at that wealth?"
crisis foremost in the thoughts of every English politician.
The arguments brought forward for doing away with the
' negative voice ' in the college must have seemed little less
than faintly disguised pleas for the maintenance of the
Commonwealth, in opposition to that reactionary tendency
which was just then beginning to manifest itself, partly
under the influence of Hobbes, in favour of a return to a
monarchical form of government. The contest between the
Master and the ejected fellow of Peterhouse was, however,
now virtually at an end, terminated rather by their divergent
aims and sympathies than by any grave difference in politics
or religion. The one loved the fray and gloried in the dis-
putation ; the other, although, as we have seen, he could
rouse himself, on an emergency, to the defence of the right
and to denounce the oppressor, was inclined by temperament
to a life of leisurely retirement and meditation. ' I am notham
seeks to
desirous,' he wrote, some time before their controversy had contem°to a
been decided, ' to withdraw mine eyes from beholding vanity, plative We-
and retire back into my heaven' [? haven] 'of a contem-
plative life2.' The opportunity of pursuing his natural bent
was fortunately afforded him. Although many livings had
already been sequestered, the rights of patronage still re-
mained intact3; and, the rectory of Wigan being in the gift Hr|s*ntedto
of his family and happening to fall vacant, Hotham decided of
in 1653 to retire thither and enter upon the duties of a
parish priest. The town, at that time, was in a depressed
1 Hist, of the Commonwealth, n 2. County Committees.' Gardiner, u. *.
2 True State of the Case, 4to. p. 49; n 12. Bridgeman (see following
24mo. p. 93. note) conjectures that ' Sir John
3 As yet, it was only 'where the Hotham had left the advowson in
patrons had been delinquent that the trust for his son Charles.'
patronage fell into the hands of the
M. iii. 27
418
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv.
.
port?onof
of the""1'
He and MS
BOEHBMB:
a. 1624
of the
religious life,
His aim,
to abolish
religious
contro-
versies.
condition, for it had not only been cruelly ravaged during the
war but was subsequently visited by pestilence; while the
very yearnings of the new incumbent for seclusion appear to
have resulted in his becoming involved in litigation. The
' parson's chancel,' as it was termed, on the north side of the
ancient church at Wigan, had from time immemorial been
held to be rightly and exclusively designed for the sole use
of the rector, where he could sit during service, along with
his 'chaplains, officers, and other servants,' all occupying
' semi-circular seats,' in comparative isolation from the main
body of worshippers. It was here, accordingly, that Hotham
proposed to take his place, but found his claim to do so dis-
puted by the Rigby family ; and it was not until after the
case had been argued in court and ' many depositions' taken,
^h^ ne succeeded in establishing his claim1. Subsequently
he appears to have lapsed into mysticism. In the same year
that he assumed the rectorate of Wigan, his brother, Durand
Hotham, published in London his Life of Jacob Boehme.
That eminent mystic, numerous as his disciples afterwards
became, never founded a church, — a fact on which his
biographer insists as greatly in Boehme's favour2, while a
subsequent editor of the Letters dilates with no less com-
placency on the contrast presented by the Saxon philosopher
to those teachers of religion to whom the one thing needful
appears to consist in a due observance of external forms and
prescribed times of devotion. In the retirement of his
rectory, Charles Hotham was able, for the first time, to
familiarize himself with a conception of the religious life
which regarded spiritual assurance and mental calm as attain-
able only by those who are prepared to put aside ' all blind
. .. . •
contentions, disputes, doubts, errors, and controversies con-
•!•
cerning belief, and definitely to shun the maze wherein the per-
plexed Christian too often found himself lost in the endeavour
1 Bridgeman (Eev. Geo. T. 0.),
Hist, of the Church of Wigan (Che-
tham Soc.), pt. iii 475-6.
2 ' ...when throughout all Christen-
dom, scarce any one can pray well,
has a voluble insonnation, or exer-
cises a new found way towards his
carcass, but he makes himself the
head of a new Convent and order of
Confrieries,' etc. See Life of Jacob
Belimen. Written by Durand Ho-
tham. November 7, 1653. London,
1654. Fol. [an unpaged volume].
HOTHAM AT WIGAN. 419
to arrive at clear conceptions respecting ' God, Christ, Faith, CHAP, iv.
Election, and the Ordinances1.' 'Behold, I shew you a more
excellent way,' is the burden of Boehme's discourse; and,
although he had been dead thirty years when the above
biography appeared, his influence as a thinker was never
more potent, while his writings survived to find, long after,
a translator in the author of the Serious Call, a careful
student in Isaac Newton, and a devout admirer in Hegel, —
appealing, it would seem, to some instinct in the human
heart which may possibly survive the creeds.
At the juncture when Durand Hotham's volume appeared,
such discourse, to many a weary spirit, must have seemed
like some strain of celestial music rising above the sur-
rounding din ; while Boehme's censure of theological con- J^6^8^ of
troversy, as in itself alien and even detrimental to the truly ^h they
religious life, suddenly acquired new and ominous force from gi^'rul to
the fact, now becoming only too plain, that this mania for aboiisifthe0
, . , . universities
disagreement was seen to be menacing the very existence of themselves.
the universities themselves. By one of those singular analo-
gies which steal over the consciousness of the historian, when
himself innocent of all design to theorize, we become aware
that, just as Charles Hotham bad insisted that the college,
rightly regarded, ought to be looked upon as a limited
monarchy, so other, but less subtle, observers, unfriendly to
monarchical government in any shape, were fast arriving at
the conclusion, with respect to colleges and universities alike,
that societies thus fruitful of strife which led to no practical
results, — designed theoretically to be harmonious brotherhoods
but constantly giving birth to undying animosities, — no
longer subserved the purpose for which they had been
created. In the theological, as in the political, world, the T^e
call for more efficient organization seemed likely to be ^^
drowned in an outcry for complete abolition ; while, again, <iuestion-
the philosopher and the theologian were at the same time to
be seen coming forward to propound, — the former, in con-
1 See the Works of Jacob Boehrne. Epistles. Glasgow, 1886. Introd.
With Introduction by a Graduate of p. vii ; see also p. 5.
Glasgow University. Vol. i. The
27—2
420 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. iv. nexion with scientific or metaphysical enquiry, the latter,
with Biblical criticism, — methods which, either openly or
implicitly, involved the complete repudiation of the traditions
of the schools, as resting on no well ascertained basis or on
hypotheses which could be shewn to be erroneous.
DESCAKTES- -^n ^ne same year that Jacob Boehrne went peacefully to
a. 1650. h^ res* at Gorlitz, Rene Descartes, then just shaking off his
youthful illusions about Rosicrucianism, was, for the first
time, setting foot in Rome, — his observant nature far more
intent on his fellow-man than on classic antiquities or art
treasures, and his emotions not a little stirred as he gazed on
the pilgrim throngs around him which the great Jubilee had
attracted to the capital, ' a population on its knees.' It has
been truly said by one of his latest biographers1, that
Descartes 'did not want to break with his traditions,' — an
observation sufficiently true to have admitted of more em-
ms enriy phatic statement. Born an aristocrat, brought up in what
associations. ,,.,., , . ,
he himself terms ' the garden of Tourame, educated by
Jesuit fathers at La Fleche, a soldier not only by profession
but familiar with camp life, and in the enjoyment of a
moderate competency, he had little to gain and much to lose,
as regards all that constitutes happiness in social existence,
by an open abandonment of either his political or his religious
faith. The fate of Giordano Bruno might have alone sufficed
as a warning to one who held retirement and tranquil leisure
essential to his main purpose. Although therefore few philoso-
phers have put forth theories involving so much that militated
against established doctrine and belief, still fewer, perhaps,
have done so in a less aggressive manner, and, at the time
that he first promulgated his opinions, he seemed disposed to
leave it very much to his followers to apply and to defend
them. Notwithstanding that it was his avowed desire to
divest himself of every prejudice, it is evident that the
impressions of his youth, — those impressions which Goethe
affirms no man can entirely outgrow, — were still strong upon
him. In the first edition of the Methode, the maintenance of
1 Descartes, his Life and Times. 1905, p. 367.
By Elizabeth S. Haldane. London,
DESCARTES. 421
the religion of his fathers is declared by him to be a primary CHAP, iv.
' maxim1 ' : while in the prefatory Epistle to his Meditations he HIS desire
r J r . at the outset
approached the doctors of the Sorbonne in language of ^propitiate
deepest deference, beseeching them to pardon his ignorance Sorbonne-
and to correct his errors, at the same time predicting that if
their approval and sanction could only once be bestowed on
his writings, the arguments whereby he had sought to
demonstrate the truth of the two fundamental beliefs of
Christianity, — the existence of a God and the immortality of
the soul, — would then find such acceptance by both the
learned and the scientific world that Atheism would dis-
appear from among civilized mankind2. It is, however, hardly ms attitude
. ° . , towards the
necessary to point out that by his summary rejection of the scholastic
scholastic logic and his avowed resolve to accept nothing as f^s^bie!8
certain which did not approve itself as such to his reason,
Descartes was really assuming in relation to scientific thought
an attitude almost exactly corresponding to that which, as
we have seen, Roger Williams adopted in regard to Biblical
criticism3 ; and, as the result, just as The Bloudy Tenent had
been burnt, in the same year that it appeared, by the
common hangman in London, so, before another twenty years
had passed, the Meditations were in the Index,
We shall perhaps best understand the motives by which His
sympathy
.
the philosopher was actuated, if we bear in mind the associa-
tions of his experience at La Fleche, and also the relations htatom the
in which Jesuits stood to the universities of France at the ofpar£!ty
time when he quitted La Fleche to pursue his studies in
Paris. In our preceding volume4, we have already noted the
remarkable manner in which the Society succeeded in diffusing
their influence throughout the provinces after their expulsion
from the capital. The general excellence of their school
system, — the care shewn for the physical well-being of the
1 '...d'obeir aux lois et aux cou- certitude, je ne doute point, dis-je,
tumes de mon pays, retenant con- qu'apres cela toutes les erreurs et
stamment la religion en laquelle Dieu fausses opinions qui ont jamais e"te"
m'a fait la grace d'etre instruit des touchant ces deux questions ne soient
mon enfance.' Oeuvres, ed. Simon bientdt efface"es de 1'esprit des
(1850), p. 15. hommes.' Epitre,Ibid.ip.57. Trans-
2 ' ...si vous daignez les autoriser lation of 1647 revised by the Author.
de votre approbation, et rendre un 3 See supra, p. 197.
te"moignage public de leur verite" et 4 See Vol. n 258-260.
422
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Statutes
of the
University
of Paris of
1598.
The chief
authority
vested in
the Crown.
Expulsion
of the
Jesuits
from Paris.
Jealousy
with which
they were
regarded
by the
University
teachers.
pupil, the regard paid alike to his abilities and his de-
ficiencies (in short, to his individuality), the extension given
to the study of rhetoric, the time allotted to accomplishments
which both relieved the brain and developed the body, — had
won for them a not unmerited popularity. In Paris, on the
other hand, the new statutes of 1598, while assigning to
classical studies that prominence which they retained through-
out Europe for nearly three centuries, and still cherishing
the mediaeval regard for Aristotle, although discarding his
glossists and commentators1, had so completely vested all
authority in the Crown as to induce the developement of a
rigidly conservative spirit2. The designs and conceptions of
Henri Quatre have been compared, and not without reason,
to those of Charlemagne. But before the first decade of the
seventeenth century had expired, the heroic monarch had
fallen by the dagger of the Jesuit emissary ; while, long
before that time, the unsuccessful attempt on his life by Jean
Chastel had sealed the fate of the Society in Paris, when,
in the sweeping charges brought against them in 1594 by
Antoine Arnauld (the elder) and the avocat Dolle, it is easy
to discern the professional jealousy of the ecclesiastics of
Paris for teachers who not only taught better than they did,
but generally did so gratis3. Throughout his life, there can be
1 Teachers were enjoined by the
statutes, ' d'expliquer la texte d'Aris-
tote plutot en philosophe qu'en gram-
marien, de maniere a ce que les
ecoliers se penetrent plutot des faits
que des mots, — magis pateat rei
scientia quam vocum energeia.' See
Jourdain (C.), Histoire de I' Universite
de Paris, p. 16.
2 ' Les statuts de 1598 sont un
reglement de police interieure tres
habilement r6dige"; mais la main
du maitre qui 1'a dicte, roi ou Par-
lement, s'y fait sentir a chaque pas,
tour a tour bienveillante et severe, ici
redressant les abus, la effacant les
derniers vestiges de la liberte aca-
de'mique et subordonnant au bon
plaisir du prince les moindres details
de 1'organisation de 1'enseignement. '
Jourdain, Ibid. p. 26; Pattison, Isaac
Casaubon, p. 176.
3 According to Arnauld, it was not
customary, even in the university,
to accept fees from poor students :
'En nostre Vniversite on n'a jamais
rien desire des pauures, mais si vn
enfant de bonne maison donne quatre
ou cinq escus a celuy qui 1'a instruit
toute vne ann6e, cela peut-il estre
trouue mauuais ? N'est-il pas raison-
nable, que ceux qui ont consume leur
age aux lettres ayent quelque chose,
Unde toga niteat'? . . .Mais depuis que
les Jesuites ont attire a eux les Es-
coliers on a perdu tout courage,
sublatis studiorum praemiis studia
pereunt.' Plaidoye de Maistre An-
toine Arnauld, Advocat en Parlement :
Pour I' Universite de Paris deman-
deresse, contre Les Jesuites defen-
deurs, des 12 <£• 13 Juillet, 1594,
p. 24.
DESCARTES. 423
no question that Descartes, in common with many others of ^CHAP. iv.
his countrymen, held both the theory and the practice of the p.escartes;
» * high opinion
Jesuits, in relation to education, to be far more favourable to °*£™of
progress and enlightenment than the system which obtained education-
in the universities. La Fleche, with its wider and more
careful culture and judicious discipline, was for him always
the ideal Academy; and we find him, so late as the year
1638, strongly remonstrating with a parent who was pro-
posing to send his son to be educated at Leyden, instead of
consigning him to the care of the ablest educators of the age1.
But if there was rivalry and antagonism between the ^fvt^resion
scholars who filled the chairs in Paris and the Fathers who o^T8'8
taught at La Fleche, the feeling of aversion with which the chu°^h^
entire Jesuit Order was regarded by the Calvinistic pro- whole6
fessors of Leyden and Utrecht was a no less powerful
sentiment ; and, in endeavouring to trace the progress of
Cartesianism in the United Provinces, it is certainly some-
what perplexing to find that its doctrines were there regarded
as associated with Jesuitism. That a like belief militated,
to some extent, against their first reception in England, is a
fact also to be recognized, and it becomes, accordingly,
necessary to explain how it was that the author of these
doctrines was himself led to quit his native country for one
where the cool reception accorded him as a stranger, whose
designs were at first not altogether intelligible, would be
certain to become one of marked hostility under the influence
of religious antipathy. The motives recognized by his bio-
graphers,— a desire to find not only retirement and seclusion
in order to carry to completion his system of philosophy, but
1 ' La philosophic ne s'enseigne mesme chose que s'ils voyageoient.
icyquetres-mal,...c'est, cemesemble, Et enfin PtSgalite que les Jesuites
un grand changement, pour la pre- mettent entr'eux, en ne traittant
miere sortie de la maison, que de gueres d'autre facon les plus releuez
passer tout d'vn coup en vn pais que les moindres, est vne invention
different de langue, de facons de extremement bonne, pour leur oster la
viure et de religion, au lieu que 1'air tendresse et les autres defauts qu'ils
de la Fleche est voisin du votre ; et peuuent auoir acquis par la coustume
a cause qu'il y va quantite de ieunes d' estre cheris dans les maisons de
gens detous les quartiersde la France, leur parens.' 12 Sept. 1638. Corre-
ils y font vn certain melange d'hu- spondance (ed. Adam et Tannery), n
meurs, par la conversation les vns 377-9.
des autres, qui leur apprend quasi la
424
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
Descartes
especially
anxious to
found a
school at
some
university.
motive in
deciding to
settle in the
United
Provinces.
CHAP. iv. also freedom from ' priestly espionage,' — are not inadequate
in themselves, but it may be questioned whether, at the
time when, towards the end of March 1629, in the thirty-
third year of his age, Descartes quitted Paris for Amsterdam,
there was not present to his mind a yet stronger motive, to
which we find no reference whatever. A careful consideration
of the facts, however, would certainly seem to render it
highly probable that Descartes was already intent, not merely
on continuing his own labours, but also on finding some
available centre for expounding more systematically the
principles of his philosophy to others, in short, on founding a
This his chief school. But for such a purpose, Paris itself was hopeless.
actuating
The Academie Franpaise was not yet fully organized. France,
at large, was far from sympathetic ; and some years were still
to elapse before the two philosophers among his own country-
men who were competent to appreciate the value of his
speculations, — Fermat the Toulousain1 and Gassendi the
Proven£al2, — would be able to read his writings, and even
then they appear to have been quite as much disposed to
criticise as to commend. Saumur, although afterwards dis-
tinguished as a school of Cartesian doctrine, could no more
than any other centre of Huguenot teaching, be approached
with any reasonable prospect of success by an avowed
Catholic3 ; while he must have already been conscious that,
whatever indulgence the Jesuits as a body might be able or
willing to extend to his earlier speculations, was not a factor
in his favour on which he would be able much longer to rely.
The United Provinces, on the other hand, were wealthy, and
friendly to the scholar ; and, as we have already seen,
Amsterdam was the city where free speech and diverse
doctrine were regarded with an amount of toleration beyond
what could be found in any other city in Europe4. Descartes'
Freedom
there
conceded to
theological
speculation.
1 See Haldane («.«.), pp. 187-9;
Descartes to Mersenne (Janvier 1638),
Correspondence, i 486-9.
2 Haldane, pp. 213-5.
8 It was not until 1652 that Andre
Martin at Angers published ' un pre-
mier essai de son livre Philosophia
Christiana, dans lequel il essayait de
concilier Saint Augustin et Descartes.
De la la creation a Saumur et dans
toute la region d'un milieu cartesieru1
La Philosophic a I' 'Academic Pro-
testante de Saumur (1606-1685) par le
Professeur Joseph Prost (Paris, 1907),
pp. 75-76.
4 See supra, pp. 158, 162.
DESCARTES. 425
former pupil and attached friend, Reneri, was at this time CHAP, iv.
resident there and thither the philosopher repaired; and
it is highly probable that his subsequent movements were in
a great measure guided by the information which his pupil
was able to give him with respect to the best means of
bringing his philosophy home to the student-world of the
Low Countries. Such a conclusion, indeed, affords an ad-
ditional clue to the interpretation of his career until within
the last five years of his life, and is supported by two un-
questionable items of evidence : firstly, the proofs that exist
of his design having been seen beforehand and successfully,
for a time, frustrated ; secondly, the fact that Voetius, the
rector of the university of Utrecht, himself assumes it as a
matter of fact hardly admitting of dispute, that Descartes
visited what he terms ' Belgium,' with the intent of there
promulgating his doctrines1. It seems difficult, therefore,
not to suppose that, as Descartes and his energetic pupil
talked over the remarkable success of the Jesuits in pro-
vincial France, the thought must have suggested itself that
there was scope for a new educational movement in provincial
Holland; while in Holland itself the two recently founded
universities at Franeker and Utrecht seemed more especially
eligible, as being not yet ' corrupted ' by the normal academic
traditions.
At first, it is evident, the philosopher was sanguine, and
no hero of the Apostolic age could have exhibited a more
resolute determination to make the best of the varied con-
ditions which confronted him in his successive endeavours to
find a centre for carrying out his designs. He was charmed
with the animation and cheerful hum of commerce at Am- A
sterdam and knows nothing of its clamour of the creeds. Defter'
Franeker, only recently become the seat of a university,
pleased him by its very simplicity, and we find no reference
1 ' Renatus des Cartes, olim Jesuit- ejus loca insedit.' Gisberti Voetii
arum discipulus, qui ex Gallia in Theologiae in Acad. Ultrajectina Pro-
Belgium nostrum novae philosophiae fessoris Selectarum Disputationum
ovum sub praesumta libertatis, an Theologicarum Pars Prima. Ultra-
licentiae, umbra exclusurus, antea jecti, 1648. Praef. p. 3.
complures annos advenit, et varia
d". lire'.
426 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. to those convivial habits and constant brawls by which its
students would seem to have been, from the first, dis-
tinguished1. He was equally delighted with Deventer and
would have continued to reside there, had not his corre-
ff°thedati°n spondence been persistently intercepted. But it was Utrecht, —
OFNITJTMCHT, with the resources of the suppressed chapter schools and the
patronage of the provincial authorities at the command of
the new university, and the countenance given by its power-
ful burgomasters to its multiplying chairs, — that offered the
strongest attraction2 ; as it was here, also, that he encountered
GISBEKTUS the most resolute opposition. Gisbertus Voetius. who was at
VOBTIUS :
this time in his fifty-fourth year, and outlived Descartes by
more than a quarter of a century, had long before acquired
no little reputation by the energy with which he threw him-
self into the conflicts between the Calvinistic party and the
Remonstrants at the Synod of Dort, and his appointment to
the chair of theology in the new university was generally
looked upon as a well-deserved recognition of valuable
service ; while, long after his death, the studious divines of
Oxford and Cambridge were wont to place upon their book-
1 'He had probably contemplated The 'Thief's' Calvinistic pastor ad-
attending the classes of the university, vises that he should be sent to
for we find the name " Renatus Des- Franeker in preference to Leyden,
cartes, gallus philosophus, 16 Apri. where the ' Academia haeresium plena
1629" in the Kegister.' See Miss erat,' holding that it would be far
Haldane's Descartes, p. 119. It was better that the youth should fall a
some twelve years later that William victim to drinking or duelling than
Sancroft wrote — ' Franequerae vero turn heretic, 'cum hie animamperdat
studiosi Baccho litabant, digladia- et trucidet, ille duntaxat corpus.'
bantur, et ferocissimorum instar mi- pp. 2-3.
litum ad duella continue et concer- 2 ' ...mais pour les etudes, je croy
tationes mutuas sese provocabant... qu'ilseroitbeaucoupmieux a Utrecht;
Post haec, adibam Franequeram, ubi car c'est une Universite qui, n'estant
cervisia adeo erat laudabilis, vinum erigee que depuis quatre ou cinq
pretii tarn vilis, sodalitiumque ita ans, n'a pas encore eu le temps de se
amoenum, ut omnes nummos convi- corrompre, et il y a vn Professeur,
vando insumerem.' Fur Praedesti- appelle M. le Boy, qui m'est intime
natus: sive Dialogismus inter quen- amy, et qui, selon mon jugement,
dam ordinis Praedicantium Calvinis- vaut plus que tous ceux de Leyde.'
tarn et Furem ad laqueum damnatum For ' le Koy ' we should probably
habitus. In quo ad vivum repraesen- read 'Keneri' ; see the whole of this
tatur non tantum quomodo Calvi- interesting letter (Correspondence, n
nistarum Dogmata ex seipsis ansam 377-9), assigned by the editors to
praebent scelera et impietates quasvis the date '12 Sept. 1638,' and lending
patrandi, sed insuper quomodo eadem no little support to the theory that
maxime impediunt quominus peccator Descartes was at this time fully hoping
ad vitae emendationem et resipiscen- to found a school in the United
tiam reduci possit.' Londini, 1651. Provinces.
DESCARTES. 427
shelves the massive quartos which attest his unwearying ^HAP.
academic toil1. It was one of the duties attaching to his
office of Rector to preside at the disputations of candidates
for theological degrees, each of whom was required to print
beforehand, generally at his own expense, the theses, or
'positions,' in relation to which it would devolve upon him
to sustain the part of respondent. Early in 1636, when it
was already known that Utrecht would shortly be raised from
the status of a gymnasium (schola) to that of a university
(academia), and in anticipation of that event, one Luke Luke
v * ' . < Couterel s
Couterel, a native of the Hague, is to be found coming £^°r0'fhe
forward and announcing as the subject of his Act for his ff Feb. isse.
degree, 'The Use of human Reason in matters of Faith,' and
dedicating his theses, as ' his theological first-fruits,' to
Yoetius, who was to preside on the occasion. A whole series
of such theses had already been announced, not improbably
with the design of reassuring the world at large and, more
especially, the munificent burghers of Utrecht, with respect
to the orthodox nature of the doctrines and discussions that
it would be the aim of the academic authorities to encourage
and promote, — the doctrines embodying the latest utterances
of the oracles of Calvinism, holding the just mean between
Socinianism, on the one hand, and Romanism on the other, —
the discussions such as bore upon questions of the kind most
likely to prove useful to disputants by rendering them, on
all occasions, prompt in the defence of the tenets they were
pledged to uphold, and quick to expose the fallacies of their
antagonists. 'Elenchtic' (as it was termed) or the art of His defence
0 . ' of Elenchtic
refutation, was, however, we now learn, no longer to be re-*?*?16?118
O of bringing
stricted to arguments relating solely to Scripture ; it might crawVtions8
also equip itself from a recognized repertory of axioms and myitenes
principles inculcated by the human reasoning faculty2 ; and °
1 Gisberti Voetii Theologiae in utendum esse ; et siquidem praef ractus
Acad. Ultrajectina Professoris Se- adversarius eas negat, etiam proba-
lectarum Disputationum Pars i-v. tionibusconsequentiarum.MOMtanJuMi
Ultrajecti. 5 vols. 4to. 1648-. ex sacris litteris, sed etiam ex axio-
2 ' Sententia nostra est, in Theo- mat is et principiis luminis naturalis
logia Elenchtica, seu in refutatione sive naturaliter sive technice ex Philo-
falsitatis, e.g. purgatorii, indulgent!- sophia et Logica notis, ut appareat
arum, etc., discursu et consequentiis apta connexio medii termini cum
428 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
iv. Couterel concludes the brief outline of his theses, with a
concise statement of sundry additional reasons why dialectic
should ever be regarded as the handmaid of the Christian
faith, inasmuch as, he maintains, it is by disputation, and by
disputation alone, that the mysteries of revealed truth are
fully enucleated and brought home to the understanding of
the believer1.
At the same time that the young Dutch theologian was
making ready to keep his Act, Descartes was engaged in
seeing his treatise, La Methode, through the press of Jan
Meyer of Leyden, and Couterel's dissertation cannot conse-
quently be supposed to be a rejoinder to the former, but it is
by no means improbable that it may have come under the
philosopher's notice before he finally completed what might
not inappropriately have been described as his own philo-
sophical ' first offering.' He was frequently at this period in
Utrecht2, possibly staying there at the time, one chilly day
in February, when Couterel's theses were to be seen affixed
to the gateway of the Schola Illustris ; he may have even
paused to glance at the fluttering pages, and have then
passed on, not however without considerable misgiving as to
the design of this inauspicious omen of coming strife3.
Before another month had elapsed, Voetius was called upon
major! extreme.' Selectarum Dispu- ami commun, Reneri, qui habitait
tationum Primade Ratione Hermana, Utrecht.' Correspondence (u.s.), i
etc. Ultrajecti, 1636, p. B. 580. There are letters from Des-
1 The whole of the nine arguments cartes to Huygens and others dated
adduced by Couterel in defence of the 'Utrecht,' from April to December
school logic and the disputation in 1635 (Ibid. pp. 324-334) ; and it is not
connexion with theology are well improbable that the correspondence
worthy of note, while he points out addressed to Descartes himself was
that it devolves quite as much on the regularly sent to him under cover to
Romanist as on the Calvinist to assume Reneri.
the defensive against the Socinians 3 La Methode, along with the
and others who allege 'omnem ipso- Dioptric, Meteors&nd.Geometry, print-
rum Scholasticam, casuisticam, et ed by Jan Maire at Leyden, was not
textualem Theologiam, aeqtie ac nos- actually issued until 8th June 1637;
trae reformatae magnam partem, esse but the sheets, as they passed through
glossas, consequentias, ac subtilitates the press, were regularly submitted
humanas, minime ad salutem neces- to the authorities, and it is highly
sarias, quippe quae exsertis verbis in probable that Voetius had some time
scriptura non exstent.' Ibid. p. B before become apprised of the views
ij. therein set forth. See Correspon-
2 ' Huygens correspondait avec dance, i 371-6 ; Haldane (Miss) , pp.
Descartes par 1'intermediaire de leur 164-7.
DESCARTES. 429
to preside at a second disputation, the theses also dedicated
to himself, Utrecht having, in the mean time, been raised to the Joe*|^ted to
rank of a university, and he installed as its ordinary professor of tileofogy in
theology. Within another year La Methode was in his hands, unVersity:
and the following words can hardly have failed to arrest his
attention, — they occur in the pathetic passage wherein the
philosopher describes his endeavours dispassionately to assess
the true value of his early studies in relation to his main
object, or, as he himself expresses it, to ' ascertain the true
Method by which to arrive at the knowledge of whatever lay
within the compass of my powers1.' ' Among the branches Descartes-
depreciatory
of philosophy,' he says, ' I had given some attention to logic, ^e^oi^tic
but, on examination, I found that its syllogisms and the Logic-
majority of its other directions are of service rather in
making clear to others what one already knows, — or even, in
speaking after the Art of Lully, without committing oneself
to an opinion respecting matters concerning which one is
ignorant, — than actually to make oneself acquainted with
them; and, although it contains not a few just and excellent
precepts, these are at the same time mixed up with so many
that are harmful or superfluous, that to separate them
becomes a task almost as arduous as to fashion a Diana or
a Minerva from a block of marble which is not yet rough-
hewn2.'
The publication of La Methode would seem to mark the ^
limit of Descartes' personal efforts in the direction of uni- S
versity reform, but already the movement to which he had
imparted so much momentum was passing beyond his control.
Reneri, his indefatigable disciple, was of Walloon extraction,
and also a pervert to Romanism 3, and he now threw himself
into the struggle with a circumspect energy which augured
well for the success of the cause which he had espoused.
Some of the civic authorities and not a few of the students
at Utrecht became, under his influence, enthusiastic converts
to the new philosophy. Among the latter wras Regius; and Ke&ius-
1 '...4 chercher la vraie methode z Ibid. p. 12.
pour parvenir a la connaissance de 3 See Arnold Geulincx und seine
toutes les choses dont mon esprit serait Philosophic. Von Dr J. P. N. Land,
capable.' Descartes-Simon, p. 11. Haag, 1895, p. 59.
430 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. Reneri, who had been appointed to the chair of philosophy,
now succeeded, in conjunction with a body of the students,
in bringing about the appointment of Regius to a second
chair in the same faculty, and the latter thereupon began to
teach the doctrines of Cartesianism in a systematic form and
under the new designation of 'physiology.' In so doing,
however, he had the boldness to discard the traditional
scholastic terminology as no longer adequate to his needs.
There was a loud outcry ; and Descartes himself was fain to
protest against a temerity which threatened to jeopardize
everything. At this point his personal efforts to establish a
school of his philosophy at Utrecht appear to have been
abandoned, and the sudden death of Reneri proved fatal to
the whole scheme. The disciple had been carried away by
his enthusiasm. We hear of him as giving eighteen lectures
in the week, presiding at disputations, urging on the students
to renewed warfare against divers assailable points in the
scholastic Aristotle, and eventually himself succumbing to
the fatigues of the campaign. Regius, in turn, sustained for
a time the conflict ; but he had not his instructor's judgement
and possessed less control over the student body. One day,
mure0tle 8 when Voetius was presiding in the schools, a youthful student
FmpuKnedyin came forward with a thesis impugning alike the philosophy
and the science of Aristotle. The Rector had already made
an important pronouncement by condemning Harvey's theory
of the circulation of the blood, which Descartes had accepted
teaching8' with certain reservations1, and he now proceeded to pronounce
condemned a like censure on the doctrines of Descartes himself. What
followed has been concisely summed up by M. Boutroux :
' Voet determined to ruin Descartes. On the one hand, by
means of insinuation, he accused him of atheism; on the
other, he denounced him as a pupil and spy of the Jesuits.
And he declared that his whole method of philosophy was
heretical and opposed to the scholastic system of instruction.
At his instigation the magistrates ordered Regius to confine
himself in his lectures to medicine ; and the majority of the
1 See his letter to Plempius, 15 Feb. Haldane, pp. 371-4.
1638, Correspandance, i 521-536;
VOETIUS AND DESCARTES. 431
professors, in the General Assembly of the University, con- ,CHAP. rv.
demned the new philosophy, on the grounds that it was
opposed to the ancient and true philosophy, that it deterred
young men from the study of scholastic terms, and that it
was conducive to scepticism and irreligion1.'
And here we must leave these two notable men, dis- voetius and
; Descartes
tinguished alike by their labours and their strong desire to c
bring mental assurance home both to the teacher and the
taught, but by methods which, in their singular divergence,
stand exemplary for all time. The former, surrendering up
his right of private judgement and intellectual freedom,
content if, by elaborated effort and untiring zeal, he could
exorcise the evil spirit of scepticism or lull to rest the mis-
givings of the doubter. And, with this aim, — propounding
only what should serve to perfect and confirm the faith
delivered to the Saints, — he held that dogmas which seemed,
at first, to affront the intellect, or ambiguities which still
divided the schools, might, by due adherence to the prescribed
processes of the established logic, be finally approved or
resolved, beyond all further questioning, for the acceptance of
universal Christendom. The latter, although distrustful of
the scholastic methods and their adequacy to guide him
through those untrodden paths and over those unknown seas
newly opening up to the philosophic vision, was actuated,
nevertheless, by no iconoclastic spirit. It was no aim of his
either to subvert the crowded fane where devotion should
still pay its vows, or to abolish the roadside shrine before
which the lonely wanderer might raise the cry for deliverance
from the dangers of the encircling gloom. But it was his
hope, his belief, that beside the one, there might be reared
the temple which should attest the triumphs and perpetuate
the memories of great creative intellects and conquerors in
the domain of knowledge ; while, beside the other, there might
rise the simple column to mark the spot where the solitary
explorer had faltered and fallen, seeking if haply he might
lay his hand on the hem of the garment which enshrouded
the Immortal and Divine.
1 Cambridge Modern History, rv 788.
432 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. jn the year following upon that in which Descartes died,
the revolt from Aristotle, suppressed at Utrecht, found a
more fearless leader in London. According to the statement
of a contemporary, Descartes and Hobbes had been personally
acquainted in Paris, and they had a common friend in
Mersenne. The two philosophers, it need hardly be said,
had found it difficult to bring their respective theories into
full agreement, but there was little difference in their views
as to the injury inflicted on the understanding by wrong
Agreement teaching. Hobbes, indeed, might have been inclined to
Descartes on consider his well-known dictum on the strength of pre-
un1v™«7ty:° possessions1 not altogether inapplicable to Descartes himself,
education. * . i • • * i_ i i i 111
but it hardly admits 01 doubt that the latter would have
fully concurred in all that we find said about the universities
in the pages of the Leviathan. Hobbes had long before, in
his De Give, enunciated his leading doctrine that if real and
lasting peace were ever to be established in the realm it
must be by the complete subordination of the Church to the
State. But his heterodoxy was still a matter of some doubt ;
and Cosin, who had visited him when prostrated by a serious
illness in Paris, had reported that the sick man had received
the sacrament at his hands in accordance with the Anglican
rites2. The publication of the Leviathan, however, left his
mental attitude in relation to the traditions of learning no
longer ambiguous. Few, indeed, of the leaders of the respec-
tive religious bodies at that time had so far embraced the
theory of toleration as to be able to accept the view which
Hobbes now enunciated as axiomatic, — that 'the ministers of
Christ in this world, have no power by that title, to punish
any man for not beleeving or for contradicting what they
say... but if they have sovereign civil power, by politick
institution, then they may indeed lawfully punish any con-
tradiction to their laws whatever3.' Whether his treatise
1 'When men have once acquiesced Molesworth, iv 1.
in untrue opinions, and registered 2 ' . . . a fact to which Hobbes af ter-
them as authenticated records in wards referred in proof of his ortho-
their minds, it is no less impossible doxy.' Leslie Stephen, D. N. B.
to speak intelligibly to such men xxvn 40.
than to write legibly on a paper 3 ' I conclude therefore, that in all
already scribbled over.' Hobbes- things not contrary to the moral
HOBBES. 433
was written, as has been alleged, with the express purpose of CHAP, iv.
subserving the designs of Cromwell and his party, we cannot
here stop to enquire. It is at least certain that it afforded
no little moral support to the subsequent policy of the
Protector, the lineaments of whose countenance appeared in
the representation of the Leviathan on the title-page. But
it is as embodying an unsparing attack upon the predominant
studies of the time, that the Leviathan chiefly demands our
attention, — presenting as it also does, in its unimpassioned
and philosophic tone, a, marked contrast to that controversial
literature which had for years been pouring forth from the
presses of the Continent and those of England, but singularly
in harmony with the opinions of the late French philosopher.
What Descartes had implicitly censured, Hobbes now openly
condemned. The traditional idolatry of Aristotle and the
tenets thence ' derived to the universities,' and ' thence '
again 'into the Church,' seern to him comparable only to
those ' false commentaries and vain traditions ' wherewith
the Jewish Rabbis of old were declared by the Divine Master
' to have corrupted the Law and the Prophets.' The original
writings of the ' schoole divines ' themselves, he characterizes
as ' nothing else for the most part, but insignificant traines
of strange and barbarous words, or words otherwise used then
in the common use of the Latine tongue, — such as would pose
Cicero and Varro and all the grammarians of ancient Rome1.'
Then, turning to the instruction itself, derived from such The text-
books in
text-books, he inveighs against ' the ecclesiastiques,' as taking u
' from young men the use of reason, by certain charms com-
pounded of metaphysics, miracles, and traditions, and absurd ensilve the
r J ' ' minds of
scripture, whereby they are good for nothing else but to students,
execute what they command them.' ' But,' he goes on to
say, 'the operatories of the clergy are well enough known
law,... all subjects are abound to obey for the time, to escheat to the civil
that for Divine law, which is de- power, when it is Christian, and dis-
clared to be so, by the laws of the solving the said Churches into the
Commonwealth.' See Leviathan (ed. State or Commonwealth which, once
1661), pp. 149, 270. 'Making,' Christian, is from thenceforth the
observes Herbert Thorndike in 1659, Church.' Of the Principles of Chris-
'thatright'[oftheprimitiveChnrches] tian Truth, Works, n 26.
•which the Scriptures give them l Leviathan (M.S.), pp. 370-2.
M. in. 28
434
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Robert
Parsons of
Balliol
College :
b. 1546.
d. 1610.
His
Memorial
of the
Reformation
of England.
to be the universities, that received their discipline from
authority pontifical!1.'
While the philosopher was thus denouncing the traditional
learning of the universities, the Jesuit was scarcely more
sparing in his criticisms of their actual discipline and methods
of instruction, — criticisms, moreover, which told directly over
a far wider area; for while Descartes and Hobbes could
address their appeals only to the educated few, the fathers of
the Society could rely on a much larger audience scattered
throughout the provinces. And notwithstanding the rebuff
just inflicted on their insidious policy in Paris, in connexion
with the College de Pontoise, they were now rousing them-
selves with fresh energy to confront the growing opposition
of the Jansenists2. The shrewd observations left on record
by Robert Parsons, towards the close of the sixteenth century,
still slumbered, it is true, in manuscript, and were destined
to remain so until nearly a century had elapsed from the
time when they were written, but during his life he had
given frequent expression to similar views, and the chapters
of the Jesuit's Memorial3, relating to the universities, really
embody the gravamen of the Jesuit attack. The two philo-
sophers had appealed to those who were, to a great extent,
indisposed to listen to the representations urged upon their
notice ; the Jesuit fathers preferred their plaint before a
wider audience, and one which was neither unintelligent nor
unsympathetic, save where fanaticism had completely closed
the ear to the voice of common sense. The master of Douay4
(for such he virtually was), in arranging his ' suggestions,' —
1 Leviathan, p. 379.
2 In 1650; see Jourdain (C.),His-
toire de I' Universite de Paris, i 172.
For the charges brought against them
by the University, see Ibid, i 153.
For a long time, students attending
their classes had been refused ad-
mission to degrees. Ibid, i 150-1.
3 The Jesuit's Memorial, for the
intended Reformation of England,
under their first Popish Prince. Pub-
lished from the Copy that was pre-
sented to the late King James II.
With an Introduction and some Anim-
adversions, by Edward Gee, Rector
of St Benedict Paul's Wharf, and
Chaplain to their Majesties. London,
1690. See more particularly Pt. n,
cc. 4 and 5. The title given by
Parsons himself to his treatise was
simply that inserted in the margin
above.
4 Parsons, according to Flanigan,
Church History (n 262), had direct
control of all the foreign ecclesiastical
seminaries controlled by the Jesuits,
and Dr Law considers him to have
been ' virtually master of Douay Col-
lege.' D. N. B. XLIU 416.
ROBERT PARSONS. 435
drawn up ' with a view to the honour of God and the good of CHAP, iv.^
our countrye,' — was careful, accordingly, at the commence- ^idsm8
ment, to single out the most palpable defect in the existing £na>xford
system of the two universities, by denouncing, in the plainest Ca
terms and in that forcible English which long after moved ^
the admiration of Swift, the prevailing excess of disputation
in connexion with religious questions. It was not that he
disapproved of the disputation itself, in the abstract, any
more than did Voetius, if it were conducted by competent
dialecticians as a means of arriving at a definite conclusion ;
but he deplored the abuses to which it was seen to be subject,
even in the days of Whitgift and Cartwright, and he accord-
ingly propounded a formal scheme for its ultimate suppression.
It was his proposal, that each of the main questions at fQai^for
issue between the ' Heretics ' and the Catholics should sue- ?ios,DTA
cessively be decided much as, in ancient times, disputes had irregular
111 T M • i disputations
been settled between contending tribes, that is to say, by a °° religious
J ' J questions
formal conflict between certain selected champions on either pe^an^ntiy
side, the issue of the same to be accepted as decisive of the 8UPerseded-
whole quarrel. Four disputants and a ' Moderator,' of recog-
nised attainments and ability, were to be chosen by each of
the two religious parties as champions of their respective
Faiths, and a day having been fixed and a place for assembling
decided upon (either in London, Oxford or Cambridge),
where ' all kind of books ' were to be ' allowed them for their
contentment1,' a series of disputations was to take place,
limited however to a single week and conducted on a definite
plan, previously agreed upon. Then the results arrived at
were to be given to the world ' in print, for the satisfaction
of such as could not be present,' and ' all circumstances ' to 'be
declared, how and when, by whom and in what order' the
disputations were waged. ' I am of opinion,' says Parsons, ^fcuh14ge
' that such a disputation, full, free, equal and liberal, would wou^ifoiiow
break wholly the credit of all heresies in England, and that
afterwards few books would be needful on our part, — as in
truth it were to be wished that few or none were written
1 I.e. for reference, so as to satisfy citation, etc.
the audience of the correctness of a
28—2
436 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. in the vulgar tongue, against hereticks ; but rather that
Books of Devotion and vertuous Life should enter in their
place, and the memory die of the other wranglings1.' The
whole question concerning disputations being thus disposed
of, he proceeds, in another chapter, to comment on certain
other abuses or objectionable features, observable both at
Oxford and at Cambridge, which would, he considers, be best
dealt with by the appointment of a Commission, and it is
interesting to find that here the Catholic and the Presby-
terian appear in full agreement. Just as, half a century
later, Dr Thomas Hill, the master of Trinity, along with his
party, is to be found demurring to the frequency and gravity
of the oaths imposed in connexion with the ordinary academic
}^ pleads career2, so Parsons, in the very front of his enumeration of
oftheion matters to be amended, places 'the exceeding great multi-
oathsrou tude of Oaths, which are wont to be given to them that take
the'academic degree of School in our Universities3.' His next demurrer is
course.
Deprecates to the extent to which ' particular colleges ' endeavour to
endeavour of monopolize the function of providing for the ordinary in-
struction of their students by appointing as lecturers only
members of their own body, which practice, he holds, ' doth
attend, greatly hurt and hinder the publick profit of students in
their learning ; for neither so learned and substantial Readers
can be had in private colleges as were necessary to be publick
masters; nor can the number of schools4 be so great, and
chosen in every particular college or hall, as were convenient
to furnish a course of any science with reputation and profit ;
whereof also ensueth that neither the Master nor his scholars
Pleads for . .
the revival are able or much animated to go forward in the same5. It
of the canon
indus'ion'18 was to be expected that the writer would plead for the
taon^MdT11 revival of the study of the canon law ; but he does so with
certain reservations, suggesting that, along with the civil law,
1 Memorial, pp. 36-40. which he had deserted in relation to
2 See supra, pp. 332-4. It is, the question of Oaths. SeeMrDavis's
however, to be remembered that Balliol College, pp. 89, 106-8; Foley,
Parsons had himself once been, as Recor ds of the English Province (S, J.),
Mr Carless Davis observes, ' a Cal- vi 679.
vinist of the deepest dye,' and he 3 Memorial, p. 152.
may have continued to sympathize, 4 In the sense of classes.
in some measure, with the party s Memorial, p. 153.
ROBERT PARSONS. 437
it should represent one and the same faculty, and that CHAP, iv.
students graduating in that faculty should be required ' to Points out
have studied not only humanity and rhetoric, but also their foradditionai
» lectures m
course of logick and philosophy,' the ' time and labour of
study ' requisite in the faculty of law being thus co-ordinated
with the requirements for degrees in divinity and medicine,
' all which lectures/ he points out, ' are either wanting or very
weak in our English universities at this day1.'
Such trenchant criticisms, emanating from such a quarter,
may serve to diminish the surprise of the student of academic
history, on finding that Dr Edward Gee, of St John's College,
— a fierce controversialist in the days of James II to become
eventually a thriving pluralist under William and Mary, —
after editing Parsons' tractate for the press and giving some
account of the author himself in a lengthy Introduction,
brings his sketch to a conclusion with the following words :
' As I take the Jesuits to be the very worst of men, so I ^S
think the proceeding accounts have proved Father Parsons
to be the very worst of Jesuits2.' For our present purpose, Wl
however, it will be sufficient to recognise the broad fact, that,
whatever might be the demerits or the motives of the mem-
bers of the Society, — warned off, as they were, from Paris and
denounced from all the professorial chairs of the Protestant
universities, — they could discern and expose the defects, as
regards studies, discipline and organization, of the English
universities with a practical insight far better calculated to
win the suffrages of Englishmen themselves than was the
fascinating but impracticable day-dream of Milton/
The widespread dissatisfaction with the existing methods
of controversy in England was certainly not diminished by
the perplexities that followed upon the promulgation of the
' Act for the better Propagation and Preaching of the Gospel,'
which took place at nearly the same time as the publication
of the Leviathan, and originated, somewhat singularly, in the 23
interest excited by John Eliot's propaganda among the
aborigines of Massachusetts. The Committee appointed for
carrying the new measure into effect soon discovered that
1 Memorial, pp. 156-8. 2 Ibid. Introduction, p. Ivi.
438
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
The Fur
Praedes-
tinatut:
1661.
Thomas
Smith,
Burrell
lecturer
of Christ's
College,
University
Librarian
1655—61.
His
translation
of Daill€,
On the Right
Ute of the
Fathers :
1651.
their task involved a far larger amount of investigation and
deliberation than had been anticipated, necessitating as it
did, to quote the description of Masson, ' such a vast exten-
sion of its purport that it exercised the House and the public
mind more laboriously than anything else.' ' For months
and months,' he adds, 'everybody heard of this Committee
for the Propagation of the Gospel, of its conferences with the
Petitioning ministers, and of the shoals of suggestions that
were poured in upon it from other quarters1.' The mere
enumeration, indeed, of the different questions which the
Committee were called upon to consider, occupying, as it
does, several pages of his volume, alone suffices to render his
statement quite intelligible, especially when we bear in mind
the highly practical character of the measure ultimately
brought before the House2.
To the foregoing attacks by the philosopher and the
Jesuit there next succeeded that of the satirist. William
Sancroft, just ejected from his fellowship and living in re-
tirement at Fressingfield, composed his Fur Praedestinatus3,
a solemn satire of Calvinistic doctrine published anonymously,
and the authorship of which he appears never to have ad-
mitted. Its exceptional cleverness, indeed, caused it long to
be regarded as the production of another pen. A more
serious contribution to the current controversial literature
and one which told strongly in favour of the opposite party,
was the translation, brought out in the same year, of Daille's
treatise Du vrai Emploi des Peres, by Thomas Smith of Christ's
College. It was the design of the author to shew that the
questions in dispute between the Reformed Churches and
the Romanists required to be solved ' by some other means '
1 Life of Milton, iv 388, 390-2.
2 ' The Propagation of the Gospel
had come in fact to mean The Supply
and Sustenance of a Preaching Minis-
try throughout the Commonwealth.'
Ibid. p. 388.
3 Fur Praedestinatus (u. s. p. 426,
n. 1), pp. 2-3. According to Dr Tho-
mas Birch (Life of Tillotson, p. 160),
the satire was a joint composition
'with Mr George Davenport and
another of his friends.' Sancroft,
notwithstanding his learning and
undoubted probity, was certainly
neither possessed of much original
power nor clearness of judgment.
See Burnet, Hist, of Own Time, n
145; Macaulay, Hist, of England,
n11 610-11. The statement of Leibniz
that the Fur was originally a Dutch
publication, of which it was a trans-
lation, appears to be incorrect. See
Hallam, Lit. of Europe, iv7 34 n. ;
Leibniz, Theodicea, sec. 137.
DATLLti ON THE FATHERS. 439
than those afforded by the Patristic writings, — a vast and CHAP, iv.
venerable collection of oracular utterances, it was true, but one
from which it was impossible to formulate a final standard of
belief whereby the orthodoxy of any doctrine put forward by
a modern theologian could be decided. His own position, how- J^icMhe
ever, as minister to the congregation of the Reformed Church considered
in Paris, made it difficult to accept him as an unbiassed witness literal™110
. . 111-1 i -i relevant to
in relation to what he describes as 'the controversies that actual con-
troversies.
are this day in Religion1 ' ; although the sympathies of the
Latitudinarian party were doubtless at once aroused when
the Cambridge translator drew attention to the fact that
Daille's discourse, in its original French garb, had excited
the admiration of Falkland and Chillingworth, and that it
was also known to be commended by Jeremy Taylor2. But
the Anglican party could not conceal their alarm when it
was made clear that the drift of the argument would be to
convert the Fathers into witnesses against those very doc-
trines and observances, which, derived originally from Rome,
the Church of England had hitherto continued to cherish,
although in a modified form. Regarded, indeed, from this
point of view, the evidence to be gathered from the Fathers
might be considered as of the highest value, though chiefly
of a negative character ; and the author himself, so far from The Fathers
discouraging the study of their writings by the theological Studied. e
student, strongly urged that it should be systematically
pursued at the universities, and that the auxiliary studies
of the learned languages should, on that very account, be also
encouraged3.
1 A Treatise concerning the right this and other Nations, among others
Use of the Fathers, in the Decision by Sir Lucius Cory, late Lord Viscount
of the Controversies that are at this Falkland, who with his dear friend
Day in Religion, Written in French Mr Chillingworth made very much
by John Daille, Minister of the Gospel use of it in all their writings against
in the Reformed Church at Paris, the Romanists.... I could tell you how
London, 1651. Smith, in an address highly this Author is esteemed by
to the ' Reader ' signs only his initials the learned and famous Dr Andr.
' T. S.' He was never fellow of his Rivet... but writing to Englishmen I
college, as stated by Jekyll, in Preface will only name the judicious Doctor
(p. xiv) to edition of 1843. Jer. Taylor,' etc. 'T. S. To the
2 'The translation of this Tract Reader, Chr. Coll. Aug. 1. 1651.'
hath been oft attempted, and of tener 3 'My opinion therefore is, that
desired by many Noble Personages of although the authority of the Fathers
440 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
VCHAP. iv. Intimate as had been the connexion between Cambridge
brtwee°nthe and those divergent forms of Christian belief which developed
and the' ies in America and in Germany, it yet remains to recognise the
INDBPEN-
.
fact that the relations between the university and the rise
of Independency were still more direct and unquestionable.
Peter Heylin, when, in the full flow of the reaction which
followed upon the Restoration, he compiled his biography of
Laud, did not fail to press home the charge ; and he singles
Rotterdam.11 ou^ *ne little band of fugitives who found shelter in Rotter-
dam, as the originators of the movement which, in connexion
with our narrative, now assumes a foremost importance.
Rotterdam, at this period, was very far from being a second
Amsterdam. It had neither the civic magnanimity, the
ample resources, nor the tolerant spirit of the still growing
capital on the Zuyder Zee, — features which had elicited the
admiration of Descartes, and, a few years later, won from
Comenius his glowing eulogium1, the outcome, doubtless,
to some extent, of the intercourse that there obtained
between conflicting elements, alike seeking shelter from
persecution, but mutually debarred from reproducing the
state of methods of religious bigotry. As early as the third decade
religious O J J
thlt'cistin °f the seventeenth century, Rotterdam had harboured a little
arc. 1639. community of Scotch presbyterians, who, in the absence of
any settled pastor, were fain to rely on the occasional
ministrations of some army chaplain or some teacher from
another centre, for religious sympathy and counsel, and, in
default of these, to join the congregation of the Dutch
be not sufficient to prove the Truth a good part of their time in reading
of those Articles which are now main- over the Books of the Ancients. Onely
tained by the Church of Eome against it is requisite that either Party, when
the Protestants, although the An- they undertake so tedious and so im-
cients should perhaps have believed portant a businesse as this is, should
the same, it may notwithstanding come very well provided of all neces-
serve to prove the Falseness of them, sary parts ; as namely of the know-
in case that we should find by the ledg of the languages, and of history,
Fathers that the Ancients were either and should also be very well read in
wholly ignorant of them, or at least the Scriptures.' A Treatise, etc.,
acknowledged them not for such as p. 194.
they would now have us believe them 1 ' Ocelle Urbium Amsterdamum,
to be: which is a business that so decus Belgii, exultatio Europae.'
nearly concerns the Protestants, as Dedicat. to the Didactica Opera
that to be able to bring about their omnia (1657).
design, I conceive they ought to imploy
THE INDEPENDENTS. 441
Reformed Church in the city. It was only as a last resource, .CHAP, iv.
and not without misgiving, that they occasionally attended
the services of the new congregation of English Indepen-
dents1. But whenever they did so, it may be reasonably
assumed that they looked anxiously for any indications of
unity and harmony which might seem to encourage the hope
of an ultimate merging of differences among the Reformed
Churches, while it is certain that whatever expectations
they may have cherished were destined to be completely
disappointed. The arrival in 1639 of Thomas Goodwin, to The church
at Arnheun :
assume the pastorate at Arnheim, some fifty miles distant on
the Lech, doubtless served to raise their hopes. Educated at
Christ's College, fellow of St Catherine's, afternoon preacher
for a time at Trinity Church and subsequently its vicar, and
throughout a loyal disciple of Sibbes and Preston, Goodwin
was one whose ability could scarcely be questioned. But in
the following year he returned to England, although not
before he had exchanged views and taken counsel with the
four divines whom he left behind in Holland, — Philip Nye,
of Magdalen, Oxford (the same society over which Goodwin ^SS^eie.
himself was afterwards to preside), and the three divines from jl'r^ah5'
Emmanuel, Sidrach Simpson, Jeremiah Burroughs and matric" wit.
William Bridge, — the whole five having, in all probability, $$**™
already, to a great extent, agreed upon those conclusions MaA?ci6^!9'
with regard to the contending sectaries in England, which
subsequently gave rise to the production of the Apologeticall J^^ eticall
Narration*. That notable tractate, — wherein the writers lfarraU°n-
appear as assuming towards Presbyterianism much the same
attitude that the Smectymnuans had taken up towards Epis-
copalianism, and that the authors of the Certain Disquisitions
had adopted towards the Covenanters, — first formulated the
principles of a new departure. ' These men,' says Heylin,
1 ' Those of the residents who had English merchants, or frequented a
a sufficient knowledge of the language recently formed congregation of In-
attached themselves to the Dutch dependents.' See Steven (Eev. W.),
Reformed Communion, which, in History of the Scottish Church,
doctrine and discipline, corresponded Botterdam, etc. (1833).
with the Church of Scotland; and 2 An Apologeticall Narration, hum-
some of them attended the ministry bly submitted to the Hon. Houses of
of Mr John Durie, chaplain to the Parliament, 1643.
442 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. ' affecting neither the severe discipline of Presbytery, nor the
Heyijn's licentiousness incident to Brownism, embraced Robinson's
description of
mlnT°ve" niodel of Church-government in their congregations, consist-
ing of a coordination of several Churches for their mutual
comfort ; not a subordination of one to the other, in the way
of direction or command. Hence came the name of INDE-
PENDENTS1.'
The three Emmanuel men, who appear to have been of
nearly the same age, were all alike fugitives from eccle-
siastical persecution, — Bridge and Burroughs from the
inquisitorial rule of bishop Wren, Simpson from the tyranny
of Laud. Bridge, however, had been a fellow of his college,
and his predecessor in the pastorate to which he now
HUGH succeeded, had been no other than the widely known Hugh
PBTEBS of J
Tnn'ty Peters. Peters, who had been educated at Trinity College,
d;i66<j; had been the disciple of William Ames at Franeker; and
just as Ames had become the devoted follower of Perkins in
Cambridge2, so Peters, in turn, became the unquestioning
disciple of Ames in the new school in Frisia, and had eventu-
ally preached his funeral sermon. The Dutch government
had recognised his merits by granting him a salary of five
His Short thousand guilders, and in 1633 Peters repaired to Rotterdam,
Covenant ...
drawn up at there to edit his great teachers posthumous treatise, and to
Rotterdam >
hTflduencheeof ProPagate his doctrines. ' If there is a way,' Ames had said
Ames, {.Q njm shorkiy before his death, ' if there is a way of public
worship in the world that will last, it is this3.' The disciple
was not one to falter where his instructor had been confident,
and he now proceeded to draw up a ' short covenant ' of
fifteen articles, to serve as an epitome of doctrine for the
guidance of his congregation. But Laud's untiring enmity
had tracked him across the sea, and he soon after sailed for
1 Cyprianus Anglicanus (ed. 1671), Goodwin, who did help to propagate
p. 364. It is interesting to compare it to sundry others in Old England
Bobert Baillie's account : ' Master first, and after, to more in Holland.'
Robinson did derive his way to his A Dissuasive from the Errours of
separate congregation at Leyden; & the Time (London, 1645), p. 54.
part of them did carry it over to 2 For Ames see Vol. n 510-3.
Plymouth in New England ; here 3 Peters, Last Report of the English
Master Cotton did take it up, and Wars (1646), p. 14.
transmit it from thence to Master
THE INDEPENDENTS. 443
America, arriving in Boston in 1635 ; so that when Bridge ^CHAP. iv.^
arrived in Rotterdam, it was too late for him to profit by the he sails for
* Boston and
counsels of his strenuous and able predecessor. The new jfy'wuuaS1
instructor was, however, cordially welcomed by the magis- ""^o(?).
trates of the city, and the congregation continued to receive
numerous and influential accessions, while, before long, he
found a coadiutor in Samuel Ward, a former scholar ofsamuei
J Ward :
St John's College and one of the first fellows of Sidney |cth^?gf
College. If we may credit a story told by Baillie1, Bridge g0"^^
and Ward now agreed formally to repudiate their Anglican d- 164°-
ordination; and Bridge, accordingly, ordained Ward to the
ministry, and was thereupon himself ordained by Ward2.
The stay of Sidrach Simpson was, perhaps, the briefest of all.
He soon found himself at variance with Bridge, and withdrew variance
between
from the co-pastorate which he had at first accepted, to Hmdpgson°d
minister to the spiritual needs of a separate congregation,
largely composed of 'Seekers' and Baptists. The rivalry
between the two proved fatal, however, to the peace of the
English community, and Simpson ultimately quitted Holland fcf£7tof the
to become a lecturer in London and a member of the West-
minster Assembly. In the mean time, the little Church at T^ church
«/ at Arnneim,
Arnheim had invited Ward to become their pastor, but, after
a brief probation, had dismissed him, on grounds which were its harsh
°. treatment of
afterwards shewn to be not merely insufficient but false; and, Ward-
after allowing him and his family to remain for several
months ' without all maintenance in a strange land,' were
fain to reinstate him, without however making any endeavour
to compensate him for the injury and the privations to which
he had been subjected. It was a pitiable episode, and, in the
opinion of Thomas Edwards, filled up the measure of the
1 A DISSUASIVE FROM THE ERROURS 2 ' They all renounced their Ordi-
OF THE TIME : wherein the Tenets nation in England, and ordained one
of the principall Sects, especially of another in Holland ; first Master
the Independents, are drawn to- Bridges ordained Master Ward, and
gether in a Map, for the most part, then immediately Master Ward or-
in the words of their own Authours, dained Master Bridges.' Ibid. p. 82.
and their maine principles are ex- Baillie here cites as his authority
amined by the Touch-stone of the The Anatomy of Independency, by a
Holy Scriptures. By Bobert Baillie, Learned Minister in Holland (1644),
Minister at Glasgow. Published by p. 22.
Authority. London, 1645.
4.4.4.
-T J? JJ
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Opinions
passed on
him by his
contempor-
aries.
His
Antapologia.
discredit which the Apologists had brought upon themselves
in Holland1. That fiery polemic, — ever since his conversion
to Presbyterianism2, — had been equally distinguished by the
ardour with which he espoused its interests3, and the
animosity with which he assailed the Independents. Rarely,
indeed, do we find the principle of toleration called in
question in a more intolerant fashion. Milton, who dubbed
him ' shallow Edwards,' — Fuller, who had formed a shrewd
estimate of the man when they were contemporaries at
Queens'4, — Jeremiah Burroughs5, at a time when the excite-
ment connected with the Apologists had in a great measure
subsided, — all alike left on permanent record their strong
dislike of a spirit of invective and abuse in which the first
elements of Christian charity seemed altogether forgotten.
The Apologeticall Narration was a prolix but far from
acrimonious exposition of the grounds on which the writers
rested their claim for protection against the coercive intoler-
ance of a Presbyterian majority both in Parliament and in the
Assembly ; the Antapologia* of Edwards, which came forth in
1 ' If the Church offending had
been enjoined, or had ordered them-
selves to have paid him the profits
of his place, or to have given him a
good summe of money on their fast
day, this had been some relief e for
a wrongfull sentence and a person
injured thereby, and might have
been a meanes to have preserved
them from doing the like for time
to come, but for a minister and his
family to be so long in a sad condition
without all maintenance in a strange
land, and in the issue for those who
did this to acknowledge only their
sinful aberration, and the Minister
thus suffering to acknowledge his sin
too, and both of them to be humbled
for it alike ; this was a poor remedy.'
Antapologia, pp. 149, 150. Baillie
(to whom this episode appears not
to have been known) represents the
little community as maintaining
' small intercourse with others ' and
much ' taciturnity of their own
affairs,' ' yet,' he goes on to say, ' so
much of their wayes is come to light
upon divers occasions, as will not be
very inductive and alluring of in-
different spirits, to tred in their foot-
steps.' A Dissuasive, etc., p. 78.
2 See supra, pp. 77-8.
3 ' ...not only preaching, praying,
and stirring up the people to stand
by them ' [the Presbyterians] ' but
even advancing money. ' Gangraena,
Pt. n p. 2.
4 See supra, p. 77, n. 2.
5 ' ...I am very confident, and I
am not alone in this my confidence,
that Bishop Wren was not more
mischievous to the Prelacy, than he
[Edwards] hath been to the Presby-
tery ; I doubt whether there ever was
any in the Christian world who was
looked upon as a man professing
godlinesse in that heigth that he
hath beene, that ever manifested so
much boldnesse and malice against
such as himselfe acknowledges to be
godly, as he hath done.' Vindica-
tion of Mr Burroughes (London,
1646), sig. A 2 v.
6 Antapologia: or a full Answer to
the APOLOGETICALL NARRATION of Mr
Goodwin, Mr Nye, Mr Sympson,
Mr Burroughs, Mr Bridge, Members
of the Assembly of Divines. Wherein
THE ANT APOLOGIA. 445
1644, was an intolerant rejection of their claim, grounded on VCHAP. iv.
the assumption that the dominant creed was entitled to
implicit acceptance. As Mr Hunt observes, 'the Divine right
of Presbyterianism was, with the Presbyterians, as much a
mental madness as the Divine right of Episcopacy with the
followers of Laud1'; and Edwards probably conceived his
triumph complete when he published his volume with a
title-page whereon the names of the Apologists were duly
gibbeted. The further dissensions that ensued, not only in
Rotterdam but at other centres, afforded him an opportunity
for renewing his attack ; and in his Gangraena, which HU ^^
appeared in 1646, we gain an insight into the conditions
under which the great Independent body was gradually
formed, which we should otherwise lack, — both treatises
being designed, to quote the author's own words, ' for a true
glasse to behold the faces of Presbyterie and Independencie in,
with the beauty, order, strength of the one, and the deformity,
disorder and weakness of the other2.' According, indeed, to ffisdepre-
ciatory
Edwards, it was to evade suffering and privation, rather than the
heroically encounter such evils, that the exiles in Arnheim Hollan<L
and Rotterdam had crossed the waters ; and, as he drew the
picture, it was ' in a time of common danger and suffering
in their own land ' that they had gone forth, ' with their
wives, children, estates, friends, Knights, Gentlemen and
Citizens over into Holland, where they lived in safety, plenty,
pompe and ease, enjoying their own wayes and freedome';
and then, ' when the coasts were cleered, came over into
England, were entertain'd and receiv'd with all respects and
applause, and are now Members of the Assembly of Divines3.'
He scornfully puts aside, as sheer querulousness, the protest
of the Apologists against the unfair criticisms to which they
had been subjected, — 'as though,' he observes, 'a few men,
going in a new by-way different from all the Reformed
is handled many of the Controversies ment, by Thomas Edwards, Minister
of those Times [in the enumeration of the Gospel. London, 1644.
of fourteen Controversies which fol- l Religious Thought in England,
lows, no. 10 is ' Of Tolerations, and i 260.
particularly of the Toleration of Inde- 2 Antapologia, 'To the Eeader,'
pendencie']. Humbly also submitted sig. A.
to the Honourable Houses of Parlia- s Ibid. p. 2.
446
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Appoint-
ment of
Sidrach
Simpson to
the master-
ship of
Pembroke
College.
Churches of Christendome, and that with so high a hand/
'' should not expect speaking against, and to have their eares
filled with outcryes and exclamations!' As for their extreme
reticence, and abstention from a formal enunciation of their
distinctive belief, this, he declares to be nothing less than a
cloak to conceal their virtual identity with the divines of
New England, — 'I heard Mr Bridge since this Parliament
openly affirme it, for himselfe and others, we agree with
them of New-England, and are of their Church- way : and
Mr Burroughs hath said so too1.'
In the mean time, Sidrach Simpson had found little cause
to regret his decision to return to England. In the Assembly
he was distinguished by the boldness with which he pleaded
the cause of liberty of conscience; and, long before monarchy
was actually overthrown, he had advocated an appeal from
King and Parliament to a truly national Assembly. In 1650,
he was appointed master of Pembroke in the place of
Dr Vines, — one of the most noteworthy changes resulting
from the enforcement of the Engagement in the university ;
and in 1653, he was presented by the commissioners of the
Great Seal to the rectory of St Bartholomew, Exchange, in
opposition to the unanimous election of Mr George Hall by
the Vestry2. Simpson's relations with the official world, both
1 Antapol. pp. 11-12. Edwards'
conclusion, indeed, was nearly
identical in its assumptions with that
advanced, some fifty years later, by
one of the most eminent of the Non-
jurors, Charles Leslie, in defence of
episcopal government, — whereby all
error in the teaching of the Church
was asserted to be the inevitable result
of disregard of the bishop's authority.
Leslie pointed out that when, at the
Restoration, that authority had been
re-established, some sixty previously
existing sects had disappeared ; it
was evident, therefore, that epis-
copacy was the legitimate and only
effectual preventive of disunion. See
his Case of the Regale and of the
Pontifical stated. In a Conference
concerning the Independency of the
Church*. London, 1702, pp. 161-6.
With regard to penal laws and Test
Acts Leslie is silent, but Dr Johnson
pronounced him the ' only reasoner '
among the Nonjurors, and, when
Boswell suggested the name of
William Law, simply ejaculated,
'Lor, I forgot.'
2 The names of the Commissioners
by whom he was appointed, — Sir
Thomas Widdrington, Bulstrode
Whitelock and John Lisle (the regi-
cide),— suffice to indicate the party
with whom he was in favour.
Simpson's appointment was made,
apparently, in April 1653, and his
sermon was preached in the following
July. His discourse, accordingly,
acquired additional force from the
fact that he represented the party of
the Independents. See Freshfield,
Vestry Book of St Bartholomew, Ex-
change (1890), pp. xxxi-ii ; and, for
the significance of the whole election,
SIDRACH SIMPSON. 447
in the capital and the university, were, accordingly, now CHAP, iv.^
such as to enable him adequately to estimate the gravity
of the crisis that was impending. Already, in 1652, Roger Roger
_ " . 6 J} . Williams
Williams, temporarily back in London from Providence, ^^es his
had printed there, without publisher's name, his pamphlet peiTies!'
against a ' Hireling Ministry,' and had predicted that the
fall of the seminaries which educated that ministry was at
hand1.
Christ's College was at this time ably ruled by Dr Bolton, ^L';^3
whose unselfish spirit and single-minded devotion to the m 1653-
duties of his office, along with the growing influence of
Dr Henry More, did much to sustain the spirits and raise the
tone of the entire society. In the opinion of Dr Peile, the
fellows, taken as a body, were superior to their predecessors2.
In 1649, the college had attracted from St Catherine's (at
that time in a very depressed condition) and elected to
fellowships, three bachelors of arts, two of whom after-
wards achieved distinction, — namely Joseph Sedgwick, whose JOSEPH
• SBDOWICK.
influence with those in authority was sufficient to carry his Mktt'er652"
election over the afterwards better known Matthew Robinson, school™
and George Rust, afterwards bishop of Dromore3. Sedgwick, Master of
11 IT* i • "iiTi i IT Stamford
although his sympathies were with the Independents, could school
Io7o — 82.
not but regard with apprehension the advance of the new
movement, threatening, as it did, to envelope and crush
within its folds all academic learning, which it contemned as
a tedious acquisition whereof its own inspired prophets and
their docile followers had alike no need ; and in a sermon at His sermon
at Great St
Great St Mary's on the first of May, 1653, he now did his Mary's:
the evidence given by Mr Shaw, Hist. 3 The third fellow was one Thomas
of the English Church, n 268-78. Fuller, 'not the Sidney man,' Dr
1 The Hireling Ministry none of Peile observes in a helpful letter
Christ's, or a Discourse touching the (16 Jan. 1909). I incline therefore to
Propagating the Gospel of Christ conclude that it was the fellow of
Jesus. Humbly Presented to such Christ's and not Thomas Fuller, the
Pious and Honourable Hands, whom historian, who sided with Charles
the present Debate thereof concerns. Hotham in the latter 's memorable
By ROGER WILLIAMS, of Providence contest (see supra, pp. 413-4). The
in New England. London, Printed influence of George Bust would be
in the second Moneth, 1652. For likely to prevail with the younger
his attack on the universities more Fuller who, however, obtained the
especially, see pp. 14-18. degree of D.D. in 1665 by royal
a Hist, of Christ's College, p. 171. mandate.
448
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Sedgwick's
his defence of
learning as
necessary to
the divine :
his plea for
the laying
aside of
theological
strife.
best to denounce and expose that 'Spirit of Enthusiasme and
pretended Inspiration, that disturbs and strikes at the
Universities.' A few days prior to the delivery of this sermon,
William Dell, master of Caius College, had also printed a
sermon, entitled the 'Stumbling Stone,' to which, as a marked
manifestation of renewed hostility, Sedgwick deemed it
necessary to make some reply in the form of a ' Postscript '
of ten pages ; and on further revolving in his mind the whole
question at issue, he finally decided to publish a third and
more elaborate treatise, extending to 25 closely printed
quarto pages, on 'the Necessity of Learning to an able
Minister of the Gospel,' in which he sought to bring home to
the reader the baneful results which had already followed
upon utterances like those of the master of Caius and again
denounced the yet graver consequences that awaited the
universities from the spreading influence of Enthusiasm1.
The three compositions represent, accordingly, three distinct
gradations of sentiment and expression. The Sermon, — on
the text, Follow after Charity (1 Cor. xiv 1), — had for its key-
note, the laying aside of theological dissension, and might
well seem not inappropriate to a crisis when war or peace
with the Dutch was known to be a question of but a few
days. ' What,' asked the preacher, ' do we by our dissentions
but furnish our adversaries with matter of calumny ? Univer-
sity with Town, scholars with scholars, study peace and
charity ! I need not tell you how acceptable to God, how
worthy of the Christian calling this duty is.' ' Minde you,
men, brethren and fathers, your duty, maintain strictness of
discipline, profitableness of study and reality of learning: and
maugre all the oppositions of malice and ignorance, the
1 A Sermon preached at S. Marie's
in the University of Cambridge May
1st 1653, or, an Essay to the dis-
covery of the Spirit of Enthusiasme
and prvtended Inspiration, that dis-
turbs and strikes at the UNIVER-
SITIES: By JOSEPH SEDGWICK, Mr of
Arts, and Fellow of Christ's Coll. in
the University of Cambridge. To-
gether with an Appendix, wherein
Mr DEL' s STUMBLINGSTONE is briefly
replVd unto : and a fuller discourse
of the use of UNIVERSITIES and Learn-
ing upon an Ecclesiastical account,
submitted by the same Authour to the
judgement of every impartial and
rational Christian. London, 1655.
[The pagination of these three trea-
tises is continuous, although the
third has a separate title-page.]
rj
JOSEPH SEDGWICK. 449
Universities shall be acknowledged the eyes of the land, the CHAP, rv.
fountain of a godly and an able Ministery1.'
In replying to the author of The Stumbling Stone2, he He defines
the position
briefly re-affirms and defends the position of the Independent independent
party with regard to the views maintained by Dell, declaring party-
that ' A National Church is not Antichristian. That a Con-
gregation of external believers and professours is an Apostoli-
call Church. That set times and places of meeting are
designable under the Gospel. That the Ministery of the Gospel
requires Ecclesiastical Ordination. That all believers are not
Ministers. That the teaching of the Spirit is not enablement
enough to the Ministery. That Philosophy, Arts and Sciences
accomplish a Minister. That tongues are necessary to a full
understanding of Scripture. That University Habits and
Degrees are lawful, and speake nothing of Antichristianisme.
That the Institution of the University for the supply of the
Ministei'y is according to Christian prudence and the duty of
a Christian State.' ' Should you please,' he says, ' to contra-
dict any of these assertions,' 'I shall promise a serious
examination, and either a plaine conviction, or serious
acknowledgment of truth3.'
It is. however, in his third treatise4 that Sedgwick for the His main
0 argument in
first time puts forth his full strength, and states the case for defence of
University
the defence against those who decried the culture of the trainins-
universities, — whether regarded as an aid to the theologian
or to the requirements of practical life, — with a cogency and
directness that may well have penetrated even the over-
weening conceit of a Webster or a Dell. By this time, the
gravity of the crisis impending in the State had become yet
more alarming, and his language, whether when dealing with
the Enthusiast or the Sceptic, assumes a correspondingly
outspoken tone and expression. In his Preface to the His denun-
r elation of
Reader, he thus deals with the former : — ' Of all things I can ^dcd^e
least endure Enthusiasm, unlesse it be in brave, lofty and holder^
1 A Sermon, etc. pp. 13, 16. necessity to an able Minister of the
2 Ibid. pp. 17-26, with heading Gospel. By Joseph Sedgwick, Mr of
'An Appendix, or Postscript,' etc. Arts and Fellow of Christ's College
3 Ibid. pp. 25-6. in the University of Cambridge.
4 'EiriffKoiros AiSa/tri/toj. Learning's London, 1653.
M. in. 29
CHAP. IV.
Dangers
attendant
upon the
assumption
of super-
natural
powers at
this time.
450
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
Sedgwick's
defence of the
Reformation
as the out-
come of more
advanced
scholarship.
Romantick lines. Then, methinks, it sounds rarely, and
burn'd into Latine verse, might be bound up with Ovid's
Metamorphosis. Else I have no patience to heare, in plaine
English and sober sadness, God made the Authour of lies.
These pretenders to the Spirit should not in justice trouble
the World with their wild conceptions, till they can speak
sense and make out their Positions rationally, or shew
miracles1.' From this reproach, indeed, of assuming to them-
selves supernatural powers, the Fifth Monarchy man and
the Ranter would appear to have been comparatively free ;
although their apparent disinclination was perhaps quite as
much the result of fear as of dislike to imposture, for, at this
time, any such assumptions were more likely to be interpreted
as evidence of their being leagued with the powers of Dark-
ness than with those of Light. Lecky long ago pointed out,
that the Presbyterian divine was exceptionally inclined to
listen to charges of witchcraft2; and within less than ten
years prior to the time when Sedgwick put forth his challenge,
John Lowes, of St John's College, a master of arts who had
held for half a century the living of Brandeston in Suffolk,
had suffered as a wizard, at the stake, — a sentence which
Richard Baxter is said to have openly approved. It was
consequently something far more terrible than simple detec-
tion and the ' indignation ' that might ensue on the exposure
of an ' insolent fraud3,' which now confronted the pretender
to miraculous powers; mutatis mutandis, the tribunal was
generally only too ready to credit him with them, and Buckle
has noted the significant fact that in the trials for witchcraft
in Scotland, not a single case of imposture is on record4.
Not less effective is Sedgwick's exposure of the fallacy by
which, as he shews, Dell and his supporters were practically
making common cause with the Jesuits : —
' The Reformation of Religion,' he says, ' and the reviving of rfjs
1 A Sermon, etc. p. 32.
2 Hist, of Rationalism in Europe
(1882), 1 127-136. ' As late as 1736
' ' the divines of the Associated Pres-
bytery " passed a resolution declaring
their belief in witchcraft, and de-
ploring the scepticism that was
general.' Ibid. p. 136.
3 Gibbon, Decline and Fall (ed.
1854), n 180-1.
4 Hist, of Civilization, n 189-190.
JOSEPH SEDGWICK. 451
s, — in plaine English, the Gentile learning, — were CHAP. rv.
contemporary and happily promoted by the same Instruments. And v
it were strange if the Reformation begun in Knowledge, could no other-
wise be carried on then by returning to the ignorance of darker and
more degenerate ages. What can an adversary to the Reformation in
reason think else, but that they have convinced us of the insufficiency
of our cause, and that now we are sensible Learning was only an
argument for us, when our opponents had not attained to enough to
discover our fallacies, impostures and learned juglings ? What greater
triumph can the Jesuites desire, then to see us beat out of our con-
fidence of Learning, and put to a poore and irrational shift of private
infallible Inspiration1?'
The influence of the nascent Royal Society breathes in the
bold assertion that:
' Philosophy according to the traditions of men and the principles He contrasts
of the World, the philosophy of the Sects, philosophicall quirks and philosophy of
subtilties and ungrounded dreams and fancies concerning Angels and with that
the like, is nothing to genuine philosophy proceeding upon true th"steudy(of1
principles of nature, — i.e. God's discovery of himself to our under- Nature-
standings by the light of Reason and works of Creation2.'
And while he admits the fact that 'the authority and
discipline of the University hath been weakned by some such
spirits amongst us as our Adversaries,' he nevertheless can
venture to say,
' I call all that know Cambridge (and I question not but others can He defends
the actual
testifie as much for Oxford), — all that judge by nothing of faction and state of dis-
prejudice, — that there is no collection of men this day in England, that university/
can shew more eminent examples of true Worth, reall, sober Piety and
Religion, then are in our University3.'
To the argument urged, 'You scholars cannot agree in
the Truth ! ergo what need of Universities ? ' he rejoins, —
' It is a strange accusation, that we are a Society of Men. We con- Differences
fesse we seek after truth, and, if we erre, it is because we are fallible. amoPngl°n
Nay, that we differ, is an argument that we set ourselves to seek the no'argunient
truth, and not lazily conspire in that which, for ought we can tell gl^c^Vfter
certainly, may be absolute falsehood, — which is all, I doubt, a perfect Truth-
unity of opinion will amount to, till it be the fruit of an universall
1 Learning's Necessity, etc. pp. 2 Ibid. p. 55.
43-4. » Ibid. p. 57.
29—2
452
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
Sidrach
Simpson's
Commence-
ment Ser-
mon : July
1663.
CHAP, iv. infallibility of spirit. Rather the ingenuity of an indifferent and free
enquiry into Truth, is true NoblenesseV
Within a few weeks of the delivery of Sedgwick's sermon,
Sidrach Simpson appeared in the same pulpit, to enforce a
similar argument with all the authority derived both from his
wider experience and more extended influence. He had been
invited to preach the Commencement sermon in July, and
his discourse, delivered before a congregation which William
Dell afterwards described as composed ' especially of ministers,
and gathered together from several parts of the nation,'
attracted all the more attention in that, while giving expres-
sion to very advanced views in connexion with doctrine, it
was eminently conservative as a defence of learning. From
certain brief notes, taken by no friendly hand, we gather that,
as an oratorical effort, it perhaps surpassed that of his pre-
decessor, but was hardly equal to it with regard to force of
argument. The universities of England, the preacher main-
tained, were as the outworks to the citadel of religion, and as
the Outer court to the temple of the Gospel, — in short,
not less affine to the spirit of the New Testament than the
schools of the prophets in Judaea had been to that of the Old
Testament. Those who decried the schools had ever, from
the days of Julian the Apostate, downwards, been the enemies
also of religion ; and if it were true that ' the Spirit/ alone,
sufficed for the teaching of doctrine, unaided by the 'means'
afforded by the universities and humane learning, then the
laity might ' as well be without the Ordinances themselves.'
' We shall never,' said the preacher, as he brought his sermon
to a conclusion, 'we shall never keep up religion, if we do not
keep up learning, for when learning goes down, religion
goes down too.' ' Your destruction,' he cried, as he glanced
around upon his erudite audience, 'will never be but from
yourselves2.'
He
maintains
that
Christian
doctrine
relies for its
exposition
and defence
on an
educated and
learned
clergy.
1 Learning's Necessity, p. 57.
2 The compilers of the Bodleian
Catalogue (ed. 1843), m 480, followed
by those of the British Museum Cata-
logue and also by ' A. G.' in his Life
of Simpson in the D. N. B.t have
fallen into the error of representing
Simpson as himself the author of
A plain and Necessary Confutation of
divers gross and Antichristian Errors,
delivered to tlie University Congre-
gation, the last Commencement, anno
>>
DELL'S ATTACK ON THE UNIVERSITIES. 453
Although Simpson appears never to have printed his CHAP, iv.
discourse, it doubtless produced deep and widespread effects ; wmiamDeii
and following, as it did, close upon the publication of t^0* «°n-
Sedgwick's sermon, can hardly have failed to bring home to P™^1?'8
the consciousness of Dell himself the necessity of a reply. 1654-
It was now four years since the master of Caius had succeeded
to office1, and amid the strenuous controversies which had
been going on during that time, his temper had not improved.
He had inveighed against the university in which he was a
Head, and had availed himself of the opportunities which
that important post afforded him, to utter his invectives from
the university pulpit2. He believed, indeed, or at least
he professed to believe, that the reputation of both Oxford
and Cambridge was highest where learning least prevailed3,
and in his own argument he relied neither on historical
comparisons nor on ascertained facts, addressing himself
chiefly to those who were disqualified, by the lack of the
judicial temper and of habits of accurate thought, from
forming a competent judgement on the actual evidence. He
commences his Confutation, it is true, by protesting that he is
far from being hostile to humane learning ' upon all accounts.'
' On the contrary, I allow it (so it be sober and serious) in
its own place and sphear, as well as other humane things :
but I do oppose it, as it is made another John Baptist, to
1653. By Mr Sydrach Simpson, lution of the ' nominated ' Parlia-
Haster of Pembroke Hall in Cam- ment, within five months after, may
bridge. London, Printed by Eobert have suggested that his dissuasives
White, etc. 1654. It is Dell who is were no longer needed, or his own
the 'Confuter,' as is clearly shewn by death, which took place in the fol-
his language in the ' Apologie to the lowing April, may have prevented
Header,' — 'If it shall seem grievous publication,
to any, that I have dealt thus freely 1 Supra, pp. 365-6.
and plainly with Mr Sydrach Simpson, 2 Sedgwick's language evidently
one of the first pastors of an inde- implies that Dell had said things
pendent Congregation in England,' in the university pulpit which had
etc., sig. A 2. All that we know of not, at that time, been printed, the
Simpson's discourse is derived from former's criticism, being, in his own
certain 'notes' 'taken from Mr Simp- words, 'a composure and collection
son's mouth and delivered to me [Dell] of what I had at several times ob-
by an honest hand, and affirmed to served by diligent attending upon his
be true for the substance of them' preaching, and reading some dis-
(p. 3). These are printed by Dell courses of his and others of the same
himself in pp. 2-3 of his Confutation. Spirit.' To the Eeader, sig. A 2,
I cannot find that Simpson himself prefixed to Sermon,
ever printed his Sermon ; the disso- 3 See supra, p. 389, n. 1.
454 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. prepare the way of Christ into the world, or to prepare the
world's way to Christ.' ' For humane learning,' he goes on
•
to sav' 'mingled with divinity, or the Gospel of Christ under-
stood according to Aristotle, hath begun, continued, and
perfected the mysterie of iniquity in the outward Church1';
and then, in reply to those who might deem his censure of
and cites the the universities too severe, he adds, ' I have done in this
example set
matter but as Wickliff, Hus, Luther, and several others, holy
men of God and happy instruments in the hand of Christ,
have done before me2.' In short, Dell's argument (if such it
can be termed) is conducted on the gratuitous assumption
that the chief and most widely famed universities abroad, —
Prague, Cologne, Heidelberg and Leipzig, — were still,
essentially, what they had been in the days of the early
Reformers, — to quote his own words: 'not only as to the
conception *
toittheespect inward substance of all things, to wit, their statutes, philo-
universttles sophy, and divinity, but also in a great measure to their
outward forms, what they were in their first Antichristian
institution, that is to say, the strongest holds that Anti-
christ hath had among us3.' Although, accordingly, John
Hall (as we have already seen4), only five years before, had
deemed it necessary to draw attention to the manner in which
the Continental universities were gaining on Oxford and
Cambridge with respect both to range of studies and eminence
of their teachers, Dell, whose complete ignorance, alike of the
Reformed and of the Catholic centres abroad, is a noteworthy
feature in his writings, is apparently unconscious of any such
changes as having taken place or being actually in progress.
And, notwithstanding that, for nearly a century, both the
English universities had professed to educate the clergy as
members of a 'pure and Reformed Church,' in conformity
with new statutes given by a Protestant queen, they still
remained, in his view, much what the German universities
had been in Luther's eyes, — 'open to condemnation in the
very institution and constitution of them, and chiefly in their
1 An Apologie, etc. [prefixed to the 3 Ibid, sig. (a 2) v.
Confutation], sig. A 2 v. * See supra, pp. 371-3.
2 Ibid. sig. (a) v.
DELL'S ATTACK ON THE UNIVERSITIES. 455
chief studies, — humane learning and school-divinity1.' After ^CHAP- lv-^
devoting some fifty quarto pages to his lengthened argument
against Simpson's positions, and twenty-five more to the
denunciation of divinity degrees, Dell succeeds, somewhat to His
.... . . proposals in
the reader s surprise, in condensing into six pages his own ^
suggestions ' for the Right Reformation of Learning2.' And
here, singularly enough, he appears as plausible and practical
as he had before seemed extravagant and captious, — his
observations bearing not a little resemblance to what has
already been noted in the tractates of John Hall and John
Milton, relating to the same subject. It is consequently
only fair to recognize the fact, that, notwithstanding the
intemperance of language and perversity in the treatment
of evidence which characterize his other treatises, the master
of Caius College here appears as one of the earliest of
English writers to insist on the education of the People as a
foremost duty of the State, and of the State as distinguished
from the Church. In pursuance of this theory, he advocates {J^
accordingly the foundation of Schools throughout the country, [hrou^hout
' not only in cities and great towns, but also (as much as may th ltry>
be) in all lesser villages.' And in such schools he would
advise that there should be both a more extended range of
subjects and greater discrimination in their treatment : ' let *e^ular
them first teach them to read their native tongues, which !£detntught'
they speak without teaching; and then presently, as they
understand, bring them to read the Holy Scriptures, which
though for the present they understand not, yet may they
(through the blessing of God) come to understand them
afterwards.' ' In the cities and greater towns,' he goes on to
say, 'are the greater schools and the greater opportunities to
send children to them, let them teach them also the Latine Latin, Greek
and Greek tongues, and the Hebrew also, which is the easiest *» b,e studied
in tin- larger
of them all, and ought to be in great account with us, for the 8chools-
Old Testament's sake.' In common with later writers, and
1 A Testimony from the Word a- 2 The pagination of these six pages
gainst Divinity Degrees in the Uni- is continuous from that of the Tes-
versity, p. 21 [30 pp. : no title or timony.
date].
456 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. more especially Locke, he advises that a principle of selection
should be observed in the authors studied, lest ' whilst youth
do learn the language of the heathen, they also learn their
wickedness.' On the other hand, he suggests an extension of
w^uuts the range of study, and of its use ; even logic, ' although in
witeiunkept divinity it is termed gladius diaboli, " the devil's sword," '
i7mft°s?abl niay, he considers, be of real service, ' if reason manage that
mathematics art of reason.' 'The Mathematics,' he holds, 'are to be had
of high value _ J
tponaring *n g°°d esteem in the universities, as arithmetic, geometry,
mattersln geograPny and the like, which, as they carry no wickedness
in them, so can they besides be very useful to humane society,
and the affaires of this present life.' He next proceeds to
advocate the studies of physic and law, but 'according to that
reformation, which a wise and godly authority will cause
them to pass under, both being now exceedingly corrupt and
out of order, both for practice and fees.' Finally, returning
to his disloyal attack on his Alma Mater and on Oxford, he
confesses that he ' knows no reason ' why colleges should not
be founded elsewhere.
cate8ethee ' ^or ^'' ^e savs> ' humane learning be so necessary to the know-
monopoly of ledge and teaching of the Scriptures as the Universities pretend, they
education surely are without love to their brethren, who would have these studies
oxford and thus confined to these places, and do swear men to read and teach them
nowhere else : certainly it is most manifest, that these men love their
own private gaine more than the common good of the people. But
now seeing by the hand of God, a Kingdome is turned into a Common-
wealth, and tyranny into freedome, we judge it most prejudicial to the
common good of a Commonwealth, that these two Universities should
make a monopoly of humane learning to themselves, especially (as is
said) seeing they say, nobody can well understand or teach the
Scriptures without it ; and so by reason of this their encroachment,
against the rule of love, through the former grants of Popes and Kings,
all men should be necessitated to send their children hither from all
parts of the Nation, some scores or hundred miles, for liberal education,
to the great trouble and charge of parents : especially this considered,
that the Universities usually, have been places of great licentiousness
and profaneness, whereby it often comes to pass, that parents sending
their children far from them, young and hopeful, have for all their care
and cost, after several yeers received them back againe with their
tongues and Arts, proud, profane, wicked, abominable, and incorrigible
wretches.
DELL'S ATTACK ON THE UNIVERSITIES. 457
Wherefore doubtless it would be more suitable to a Commonwealth CHAP. iv.
* v -
(if we become so indeed, and not in word onely) and more advantagious
to the good of all the people, to have Universities or Colledges, one at
least in every great town or city in the nation, as in London, York,
Bristow [sic] Exceter, Norwich, and the like ; and for the State to
allow to these Colledges an honest and competent maintenance, for
some godly and learned men to teach the Tongues and Arts, under a
due reformation. And this the State may the better do (by provision
out of every County, or otherwise, as shall be judged best) seeing there
will be no need of indowment of Scholarships, inasmuch as the people
having Colledges in their own cities, neer their own houses, may
maintain their children at home, whilst they learn in the Schools ;
which would indeed be the greatest advantage to learning that can be
thought of1.'
Dell's known eccentricity of character and impracticability
of temper might, not improbably, have altogether closed the
public ear to his appeal, had not other writers, whose practical
experience gave them a better title to be listened to in such
a controversy, given a virtual support to the views embodied
in the preceding paragraph. Foremost among these was
John Webster, the self-styled ' Hyphastes2,' whose name, JOHN
although he implies he had studied at Cambridge, is not &. wio.
discoverable in the registers. Before taking orders, he had Probably
studied at
held for some years the mastership of the grammar school at Cambridge.
Clitheroe in Yorkshire ; and, like Dell, he subsequently
became a chaplain in the army. To such a common experi-
ence, we may perhaps attribute the fact that they both
advocated the bestowal of increased attention on medical |»e pleads
for a more
studies; but while Dell might seem in a manner bound to attention to
protest against the neglect of a science which his college was suuS
especially designed to promote, Webster appears to have
gained by his familiarity with camp life a practical acquaint-
ance with both surgery and chemistry. It must be admitted
also that, like Dell, he was noted for his contentious dis-
position. At the close of the war, he had been intruded into
the living of Mitton, not far from Clitheroe, and, in his
retirement there he appears, like the two Hothams, to have
1 A Testimony, etc. pp. 27-8.
2 From the Greek v<}>d>>Tr)s, ' a weaver.'
458 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. embraced the doctrines of Jacob Boehme, and there, too, he
composed his Academiarum Examen1. The internal evidence
would lead us to infer that he had already seen Dell's several
treatises; for he is careful, in the prefatory Epistle, to
explain that it is not his intention ' to traduce or calumniate
the academies themselves, but only the corruptions that time
He dedicates and negligence hath introduced there.' It is to be noted,
his Aca-
Sm«n7o however, that his volume is dedicated 'To the Right
L!MBBKT: Honorable Major General Lambert,' and Lambert, who, like
d. 168& Webster, was a Yorkshireman, was probably far from dis-
inclined to listen to a free criticism of the existing universities
and to arguments in favour of the creation of new centres
Lambert further north : he was moreover, at this iuncture, at the summit
an active
cromwfn °f °f his influence as a politician, having, only a few days before,
presented the Deed by which Parliament formally resigned
its powers into the hands of Cromwell ; while he was also
favorably regarded by the royalist party, by whom he was
admitted to be ' learned and well qualified, of courage, con-
duct, good nature, and discretion2.'
Phjef points Jn his prefatory Address, Webster makes his appeal ' to
in Webster s *
argument: a]| ^hat truly love the advancement of learning in the
Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, or elsewhere,' while
he describes himself as ' a free-born Englishman, a citizen of
the world and a seeker after knowledge,'../ willing to teach
what I know and learn what I know not,' an account which
he considers ought to be sufficient to reassure all ' modest
inquirers.' Having thus prudently limited the range of his
attack to defects with respect to which he had a right to an
opinion, he directs what he has to say as a critic chiefly to
the existing 'customs and methode' of the Schools with their
scholastic exercises, urging, as a serious objection, that, in all
1 Academiarum Examen, or the all kind of Science. Offered to the
Examination of Academies. Wherein judgements of all those that love the
is discmsedand examined, the Matter, proficiencie of Arts and Sciences, and
Method and Customes of Academick the Advancement of Learning. Lon-
and Scholastic Learning, and the in- don, MDCLIV [MS. note in copy in
sufficiency thereof discovered and laid Univ. Library, 'Decemb. 19, 1653 '].
open; As also some expedients pro- 2 Calendar of Clarendon Papers,
posed for the Reforming of Schools, n 206 ; D. N. B. xxxii 13; Gardiner,
and the perfecting and promoting of Commonwealth, etc. n 226, 275, 283.
WEBSTER'S ACADEMIARUM EX A MEN. 459
such exercises 'they make use of the Latin tongue... whereby CHAP. IY.^
the way to attain Knowledge is made more difficult and the he objects to
the use of
time more tedious, and so we almost become strangers to our
own mother tongue.' The stress of his criticism, however, is
concerned with the defects of the existing curriculum rather K}
than its abuses, and here the justice of his comments is so
obvious, that it seems difficult to understand how more than
another century was yet to pass away, before his suggestions
were carried, even partially, into effect. He dwells upon the
desirability and excellence of physical studies ; he deplores deplores the
the neglect of mathematics : the ' sloathfulness and negli- mathe-
O matical
gence of the professors and artists,' as a body, describing them *tudies't
as ignorant ' that their scrutiny should be through the whole n^/Ttht
theatre of nature,' and that ' their only study and labour
ought to be to acquire and find out salves for every sore and H°arvef,up
,. . i i • i • i Gilbert and
medicines for every malady, and not to be enchained with Descartes as
• * * examples for
the formal prescriptions of schools, Halls, colleges, or masters1.' imitotion'>
Then he turns to extol that great discovery of Harvey,
' our never sufficiently honoured countryman,' and expresses
his regret that it has not been more generally utilized.
He dwells with like emphasis on the merits of Gilbert's
treatise, De Magnete. ' What shall I say,' he asks, ' of the
atomical learning revived by that noble and indefatigable
person, Renatus Des Cartes2?' He next pauses to sav a his praise of
. *. Brinsley and
good word in behalf of the elder John Brinsley, once, like oughtred.
himself, a schoolmaster, but ejected from his post on account
of his religious opinions ; and, finally, reverting again to the
subject of mathematics, urges the signal services rendered by
Oughtred to the study, and concludes with an expression of
his fervent hope ' that this so noble and excellent a science,
with all the parts of it, both general and special, vulgar and
mystical, might be brought into use and practice in the
schools3.'
It was not long before both Dell's attack and that of
Webster came into the hands of Dr Wilkins and Seth Ward
at Oxford, where the Warden of Wadham and his friend, the
1 Examen, p. 75. * Ibid. p. 103.
2 Ibid. p. 78.
460 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv.^ professor, were alike still occupied, as we last saw them1, with
that work of education which was so visibly prospering under
their supervision. They decided that both the manifestos
Rep^e-!,^f before them called for a reply: but it was not until 1654 that
Dr Wilkins f J •
warden the ^ne Vindiciae Academiarum2 saw the light, and by that time
Alcad£ri- the danger which had menaced the universities was over.
The grave banter and occasional severity of rebuke with
which the two teachers of Oxford proceeded to treat these
unscrupulous defamers of academic learning and its methods,
were consequently only what might be looked for from scholars
equally assured of their own position and of the justice of
their cause. The joint reply which they now put forth,
although dealing principally with Webster's Examen, affords,
however, too valuable an illustration of the varied aspects of
university culture in those days to be here summarily dis-
missed.
^Stfon at -^or reasons which do not transpire, the authors preferred
Sublime? to remain anonymous; but their respective shares in the
work are distinguished by appending capitals, — these, again,
being not the initials but the finals of their names3. The
letters 'N. S.' at the foot of page 7 indicate, accordingly, that
the 'Epistle,' thus signed, is written by Wilkins to Ward, the
writer subscribing himself ' Your most affectionate Friend
and Servant,' and the burden of his letter being, to urge upon
the professor the desirability of not leaving the Examen
unanswered. The warden of Wadham does not hesitate,
however, to speak his mind with considerable freedom con-
cerning Webster, Dell and Hobbes alike ; at the same time
availing himself of the opportunity to urge, on Seth Ward's
behalf, certain considerations which the latter's native
modesty would have hardly permitted him to put forward in
his own defence. But as Webster's tractate had been the
immediate cause of the publication of the Vindiciae, the
1 Supra, pp. 315-6. on this Argument. Oxford, Printed
2 VINDICIAE ACADEMIAKUM contain- by Leonard Lichfield, Printer to the
ing some brief Animadversions upon University, for Thomas Eobinson,
Mr Webster's Books, stiled, THE Ex- 1654.
AMTNATION OF ACADEMIES. Together 3 Thus 'N. S.' (Vindiciae, p. 7)
with an Appendix concerning tvhat denotes John Wilkins, and 'H. D.'
M. Hobbs and Mr Dell have published (Ibid. pp. 50 and 65) Set/i Ward.
THE VINDICIAE ACADEMIARUM. 461
writer's arguments, like those of Ward himself, are mainly VCHAP. i\.
devoted to its refutation. To both, indeed, this task was
rendered comparatively easy by the fact that, while the
author of the Examen evidently possessed but a very slight
acquaintance with Cambridge and knew still less about
Oxford, the Savilian professor had the advantage of being His q
° cations for
exceptionally familiar with both, and it soon becomes evident forming an
J opinion on
that the retired schoolmaster by the waters of the remote qSisfoM
Kibble is altogether overmatched by the two pundits on the Sthofe of
classic banks of the Isis. It would have been difficult, indeed,
at that time, to name a teacher whose reputation was more
likely than that of Seth Ward to command a respectful
hearing alike at Oxford and at Cambridge, distinguished as
he was, as the oracle of a rising school, and himself in corre-
spondence with the chief mathematicians throughout Europe ;
while the Warden, on the other hand, appears to have had no
hesitation in designating Webster as one of ' the gang of the J^n^on
vulgar Levellers,' ' amongst whom,' he adds, ' his ability to of Webster-
talk of some things out of the common road, hath raised him
to the reputation of being rt9 /ieya?, some extraordinary
person ; and by that means hath blown him up to such a
selfe-confidence, as to think himselfe fit to reform the
University es1.' It is, however, to Ward that he leaves the
main burden of disproof, especially as regards the curriculum
of studies, while he contents himself with an argument in
which the evidence is derived chiefly from the pages of the
Examen itself. The Warden commences, accordingly, by Hiscom-
. . . . . ' . ments on the
bringing against their common antagonist a twofold indict- *•*•»
ment of signal ignorance : first, with respect to ' the present
state of our university es '; and, secondly, with regard to ' the
common grounds of those Arts and Sciences which he under-
takes to advance and promote ' ; but in both respects falling
' under that censure of folly and shame, which Solomon doth
ascribe onto those that will venture to judge of a matter
before they understand it2.' Such candid language, will not,
perhaps, appear too severe, if we bear in mind that Webster's
1 Vindiciae, p. 7.
2 Vindiciae, p. 1 ; Proverbs xviii. 13.
462 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
indiscriminate onslaught had touched the Savilian professor's
reputation and, indeed, that of the whole 'Philosophical
Society ' at Oxford, very closely. Ward, as we have already
oxford,'" noted1, was Oughtred's own pupil, and had, for nearly five
under Ward . *
and waiiis. years, been filling the Oxford chair of Astronomy; while,
WALLIS of w^hm a few months of his appointment, John Wallis of
fmm^nuel: Emmanuel had been called to the corresponding chair of
Geometry, — a post which he continued to fill for more than
half a century. The two professors had before been known
to each other at Cambridge ; and their best efforts were now
conjointly given to the promotion of mathematical studies at
the sister university, — Ward, according to his biographer, not
only devoting himself with all possible assiduity to the duties
of his chair, but also proffering to all comers gratuitous
instruction in mathematics generally, while the labours of
both were cordially countenanced and seconded by the
departure energetic warden of Wadham. On the other hand, it is a
Cambridge in fact that cannot be disguised, that Wallis had quitted Cam-
conseque e Bridge simply because the study of mathematics had there
mathematics died out, and, as Mr Ball is fain to admit, there was ' no
in the
university. career open to a teacher in that subject2.' It was con-
sequently somewhat galling to find Webster, whose very
slight knowledge of the actual facts was limited to Cambridge,
compassionately expressing his hope that the study might
even yet ' be brought into use and practice at both univer-
«hewn to be sities3,' — thus betraying his ignorance alike of the fate which
fa^it'with* had befallen it at the one and of the remarkable progress
uuui wii>u j_ o
toTheeCdeferh- which it had, for some years, been making at the other. His
Aristotle ° observations on this subject, however, wide as they fell of the
and the state . .
of mathe- mark, were such as might fairly be left to Seth Ward himself
matical ° J
thedtwoat adequately to expose ; Wilkins, accordingly, prefers to level
universities. ^g majn criticism at the no less misconceived assertion, that
the two universities were still so wholly given over to a blind
idolatry of Aristotle, that not merely what contravened the
dicta of the Stagirite, but even that which essayed to com-
plement them, were equally denounced. ' Which,' says the
1 Supra, p. 314. matics at Cambridge, p. 42.
2 Ball (W. W. E.), Hist, of Mathe- 3 Academiarum Examen, p. 103.
THE VINDICIAE ACADEMIARUM. 463
writer, ' is so notoriously false, that I should very much CHA.P. iv.^
wonder with what confidence he could suppose it, if I did not
find Mr Hobbs likewise guilty of the same mistake, Whereas,
those that understand those places, do know that there is not to
be wished a more generall liberty in point of judgment or debate
than what is here allowed. So that there is scarce any hypo-
thesis, which hath been formerly or lately entertained of
judicious men, and seems to have in it any clearness or
consistency, but hath here its strenuous assertours, as the
atomical and magneticall in philosophy, the Copernican in
astronomy, etc. And though we do very much honour
Aristotle for his profound judgment and universall learning,
yet are we so farre from being tyed up to his opinions, that
persons of all conditions amongst us take liberty to dissent
from him, and to declare against him, according as any con-
trary evidence doth engage them, being ready to follow the
Banner of Truth by whomsoever it shall be lifted up1.' On His like
. * J ignorance of
certain other, although minor, points, the warden of Wadham *he attention
bestowed at
has equally the advantage of his opponent ; and he is con- crypto-°n
sequently able curtly to dismiss, as ' a loose and wild kind of fS&ent"1
vapouring,' some exceptionally unlucky comments which ***"
Webster had ventured to make with respect to 'Cryptography
and the universall character] of which he assumes the
universities to be ' wholly ignorant, none of them having so
much as touched at these things2.' As a matter of fact,
Dr Wilkins himself was, at this very time, busied with the
collection of materials for his famous treatise on a Real
Character, his researches being with him a frequent topic of
conversation, — while professor Wallis already enjoyed a high
reputation as a Cryptographist, the result partly of the skill
with which, during the late War, he had deciphered some of
the intercepted correspondence of the royalist forces3.
The portion of their task which devolved upon Ward, —
namely the exposure of Webster's blunders in detail, —
1 Vindiciae, pp. 1-2. in the correspondence which the
2 Ibid. p. 5. enemy might have found only too ser-
3 Peter Barwick, however, claims viceable. Life of Dr John Barwick
for Wallis the credit of having sup- (1724), p. 251. See also D. N. B.
pressed not a little of what he found LK 142.
464
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
He next
proceeds to
a detailed
criticism
of the
Examen.
He compares
Webster to
Don Quixote
as attacking
non-existent
abuses.
Special
points with
respect to
which he is
altogether
wrong :
necessarily called for more lengthened treatment, and extends
to forty pages. It is preceded by the former's reply to
Wilkins' letter, in which the perfectly amicable relations
between the two are attested by the writer's declaration that
'the pleasure of giving testimony to the service and respect'
which he bears his friend is alone 'a reward exceedingly
beyond the labour of the taske1.' He compliments the
Warden on his 'character' of Webster, describing it as
' perfect,' all that is left for himself to do, being to point out
how 'the man,' as he styles him, stands condemned by his
own utterances ; and he forthwith proceeds, accordingly, to
make it evident beyond all gainsaying, that the author of the
Examen has been guilty of a succession of blunders and mis-
apprehensions which sufficiently shew his incompetency for
the onerous task that he had voluntarily assumed to himself,
not only propounding a new theory of academic education,
but also of demonstrating how far both Oxford and Cam-
bridge come short of his lofty ideal. It may perhaps be
doubted if any member of either university, whether resident
or pursuing a professional career elsewhere, would have cared
to turn to the pages of Webster's polemic, when he had
already found it clearly shewn that the aggressor (like the
knight of La Mancha, to whom Ward compares him) was
himself subject to delusions2: that he found fault, for example,
with the universities for their defective method of teaching
' grammar,' when the answer was, that they did not profess
to teach it3, — that he had, through a like mental confusion,
mistaken the mathematical symbol for the cryptogram4, —
1 Vindiciae, p. 8.
2 ' His predecessor in the military
way (the famous hero of the Mancha)
mistooke a windmill for an inchanted
Castle, and this man (man did I say,
this Hero) lyes under the same de-
lusion.' Ibid. p. 10.
3 'The man supposes that Uni-
versities, like to the Sclwlae Illustres
of the Jesuites, teach the Latin
Grammar, and to goe through even
the lowest elements of learning ; but
you know Sir, that it is neither
usuall nor lawful to teach the Latine
Grammar in the Universities. If this
man have ever scene the Univer-
sities, they have been the Eomish
Schools and Academies, to whose
elevation, the learning which he
discovers and the reformation he
proposes, are (to use his excellent
phrase) coapted.' Vindiciae, p. 17.
For discontinuance of teaching of
grammar in the Universities, see
Author's History, n 163, n. 4 ; also,
in Appendix (A) to same, Trinity
College Statutes (1560), pp. 609, 611.
4 Vindiciae, p. 18.
THE VINDIGIAE ACADEMIARUM. 465
that his criticisms of Aristotle were all borrowed from CHAP, iv.
Gassendi 1, — and that he was equally mistaken in supposing ''a'uaectual
that Aristotle's Organon was a text-book in either university2 ^authority
and that the authority of the Stagirite there took precedence i?nth?^lr-
of all Christian philosophers3. To his complaint that the
disputations in the Schools were about ' Notions and paper-
Idols,' Ward contemptuously rejoins, ' Was there ever, or can
there be, a Disputation about anything else but Notions4 ? '
And, finally, when Webster urges ' that we doe not read the the
Mathematics,' his critic vouchsafes a rare assent, by allowing mathematics,
that ' we doe not so much and nearely as is fitting,' but adds,
' yet this I must needs say, that we read Ptolemy, Apollonius,
and Euclide, and he [i.e. Webster] hath read nothing but
John Dees English Preface5.' In bringing his criticism to a cry raised
close, the professor takes occasion to refer, in more general JU^tes
of Natural
terms, to a class of ' pamphleteers,' who, under the pretext of f™jg™
giving effect to the teaching of Bacon, had been demanding
the entire abolition of all logomachies, urging that ' instead
of verball Exercises, we should set upon experiments and
observations,' and, laying aside ' our Disputations, Declama-
tions, and Publick Lectures,' 'betake ourselves to Agriculture,
Mechanicks, Chymistry, and the like8.' Such a cry, familiar
enough in the present day, when its plausibility has ofttimes
appealed with no small effect to the minds of many, alike
1 ' That there is not one Argu- valid. His Syntagma Philosophicum,
ment against Aristotle, which he in which he returns to the attack,
hath not taken entirely out of Gas- first appeared at Lyon in 1658, in
sendi, Exercitationes adversus Aristo- the complete edition of his Works.
teleas, besides a little out of Helmant ; 2 ' Aristotle* Organon is not read
to spare words I have annexed this to the youth of this University (how
Table ' [a table of parallel passages justly I contend not) neither was it
follows]. Vindiciae, pp. 32-3; see also ever understood, or ever will be by
p. 28. The full title of the treatise M. Webster, then why should we fall
referred toby Ward is, Exercitationes out about it?' Ibid. p. 25.
paradoxicae adversus aristotelaeoi, in 3 ' Are not the Christian Ethicks
quibus praecipua totius peripateticae of Daneus, Scultetus, Amesius, Aqui-
doctrinaeatquedialecticaefundamenta nas, and others, besides all those
excutiuntur, opiniones vero aut novae Authors you have mentioned, read
aut ex veteribus obsoletae stabiliuntur. and studyed before him in the Uni-
Grenoble, 1624. 8vo. Here Gas- versities ? What shall be done unto
sendi, following in the track of Ba- thee, 0 thou leasing tongue?' Ibid.
mus (see Vol. n 404-14) and in p. 38.
agreement with Descartes (supra, * Ibid. p. 41.
p. 421), expresses his repudiation 5 Ibid. pp. 41-2.
of Aristotle's authority as invariably 8 Ibid. p. 49.
M. in. 30
466 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
ignorant or careless of the fact that the same outcry had been
raised and silenced as long ago as the days of the Pro-
tectorate, need scarcely here detain us; but the unanswerable
rejoinder with which it was then dismissed by one who
perhaps grasped the whole question at issue more thoroughly
than any other English professor of his age, must not be left
unquoted, scarcely less applicable as his words are to existing
conditions at the present time, than they were when origin-
ally indited. Referring to the proposals involved in the
seth ward's passage above quoted, Seth Ward observes, ' It cannot be
own ideal ., ....
University denied but this is the way, and the only way, to perfect
Naturall Philosophy and Medicine: so that whosoever intend
to professe the one or the other, are to take that course, and
I have not neglected occasionally to tell the World that this
way is pursued amongst us. But our Academies are of a
more generall and comprehensive institution, and as there is
a provision here made, that whosoever will be excellent in
any kind, in any Art, Science, or Language, may here receive
assistance, and be led by the hand, till he be come to be
excellent; so is there a provision likewise, that men be not
forced into particular waies, but may receive an institution
variously answerable to their genius and designe1.'
It is difficult not to suppose that the great majority of
such Cambridge scholars as found time to study the Vindiciae
must have felt that, while it was somewhat to be regretted
that the captious schoolmaster had ever entered the univer-
sity, it was still more a matter for concern that the professor
had been allowed to leave it. But although Ward's masterly
rejoinder earned for him the gratitude of both universities,
he was by no means able to entertain like sentiments towards
some of his supporters ; and if Webster had written under
1 Vindiciae, pp. 49-50. We ac- a profession, was allowed complete
cordingly here have it, on the unim- freedom of choice in his subjects of
peachable authority of a professor of study and entitled to receive instruc-
the University of Oxford in 1654, that, tion consonant with his 'genius and
at that time, any student desirous of designe.' Neither Burrows, Register
specializing in Natural Science (e.g. of the Visitors (pp. Ixxxiii, cxxi) nor
medicine, chemistry, or mineralogy), Mr Wells (Wad)wm College, pp. 75-
with a view to a professional career, 6), although recognizing Seth Ward's
was allowed to do so. While every conspicuous merit, appears to have
student, apart from the question of read the Vindiciae.
THE VINDICIAE ACADEMIARUM. 467
serious misapprehension with respect to facts, Thomas Hall, >.CHA'
of Pembroke College, Oxford, at this time pastor of King's HA
Norton and master of the slenderly endowed Grammar School d. leei
there founded by Edward vi, blundered sadly with respect
to persons. His Histrio-Mastix, which now appeared, — an 1$*£
ambitious effort to gain for the writer a share in the credit
which had been reaped by the Vindiciae, — was a misnomer
in its very title1, having been written under the singular ^st^nt
misconception that the Webster whom he proposed to
chastise, was no other than the celebrated John Webster2,
the author of the Duchess of Malfi and other famous tragedies
which, in the opinion of his contemporaries, had ranked as
scarcely inferior to those of Shakespeare himself. As the
tragedian had now been dead some twenty years, such a
portentous blunder could only be interpreted as shewing that
the author of the Histrio-Mastix was as little at home in the
world of polite literature as Webster had been proved to be
in the world academic. At first, Thomas Hall assures us, he
had been inclined to put his manuscript aside, when he saw
how ably the writers of the Vindiciae had performed their
task3; but eventually he rushed into print, and he is un-
doubtedly entitled to the credit of having made a genuine
contribution to the force of their refutation, by pointing out
Webster's grave error of judgement in assuming to deprecate
the neglect of the study of Astrology4, that wide-spread
1 Histrio-Mastix. A Whip for once to be the Author of Stage-Plaies
Webster (as 'tis conceived) the Quon- but now the Tutor of Universities.'
dam Player: or An Examination of Ibid. p. 217.
one John Webster's delusive Examen 3 ' ...which since I penned my dis-
of Academies : where the Sophistry, course, I find to be done so elabo-
Vanity and insufficiency of his Neic- rately and accurately by two very
found-Light (tending to the subversion learned pens' [note in marg. ' Dr
of Universities, Philosophers, Phy- Wilkins and Dr Ward '] ' that I was
sicians, Magistrates, Ministers) is resolved to lay my own answer by.'
briefly discovered and the contrary Ibid. Preface.
Truth asserted. London, Printed in 4 ' I cannot but wonder how Mr
the Year, 1644. The authorship is Webster durst be so impudent as to
disclosed in the Preface, where we commend the worth, vertue and
learn that it is by ' THOMAS HALL, learning not only of these lying prog-
B.D. and Pastour of King's Norton ': nosticators, Booker and Culpepper,
see copy in Brit. Museum Library but he also extols that lying, railing,
' 224. a. 17.' ignorant Wizard, Lyly, who hath not
2 ' ...This Mr Webster (as I sup- onely reviled the most learned and
pose) is that Poet, whose glory was reverend Mr Gataker, with the or-
30—2
468 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv^ delusion which was now fast falling into deserved contempt.
Hall also appended to his volume an ' elaborate defence of
Logick, by a very learned Pen ' ; and subsequently published
a *reatise entitled ' Vindiciae Literarum ; or the Schools
guar(jed ' (165f ), and notable chiefly for its somewhat limited
conception of learning, as of value only so far as it approved
itself ancillary to divinity.
seth ward's In replying to his two other opponents. Seth Ward was
criticism of f J O rf
Hobbes. not }ess happy. He discerns in Hobbes (the only one of the
three who could compare with him in intellectual power) a
thinker 'of good ability and solid parts/ but he demurs
strongly to the dictatorial tone of the Leviathan, and politely
insinuates that the writer is under much greater obligation
to 'Mr Warner's MSS.1' than he has cared to acknowledge.
He had himself, not long before, achieved a decisive victory
over the philosopher in another field, and one which more
directly concerned the scientific world, by his successful
exposure of the delusion under which Hobbes laboured, of
having solved what was at this time the crux of the mathe-
maticians, — the squaring of the circle. The master of Caius
College, — whose discursive irrelevance and declamatory rude-
ness left him no claim to like consideration, and who had
already been handled by Wilkins with a severity yet greater
than that with which he treated Webster, — is now described
HJ5Scri tion by the professor as ' an angry fanatick man, who wanting
of Deii, himselfe such academicall learning as would become his re-
lation, would needs persuade others against it, like the ape
whose in the fable2': turning next to the reproach cast upon the
aspersions
universities as ' places of great licentiousness and profaneness,'
universities Ward gives expression to an emphatic disclaimer as regards
repudiates. Oxford, coupled with a sharp retort in relation to Caius
College which even its vituperative Head can hardly be sup-
posed to have read altogether unmoved3 ; while he deems it
thodox ministry of the Land ; but of Sir W. Baleigh. See Wood-Bliss,
with his lies hath abused both Cimrch n 301-3; Thorndike's Works (u.s.),
and State, to the great discomfort of vi 115-6; Vindiciae Academiarum,
the Nation.' Histrio-Mastix, p. 207. p. 53.
1 Walter Warner, the mathema- 2 Vindiciae, p. 7.
tician, who died circ. 1640. He was 3 ' ...indeed the care and prudence
B.A. of Oxford and a personal friend and successe of our Immediate Go-
THE PERIL OF THE UNIVERSITIES. 469
sufficient, in replying to the charge that it was their aim to CHAP, iv.
monopolize the teaching of humane learning, to remind his The^
opponent that ' the privileges and statutes of both the univer- ^<^c of
sities have been always regulated ' by the nation, whose *u^donal
' soveraigne magistracy ' is consequently implicitly called in plea
question1.
Ward's whole criticism is characterized by a marked sense
of superiority and disdain of his opponents, not without an
occasional deviation into sarcasm which led his biographer to
describe it as written ' in a jocose style2.' Such a feature, ^"wunder
however, excites less surprise if we bear in mind that, at the '1"^-<^
time when the Vindiciae appeared, the great danger which wc
had menaced the universities was at an end, and the ' nomi-
nated Parliament' was itself no more. But for a brief j^y Gardiner
period, ' it had seemed/ to quote the language of Gardiner,
' as if no institution was to be spared,' and it was ' the far-
reaching character of the changes demanded, together with
the number of institutions attacked, which presaged a
universal deluge. The conservative spirit was aroused in the
nation, and those members of Parliament who shared in the
general alarm knew that they would find support outside
the walls of the House3.' Various evidence attests that the
danger was no visionary one. Pauluzzi, the Agent from
Venice, writing, in December, to Morosini, imputes to Parlia-
ment a design of destroying both the universities4. And in
London, John Webster himself, along with William Urbury,
a former student of Brasenose, had engaged in a disputation
in a church in Lombard Street, in which, to use Anthony
Wood's expression, they had sought ' to knock down learning
and the ministry together,' and the disputation itself had
terminated in a popular tumult5. Composed, indeed, as the
vernors, as to the Advancement of done hitherto, hath been such as
Religion and Learning is such as tends manifestly rather to the ruine
Mr Dell may envy but he will never than Reformation of that place. Vin-
equall it ; I should be very loath to diciae, pp. 63-4.
injure him, yet common fame hath 1 Ibid. p. 63.
brought his name hither with a 2 Life of Seth Ward, p. 27.
Character upon it of one whose 3 Commonwealth and Protectorate,
studyed designe is (by letting fall all n 275.
Discipline) to let in Licence with all 4 Letter Book in Record Office ;
its usual traine, both into Cays Col- the letter is dated Dec. ££ 1653.
lege and that other University ; and * Athenae Oxonienses, n 175-6.
that the consequence of what he hath
470 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv.^ < Little Parliament ' largely was, of Fifth Monarchy men, —
of fanatics, that is to say, who believed that the temporal
reign of Christ was at an end, and that Amsterdam and
Rotterdam had been divinely ordained refuges for the Saints,
in anticipation of the downfal of all existing institutions1, —
we must admit that their design was in harmony with their
avowed convictions. On the very eve of the Dissolution, the
and coioner voice of colonel Sydenham was heard declaring in Parliament,
Sydenham. _ *
that the majority of those whom he addressed was aiming at
nothing less than the destruction of Chancery, together with
the law, and the property of the subject2. Richard Baxter,
Clarendon and Echard, all testify to the same effect, and it
now devolved on Cromwell to approve himself, as Ranke
describes him, ' the champion of civil law and personal pro-
perty.' ' He broke with his party,' says that writer, ' when it
attacked the fundamental principles of society and of the
paHiame^t State3'; and on the 12th December, 1653, he dispersed that
cromwee<ii,by short-lived remnant of a Parliament which, had it been able
to carry its purpose into effect, would itself have dispersed
the universities. Before another year had elapsed, in his
famous speech as Protector, he recalled with satisfaction and
amid deep-murmured applause, how, by that summary act,
the laws and liberties of the realm had been preserved and
vindicated; while, in relation to the question which then
most closely touched the universities, he described the aim
The future of the government, which he represented, as an endeavour
policy of the ' r
de°s£ribedent ' *° Pu^ a S^°P to ^na^ heacty waj °* every man making
Projector, himself a minister and preacher,' — ' to settle a method for
the approving and sanctioning of men of piety and ability to
discharge that work,' — 'and,' added the orator, 'I think I
may say it hath committed that work to the trust of persons,
both of the Presbyterian and Independent judgments, men
of as known ability and integrity, as, I believe, any this
nation hath4.'
That the alarm felt at both universities was fully justified
1 For the demands of the Fifth to the government of the Saints.'
Monarchy fanatics, see Gardiner (M.S. 2 Ibid. 11 279.
n 265-7) : ' their aim,' he says, 'was 3 Hist, of England, m 214.
to grasp the sword and to compel 4 Cromwell's Letters and Speeches*
their countrymen to adapt them selves Carlyle-Lomas, n 353-4.
THE PERIL OF THE UNIVERSITIES. 471
by the circumstances, is sufficiently proved by the testimony VCHAP. iv.
of both their distinguished vice-chancellors : that of John
Lightfoot, at Cambridge in 1655, and that of Cromwell's own joimUL^htf
vice-chancellor at Oxford two years later, when the mere bridge.
panic of 1653 had passed away. 'What,' asked the former in
a notable oration delivered in his official capacity, ' would
Cambridge have been without Cambridge ? What a spectre
of a dead University, what a skeleton of empty Colleges, what
a funeral of the Muses and carcase of deceased Literature1!'
In October, 1657, John Owen, on retiring from the office which Language
he had continued to discharge for four years in succession, J<>un owen
. ... . subsequently
took occasion to refer to the highly critical condition of affairs [J^^
when he first entered upon its duties, when their position, as ocJM^:
he reminded his audience, was such as to be ' a subject for
the diaries of the astrologers and the diurnals of the
journalists,' and when 'to have stood up in defence of the
public Schools would have been reckoned an offence against
religion and piety.' ' But,' he went on to say, ' through the
intervention of the Supreme Arbiter, the counsels of the con-
spirators were suddenly brought to confusion,' 'although their
baneful purpose will be recalled to memory and denounced,
so long as there shall be historians capable of recording the
consultations and deeds of those courageous and wise men
who were then summoned to the defeat of what represented
all that could dishonour a civilized State2.'
1 St Catharine'* College (by Dr Gardiner reprints a List of the Mem-
G. F. Browne), p. 114; Lightfoot- bers which subsequently appeared, in
Pitman, v 391-2. which the names of those who were
2 ' ...Imo jam eo deventum erat for a 'Godly Learned Ministry and
dementiae, ut e partibus gentis to- Universities ' are distinguished by
gatae stetisse violatae religionis et an asterisk and their opponents by
pietatis nomine censeretur. Omne a cross. Here, out of the four
autem illud, quod apud viros graves members for Cambridgeshire, three
male audit atque est vere flagitiosum, (John Sadler, Eobert Castle, Samuel
per quam liberaliter quotidie in vos Warner) have the asterisk, the fourth,
impegere malevoli...omnia eorum Thomas Warner, member for the
consilia, conatus omnes, dicto citius Town, the cross. It would seem,
ita dissipavit summus Ille rerum accordingly, that the fanaticism of
omnium arbiter, ut rebus suis vix the townsmen of Cambridge, at this
aut aegre consulerent qui nudius- time, would have led them to concur
tertius nostris avidissime inhiaban- in the abolition of the University,
tur.' Oratio v quam, alio procancel- See Gardiner, Commonwealth and
lario electo, munus illud jam deposi- Protectorate, n 258-261 ; also Cooper,
turn* /nit, etc. Owen-Russell, xxi 611. Annals, in 453, n. 7.
472 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. The dread crisis over, and Cromwell duly installed as
Protector, a series of measures were enacted which served, to
some extent, to reassure the supporters of moderate counsels
Repeal of and true learning. Not only was the Engagement repealed,
ment'- , but, in little more than another twelvemonth, the Protector
19 Jan. 165J.
cromweirs issued his famous Proclamation, — ' the Charter,' as Gardiner
uon-am describes it, 'of religious freedom under the Protectorate.'
°' By virtue of this notable decree, men of every recognized
form of belief were thenceforth to be freed from molestation
in ' the sober and quiet exercise ' of their respective religious
services. But 'Quakers1, Ranters and others,' as 'notorious
disturbers of the assemblies and congregations of Christians
in their public and private meetings,' are especially excepted,
such 'practices' being formally declared to be 'contrary to the
jast freedom and liberties of the people2.'
Within two days after Cromwell's installation as Pro-
DeaHi^of tector, the death of Dr Hill had again placed the mastership
is Dec. less. of Trinity in the hands of the Government. He passed away
while still in middle life, but his health had been for some
time indifferent, and his end was hastened by the anxieties
of office and possibly by the above ominous crisis in our
His university history which he only just outlived. In his child-
precocity in hood he had exhibited that precocity which is rarely followed
childhood. r J ./
by fulness of days. When he first entered at Emmanuel, coming
up from St Paul's School, he was found, if we may credit
Calamy, not only excellent in Latin and Hebrew, but also pos-
sessed of a knowledge of Greek superior to that of most of
His the 'tutors.' Among the college friendships which he formed,
with snp that with Tuckney (slightly his senior) was attended with
Tuckney. ,7
important results; the latter, as above noted3, was a cousin
intimacy of of John Cotton \ and after taking their M.A. degree, Hill and
both with m . ,, . ,. , , .
John cotton. Tuckney went to carry on their studies under his auspices at
1 Of the Quaker of the seventeenth nounced the Universities as ' pre-
century a good description is given tended Seed plots and seminaries
by Masson in his Life of Milton, for the Ministry ' — an educated and
v 22-27; and among contemporary regular body of clergy being in their
criticisms that in A Looking Glass view an abomination.
for Quakers, London, 1657, sets forth 2 Gardiner, M. s. m 107-9; Masson,
the heresies involved in their teach- Life of Milton, v 12-28.
ing. Like Roger Williams, they de- 3 Supra, p. 312.
DEATH OF DR HILL. 473
Boston. When we recall that it was the same teaching that .CHAP, iv.
had converted Preston, we may reasonably infer that Cotton's
influence on the two younger men, with whom he had been
acquainted at Emmanuel, was permanent. Before long, Hill ™J,'^°g
became himself a tutor in that society, where his exemplary E^anuei
diligence contributed still further to extend its reputation : London,
and in 1 640 he was summoned to act as 'assessor' to the Com-
mittee of the House of Lords appointed to consider innovations
in Religion1. In the capital, where he gained considerable
popularity as a preacher, he was one of the original members
of the Westminster Assembly, and often, Tuckney tells us,
ordered to preach before Parliament at ' their publick Fasts
and upon other more solemn occasions2.' It was when he
was becoming yet more widely known, as a preacher in the
highly Puritan parish of St Martin's-in-the-Fields, that he
was unexpectedly summoned back to Emmanuel to undertake His
nomination
the duties of the Mastership ; but before he had performed $,£tershi
any function in that capacity, he was transferred to the gupe^dST1
headship of Trinity3. Here his administration, as depicted to the*
by his partial panegyrist, left nothing to be desired. He of Trinity?
i i • i i i i P i •• April, 1645.
preached regularly in the chapel ; he was careful to maintain
a regular intercourse with the senior fellows: and he exacted. His stringent
' discipline.
with unwonted vigilance, the due performance of their college
exercises from the students4. It is certain, indeed, that he
was a rigid disciplinarian and, consequently, far from popular.
He imprisoned one of the fellows, who, over his cup in a
tavern, had been heard to declare that the English parlia-
ment was a more rebellious body than the Irish themselves5.
It can hardly have served to raise the Master in the good
opinion of the bachelors of the society, when he prohibited
1 Of this Committee, over which at St Maries in Cambridge, Decem.
John Williams, bishop of Lincoln, 22. 1653.... By ANTHONY TUCKNEY,
presided, and in which other Cam- D.D. Master of St Johns Colledge
bridge men took a prominent part, in Cambridge. London, 1654. p. 52.
there is a prolix account in Hacket's 3 ' Though Hill was nominated
Scrinia Reserata, n 147; a more con- Master of Emmanuel, and speaks of
else and intelligible one in Mr W. A. himself in one of his books as "late
Shaw' s History of the English Church, Master," he does not appear to have
i 66-74. been ever admitted.' Shuckburgh,
2 Lightfoot's Journal, Works, xm Emmanuel College, p. 96.
27, 218,245. 0ANATOKTASIA. Or * Tuckney's Sermon («. «.), p. 53.
Death disarmed : A Sermon preached 5 Ball, Notes, etc. p. 94.
474 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
VCHAP. iv.^ the observance of a commendably sociable custom such as
that of their regularly inviting the bachelors of St John's to
an entertainment on Port Latin Day1; while, among the
Punishment scholars, John Dryden appears to have never been able to lav
of JOHN . . J y
DEYDEN. aside his resentment at the humiliation to which he was
subjected in being required to make a formal apology to the
Vice-master in hall, ' for contumacy in taking of his punish-
Saracter ment inflicted upon him2.' The poet proceeded, notwith-
as a student, standing, to his bachelor's degree, and throughout his residence
had the reputation of an industrious scholar, distinguished
Resentment by his familiarity with the Greek and Latin poets. But he
bTttepoet. never returned to receive the degree of master of arts, which,
in 1688, was conferred upon him by the archbishop of
Canterbury, at the royal request. The tone pervading Trinity
"under Hill's auspices can hardly, indeed, have failed to be
repugnant to Dryden's ardent and impulsive temperament ;
and when, long afterwards, he visited Oxford, there to receive
the recognition due to his established fame, he saluted the
sister university as the English ' Athens.' and affected to
deplore the fate which had consigned him, in his youthful
inexperience, to the austere discipline of Spartan ' Thebes3.'
Another incident, which occurred a few months before the
Master's death, was, not improbably, purposely designed to
The Prayer occasion him annoyance. In the month of March, 1653, we
Book again
college the finc^ Henry Paman writing to Sancroft, to inform him that, an
chapei. evening or two before, the Common Prayer Book had again
been used in the college chapel ; and although its use had
not, as yet, been made subject to a definite penalty, Dr Hill
did not fail to allude to it in a subsequent sermon4.
1 The practice was forbidden on crime, in the Hall at dinner time,
the ground that such meetings were at the three Fellowes tables.' Ball,
'occasions of Great Intemperance u.s. p. 95.
and other abuses to the great scandall 3 ' Oxford to him a dearer name
of both colledges.' Ball, Notes, p. 95. shall be | Than his own mother
2 ' Agreed then that Dryden be put university, | Thebes did his green un-
out of commons for a fortnight at knowing youth engage, | He chooses
least, and that he goe not out of the Athens in his riper age.' Epilogue
Colledg during the time aforesaid, to The University of Oxford, Dryden-
excepting to sermons, without express Bell, in 254.
leave from the Master or Vice-Master, 4 ' Dr Hill, next morning, they say,
and that at the end of the fort- snuffed ; he thought sure his incense
night he read a confession of his would not ascend with strange fire,
ARROWSMITH AS PROFESSOR. 475
Arrowsmith, who now succeeded Hill in the mastership, CHAP, iv.
had certainly a quieter time. He was. in fact, already Joim
1/1 . 1-1 Arrowsmith
wearying of the conflict. Since his appointment as head of ™c^a
St John's1, his career had been one of arduous study, laborious olxriStyF
duties, and incessant strife ; and, during his nine years' tenure 1653'
of the mastership, the discordant elements had demanded
constant vigilance and intervention. Professor Mayor notes,
indeed, that ' the feuds between the old and new fellows
attracted, at one time, the notice of the Commons2.' Taking His
0 experiences
warning by his past experience, the new Master would seem, f,™trtit£ie
accordingly, to have resolved not to become involved in
college disputes at Trinity, and his tenure of office, as regards
the college, is almost a blank. A serious physical infirmity3
might fairly have been pleaded in his excuse, had he chosen
to be equally reticent as a writer. But a sense of duty,
combined with a strongly combative nature, still urged him HIS genius
0 J & naturally
to the conflict, in which, again, he was more often to be found combative,
assuming an aggressive rather than a merely defensive atti-
tude. John Bunyan himself was not more thoroughly imbued
with that conception of the Christian's career, which depicts
the good and faithful servant as a soldier of the Church
militant; and, whether seated at the Westminster Assembly,
or discoursing from the pulpit or from the professorial chair,
John Arrowsmith invariably responds to this ideal. In his
first, his 'probation' lecture, he singled out a grave mis-
application of Scripture, on the part of the Jesuits, for
detailed and vehement denunciation4. His earliest published
and presently swept the chapel with escape penalties,' a course which
an exposition." H. Paman to San- gave rise to a formal discussion by
croft, 5th March 165$. D'Oyly's Life the leading clergy in London. See
of Bancroft, p. 50. The use of the Thorndike-Haddan, vi 212 and note.
Prayer Book by a minister was not 1 Supra, pp. 303-5.
made subject to any penalty prior to 2 Baker-Mayor, p. 639.
1654, when those who had used it 3 ' So that learning is now so much
subsequent to the first of January in advanced, as Arrowsmith's Glass eye
that year were declared subject to sees more than his Natural.' The
ejection. Its use in Trinity College Assembly Man : written in the year
Chapel may, not improbably, have 1647. London, 1681. [A fierce Satire
been intended as a protest against on the Assembly by Sir John Birken-
the expedient introduced by bishop head.]
Sanderson in the same year (1653), 4 ' Arrowsmith read his probation
of retaining its use, but ' under such lecture wherein he blamed the Jesuits
a disguise as to obviate offence and for expounding what was said of Eve,
476 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP.IV. sermon had for its theme, The Covenant-avenging Sword1 ;
best-known and most popular treatise, the Tactica Sacra'*,
is a figurative description of the Christian's equipment for
the fight, although one which the theologian of the present
day can only scan with feelings somewhat similar to those
with which a modern antiquary surveys a collection of
mediaeval armour. In the Assembly he had taken a promi-
nent part on Committees, especially those for Revising the
Confession of Faith and for the Accommodation of Church
Government; he had also served as a Trier in the Sixth
anointment Classis3. In 1651, he had been appointed Regius professor
Proflfsor: °f divinity. Soon after his election to his second mastership,
And as a however, he had been nominated one of the twenty-one
sio^CT.18" Commissioners appointed to survey the counties, and em-
-powered, along with selected residents, to carry out sweeping
changes, — to eject unfit ministers, install others, and even
to unite or divide parishes4. Viewed in connexion with these
official duties, the description of Arrowsmith by a con-
temporary member of the college, as 'a very sickly man, that
seldom came abroad5,' becomes more intelligible. The master
had probably made up his mind to hold aloof from dissensions
onh?8uiatter *n c°Mege by keeping out of the way, and his periods of
occasional1™ absence as a commissioner would serve to aid him in this
Trinity! from design ; while his professorial Chair afforded him the oppor-
tunity of still carrying on the war against whatever he held
to be superstition, false doctrine, or mysticism. Judging,
indeed, from the specimens of his lectures which have come
down to us, he must, in this capacity, have rendered no little
in Genesis iii 15, as referring to the read, although the copy presented by
Virgin Mary.' See Gary, Civil War, the author himself had long been
n 371. on the Library shelf (P. 9. 33) at
1 The Covenant-avenging Sivord St John's. Baker-Mayor, p. 227.
brandished, 1643. The book was however reprinted at
2 Tactica Sacra, sive de Milite Amsterdam in 1700.
spirituali Pugnante, Vincente, <£• 3 Shaw (W. A.), History of the
Triumphante Distertatio, tribus Li- English Church, i 360, n 48, 401.
bris comprehensa ; per loannemArroiv- * See Scobell, Commission for
smith, Doctorem, & Exprofessorem Approbation of Public Preachert,
S. Theologiae, Praefectum Collegii Ordinances, Pt. n 279. Masson, Life
Sanctae & Individuae Trinitatis, quod of Milton, iv 571.
est Cantabrigiae. Cantabrigiae,lQ57. 5 Letter from a ' Mr Paine,' quoted
A treatise which Thomas Baker is by Mr Ball, u.s. pp. 97-9. See also
at the trouble to note that he has not Lightfoot-Pitman, v 398.
ARROWSMITH AS PROFESSOR. 477
service to the cause of orthodox belief; and, in relation to .CHAP, iv.
our present enquiry, the three brief 'Orations' which he His
* ' OHATIOSES
delivered at the Commencement of 1655. and afterwards 4NTI~
W EIGEL-
published under the general title of Anti-Weigelianae1, are dtuvlred
exceptionally noteworthy as a defence of sound academic
.. . TT. .,,,... ,, Commence-
traditions. His ostensible design, it is true, was to call ment, less.
attention to the revolutionary character of the teaching of a
once famous foreign divine, long passed away, — but his real
purpose, it can hardly be doubted, was to denounce and
refute, in plainer language than could otherwise prudently be
employed, before an audience largely composed of Independ-
ents, the narrowness of view and disastrous tendencies of
doctrines which, as resuscitated in England, had so recently
menaced both Oxford and Cambridge with virtual extermina-
tion. Otherwise, simply to recall to memory and expose the
theories of that gentle mystic, Valentine Weigel, who, more
than two generations before, had gone to his rest in his d.
pastorate of distant Zschopau, amid the encircling forests of
the Erzgebirge, might scarcely seem worthy of an occasion
which had brought together the 'noble, venerable and learned
throng,' whom the lecturer salutes in his final Oration2. It is
true, indeed, that Weigel's writings, which the author him-
self had left unpublished3, were at once so strongly anti-
Lutheran, and so tinged throughout with mysticism and
pantheism, that an Elector of Saxony had recently given orders
that, wherever found, they should be burnt. It was also
undeniable that, in more than one respect, they bore a
suspicious resemblance to the teaching of the Catharists, —
that mysterious sect which, three centuries before, crossing
the Adriatic from Macedonia, had migrated in successive
waves to the eastern coasts of Italy, or, passing onward from
1 Accesserunt Ejusdem OBATIONES his third (and last) on the 7th of
aliquot Anti-Weigelianae etpro Eefor- July, when the assemblage would
matis Academiis Apologeticae, quas probably be at its fullest, we can
ibidem e Cathedra nuper habuit in understand why he especially ad-
Magnis Comitiis. [Continuation of dressed his audience on the latter
title of Tactica Sacra, the Orations occasion, as 'Alunmorum et Hos-
being printed as an Appendix to same pitum corona nobilis, venerabilis,
(see p. Zz 4) but with distinct pagi- erudita.' Oratio m, p. 19.
nation.] 3 'Die ersten Drucke Weigelscher
2 If we assume that Arrowsmith's Schriften erschienen in den Jahren
first lecture was delivered on the 1609-14 in Halle bei J. Krusike.'
opening day of Commencement, and Herzog-Hauck, xxi 38.
478 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv.^ tne Vistula to the Scheldt, and from the Rhone to the Seine,
had attracted converts and multiplied adherents throughout
central Europe, until Philip Augustus was roused to un-
wonted apprehension and Innocent ill trembled for the
safety of his temporal domains. But, on the other hand, it
was not less certain that Weigel's teaching had already, years
before, been formally refuted and shewn to be inimical to the
universities of Europe, whether Reformed or Catholic. As
MAKE }ono- ago as 1634, Mark Wendelin, the Rector of the Reformed
x RIEDRICH O O
Wi584ELIJI: archiepiscopal gymnasium at Anhalt, had published at Han-
His662' over an elaborate manual, expressly designed as a kind of
cft™™?o»°f armoury from whence the neophyte and the advanced student
'°9y' of theology might alike equip themselves with arguments
sufficient for the refutation of almost every heresy that had
troubled the True Church from the days of Constantine down
His^xposure to the seventeenth century1. In a 'dedicatory Epistle' pre-
chlrac°terrof fixed to his treatise, Wendelin had been at special pains to
^ritutgsin point out the revolutionary tendencies of Weigel's teaching
to the0" as regarded the universities, and Arrowsrnith now considered
Passages that he could hardly do better than read aloud to his august
same which audience some of the quotations from Weigel's writings which
Arrowsmith * . ° . °
je*ds aloud he had there found, and especially those in which the pastor
audie"cefe °f Zschopau had enunciated his theory of the religious life,
a life which, as he held, found its truest and fullest expression
in genuinely spiritual devotion, — devotion, that is to say,
which ignored set times and solemn gatherings at ap-
pointed centres, and was opposed, in its very conception,
The truly to the idea involved in such terms as ' congregation ' (coetus}
religious life «•• i
in"thesible a ' university, r or ' throughout Christendom there was
atmosphere not a smgle university wherein the true Christ was to be
university. found , . «.TeU me>' cried Weigel, ' of one? Universities,
Consistories, Councils, are, all alike, the creations of temporal
potentates and inimical to Christ2 ! '
1 Christianae Tlieologiae Libri u work was also translated into Hun-
Methodice Dispositi, perpetua Prae- garian by Prince Michael Apassi.
ceptorummccinctorumetperspicuorum 2 'Ecclesia non est in loco certo,
serie explicati, etc. etc. Studio et opera non in coetibus, neque sibi associat
Hard Friderici Wendelini, Archipa- principes : Nota ejus non sunt verba
latini Gymnasii Anlialtini Bectoris, et sacramenta: Ubi coetus est visi-
Theologiae . et Philosophiae Profes- bilis, ibi vera Ecclesia non est : non
"sorts. 24mo. Amsterdam, 1639. The est purganda Ecclesia, non resisten-
THE ORAT10NES ANTI-WEIGEL1ANAE. 479
It was hardly necessary for the professor, after reading VCHAP.
aloud these extracts, to proceed to their application ; for "sl
among his auditors it may be doubted whether there was a hol"nftythe
single divine who failed to grasp the fact, that the cry so wefegfeH
recently raised by Dell. Webster, and Roger Williams, and «es and that
J J o ' entertained
echoed by their unlettered followers, had now been clearly ^dD0et"er
shewn to be identical with one which had been heard long wnters-
before, in other lands, and that too at centres of learning
famed throughout Europe; and that there and then, the
involved fallacy had been exposed and its chief author
silenced. How far its revival in England may have been the
result of intercourse between Weigel's followers and those
Cambridge exiles, whose presence at Amsterdam, Rotterdam
and Anhalt has already claimed our notice, is a point with
respect to which we have no evidence. Arrowsmith himself, Arrowsmith
prefers to
had he possessed any information to that effect, would £?£/, °{Jey
probably have preferred to be silent about it. For his pur- former-
pose, it was at once more prudent and more effective, to
exhibit the call for the abolition of the universities as
appearing in conjunction with effete fanaticism and exploded
errors, rather than seek to deal with it as it had just re-
appeared,— revived by living contemporaries among his own
countrymen, and by writers who, like Milton, had undoubtedly
succeeded in combining with their argument not a little that
was in full harmony both with Christian doctrine and
apparently sound practical discernment.
With no less tact, the professor had taken occasion, in his The
r . denunciation
first oration, to draw attention to another historical parallel. °^t^ae"h
Just as it had been the worldly wealth, and not the religious ^tte^mmon
belief, of the Huguenot, that had marked him out for denun- wellfeiians
ciation by the desperadoes of Paris, so it was the endowments Monarchy
men.
of the professorships and colleges of Oxford and Cambridge
that had tempted Levellers and Fifth Monarchy men to
propound schemes for the overthrow of the universities
themselves1. That this allegation was no mere rhetorical
dum hereticis. In Academiis ne tan- Epist. Dedieatoria, p. 18; Arrow-
tilla quidem Christi cognitio reperiri smith, Oratio Prima, p. 9.
potest; nulla est in universe orbe * ' Census est qui censuras peperit,
Academia,inquaChristusreperiatur.' ut in Parisiensi laniena Nummus
480 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CS.AP. iv.^ invention on the part of the professor but appealed to a
knowledge of actual facts among his audience, would seem to
be a reasonable inference from an item of evidence presented
in a publication of the contemporary University Press.
Among other features common to the Catharists and the
followers of Weigel, was the communistic doctrine that the
mere accumulation of wealth by the individual was un-
Christian in practice, and its very possession, consequently,
unlawful1; and, some twenty years before Arrowsmith pub-
lished his Orations, a little book had issued from the
Cambridge Press in which such theories were successfully
Thee™™* satirized. The Cuique Suum is a composition in Latin
Suum (1635) . r
modrais elegiacs (occupying only seven pages2) designed to exhibit the
extravagance and impracticability of the Catharist doctrine.
' Philoxenus, the son of Eugenius,' is a prosperous and liber-
ally-disposed owner of an estate, who takes pleasure in
relieving the distress of others, and especially that of the
stranger at his gate, and content to find his reward in the
grateful thanks which his bounty usually elicits. But in the
case of a Catharist whom, unawares, he has one day enter-
tained, he finds himself disappointed, — his charity evoking
nothing but an exhibition of the grossest ingratitude, for
the Catharist, emboldened by the good cheer of which he
has been partaking, turns on his host, and instead of evincing
the sense of indebtedness customary on the part of the way-
worn traveller, endeavours to involve Philoxenus in argument.
He begins by observing that all worldly possessions belong,
rightfully, to God's people. The Catharists are God's people.
And he, as one of them, claims that the wealth of his
entertainer is rightfully his, and calls upon him no longer to
erat pro haeresi, fecitque Hugonotas sect known as the Patarins, see
non Beligio sed opulentia.' Anti- Schmidt (C.), Histoire des Cathares,
Weigeliana, p. 5 : an echo of the n 156.
words of Joseph Sedgwick, two years 2 CUIQUE SUUM. 'ANTflAH contra
before : ' Crimen est Academicis nil Cathari Cantilenam
aliudquamquod | Ditescerevideantur Meummeum:) § (Meumtuum:
et sapere, supra quod par est | Minis- Tuum meum : j ^ | Tuum tuum.
tris(siDeoplacet)Evangelicis.' Lines Cantabrigiae
prefixed to the 'ETTIOTCOTTOS Ai5a/cri/c6s Ex celeberrimae Academiae Typo-
(1653). grapheo:
1 For this tenet in the teaching of Ann. Dom. 1635.
the Catharists, chiefly held by the
THE CUIQUE SUDM. 481
profane it, but to yield up possession1. His host rejoins that, ^CHAP. iv.
if such be the case, his mastiff also belongs to the Catharist ;
but he at the same time invites his attention to the fact that
the dog is already growling surlily at his would-be pro-
prietor2. The Catharist politely retorts that Philoxenus is
the greater hound of the two, and that it is perfectly certain
that the gates of Heaven will never open to either of them3.
Whereupon his host observes that his gate is open, and that,
too, for the Catharist's departure; and that he himself, mean-
while, relies upon Providence to adjudicate upon their
respective claims4.
Although but a straw floating on the surface of the sense of the
gravity of
stream, this tiny volume is a noteworthy indication of the *e 'ate crisis
<* J shewn both
direction in which the current of popular feeling had long an^at0™1
been flowing in the university, until at last it found expres- Cambndse-
sion from the professorial chair. At Cambridge, in 1654, it
seemed, as it did to the world at large, that Providence had
very recently intervened, and with no ambiguous result; and
just as, at Oxford, Seth Ward and Dr Wilkins, in the pre-
ceding year, and John Owen, as Oxford's vice-chancellor, two
years later, were able to exult at the delivery of their
university from the tyranny of the dissolved Parliament5, so
the Cambridge professor, throughout his notable Commence-
ment lectures, found no less cause for congratulation, and was
even able to dwell, with something approaching enthusiasm,
on features that either afforded ground for present satis- Features
3xiv6rt6d
faction or for hope with regard to the future. He could to by
Arrowsnnth
advert to the restoration of ancient sources of revenue to ^r™*"ers
their traditional and legitimate use, — to the fact that the I^SJ™'
Library was at last in possession of Bancroft's splendid afriad^on
bequest (a collection which he affirmed might vie with that shelves.™3
1 Cat. Parcite mortales alienam Nee timet Adami numen
invadere sortem : herile novi.
Dona Dei vetita nee te- 3 Cat, Ipse magis canis es Phi-
merate manu. loxene. Cerium est
2 Phi. Scilicet iste canis tuus est, Haud tibi coelestes posse
ut caetera. Dicat : patere fores. [marg.]
Adlambat sanctos, te Apoc. 22. 15. 2£w oi
dominante, pedes. ictfoes. CuiqueSuum,u.s.
Ecce autem oblatrat; di- 4 In the margin ' Rom. 14. 4.'
ductis rictibus hirrit : B See supra, p. 471.
M. III. 31
482 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. of the Vatican or the Bodleian)1, — to the enlargement of the
Library itself, now affording, by the incorporation of the
Greek schools, adequate reception to the new treasures, and
to the long array of volumes, on especially provided shelves,
Their presenting a spectacle which, in the preceding year, had led
joh^ by J°nn Evelyn to qualify his otherwise somewhat unfavorable
3iTAu«.:i654. impression of the Library at large2. Like Joseph Sedgwick,
aVv^es tueh h°wever3> Arrowsmith pleaded for the laying aside of strife,
comroversy and the advice of the veteran was added to that of the newly
enlisted combatant. The one had advocated peace with the
Town, the other now counselled amity with Oxford, and more
especially the cessation of the ancient feud between the two
universities with respect to their comparative antiquity4.
Sir Simonds D'Ewes had been dead some years, not having
long survived his expulsion from the House by Colonel Pride;
and the professor was probably not unaware that the theory
maintained by the departed antiquary was indefensible.
Let these two venerable societies, he says, remember only
that both alike are ornaments of the Church and the State,
and still rightly to be regarded as such, notwithstanding the
He denies slur recently cast by 'certain chatterers' on the subject of
of the evancy liberal education. Like Sedgwick, he affirms the generally
language of . ... . . . '
the early high status of morality and discipline in both universities :
Reformers ° J
condition! at ^ne colleges in each are seminaries of virtue and learning ;
Cambridge*! the academic chairs, bulwarks of the Truth; the chapels,
1 ' Si quid enim valuissent minae, about 50 less than at Oxford,
vota, conatus quorundam maleferia- 2 ' The Public Librarie but meane,
torum, nostra jamdudum Trqja in tho' somewhat improv'd by the wain-
segetem, Alma Mater vel in umbram, scotting and books lately added by
vel in Novercam transisset; quae Bp. Bancroft's Library and MSS.'
tamen hodie per singularem Dei Evelyn's Diary (1818), i 281; see also
gratiam, Ordinisque Senatorii benig- Willis-Clark, in 27-28.
nitatem, antiquis gavisus latifundiis, 3 See supra, p. 448.
novaque ditescens bibliotheca Vati- 4 '...neque enim moror inutilem
canae Bodleianaeve aemula, magno- illam de Antiquitate controversiam ;
rum insuper Comitiorum celebritate faxit Deus ut antiquetur, utque
splendescit ; et advenas amicis ulnis, omni praecisa simultatis materia,
gremiales materno complectens sinu, utraque sit turn ipsis mutuo, turn
de formosaquidemsubole, licet parum bonis omnibus antiquissima. Sunto
fortasse numerosa, non immodeste gemellae, sorores saltern uterinae, de
gloriatur.' Oratio i, p. 1. In 1655, quibus meritd dicatur ut olim de Lea
Mr Venn's Chart shews the Matricu- et Kahele, Extruxerunt ambae de-
lations to have been 255, a slight mum Israelis.' Oratio i 3.
increase on the preceding years, but
THE ORATIONES ANTI-WEIGELIANAE. 483
homes of piety ; the museums, anvils whereon to fashion the VCHA.P.
acquirement of true scientific knowledge. And to apply to
either university the language used by Luther or Beza with
respect to the universities of their time, would be like taking
ensample from the burning of the books of the magicians by
the Christians at Ephesus, as a precedent for giving the
literary treasures of Oxford and Cambridge to the flames1.
With a fervent prayer, that the university may henceforth
approve itself so strenuous in the maintenance of the Truth,
that ' ere long it may be easier to find a wolf in England, or a
toad in Ireland, than a Socinian, an Arminian, or a Weigelian,
in Cambridge,' the lecturer brings his third oration to a close2.
The conclusion of peace in the preceding year had diffused
among nearly all parties the hope that calmer years awaited Holland-
a troubled realm ; and while the Regius professor could
venture thus to aspire to conditions which would result in
the cessation of theological warfare, all sections of the uni-
versity had combined to congratulate the Protector on the
restoration of pacific relations between the nation and its
great naval rival. The contributors to the Oliva Pads9, how- ^^liv
ever, could hardly be expected to exhibit much originality
in connexion with a topic, suggestive, indeed, of much that
redounded to their country's fame, but associated, as regarded
the university itself, chiefly with diminished revenues and
domestic privation. Their verses, accordingly, are chiefly
remarkable for their monotonous reiteration of the well-worn
theme, the essential superiority of the British navy. And
even Duport, while contributing, as in duty bound, some
stately Latin hexameters4, found more congenial employment
for his Muse, in a contemporary jeu d 'esprit, wherein, taking
refuge in elegiacs, he recalled how the late war had diverted
1 'Perinde fecerit qui de nostris lendam.' Oratioiibid.
ista depraedicaverit, ac si quis ex eo 2 Oratio m 26.
colligeret libros omnes igni tradendos, 8 Oliva Pacis ad illustrissimum cel-
quod Ephesi magicos comburebant sissimumq. Oliverum Reipub. Angliae
Christian!. Eant, inquam, et res Scotiae & Hiberniae Dominum Protec-
suas sibi haheant quorum oculis ut- torem de Pace cum Foederatis Belgis
pote morbo laborantibus invisa sunt feliciter sancita Carmen Cantabrigi-
aded firmamenti Anglican! duo lu- ense. Cantabrigiae : ex celeberrimae
minaria, ut eclipsin illis minitantur Academiae Typographeo. A.D. 1654.
nulla unquam lucis usura repel- 4 Musae Subsecivae, pp. 336-7.
31—2
484
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP,
Cromwell's
Ordinance
for the
Visitation
of the
Universities :
2 Sept. 1654.
His
endeavour
to institute a
more com-
prehensive
standard of
Orthodoxy :
Nov. 1654.
the supply of coal, or, as he humorously expressed it, how
Bellona, in lighting her torch, had managed to put out the
kitchen fire and almost extinguished the household lamp : —
Interea friget bello fervente culina,
Dum venit a Castro vix ratis ulla Novo.
Vix ollae & suus ignis adest, licet aspera flammas
Bellona atque faces spargat utique suas.
Carbonum Batavus commercia tollere tentat,
Proque arts Anglus dimicat atque focis1.
The Protector himself, on the other hand, appears to
have discerned in the changed aspect of affairs an auspicious
juncture for bringing forward a highly important measure
in connexion with both Oxford and Cambridge, — the
appointment of a Commission 'for the carrying on and
perfecting of the Reformation and Regulation' of each
university, — described by him as 'a work very much con-
ducing to the glory of God and the public good2.' Two
months later, a sub-committee of the Grand Committee for
Religion was appointed for the purpose of arriving, if
possible, at some conclusion with regard to a certain standard
of orthodoxy, — a task which the larger body had already
essayed, but without arriving at any satisfactory agreement,
— and also instructed ' to draw up in terminis the funda-
mentals of religion3,' the latter to serve as a test in relation
to Cromwell's newly conceived scheme of Toleration.
1 Musae Subsecivae, p. 258.
2 Scobell, Ordinances, n 394.
According to Anthony Wood, the
project originated in a suggestion
made by Thomas Goodwin, the former
pastor of the church at Arnheim
(see supra, p. 441) but now president
of Magdalen College, Oxford. It was
accordingly regarded with suspicion
by John Owen, who, though also an
Independent, ' was of a different
school from Goodwin, and had been
superseded by him in Cromwell's
favour.' Burrows, Register, Introd.
p. Ixxix ; Wood, Annals, n 661. Owen
appears to have inclined to Arminian-
ism. It is to be noted that Cromwell's
Ordinance ushered in Oxford's third
Visitation, — the first having lasted
from March 164£ to 13th April 1652 ;
the second from 15th June 1652
(although nothing was done until
June 20, 1653) to Sept. 1654, being,
according to Burrows (u.s. p. 400),
under the ' stringent direction ' of
Owen ; while the third, with which
we are now concerned, lasted from
Sept. 1654 to April 1658, and was
chiefly under the influence of Good-
win, and, towards its termination,
that of Conant.
8 See Shaw (W. A.), Hist, of the
English Church, etc. n 84-6. Dr
Shaw considers that ' Owen's fun-
damentals in 1654 were practically
the same as in the proposals of Feb-
ruary 1652,' and as those 'which
occur finally in the Savoy congrega-
tional profession of 1658.' Ibid.
n87-8.
VISITATION OF THE UNIVERSITIES. 485
Although neither of these important measures was ^CHAP. IV\
destined to become actually operative, whether as a modifi-
cation of education and discipline at the universities or of
religious belief throughout the nation, they are equally
deserving of careful consideration as embodying a very
noteworthy effort to bring to a definite termination those
controversies which had so long been disquieting the con-
science of the educated divine, on the one hand, and that of
the devout although illiterate layman, on the other. When HU design
' . compared
dispassionately considered, indeed, it would seem that the vJ^'-it °f
design of the Protector had much in common with that of ofiiud!
Whitgift and that of Laud; but while each of these
eminent Churchmen had sought to put an end to dissension
by processes which inevitably gave rise, in turn, to further
questionings and demurs, it was Cromwell's cherished per-
suasion that, by requiring from the loyal subject a general
assent only to those essential doctrines of the Faith which
might be said to have remained unchallenged, save by
extreme fanaticism, throughout the history of the Church,
the State itself might be enabled to ignore those minor
divergencies with respect to belief or ritual, of which nine-
tenths of the existing sects might be said to be the outcome.
How far such extended latitude of belief could safely be Difficulties
. ... involved
conceded, — that is to say, without giving rise, when all in the.
• ' constitution
deterrent influences had thus been withdrawn, to a yet greater gl^? two
multiplication of sects than before, — was the question that mi
awaited the coming generation. For the present, the two
Commissions and the prolonged excitement to which they
gave rise in both universities, demand our attention, not
only as affording a useful illustration of the difficulties which
invariably beset the effective working of measures, but also
as requiring us somewhat to qualify the representations of
those writers who have depicted the condition of both Oxford
and Cambridge during the Protectorate as one of exceptional
immunity from all forms of contention1.
1 ' The result ' [of the Ordinance] interruption of their old routine by
'was that the two Universities were the Civil War.' Masson, v 73. See
now in better and quieter order than also Neal, Hist, of the Puritans (ed.
they had been since the first stormy 1822), rv 111-112.
486
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
The chief
external
Visitors at
Oxford,
and at
Cambridge.
The distinctive feature of each Commission, as compared
with previous bodies created for a like purpose, was the in-
clusion of most of the available Heads of Houses, — those
dignitaries being appointed, moreover, not merely to act as
assessors, but with power themselves to take the initiative in
instituting enquiries and with the fullest discretion in con-
ducting the same1; while, from their superior knowledge of
facts, as residents, they had necessarily a great advantage over
what may be termed the external element in each Commission.
As regarded the latter, neither university had much reason
for apprehensions like those which had before been evoked
by the ' nominated Parliament.' Oxford, for example, could
regard with equanimity the appearance of my Lord Saye and
Sele2 and his son, Nathanael Fiennes3; any alarm that might
have been occasioned by the name of Humphry Mack worth (the
elder) was ended by his death and interment in Westminster
Abbey, before the Commission had well commenced its
work ; Bulstrode Whitelock, ' learned Bulstrode,' as Carlyle
terms him, was still commissioner of the great seal, and,
along with George Fleetwood, the regicide, might be relied
upon to do just as much as, and no more than, might be
pleasing to Oxford's chancellor. At Cambridge4, again, the
name of her chancellor, Oliver St John (Cromwell's relative
by marriage), and that of his son, the lord Henry Cromwell,
1 The ' Visitors ' were to 'have, use
and exercise all and every the like
powers, authorities and jurisdictions
as any person or persons heretofore
appointed Visitors of either of the
said Universities, or of any Colledge
or Colledges, Hall or Halls within
the same, or which any Visitor or
Visitors now have, or heretofore had
and lawfully used and exercised by
force or vertue of any law, statute,
ordinance, custom, Commission,
patent or foundation of any college
or Hall respectively ' (Scobell, Ordi-
nances, n 366 and 394). Of the Oxford
external Visitors, Wood ventures to
assert that, living as they did, ' some
near and some remote from ' the uni-
versity, 'they were utterly ignorant
for a considerable time whether they
were in the Ordinance or not ' (Wood-
Gutch, n 661). It is also to be noted
that as the number of the external
and resident Visitors was equal
(thirteen in each case) and ' seven
or more ' might constitute a quorum,
the probability of the Heads being
usually in amajority was considerable.
2 William Fiennes, first Viscount
Saye and Sele (1582-1662), known
among his contemporaries as ' Old
Subtlety.' See Professor Firth's ac-
count of him in the D. N. B. xvm
433-6. 'At New College,' say its
historians, his lordship's ' younger
sons had already begun to live upon
the College.' Eashdall and Bait,
New College, p. 179.
3 D. N. B. xvm 430-2. Nathanael
had been educated at Winchester
and New College.
4 Cooper, Annals, m 461.
VISITATION OF THE UNIVERSITIES. 487
together with those of John Lambert, John Thurloe (whose .CHAP, iv.
influence was well known to stand high at court1), and Francis
Rous, must have appeared little less than guarantees that the
Protector's wishes would be paramount. The Heads, on the i>fo-
A advantage
other hand, although they could regard with equanimity the ™edyer wllich
amount of pressure likely to be brought to bear upon them wh
in any course of action upon which they might determine,
must also have been conscious that their probable superiority element.
in numerical strength at each formal session of the Commis-
sion, could only be asserted by the maintenance of unanimity
among themselves, and this, it was doubtless foreseen, was
likely to prove a somewhat precarious element. For, even
supposing that the external Visitors would be content with
no more assertion of their powers than, as we have seen,
Charles Hotham was disposed to attribute to ' Cecil, Cook,
and Haddon,' in connexion with the Elizabethan Statutes2, it The com-
missioners
must have been evident, from the first, that the amount of j^^f6^,
contentious business which would devolve upon the entire eluting
Commission would be far greater in 1654 than it had been anTcSiiege
, _ w ~ « ,i • , • IT i ,1 i statutes but
in 1570. seeing that it involved not merely a thorough also to
. . „ . . interpret
scrutiny of the existing statutes of the university and the difficulties
* J and arbitrate
colleges, with a view to their revision and amendment, but ^eMies
also the drawing up of such new statutes as might appear Jhlrefrom.
to be necessary ' for the better ordering and government of
the said university, in matters of religion, maners, discipline
and exercises,' — the interpretation, moreover, of ' such statutes
of any of the said colledges or halls, as being ambiguous or
obscure, should be offered unto them for that purpose,' —
and, finally, the acting as arbiters in any unsettled contro-
1 Baillie, in referring to a dis- the following terms: 'I think Mr
cussion at a ' Facultie meeting' at Thurloe would doe weell, as a stranger
Glasgow, describes Patrick Gillespie to our nation and our affairs, and, at
as warmly pressing ' the expedience such a distance, unable to be duly
of having a courtier Chancellor of informed of many things passing
our Universitie,' and suggesting that among us, in a letter to us, to signifie
1 Thurloe was fittest.' Letter to his unwillingness to continue longer
William Spang, 11 Nov. 1658. Letters under that title of our Chancellor,
(ed. 1841-2), m 386. Baillie, how- which Mr Gillespie did put on him,
ever, declared himself as ' against alone for a trick, to serve his own
all English flesh ' ; notwithstanding designes. ' Letter to Mr James Sharp,
which, Thurloe was elected chan- 10 March 1660. Ibid, ra 399.
cellor of Glasgow a few months later, 2 See supra, p. 410.
a result deplored by the professor in
488 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. versies arising out of defects or ambiguities in the existing
codes both of the university and of the colleges1. It was
consequently evident that, apart from the question of ex-
ternal criticism and intervention, there was considerable risk
of internal disagreement, especially if the Head of one college
were to be called upon, in conjunction with other Heads, to
examine the statutes of another foundation and to arbitrate
with respect to the meaning of any passages in the same, —
thus assuming the function of an ordinary Visitor,
opposition At Oxford, accordingly, we find that, as early as the 5th
oxford to February 1654, a meeting was convened at the 'lodgings' of
the proposed J
the'ri£nts0f *ne Provost °f Queen's College2, and a series of proposals
vfiSt°orsfe brought forward 'to be offered to the Visitors/ as bearing
upon matters wherein the petitioners considered 'the
interests, liberties and privileges of the University to be
very much concerned.' Among these proposals was one in
which it was urged, ' that the power of these Visitors do not
extend to such Houses as have local Visitors of their own,
fitly qualified to exercise that power with which they are
intrusted by the statutes of those Houses ' ; while, in another,
it was ' desired ' that ' the Commission to be granted to such
Visitors' should be ' limited to a time certain, so as to continue
for one year, and no longer3.' It was not, however, until four
years later that either Commission, with its abortive labours,
was finally brought to a conclusion, either at Oxford or at
Cambridge, under circumstances hereafter to be noted.
1 'As also to hear, examine, decide supporter of episcopacy and had been
and determine all and every such a staunch opponent of the Visitation
controversie and controversies by or of 1648. On his death (5 Feb. 1657),
upon any appeal or appeals, which he was succeeded by his friend
shall be brought before them by any Thomas Barlow, the librarian of the
person or persons being a member Bodleian. Langbaine himself was
of the said university, or of any keeper of the University archives, and
students or scholars within the same, it is probable that Queen's College
or any of the said colledges or halls, is indebted to these two distinguished
which are not clearly determinable Heads for the exceptionally complete
by the statutes of such respective state of its Registers throughout this
colledge or hall, or of the said uni- period. Life of Langbaine inD.N.B.
versities respectively.' Scobell, Ordi- (xxxn 91), by Dr J. R. Magrath,
nances, n 366; Cooper, Annals, m Provost of Queen's College (to whom
462. the author is also under obligation
2 Gerard Langbaine, the elder, who for information privately communi-
had been elected Provost 11 March cated) ; Burrows, Register, pp. Ixxxii,
1645, on the death of Christopher Ixxxiii, Ixxxvii.
Potter. He was a zealous loyalist and 3 Wood-Gutch, n 663-4.
WALTON'S POLYGLOT. 489
A lull in controversial contests appears to have followed CHAP. iv.
upon the appointment of the Commissions, — which may Decline of
perhaps be partially attributable to a disposition to await troversiai
the results by which their investigations might be attended, 1655-
and still more those which should follow upon the promul-
gation, in the following February, of Cromwell's famous
Proclamation1. As the year advanced, a bounteous harvest, —
according to Fuller, 'as plentiful as any memory could
parallel ' and ' wanting only grateful hearts for the same,'
— further tended to produce a spirit of contentment through-
out the land, while he himself now brought his Church
History to a close, with his History of the University of
Cambridge appended thereto. Others, in like manner, for- p^uctions
saking controversy, betook themselves to more profitable Cambridge at
labours. The University Press printed for Holstenius his where.86"
Latin version of Porphyry, and for Isaac Barrow his edition
of Euclid2; Francis Junius, who had retired to Friesland,
brought out at Amsterdam his edition of Caedmon; while
William Bancroft, still at Fressingfield, was editing for the
press the collation of the Vulgate with the Greek text which
John Bois of St John's had undertaken, a quarter of a
century before, at the suggestion of Andrewes3. But the
work which, at this time, was chiefly absorbing the energies
of Cambridge scholars was one that, both in its conception WALTON'S
and by the self-denying spirit in which it was carried on, offered
a striking contrast to the predominant literature of previous
years, — serving, as it did, silently to recall to the conscious-
ness of the religious world, that Christianity was, after all,
primarily designed to be a centralizing, beneficent, and
harmonizing influence among mankind. It was at the Com-
mencement of 1655, that John Lightfoot, in delivering the
customary oration which accompanied the resignation of his
office as vice-chancellor, took occasion to pay a well-deserved
1 See supra, p. 472. 12mo.
3 Euclidis Elementorum Libri xv 3 ' The renderings of the Vulgate
breviter demonstrati, Opera Is. Bar- are in the main defended, but Bois
row, Cantabrigiensis Coll. Trin. Soc. frequently proposes more exact trans-
Cantabrigiae. Impensis Guilielmi lations of his own, both Latin and
Nealand, Bibliopolae. A.D. 1655. English. See D. N. B. v 313.
49Q
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
BRIAN
WALTOK :
6. 1600 (?).
d. 1661.
Matric.
Magdalene
College,
4 July 1614.
Adni. sizar at
Peterliouse
1619.
M. A. 1623.
His
prospectus
of the
Polyglot,
tribute to the labours of Brian Walton and his coadjutors in
connexion with their famous Polyglot. His cheering words
were all the more welcome, in that it had, at one time,
seemed doubtful whether those painful scholars would be
able to bring their vast design to a successful accomplish-
ment. But the first two volumes had now appeared, and it
was in tones of hope, and even confidence, that the orator
urged on the translators to the completion of an enterprise
' whereby they were rendering the Scriptures accessible to
half the nations of the world and to each in its own tongue,
and thereby, at the same time, rearing a monument to
themselves and to their country1.'
Prior to the year 1652, Walton had been chiefly known
by his researches in the history of Tithe, and neither Magda-
lene, whence he matriculated, nor Peterhouse, whither he
migrated, appears to have preserved any facts of interest
relating to their meritorious alumnus. In the above year,
however, he issued a prospectus, along with a specimen
sheet, of his proposed undertaking2. Selden was foremost
in the expression of his approval3, Ussher pledged himself
to hearty cooperation ; and Cromwell gave order that ' the
work was to go on without let or hindrance,' and that
the costly paper, which would have to be imported from
1 'Opus aeternae famae, monu-
mentum memorabile in sempiterna
xecula futurum summae eruditionis,
zeli, et in Deo bonarum literarum
protectore fiduciae Cleri Anglican!,
jam turn summe periclitantis. Macti
estote, viri venerandi et doctissimi,
qui in opere tarn magnanimo desu-
datis. Pergite, quod facitis, tropaea
vobis erigere, patriaeque ; et perlegant
ope vestra omnes gentes Sacra Biblia
suis linguis; atque iisdem linguis
eadem opera praedicentur fama eru-
ditionis et literatura gentis Angli-
canae.' Preces et Oratio Domini
Johannis Lightfoot, S. T. P. qui-
buscum Solennia Academiae Canta-
brigiensis Comitia auspicatus est Anno
Salutis, MDCLV. Lightfoot-Pitman,
v395.
2 A Brief Description of an Edition
of the Bible in the Original Hebrew,
Samaritan, and Greek, with the most
ancient Translations of the Jewish
and Christian Churches, viz. the Sept.
Greek, Chaldee, Syriac, Ethiopic,
Arabic, Persian, etc. and the Latin
Versions of them all; a new Appa-
ratus, etc. See Todd (Rev. H. J.),
Memoirs of the Life and Writings of
the Eight Rev. Brian Walton (1821),
i 32-46. A copy of the Propositions
which followed the Prospectus is pre-
served in the library of Sidney Sussex
College, and is probably earlier than
that in the British Museum. See
Ibid, i 46, n. r.
3 Selden, says Walton's biographer,
' signed with archbishop Ussher, the
forcible letter in recommendation of
it [the Polyglot]. He was one of those
who were to be consulted in the pro-
gress of the work. He supplied the
editor with what his valuable library
afforded.' Ibid, i 316.
WALTON'S POLYGLOT. 491
Auvergne, should be admitted duty free1. Although, there- ,CHAP.
fore, in 1655 all royalists were required to quit the capital2,
Walton and his coadjutors continued to carry on their
labours there without interruption. Among them, Ussher
was especially distinguished by the ardour with which he
threw himself into the work, while he was enabled, at the
same time, to render lasting service to the cause of Biblical
studies, generally, by his sound judgement in estimating,
more dispassionately than most preceding scholars had done,
the extent to which such studies could be subserved by a
knowledge of the Semitic languages3. But early in the neathof
following year, the great scholar, — scarcely more famed for Marc
his acquirements than for his readiness to impart his know-
ledge4, on whom Parliament, to its honour, had bestowed a
pension and to whom Richelieu had offered one, — was borne
to his tomb in Westminster Abbey; and his valuable library,
being soon after purchased by the State and presented to
Trinity College, Dublin, became in a great measure lost to
English scholars8. Ussher's place among the translators was ™
taken by Thorndike, who, with the design of associating himself x
more directly with the work, would appear to have taken up
his residence in London as early as 1652. He was at this
time in exceptionally straitened circumstances, for the ' fifth '
to which he was entitled from his former living of Barley
seems not to have been paid him before 1656, while a
charitable dole which he received from his own college of
Trinity ceased to be granted after 16546, and he had con-
1 Carlyle-Lomas, in 286-7. fluence of Dudley Loftus, the jurist,
2 Gardiner, u.s. m 166. one of the most enthusiastic
3 Walton, according to his bio- among the cooperators in the work
grapher, placed Ussher at ' the head connected with the Polyglot and
of his literary benefactors.' See grandson of Adam Loftus, archbishop
Todd's Life of Walton, i 182. of Dublin, would not fail to be
4 ' ...cui inter alias virtutes haec exerted to give effect to Ussher's
propria laus erat nil proprium habere, wishes. See Todd, Ibid, i 248-251.
sed ex effusa bonitate omnia in Beip. 6 The Conclusion Book of Trinity
Literariae bonum communicare.' College shews that he had been
Ibid, i 182 n. annually in receipt of a small gra-
5 According to Dr Bichard Parr, tuity from that society, of which
Ussher himself had originally in- the final payment, made in 1654,
tended to present his great collection is entered as ' his ultimum vale. '
to the College. See Parr, Life of Thorndike-Haddan, vi 213, n. m;
Ussher, pp. 10-11 ; Edwards, Me- see also 127, n. a.
moirs of Libraries, n 48. The in-
492 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. sequently become dependent almost entirely on the generosity
of Lord Scudamore supplemented by occasional aid from his
special own brother. On the other hand, his cooperation must have
qualifica- -1
iatteVforhe Deen especially serviceable to Walton, for Cambridge was far
the task. better known to Thorndike than it had been to Ussher, and
the former was also in correspondence with the ablest
scholars and most esteemed theologians of the country,
with Lightfoot and with Pocock, and with Sheldon and
William Sancroft; while there were not a few who, widely
as they differed from him on Church questions, sympathised
with the distinguished scholar whom the Puritan soldiery
had so rudely thrust aside from the mastership of Sidney in
order to make way for the incapable Minshull. The genuine
interest felt by Thorndike in the great undertaking with
which he had become associated was, again, unquestionable,
and he was perhaps the best linguist among all of Walton's
whe'eiock coadjutors, — certainly so, after that Wheelock, the university
sept less!' librarian, had been removed by death and could no longer be
sought out in 'the obscure and litle cell, free from bitter
taunts and checks,' wherein he had been wont to find a
refuge from his persecutors1. The high value of Castell's
services was equally unquestionable (although he does not
appear to have been one of the correcting Committee) and
his Heptaglot Lexicon afterwards formed a valuable sup-
plement to the Polyglot. Thomas Smith of Christ's, the
translator of Daille", was however a member of the Committee ;
while, if the sister university could only claim to share with
Cambridge the credit attaching to the labours of John
Viccars2 and David Stokes3, those of Thomas Greaves (a
brother of the Gresham professor) and Edward Pocock, her
two most eminent Orientalists, were the outcome of Oxford
training alone.
The unprecedented commercial success4 that attended
1 Todd, u.s. i 233. 3 Of Trinity College and subse-
2 John Viccars of Christ's College, quently fellow of Peterhouse : M.A.
B.A. 1622; M.A. Lincoln College, 1618; incorporated at Oxford 1645.
Oxford, 1625. To be distinguished 4 As early as May 1653, Dr Walton
from the John Vicars, the Presby- informed Thomas Greaves that sub-
terian, satirized in Hudibras. scriptions amounting to £9000 had
WALTON'S POLYGLOT. 493
the publication of the ' Great Bible,' as it was frequently CHAP. iv.
termed, the tall folio volumes of which constituted, for loner success that
0 attended the
afterwards, a prominent feature in our cathedral libraries, 10f$£rs
was accompanied, after the Restoration, by fitting recognition Translators-
of the labours of those among the translators themselves
who survived to receive church preferment or substantial
recompense1. But any expectation of such reward, it may
safely be asserted, was hardly an appreciable element in their
purpose in entering upon that protracted toil, and the tribute
paid to their memory, two centuries later, by one who,
throughout life, himself laboured in a like spirit, seems almost
an echo of the eulogy pronounced by John Lightfoot at the
Commencement of 1655. ' A work,' says Thorndike's bio- Haddan-s
J eulogiuiu.
grapher, 'which a century and a half earlier had required
the resources of a Ximenes, with the whole power and wealth
of the great and intellectual Spanish Kingdom of his time,
and the munificence of the most munificent of Popes, Leo the
Tenth, to back him, — which had at a later time formed a
design worthy of being undertaken at the charge of the King
of Spain himself, — and which but a few years before had
taxed the then pre-eminent learning of Parisian scholars,
aided and thwarted alternately by the powerful patronage of
a Richelieu, — was accomplished in England by the efforts of
a small band of private divines, labouring under all the
disadvantages which the late civil war, and the ruin of the
English Church, and poverty, and religious strife, could heap
upon them, and assisted only by the generous and (for
England at the time) unprecedented aid of private sub-
scribers, and by a scanty boon and a questionable patronage
at the hands of the usurping powers2.'
already been promised. Twells, Life of Canterbury, 1667; Thorndike,
of Pocock, sec. 3. The subscrip- prebendary of Westminster, 1661;
tion price, £10, was, as Mr Purnell Lightfoot, prebendary of Ely, 1667 ;
observes, a good investment, for the Thomas Greaves, prebendary of Peter-
price soon rose to £50. Magdalene borough, 1666; and David Stokes,
College, p. 95. who was restored, within a few
1 Among those who thus reaped a months of the Bestoration, both to
reward, the chief were; — Walton him- his fellowship at Eton and his
self, consecrated bishop of Chester, canonry at Windsor.
Dec. 1660 ; Castell, appointed pro- 2 Haddan (A. W.), Life of Thorn-
fessor of Arabic, 1666, prebendary dike, in Thorndike-Haddan, vi 203-4.
494 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. iv. It is in connexion with Walton's Polyglot that we are
presented with a noteworthy illustration of the interest
which the progress of events in the two English universities
was exciting in the universities north the Tweed, and this,
more especially, now that Presbyterianism, dominant for a
time both in Oxford and Cambridge, began to find its
supremacy challenged, in turn, by the growing strength of
the Independents. Among the many divines in Scotland
by whom the conflict in England was carefully watched,
ROBEBT there was no shrewder observer than Robert Baillie, at this
BAILLIB:
di662 time professor of divinity at Glasgow and subsequently
Principal of that university, while his judgement in relation
to the main questions involved was not a little aided by the
fact that he was also exceptionally well informed with respect
to the corresponding struggle in process in the United Pro-
wiiiiam vinces. His cousin. William Spang, who had been educated
sPang: . '
d 1664, at Glasgow, had long been resident in that country as a
minister to Scotch congregations ; first at the 'Staple Port' at
Campvere in Holland, and subsequently at Middelburg in
Sondecn°ce Zeeland. The cousins frequently exchanged letters ; and in
with spang, ^heir correspondence they confided to each other, with remark-
able frankness, their impressions of the religious tendencies
in the two countries in which their respective lots were cast.
It was from Baillie's letters, almost exclusively, that the
minister at Campvere compiled his account of affairs in
Scotland in 1637 and 16381; while it was from Spang that
the professor at Glasgow mainly derived his knowledge of
the details of the contests which were going on in the United
Provinces. He was deeply concerned to hear how the best
HIS letter, learning of that land of scholarly culture was becoming
15 July 1641, ,,,. A ,„,, £ j i-
lamenting absorbed in controversy. As early as Io41, we nna mm
the time J
Scholars of e writing as follows : ' I wish how you could finde a way to get
p'ro^inc^to your great men sett on a profitable studie: a pitie that
contioveTsy. Salmasius, Vossius, and Heinsius should so trifle their
1 BrevisetfidelisNarratioMotuum good and clean Latin; but he dis-
in Regno et Ecclesia Scotica excerpta covers himself in it, a most zealous
ex scriptis utriusque partis scitu dig- champion of presbytery. ' SeeLaing's
nissimis. Per Irinaeum Philalethen. Appendix to Baillie's Letters, etc.
Dantisci, Anno 1640. ' A piece of m cxv.
ROBERT BAILLIE. 495
dayes about toyes : I think Dr Rivett, if he laid it to heart, .CHAP, iv.
could move the Prince and State, or else the Curatores
Academiae, or the provinciall Synods, or all of them, to
interceed, so farr as their pressing request or authoritie or
rewards could goe, to have these great spirits sett on work
on those things which are most profitable for the Reformed
Churches, especially to vindicate antiquitie from the hands
of Baronius and other Papists1.' Two years later, we find Ijun^iws
him writing, ' I wish you would send to the College Voetius's fhlfworks
Theses, and all that comes from that man or your divines °
there2.' What he found in Voetius appears to have con- TO same,
10 Aug. 1644,
vinced him that the method advocated by that eminent ™?4d525 APF-
teacher was the right one, and he now strongly urged that it f^Sjfprofai
should be adopted as the weapon wherewith to fight that method!"8 ''
portentous demand for ' a universall libertie for all religions '
which he declares 'the sectaries press most3.' and particularly
against the doctrines of Erastus, — ' most of the House of Com-
mons,' he writes in 1645, ' are downright Erastians4,' — and in
the following year he published his own tractate, A Dissuasive
from the Err ours of the Time5, denouncing the sectaries, and
more especially the Independents. On the other hand, it
was with grave concern that he learned that Voetius had
spoken with approval of Cotton's Keys of the Kingdom of
Heaven, as ' consonant to truth and to the discipline of Hoi- TO same,
land.' ' He will wrong himself, and us and all the Reformed
Churches6 ! ' he wrote ; although he was none the less moved
when he learned that Lazarus Seaman had been heard to
say in the Assembly, that ' Voetius was but one man, and
the classis of Walcheren but one classis7.' To some, how-
ever, it may possibly appear, that the worthy professor's
pious horror and fervid denunciations of schism and diver-
gencies of religious opinion elsewhere, would have carried
greater weight, if Glasgow itself had not, at this very time,
1 Baillie (Robt.), Letters and Jour- of the Time; wherein the Tenets of
nals (u.s.), i 357-8. the Principall Sects, especially of the
2 Ibid, n 72. See also supra, Independents, are drawn together in
p. 427, n. 2. a Map. 164$.
3 Ibid, ii 218. 6 Letters and Journals, n 240.
4 Ibid, n 265. f n^d. n 165.
5 A Dissuasive from the Errours
496 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. been deeply agitated by the fierce intolerance which found
expression in connexion with the notable Act of Classes, of
which Gardiner ventures to say, that ' Pride's Purge was less
drastic1.'
In 1649 we find Baillie approaching Voetius himself, in a
rr &
Voetius, . .
13 Apr. 1649. brief Latin letter couched in highly complimentary terms,
but expressive of little more than the writer's earnest hope
that the indefatigable teacher of Utrecht may be blessed with
length of days, so that ' his light may continue to shine aloft
to dissipate the darkness in which Independents, Anabap-
tists, and other sectaries are ever seeking to involve the
religious world in Britain2.' But in 1655, when Descartes
himself was no more, the professor addressed to his honoured
teachers' correspondent a second letter, also in Latin but of much
especially of greater length and of considerable importance, in which
Descartes, & 6
wmto^Sf he takes occasion strongly to deprecate 'that perverted
n°ewhand tendency (cacoethes) which appears to be spreading in the
compendium schools of Protestantism,1 wherein, he asserts, that, so far as
philosophy1 his information goes, the traditional teaching, whether of the
for use m the . & .
universities, arts or of philosophy, is no longer characterized by that
scrupulous care and precision so essential to the dignity alike
of the instructor and the subject, while the text-books of the
Jesuits are the only ones to be found in the hands of the
students. 'False teachers,' he goes on to say, 'are ever
seeking to lead astray the minds of their disciples,' and ' you
yourself well know what was the design which that misguided
heretic, Descartes, was seeking to carry into effect under the
cover of his new and improved philosophy3,' and he thereupon
proceeds to insist that it is a matter of primary importance
for the Reformed Churches, that an 'orthodox, solid, lucid
compendium of philosophy, strictly systematic, both as
1 Commonwealth and Protectorate, Anabaptistae, Chiliastae, Antinomi-
1 16 and 233. See also Laing (D.), ani, caeteraque Sectariorum turba
Life of Robert Baillie, in Letters nostrae Britanniae coelum maximo
and Journals of same, m Ixvii-lxxi. jamnisuobscuraremoliuntur.' Ibid.
2 ' ... non eos tantum errorum ni 104.
fumos quibus Pontificii, Arminiani 3 ' Probe nosti quae fatuus haereti-
et Sociniani vestras pro viribus ec- cus Cartesius sub novae suae et
clesias offuscare conantur, sed illas perfections philosophiae velo molitus
etiamtenebrasquibuslndependentes, est.' Ibid, m 268.
ROBERT BAILLIE. 497
regards the text and the quaestiones appended thereto, should JCHAP.
be compiled for use in all the universities1.' ' But amid the
clouds that envelope our churches and colleges alike, at the
present time,' he adds, ' I see no hope of such a work being
produced either in England or in France ; our only hope is
in you2.' In Glasgow, he adds, all studious minds are longing
to welcome another volume of his correspondent's Disputa-
tions3. Voetius, in his reply, is not less outspoken than V3°^s
Baillie himself, nor is his tone more hopeful. Everything tn\uputrecht'
at Utrecht is in a doubtful and transitional state; and if condition^
Scotland, with its four universities, is unable to produce an Twant 8U(
authoritative manual of the kind that his correspondent cartesian
doctrines
desiderates, there is still less chance of such a work appear- *™ fad?ng
ing in Belgium where Cartesianism is making rapid progress.
Its doctrines have already been espoused by many, while a
still larger number, although not formally enlisted in their
support, have become immersed in controversies of which
they would otherwise have never dreamed, and he intimates
that the faculty of theology at Utrecht has recently passed
through a highly perilous crisis in connexion with these
questions. ' But should the tempest pass by, and new, foolish
and petulant philosophasters no longer be intruded into
academic chairs,' — he is evidently thinking of Regius and
Reneri4, — 'it is not impossible that Utrecht may then be able
to confer with other universities on the whole question of
remodelling their entire course of philosophy5.' It is certain,
1 ' Profecto non parum interest 269.
Ecclesiis Reformatis, utorthodoxum, 4 See supra, pp. 429-430.
solidum, et perspicuum philosophiae 5 ' Si enim vestrarum quatuor Aca-
corpus, tarn systematicum quam demiarum tarn praeclarum institutum
textuale et quaestionarium, exstet, in spongiam incubuit, quid de nostris
in communem, si fieri posset, om- Belgicis sperandum? Quaedam ex
nium Academiarumusum.' Baillie, illis per Cartesianam philosophiam
u. s. m 268. graviter concussae sunt ; aliae in-
2 ' Nescio si in Anglia aut Gallia testinis super eadem philosophia
fratres ullos inpraesentiarum habe- dissidiis admodum adhuc vacillant
amus, quibus volentibus simul et et fluctuant, turbonibus nusquam
valentibus onus hoc posset imponi.... figentibus, nusquam quiescentibus ;
Unica in vobis restat spes.' Ibid. sobrie philosophantibus contra obni-
3 ' ...sed quod ante omnia studiosi tentibus, et hoc unice agentibus ut
hie omnes a te expetunt, est caeter- clavum teneant, nee fluctibus oppri-
arum tuarum Disputationum publi- man tur.... Quod si haec tempestas
catio, cui dudum in primo volumine aliquando desaeviat, et non amplius
obstrinxisse tete occlamitant.' Ibid. protrudantur in cathedras philoso-
M. HI. 32
498 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. however, that Baillie himself was at this time in no hopeful
Baiiiie-s state of mind with respect to academic Scotland. Only eight
description _ • <f
of tile scotch months before, in a letter to his cousin, he had deplored, in
anTtheSlties> forcible language, the changed fortunes of Presbyterianism
shewnhf under the Protectorate and the measures taken by the
entsto English Parliament ' to plant and displant our Universities/
19 July 1654. < A\\ our Colledges,' he wrote, 'are quicklie like to be undone.
Our Churches are in great confusion: no intrant getts any
stipend till he have petitioned and subscryved some acknow-
ledgment to the English. When a very few of the Remon-
strators or Independent partie will call a man, he gets a kirk
and a stipend ; but whom the Presbyterie, and well near the
whole congregation, calls and admitts, he must preach in the
satisfaction fields, or in a barne, without stipend1.' Cromwell's Procla-
cromweii's motion was viewed by him with equal dissatisfaction, — ' all
uon. our Confessions and Covenants,' he wrote to another corre-
March'iesT. spondent, 'and absolutely all forms and models beside the
text of Scripture, are abolished.... The only excepted are
Poperie, Prelacie and Licentiousnesse in the abstract: but
seeing popish, prelaticall, and licentious men professe the
qualification'2, and will give securitie for this, their exclusion
seems to be but of free will, which is not durable3.' It can
scarcely, again, have served to diminish his discontent, that,
at nearly the same time that Arrowsmith, at Cambridge, was
Hig advising the two English universities to abandon their
ats51ieasure ancient contention with respect to priority4, those of Scot-
advearnc°ed by land should have deemed it worth their while to embark in
at Aberdeen a similar dispute among themselves, and this, too, at a crisis
antruit" when a professor at Aberdeen was rousing himself to under-
^a^e the putting forth of another Vindiciae5, in defence of
phicas novi philosophastri, et stulti in 340-1.
ac petulantes juvenculi, turn demum 4 See supra, p. 482.
nobis de cursibus philosophicis con- 5 ' I was so much offended with
juncta Academiarum opera adornan- your former book,... and your very
dis cogitandum esset.' Baillie, u.s. idle and false gloriation of whole
in 274. two hundreth year and above an-
1 Ibid, in 244. tiquitie before St Andrewes and us,
2 I.e. '...fearing God, though of that I have not read any of your
differing judgments.' See Gardiner, writs in patience since.1 SeeBaillie's
u. s. m 108. Letter (23 March 1660) ' for his Reve-
3 Letter to James Hamilton : Ibid. rend Brother Mr William Douglass,
GLASGOW AND ABERDEEN. 499
academic traditions in Scotland, — the rejoinder to demon- CHAP, iv.
strations of a like character to those which had recently
menaced the existence of Oxford and Cambridge.
But little as Robert Baillie loved Aberdeen, with her
lukewarm Presbyterianism and leanings towards Gallic
culture, and notwithstanding the jealousy with which he
regarded all English interference and especially the intrusion
of Cromwell's nominees, he could not conceal his admiration His
admiration
for the heroic spirit in which Walton and his coadjutors had °f,the
J labours of
pursued their labours to their final accomplishment, and W3a/e°1'0£!ld
given to the world what he himself terms ' that excellent translators-
book, the best to me that ever was printed1.' At the very
time that Batavia seemed to be making common cause with
the sceptic, and Albion was admitting her inability to calm
the troubled waters of doctrinal belief, the enlightened toil
of a scanty band of Anglican scholars, in the prosecution of
' a profitable study/ had resulted, to quote the expression of
Lightfoot, in the ' rearing of a monument2 ' which wellnigh
all learned Europe was already regarding with expressions
of emphatic commendation. In England, indeed, the only objections
adverse criticism was that of John Owen, the Independent, John owen,
* dean of
— the same whom Laud's statutes had driven from Oxford3, £j;™*h
but whom Cromwell had installed as her vice-chancellor and
to whom Trinity College, Dublin, was largely indebted for its
restoration, — while he now, by his captious censure of
Walton for his rejection of the authority of the Masoretic
points, was virtually raising the whole question of verbal
inspiration4. When we note, however, that Owen's bio-
Professor of Divinity in Aberdeen." a follower of Laud in matters of
Baillie, M.S. m 402-3. The title of ritual, and it is difficult to resist the
' the former book ' is Academiarum impression that Owen's attack on
Vindiciae, in quibus Novantium prae- the Polyglot was partly inspired by
judicia contra Academias etiam Re- personal dislike. See Todd, Life of
Jormatasaverruncantur,earumdemque Walton, 1 14-20.
Institutio recta proponitur. Aberdo- 4 The gravamen of Walton's reply
niae, 4to. 1659, — the volume itself to Owen was that the latter, in his
being the outcome of an Oration by Considerations, when citing the views
Douglass delivered in the Theological expressed in the Prolegomena to the
Hall at Aberdeen, 19th Nov. 1658. Polyglot, ' perverted or falsified al-
1 Baillie, Letter to James Gran- most everything ' — ' the Prolegomena
ford, 27th Aug. 1656, u.s. in 309. asserting the clean contrary in most
2 Supra, p. 490. things to what he would impose
3 Walton, on the other hand, was upon them.' Todd, Ibid, n 46.
32—2
500 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
VCHAP. iv.^ grapher was fain, long afterwards, to admit that the appre-
hensions expressed by the dean of Christ Church 'were
wholly groundless1/ it may here suffice to cite the words in
which Walton himself, in 1659, summed up his own elaborate
Walton's defence: 'And though these weak endeavours be attended
rejoinder to
the same, (as hath been the fate of all public works of this nature)
with obloquy in some emulous and contradicting spirits, yet
I shall think it sufficient that I have had the general appro-
bation of men truly learned, judicious, and pious. And for
those that are otherwise, I doubt not but the work will
live in after ages, when their invectives shall be buried in
oblivion2.'
Before another twelve months had elapsed, — within a few
days of the signing of the Declaration of Breda3, — Baillie,
foreseeing the changes that were inevitable, but still hopeful
that the efforts of his Presbyterian friends would not prove
altogether unavailing, could not forbear from giving expres-
Baiiiie's sion to the wish, in a letter to a correspondent, that ' Dr
expression
tiLl; wiTton Waltoun/ ' albeit bitterlie episcopall,' might yet ' for his great
Ssjus^11 work' be 'cherished/ 'though/ he adds, 'it were with the
Provostrie of Eaton College4/ — a noteworthy instance, in
those days, of scholarly sympathies rising superior to the
prejudice attaching to sectarian bigotry.
Results that At the expiration of three years from the issuing of the
followed
upon the Ordinance of 1654, which has already come under our notice,
Commission _ J
of 1654. ^ devolved on the Visitors to give some account of the
results of their labours, and the question of the renewal of
the Ordinance itself came formally before Parliament. Ac-
1 Orme (Wm.), Memoirs of John patterned ecclesiastically at last in
Owen , D. D. (1820) , pp. 271-3 ; that exact resemblance to North
Todd, u.s. n 307. Britain which had been the ideal
2 The Considerator considered. before Independency burst in.' Life
Ibid. of Milton, v 550.
3 The Declaration was signed 4th 4 Baillie, u.s. m401. The Provost-
April 1660. With respect to the ship of Eton fell, however, to Nicholas
expectations previously excited of the Monck (brother of the General) , to
re-establishment of Presbyterianism, whom Charles n made an absolute
Masson states that ' the Universities grant of the post ' in the same terms,
were to be constituted into presby- mutatis mutandis, as a conveyance of
teries or inserted into such ; and the land.' Maxwell Lyte, Eton College,
whole of South Britain was to be p. 255.
PARLIAMENT AND THE COMMISSIONERS. 501
cording to Burton, ' a great debate ' ensued in the House, CHAP, iv.
and it was not without considerable opposition that a further Thue
debate in
term of six months was ultimately conceded, for although it aTA^aiesr
was admitted that the investigations of the Commissioners
had been attended with a marked improvement in the state
of discipline throughout the university1, complaints were The com-
» ° _ *t niissioncrs
also heard that, in their desire to carry out radical changes f^f of
which threatened to revolutionize the entire academic con- their*16*1
stitution, they had exceeded their instructions2. It further IDi
transpired that, notwithstanding the display of feeling that
had ensued at Cambridge, upon the episode at Peterhouse3,
the Heads, both new and old and in both universities, each Jt-iidataSa
virtually asserted his claim to a ' negative voice ' in relation vofcgea>t'aud
to the society of which he was the appointed governor4. The payment1
conditions which favoured and partly justified this re-asser- respective
augments-
tion of their traditional authority are not far to seek. Lazarus tions-
Seaman, whose resolute tenacity of purpose5 appears to have
impressed both Cromwell and his son Richard, had set the
example, during his tenure of the vice-chancellorship in
1654, of asserting the claims of the university for the repay-
1 It was urged by Major-General tion of Sir Thomas Widdrington
Desborough, that ' whatever reproach who was in the Speaker's chair,
might be made against the Ordinance, Sir Thomas was brother to Ralph
it had been a great means to regu- Widdrington, who had gained both
late the university, and to purge it of his fellowship at Christ's and his
loose and profane persons. ' Burton post as Public Orator largely through
(Thos.), Diary, n 63. At Oxford, Cromwell's influence. See Peile,
John Owen had been able, as vice- Christ's College, pp. 172-4.
chancellor, to point to a like refor- 3 See supra, pp. 413-414.
mation, four years earlier: ' We have 4 ' The Masters do not challenge '
done away with the wine shops, the [i.e. claim] 'a negative voice, in ter-
ale sellers, the mimes, the farces, the minis, yet they call it a necessary
buffoons, the public riots and the voice; so that, though all the scho-
various disgraceful scenes that lately lars agreed about the choice of a
infested our streets. We can now Fellow, unless the Master allow it,
once more shew ourselves in our all is void.' Sir Richard Onslow, the
former solemnities, and stand forth parliamentary general. Burton (u.s.),
unrebuked.' Oratio at Oxford Com- n 63.
mencement of 1654, quoted by God- 5 Hence the compliment paid him
win, Hist, of the Commonwealth, by Lightfoot, when presiding at the
rv 95. Godwin notes the fact that Disputations in 1655, on which occa-
there had been no Oratio in the sion Seaman was to appear as 're-
preceding year. spondent ' : ' Sic bonum et fortem
2 ' Besides the taking away his militem arguit, nunquam frigere,
Highness's right, you take away nunquam defatigari.' Lightfoot-Pit-
the right of the statutable visitors' man, v 400.
(Burton, Ibid, n 63), — the observa-
502 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. iv. ment of certain rents which the official collector had diverted
to the public exchequer1 : and a like appropriation of funds
having taken place with respect to those promised augmen-
tations of the incomes of the Heads, — which, as above noted,
had been formally granted some years before, — he, again,
appears as coming forward, and stating his own case with
his customary bluntness. 'I am,' wrote the master of
Peterhouse, 'in a chargeable office of employment in the
University, my attendance is necessary and my means of
subsistence not answerable to my expenses. I beg payment
of arrears and payment for the future2.' Similar action was
taken, at nearly the same time, by the heads of St John's,
Christ's, Jesus, King's, Queens', Trinity Hall, St Catherine's
and Sidney, although their appeals were, for the most part,
couched in more deferential language3.
But while not unwilling to give a prompt response to
these applications, the Council had other considerations to
take into account which must not be lost sight of. The
delay that had occurred in making the payments may fairly
be attributed to the ' financial strain ' arising out of the Dutch
war4; and when, two years later, it was found necessary to
levy a tax for the prosecution of the Spanish war, we find
1 ' ...but the said Collector did pay Colledge in Cambridge, he hath
ye saide summe (of wright due unto y8 constantly resided upon this place
said Universitie) unto Thomas ffalcon- untill the last year, the sumer part
bridge Esqre Eecevor Generall for the of which he was absent and in regard
State (as may appeare by the annexed of the then discouragements and un-
Certificate) who allegeth that in re- certainties about the Augmentations
gard it is brought into the Exchequer which had not been of a long time
he may not pay it out to the Uni- payd him, he was in a mafier neces-
versity without the speciall Order of sitated to supply a place in the
yr Highnes. May it therefore please country for that sumer-quarter. May
your Highnes out of yr zeale to Justice it therefore please your Highness
and noble inclinacion to yc counten- to remove the Kestraint that so
ancinge of Learninge to vouchsafe the Augmentation may be payd to
yr Order to the said Recevour Generall your Petitioner who continued in
for the payment of ye saide summe of Cambridg the Winter, Spring and
4911 iQsh to the sai<i Universitie. Autumn of that year, and for the
And your pet" shall ever pray, etc. former yeares did always constantly
La. Seaman.1 State Papers (Dom, reside upon his place wch without
1654), LXXV, No. 18. the anexed Augmentation is wholy
2 Cooper, Annals, v 428. insufficient as to his subsistence
3 In marked contrast to Seaman's there. And your Petitioner, etc.'
petition, that of Worthington (now Endorsed, 'Re-read 28 Mar. 1654.'
master of Jesus) deserves to be cited : State Papers (Dom.), ann. 1654,
'Your Petitioner humbly represents, Lxvm, No. 56.
That ever since he came to Jesus 4 See Gardiner, u. «. n 358-9.
AUGMENTATION OF THE MASTERSHIPS. 503
that all those who held office in the universities, from the CHAP. iv.
Heads downwards, were expressly exempted. ' for and in Their
requests
respect of the stipends, wages and profits of their places and |nd^f°ted
employments ' in the university itself or in the colleges1. Invted toes
Cromwell himself, indeed, can hardly have wished to deal Ittentio^to
I'li'iii'ii . .. the duties
otherwise than liberally with those two ancient communities of the
•* mastership,
which he had so recently saved from destruction, but he *h1chcww°m
appears also to have discerned, in the payment of the aug- onteth!'pcu£ed
mentations, an excellent opportunity for bringing about an preferment
important reform in the government of the colleges, by e '
requiring that the Heads should themselves concentrate
their energies more entirely on their official duties. In
1654, the Council had already ordered that no augmentation
should be granted where there was a benefice attached to
the mastership2. This, however, did not debar a Head from
holding other preferment, — preferment, moreover, of a kind
which might well afford a valid excuse for frequent absence.
The master of Caius, for example, notwithstanding that he [£?{fsn^at
was in receipt of an augmentation of £60, which had recently Peterhouse-
been renewed, was generally resident at his rectory of Yelden,
to which he had been presented by Lord Bolingbroke, and
continued to hold the same, along with that of Westoning
(where he had other property) until his death3; while
Lazarus Seaman, who drew a regular income from his rectory
of All Hallows in Bread Street, and had been appointed a
member of the Commission of 1654, was rarely to be seen at
Peterhouse save when his own personal interests were con-
cerned. On the 22nd of January 165|, accordingly, we find
that a Bill was read a second time in Parliament, and duly
committed, ' against the non-residence of Masters, Provosts,
Presidents, Wardens,' etc. in the universities4. It did not
pass without opposition, and Sir Lislebone Long, the presby- ^-ence
terian, and an elder of the classis of Wells, moved its %$£*ded in
rejection, — grounding his dissent on the allegation, that the House-
there were 'many worthy persons in the City, masters of
1 Scobell, Ordinances, u 400, 403, lege, m 94.
423; Cooper, Annals, m 466. * Commons1 Journals, vn 581;
2 Cooper, Annals, v 428. Cooper, Annals, m 468.
3 Venn, Gonville and Caius Col-
504 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
VCHAP. iv.^ colleges/ who ' did more good by their non-residence1.' It is
evident, however, that increased importance was beginning
to be attached to the office; and Manchester, the former
chancellor of the university, who, but a few days before the
debate, had declined to comply with Cromwell's summons to
his new 'House of Lords2,' was heard, about this time, to
express an opinion that the income of a Head ought properly
not to be below three hundred pounds.
objections Demurs were also to be heard at the proposed prolonga-
raised to the a r r < r .°
!>™ensfonof *i°n of the powers of the Commissioners, and the illustration,
whtehthe°r now afforded, of the difficulties generally attendant on the
exercise of such powers gives a special value to the narrative.
Lenthall was at this time one of Cromwell's firmest sup-
porters, but his knowledge of university affairs was somewhat
superficial. He had matriculated from St Alban Hall, but
left Oxford without taking a degree ; and although, at the
elections for the Protector's first parliament, he had been
returned as member for the shire, he was rarely to be seen
in the university. He was, however, now Master of the
Rolls, and by virtue of his tenure of that office he had been
designated visitor of Lincoln College, in a new list of Visitors
to the different Oxford colleges which had just been drawn
up in anticipation of the representations of the Presbyterian
party becoming operative3. This list, however, was never
' passed,' owing, says Anthony Wood, ' to the prevalency of
the Independent party'; while, according to Mr Macleane,
at Lincoln College itself, ' the intruded fellows ' were, at this
time, 'disposed to thorough Independency4,' — representing,
in Wood's view, ' the dregs of the other University.' Such
Doubts were the circumstances under which Lenthall rose in the
expressed l>y
wSdrin fan House, to propose that, if the Commission were to be pro-
toUtheegard longed, it should be for three months only, at the same time
authority of declaring that, whatever time Parliament might give, they
in theani€ ' would be encroaching on the Lord Protector's prerogative, —
question: & r .
April 165T. ' and on the rights of the statutable Visitors as well,' said
1 Cooper, Annals, m 468; Burton's 3 See Wood-Gutch, n 679-680.
Diary, n 338. 4 Lincoln College, p. 119.
2 D. N. B. xxxvra 230.
DIFFICULTIES ATTENDING THE COMMISSION. 505
Widdrington1.' There is nothing to warrant the supposition JCHAP. iv.
that either of the speakers had the slightest intention of
proposing anything that would contravene the wishes of
Cromwell, and we must consequently conclude that the
Protector and his two supporters were alike beginning to
augur far from favourably with respect to the advantages that
were likely to result from the continued labours of the Com-
mission; while, what may at first sight seem yet more
surprising, we find that ' the Presbyterian gang of the j^*0^1
university,' as Wood terms it, were so fully disposed to {j?7herd
concur in such a view, that they were already ' using great party ff™
endeavours,' ' to have the Commission annulled and other of the
Commission.
Visitors appointed2.'
There can be no question that the rock on which the $£ftoJ?~
Commission seemed destined thus to go to pieces, was that {£*$" ^
difficult and delicate part of their task, the dealing with f" supp°re"
' corrupt resignations ' and ' corrupt elections ' in the colleges, elections in
a L • f v.- t, f J V Air J the Colleges.
flagrant instances of which are referred to by Wood, as
examples of practices which had become traditional at Mag-
dalen, New, and All Souls3. The latter two societies, indeed,
to quote Mr Robertson's expression, had already been ' par-
ticularly dishonoured by having a special and stringent code
drawn up on their behalf; while at All Souls, after certain
elections had been peremptorily quashed by the Visitors and
the society had been inhibited from making others, we find
the fellows ultimately petitioning the new Protector, the
lord Richard Cromwell, to intervene; and it is amid the
confusion that attended the doing away with the Protectorate
itself, that the curtain descends alike upon the further
proceedings of the college and of the Visitation4.
A clearer insight into the actual work of the Commission
1 Burton's Diary, n 63 ; Cooper, which Lenthall was to be included.
Annals, m 467. 3 ' In the last of which were this
2 Wood-Gutch, n 676. ' The chief year ' [1657] ' such unworthy dealings
reasons for which submitted to the (as the Visitors conceived) that the
consideration of Parliament ' are Protector and his Council was ac-
given, under the different heads. quainted with them for remedy sake.'
Ibid, n 677-9. It was this move- Ibid, n 676.
ment which, had it proved successful, 4 Grant Robertson, All Souls
was to be followed by the appoint- College, pp. 127-134.
ment of the new body of Visitors in
506 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
at Oxford, is, however, afforded, if we turn to note the
experiences of Jesus College, where a contest of a somewhat
different character had been going on, but one of longer
duration, and not a little resembling, in certain respects, the
episode at Peterhouse1. As early as 1650, that ' stubborn
little Welsh college,' as Burrows terms it, was once more in
revolt, — this time, against the rule of its Principal, Dr
Michael Roberts, whose government, if we may trust the
allegations made by the vice-principal and four of the fellows,
was characterized by acts of maladministration yet graver
than those alleged against Lazarus Seaman, while the college
itself is described by its historian as being ' in a chronic state
of domestic feud2.' At first, the fellows appealed to their
own Visitor, the earl of Pembroke (the son of the late
chancellor of the university), but were baffled by a counter
appeal from Dr Roberts to the newly appointed Visitors ;
and they, accordingly, next decided on an appeal to the
Protector3. Cromwell, however, referred their petition to
the Council, and that body, in turn, agreed to refer it back
Principal's ' to *ne cognizance and determination ' of the Visitors. The
theUFeUovvbsy fellows, accordingly, evidently acting under a sense of resent-
ment at this prolonged procrastination on the part of the
supreme authorities, decided themselves to expel their Prin-
cipal. It was then, apparently, and not till then, that the
Visitors undertook the labour of investigating the evidence4,
but only to arrive at a unanimous conclusion that it did not
appear that Dr Roberts had been 'justly or legally expelled.'
This decision was communicated on the 20th of February
1655, no further order being given at the time, except that
the Visitors took upon themselves the appointment of the
College officers for the next year ; but in the month of May,
1656, they vouchsafed ' a very long and full hearing ' to the
1 See supra, pp. 394-403. the same time to the Visitors of
2 Hardy (E. G.), Jesus College, the University and to their own
p. 117. There were, at this time, Visitor; but see Burrows, 406, n. a.
only eight fellows. 4 The charges formally brought
3 The Visitors had inhibited the against Dr Boberts, are given by
Appeal made by the fellows to the Hardy (pp. 119-120), as transcribed
earl of Pembroke (see Burrows, from the Wynne MSS. in All Souls
Register, pp. 402, 406) ; Mr Hardy College.
represents the latter as appealing at
DIFFICULTIES ATTENDING THE COMMISSION. 507
plaint of each party, and, 'upon mature deliberation,' declared CHAP, iv.
themselves unable to ' see cause to confirm the act of the ^j^
Fellows in the question of their Principal1.' Dr Roberts, vis£0ers
accordingly, remained at his post; while it is deserving of uitiSatei^8
note that the College would seem to have undergone no loss re
of popularity during the preceding years, for in 1657 it
numbered fifty-three Commoners, in addition to the Founda-
tioners, the names on the books continuing to be almost
entirely Welsh. Towards the end of the same year, however,
Roberts resigned the Principalship into the hands of the
Protector, but continued for some time in residence, and
consequently, we must infer, still on terms of at least occa-
sional intercourse with those who had sought to expel him2,
and receiving, at the same time, a certain amount of moral
support from the Visitors themselves as well as from other
members of the university. The fellows, on the other hand,
continued to be at variance with the former body, a feature
which can scarcely be deemed surprising when we bear in
mind not only the staunch loyalist traditions of the society3
but also the fact that it had failed to obtain representation
either among the external or the resident members of the
Commission. When, accordingly, on Roberts' resignation, the
fellows took upon themselves to elect a new Principal and their
choice fell upon Seth Ward, the whole proceeding was at once
quashed by the Visitors, who installed one of their own
number, Francis Howell, a fellow of Exeter (the Devonshire
college) and an Independent. Such a result could not, of
course, be deemed satisfactory by the Presbyterian party,
although it afforded additional justification of their state-
ment, ' that those of the Visitors who were resident in the
University did rather nourish and foment than appease
differences, hearkening to the notions and addresses of any
1 Burrows, Register, pp. 412-3. 121-2; Burrows, p. 413.
2 For this a precedent was afforded 3'...the gallant little College,
by the fact that his predecessor, which nothing could effectually tame
Dr Mansell, ejected from the Prin- till the King, for whose family many
cipalship in 1648, had subsequently brave Welshmen had died, came to
been invited to reside in the College, his own again.' Burrows, u. «. p.
which he continued to do from 1652 cxvi.
until the Bestoration. Hardy, pp.
508
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
The
obligations
imposed by
the College
Oath
sometimes
directly at
variance
with the
requirements
of the Com-
missioners.
Burrows'
criticism
of the
Presbyterian
Protest.
Oxford
wearied
out by
protracted
Visitation.
-John Owen
gives place
to Conant.
junior, factious, and troublesome person,' — 'too often,' they
added, ' to those who pretend to have any interest in their
favour, against the vote and determination of a whole college' ;
while, as regarded the discretion vested in the colleges them-
selves, it was further submitted, 'that there were some which
were obliged by oath to resist all determinations of Visitors
made against Statutes, by all ways and means possible1.'
Taken as a whole, these ' Reasons submitted to the considera-
tion of Parliament,' — a document put forth by the Presby-
terian party extending over two quarto pages, — appear to
deserve the praise bestowed upon them by Burrows, of being
characterized by 'moderation and good sense.' Oxford,
indeed, was by this time weary of being ' visited,' and plain-
tively urged that ' nine years were surely enough to purge
and correct all humours and malignities,' while it was further
represented that, ' of above five hundred Fellows which there
were at the end of the War there be not many now remain-
ing,'— that Heads of Houses had often been made 'both
parties and judges in their own cause,' — and that experience
already pointed strongly to the expediency of a return to
the ancient system of appointing as Visitors of the respective
colleges, 'great persons, in single capacities2.' ' The growing
strength of University independence,' continues Burrows,
' was finally proved by its victory over Owen himself, who, in
his disgust at being unable to force his reforms on Convoca-
tion, attempted to carry them with a high hand, but found
it best to desist: the Presbyterians were regaining power,
and the Independents losing it3. We hear little more of
1 Here the question of the obli-
gation imposed by the College oath
as opposed to the requirements of
external authority (cf . supra, pp. 369,
410, 411), is manifestly reopened.
2 I.e. persons of recognized po-
sition, but holding no other office in
connexion with the University which
might serve to prejudice their judge-
ment. Anthony Wood himself signed
the Protest (11 Feb. 165f). It was
brought to him, he tells us, 'by
Nathaniel Crewe, fellow of Lincoln
College ' [afterwards Lord Crewe and
the great benefactor of that society].
Life and Times, i 268; Clark (A.),
Lincoln College, c. xi.
3 'The godly party they put up
another petition and say "it is for
the cause of Christ." Dr (John)
Conant the vice-chancellor sent a
letter to Dr (John) Owen then att
London and told him that "he must
make hast to Oxon for godliness layes
a gasping," i.e. there was a petition
to the Parliament to putt out Visi-
tors.'...'No person was more ready
than Crew, a presbyterian, to have
the said Visitors put downe, notwith-
standing he had before submitted to
DIFFICULTIES ATTENDING THE COMMISSION. 509
him at Oxford. Neither he nor the Visitors were any longer CHAP. iv.
necessary; and the man had been formed, under so many
varied experiences, who was exactly in his place as a substi-
tute for Parliamentary Visitors. For three years, from the
commencement of his vice-chancellorship in 1657, Dr Conant
exercised the most beneficial influence, and passed on his
charge unharmed till the Restoration once more set it on
the old track from which the storms of twenty years had
diverted it1.'
The real value of the foregoing evidence, as an illustration
of the conditions under which the control of the university
and the administration of the different colleges were carried
on, is but slightly diminished by the fact that the designs of
the Visitors were not destined to be submitted to a practical
test ; while, as regards Cambridge, it is an especially note- Absence
worthy feature, that there appear to have been no corre- Cambridge
J Colleges of
spending experiences, — or, if such there were, they are not ^n^Sforathe
on record. The colleges, with one exception only, appear, oTthe611*
during the same period, to have been free from domestic
contention, and, in this respect, to quote Burrows' expression,
are 'happy in having no history'; while, at Oxford, the
misrule at All Souls, the ' Appeals ' from Jesus, and certain
matters calling for reform at New, constitute the main bulk
of the entries in the eighty pages of the Visitors' Diary in
the Register*. At Cambridge, again, the odium theoloqicum controversy
. assumes
itself assumed a milder form, of which Tuckney, who now throughout
succeeded Arrowsmith as Regius professor of divinity, had » mudesrty
already set an example in his controversy with Whichcote, — tone"
a correspondence which presents, in the whole tone of both
writers, an edifying contrast to the acerbities of a Cheynell
or a John Owen.
When the tidings arrived of the massacre in Piedmont,
the widespread feeling of indignation altogether transcended
them, and had paid to them reverence party were the Independents,
and obedience.' 11 Feb. 165|. Wood, 1 Register, u. s. pp. ci-cii.
Life and Times, i 268. The ' godly' 2 Ibid. pp. 360-439.
510
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Sir SAMUEL
MOKLAND :
b. 1625.
d. 1095.
His career
prior to his
mission to
the Duke
of Savoy.
He gains the
notice of
Thurloe
and of
Ussher.
the limits of sectarian jealousies. A day of humiliation
(June 14) was appointed and a Committee formed for the
purpose of carrying relief to the hapless survivors. In the
list of the subscriptions the Protector's name appeared as
donor of £2000, while the collections throughout the country
ultimately so far exceeded the needs of those for whom they
were designed that a sum of £17,872 remained in the hands
of the treasurers1. Milton composed his fine sonnet, destined
to perpetuate the ruthless tragedy in the memory of after
generations; Waller put forth his vigorous stanzas appealing
to the nation's pride, as ruled by one who might claim to be
the Protector, not of Britain only, but of the world2.
The whole literature of the history of the Waldenses,
both before and after the massacre, possesses for Cambridge
an exceptional interest as associated with the annals of
the University Library. Samuel Morland was a scholar of
Winchester who matriculated as a sizar from Magdalene
College in 1645, and afterwards became both a fellow and
tutor of the society3. Although urged by his friends to take
orders, he declined to do so, the bent of his genius being
in the direction of those mathematical studies to which, as
we have before noted, Cambridge at that time gave little
encouragement ; but on quitting the university, he appears
to have decided on a diplomatic career, and in 1653 was so
fortunate as to be selected a member of Bulstrode Whitelock's
retinue in his important mission to the queen of Sweden.
On his return to London, Morland appears to have become
known to Thurloe and also to Ussher by whom his attention
was first directed to the history of the ' Waldenses, as a
subject well deserving further investigation4.' He had already
1 Gardiner, Commonwealth and
Protectorate, in 417. ' About £30,000
was remitted to their Deputies at
several payments, in this and the
next year ; but the confusions which
followed upon the Protector's death
prevented the clearing of the whole
account till the Convention Parlia-
ment at the Eestoration who ordered
the remaining £7000 to be paid.'
Neal, Hist, of the Puritans, iv 143-4.
2 Gardiner, Ibid, ra 424, 425.
3 Mr Thompson Cooper (D. N. B.
xxxix 68) makes Morland himself
say that he ' took no degree ' at Cam-
bridge. The Begisters, however, give
Matric. 1645, B.A. 1649, M.A. 1653.
Samuel Pepys was one of his pupils.
Purnell, Magdalene College, p. 121.
4 Introduction to History of the
Evangelical Churches, etc. [see infra,
p. 512, n. 2], sig. a 2.
THE WALDENSIAN MANUSCRIPTS. 511
acquired the command of a good epistolary Latin style, an CHAP. iv.
accomplishment which may have partly decided Cromwell to HC is
deputed by
employ him as his envoy to the courts of the French monarch oomweiuo
f J J present his
and the Duke of Savoy, to represent the fearful wrongs that [„" courts
had been inflicted on the peaceful Vaudois, and obtain, in and'xurin :
the one case, the co-operation of Mazarin, and in the other
to bring the Duke and his mother to a full sense of the
enormities that had been committed by their soldiery. The
letter from the Protector, which Morland presented at Turin,
' intreating his highness to recall that merciless edict of
Gastaldo/ is a dignified and courtly missive, well calculated
to bring about its object, without unnecessarily rousing the
susceptibilities of the bigoted sister of Henrietta Maria.
His errand duly discharged, the envoy did not, at once, set
out on his return to England, but was permitted by the
government to settle, for a time, as its English resident at He is. t
appointed
Geneva, which he describes as ' a place not more pleasant by "esifent'at1
reason of its lovely situation, than eminent for the sincere, whereat
constant, and painful preaching of the Word, and adminis- suggestion,
m . 9 . ft • h? compiles
tration of the Sacraments,... accompanied with a singular M* History
piety, and Christian behaviour in general, both of Governors chu^he"1686
and people.' ' I had not remained,' he goes on to say, ' many
months in this place before I received a letter from Mr
Secretary Thurlo, wherein he was pleased to intimate to me,
how usefully both for the present Age and future generations,
I might employ my vacant hours during the time of my
retirement ; namely, by drawing into an exact History all
that had lately happened to the poor Protestants in the
Valleys of Piemont,...and setting down all the particulars in
a distinct and clear method1.' Morland could hardly have
felt himself free to act otherwise than as his powerful patron
suggested, especially when he recalled the exhortation of
Ussher, the news of whose death reached him in the midst
of his researches2; while, in the work of collecting the
1 Introduction, etc.,u.s. See also this letter, joyned to the strict charge
Firth (Prof.), Last Years of the given me by the late deceased Lord
Protectorate, n 221. Primate of Ireland, one of the Won-
2 'Now when I had sate down and ders of this our later Age, touching
seriously considered the contents of the same subject, I began to persuade
512
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. iv. 'minutes, records, vouchers and attestations' requisite for
his purpose he was assisted by a Waldensian minister, named
Jean Leger, who kept an academy at Geneva, and who him-
self, long after, composed an elaborate work on the same
subject1. It was, consequently, not until the year 1656 was
drawing to its close, that he arrived in England, to be
graciously welcomed at Whitehall, and subsequently to
receive the thanks of a select Committee appointed by
Cromwell to consider the Report of his labours. And it was
not until 1658 that the results of those labours appeared, in
the form of a costly folio2 dedicated to the Protector, and the
author himself, as Thurloe's secretary, became a recognized
state official3.
His return
to England
where he is
appointed
Thurloe's
secretary.
myself,' etc., Ibid. Ussher's keen
interest in the history of the Vaudois
had doubtless been especially excited
by his study of the manuscripts,
which (along with the greater part
of his Library) subsequently came
into the possession of Trinity College,
Dublin, and of which James Hen-
thorn Todd, Hebrew professor in the
University, gives a critical account
in his Books of the Vaudois, Dublin,
1865. See supra, p. 491, n. 3.
, 1 Histoire generate des Eglises
Evangeliques de Piemont. Amster-
dam, 1680. Leger, according to
Thompson Cooper, produced what
' may be regarded as an enlarged
edition of Morland's book ' (D. N. B.
xxxrx 68), and ' Morland was prob-
ably misled ' by his ' incorrect state-
ments.' But Cooper's account of
Morland is written with a strong
bias, to which Masson's treatment
of the subject (Milton, v 38-44) sup-
plies a certain corrective ; but that
of Gardiner (u. s. c. xlvii) is at once
the most complete and the most dis-
criminating to be found in recent
writers. As was the case with the
Huguenots, it was largely the steadily
progressive organization of the Vau-
dois, together with their quiet in-
dustry, that drew upon them the
hatred and invited the cupidity of a
lawless soldiery.
2 The History of the Evangelical
Churches of the Valleys of Piemont.
Containing a most exact Geographical
Description of the Place, and a
faithful Account of the Doctrine,
Life, and Persecutions of the Ancient
Inhabitants. Together with a most
naked and punctual Relation of the
late BLOUDY MASSACRE, 1655. And a
Narrative of all the following Trans-
actions, to the Year of our Lord,
1658. All which are justified, partly
by divers Ancient Manuscripts written
many hundred Years before CALVIN
or LUTHER, and partly by other most
Authentick Attestations: the true
ORIGINALS of the greatest part whereof,
are to be seen in their proper lan-
guages by all the curious, in the
Publick LIBRARY of the famous Uni-
versity of CAMBRIDGE. Collected and
compiled with much pains and in-
dustry, by SAMUEL MORLAND, Esq;
During his abode in GENEVA in quality
o/His HIGHNESS COMMISSIONER Extra-
ordinary for the affairs of the said
Valleys , and particularly for the DIS-
TRIBUTION of the COLLECTED MONEYS,
among the remnant of those poor
distressed People. London. Printed
for Adoniram Byfield, 1658.
3 'Morland's connexion with Crom-
well,' says Bradshaw, 'is probably
the reason why his gift is so com-
pletely ignored in all our records and
commemorations, while much more
insignificant benefactors have been
duly held up for veneration. The
still more remarkable fact that for
more than a century the Librarians
themselves uniformly denied the
THE WALDENSIAN MANUSCRIPTS. 513
Morland brought with him six volumes of Waldensian .CHAP, iv.
manuscripts, which, along with a large collection of papers
relating to the history of the sect, he presented to the He publishes
University Library after the publication of his volume1; and, ^o'd-inai8
whatever doubts might be entertained with respect to the uSvwsity1 e
judgement and literary acumen shewn in the pages of that L'brary>
work, there could be none with regard either to the value of
his gift or to the capacity of the Librarian then in charge
adequately to estimate its value. Of William Moore, who WILLIAM
* ' MOORE,
died in the following year, some account has already been Librarian*1.
given2. Although ejected from his fellowship, it was his 1653~9-
wish to be buried in Caius college chapel ; and his desire
would probably have found its accomplishment had not the
Master's strong prejudices been allowed to prevail. He was
consequently interred in Great St Mary's, where his funeral g^,^1^
sermon was preached by his successor in the librarianship, sm°tmanis
Thomas Smith of Christ's, the translator of Daille; who bore ^pneiS24,r:
emphatic testimony alike to the high attainments and the
virtues of his departed friend. ' You can scarce name,' said His varied
attainments.
the preacher, ' the piece ' [i.e. department] ' of knowledge
wherein he was not eminent : one of the ablest that ever I
met with, not only in the knotty pieces of Divinity, Cases of
conscience, and Chronologic, and all ingenuous sciences, espe-
cially History and all kinde of Antiquity (which, if any thing,
must bring the men of this age to their wits again, when all
is done) but also in Anatomy, Physick, Mathematicks, and the
like. Those who are the most eminent for all these now in HU
England being of his education3.... 'Tis well known that influeilce as
** J an educator.
he was through his whole life a diligent collectour and
transcriber of the choicest Manuscripts which he could
existence of the most important part University of Cambridg.' A certain
of the collection, is well known, and number of the documents were, how-
is only one example in a thousand ever, ' authentick copies communi-
of the disregard of such treasures cated by Mr Secretary Thurloe.'
which the whole history of the 2 See »upra, p. 293.
Library brings to light.' The Uni- 3 This somewhat surprising state-
versity Library (1881), p. 21. ment is confirmed by an entry made
1 Hence the repeated statement by Thomas Baker on the flyleaf of
(prefixed to each piece justificatice his own copy of the Life (see following
or document, printed in full in Books note) : ' But his pupils have been
in and iv of the volume), — ' to be seen wanting in not giving him a Monu-
in the publick Library of the famous ment, which he well deserves.'
M. III. 33
514
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IT.
The
Collection
presented
by Morland
completely
overlooked
for more
than a
century until
discovered
by
Bradshaw.
Cromwell's
popularity
now on the
wane.
possibly purchase by love or money.... While he was in the
University library, how diligent he was for the publick good
from first to last, what incredible pains he took there for you,
and for how trifling a recompence ye all sufficiently know.
And when the sharpness of his disease would not suffer him
to frequent that place, he delivered to me a catalogue of all
the Manuscripts in that library (except the Oriental) writ
every word with his own hand ; which I am to deliver into
the publick library, as soon as it is open again1.'
It may safely be assumed, therefore, that it was not
through any inadvertence on the part either of William
Moore or Thomas Smith, that, to quote the words of their
successor in the nineteenth century, 'for more than a hun-
dred years, the librarians themselves uniformly denied the
existence of the most important part of the collection2'
presented by Morland. There is evidence, indeed, of the
volumes having been used by Peter Allix in 1689, but from
that date until 1862, — when they were rediscovered by
Bradshaw himself, who found ' the volumes all standing on
the shelves as near to the "documents" as the difference
of size would allow,' so that ' the only wonder is how they
could ever have been lost sight of/ — they had ceased even
to be identified, ' having come to be regarded as miscel-
laneous pieces, apparently in Spanish, of no particular
importance8.'
That the mere fact of the donor having been one of
Cromwell's agents should, as Bradshaw suggests, have caused
the collection itself to be ' so completely ignored,' is by no
means improbable. Even, before his death, Cromwell's
popularity was already on the wane. His famous Procla-
mation proved equally unacceptable to the three great
1 The Life and Death of Mr
William Moore, late Fellow of Caius
College and Keeper of the University
Library: as it was delivered in a
Sermon preached at his funeral so-
lemnity, April 24, 1659. In St Maries
Church in Cambridge, by TJw. Smith,
B.D. his Successour. Printed by
John Field, Printer to the University
of Cambridge. 1660. I am indebted
to our Librarian for the loan of his
own copy (formerly in Baker's pos-
session) of this rare little volume.
2 The Cambridge University Li-
brary, p. 21.
3 Cambridge Antiquarian Society,
Communications, n 205.
DEATH OF CROMWELL. 515
religious parties whose distinctive tenets it virtually disre- CUA.P. iv.
garded, and to the fanatics whose practices it justly censured;
while his proposal to found a third university at Durham
embroiled him with both universities. At Oxford, indeed,
the latter project was probably one of the reasons which led
him to resign the chancellorship, for Conant. who was now HIS
resignation
vice-chancellor and the chief leader of the Presbyterian party, ^ceiior-
was known to be strongly opposed to such a measure. In o"fonL
July 1657, accordingly, the Protector tendered his resigna-
tion, alleging, to quote his own language, that his continuance
in office ' might not be so consistent with the present
constitution of affairs1,' — words which, at the time, were
generally supposed to refer to the recent treaty with France
for the continuance of the Spanish war, whereby he was
accused of having sacrificed the balance of power in Europe.
On the 18th of the following September, his son Richard, ^
although then the representative of the sister university in
Parliament2, was installed as Chancellor at Oxford, where
his investiture with such supremacy would certainly not be
rendered less popular by the fact that, by this time, according
to professor Firth, ' in his journeys through England, he was
received with the pomp befitting the heir of the throne.'
But twelvemonths later, the hand, that ' had controlled the His death :
helm in the most stormy and tempestuous season that
England ever saw3,' was withdrawn by death, and the son
succeeded to the Protectorship also.
Throughout the university, and more especially among
the Heads, there were no signs of any desire to withhold the
customary tribute to the memory of one who had died
supreme ruler of the realm ; but in the expression of their
felicitations to his successor, it is evident that, among the
more experienced and cautious contributors, there prevailed
1 Carlyle-Lomas, m 306. 1654 to 1656, and his brother from
2 D.N.B. xni 187. On 16 Dec. 1656 to 1659, is probably to be at-
1653, Parliament had decreed that tributed quite as much to their nu-
there should be four members for merous and influential family con-
Cambridgeshire, while the Town and nexions among the surrounding
the University were alike to be repre- county families as to their father's
sented by one member only. That interest in the University itself.
Henry Cromwell should have been 3 Neal, Hist, of the Puritan* (ed.
the University representative from 1738), iv 204.
33—2
516 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. a certain reserve and perplexity which contrasts strongly
contrasts with the unmeasured adulation of the younger of the
observable
contributions number. To the majority, indeed, whose actual knowledge
and junk>rlor of Richard Cromwell's capacity was vague, it probably seemed
members ^^ fating that his accession should be hailed as that of a.
new Marcellus, and the two proctors, Joseph Hill of Magda-
lene and John Luke1 of Sidney, on whom it devolved2 to
compose the dedication of the Lucius et Gratulatio3, might
be pardoned for assuming, — what, indeed, the junior proctor
explicitly affirms, — that all the paternal virtues had descended
on the son whom the late ' Monarch ' had himself nominated
his successor, and in whose person he might be said to have,
in a manner, returned to earth, to continue his administra-
tion of the government4. When, however, we note that the
and language of the two other fellows of Sidney who appear as-
especially ., . , -. . , ,
between contributors, is pitched in the same key, we can hardly doubt
emanating ^^ au three had taken their cue from their Head, and it
from Sidney
from^htg-s, must be admitted that, if any one Head in Cambridge was,.
mnflduenceeof more than another, under obligation to Cromwell, it was-
w'hichiote" Dr Minshull. In his own contribution, which appears on
the first page of the volume, he had found no difficulty in
declaring that Richard, 'alike in disposition and mind was.
the very image of his father,' and, turning to apostrophize the
King of Terrors himself, enquires, ' where was now His.
victory5?' Nalson, accordingly, another of the fellows, after
similarly invoking the shade of Cromwell himself, attributes,
to it the declaration that, having ' transferred his swift
intelligence and unvanquishable powers to his great son, he
shall still survive6'; while William Preston, a bachelor,.
1 Luke, who became fellow in 1654, graphum. 1658.
was afterwards fellow of Christ's and 4 ' Traditur haeredi, patrio cum
professor of Arabic from 1685 to 1702. nomine, virtus: | Inque pari Gnato^
2 'nondumadmissoProcancellario,' summe Monarche, redis.' Musarum,
Dr Bond, Worthington's successor, etc. p. B 1.
not having as yet been admitted. 5 ' Ingenii porro, mentisque est
3 Musarum \ Cantabrigiensium \ vera paternae | Effigies ; Ubi, Mors,
Lucius et Gratulatio: \ ille \ in Fu- tua nunc victoria ? nusquam.' Ibid.,
nere \ Oliveri \ Angliae, Scotiae, & p. *1 v.
Hiberniae \ Protectoris : \ haec
Ricardi \ successionefelicissima
de 6 ' Ast celeres animos, invictaque
ad robora, Magnum | Transfudi in Gna-
eundem. \ Cantabrigiae : Apud loan- turn: sic tibi vivus ero.' Ibid,
nern Field, Almae | Academiae Typo- E 4 v.
THE LUCIUS ET GRATULATIO. 517
thinks it a passable conceit, to suggest that Cromwell's sun CHAP, iv.
had chosen to descend below the horizon, inasmuch as Nature
would not suffer two suns to be visible at the same time1.
To such hyperboles, more befitting the court of an Eastern
despot than that of a Protestant monarch, the marked con-
trast presented by the contributions which emanated from
King's, may probably, also, be partly attributable to the
character of its Head, — the example set by the high-minded
and dispassionate Whichcote being in harmony with the
influence which he had exerted over that society throughout
his tenure of the provostship. ' Religious truth,' he premises,
* relies solely on spiritual weapons ; Cromwell had disdained
to coerce others in matters of belief, and had reaped his
reward in being spared to see long life, and he now rested at
peace. It was not thus that tyrants died ! His son had
ascended the throne, acceptable to the entire realm; he
understands how to guide those who follow after divine
things ; and it is no ungrateful task to become the leader of
those who are themselves actuated by noble aspirations ; but
to compel such is thankless work2.' Thus the Provost,
embodying his thoughts in excellent hexameters; while
eight of his scholars, — two in the same metre, the others in
elegiacs, — follow in his steps, with contributions creditable
alike as specimens of Latin verse and as characterized for
the most part by reasonable sobriety of thought and meta-
phor,— an exception, however, being presented in the verses
by ' E. Bachiler,' whose profuse laudation of Richard can be
regarded only as the outcome of presumptuous ignorance.
The Heads of Caius, St Catherine's, Trinity Hall, Trinity,
and Corpus, sent in no contributions, the master of the last-
named society manifesting that habitual caution which
probably on this occasion served to save him from subsequent
1 ' Disparere prior voluit, dum sur- Annos usque expirat, et alta in
geret alter ; | Quod natura simul non pace quiescit. | Filius ascendit simi-
sinit esseduos (soles).' Ibid.ip-C2v. lis, gratusque Britannis, |
2 ' Magna Fides penetrat Cor spiri- Quaeque Deum sapiunt scit pectora
tualibus armis, | Aggreditur victrix, flectere lente. | Nam Batione animum
totum peragratque per orbem, | generosum ducere suave est, I
Plena sui, subnixa Deo, carnalia At mentem ingenuam trahere in-
spernens | ...At Pater hie patriae non gratum atquemolestum.' Ibid. p. *2.
est tormenta minatus 1
518
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Contri-
butions by
the Heads of
St John's,
Peterhouse,
Jesus, and
Christ's.
Those from
Trinity
College
the most
numerous.
Belligerent
tone of
that by
R. Critton
ejection. The three contributions afterwards singled out by
Zachary Grey, in proof of his assertion that 'nothing ever
exceeded them in point of flattery1,' are those by Tuckney,
Seaman, and Moses, the master of Pembroke ; with respect
to which it must be admitted that the contribution by the
first-named certainly adds nothing to his reputation ; that of
the second, although commonplace in conception, is better
verse than he was supposed to be capable of writing ; while
the third, after comparing Oliver to a fallen oak, greets
Richard as a bright sun ! The lines by Worthington at
Jesus bear the impress of their highly cultured author alike
in diction and sentiment. The master of Christ's preferred
to enshroud his ideas in Hebrew, and Widdrington2 (now
both Greek professor and Public Orator) in Greek elegiacs.
The silence of the master of Trinity must not be attributed
to motives like those which weighed with Dr Love, — Dr
Arrowsmith was at this time nearing the close of his arduous
career ; but his influence is probably to be discerned in the
fact, that the contributions from his college more than
doubled those of any other society, with the sole exception of
King's, among them being one by his relative, Thomas Arrow-
smith, now a bachelor fellow; while one 'R. Critton,' who
contributes both Greek and Latin verses, seems to be ani-
mated by a spirit well worthy of a disciple of the author
of the Tactica Sacra3, inasmuch as, alone among the con-
tributors, he takes upon himself to assume a tone that is
warlike rather than peaceful, by suggesting to the Protector
that his father had reduced three kingdoms to obedience,
but that there still remains another power, 'the Triple Crown
of the Roman Wolf,' which requires to be summoned to
lower the fasces before the English colours4, — a suggestion
1 Impartial Examination of the
Fourth Volume of Mr Daniel Neal's
History of the Puritans, pp. 226-7.
2 Of Kalph Widdrington, the bro-
ther of Sir Thomas, the Speaker of
the House of Commons, Dr Peile
says : ' From 1654-60 (when he re-
signed the office) he was Greek Pro-
fessor, being elected against Isaac
Barrow, who, according to Aubrey
(Aubrey-Clark, i 90), " had the con-
sent of the University, but Oliver
Cromwell put in Dr Widdrington." '
Hist, of Christ's College, pp. 173-4.
3 See supra, p. 501, n. 2.
4 ' Devicit tria regna Pater, super-
anda Tibi uni | Restat Bomani trina
corona Lupi; | Ut (crucis huic si
RICHARD AS PROTECTOR. 519
about as unacceptable to the peace-loving Richard as it was CHAP. iv.
unjust to the humble-minded Alexander VII, chiefly intent,
at this very time, on the abolition of that system of nepotism
which had so long impaired the dignity of the Papal Court
under his predecessors.
But whatever misconception may have existed in the ^^!ient8
university with respect to the new Protector's capacity for ^oltrtor for
government was destined to be soon dispelled. As early as ofhis
1650, the Committee for the Reformation of the Universities 5T5
elections to
had announced its resolve, not ' to recommend any more fellowships,
persons to fellowships or scholarships in any of the colleges
or halls in either of the Universities respectively, where there
is a competent number of Fellows to chuse according to
Statute,' and this resolution had been cited by Charles
Hotham as 'a strong argument' against interference with
such elections under any circumstances1. And although
that Committee had ceased to exist in 16522, and Cromwell's
powers as Protector placed him in the position of royalty
itself, the evidence would tend rather to shew that they were
sparingly used. We find him, indeed, sending a mandate to
Queens' College in 1656-7, for the election of 'John Lauson'
(already a member of the society and afterwards President
of the College of Physicians) to a fellowship, but the reply
which he received was as follows: —
'Jannar. 19, 1656-7. Resolved by the determination of the major
part of the Fellowes, that Mr Laiison be not admitted fellow upon the
mandate of my Lord Protector, till further addresses be made to his
Highness in that behalf, for as much as they are not satisfied in the
condition mentioned in the sayd mandate3.'
And thus, apparently, the matter rested. In the follow-
ing year, a similar exercise of his prerogative is on record in (6) in the
. , . . conferring
connexion with an honorary degree, his ' Mandate being of honorary
addressed to ' Our trusty and well beloved the Vicechancellor
tantus amor) Mox Praesul adoret | Ro- lege, p. 568. John Lawson of London,
manusvestras.Anglicasigna, cruces.' adm. pensioner of Queens', 12 Nov.
Lucius et Gratulatio, p. D 3-4. 1648, M.A. 1656; M.D. of Padua
1 True State of the Case, etc. u.s. 1659 and incorporated at Cambridge
p. 91. 1659. Died 21 May 1705. Ibid. p.
2 See Shaw, u.s. n 225. 569.
3 Searle, Hist, of the Queenes' Col-
520 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. iv. and Senate of our University of Cambridge,' and couched in
the following terms :
' Whereas we are informed that you cannot by the Statutes, and
according to the Customes of your University, admit any to the Degree of
Bachelor of Music unless he had been some years before admitted in a
BENJAMIN College: And whereas we are also certify'd that BENJ" ROGERS hath
b. 1614. attained to eminence of skill in that Faculty : We, willing to give all
MUS. Bac. : encouragement to the studies and abilities of Men in that or any other
Ingenuous Faculty, have thought Jit to declare our will and Pleasure,
by these our Letters, that, notwithstanding your said Statutes and
Customs, You cause BENJn ROGERS to be admitted and created Bach, in
Music in some one or more of your Congregations assembled in that
our University: He paying such dues, as are belonging to that Degree
and giving some proof of his accomplishments and skill in Music. And
for the so doing These our Letters shall be your Warrant.
Given at Whitehall the 28th day of May 16581.'
Although Benjamin Rogers was at this time a compara-
tively unknown man, the University found no difficulty in
suspending a general statute2 at the behest of the supreme
ruler of the realm and in order to afford recognition to
His artistic merit ; the Protector's mandate was accordingly obeyed
admission to . . . °
his degree without a dissentient voice ; and Cambridge was thus enabled
granted in
withponver's *° anticipate, by some ten years, the more tardy appreciation
mandate. subsequently shewn by Oxford, of the merits of the distin-
H»s guished composer whose cathedral music was to become,
subsequent
a0cpomposeras before the close of the century, the theme of admiration
muaic!edral among the virtuosi of the realm ; while his melodious hymn,
Te 0 Deum colimus, still daily sung in the hall of Magdalen,
and every Mayday morn from her ancient tower, preserves
his memory when the more elaborate productions of his
genius have almost ceased to be heard.
seaman It was a very different matter, however, when, a month
recom-
mended by later, Oliver so far yielded to the restless importunity of
Oliver for » *
feiiows'mp at Lazarus Seaman as to recommend his son, Joseph Seaman,
a'june'iess. for election to a fellowship at Peterhouse. We have it, on
1 Baker MSS. D 129-130; Carlyle- procancellarii et eorum qui fuerint in
Lomas, m 311. capite nisi sint regiae majestati a
2 ' Nee ulli concedatur gratia ut secretis aut episcopi aut nobiles vel
ejus admissio stet ei pro completis nobilium filii." Statute of Elizabeth,
gradu et forma sub poena perjurii Documents, i 464.
RICHARD AS PROTECTOR. 521
the authority of Richard, that the fellowship had been CHAP. iv.
standing vacant for ' the space of fourteen years att least1.'
Information of what had taken place was probably secretly
transmitted to the authorities, and Oliver's 'recommendation'
was forestalled by a counter representation to the effect that
the vacancy had already been filled up by the college oiiver
electors at an earlier date, and a deputation of some of ^™^.on
their number to the Protector at Whitehall succeeded in thatThTng
obtaining from him 'a repudiation of any desire to exercise already ha
illegal pressure,' while the authorities were at the same time Lather.
enjoined to suspend proceedings until in receipt of further
instructions2. But before another three months had passed,
the Protector himself was no more ; and then, in November
1658, we find Richard sending a peremptory order to
the ' Master ' (sic) and fellows of Queens' College, ' to Richard,
0 . Protector,
admit Martin Pindar, B.A. of the college, ' to the fellowship ^*^r
lately held by Simon Patereke ' [Patrick]3. His attention ^"S*
being next directed to the question of Joseph Seaman's ptadSTtp a
election at Peterhouse, he decided to cut the knot which his iexov!i^8.
father had designed to untie, and summed up his view of
the case in the following terms : ' Hearing from a member He assumes
of our Privy Council that Seaman [i.e. Joseph] has the omcT
fellowship, as there is no Visitor for the College, and his ftl^dfinthe
place during vacancy can only be supplied by the chief vitltor and
magistrate, we declared Seaman admitted by ourselves as Joseph
. . . . . Seaman to
Visitor, and ordered the Master to admit him, but he is Readmitted
fellow of
obstructed by some of the fellows. We therefore declare Accordingly:
our pleasure that he be a perpetual fellow, from the delivery 24
of the former letter4. And though this case be singular and
not provided for by the Statutes of the College, so that no
dispensation needs to be granted about it, yet being informed
1 ' We have seen his [late] High- 2 Walker, Peterhouse, pp. 116-7.
ness's letter to you of 21 June 1658, 3 State Papers (Dam.), 1658, vol.
recommending Jos. Seaman, B.A. of CLxxxm, no. 74. Simon Patrick, the
your Colledge, to Mr Monning's fel- future bishop of Ely, to whose Auto-
lowship, which has been void by the biography we are indebted for nu-
space of 14 years att least. The merous details respecting Queens'
president of the Colledge received College during the presidency of
the letter 26 June, and for his part Dr Horton.
obeyed.' State Papers (Dam.), CLXXXIV, * I.e. the letter sent by Oliver re-
no. 72. ferred to above.
522
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
In other
respects he
aimed chiefly
at giving
effect to
his father's
designs and
especially
that of
constituting
Durham
College a
University.
The
Universities
decide on
petitioning
against the
measure
and send
Petitions to
Whitehall.
that some of the fellows desire it, we grant it, and dispense
with any Statute to the contrary1.'
When we recall to mind some of the facts which came
before us in connexion with the contest between Charles
Hotham and the overbearing head of Peterhouse2, and now
find the latter wresting from the irresolute Richard the
concession which his father would probably have withheld,
it is difficult not to surmise that equity, at least, had
throughout been on the side of the party of resistance.
There is, however, no reason for supposing that, dictatorial
as was his language, the new Protector was actuated by any
design of reversing his father's policy. On the contrary, as
soon as the new Parliament had assembled and, along with
Thurloe as its leader, had sworn fidelity to himself, it was
forthwith announced that the deed for constituting the
College at Durham a University only awaited sealing in
order to become operative. In this design, Cromwell had
been aided by the advice of John Lambert, Edward Montagu
(first earl of Sandwich), and Francis Rous, a former provost
of Eton ; and the Charter which he had given the College in
1657 might, very probably, have already excited misgiving,
seeing that it not only authorized the transfer to the new
foundation of the endowments of the Cathedral together
with its library, but also conferred on it the right ' to keep
and maintain' a press3, at the same time instituting fellows,
tutors, and professors, — so that, in short, the College needed
only a chancellor and the right to confer degrees in order
to become a fully constituted University. At Cambridge,
accordingly, the Senate forthwith nominated six delegates4
to exhibit to the Lord Protector a petition against the
1 State Papers (Dom.), 1658, vol.
CLXXXIV, no. 72.
2 See supra, pp. 408-16.
3 'And that the said Master or
Provost, Fellows and Scholars of the
said College for the time being, and
their successors, may from time to
time print or cause to be printed
Bibles of all, or any kind of volumes,
and may license other books to the
Press.' Grey (Zach.), Impartial Ex-
amination, etc. iv, Append, p. 122.
4 These were Thomas Horton,
president of Queens', Benjamin
Whichcote, and Lazarus Seaman (as
Doctors of Divinity), Thomas Slater,
M.D., Ralph Widdrington, as Public
Orator, and Thomas Bucke, one of
the Esquire Bedels. Cooper, Annals,
m 473; Statuta Acad. Cantabr. p.
393.
THE CHAETER FOR DURHAM. 523
measure, as 'not only prejudicial to but also destructive of VCHAP.
those charters and fundamental privileges of this University,
which your petitioners are jointly and severally obliged
by oath to maintain'; and they therefore besought his
Highness 'to inhibit the sealing. . .untill such time as your
petitioners are heard what they have to alledge in the
maintenance of their charters and ancient rights1.' A
similar petition sent up from Oxford, by the hands of the
Principal of Brazenose and Dr John Wallis, arrived about
the same time, and before the end of April the two deputa-
tions were admitted together at Whitehall. The Protector The result
. . as described
was by no means desirous, at this juncture, of becoming $0^thony
involved in new contentious business, and, to quote Anthony
Wood's terse account of what ensued, 'he forthwith promised
that nothing should be done therein to the prejudice of the
Universities till both were heard therein ; and did moreover
grant an Order to the Lords Commissioners of the Great
Seal to this purpose :
RICHARD P.
It is our will and pleasure that the Lords Keepers of the Great Seal
do forbear passing the said Grant for Durham College until further
Order from us.
Whitehall 22 April 1659.
'So that the business resting here, till such time that
Richard (the Mushroom Prince) was deposed, the matter was
soon forgotten, and not long after, when King Charles II
was restored, the said College of Durham was restored also
to its antient Inhabitants, viz. the Dean and Chapter
formerly of that place2.'
When electing Richard Cromwell as his father's successor, Difficulties
created by
there had probably been but few members of the late the return
» to the
Parliament to whom it occurred that, in thus reverting to fierecuury*
the theory of hereditary succession, they were also creating a su
valid argument for his deposition. But as the incapacity of
the son became evident, even to the Independents who were
his chief supporters, the Presbyterian party could not fail to
1 Cooper, Ibid, ra 473-4. 2 Wood-Gutch, n 294.
524
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
EDWARD
STILLING-
FLEKT I
b. 1635.
d. 1699.
His
Irenicum.
Milton's
views dis-
tinguished
from those
of Cromwell.
recall that the father of the young prince now in exile, had
himself, when at Newport, advised that an endeavour should
be made to find a basis for doctrinal agreement between
themselves and the members of the Anglican communion ;
and as the question with regard to Richard's successor came
before them, they might reasonably consider that they could
hardly do better than elect, in the place of the ruler whose
father had brought about the overthrow of their party, the
son of the monarch who had recognized the desirability of
forming an alliance with them. It was thus, at least, that
Edward Stillingfleet reasoned, as, retired from his fellowship
at St John's College to his rectory at Sutton, and now in
his twenty-fourth year, he commenced to write his famous
Irenicum, wherein the arguments in favour of such a com-
promise were elaborately set forth, and the authority of the
late King cited in their support1.
Very different was the point of view from which John
Milton regarded the crisis of 1659. His aims, as Masson
has pointed out, had been gradually diverging from those of
Cromwell, and the course of events throughout the Protec-
torate had been fraught, for him, with disappointment.
' Milton wanted to see Church and State entirely separated ;
Cromwell had mixed them, intertwined them, more than
ever. Milton wanted to see the utter abolition in England
of anything that could be called a clergy; Cromwell had
made it one of the chief objects of his rule to maintain a
clergy and extend it massively2.' In the course of the month
of May, it became known that Richard's abdication was
1 ' His Majesty thinketh it well
worthy the studies and endeavours of
Divines of both opinions, laying aside
emulation and private interests, to
reduce Episcopacy and Presbytery
into such a well proportioned Form
of superiority and subordination, as
may best resemble the Apostolical
and Primitive times, so far forth as
the different condition of the times,
and the exigencies of all considerable
circumstances will admit.' IRENICUM:
A Weapon-Salve for the Churches
Wounds, or the Divine Eight of
. Particular Forms of Church-Govern-
ment, discussed and examined accord-
ing to the Principles of the Law of
Nature, the Positive Laws of God,
the practice of the Apostles and the
Primitive Church, and the judgment
of Reformed Divines, etc. By Edward
Stillingfleete, Eector of Sutton in
Bedfordshire. The Second Edition.
London, 1662, p. 415. The Preface
to this edition (substantially nearly
the same as the first) is however
dated ' Octob. 26. 1660,' and the
greater part of the treatise was
probably written in 1659.
2 Life of Milton, v 600.
MILTON'S ATTACK ON THE UNIVERSITIES. 525
impending, and one of the earliest measures of the new Par- CHAP, iv.
liament (known as the 'restored Rump') which assembled
on the 21st, was to pass a Resolution, ' That the Univer- g2SlSof
sities and Schools of Learning shall be so countenanced fhlpec'
and reformed, as that they may become the nurseries of
piety and learning1.' If we note that this Resolution was
one of a series, which had resulted from a consideration by
the above Parliament of a petition and address from the
Army, we may perhaps conjecture that the design of its
authors was rather to revolutionize than reform both Oxford
and Cambridge. Four days later, Richard Cromwell abdi- ^^j^jJJ
cated, and Milton was no longer Latin Secretary, and he ^M^ies^
might consequently now venture to speak his whole mind.
His dissatisfaction with the actual condition of affairs was, ^^s
by this time, at its height, — Presbyterianism everywhere fast tendency
regaining that ascendancy, which it had seemed likely, only of
a few months before, to forfeit, owing to its incautious
neglect of Church ordinances2, — the Independents, on the
other hand, losing ground, and especially at Cambridge, so
that they were already evincing a desire to compromise3;
while, at Oxford, John Owen was reluctantly giving place to
Conant ! Milton hailed the opportunity afforded him, and
in the following August published his Considerations*, a tiny He publishes
volume in large type, which grave men might carry in the tj^r^i°"^
pocket and read at leisure, wherein the writer proceeded to
denounce not only an Established Church but also those
universities which trained its clergy. The Considerations
are prefaced by An Address to Parliament5 designed more
especially to bespeak the attention of the legislators of the
1 Commons' Journals, vn 661 ; 3 Masson, Life of Milton, v 342-5.
Cooper, Annals, m 474. 4 Considerations \ touching \ the
2 See Dr Shaw's account of this likeliest means to remove \ HIRELINGS |
phase of the Presbyterian system, in out of the Church. \ Wherein is also
his Hist, of the English Church, etc. discoursed of \ Tithes, Church-fees, \
n 98-152. 'It is,' he says, 'to the Church-revenues; \ and whether any
everlasting reproach of presbytery maintenance \ of ministers can be
that such a state of things should settl'd \ by Law. \ The author J.M. [
have existed.' Ib. p. 152. He how- London, 1659.
ever states elsewhere, that ' the B To the Parlament of the common-
triumph of the army struck a death- wealth of England with the dominions.
blow at the Presbyterian discipline.' thereof [unpaged]. Ibid.
Ib. p. 136.
526
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
He
maintains
that the
•education of
the Clergy
•at the
Universities
is radically
•wrong.
realm, whom he describes as already occupied with ' peti-
tions,' in which the writers were tendering advice to the
recipients with respect to ' new models of a Commonwealth.'
'You will interpret it,' says Milton, 'much more the dutie of
a Christian to offer what his conscience perswades him may
be of more moment to the freedom and better constituting
of the Church, since it is a deed of highest charitie to help
undeceive the people, and a work worthiest your authoritie,
— in all things els authors, assertors, and now recoverers of
our libertie, — to deliver us, the only people of all Protestants
left still undelivered, from the oppressions of a Simonious,
decimating clergie.' He then proceeds, in the Considerations
itself, to concentrate his attack on the Universities, where,
as he asserts, the whole education of the clergy is carried on
under a false assumption, namely that their future profession
requires the culture there imparted, while, he adds, the
pretensions of the graduate himself are often insufferable,
— for after having received his education almost entirely ' at
the public cost1,' he is frequently to be heard complaining
of the scantiness of the income which he derives from the
pursuit of the profession which he has chosen2. For the lead-
ing feature of the academic training, — the attention bestowed
on dialectics, which, subsequent to the time when Milton
quitted Cambridge, had become invested with additional
1 "... the poor Waldenses, the
ancient stock of our reformation,
without these helps that I speak of,
bred up themselves in trades, and
especially in physic and surgery, as
well as in the study of scripture
(which is the only true theologie)
that they might be no burden to the
church.' Considerations, pp. 98-9.
2 ' But they will say, we had be-
taken us to som other trade or pro-
fession, had we not expected to find
a better livelihood by the ministerie.
This is that which I looked for, to
discover them openly neither true
lovers of learning, and so very seldom
guilty of it, nor true ministers of the
gospel.' Considerations, p. 132. How
inapplicable this reproach was, in
the time of the Commonwealth, may
be gathered from the following as-
sertion by a Master of St John's
College, published in 1654 : ' In
Cambridge now, more then any-
where I know, or in these latter
times have heard of, you may have
aSd-jravov evayyt\t.ov , the more to the
honor (I say not of such thrifty
hearers, but) of God in the first
place, and then of that Reformation
which so many do so traduce and
spit at ; as also of those more noble
spirited Preachers, who so freely
offer to God that which costeth
them so much, for which of men
they receive nothing.' Tuckney
(Anthony), Sermon .preached at St
Maries in Cambridge, Decemb. 22,
1653, at the publick Funerals of
Dr Hill, etc. pp. 59-60.
TRUE STATE OF THE UNIVERSITIES A.D. 1653 TO 1660. 527
importance through the impulse given to the practice by CHAP, iv.
Voetius, — he manifests especial contempt, stigmatizing
'those theological disputations there held by professors and HIS
, • J • denunciation
graduates as 'such as tend least of all to the edification or °f theological
disputations.
capacitie of the people, but rather perplex and leaven pure
doctrine with scholastic trash then enable any minister to
the better preaching of the gospel1.' He considers, indeed, £"rning
that 'all the learning, either human or divine, necessary to a a minister for
minister, may as easily and less chargeably be had in any oTtLntd
private house'; and even the formation of a good library, such and without
as he implies it was the ambition of not a few young divines possession
• of a large
to get together, is pronounced by him ' not necessary to his library-
ministerial either breeding or function,' and 'if Father and
Councils be thought needful, let the State provide them2.'
In partial explanation of this harsh and captious criti- cu-cum-
-1 stances that
cism, it may fairly be urged that Milton's blindness, now of ^{jf^is
some seven years' duration, combined with the laboriousness [f^/ST of
of his secretarial duties, may in some measure account for universities.
the misconceptions with respect to the actual condition of
the universities under which he apparently wrote ; while, as
Masson observed, the Considerations, along with his Treatise
of Civil Power (which appeared in the same year), represent
his earliest ' considerable English dictations ' subsequent to
the commencement of his loss of sight3. In disproof of the His repre-
sentations
above assertions, it may here suffice, as regards Oxford, to ^^^^
cite the oft-quoted passage in Clarendon, who, notwithstand- {J,eford by
ing his depreciatory estimate of all that guided thought and cTa'rSTd'on0
action during the Protectorate, was fain, long afterwards, to exclusions
. . of Montagu
admit that ' the stupidity, negligence, malice and perverse- Burrows,
ness ' of those in authority, had, greatly to his astonishment,
not only failed 'to extirpate all the learning, religion, and
loyalty that had flourished there,' but that the University
had actually 'yielded a harvest of extraordinary good and
sound knowledge in all parts of learning; and many who
1 Considerations, etc. p. 138. patently furnished for £60 [ = £200
2 ' ...we may also compute the now].' Masson, Life of Milton, v
charges of his needful library, which 614 ; Ibid. pp. 136-9.
though some sliame not to value at 3 Milton, v 582, 605.
£600 [ = £2000 now] may be com-
528 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. were wickedly introduced applied themselves to the study of
good learning and the practice of virtue, and had inclination
to that duty and obedience they had never been taught ; so
that, when it pleased God to bring King Charles the Second
back to his throne, he found that University abounding in
excellent learning, and devoted to duty and obedience little
inferior to what it was before its desolation V ' We cannot
fail to observe,' says Burrows, after citing the above testi-
mony, ' that whatever violence, necessary or unnecessary, had
accompanied the Parliamentary reform, the University at
least kept up its high character as a place of religion and
seat of learning; and that it did so all along in close con-
nexion with by far the larger portion of its ancient statutes,
customs, and traditions2.'
Milton's With regard to Cambridge, although no equally emphatic
tions testimony is on record, the characters of those who bore
as regards »
Sravened sway in the university and the tendency of their influence
tempoiSJy" during the same period undoubtedly point to a like con-
affordedby elusion. Among their number, Anthony Tuckney, who
colleges. succeeded to the mastership of St John's when Arrowsmith
of Anthony was transferred to Trinity, appears to have been the chief
Master of leader, a fact attributable mainly to his great force of
St John's, > .....
i663-*i. character, aided perhaps by his seniority (in point of years)
Baker's to all the other Heads, with the exception of Minshull. ' As
testimony
merits'afa much esteemed and reverenced as any master ever was8,' is
to*tt?o'senodf Baker's estimate of one whom he nevertheless regarded as a
'' schismatic; while with respect to Tuckney and his pre-
decessor, he adds, — 'as a right owing to their memory,' —
that 'though they were not perhaps so learned as some of
those who have both before and since filled that post and
station, yet their government was so good and the discipline
under them so strict and regular, that learning then flourished,
and it was under them that some of those great men had
1 Hist, of the Great Rebellion (ed. sities never were more scholarly,
Macray), rv 259. never had more thoroughly-furnished
2 Introduction to Register of Visit- professors and teachers than during
ors, p. cvii; similarly Grosart, Preface the Commonwealth.'
to Beaumont's Wor ks (p. xv), ventured 3 Baker-Mayor, v 229.
to assert that ' our national Univer-
THE HEADS: A.D. 1653 TO 1660. 529
their education that were afterwards the ornaments of the CHAP. iv.
following age1.' There is nothing in the facts which have
reached us to contravene this description ; and the incidental
evidence materially confirms it. In Tuckney, however, there fuckney-s
,, . ••«_.« special
was a certain intellectual equipoise which we miss in Arrow- ^g"ca"
smith. Although a theologian of pronounced convictions
and an administrator with great strength of purpose, his
sense of what was practicable had been quickened by his
experiences as a London rector'2, and he could both under-
stand the point of view of those from whom he differed, and
also co-operate with them for the attainment of some desirable
end. There were Masters, such as Lazarus Seaman and
Dell, in whom it is difficult to discern a stronger motive
than that of self-aggrandizement, — their college coming only
second, and the university nowhere, in their regard. Tuck- MS care
J ° alike for
ney, on the other hand, never allowed his devotion to the w» college
* ' and the
interests of the society over which he presided to obscure his University-
sense of duty to the university at large ; and he preferred to
look upon his fellow Heads as coadjutors rather than rivals.
When, indeed, in his noteworthy eulogium of Dr Hill, he
singles it out as one of the latter's distinguishing good
qualities, that 'the general good and well-ordering of the
University' were alike 'his careful thought in private with
himself and 'the matter of his frequent discourse with
others3,' we recognize a trait which these contemporary
masters of Trinity and St John's certainly possessed in
common. Although, again, a staunch defender of the sympathy
. . r*\ p ' m ^e Irian'lests
doctrine embodied in the Westminster Confession, Tuckney wj*',1 throse.
J of the Lati-
strongly objected to the proposal that others should be called panyTrom
upon 'to subserve or swear to' the same4; and while upholding, mffe
1 Baker-Mayor, i 232. at St Maries, etc. (u. *.), p. 55.
2 He had been appointed, after 4 ' In the Assemblie I gave my
leaving Boston for London in 1643, vote with others, that the Confession
to the sequestered rectory of St of Faith, putt-out by Authoritie,
Michael - le - Querne in Cheapside. should not bee required to bee eyther
D. N. B. LVH 286. sworne or subscribed to, — wee having
3 ' Scarce was there a time that bin burnt in the hand in that kind
he met with us, but hee was asking before, — but so as not to be publickly
or proposing something or other that preached or written against. ' Eight
way. It seemeth his care was to Letters of Dr Antony Tuckney and
keep up those Universities, which Dr Benjamin Whichcote (ed. Salter,
others would ruin. ' Sermon preached 1753), p. 76; Salter's Preface, p. xv.
M. in. 34
530
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV
Tuckney's
regard for
Whichcote
and
Culverwel.
His maxim
in elections
to fellow-
ships.
His
disclaimer
of any
pretension
to interpret
prophecy.
with no less determination, the requirements of the Engage-
ment, he did his best to shield William Sancroft from the
consequences of his refusal to subscribe. So, too, at the
commencement of his celebrated controversy with his former
pupil, Whichcote, he describes his actuating motives to be
not only ' zeal for God's glory and truth,' but also a desire
that ' your name and repute may not be blemished, and that
myself with your other friends may not be grieved, but com-
forted and edified by your ministry1,' — language, the sincerity
of which hardly admits of question ; while it is pleasing to
note that when, some five years later, Tuckney succeeded
Arrowsmith in the Regius professorship, Whichcote was one
of the electors. So again, the kindly recognition which
Tuckney, as master of Emmanuel, had extended to the
rising genius of Whichcote's disciple, Nathanael Culverwel,
is attested by William Dillingham, in his dedication of the
former's Light of Nature, after the author's death 8. On the
other hand, according to Calamy, he was distinguished
among the Heads by his resolute resistance to orders from
' the higher powers,' whenever he deemed their mandate to
be in excess of their prerogative3; while his genuine con-
scientiousness in the same capacity found expression in his
well-known dictum with respect to the principle which chiefly
regulated his choice in elections to fellowships, namely that of
attaching more importance to proved attainments than to
reputed sanctity, — ' they may deceive me in their godliness,'
he would say, ' but they cannot in their scholarship4.' Per-
haps, however, the sobriety of his judgement was never more
conspicuous than in the disavowal which he had the courage
to make, at a time when the Millenarian controversy was at
1 Eight Letters, etc. p. 5.
2 ' Honoured SIKS, The many testi-
monies of your real affection to this
pious and learned Authour (especially
while he lay under the discipline
of so sad a Providence) deserve all
grateful acknowledgement,' etc. Dedi-
cation of The Light of Nature, with
several other Treatises : by Nathanael
Culverwel, Master of Arts, and late-
ly Fellow of Emmanuel Colledge.
London, 1652. [A posthumous pub-
lication, the Dedication being written
by the editor, William Dillingham.]
3 Account of the Ejected Ministers
(ed. 1777), i 206.
4 ' This story of him, so much to
his honor, is still upon record in
the College; and was told me by
the present worthy Master.' Salter
(Sam.), Preface to the Eight Letters,
etc. p. xv.
THE HEADS: A.D. 1653 TO 1660. 531
its height, of his ability to adjudicate, or even offer an CHAP,
opinion, with regard to those various interpretations of sacred
prophecy which theologians of almost every school, from the
time of Mede to that of Vavasour Powell, had been con-
fidently putting forth, as manifestly finding their verification
and actual fulfilment in contemporary or impending events1.
In short, a penetrating intelligence and a wholesome dread
of enthusiasm, combined with great self-restraint in dealing
with questions of religious or philosophical belief, would
appear to have gained for Tuckney a reputation somewhat
beyond that to which he was entitled by virtue either of
his attainments or his actual contributions to learning; and
from Whichcote, who deferred to his arguments with ' rever- £" £$™°n
ence and esteem2,' to Robert Baillie, who consulted him on scl
the drawing up of a course of 'philosophy' which would
enable the teacher to dispense with the manuals of the
Jesuits, his advice was deferentially sought by scholars whose
claim to an opinion on the subject was, in some cases,
superior to his own3. His rigid Calvinism, however, repelled
not a few ; and at Jesus, under Worthington, and at King's,
under Whichcote, students were conscious of breathing a BENJAMIN
WHICHCOTB,
different atmosphere. Of these two eminent men, both of {^°^of
whom had been tutors at Emmanuel, the latter was nine a. mi
years the senior of the former, 'and in 1657 Worthington JOHN
J ' . ? . WOBTHING-
married Whichcote's niece. But although kindred spirits, ™ j'e^ster
their activity took a different turn. The provost of King's b°ms.'
wrote but little, and, by his own confession, was by no means
1 ' For my own part, I freely pro- in NEW ENGLAND. Published by
tesse,...th&tinpropheticisnullussum. Anthony Tuckney, D.D., Master of
When I see so many far more versed Saint Johns Colledge in Cambridge,
in them than I am, so exceedingly London, 1655.
differing among themselves, and 2 ' Sir, I have had you all along
oftentimes so manifestly mistaken, in very high esteem, and have borne
although it doth not dishearten me you reverence beyond what you do
from a sober enquiry, yet it giveth or can imagine." See Eight Letters
me a faire warning to be neither (u. s.), pp. 6-7.
over-forward in opinion, nor too per- 3 ' He has the rare good fortune
emptory in asserting things of this of uniting in his praise such men as
nature.' 'To the Reader' prefixed Baker, the non-juror, Walker, the
to A brief Exposition with practical chronicler of the sufferings of the
Observations upon the Whole Book of clergy, and Calamy, the non-con-
Canticles, Never before Printed. By formist historian.' Crossley (Jas.),
that late Pious and Worthy Divine Diary and Correspondence, of Dr
Mr JOHN COTTON, Pastor of Boston Worthington, i 22.
34—2
532 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. a hard student. When Tuckney imagined that he had dis-
cerned in the other's sermons certain traces of the influence
hTmldf °te °f Pagan philosophers or of the schoolmen, Whichcote frankly
auprete'nfion confessed that ' he had been little acquainted with bookes,'
character for, to quote his own words, 'while fellow of Emmanuel
student. Colledge, employment with pupils tooke my time from mee.
I have not read manie bookes but I have studyed a fewe;
meditation and invention,' he goes on to say, 'hath been
rather my life, than reading ; and trulie I have more read
Calvine, and Perkins, and Beza than all the bookes you
HM "ifluence mention1.' It was as a preacher, indeed, that he mainly ac-
aVreachl" quired his reputation ; and his Sunday afternoon sermons
at Trinity Church, delivered through a succession of years,
before audiences largely composed of both the seniors and
the younger members of the university, were generally
recognized as exercising no slight influence on academic
nminihithe0n thought. Worthington, on the other hand, already employed
student on ^e cnief literary labour of his life, — the editing of the
works of Joseph Mede, — and, as yet, best known by his trans-
lation of Thomas a Kempis2, — preferred the seclusion of his
study. Here he carried on an extensive correspondence,
especially with Hartlib, while the duties of his mastership
were discharged with fidelity rather than with zeal, and his
tenure of the office of vice-chancellor was limited to a single
year.
THB^OPHIMJS At Clare, Theophilus Dillingham, who succeeded Cud-
Master of WOrth in 1654, had married the daughter of his predecessor,
d.i678. Dr Paske; and, in Mr Wardale's opinion, proved himself
'as admirable a Head of a College as his father-in-law3.'
During the first three years, he found an able coadjutor in
TILLOTSOH John Tillotson, who appears, indeed, to have been a model
o\rcanter-op college tutor, — conversing with his pupils almost exclusively
&ui63o. in choice Ciceronian Latin which Milton himself might have
d. 1694. ...
His assiduity commended; equally assiduous in attendance at prayers in
tutor. eg college chapel or in conducting them in his own chambers;
1 Eight Letters (u.s.), p. 54. and went through numerous editions.
2 This was published under the 3 Clare College, p. 113.
title of The Christian' s Pattern (1654)
THE HEADS: A.D. 1653 TO 1660. 533
and not less so, in himself listening to sermons without. CHAP. iv.
In 1657, however, he quitted 'the place he loved so well1/
but still retaining his fellowship and along with it a loyal
remembrance of Clare. It was owing, indeed, to Tillotson's
good offices, that the society was able in 1659 to add two
fellowships and four scholarships to its endowment, by the
bequest of Joseph Diggons, a former fellow-commoner2;
while, three years before, Barnabas Oley had given like proof Bequest of
of his undiminished interest in his college, by a bequest to oiey to
the society of King's, having for its object the preservation Collese-
of amicable relations between the two societies3. At William*
Moses at
Pembroke, William Moses, the youngest of all the Heads, cXge0*6
although regarded with little favour either by Cromwell or 16i
his son, maintained his conscientious and assiduous rule
unmolested, but inclining, apparently, to a moderate form of
episcopalianism in matters of Church government. At
Trinity Hall, Dr Bond, although ruling over what was now D* JOHN
essentially a lay community, and averse probably from be- ^f,^r ^all
coming entangled in sectarian controversies, found himself, 1646~ti°-
on one occasion, owing to certain rights of private patronage
appertaining to his mastership, under the necessity of making
an assignment of pews in St Edward's Church to the parish-
ioners4; and in the year 1658-9, he discharged the duties
of the vice-chancellorship. At Queens' College, Thomas HOMO*
Horton continued to rule the society with a certain measure ofoitenV,
of success. Throughout his career a consistent Presbyterian,
he is described by John Wallis, the mathematician, who Testimony
J of John
wrote his Life, as one who was ' very well accomplished for ^« *° £is
the work of the ministry, and very conscientious in the Preacher-
discharge of it'; while his pulpit oratory, which offered a
complete contrast to the florid style and elaborate imagery
then fashionable among Anglican preachers, is excellently de-
scribed by the same pen. ' He wanted not variety of learning
1 Letter to Dillingham, 24 June which Clarehall now holdeth of them
1659. Wardale, Clare College, p. 122. by Lease and as a mean to perpetuate
2 Ibid. p. 121. love and amitie between Kings Coll
3 '...as a compensation for any and Clarehall.' Ibid. p. 131.
detriment that Colledge susteined by 4 Maiden, Trinity Hall, p. 150.
parting with that part of Butt Close
534
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
JOHN
LlGHTFOOT,
Master of St
Catherine's.
1650-75.
RALPH
CCDWORTH,
Master of
Christ's,
1664—88.
WILLIAM
DlLLING-
HAM,
Master of
Emmanuel,
1653-62.
to embellish and trim up a sermon if he had so pleased. But
he contented himself with sound doctrine, Scripture-language,
and such as might be understood by his Auditory (rather than
admired) as best conducing to perswade men to the practice
of those duties he did recommend.' ' For/ his soberminded
biographer goes on to say, 'matters of Wit, though at the
first hearing, they may please the ear and tickle the fancy ;
yet have not that awe upon the conscience, nor make those
lasting impressions which sound doctrine plainly delivered,
with clear evidence from the word of God, is known to do.
And sermons so composed are like to be of more lasting use
than others accommodated to what the present age calls
Wit1.' At St Catherine's, John Lightfoot's profound learning
was also generally at the service of the Presbyterian body,
with whom he stood in high favour. In 1658 he dedicated
the first volume of his Horae Hebraicae to those whom he
designated as ' Catharinenses mei.' Alike as vice-chancellor
and Head, he gave evidence of a capacity for administration
which made his absorption in study and frequent absence at
his rectory of Much Munden all the more a matter for general
concern2. At Christ's College, Cudworth, transferred thither
from Clare in 1654, appears to have lived on amicable terms
with the fellows, and, after receiving his augmentation as
Master, abandoned the design he had previously formed of
quitting the university. Although mostly in his study, he
was an excellent bursar, and sedulous in urging the interests
of fellows of the society with secretary Thurloe3; while the
energy of Ralph Widdrington (the brother of the Speaker),
as college tutor, attracted numerous pupils4. At Emmanuel,
William Dillingham, who succeeded Tuckney in the master-
ship in 1653, although he especially distinguished himself by
his tact and ability as vice-chancellor in the eventful year
1660, was considered, according to Shuckburgh, 'to be more
interested in his private studies and literary employments
1 Life prefixed to One Hundred
Select Sermons upon Several Texts.
London, 1679. fol.
2 Browne (Rt. Eev. G. F.), St
Catharine's College, pp. 112-114.
3 Cudworth-Birch, i 11 ; Masson,
v 77.
4 Peile (Dr), Christ's College, pp.
172-181.
THE HEADS: A.D. 1653 TO 1660. 535
than in the government of the college.' Discipline, accord- CHAP, iv.
ingly declined1, and the numbers fell, — the entries, which in ^jP"ien°fin
1644 had reached to 81, falling in 1654 to 242; while the tlie College-
prescribed ' scholastic exercises ' were frequently evaded. At
Sidney, Minshull, notwithstanding his shortcomings as an Sidney
administrator, found no difficulty in maintaining possession j^^f
of office throughout the Protectorate. Edmund Calamy, the Edmund
° • ' Calamy,
younger3, had already migrated to Pembroke ; but in 1658, B-A- 165f •
Thomas Rymer, the compiler of the Foedera, was admitted
as a pensioner. Amid so much of change and apprehension,
Dr Love, at Corpus, pursued the even tenor of his way, —
neither saying, nor writing, aught that could give intimation
of heterodox opinion or disloyal aim, but with his Latin
muse ever at the service of the university to swell the strains
of lamentation or felicitation as occasion might require.
On the whole, however, it must be allowed that the
majority of those who constituted the governing body during
this brief but trying period, appear to have been actuated
by a strong sense of duty; and even in those cases where a
love of study or the prospect of professional advancement
prevailed over a sense of official responsibility, the loyal
devotion of one or more of the fellows to the interests of
their college generally provided a remedy. We have also
evidence that among the Heads themselves, however warmly
they might deny the justice of Milton's sweeping censures,
there were those who were fully aware that the existing
provisions for the education of the future minister were
1 The following entries in the of a Bible.'
Journal, recorded in Dillingham's 2 Transcript of Admissions, Emm.
handwriting, between the years 1655 Coll.
and 1660, may serve as examples : 3 The son of the ejected minister,
' Eichards (Edm.) and Paulet (Ei.), and the father of the historian of
for frequenting the bird-bolt [the Nonconformity. The statement of
ancient Inn, opposite the College] the grandson, that his father was
and there drinking and singing,' • sometime fellow of Pembroke ' (Ac-
and 'affronting the authority of the count of Ejected Ministers (1713), n
College by blotting out their punish- 301), appears to be incorrect, but he
ment sett on by the Head Lecturer' ; proceeded M.A. from thence in 1658,
' Green and Fitch, for sitting up and on 20 April 1659 was presented
drinking till three in the morning ' ; by the Commissioners for approbation
' for robbing the Fellowes orchard ' ; of public preachers to the rectory of
Baskerville [probably Jo. Baskerfield, Moreton. D.N. B. vm 230; Baker,
adm. 1658], 'neglecting of chappell manuscript note to Calamy, u.s.
and his Tutors prayers ' ; ' stealing
536
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
MATTHEW
POOLB of
Emmanuel :
6.1624.
d. 1679.
He pleads
with the
merchants
of London
to come to
the aid of the
Universities.
His appeal
seconded by
Richard
Baxter.
inadequate and capable of improvement, and who also per-
ceived that, amid the multiplication of books, the growth of
new sects, and the advance in theological learning, it was
especially desirable that the course of study should be both
lengthened and widened, and the student himself be enabled
to prolong his term of residence. As it was, the majority,
after admission to the degree of B.A., quitted the university
altogether. It became necessary, accordingly, to devise some
scheme for their support if they were to remain. The uni-
versity, however, was too poor to provide the funds, while
the government was little likely to grant them : and it was
left to the efforts of a single individual to find a way out of
the difficulty.
Among Worthington's pupils when he was tutor at
Emmanuel, had been Matthew Poole, afterwards the well-
known compiler of the Synopsis Criticorum. There too, the
latter had become known to Tuckney, and, in this manner,
probably, it came about, that when, in the year 1649, Tuckney
resigned his London rectory1, Poole was elected to succeed
him. The new incumbent, accordingly, entered upon his
work under favourable auspices ; his attainments and judge-
ment were alike excellent ; and he was also of a social, genial
disposition which won him favour even among opponents.
He was thus encouraged, eventually, himself to essay the task
of bringing the needs of the universities before some of the
wealthier citizens of London with whom, in the discharge of
his rectorial duties, he frequently came in contact, and among
whom were to be found fit representatives of those merchant
princes, who, in the preceding century, had been the virtual
founders of the chief schools of the capital. A letter from
the pen of Richard Baxter gave him valuable support, as, in
his usual admirable English and with less than his usual
hesitancy, that eminent divine set forth the urgency of the
case, and the dishonour it would be to the Protestant cause
if the proposed scheme were permitted to become a failure2.
1 See supra, p. 529, n. 2.
2 ' To the rich that love Christ, the
Church, the Gospel, and themselves ' :
Feb. 26, 165f . ' The necessities of
the Church have of late called stu-
dents so young into the ministry, that
eminent proficients in languages,
sciences, antiquities, &c. grow thin,
POOLE'S NEW MODEL. 537
Eventually, accordingly, and mainly through Poole's efforts, a CHAP. iv.
fund sufficient to produce an income of £900 per annum Response
r . * of the
was raised, and a detailed scheme, bearing the signatures Presbyterian
o party both
(on behalf of Cambridge) of Tuckney, Worthington, Arrow- annd ^ the
smith, Whichcote, Cudworth, and Dillingham, as sanctioning provmces-
and recommending the same, was printed and published1.
It is reasonable to suppose that those wealthy Presbyterians
who responded thus liberally to Poole's appeal, did not fail to
take account of the probability that the new project, if carried
into effect, would serve greatly to aid their party in the •
retention of that ascendency which they had recently suc-
ceeded in regaining in both universities. But their liberality
serves, none the less, to prove, as Mr Andrew Clark has
pointed out2, that their sentiments in relation to those bodies,
at this time, differed widely from those entertained by
Milton or by the fanatics of the Fifth Monarchy. It could,
indeed, hardly admit of reasonable doubt, that, at a period
when the annual matriculations at Oxford were generally
under 400 and those at Cambridge some thirty to fifty less,
the introduction into each universitv of a select body of forty Forty
* selected
students, chosen, in the first instance, as being 'of godly life, students to
o J 'be enabled
eminent parts, and ingenuous disposition,' sufficiently sub- a° ^dy
sidized, during their undergraduate career, to enable them to "0T se™ny
take their first degree, and then, if still approved, to reside >e
for four years longer3, — their prescribed studies, as under-
graduates, being Latin, Greek, Hebrew. ' and other oriental
languages4/ while ' their three last years ' were to be ' prin-
and are in danger of being worn out, Worthington and John Arrowsmith
if there be not some extraordinary are omitted, while Horton, Seaman,
helps for chosen wits addicted to Woodcock, Hill and Stillingfleet are
these studies. And what a dis- added. In this edition, the date
honour, what a loss that would be ' 1648, ' is an error of the press.]
to us, the Papists would quickly See Mayor, Ibid. p. 158.
understand.' Mayor (Rev. J. E. B.), 2 Wood (Ant.), Life and Times,
Matthew Robinson (1856), Append. i 301, n. 2.
p. 166. x Mayor, Matthew Robinson, pp.
1 A Model for the maintaining of 173-5. The guaranteed annual sti-
Students of choice abilities in the pends were : for undergraduates, £10;
University, and principally in order bachelors of arts, £20 ; masters of
to the Ministry: with EPISTLES and arts, £30.
Recommendations, and an Account of 4 ' and in the several arts and
the Settlement and Practise of it in sciences, so far forth as their geniuses
the Universities there, etc. London, will permit.' Ibid. p. 175.
1658. [In the revised edition, John
538
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Attention
given in the
Colleges
to the
formation of
the student's
character.
The aim in
view in
instituting
extempore
prayers.
' Tutor's
prayers."
cipally employed in the study of divinity,' — might serve
materially to raise the tone of thought and the standard of
discipline throughout the university. In short, as Poole
himself urged, in reply to possible objectors, the design of
the authors of the scheme was, ' first, to select choice wits/
and next, 'to oblige them to a sufficient continuance,' as
also ' to extraordinary diligence,' — in other words, not only
to remedy an existing defect, but also to guard against an
abuse which, in later times, has too frequently discredited
the system of school exhibitions. Rarely, indeed, in the
history of the university, do we find equal evidence of a
desire, on the part of those who supervised its studies, to
mould the character, as well as to inform the mind, of the
student. It was not sufficient that he should passively
accept and formally subscribe the doctrines sanctioned by
the Assembly it was deemed essential that he should also
lay them to heart as energizing and disciplinary truths, to
become interwoven with his habits of thought and spiritual
aspirations throughout his after life. And hence the import-
ance attached to extempore prayer. What the disputation
was, in relation to philosophy, that was the extempore prayer
in relation to theology; it quickened the apprehension of
accepted doctrine, as did the former that of scientific fact.
As each student, in turn, in his tutor's chamber1, and sur-
rounded by his fellows, came forward to encounter what can
rarely have failed to be a somewhat trying ordeal, he grew
more and more conscious, with each successive effort, that
his own conceptions of the truth were defective and vague
to an extent of which he had himself before been unaware.
Like efforts, on the part of others, abler than himself, would
confirm him in his conclusion, while the suggestions and
comments of a judicious tutor would often prove invaluable.
And thus, eventually, with each renewed endeavour to express
1 ' Prayers, in most tutors' cham- considered a breach of discipline,
bers every night,' is one of the and ' negligence at chappell and his
features noted by Anthony Wood as Tutor's prayers ' is a not infrequent
characteristic of this period. Life entry in the list of offences marked
and Times (ed. A. Clark), i 300. for censure or more severe punish-
At Emmanuel, non-attendance was ment.
POOLE'S NEW MODEL. 539
more adequately the needs of a common humanity as inter- CHAP, iv.
preted by the aspirations of the Christian's hope, the student
would have received a special discipline, which, by virtue of
the greater clearness of perception and strength of conviction
it developed, would better enable him in after life to become
the spiritual guide and helper of others. Such exercises,
however, when suffered to degenerate into a matter of routine,
were liable to assume a perfunctory character which divested
them of all their value ; and we find Richard Sam ways1, in Richard
» Samways :
his treatise entitled England's faithful Reprover*, inveighing ch°ri^rpus
strongly against the practice of, what he terms, ' unpre- oxford!'
meditated praying.' Here the adjective almost begs the Sections to
question ; but it is probable enough that, what he describes praj™rps?re
as 'the mistakes, impertinencies, tautologies, inconsequencies'
observable on such occasions, often repelled or discouraged
those for whose edification these exercises were especially
designed ; so that, as the writer himself goes on to say, ' the
better advised and wiser sort among you, to avoid such
inconveniences as these, are thought to present us with
composed formes of prayer many times, yet so as they would
have them taken of their auditors for the issues of sudden
meditation3.'
To the genius of Puritanism, however, the formal Oath
was no less obnoxious than the formal prayer. We have
already seen that, within a few months of the appointment
by Parliament of the Committee instructed to consider the
whole question of Oaths, both academic and civic4, a grace Grace for
.6 the scrutiny
had passed the senate of the university5 empowering a a"d rejvisi9n
J O of academic
thoroughly representative syndicate to examine and revise Febl'iwT.
the Proctors' Books.
At the same congregation, and evidently in direct con-
1 To be distinguished from Peter script note on the title of the copy
Samways, fellow of Trinity College, in the library of St John's College,
Cambridge, who was deprived of his Cambridge (P . 12 . 9), says 'By John
fellowship. See D. N. B. L 242. Almyton: a sequestred divine.'
2 England' 8 faithfull Reprover and 3 Ibid. p. 153. The whole chapter
Monitmir. London, 1653. Halkett (pp. 148-162), entitled ' To the new
and Lang (i 751) and Wood, Athenae Academick's,' is an excellent illus-
(n 430), agree in assigning this to tration of the subject.
Richard Samways, although no name 4 See supra, pp. 330-4.
appears on the title page. A manu- 8 Ibid. p. 338.
540
- A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Each ma-
triculating
student and
graduate to
receive a
printed copy
of his Oath.
Grace of
July 1647
whereby
those
convicted of
any breach
of the
statutes are
relieved
from the
imputation
of perjury.
nexion with the action of Parliament, a second grace, imme-
diately succeeding the above1, gave directions that the same
Syndics should proceed to examine 'all the oaths of the
University,' and, after arranging them in due order, expunge
those which they found to be clearly antiquated and obsolete8;
while instructions were at the same time given that the
oaths required at the various stages of the academic career
should be printed, and the vice-chancellor was directed to
see that on each occasion, whether at matriculation or on pro-
ceeding to a degree, the student should receive a copy of the
oath to which he had sworn, — a small payment being exacted
for the same3. In the next place, with a view to divesting
the former oath (as already taken by many who were still
living) of that peculiar sanctity imparted by solemn attesta-
tion, a grace, passed in the following July, declared that,
in future, whoever might have disregarded or violated any
statute or ordinance of the university, but had subsequently
duly submitted to the correction, fine, or penalty prescribed
for such default or offence, should be held, ipso facto, acquitted
of all imputation of perjury together with all the con-
sequences which might be thereby involved4.
1 Dyer, i 246 ; Cooper, Annals,
in 406.
2 ' Experientia tamen nos docet,
tarn in baccalaureorum atque Magis-
trorum quam in aliis fere omnibus
Academiae nostrae juramentis, par-
tim ex immutatione statutorum,
partim ex longa nonnullorum rituum
desuetudine factum esse, ut non
solum rebus non necessariis sed non
intellects etiam planeque abolitis ju-
rantium conscientiae onerentur. Pro
cujus scandali amotione: Placeat vo-
bis statuere, ut gravissimi iidem viri,
quibus non ita pridem commisistis
negotium de libris procuratorum con-
ferendis, digerendis, exscribendisque,
eadem vestra authoritate et jura-
menta omnia Academiae examinent,
et eorundem particulas illas segre-
gent, expungantque quas antiquatas
et abolitas esse certo reperient....'
Gratia 22 Feb. 164f . Dyer, Privi-
leges of the University, i 246. The
' viri gravissimi ' are those named
supra, p. 338, who had been ap-
pointed, by a preceding grace, to
subject the Proctors' Books to a
general revision.
3 ' Procancellarius unicuique tradi
curet typis Academiae expressam
juramenti sui materiem, ea lege ut
quilibet solvat ei in Matriculatione
unum denarium tantum ' ; etc. Dyer,
Ibid, i 247.
4 ' Placeat vobis ut in majorem in
posterum cautelam jurantium et
levamen haec verba sint annexa jura-
mentis Academiae matriculationis
admissionis creationis :
Senatus Cantabrigiensis decrevit et
declaravit eos omnes qui monitionibus
correctionibus mulctis et poenis stat-
utorum legum decretorum ordinati-
onum injunctionum et laudabilium
consuetudinum hujus Academiae trans-
gressoribus quovis modo incumbentibus
humiliter se submiserint NEC ESSE NEC
HABENDOS ESSE PEBJUBH KEOS.' Ibid.
i 250.
REVISION OF OATHS. 541
In this manner, accordingly, it came to pass, that the CHAP. iv.
ancient form of attestation, wherewith the student had Discontmu-
• i <> i i • i ance °^ *'ie
hitherto been wont to ratify his oath 01 allegiance to the na me Deu
university, in days long anterior to the renunciation of the
papal supremacy, — the same, indeed, that Luther had em-
ployed at the Diet of Worms, to emphasize his repudiation
of the authority of General Councils1, — now temporarily
disappeared from our academic usage. And here Richard
Sam ways appears as approving the innovation. ' For it was sa™j»y^f
very frequent,' he says, ' with them [i.e. ' the Academicalls '] oath£rsity
to attest upon oath the sufficiency or ability of any person to
receive a graduall promotion in the University, how illiterate
and otherwise unworthy soever he was of that favour. A
scio was tendred and accepted in his behalf where a credo
had been too much, — a nescio was due, or in truth a nego
rather. And what a congregation- vote for the same purpose
was, I need not to explain. Surely, such men had either a
very low esteem of the religious tye of any oath, or scarce
thought these of their corporation obligatory in point of con-
science, but rather ceremonies of meer formality or custome.
Although I have often heard it reported of a very learned
and pious Bishop, now with the Lord, that in his confessions
to God he usually craved pardon of Him for his University
oathes, the which probably he had readily taken, but slackly
performed, as well as the rest of his brethren2.'
In the Church, however, although at the time when the
1 '...leges, statute, mores appro- seded in the university by the formula
batos et privilegia Cantabrigiensis Ita qffirmo' et do fidem. Peacock,
Academiae, quantum in me est ob- Observations on the Statutes, p. 78;
servabo, pietatis et bonarum litter- Ainslie, Historical Account, etc. p. 5.
arum progressum et hujus academiae No reference, it is to be noted, to
statum, honorem, et dignitatem tue- this oath occurs in the Statutes of
bor quoad vivam, meoque suffragio Elizabeth; for by the 5th of Eliza-
atque consilio rogatus et non rogatus beth (c. i, sec. 14) the oath of
defendam. Ita me Deus adjuvet et Supremacy had already been drawn
sancta Dei Evangelia.' StatutaAnt. up in terms whereby, to quote the
50. Documents, i 336 and 444-5. language of Thorndike, ' not only
The words in italics, it is hardly the unlimited power of the Pope,
necessary to say, were the additional but all authority of a General Council
asseveration which, in mediaeval might justly seem to be disclaimed.'
times, was supposed to impart special Thorndike-Haddan, v 216.
solemnity to any oath, as taken over 2 England's faithfull Reprover,
the Gospels. It was not until the pp. 137-8.
nineteenth century that it was super-
542 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. above words were written, the authority of the bishop was
no longer recognized, we have ample evidence that the oath
itself was not altogether discontinued, while its validity was
still admitted; and the candidate for holy orders, — pledged
as he felt himself to be by an obligation which he refused to
ignore at the mandate of either Covenanter or Independent,
— continued, at least in certain dioceses, to record in the
episcopal registry his loyalty to Church and King as in-
The inferior separable from his conception of his future duties. And thus,
clergy
although — to quote the observation of Ranke, whose attention was
true to their
sicS1 in arrested by this anomaly in the main features of the crisis, —
theirnpSfts c amid the storms which overthrew bishops and chapters, the
lower ranks of the Church establishment succeeded in hold-
obtaining ing their ground1.' At this juncture, indeed, the curate and
ordination, the vicar would appear alike to have been indirectly pro-
tected by the diversion in their favour which necessarily
resulted from the conflict which was being waged, more
especially by Fairfax and the Council of Officers, in behalf
of that more general liberty of conscience which Cromwell
derfveedcefrom ultimately proclaimed2. Among other evidence of this un-
tofthe:egisters shaken spirit of loyalty in the Church, Dr Venn adduces3,
as especially noteworthy, the 'Subscription Book of the
8 bishop of London, commencing August 9, 1631.' ' Here,' he
observes, ' the threefold subscriptions required by the 36th
Proof of canon — to the oath of the King's supremacy4, the oath of
staunch ° .
onhtheenart Allegiance, and the Declaration of conformity to the Liturgy,
th^S»gyf — neld their ground for the ensuing ten years; after that
oblations time they undergo more than one modification; but the
hiipo^edby following subscription, dated a week after the execution of
the Articles
chwch of ^ne •^n£> an°ords undeniable proof of the resolute loyalty of
England. a certain section of inducted clergy to the service of their
Church':
' FEB. 6, 1648-9. Ego Gualterus Jones, Sacrce Theologice Bac., jam
1 Hist, of England (Engl. transl.), at London by Robert Barker, etc.
in 90. (fol. 1634), in the ' Ordering of
2 Gardiner, Commonwealth and Deacons ' the Oath of Supremacy
Protectorate, i 192. and that of Allegiance are included
3 See Appendix (F). in the same formula, while no decla-
4 It is to be noted that in the ration of conformity to the Liturgy
Boke of Common Prayer imprinted is required.
LOYALTY OF THE CLERGY. 543
admittendus et institutus ad et in rectoriam de Sunningwell in Com. CHAP, iv.^
Berks, articulis religionis Ecclesice Anglicance juxta formam statuti
libenter subscribe.'
While, however, the admitted candidate satisfied his own
conscience, and possibly the requirements of his bishop, by
such a declaration, it can hardly have been without a certain
risk to both ; and, again to quote Dr Venn, 'the fact remains,
that a considerable number of the clergy, though complying
with the new regime, must have been aware of the existence
of such a subscription book, and must have satisfied their
consciences by signing it before being instituted to a living
by the Parliamentary Committee. As William Juxon suc-
ceeded Laud, in 1633, we may presume that this subscription
book remained in his hands all the period in question, until
his deprivation of his see in 1649.'
Among those members of Caius College whose names Evidence
derived
occur in the Norwich Registers as thus attesting the sincerity from the
of their principles, and who survived the troublous times of ^yjj^se
the Commonwealth, not only to regain their liberties, but also
to receive recognition of their loyalty and subsequently to
discharge the duties attaching to posts of credit and prefer-
ment, were Edmund Mapletoft1 and John Browne2, the Notable
* members
former, chaplain to lady Lovelace, the latter, to the earl of cJ)j(iaTwllo
Derby, — Henry Peirson3, afterwards a distinguished bene- *}j^8ratteste<1
factor to the parishes of Witton and Plumstead, of which he Polity!
was the incumbent, — Thomas Bradford4, afterwards master
of Yarmouth Grammar School, — and Edward Wharton5 (the
father of the distinguished antiquary), who in 1656 was special
i- T i • f T evidence
elected to a fellowship. In the registers of the diocese of fron> the
Registers of
London, again, out of a list of twenty members of Christ's ^
1 B.A. 165? ; M.A. 1654. Ordained rectory houses, and done much good
priest by bp. Joseph Hall, 30 June in his generation.' Plumstead Parish
1655. Venn, i 366. Reg. Ibid, i 377.
2 B.A. 165£; M.A. 1655. Ordained 4 B.A. 164f ; M.A. 1651. Eector
priest by bp. Joseph Hall, 3 July of Winterton and Somerton 1656-62,
1654. Ibid, i 361. by appointment of the Parliamentary
3 Peirson (or Person), B.A. 165|; Committee. Ordained priest by bishop
M.A. 1657. Not ordained till after the of Ardfert and Aghadoe, 11 Feb.
Restoration. ' ...faithfully laboured 164|-. Ibid, i 348.
in the ministry for three and forty 8 B.A. 165f ; M.A. 1659. Ordained
years in this and Witton parish, and priest by bishop Brownrig of Exeter
new built the greatest part of the in 1659. Ibid, i 385.
544 A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP, iv. College making like attestation, are to be found the names
of Robert Eaton, afterwards of All Souls, Oxford1, who sub-
Notabie sequentlv went over to the Independents2, — Samuel Ball, a
members . *
cotton*'1 fellow °f the society who had been intruded by Manchester,
p\TdgTdf afterwards a highly successful college tutor3, — Robert Powell4,
who lived to become a royal chaplain and also archdeacon of
Shrewsbury and chancellor of St Asaph, — Henry Teonge5,
who, as a chaplain in the navy, kept a Diary, which Charles
Knight, the publisher, deemed worthy of being given to the
world as a good illustration of naval life in the Levant in the
last quarter of the seventeenth century6.
The absence How far the Subscription and Ordination Books of the
of corre-
recorf" at diocese of Ely might have served to confirm the foregoing
evidence is unfortunately a matter for conjecture only, inas-
much as, from 1580 to 1662, they are almost entirely wanting7.
It is certain, however, that the London Registers contain not
a few names, both of deacons and priests, who belonged
properly to other dioceses, and it is easy to understand that
the metropolis would, by that time, have become a common
centre to which refugees from such dioceses, and especially
those in the northern province, would naturally betake
themselves, whether to take counsel with respect to their
future action or simply to evade persecution as denounced
1 'created M.A. 15 July 1653 as 4 B.A. 1648; M.A. 1651. D.D.
of All Souls, Oxford ' (Foster, Athenae Oxford 1663.
Oxon.). This was towards the con- 6 B.A. 164£.
elusion of the period (somewhat less 6 The Diary of Henry Teonge.
than five years) when no less than London, 1825. 8vo. Teonge appears
43 fellows were intruded at this to have been the incumbent of
college. See Mr C. Grant Kobert- Spernall in Warwickshire from 1670
son's All Souls College, p. 125. to 1690. His chaplaincy on board the
2 Eaton was ejected from his living Assistance, which lasted from May
of Walton in Lancashire to make 1675 to June 1679, was held con-
room for a returning ejected minister sequently during that period. See
(Halley, Nonconformity in Lanca- D. N. B. LVI 76.
shire, n 135). Dr Peile inclines to 7 See Gibbons (A.), Ely Episcopal
the conclusion that it was at Eaton's Records, pp. 3-4. During the vacancy
house in Deansgate, Manchester, that of the see from 1581 to 1600 the
an ordination by ejected Noncon- records are supplemented by those
formist divines was first held, in at Lambeth (Ibid. p. 434). I am
1667 (Ibid, ii 249). indebted to his Lordship, Dr Chase,
3 Probably B.A. King's 163f ; for the information that further re-
M.A. 1639. Intruded fellow of search since the publication of the
Christ's 1644. Disappears from the preceding volume, in 1891, has still
College Eegister in 1651, perhaps as failed to bring to light any portion
a refuser of the Engagement. of the missing documents.
INSTITUTIONS OF PRESBYTERIANISM. 545
' malignants.' The foregoing evidence would seem, however, JCHAP.
sufficient to justify the inference that, when we find two The
* . infer
societies, differing materially (as did Caius College and ^^he
Christ's College in those days), both in the scope of their *£$££
respective codes and predominant studies, alike affording
such unquestionable proof of staunch adherence to the prin-
ciples of the loyalist party, there must have existed, through-
out the university at large, a considerable minority which
discerned in the policy of Presbyterian and of Independent
almost equally, that which foreboded, to quote the language
of Herbert Thorndike, ' the destruction of the ground of all
trust which the Church might have had in them for conduct
in Christianity1.'
Until March 1654, however, the State had continued to ordination
nptrecog-
ignore the whole ceremony of ordination. To quote the
language of Gardiner, ' the State had nothing to do with the
forms by which a man was set apart for the ministry, or
whether he had submitted himself to any forms at all. All
that it was concerned with was his right to the payment of
a settled maintenance if he desired to place himself in a
position in which such maintenance was secured to him,
under certain conditions, by the law2.' The institution of The
J . institution
Triers, however, materially changed the conditions as regarded J[
patronage. The right of the patron of a living to institute
remained where it was ; but a considerable check upon that
right was introduced by the obligation imposed upon the
minister presented to a benefice to appear before a special
Commission and submit himself to enquiry respecting his
' holy and unblamable conversation ' as well as his capacity.
The Commission of Ejectors, appointed five months later, The
, . , . , , . . Commission
was invested with power to eiect, not only those ministers °f Ejectors:
* J . 28 August
and schoolmasters who should be proved " scandalous in their 1654:
lives and conversation," but also those who should " be proved aii holders
of opinions
guilty of holding or maintaining such blasphemous and
atheistical opinions as were punishable by" the Blasphemy
1 Letter' concerning the present See Works, v 5, 11.
State of Religion (first published 2 Commonwealth and Protectorate,
towards the end of 1656), p. 11. n 320.
M. ill. 35
546
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
CHAP. IV.
Act of 1650; while an ordinance of Parliament, passed in
1643, was re-enacted, whereby liability to ejection was to
extend to such as should "hold, teach or maintain certain
specified Popish opinions," namely " acceptance of the Pope's
authority, of the doctrine of transubstantiation and that of
purgatory, and of worship as due to the consecrated host
or to crucifixes and images," and of "salvation merited by
works1." And, finally, all those who should " have publicly
and frequently read or used the Common Prayer Book since
the first of January" [1654] were to be similarly dealt with.
In the case of an ejected minister leaving his benefice
without resistance, the commissioners were empowered to
set aside for the benefit of his wife and children a fifth of
his successor's income from the benefice vacated2.'
Renewal in
1659 of the
attack
upon the
Universities.
Dr Wilkins
appointed
to the
Mastership
of Trinity :
17 Aug. 1659.
Election of
Seth Ward
to the
Presidency
of Trinity
College,
Oxford :
Sept. 1659.
The time, however, was now at hand when the expulsions,
privations, and long periods of exile which had been the lot
of not a few of the most devoted adherents of the Church,
were to reach their termination. As the year 1659 advanced,
the troublous condition of the atmosphere, both religious
and political, was indicated by a renewed attack upon the
universities, and, according to Anthony Wood, 'continuous
clamours were still heard against them' and 'the learning
profest in them,' as ' the nurseries of wickedness, the nests of
mutton tuggers, the dens of formal droanes3.' Taught by
experience, Oxford and Cambridge now drew closer together;
and it was a happy omen for science and learning, when, in
the month of August, in response to the petition of the
fellows of Trinity, and by the appointment of Parliament,
Dr Wilkins, the warden of Wadham, succeeded to the
mastership4; while, in the following September, Seth Ward,
perhaps the ablest scholar that Oxford ever adopted from the
sister university, was elected President of the Trinity which
1 Gardiner, Commonwealth, etc.
ii 322.
2 Ibid, n 323.
3 Life and Times (ed. Clark), i
293; Wood-Gutch, n 680-1.
4 His appointment was, however,
contingent upon his taking the En-
gagement. See Commons1 Journals,
vn 761 ; Cooper, Annals, m 474,
where the response of the House to
the petition is printed.
DR WILKINS AT TRINITY. 547
owed its foundation to Sir Thomas Pope. Here, according CHAP, iv.
to his biographer, ' he used great diligence and care to put
all things in order, and settle the troubled affairs of it,
governing with great prudence and reputation1.' At Cam-
bridge Trinity, Dr Wilkins proved a not less able adminis-
trator; and when we recall that Wadham, where he had
ruled for eleven years with the happiest results, had, from
its foundation, been distinguished by the stringency with
which it enforced attendance at lectures, and also by its
weekly examinations2, it is reasonable to suppose that the
discipline of the society which he had quitted was not
altogether dissociated from a new regulation drawn up at
Trinity within four months after his installation, whereby a stringent
. . . . enactment
manifest laxity that prevailed in connexion with the B. A. with respect
J to Examina-
examination was dealt with, — the Seniors enacting that [|1°en^r
any future attempt at evading the statutable requirements Trinity?*
for that degree should subject the offender to a penalty Ci
involving the passing of a much more formidable ordeal3.
Within less than a twelvemonth, however, both these changes
. TIT consequent
eminent men, sharing the fate of their party, were displaced Jgj£ ^«
from office. They were, indeed, soon restored to favour, and TIOH-
rose subsequently to eminence, but their universities knew
them no more, while Presbyterian and Independent, alike,
were fain to retire into comparative obscurity before the
representatives of a National Church. The distinctive The
, Presbyterian
characteristics of those great religious parties have been f™|ethndent
drawn for posterity by two contemporary writers, each well ^
qualified for such a task by his wide knowledge of the facts Wich^d
and personal experience, — by Anthony Wood4, in terms of
supercilious contempt and sarcasm, and with an eye, mainly,
1 Pope (Walter), Life of Seth Ward f erred repair to each of the Seniors
(1697), p. 48. We have to remember to be examined by them in their
that Ward's biographer was half- chambers and to get a note under
brother to Dr WUkins. their hands that they have been so
2 Wells (J.), Wadham College, examined. Concluded likewise that
p. 25. no Bachelor's degree shall be con-
3 On Jan. 13th 16£$, it was de- f erred by any meeting in the Hall
cided by the Seniority ' that whoever window. ' I am indebted to Mr W. W.
sits not in the Chapel at the usual Rouse Ball for this extract.
time to be examined for the bache- * Life and Times (u.s.),i 296-301.
lor's degree, shall before it is con-
35—2
548
A.D. 1647 TO 1660.
The new
movements
in philoso-
phy.
CHAP, iv. to the more superficial features, — by Richard Baxter1, with
admirable good sense and discernment, combined with no
little real Christian charity, but with an almost morbid
faculty for discovering defects and raising difficulties, which
seemed, to not a few, to render his own ideal Church more
difficult of realization than before. Happily, at the two
universities, there were other influences, destined soon to
come into operation, of which, as yet, the sectaries took little
account, — when deep thinkers enunciated laws and pro-
claimed truths before which the objector learned to be silent
and fanaticism faltered. And from that clamour of the
creeds and those visions of anarchy which have so long
occupied our attention, it will be a relief to turn to mark
the progress of a more benign philosophy and of a more
philosophic faith.
1 ' Reliquiae Baxterianae : or Mr
Richard Baxter's Narrative of the
most memorable Passages of his Life
and Times.' Ed. Sylvester. London,
1696. Fol., pp. 296-301. Baker, in
his copy, now in St John's College
Library (H . 3 . 21), referring to
Calamy's Abridgement of the work,
says: 'this Book was answered by
Mr Benjn. Hoadly, a learned young
Divine, [who] grounding his Argu-
ments upon Concessions, drawn from
Mr Calamy's book, gains a complete
conquest over his Adversary. See,
Dr Nichol's Defence <fec. Introduction
Pag: 128, 129.' [note on fly-leaf].
His reference is to Translation of
William Nicholl's Defensio Ecclesiae
Anglicanae, published in 1715. 8vo.
CHAPTER V.
THE RESTORATION.
%
ON the second of January 1660, Monck crossed the Tweed CHAP, v.^
on his march for England. Resolute in his designs and
inscrutable of purpose as Crorfiwell himself, men could only
speculate whether he came to espouse the royal cause or to
maintain the Rump in power; but the universities were
reassured when, three weeks later, Parliament published a
Declaration which presented, in one respect, a noteworthy Declaration
point of contrast when compared with that of the preceding ^j^0™8
May. The word 'reform' had disappeared; and throughout t?avewitfes:
the land it was made known that Oxford and Cambridge, 23Jan-16&$-
together with the public schools, were not only to be con-
firmed in possession of their actual 'privileges and advan-
tages,' but that it was designed to extend to them 'such
further countenance as might encourage them in their studies
and promote godliness, learning and good manners among
them1.'
On the 24th of February, Samuel Pepys, now twenty- Pepys-
seven years of age, accompanied by his friend Mr Pierce, set Cambridge :
out from London on a visit to Cambridge. ' The day and
the way/ he tells us, were alike ' very foul,' and they slept at
Foulmire, not arriving at the ' Falcon ' in Petty Cury (where
his father and brother were awaiting them) until eight o'clock
the next morning. His doings, from this point, will be best
told in his own words : —
' After dressing myself, about ten o'clock, my father, brother, and I
to Mr Widdrington, at Christ's College, who received us very civilly,
1 Kennet, Chronicle, p. 32.
550
THE RESTORATION.
CHAP. V.
Pepys
revisits
Magdalene
and is
entertained
by Joseph
by Ji
Hill.
He finds
that the old
preciseness
has
disappeared.
and caused my brother to be admitted1, while my father, he, and I sat
talking. After that done, we take leave. My father and brother went
to visit some friends, Pepys's, scholars in Cambridge, while I went to
Magdalen College, to Mr Hill2, with whom I found Mr Zanchy,
Burton3, and Hollins, and was exceeding civilly received by them. I
took leave on promise to sup with them, and to my Inn again, where I
dined with some others that were there at an ordinary.' 'During the
interval,' he goes on to say, ' my father went to look after his things at
the carrier's and my brother's chamber : I and Mr Fairbrother4, my cozen
Angier, and Mr Zanchy5,... to the Three Tuns6, where we drank pretty
hard and many healths to the King, &c. till it begun to be darkish. Then
we broke up, and I and Mr Zanchy went to Magdalen College, where a
very handsome supper at Mr Hill's chambers, I suppose upon a club
among them, where I could find that there was nothing at all left of
the old preciseness in their discourse, specially on Saturday nights.
And Mr Zanchy told me that there was no such thing now-a-days
among them at any time.' On the following day (a Sunday), the
narrator goes on to say, 'my brother went to the College to Chapel.
1 ' Johannes a lohanne Pepys Lon-
dini natus literas edoctus a Dno
Crumbleholm Scholae Paulinae Mod-
eratore annos natus 18 admissus est
Sizator sub Mro Widdrington.' 'Hie
cum prius admissus est in Collegium
Magalense Mail 26to ut ex lite-
ris testimonialibus constat ejusdem
etiam anni apud nos habendus est.'
Christ's College Admissions, Febr.
25° 1660. Of Widdrington himself,
Pepys tells us, Mr Fuller, a fellow
of Christ's, told him, that ' he did
oppose all the fellows in the College,
and that there was a great distance
between him and the rest, at which
I was very sorry, for that he told
me he feared it would be little to my
brother's advantage to be his pupil.'
See Pepys-Bright, i 51, 55. Wid-
drington was peculiarly obnoxious
to Cudworth. See Peile, Christ's
College, pp. 176-180.
2 Joseph Hill had been tutor in
Pepys' undergraduate time, and al-
though he probably sympathized
with the ' roundhead ' principles
which the latter, when a scholar,
had professed (see supra, p. 377),
he could hardly have forgotten an
occasion on which the other had
been ' solemnly admonished ' by him-
self and Morland (Pepys' tutor) for
being out at night, along with a
companion, and ' getting scandal-
ously overserved with drink.' But
Pepys, at this time, had good news
to tell, having already been en-
couraged to hope that he should be
made secretary (as was eventually
the case) to Edward Montagu, his
own and Manchester's cousin, who,
only two days before, had been re-
appointed General of the Fleet. See
D. N. B. xxvi 402 ; Purnell, Mag-
dalene College, pp. 121-6 ; Pepys-
Bright, i 50, 62, 64.
3 Hezekiah Burton, fellow of Mag-
dalene, where he was distinguished
as a tutor. Mr Purnell says that
Pepys enquired about him on behalf
of Sir William Penn, the admiral,
who wished to remove his son from
Christ Church, Oxford, where the
future founder of Pennsylvania was
already falling under the influence
of Dr John Owen. Magdalene Col-
lege, pp. 23, 126; Pepys-Bright, i
406.
4 AfterwardsDr Fairbrother, fellow
of King's College ; one of those taken
prisoners at the battle of Naseby.
Pepys-Bright, i 55.
5 Clement Zanchy, fellow of Mag-
dalene, 1654. 'At the college meet-
ings he spelt his name "Zanchy"
at first, but in 1656 changed it to
"Sankey."' Ibid, i 55, n. 5.
6 On Peas Hill, near St Edward's
Church. Part of it is still an eating-
house with the same sign.
PEPYS IN CAMBRIDGE. 551
My father and I went out in the morning and walked out in the fields v CHAP, v.
behind King's College, and in King's College Chapel yard, where we met
with Mr Fairbrother, who took us to St Botolph's Church, where we
heard Mr Nicholas, of Queen's College, who I knew in my time to be
Tripos with great applause, upon this text, " For thy commandments
are broad." Thence my father and I to Mr Widdrington's chamber to He ^foes
J at Christ's
dinner, where he used us very courteously again, and had two Fellow College
Commoners with him at table, and Mr Pepper, a Fellow of the College.' brother
' After taking leave,' he continues, ' I went to Magdalen College to get admitted
the certificate of the College for my brother's entry there, that he a !
might save his year1. I met with Mr Burton in the court, who took
me to Mr Pechell's chamber, where he was and Mr Zanchy. By and
by, Mr Pechell and Sanchey and I went out, Pechell to church, Sanchey
and I to the Rose Taverne2, where we sat and drank till sermon done,
and then Mr Pechell came to us, and we three sat drinking the King's
and his whole family's health till it began to be dark3.'
When Pepys returned to London, Monck had already ^PP^*-
been appointed head of the new Council and commander- in- G^MWn-
chief of the land-forces throughout the three kingdoms; and ^my°:fthe
on the 16th of March, Parliament *vas dissolved, but not ^ Peb' 16^
before it had finally annulled the Engagement4, which had
continued still to be required from all who held office. The
Declaration of Breda and the elections for a new Parliament
soon followed. The university was fully on the alert, and
not a little encouraged by the victory of the royalist candi-
dates for the county, — Thomas Wendy and Isaac Thornton, Town'a'nd
who, according to Pepys, ' by declaring to stand for the eiwSty
Parliament and a King and the settlement of the Church, convention
did carry it against all expectation against Sir Dudley North April leeo. '
and Sir Thomas Willis,' — the latter having been one of the
sitting members prior to the dissolution. Both North and
Willis, however, succeeded in getting returned for the Town
on the same day that the election for the University took
1 See supra, p. 550, note 1. Why 2 This inn stood at the end of
Pepys' brother migrated from Mag- Rose Crescent facing Market Hill,
dalene to Christ's is not clear. The 3 Pepys-Bright, i 53-56.
elder brother perhaps thought that 4 ' That the Engagement appointed
Widdrington was both more able and to be taken by Members of Parliament
more likely to help a pupil on in the and others... be discharged and taken
world, however unpopular he might off the file.' Mar. 13,16£$. Cobbett,
be in the College where he succeeded Parl. Hist, m 1583.
in getting the majority of the pupils.
552 THE RESTORATION.
. CHAP, v.^ place, which was on the third of April. Almost everywhere,
however, to quote the language of Cobbett, 'the elections
went in favour of the King's party... and the Presbyterians
and the Royalists being united formed the voice of the
nation, which, without noise, but with infinite ardour, called
for the King's restoration1.' The candidates for the univer-
sity were the Lord General Monck, Thomas Crouch, M.A., a
fellow of Trinity College, and Oliver St John, — formerly
chancellor of the academic body; and at the close of the poll
the numbers were, 341 for Monck, 211 Crouch, and 157
The vice- gfc John. On William Dillinerham, as vice-chancellor, it
chancellors
Monck°on devolved to communicate the result to ' The Lord General,'
lon' which he did in an undated letter, in the following terms :
' As it hath pleased God to make your Excellencie eminently
instrumental for the raising up of three gasping and dying
nations, into the faire hopes and prospect of peace and
settlement, so hath He engraven your name in characters of
gratitude upon the hearts of all to whom the welfare of this
Church and State is deare and pretious. From this principle
it is that our University of Cambridge hath, with great
alacrity and unanimity, made choyse of your Excellency with
whom to deposite the managing of their concernments in the
succeeding Parliament, which if your Excellency shall please
to admitt into a favourable acceptance, you will thereby put
Monck's a further obligation of gratitude upon us all2.' In his reply,
10 Apni i860: Monck declared that 'noething could bee more wellcome' to
him than such ' an ample testimony of the good affections of
your famous University.' It had always, he avowed, ' been
a great part of my desire and ambition to bee serviceable to
those eminent foundations which are the glory of our Nation.'
that MS* ^u^' ^e went on k° say> ' if my owne County should challenge
county has my service, I am engaged, by a double obligation both of
nature and promise not to refuse them3.' As it proved, how-
1 Cobbett, Parliamentary Hist, m the 8th August, Monck's reply being
1586. dated the tenth of the same month.
2 This letter, of which the cor- 3 Printed by Mr Wardale in his
rected draft was first printed in Notes Clare College : Letters and Docu-
and Queries (1st series), vn 427, bears ments, pp. 50-1. The letter is
no date, but may be assigned to about dated ' S. James's 10 April 1660.'
DR EDWARD MARTIN. 553
ever, Devonshire did claim her loyal son's 'service'; and VCHAP. v.
when, accordingly, on the 25th of April, the members of the
Convention Parliament took their seats at Westminster, the
university was represented by Thomas Crouch and William
Montagu1, while the Lord General sat for Devon.
The earliest indication of a consciousness on the part
of the expelled Anglican party that the restoration of the
Stuart monarchy would bring with it their own reinstate-
ment in the university, is perhaps that contained in a letter,
dated ' Ascension Eve,' written by Dr Edward Martin, the J^MMthi
former president of Queens' College, from Paris. He was 5Apr. leeo.'
now in his eightieth year, and his life, since his incarceration
in the Tower in 16422, had been divided between periods of
imprisonment in England and residence in exile abroad3.
On learning, from a correspondent, how the aspect of affairs
had changed, he penned an exultant reply and at once set
out on his return. ' I am heartily glad,' he wrote, ' to read tioneaxtulta"
all that you write of that Right Honourable and Noble thtulionck
Peere4,...and that hee is in that capacity and disposition to restore the
be a serviceable instrument in the advancement of God's Monarchy.
glory, his Prince's sceptre, his Countrie's liberty and freedome
from the basest slavery, and to give the world a conspicuous
argument and proof of his extraordinary and heroi'que gene-
rosity.' Then, — with reference to the doubts raised with
regard to the lawful authority of the Convention Parliament,
— he goes on to say, ' What though they be no Parliamentum
natum ? when as if they were never so legitimate a Parlia-
ment in the shell, yet no Parliament can make a King ; but
a King (as you say) can make a Parliament. And a Parlia-
ment too (as other men) though they can be no sufficient
1 Second son of Edward, first baron to choose him for their burgess,
Montagu of Boughton, of Sidney which he pleased himself with, to
College, and afterwards lord chief think that they do look upon him as
baron of the exchequer. For the a thriving man, and said so openly
numerous descendants of bishop at table.' Pepys-Bright, 1 88.
Montagu who entered at Sidney, see 2 See supra, pp. 298-9.
Edwards (G. M.), Sidney Sussex 3 To quote his own expression,
College, pp. 57-60. According to ' nothing but prisons, ships, wander-
Pepys, lord Sandwich (see supra, ings and solitude.' Searle, Hist, of
p. 550, n. 2) had heard 'that the Queens' College, p. 507.
University of Cambridge had a mind 4 Lord General Monck.
554
THE RESTORATION.
CHAP. V.
University
proceedings
at the
Proclama-
tion of the
King:
10—12 May
1660.
The
assembling
at the Cross
on Market
Hill.
cause of Soveraignty, yet they may be, as wee use to say (if
I have not forgot) at Cambridge, causa removens prohibens
of God's Anointed, and designed, by primogeniture, to take
possession of his Throne and Chair of State1.'
In the Parliamentary Intelligencer of the 21st of May, the
celebrations which attended the proclamation of Charles II
as King, throughout the realm, were more or less briefly
described, but that at Cambridge was singled out for special
notice as 'very remarkable both for the manner and con-
tinuance2.' It lasted, that is to say, for two days ; the
proceedings that took place on the part of the university,
which were on the first day, being as follows :
On Thursday the 10th of May, the Heads were all sum-
moned to attend at the Schools at 1 o'clock, and came
bringing with them ' their fellows and scholars in their
formalities,' and next proceeded from thence, 'with loud
music before them,' to the Cross on Market Hill3. The
vice-chancellor and the doctors were in scarlet gowns ; the
regents, non-regents and bachelors, came with ' their hoods
turned,' 'the scholars in capps.' Then the vice-chancellor
and 'beadles' and 'as many doctors as could,' 'stood upon
the severall seats of the Crosse, and the School Keeper
standing near them made three O yeis. The vice-chancellor
dictated to the beadle, who proclaimed the same with an
audible voice. From the Crosse they went to the midst of
the Market Hill, where they did the like, then the Musick
brought them back to the Schooles again and there left
them, and went up to the top of King's College Chapell
where they played a great while. After the musick had
done, King's bells and all the bells in Towne rang till 'twas
1 The false Brotherhood of the
French and English Presbyterians.
Together ivith his character of divers
English travelers in the time of our
late troubles. Communicated by five
pious and learned Letters in the
time of his Exile. London, 1662,
pp. 273-4.
2 Parliamentary Intelligencer, No.
21 ; Cooper, Annals, i 479, n. 1.
3 ' This stood on a site nearly
opposite to the present door of the
Guildhall. It is believed to have
been destroyed in the year 1764,
when its place was taken by the
Conduit supplied by water from
Hobson's stream.' Diary of Samuel
Newton, Alderman of Cambridge
(1662-1717), ed. J. E. Foster, Introd.
p. vi, Cam. Ant. Soc. Publ., 8vo.
series, vol. xxi, 1890.
THE PROCLAMATION AT CAMBRIDGE. 555
night, and then many bonfires were kindled and many VCHAP.
garlands hung up in many places of the streets. The vice-
chancellor sent to the mayor for him and his brethren to
ioine with the University in the Proclamation, but his Proceedings
i • of the Town
answere was they could not do it till tomorrow and would authorities.
doe it on horseback1.' On Friday the llth of May, accord-
ingly, ' King Charles II was proclaymed King by the mayor,' The King
and the ceremony was performed not only in the market at^ix
place, but 'once on the Pease Hill, and against St Buttolph's Places-
Church, and beyond the Great Bridge, and against Jesus
Lane and against Trinity Church.'...' At night many bonfires
in Towne, four on the great Market Hill, great expressions
and acclamations of joy from all sorts.' On the third day,
Mr Fairbrother of King's College2 invited the military
officers to dinner and nobly treated them. The souldiers
were drawn up to the top of the Chappel where they
gave several volleys which, with the ringing of bells and
variety of musick, gave a handsome entertainment to the
spectators3.'
No feature, however, was more significant than the Reappear-
ance of the
general reappearance of the square cap, to the complete square cap.
effacement of the round pileus, customary during the Puritan
regime*, — an incident which James Duport did not fail to
note and make the subject of some satirical, lines at the
expense of the ' Roundheads,' whom he congratulated on
their sudden conversion. ' They had succeeded,' he assured
them, ' in performing a feat which not one man in many
1 MSS. Baker, xxxm 337. had been held in aversion by the
2 Fairbrother had been made Reformers, who looked upon it as of
prisoner at the battle of Naseby ; ' Romish ' origin and accordingly de-
ne was subsequently elected vice- nounced it as an invention which
provost of King's College. Austen- contravened the natural shape of the
Leigh, King's College, p. 125. head. It had, however, been en-
3 Diary of S. Newton (u.s.), p. 1; joined by Burghley, in 1588, as
Parl. Intelligencer, Ibid. ; Cooper, incumbent on all graduates and
Annals, in 478-9. According to an- scholars, while undergraduates were
other authority, 'theeffigesof Oliver directed to wear a 'low round cap."
Cromwell, carved very like him,' But since his time, the round cap
' was hanged on a gibbet on the had become obnoxious among the
market place, in the morninge.' royalists, owing to the application of
Rugge's Diary (Addit. MSS. 10,116), the term 'Roundheads' to those
i 337 ; Cooper, Annals, v 436. whose Puritan sympathies led them
4 See Index to Vol. n, «. v. ' Cap.' to clip away the ' lovelocks ' fashion-
The square cap, by whomsoever worn, able among the Cavaliers.
556 THE RESTORATION.
CHAP.V. thousands dare even pretend to have accomplished, — they
Duport had squared the circle ! It was a grand discovery ; for now,
declares that , ,, , .
the squaring skull cap (as worn by seniors) and square cap alike, when
of the circle • ?•. J '
has at last lifted, CMS-CO vered the round head! How many a head,
been accom- t J
pushed. since the King's return, had changed from a circle to a
square1!'
restor^dster Before another month had elapsed, the House of Lords
chancellor- had reinstated Manchester in the chancellorship, and in less
26 May i860, than another week he received instructions to make the
statutes of the university again operative ; while the inno-
vations contemplated by the recent Commission with regard
to the colleges were quashed by an order, ' that the
Chancellors of both the Universities shall take care that
the several Colleges shall be governed according to their
respective statutes2.' An order for the restoration of the
ejected Heads and fellows of colleges quickly followed, and
the whole academic body now lost no time in sending a
deputation to Whitehall to congratulate the King on his
return to his native realm. Their chancellor had preceded
appointed them, having himself already been appointed to the office of
chamber- Lord Chamberlain, but it was not until the third day follow-
30 May 1660. ing upon their arrival in London, that he was able personally
to conduct them from the place of their assembling, —
' Mr Mountague's house in Channell Row at nine of the
clock,' — ' by a private way through gardens and gentlemen's
1 ' Quot capita inprimis Academica the hands of John Twysden to be
pileus ornat, | Circulus & doctos, edited. In his preface, Twysden
quadra tegitque, viros. | Vix tamen takes occasion to refer to the brilliant
innumeris caputex tot millibus unum success of John Pell, who, ' in a way
est | Quod se circulum adhuc posse not trodden by others, and in the
quadrarepuk&t. \ Circulus, &ui quadra compass of one page,' had been 'able
dempta, caput tibi reddit apertum : | to overthrow the endeavours and
Nonne quadratura & circuli aperta many years attempts of that famous
tibi est? | Quot nunc post reditum Longomontanus touching the true
Regis, TpoxoKovpdSes ante, | Sic quad- measuring of a circle.' For Longo-
rare solent circulum ubique suum ! ' montanus, the Danish astronomer,
Musae Subsecivae, p. 39. Additional see account in the Biographic Uni-
point was probably imparted to verselle ; and for attempts at squar-
Duport's raillery, by the recent publi- ing the circle, at this period, Ball
cation of the collected writings of (W. W. R.), Hist, of Mathematics,
the mathematician, Samuel Foster chap. xv. Pell's refutation appeared
of Emmanuel and Gresham professor, (in English) at Amsterdam in 1646,
whose brother, Walter, also a member and in Latin in 1647.
of Emmanuel, had placed them in 2 Cooper, Annals, m 479.
THE DEPUTATION TO WHITEHALL. 557
houses,' to the royal presence. Dr Dillingham being unwell, CHAP, v.
Dr Love appeared as his deputy ; he was followed by the The Deputa-
other Heads, by the Public Orator, the Proctors, Taxers, and wwte°haii :
, . 5 June 16<>0.
a throng of regents and non-regents, who gathered in the
Long Gallery and there awaited their monarch, whom
Dr Love, after 'a little stay did bring to them.' At Charles's
entrance, they all kneeled down behind the vice-chancellor,
who, himself on his knees, was preparing to deliver his
speech, when ' the King rose from his chayre of state and
bade him and all the rest stand up, which we did. Then the
vice-chancellor began his speech1, which being ended, he
delivered upon his knees a Letter from the Senate to his
Majestic, who was gratiously pleased both with the speech
and the letter. He said to the vice-chancellor and Heads that
he would maintain their charters, privileges, and immunities, diaries
1 1 • 1 • 1 I • 1 1 1 1 Pr0mises t0
and likewise doe his best endeavour to advance learning and maintain the
° _ Universities
learned men. Then all of us kneeled downe and the King 1s°0tnhofpt°hBefrs"
reached out his hand to the vice-chancellor for to kisse and
afterwards to every one of our university men2.' Altogether,
nothing could be more auspicious than the royal bearing and
promises ; and it being notorious that the revenues of the
Crown were, as yet, very insufficiently recruited3, the inability of
' J ^ J J Royalty to
members of the deputation can hardly have felt much dis- D"16^1^116
appointment, when, after the ceremony was over, they found
themselves compelled to have recourse to ' ordinarys ' or to
the hospitality of their London acquaintance, for whatever
of entertainment and festivity marked the close of the day.
In one respect, however, the royal liberality was soon after
exhibited to an extent that greatly surpassed all expectation.
A shower of mandate degrees began to descend in both indis-
cnmmate
universities ; and at Cambridge alone, during the ensuing ^^ of
eight months, no less than one hundred and sixty creations, jtfnTiwo to
March 166£.
1 This he subsequently printed. Masters (Kobt.), Hist, of the College
According to the Mercurius Rusticus of Corpus Christi, p. 152.
(p. 300), the speech was designed to 2 Baker MSS. xxxm 237.
shew 'the great loss which the 3 In the library of St John's College
University and learning had suffered there is still preserved the original
by his Majesty's absence.' For the receipt, dated April 1st, in acknow-
statements whereby he sought at ledgement of the loan of £100 ad-
Cambridge to justify his conduct vanced by John Barwick to the King
during the Commonwealth, see when the latter was still at Breda.
558
THE RESTORATION.
CHAP. V.
Recipients
of the
Doctorate.
Thomas
Fuller's last
visit to
Cambridge :
August 1660.
His honorary
degree of
D.D. be-
stowed by
Charles's
special
command.
chiefly of the doctorate, in the several faculties, altogether
transcended the limits required for the recognition of the
claims of those who might reasonably urge that, having been
prevented from proceeding to their degrees in the ordinary
course, they were entitled to this exercise of the restored
royal prerogative1. As early as the 21st of June, accordingly,
Bernard Hale2, Peter Gunning, Isaac Barrow (of Peterhouse),
John Barwick, John Aucher3, and William Chamberlain4,
received the degree of doctor of divinity ; Barwick being at
the same time offered the bishopric of Carlisle, which he
declined. He subsequently accepted, however, the deanery
of Durham, where he had formerly been chaplain to bishop
Morton, and went into residence before the close of the year;
but in October 1661, he was transferred to the deanery of
St Paul's, — ' a post,' says Overton, ' of more anxiety and less
emolument5.' In the following August, Thomas Fuller paid
his last visit to Cambridge to receive like recognition in an
honorary D.D. His sympathies as a royalist had been amply
attested by his language in the dedication of his Mixt Con-
templations to lady Monck6, and by his presence in the train
1 Cooper, who was at the pains to
collect the entries contained in Kennet ,
gives the following totals of the
degrees thus conferred: D.D., 121;
D.C.L., 12; Doctors of Physic, 12;
B.D., 12; M.A., 2; B.C.L., 1. See
Annals, m 481 and n. 3. ' ...his
Majesty's promoting such numbers
in so short a time by a royal man-
damus, without enquiring into their
qualifications, or insisting upon their
performing any academical exercise,'
says Neal, ' must be covered with
silence, because it was for the service
of the Church. ' Hist, of the Puritans
(ed. 1738), iv 268. He however
omits to recognize the fact that there
were considerable arrears which re-
quired to be made good.
2 Afterwards master of Peterhouse :
see infra, p. 565.
3 Aucher was one of Laud's nomi-
nees to a Canterbury scholarship at
C. C. College in 1634 ; he subsequently
migrated to Peterhouse where he was
elected to a fellowship (23 Apr. 1640)
and commenced M.A. in 1641. His
vehement assertion of the royal pre-
rogative led to his ejection soon after.
Along with his honorary D.D. he was
now made a prebendary of Canterbury.
Walker, who mistook the name for
'Archer' (Sufferings, etc. n 153),
was unable to identify him. See
Masters, Hist, of Corpus Christi,
p. 219.
4 Probably the physician and poet,
whose Pharonnida Southey greatly
admired ; he was an ardent loyalist,
and composer of England's Jubilee,
or a Poem on the happy Return of
his Sacred Majesty Charles the Second,
1660.
6 See D.N.B. xx 318.
6 ' It is notoriously known in our
English Chronicles, that there was
an ILL MAY DAY anno Dom. 1517...
wherein much mischief was donne
in London, the lives of many lost,
and estates of more confounded.
This last GOOD MAY DAY hath made
plentifull amends for that evill one,
and hath laid a foundation for the
happinesse of an almost ruined Church
and State ; which as under God it
was effected by the prudence and
THE SERMON AT ST MARY'S. 559
that accompanied lord Berkeley when the latter proceeded to CHAP. v.
the Hague, as one of the commissioners deputed to invite
Charles to return to England. Between the merry monarch
and the witty divine, there would seem, indeed, to have
existed a certain sympathy; and two years later, when Fuller
himself was no more, his son, John, was elected to a fellow-
ship at Sidney by a like exercise of the royal prerogative,
which met, however, with less ready acquiescence1.
On Thanksgiving Day, John Spencer, fellow, and sub- JOHN
sequently master, of Corpus Christi College, preached the % *j$
sermon at Great St Mary's2. It cannot, certainly, be said conms:01
that the author of the De Legibus Hebraeorum, here gives
evidence of the powers which he subsequently displayed, as
the originator of the study of comparative religion3, while
his parade of learning, in compliance with the fashion of the
times, serves somewhat to repel the modern reader. But His sermon
,, , . , . , , . on Thanki-
the main purpose ot his discourse4 does credit to the man; giving Day-.
f _ '28 June 1660.
and the warning which it was designed to convey, — addressed
as it was to an audience many of whom could recall the
assassinations of Buckingham, Wallenstein, and Dorislaus, —
can hardly have been entirely thrown away. As he looked
back on the extinct Commonwealth, and the destruction
wherewith it had so recently menaced not only the princes
and nobles of the land, but all civil and ecclesiastical
authority, it seemed to him comparable only to a Flood;
valour of your noble and most re- June 28. 1660. Being appointed a
nowned Husband, so you are emi- day of publick Thanksgiving to God
nently known to have had a finger, for the happy restauraticm of His
yea an hand, yea an Arme happily Majesty to his Kingdomes. By John
instrumental therein.' ' Zion Coll. Spencer, B.D., Fellow of Corpus
May 2. 1660.' Dedication 'to the Christi College, in Cambridge. Printed
truly honourable and most virtuous, by John Field, Printer to the Uni-
theLady Monck,' of Mixt Contempla- versitie of Cambridge, 1660.
tions in Better Times. By Thomas 3 See Robertson Smith, Religion
Fuller, B.D. London, 1660. of the Semites (1894), Pref. p. vi.
1 'Mr John Fuller was admitted 'In its special subject,' wrote that
fellowby vertueoftheKing'smandate. distinguished scholar, ' Spencer's
Mr Luke protested against his ad- work still remains by far the most
mission in behalfe of Sir Green and important book on the religious
Sir Sacket. Acta Collegii: Jan. 21, antiquities of the Hebrews,' — a verdict
1663.' Edwards (G. M.), Sidney confirmed by the opinion of Professor
Sussex College, p. 138. J. G. Frazer.
2 The Righteous Ruler. A Sermon 4 His text is taken froml Chronicles
preached at St Maries in Cambridge, xxix 22, 23.
560 THE RESTORATION.
CHAP, v. and after a flood, he says, in his Preface, there are ' three
sorts of works ' wherewith men are wont ' to entertain them-
selves,' those of piety, pleasure, or policy ; and it is in order
to ' inkindle in the breasts ' of his audience a desire to take
up with the first, and to inspire a wider circle with a sense
of gratitude to God for restoring to his people ' the Moses '
destined to lead them out of the wilderness, that he gives his
sermon, in a considerably expanded form1, to the general
public. ' Then let no private hand,' he says, ' be lifted up to
Majesty, so abetted by heaven. Christianity disowns
consecrated daggers. In heathen Writers, indeed, nothing
of more familiar occurrence then Panegyricks in commenda-
the welfare tion of the assertors of publick liberty (as they stiled them)
universities; by the assassinating of a ruler, when the people once pleased
to vote him a Tyrant. . .but Scripture shews a higher Charter
then so, whereby Kings hold their Crowns2.' ' Sure I am,'
he goes on to say, ' if any part of the Nation have matter of
joy, we in the University [have] more, — universities and
learned men most flourishing under Kings, but especially
under righteous Kings3'; and with regard to what might be
ins Majesty looked for, in return, at the hands of their monarch, ' his
is especially
the ™^o/hat ft1"8* and great (I may now add, frequentest) request to the
t^uTdb/ Houses,' he goes on to say, 'was, that the Act of Indemnity
h1nswepM~ might be as speedily and comprehensively drawn up as
possible. . ° \ J r. . ' * i • •
might be. His Majesty contents himself with the submission
of his adversaries4.'
Charles's Throughout the country there was, undoubtedly, a very
designs with general disposition to favour the views thus plainly enforced
regard to the ° . J
t^'ofhiT fr°m the university pulpit, while Charles himself, by his
Household open-handed generosity, but still more, it must be ad-
foraan°un- mitted, by his reckless promises with regard to the future,
precedented , . .,, , . . . ,
extrava- soon began to rise rapidly in popular estimation. At the
Hague, indeed, while still ' beyond the seas,' he had, accord-
1 ' This Sermon is not presented to 2 The Righteous Ruler, p. 18.
the eye with the same brevity it was Compare with these observations
to the ear; Truth in some places Professor Firth's account of 'Royalist
requiring greater assistance than views of assassination,' in his Last
those few minutes allotted for such Years of the Protectorate, i 39.
services in the Pulpit, would allow.' 3 Ibid. p. 29.
To the Reader. * Ibid. p. 46.
THE FEE-FARM RENTS. 561
ing to Clarendon, devised a very different policy, and ' had VCHAP.
formally resolved to reform those excesses which were known
to be in the great offices, especially those of his household,
whilst the places were vacant, and to reform all extravagant
expenses there'; so that his apparent parsimony, on the
occasion when he received the deputation from Cambridge,
may very well have seemed not only excusable, but even
commendable, as in keeping with such prudent designs.
But as soon as the officers of the Household had been
appointed, — 'to take care of the expenses,' 'being them-
selves,' as the historian sarcastically observes, ' a great part
of it,' — all was changed ; and the ' King's House quickly
appeared in its full lustre, the eating and drinking very
grateful to all men, and the charge and expence of it much
exceeding the precedents of the most luxurious times1.'
It was not long, accordingly, before the university was given
to understand that the professions of unbounded loyalty
made by Dr Love at Whitehall were about to be put to a
very practical test. The colleges, indeed, were still but
slowly recovering from their depressed financial condition The
consequent upon the Civil War ; but the university was J^stotethe
now, for the first time for nearly twenty years, again placed po^sfon of
in nominal possession of sources of revenue of which it had rent^wwST
been altogether deprived. In 1642, both Oxford and Cam- aboiuhSi
under the
bridge, by their refusal of the Solemn League and Covenant c°??I?on'
and openly subsidizing the royal forces, had incurred a like
process of sequestration to that put in force against the
royalist estates. The result had been that the Common-
wealth government, by a series of acts commencing in 1650,
had sold all the fee-farm rents belonging to the Crown,
tHese being largely bought by Corporations (the universities
included), and renewed on lands which they respectively
held; while, in consequence of this, certain 'ancient stipends,
formerly payable to the university were also suspended/
But amid the enthusiasm that now prevailed, the Corpora-
tions were everywhere now conveying these fee-farm rents
1 Clarendon's Autobiography, Pt. ii 24, 26 (ed. 1759).
M. in. 36
562
THE RESTORATION.
CHAP, v. back to the Crown, as a free gift1. The universities might
reasonably have assumed that, in accordance with the
traditional exemption granted them in such matters, a like
sacrifice would hardly be expected on their part. Not so,
however, thought Dr Love, who seems to have discerned in
the whole matter an excellent opportunity of completely
reinstating both himself and his university in the royal
favour, and restoring an arrangement which had formerly
served as a tie between the university and the Crown.
It was accordingly proposed to hand over, like the other
Corporations, these fee-farm rents to the King, 'in order
that his royal exchequer might be enabled to pay the
above-mentioned stipends to the University as theretofore2.'
Grace passed A grace to this effect having been passed, ' Dr Love was
empowered to make tender of the conveyance of the fee-farm
purpose :
19 July 1660.
1 ' This was the usual testimony of
loyalty. Corporations got, naturally,
no compensation for the rents they
had bought, but it is not probable
they lost much. I doubt if they
usually paid more than ten years'
purchase for the rents, and in most
cases they enjoyed them for about
that period.' Letter from Professor
C. H, Firth, Christmas, 1909; to
whom I am also indebted for some
explanations which render this singu-
lar proceeding, on the part of an
academic body, more intelligible.
For like practice, he refers me to
Mercurius Publicus (5-12 July 1660),
which prints an Address from the
Corporation of Lincoln surrendering
a fee-farm rent of £81 per annum ;
and (July 24) another from Norwich,
making a like surrender of rents
amounting to £132. 18s. 3d. To
Mr E. J. Gross, fellow of Caius
College, I am indebted for the follow-
ing illustration of the foregoing ob-
servations : ' From 1546, Caius College
has received from the Crown £3 per
annum as rent of Physwick's Hostel,
taken by Henry vm for Trinity
College. In 1614, the former College
became the owner by -purchase of
Shelf ord Mill, and thereby liable to
an annual fee-farm rent of £6, the
balance payable to the Exchequer
thus becoming £3 annually. In 1650
an agreement was arrived at with the
Commonwealth authorities, that both
these payments should be definitely
terminated by the College paying to
the Government the sum of £27.
But at the Restoration, this agreement
was annulled and order was given
that the former respective payments
should be resumed. All, consequently,
that the College realized, in return
for the £27, was the annual balance
of £3 accruing from the discontinu-
ance of the former payments during
the years 1650-60 instead of in
perpetuity.'
2 Masters, Hist, of Corpus Christi
Coll., p. 152. 'I suppose the Uni-
versity bought fee-farm rents to an
annual value sufficient to provide
these ' ' stipends. ' ' It hoped, ap-
parently, that the Crown would re-
sume the payments if it got back the
old Crown revenues. It must have
known that the sale of the fee-farm
rents would be declared invalid and
that it could not expect to keep them. '
Prof. Firth, u. s. Similarly, ' the
lands of noblemen and gentlemen,
whose estates had been confiscated
and sold by the successive Govern-
ments of the revolutionary period,
reverted to their original owners, on
the ground that sales by an unlawful
authority could give no valid title.'
See Prof. Firth's observations on the
land question, in Cambridge Modern
History, v 95.
DEATH OF DR LOVE. 563
unto his sacred Majesty, expressing the tender care and CHAP. v.
loyal affection of the University, and that the Doctor by the Formal
advice of such counsel as in his judgement and prudence made by
J Dr Love on
should be requisite, should be enabled, in the name of the ^v1ersnyhof
University, to make such addresses and petitions to his a^te tothe
sacred Majesty as should be thought fit, for the expression
of the present loyalty of the University and the security of
the said payments in the future1.'
The royal appreciation of Dr Love's services was promptlv HIS
, . . installation
manifested by his appointment, in the following September, *» Dean of
to the deanery of Ely, where he was duly installed, but died Sept- 166°-
a few weeks after. He passed awav full of honours, and His death:
• 11 i- - -11 i TT i Jan. 166?.
especially distinguished among the Heads, as the only one
of their number who had succeeded in evading expulsion
throughout the Civil War, the Commonwealth and the
Protectorate alike. The same tact and prudence, or perhaps
dexterous pliability, had enabled him also to preserve his
tenure of the Lady Margaret professorship of divinity, not-
withstanding that an ordinance passed by the House of
Lords in 1649 had designated Anthony Tuckney for the
chair2; and at the time of his death, Dr Love still held alike
his deanery, his professorship, and his mastership. His
exceptional good fortune appears yet more remarkable if we
accept the somewhat doubtful testimony of Lloyd3, who
asserts that the master of Corpus, in his capacity of professor,
always maintained the attitude of a staunch defender of the
1 In William Dillingbam's account three divinity professors, whereby
as vice-chancellor for the year ending the Lady Margaret professor's course
Nov. 1660, the process is described was to ' be kept for young divines pro
as a resignation of the fee-farm rents Tirocinio to make them sitt after for
and the procuring in return a grant ther other lecture,' and the abandon-
for the renewal of the payment of ment of such a scheme may have
the ancient stipends. See Baker caused Tuckney's appointment to
MSS. XL 59; Masters, Hist, of Corpus lapse. See State Papers (Dom.),
Christi, p. 152 ; Masters-Lamb, Ibid. Charles I, vol. DXX, no. 64.
p. 181;Kennet, Register and Chronicle, 3 Lloyd (David), Memoires, etc.
p. 207 ; Cooper, Annals, m 481-2. (1668), p. 463. Lloyd was an author
2 As Cooper observes (Ibid, in 421, who received his education at Merton
n. 3), Tuckney's name is absent College and Oriel, and afterwards
in Baker's List of the Margaret Pro- became chaplain to Isaac Barrow,
fessors and in that given in the bishop of St Asaph. Wood de-
Graduati. There seems to have been nounces him as ' a false writer and
in 1648-9 a project for dividing the meer scribbler.' See Wood-Bliss,
theological lecture work between the iv 352, n.
36—2
564 THE RESTORATION.
CHAP. v. doctrine and discipline of the Church of England. The
historian of his college, indeed, is fain to admit that he had
himself been ' at a loss ' to reconcile Dr Love's ' conduct with
any such attachment to the established Church/ or with 'the
loyalty due to his kind friend and patron1,' 'till,' Masters
Endeavour goes on to say, ' a friend whom I consulted (much conversant
of Masters °
DreLovepate *n *ke nist°ry °f those times) was pleased to intimate that,
cha^ehoefdis-for aught he could learn to the contrary, it was his opinion
theachurch Dr Love did preserve the same good conscience which a
common1-6 prudent and honest man (without party zeal and attach-
\V (.'ill til
ments) might do in those times of civil and ecclesiastical
confusion ; and that he steered as well and wisely through
those storms as any pilot could, to save his Ship (his college
and university) from an absolute wreck2.'
Assembling It may. however, be questioned whether even a Dr Love
of the new * ' . x
Parliament: could have succeeded in evading the ordeal which followed
March 166^.
upon the assembling of the new Parliament, — a body de-
scribed by Macaulay as ' during some years, more zealous for
royalty than the King and more zealous for episcopacy than
theesrioYf tne Bishops3'; while the convening of the Savoy Conference,
w°AFpBriiEi66i! which held its first sitting a month later, brought with it a
scarcely less trying searching of hearts. By the latter date,
indeed, the university itself had become a transformed com-
munity, and, even before the death of the head of Corpus,
the colleges had, for the most part, each received a new
changes at administrator. Cosin, restored to the deanery of Peter-
PBTEEHOCSB:
borough, had already been heard reading the Anglican
service in the cathedral ; and, a few weeks later, found
himself again master of Peterhouse, where Matthew Wren,
on his return to his see of Ely, had made it one of his first
enquiry concerns, as Visitor of the society, to institute a strict enquiry
andflnuof ^n^° tne circumstances of the former Master's expulsion.
seamTn: Lazarus Seaman, however, not caring to confront the forth-
660' coming evidence, had taken an abrupt departure, leaving
everything in confusion ; and Manchester having declared
that ' Dr John Cosin had been wrongfully ejected,' the latter
1 I.e. King Charles I. 2 Masters (M.S.), pp. 152-3.
3 History of England (ed. 1849), i 175.
CHANGES IN THE HEADSHIPS. 565
was forthwith re-elected. Two months, however, had scarcely CHAP. v.
elapsed, when a valedictory letter, addressed to the president cosin,
r ... re-installed
and fellows, apprised them of his promotion to the see of as Master,
Durham1, and on the second of the following December, £f hlf01***1
Cosin was consecrated in Westminster Abbey, where the to the^eT11*
sermon on the occasion was preached by William Sancroft, His con.
whom he had already appointed his chaplain. At the same l^ecember
time and place, Brian Walton was consecrated to the
bishopric of Chester; and when he set out from London for
that city, ' his journey,' says Hunt, ' was like the triumphal
march of a conquering monarch. His reception in the city
was a great ovation. Saluted by the train-bands, amid the
rejoicings of the multitude, he hastened to the cathedral to
give thanks to God that at length peace and victory had
come2.'
The new head at Peterhouse was Bernard Hale, a former Admission of
BKR.NARD
fellow whose election dated back as far as 1632; but who, HAM as
having shortly after inherited a considerable fortune, had 5 Nov' 1660>
voluntarily resigned that position. He continued, however,
to take a warm interest in all that concerned the college ;
and one of the earliest transactions that now devolved upon
him was the grateful duty of signing the receipt for 1174
volumes which Cosin, prior to his departure for his bishopric,
presented to the college library3. Hale, like the two newly
created bishops, might fairly hope that his election was
destined to usher in a period of comparative repose; 'the
whole society,' wrote Joseph Beaumont, a month later,
' unanimously submit to the Church of England, and are in
this particular very exemplary in their chappie4.' Within
less than three years, however, to the great grief of the
society, the new Master was carried off by sudden illness. HU death:
His memory survives as that of an almost princely benefactor. HU
Lands valued, at the time, at upwards of £7000 ; the livings to th
of Knapton in Norfolk and Glaston in Rutland; increased
stipends for the Master and the organist, together with an
1 Walker, Peterhouse, p. 128. * Letter to Dr Warren (9 Dec.
2 Hist, of Religious Thought in 1660), quoted in Walker, Peterhouse,
England, i 306. pp. 118-9.
3 Cosin, Works, n 14.
566
THE RESTORATION.
CHAP. V.
Resignation
of William
Moses at
PEMBROKE
COLLEGE.
His services
to the
society.
Re-installa-
tion of
Dr Laney.
His
sufferings
in exile.
He is
rewarded
by both a
Deanery
and a
Bishopric.
endowment for fche Grammar School at Hertford (which
Hale's grandfather had founded), sufficing for the institution
of seven scholarships, — all afford evidence of a thoughtful
solicitude which had not suffered the accomplishment of its
designs to remain contingent on the warning which was
never vouchsafed.
At Clare College, Dr Paske, as we have already noted1,
gave place to his son-in-law, Theophilus Dillingham. At
Pembroke, William Moses withdrew alike from the office to
which he had been unanimously elected and from the society
which had materially benefited by his watchful care. 'A very
quick and ready man,' says Calamy, ' and upon that account
Mr Baxter was very desirous to have had him one of the
Commissioners at the Savoy, but he could not prevail2.'
During his tenure of office, he had not only rendered valu-
able service by securing for the society the benefactions of
Sir Robert Hitcham, like himself a serjeant-at-law, but he
had also rebuilt, to a great extent, the college. Even ' after
his ejectment,' according to Calamy, 'he saved the "Hall"
some hundreds of pounds in a law affair, for which they
acknowledged themselves greatly obliged to him3.' Although
not in orders, Moses was known to incline to a moderate
form of episcopacy, and his continuance in office might
perhaps have been conceded, had not the claims of an
expelled predecessor outweighed those of all other com-
petitors. Dr Laney had not been seen in Cambridge since
the day when he fled to join his King at Oxford ; but,
throughout his absence, his fidelity to the royal cause had
been attested by the firmness with which he encountered,
not only the privations of exile, but also, if Walker may be
credited, other ' great calamity,' as a faithful adherent of the
son4. As in the case of Cosin, his reward was now both
marked and prompt; and before the year 1660 closed, he
had been installed dean of Rochester, consecrated to the see
1 Supra, p. 532.
2 Confirmation, p. 115. Moses
turned his attention to the law, and
became counsel to the East India
Company; he died in 1688, leaving
considerable benefactions to Pem-
broke College. D.N.B. xxxix 180.
3 Ibid.
4 Sufferings of the Clergy, Pt. ii
153.
CHANGES IN THE HEADSHIPS. 567
of Peterborough1, and still held, in commendam, both his ^CHAP.
mastership at Pembroke and his canonry at Westminster.
The circumstances under which Dr Batchcroft resumed the Return of Dr
headship of Caius have already been noted. At Trinity Hall, to cams
Robert King, LL.D., whose former election had been quashed Dr Robert
by the Commons2, now found himself, by the irony of fate, eiectedgto"the
J . J J > mastership
again elected, to the displacement of the same Dr Bond, in ^TL*I.KITY
whose favour he had before been compelled to retire. 2 Aug- 166°-
At King's College, the exercise of the royal prerogative
was attended with somewhat serious embarrassment. The
statute relating to the election of the Provost made it
obligatory on the fellows to choose a past or present member
of their own body3, and Dr Whichcote had been a migrant DrWhich-
cote and Dr
from Emmanuel, while his election had been approved, not Fieetwopd
at KING s
by the Crown, but by the Westminster Assembly. Fully c«11BOB:
conscious of this defect of title, he wrote, in the first instance
to Lauderdale, — who had probably been present in the
Assembly at the time of Whichcote's election being
sanctioned, and who was now Charles's secretary. That
unscrupulous politician was accredited with exercising a
greater influence over his sovereign than any other member
of the Court, and he sent an encouraging reply. He had
spoken, he wrote, to the King on the subject, 'your chan-
cellor ' (Manchester), he added, being present at the time ; circum-
the latter and he had talked over the matter, ' and he and "hnedjgt^ch
I were clearly of opinion, that there is no fear as to your™^,^1116
concerns, so that you need not make any particular applica- te
tion.' ' I tooke an opportunity,' he also stated, ' to acquaint
his majesty with those excellent endowments with which
God hath blesst you and which render you so worthie of the
place you enjoy (which the King heard very graciously)4.'
1 His consecration took place along gister, pp. 804, 813.
with that of Cosin and of Brian - See supra, pp. 294-5.
Walton, on the 2nd Dec. According 3 ' ...unum de seipsis seu de illis
to Kennet, Laney was one of the few qui aliquando fuerunt in ipso nostro
who had learned in his sufferings Kegali Collegio Socii.' Documents,
abroad the lesson of toleration to- n 505 ; Heywood and Wright, Ancient
wards others and was distinguished Laws for King's College and Eton,
by the leniency with which he treated p. 43.
the dissenters in his diocese. Ee- * Ibid. p. 288.
568
THE RESTORATION.
CHAP. V.
Fleetwood
objects that
Whichcote is
statutably
disqualified
for election ;
arguments
adduced by
Whichcote in
defence of his
original
election ;
his merits
urged by one
of the
Seniority.
In the mean time, however, Dr James Fleetwood, one of
the royal chaplains, had urged his own claims, and with so
much success that Charles was induced to send a mandate,
enjoining the fellows of King's that, 'assembling yourselves
in due manner, you precede forthwith to the election of the
said provost, and to the same to name and elect him the
said Dr Fleetwood1.' But here, again, a statu table difficulty
presented itself. The statute relating to the election of the
Provost required that, within fifteen days of the occurrence
of a vacancy, an announcement, or ' publication,' of the fact
should be issued ; and that, within ten days of such publica-
tion, the fellows, one and all, should assemble in the chapel
choir, and elect a successor to the office2. But this formality
had not been duly observed; and Charles, accordingly, found
himself under the necessity of notifying to Fleetwood that
his election must be looked upon as null and void. Where-
upon Fleetwood forthwith drew up another petition, setting
forth that, in pursuance of the mandate received, he had
already ' been duly elected, had taken the oath and received
the statutebook, seals, and keys of office'; while, annexed
to his petition, was a document setting forth that Dr Which-
cote was incapable by statute of the Provostship, having
never been a fellow; and that, out of the seventy fellows and
scholars on the foundation of King's, only thirty (twenty-two
of whom were juniors) had signed his certificate, the others
supporting Dr Fleetwood3. Whichcote, on the other hand,
now ' urged that the appointment of the Provostship was in
the King's hands, and that other non-Kingsmen had held the
office before him ; that he had accepted it unwillingly, and
given up for it a valuable living4.' One of the senior fellows,
William Godman, although admitting that the late Provost
was statutably incapable of the appointment, represented
that ' his great learning, prudence, and civility ' (' whereof/
he says, 'we of this College have had large experience') made
him worthy of as great or greater preferment and dignity,' —
1 Ancient Laws, etc. (M.S.), p. 293.
2 Ibid. pp. 42, 46.
3 State Papers (Dom.), ix, no. 95.
4 Ibid, ix, nos. 93, 94 (1) and (2) ;
Austen-Leigh, King's College, p. 136.
THE PROVOSTSHIP OF KING'S. 569
that ' he had been an encourager of learning and virtue, had CHAP, v.
never persecuted any of us upon difference of opinion and
had deserved well of the whole society1.' In the eves of rieetwood's
. . . deserts, as
royalty, however, these were but negative virtues ; while
Dr Fleetwood could urge considerations of a positive kind
which pleaded strongly in his favour. He had been educated
at Eton, and had graduated from King's College; and
although only a chaplain in the army, he appears to have
exerted an influence among the soldiery which was highly
valued. On the eve of that eventful fight at Edgehill which
stayed the pursuit of Essex, he had acquitted himself in a
manner which led Charles, a few weeks later, to give orders
for his admission to the degree of doctor of divinity at He receives
. . . the degree
Oxford2. To not a few, accordingly, it might well seem that Ofx^['.at
such honour bestowed on Fleetwood by the father's command l Nov" 164i
at the sister university, might fitly be followed by the pre-
ferment which it was now the son's proposal to confer upon
him at Cambridge. With respect to Charles's personal feeling
in the matter there could be no question. We must con-
sequently interpret Whichcote's conduct as designed rather
to vindicate the legality of his own position than inspired by
any hope of maintaining himself in office. He had quitted wj^cote
his Lodge; and when, on the eleventh of July, Dr Fleetwood thCL<xigreom
appeared to take possession, accompanied by. the fellows, g^anhts8
scholars, and servants of the college, and knocked at the mission to
. . . . . ° ' . Fleetwood.
Lodge door, he was refused admission by the servants whom
his predecessor had left in charge. He lost no time in
apprising Charles and petitioning his royal intervention, not
forgetting to remind the King that Whichcote himself had
turned out his predecessor, Dr Collins; while he, at the same
time, intimated his intention of forthwith restoring King's
College quire to its full statu table efficiency, — a prescribed
duty in the original code with respect to which the out-
going Provost had been somewhat neglectful3.
1 Heywood and Wright (u. «.), pp. statutable requirements connected
292-3; Austen-Leigh, King's College, with the quire, see Heywood and
pp. 136-7. Wright («.*.), pp. 120-1. As, during Dr
2 D.N.B. xix 267. Collins' rule, the financial condition
3 Cooper, Annals, v 432. For the of the society had become alarming,
570
THE RESTORATION.
CHAP. V.
He is
presented by
the College
to the living
of Milton.
Dr Martin
reinstated at
QUEENS'
COLLEGE :
2 Aug. 1660.
Thomas
Edwards,
elected in
1642, now for
the first time
admitted
fellow.
There was, however, no necessity for farther intervention
from without. His protest made, Whichcote retired ; and,
in the following year, left Cambridge for London, having
been elected to the cure of St Anne's in Blackfriars. To his
biographer, Samuel Salter, writing at an interval of nearly
a century, it seemed that he was neither ' disgraced nor
frowned upon ' ; but ' only called up, from the comparative
obscurity of a university life, to a higher and more con-
spicuous station, — from a place where he had already done
much service, to one where there was still much to be done1.'
At King's, the society did their best to shew that their
esteem for him was unimpaired, by presenting him to the
sinecure living of Milton (some five miles north of Cambridge),
afterwards noted as the residence of his successor, William
Cole, the antiquary, and where we shall hear of Whichcote
himself again2. Fleetwood's merits, on the other hand, were
before long recognized by his presentation to two livings and
eventually by his nomination to the see of Worcester.
At Queens' College, Dr Martin, on crossing the Channel,
found himself reinstated as president by the same hand that
had ejected him3; but, in marked contrast to the head of
Pembroke, he evinced a lively sense of the wrongs that he
had suffered in the past, and something like a spirit of
retaliation was only too manifest throughout the nineteen
months of his restored rule4. For the present, however, all
vindictive measures were stayed by the express order of the
Chancellor. Thomas Edwards, who had been elected to a
the Provost himself being accused of
' intolerable negligence ' (Ibid. p.
285), it is easy to understand that
Whichcote may have aimed at re-
trenchment in the direction in which
he deemed the normal expenditure
least essential.
1 Preface to the Eight Letters
(8 Mar. 1753), p. xxvi.
2 Whichcote appears to have first
been instituted to the rectory of Milton
(13 Nov. 1660) by Wren, as bishop of
Ely, on the presentation of the provost
and fellows of King's. The latter
body, however, finding their right to
present of doubtful validity, induced
him to resign, and he was again pre-
sented in the following year. See
Heywood and Wright, p. 294.
3 ' He was replaced... by a warrant
from the same earl of Manchester
who had ejected him, and who, after
having alleged the Doctor' s scandalous
acts as the ground of that proceeding,
now set forth that ' ' he was informed
that he was wrongfully put out of
his mastership." ' Searle, Hist, of
Queens' College, p. 571.
4 ' Evidently Dr Martin had neither
learned anything from his troubles,
nor forgotten anything during his
exile.' Ibid. p. 582.
CHANGES IN THE HEADSHIPS. 571
fellowship on the very day of the President's arrest in 1642, VCHAP. v.
was now formally admitted; Michael Freer, who had been
ejected in 1644, was reinstated; and the twelve survivors
from the number of those who had been elected during the rule
of Palmer and of Horton, were now re-sworn and re-elected.
Dr Martin, as he turned from the strange faces around Re-eiection
of the
him to examine the records of the College Register, — and majority of
O the fellows.
especially those of the days immediately preceding the in-
stallation of Herbert Palmer, — and as he gazed on the havoc
wrought by Dowsing in the college chapel, was deeply or Martin's
moved. He at once determined that a full statement of the becoming
aware of
destruction perpetrated should be drawn up and laid before ^ul^y
the new Parliament. The Petition which he designed to Dowsuig-
present still exists, wherein he points out what he terms 'the He
., i'ii -r-» • ii>i determines
vastation and calamity to which the 'Register book bears to petition
•* Parliament
witness, — 'the like whereof/ he declares, 'no other College for redress-
in England by God's great mercy and goodness ever suffered1.'
That the petition was never presented, is to be accounted for
by the fact that the remedial legislation which it invoked
was forestalled by the action of Parliament, in the Act for His design
Confirmation of Leases and Grants from Colledqes and the action of.
. * Parliament.
Hospitals2, which passed through both Houses before the
close of the year 1660. After security had thus been afforded
that the rights and endowments of the society would be
fully protected, Dr Martin was able to devote himself more
calmly to details of administration; and, brief as was his
subsequent tenure of office, he lived to see the presses of the
despoiled college library to some extent replenished, the
cedar wainscoting of the chapel restored, and a new organ
erected ; while finally, in February 1662, his own services
and deserts received recognition in his preferment to the
deanery of Ely. Before, however, he could be installed, his HU
, . , i j • /• • • a xi appointment
physical powers shewed signs of giving way, and the cere- to the
mony had to be carried out by proxy, but only to be followed, of Ely:
three days later, by his death. As his few surviving friends His death :
2S Anr Ififi*?
laid him to rest in the college chapel, they might feel some
1 Searle, Ibid. pp. 582-3; Gray (J. H.), Queens' College, pp. 195-6.
2 See Cooper, Annals, m 486-9.
572 THE EESTORATION.
CHAP, v. satisfaction in the thought that, although no monument or
memorial marked the site of his interment, his wanderings
and sufferings were at an end, and that his days had closed
in the place where he would be1.
pr worth- At the same time that Dr Martin was resuming office at
JESUS Queens', the head of Jesus College was becoming aware that
his tenure both of his living at Fen Ditton and of his master-
ship was in jeopardy; and the entries in his Diary2 bring
before us the successive stages of his misgivings and per-
plexity. Unambitious as regarded office, unselfish with
respect to wealth, few dignitaries of the English Church
could appeal in their defence to a more inoffensive and
exemplary career. But Worthington's was not a contentious
nature, and although only in his forty-third year, he found
in the discharge of his duties as a parish priest and in his
editorial labours on the works of Joseph Mede (before long
to be given to the learned world), the occupations that best
harmonized both with his inclinations and his genius. As
already noted3, he filled the office of vice-chancellor for only
one year; he had been a pluralist, but his tenure of his
second living (that of Horton in Buckinghamshire) had been
equally brief; he had been promoted to the headship of
Jesus College without any ambition to fill the post, and was
now looking forward with perfect equanimity to being called
His assiduity upon to surrender it. But he loved his parish ; and, out of
as rector of ^
Fen Ditton. jj js modest income, had defrayed the charges of repairing the
chancel of the church and restoring his dilapidated parsonage,
and had given much in charity; while his little flock evinced
their gratitude by prompt payment of tithes, in kind, and,
at this time, by manifest anxiety at the prospect of his
departure4. It was in July 1660, when he himself was still
in doubt what would be done with respect to Fen Ditton, —
the presentation to which had lapsed to the Crown some
1 Searle (M.S.), pp. 576-580. 3 Supra, p. 532.
2 Diary and Correspondence of 4 ' I have been for some years
Dr John Worthington. (From the possessed of the said rectory, and
Baker MSS. in the British Museum have diligently attended the duty
and the Cambridge University Library, of the place. All the people desire
etc.) Ed. James Crossley, Esq. my stay. They are free from faction."
2 vols. Chetham Society, 1847-86. Diary (M.S.), i 200.
THE MASTERSHIP OF JESUS COLLEGE. 573
eight years before, — that he was startled to learn that one ^CHAP. v.^
'Dr Hales* was enjoining the parishioners not to pay him institution of
the tithes which were then becoming due, the Doctor »» rector,
having himself been presented to the living. It seemed to
Worthington a hard case, for he knew that the new incum-
bent was a wealthy man, — according to report, 'possessed of a
great temporal estate, of about £1000 a year,' — while 'Ditton,'
he wrote, ' is my main livelihood, and if this should be taken
from me, I have no whither to go.... I did not think that any
one would so suddenly have disturbed the harvest after
it was begun1.' A few days later, a letter arrived from
Dr Sterne, enclosing an order from the earl of Manchester Dr steme
for the restoration of the former to the headship of Jesus in the
x _ mastership
College. Sterne subscribes himself ' Your loving friend,' and £f0nese*
desires to know ' what time you will please to make way for Au&u8t 166°-
my return to the college.' Within less than a fortnight, on
August 17th, we find the entry in Worthington's Diary,
'I delivered to Dr Stern the statutes, the register, both
Lease Books, and the key of the treasury ' ; and a month
later he had removed his furniture from the Lodge to Fen Worthington
_. --JT . . -.-, ... , , removes to
Ditton2. Writing to Hartlib, to whom he appears to have Fen Ditton.
confided his experiences and sentiments with remarkable
frankness, he says, ' One main thing which did more endear
an academicall life to me was that by reason of my being
there I might be in a better capacity of entertaining my
friends abroad with some accounts of the ingenuous per-
formances there, and I confess it had been to me a great
pleasure to observe several persons there eminent for different
perfections and accordingly to animate them to such things
as were most agreeable to their genius. But I hope there
are others like minded who will fill up what has been deficient
in me, and now it will not be grievous to me to retire to a
rurall employment3.'
Among the incidents of his final departure from the
Lodge, there was a musical performance which he gave in
honour of his successor and his wife. It was, however,
1 Ibid, i 200-2. 2 Ibid, i 203-4 ; 205.
3 Ibid, i 216.
574
THE RESTORATION.
CHAP. V.
Pearson's
previous
career :
his
remarkable
attainments
at Eton,
his election
to a scholar-
ship at
King's
College:
1632.
His sermon
in defence of
Fonni of
Prayer: tire.
June 1643.
already a current report that Dr Sterne had been designated
for the bishopric of Carlisle ; and Worthington's friends were
not without hope that he might be invited to resume office
at Jesus College. But in the letter above quoted, he had
himself adverted to the fact that, ' by the statutes of our
College not the fellows but the Bishop of Ely does put in and
constitute the Master of the College1'; and Matthew Wren
had already determined that the appointment should be
given to the author of the Exposition of the Creed. On
December the 4th, accordingly, Dr Worthington's Diary
recorded ' This day Dr Pearson was admitted Master of Jesus
College2.'
None, probably, of the changes in the Headships excited
a more lively interest than that to which the above entry
refers. John Pearson had been educated at Eton in the
days when Sir Henry Wotton was provost and John Hales a
fellow. His stay there had been prolonged until he had
reached his nineteenth year, and his ardour and attainments
as a student, especially of the Greek and Latin Fathers, were
already alike remarkable, when in 1631 he entered at Queens'
College. His father, Robert Pearson, archdeacon of Suffolk,
had been educated at Queens'; but in the following year,
John migrated to King's, where he was elected a scholar,
and, two years later, to a fellowship. On the death of his
father, he succeeded to a small patrimony which served to
alleviate the privations he was destined to encounter in after
life ; while Davenant collated him to a prebend in Salisbury
cathedral; and in 1640, he was presented (probably by
Henry Coke) to the rectory of Thoringbon in Suffolk. He
continued, however, to be resident at Cambridge at intervals,
and in 1643, on the eve of the Westminster Assembly, he
delivered a memorable sermon at St Mary's on The Excellency
of Forms of Prayer3. In opposition to that Puritan aver-
1 Diary (u.s.), i 217.
2 Ibid, i 231.
3 The Excellency of Forms of
Prayer , especially of the Lord's Prayer.
A Sermon preached before the Uni-
versity of Cambridge, at St Mary's,
in A.D. 1644. By John Pearson,
M.A., Fellow of King's College, after-
wards Lord Bishop of Chester. Never
before printed. London : for Geo.
Sawbridge, at the Three Golden
Flower-de-Luces in Little Britain,
1711. See The Minor Theological
Works of John Pearson, D.D. Now
JOHN PEARSON. 575
sion from prescribed forms of devotion, which has already CHAP, v.
come so prominently before us, he demonstrated that New
Testament precedent and primitive use alike authorized the
frequent repetition of the Lord's Prayer; while he also
adduced good reason for believing that other public forms of
prayer might be traced back as far as the time of Constantine
the Great. It would be as reasonable to maintain that all
Creeds, or professions of Faith, should be extempore, as that
all prayers should be so. His whole argument, cast in the
scholastic mould, urged without passion, unadorned with
rhetoric, and appealing exclusively to those early Fathers
from whose dicta the Anglican Church itself recognized no
appeal, produced a marked effect ; and although it appears
doubtful whether the sermon was printed during his lifetime,
it was probably remembered to his death.
Subsequently to the delivery of this discourse, Pearson,
having been deprived of his living, served for a time as
chaplain in Goring's force ; and then, when the royal cause
seemed hopeless, withdrew to London, where he was to be
heard of as rendering valuable service in obtaining sub-
scriptions to Walton's Polyglot, and as filling more than one
chaplaincy to some noble family. In 1654, he was approached
by some of the residents in Eastcheap who attended the HU lecture-
services at St Clement's Church, with a request that he § ciemmft
Eastcheap:
would give them a weekly sermon, or ' lecture,' as it 1654-60-
was often designated. There would seem to have been no
regular service on such occasions, and consequently the
question of the use of the Liturgy did not arise ; nor does
the invitation appear to have been coupled with any offer of
pecuniary recompense1. Pearson, however, acceded to the
first collected, with a Memoir of the this period lay under the reproach of
Author, etc. By Edward Churton, remunerating its preachers somewhat
M.A. 2 vols. Oxford : at the Uni- inadequately, and he adjures his
versity Press. 1844. Vol. n 97-111. hearers (pp. 37-8) to 'Make that
Churton, in a foot-note (p. 97), ad- proverb cease, London loves a cheap
duces good reason for concluding that Gospel. ' It appears, however, that
this discourse was delivered in the St Clement's was rebuilt by the
first half of the year 1643. parishioners, shortly before the Re-
1 According to William Jenkyn storation. Preface to Pearson 'sMi nor
(Funeral Sermon for Lazarus Sea- Theological Works (u. s.), i xlv.
man, 1675), London (i.e. the City) at
576 THE RESTORATION.
CHAP, v. request, and gave the lectures regularly down to the Restora-
tion, — one of the series of these discourses being that which
Expotitim he afterwards published as his Exposition of the Creed. The
i{&^Creed: fact that he continued to give his lectures for several years,
would seem to be a sufficient ground for assuming that they
were successful, although he resorted to none of those
artifices of pulpit oratory which were deemed necessary in
order to attract an audience in those days. Pearson knew
his hearers, and he sought neither 'to dazzle them with
tropes,' such as charmed the listeners at Golden Grove, nor
did he seek to overawe them with a parade of unknown
tongues such as the rustics at Childrey had looked for from
Pococke1. But taking the admitted doctrine of the Church
as the basis of his discourses, he brought his academic culture
to bear, and that very successfully, upon the task of making
clear, or at least clearer than before, the chief tenets of the
character of Christian faith. The shrewd, hard-headed merchants and
his exposi-
suUecTto traders of Eastcheap, as they stole in from the noisy
aud'i'Ince. thoroughfare and the crowded mart, recognized the service
which he sought to render them and honoured it accordingly.
They listened, and found themselves enlightened, comforted,
He and reassured ; while he, in return, dedicated to them, his
dedicates his
'dear parishioners,' the quarto of 1659 (the form in which
parishioners, the first edition of his lectures appeared), appending, as
value marginalia, references to, or quotations from, the authorities
marginalia, on which he mainly relied, — with respect to which a com-
petent critic observes, that ' they are almost always the best
for their purpose and almost always fairly interpreted.'
It was thus that, although not himself a great preacher,
Pearson was able to render a great service to the religious
world; and, to quote the same criticism, 'probably few
writers have had a larger influence on those who have filled
the pulpits of the Church of England for the last two
centuries2.'
At St John's College, Dr Tuckney maintained his reputa-
tion as a conscientious and courageous divine. He had,
1 See supra, pp. 388-9. Pearson, in Masters in English Theo-
2 Cheetham (S.), Lecture on John logy (1877), pp. 232, 239.
THE MASTERSHIP OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE. 577
indeed, by contributing to the Sostra, given his assent to the CHAP, v.
congratulations which welcomed Charles on his return ; but
when the use of the Prayer Book was resumed in chapel, it
was noted that his seat was unoccupied ; and even when
appointed a member of the Savoy Conference, convened for
the express purpose of liturgical revision1, he persistently
evaded the summons to attend2. At length, while the Tuckney
called upon
Conference was still sitting, the mandate came for his ejec- £0™tib™th
tion both from his mastership and his professorship. Royalty menatpsponnt~
professed to discern in the fact of his being ' well stricken in ofhfsroul
years ' (he was only sixty-two), and in certain alleged ' in- ag!anc'
firmities of body/ reasons for apprehending that he might
prove 'not so well able to bear the burden of those two
places,' a conclusion somewhat at variance with the nomina-
tion of the president of Queens', now in his eightieth year,
to the deanery of Ely. Manchester did his best to break
the blow, by at the same time assuring Tuckney, in a letter
accompanying the official intimation, that the measure was
not the result ' of any dislike of your person or distrust of
your ability'; 'I shall my self,' he added, 'upon all occasions
improve my interest for your advantage3.' Eventually, He
Tuckney signed the resignation of his professorship4, and 1™
shortly after withdrew to London. There, for the ensuing t°.^ondon-
four years, he lived a retired life, occasionally preaching to '"^e
private congregations. In 1665, however, the outbreak of
1 '...to take into your serious and ship and his mastership (Life of
grave consideration, the several Tuckney in Preface to the Eight
directions, rules, and forms of prayer, Letters, pp. x-xi).
and things in the said Book of 3 The income of the rectory of
Common Prayer contained, and to Somersham, amounting to £100 per
advise and consult about the same,' annum, which was attached to the
etc. See Baxter's Life and Times, Eegius professorship but had not been
i 303-4. paid to Tuckney during the time he
2 ' . . .alledging his backwardness to filled the chair, was now granted him
speak, though he had been the Doctor for life, the future rector being re-
of the Chair in Cambridge.' Baxter, quired to give ' assurance in law ' for
Ibid. p. 307. Salter however ob- the payment of the same (Calamy,
serves, 'everyone will see whence Ejected Ministers (1713), n 78-80;
this "backwardness to speak" arose,' Cooper, Annals, m 484, n.). This
and attributes Tuckney's silence to was the sole compensation he re-
a Demosthenean d.pyvpdyx'n, conse- ceived.
quent upon his sense of the imperfect 4 His resignation, dated June 12,
compensation he had received on 1661, is given by Baker, MSS. xxxi
surrendering up both his professor- 265.
M, in. 37
578 THE RESTORATION.
CHAP. \. the plague drove him into the provinces, and he found
shelter with friends near Nottingham ; but an endeavour to
carry on his ministrations brought him under the notice of
the authorities. He was consequently, says Calamy, 'troubled
and confin'd, but it was in the house of Francis Pierrepoint,
esquire, where he was treated very civilly and within a few
months discharg'd1.' On quitting London, he had left his
library stored away at Scriveners' Hall, and it was burnt in
the Great Fire. Its loss made him less anxious to return,
and it was not until 1669 that, after sojourning in different
places in the country, he again saw the capital, where he
died, in February 1670, and was interred in the church of
St Andrew Undershaft2.
He is The services rendered by Peter Gunning, as editor of the
succeeded *
mastership Certain Disquisitions3, were probably his chief recommenda-
<h«*im. tion in the eyes of Charles, when singling him out, as he had
done in the case of Fleetwood, for more substantial rewards
than his father had been able to confer at Oxford. Already,
Election of indeed, Gunning was a Head, — having been elected to the
tortheunn ? mastership of Corpus, on the death of Dr Love, whom he
mastership
of corpus: na(j a]so succeeded in the Lady Margaret professorship,
3 FGD. loo-j • . ,
besides being instituted to two rectories. He was, says the
historian of Corpus, ' looked upon as the properest person for
settling the university in right principles again, after the
many corruptions that had crept in amongst them4.... For he
was reckoned one of the most learned and best beloved sons
of the Church of England ; and as such was chosen proctor
both for the chapter of the Church of Canterbury, and for
the clergy of the diocese of Peterborough, in the Convocation
held in 1661, was one of the Committee upon the review of
the Liturgy, and principally concerned in the Conference at
the Savoy5.' Such was the divine who now succeeded
1 Calamy, M.S. pp. 80-1. necessary to bring in such a man as
2 Ibid, ii 81. would effectually rout out the old
8 See supra, pp. 287-9. leaven and restore it to its former
4 So also Baker, — 'this society lustre.' Baker-Mayor, p. 233.
[St John's] having been miserably 5 Masters, Hist, of Corpus Christi
tainted and infected with factious College, pp. 156-7 ; Masters-Lamb,
and pernicious principles, it was pp. 186-7.
THE MASTERSHIP OF TRINITY. 579
Tuckney both in the mastership of St John's and in the CHAP, v.
chair of the Regius professorship of divinity. His
. admission
At Magdalene, Dr Rainbowe, who had been ejected on »» ^taj0ehrn.g.
25 June 1661.
his refusal to take the Engagement1, was now reinstated in
i * • i • DrRainbowe
the mastership, and shortly after received special marks of reinstated in
<* the master-
royal favour. After being appointed chaplain to the King, Magdliene:
he was promoted, in 1661, to the deanery of Peterborough,
where it was, accordingly, obligatory on him to reside during
the greater part of the year. On his election, however, in
1662, to the office of vice-chancellor, he returned for a time
to his college lodge to discharge his new official duties. But He is
appointed
within another two years, he resigned both headship and carHsFe^
deanery on being nominated to the bishopric of Carlisle. 1664
His second period of office having been thus brief and
interrupted, the master of Magdalene, notwithstanding his
generous and sympathetic disposition and unquestionable
ability, had been able to do but little for his college ;
although, according to Mr Purnell, it was through his good
offices that it obtained the right to nominate to the office of
proctor once in nine, instead of forty- four years2.
At Trinity, Dr Wilkins. whose brief tenure of the master- Dr
J at Trinity
ship has already come under our notice3, found himself called college:
upon to deal with tendencies that were partly reactionary
and partly progressive, — that is to say, with the returning tide
of Royalist enthusiasm, and also with the growing spirit of
philosophical enquiry. With both, however, he was, to a MS general
certain extent, in sympathy ; for notwithstanding that he gn£^Jthieg
was Cromwell's brother-in-law, he had been noted throughout
the Protectorate for his endeavours to shield the sufferers in
the royal cause, thereby gaining numerous friends now at
Court ; while he was yet more widely known and esteemed
1 See supra, p. 384. that it turned often to the dishonour
2 The Life of the Eight Reverend thereof... he procured a mulct of 40s.
Father in God, Edw. Rainbow, D.D., to be imposed on every such offender;
Late Lord Bishop of Carlisle. London, and to give a good example therein
1688 [By Jonathan Bankes]. p. 56. to the Masters of Arts, the Heads of
' And not only so, but because some the Colleges (by his instigation)
who were put up to preach in the yielded to preach there in their turns.'
University Church, got for a small Ibid. pp. 56-7.
sum of money others to do it for 3 Supra, p. 546.
them, who performed it so meanly
37—2
580 THE RESTORATION.
CHAP, v. by that rapidly multiplying body of scientific thinkers, who
were shortly to find a rallying centre and means of fuller
interchange of ideas, by the founding of the ROYAL SOCIETY,
with himself as at once its secretary and its guiding spirit.
But his appointment to the mastership of Trinity, granted
by Parliament in response to the petition of the fellows, now
reverted to the Crown ; and on their again petitioning that
he might be permitted to retain that office, as one who, they
SiabieSto urged, was ' heartily honored and loved of all,' Charles found
pr wuidns himself precluded from extending to Dr Wilkins the same
Dr°Henry clemency that he had vouchsafed to Dr Love. Dr Henry
oxford* Feme, — whom we last saw taking refuge in Oxford in 1643,
from the arrest which threatened to follow upon the publica-
tion of his Resolving of Conscience at Cambridge1, — had been,
during the seventeen years that had since elapsed, still
further adding to his claims upon the gratitude of the
his second Royalist party. At Oxford he had published a second edition
edition of the J _ r. J r
Retoimng of of nis daring manifesto, to be followed by other pamphlets,
Conscience : o J
1643. put forth as rejoinders to his assailants, among them a
notable Reply to those who maintained the lawfulness of
subjects taking up arms against their sovereign in ' the pre-
tended defence of Religion and Liberty.' He had been a
frequent preacher from the pulpit of St Aldgate's, and
generally with a direct application of his discourse to the
crisis then in progress. Charles himself was at a loss as to
how he might sufficiently reward the efforts of a champion at
once so able and so fearless, — efforts which, as in the case of
Gunning, seemed very inadequately recognized by the be-
stowal of the degree of D.D. on the part of the university.
Charles i One day, among the numerous rumours which found their
promises . J °
niMterehi way in*° ™ie beleaguered city, came the report that
theTnexty at ^r Comber, master of Trinity, was dead ; and Charles, with-
out waiting for confirmation of the intelligence, forthwith
assured Dr Feme that he should be the next ruler of that
society wherein his courageous devotion to the Crown had
involved the loss of his fellowship. The report, however,
1 Supra, pp. 260-1.
THE MASTERSHIP OF TRINITY. 581
was soon known to be false ; and then it was, that, in order CHAP, v.^
to console his faithful follower, the King handed him a patent
for the mastership of Trinity College ' when it should prove
void.' From that time, Feme's devotion to his sovereign
was even yet more marked. He attended him at Carisbrooke, Feme acts
j • • i i i -i ir.il as Charles's
and is said to have been the preacher of the last sermon to chaplain at
Carisbrooke.
which the King listened prior to his removal to London for
his trial. After the fall of the monarchy, he retired into He
~\r IT.' i 11 MI -ill retires into
i orkshire, where he became still more widely known as a Yorkshire
and resumes
pamphleteer, especially distinguishing himself by the pro- his Pen-
minent share which he took in the attack evoked by the
publication of Harrington's Oceana and the theory of re-
publican government therein set forth. It was now, when At the
Comber was actually dead, and Dr Wilkins's retirement from hels0™
appointed
the mastership of Trinity was believed to be inevitable, that Master <£
Feme came forward to claim the fulfilment of the promise Charles 1L
signed by Charles's father, and that his claim was forthwith
recognized by the son. His tenure of the post which he had
so long coveted was, however, almost as brief as that of his
predecessor's, extending over only eighteen months ; but His sound
J judgement
during that time he was twice elected vice-chancellor ; and Jj^J™? is~
while, in connexion with the college, he set a praiseworthy asrivice-and
example of moderation, by obtaining the confirmation ofm^-x.
those elections to fellowships which had taken place during
the Commonwealth, in connexion with the university, he
showed a no less laudable discretion, by allowing only divines
who assented to the doctrine of the Church of England,
to preach at Great St Mary's1. His acceptance of a long-
promised piece of preferment2, the deanery of Ely, was
followed, within a twelvemonth, by his resignation of the
same, to be succeeded by Dr Martin, and himself to be con- consecration
secrated to the see of Chester, of which his tenure was yet bishopric
. * of Chester:
more brief. He appears, indeed, never to have visited his H£*e!^
episcopate, his death having taken place, exactly five weeks J«^arch
1 Rouse Ball (W. W.), Trinity ship of Trinity, promised him long
College, p. 101; D.N.B. xvm 373 before; according to Kennett( .Register,
[Art. by Miss Bradley, now Mrs p. 644) in a warrant signed by Charles
Murray Smith]. at Brussels in 1659.
2 This had been, like the master-
582 THE RESTORATION.
CHAP. v. later, in the house of his brother-in-law, Clement Nevill, in
St Paul's Churchyard. Scrupulous, to the last degree, in the
administration of every official duty which assumed the
nature of a trust, he bequeathed to Trinity College the sum
of £10, 'by way of restitution,' as he expressed it, — being
troubled, apparently, with respect to some trifling inaccuracies
in accounts of which he had the keeping when a fellow, —
' and fearing tha.t I did not discharge those petty steward-
ships (which I sometime bore there) so faithfully as I
should1.' Although a fervid controversialist, Feme is de-
scribed by contemporary writers as a man of conciliatory
and equable temper. He had, consequently, few personal
enemies, while his gentle blood and loyal service marked him
out for special honours at his death. From the precincts of
Feme's that ancient temple (itself so soon to be destroyed) beneath
funeral at • »
Abbe™inster whose shadow he passed away, they bore him across the
river to the historic Abbey; royal heralds attended at his
obsequies; and a Latin inscription on the stone which
marked the place of his interment in St Edmund's Chapel,
testified to the fidelity with which he had soothed the latter
days of his martyred monarch2. No Master of Trinity was
ever more honoured in his death.
Appointment The state of Emmanuel College, as we last saw it3, —
BANCROFT to declining both in numbers and reputation, under William
the master- °
Emmanuel- Dillingham, — was regarded with somewhat mingled feelings
so Aug. lees. kv William Sancroft, when, on his return from Rome, in
1662, he was called upon to assume the administration. His
life, since his ejection in 1651, had been spent partly at
Fressingham, his native place, and partly abroad ; but of his
genuine loyalty throughout there could be no question. On
his arrival in England, he had forthwith been appointed one
of the royal chaplains and a prebendary of Durham, and he
was also one of those who were created D.D. by royal man-
date. Personally, he appears to have been somewhat surprised
at being chosen to the mastership of his old college ; but,
of all the Cambridge foundations, Emmanuel was held by
1 Kennett, Register, p. 644. Westminster Abbey2, p. 184.
2 Mrs Murray Smith, Roll Call of 3 Siipra, p. 535.
THE MASTERSHIP OF EMMANUEL. 583
Manchester and others now in authority to stand most in CHAP, v.^
need of reform, and Bancroft to be the best qualified to carry
such reform into effect. The future archbishop of Canter-
bury, characterized by Macaulay as 'an honest and pious
though narrow-minded man1,' does not, at this juncture at
least, approve himself, to any perceptible extent, superior to
the historian's estimate. At the outset, he decided that the He holds
tll'tt tllC
first thing to be done by the society which he had been £0.lleg* ""}?*
J * ' divest itself
called upon to rule, was to ' divest itself of that former s/n^larity.'
singularity which rendered us heretofore so unhappily
remarkable2.' Such is the intimation of his general point of HIS letter to
& Ezekiel
view with which he commences a lengthy letter (still pre- ^f^gg,
served in the treasury at Emmanuel) addressed to his former
tutor, Ezekiel Wright, who, along with two other of the
senior fellows, had offered, it will be remembered, a some-
what stolid resistance to the statute de mora sociorum during
the tenure of the mastership by Bancroft's uncle3. Wright
was at this time residing at his rectory of Thurcaston in
Leicestershire, but he and his old pupil kept up a correspon-
dence and were in full sympathy with respect to the reforms
which they desired to see carried out at Emmanuel. After HIS
impressions
making the above general declaration, the newly- installed °gt'^sn.
master goes on to particularize and comment on the features
which have chiefly arrested his attention since his return,
and which appear to have materially qualified the pleasure
he might be supposed to feel on resuming residence amid
the once familiar surroundings. Everything seemed changed, everything
He knew no one ; the college itself appeared ' quite another
thing ' ; although he admits that ' in some regards the fo
change is such that I cannot but thank God for it ; there is no'kmger
being neither faction amongst us, nor disaffection to the
government of Church and State, but a general outward
conformity to what is established by law, and, I hope, true
principles of duty and obedience deep laid within4.' But
coming fresh, as he did, from visits to some of the most
1 Hist, of England (1849), i 431. 3 See supra, pp. 213-215.
2 Shuckburgh, Emmanuel College, * Shuckburgh, Emmanuel College,
p. 109. p. 109.
584
THE RESTORATION.
CHAP. V.
Sancroft
proposes to
rebuild both.
He laments
the low
standard of
attainments,
the large
influx of
' foreigners,'
and the
neglect of
Hebrew and
Greek.
gorgeous shrines of Italy, the contemplation of portions of
the fabric around him gave him absolute pain, — the tottering
chapel, as Evelyn had described it, six years before, ' meanly
erected,' and, like those of the Reformed churches abroad,
running 'north and south with rude wooden flooring and
not a surplice visible1'; the library, on the other hand, — in
defiance of the time-honoured canon handed down from
Vitruvius, — standing east and west, so that the early morn-
ing light was virtually lost, the room itself being also so
small, that Holdsworth had stipulated that another should
be built before the books he had bequeathed were sent2.
' I have it in designe,' writes Sancroft, ' to make both a new
library and chapel too.' The falling off in numbers gave
him less concern than the low standard of attainments
reached by the scholars. He had just been presiding at an
election for fellowships, and was concerned to find that he
had no other alternative, consistently with due regard to
acquirements, than to admit candidates who had received
their education elsewhere, ' so that half the society are
foreigners,' and it had consequently been necessary to obtain
the royal dispensation for disregarding certain statutable
conditions with respect to age and ' country3.' ' It would
grieve you,' he adds, 'to hear one of the public examens; the
Hebrew and Greek learning being out of fashion every-
where4, and especially in the other colleges, where we are
forced to seek our candidates for fellowships; and the
1 Evelyn-Bray, n 96 ; so also Dr
Palmer, seven years later : ' notavi
sacellum vetustate pene confectum :
tabulati tremorem, parietum rimas,
tumores, et crustas ferro constrictas :
mirum est tot annos stetisse, quod
brevi collapsurum fuisse crediderim.'
Letter, 11 Oct. 1669, preserved in
' Bennet.' See Willis and Clark, n
700-2.
2 Shuckburgh, Emmanuel, p. 112.
3 Shuckburgh, Ibid. pp. 110-111.
Sancroft appears to be here referring
either to migrants from other colleges
(whether in Cambridge or Oxford)
and possibly to those who had been
educated in schools not connected
with Emmanuel. 'Foreigner,' as
implying a different nationality, is
used by Poole when alluding to ' a
great desire in many foreign persons
to learn the English tongue, that so
they may understand our English
divines,' etc. Such persons, how-
ever, were quite outside the scheme
of the Model ; ' but,' he says, ' if it
shall please any to contribute any
sum or sums to this end and with
this desire, it shall be faithfully
employed to that purpose.' Life of
Matthew Robinson, pp. 179-180.
4 Cf. supra, p. 537, where the
neglect into which these languages
had fallen appears as one of the
defects which it was Poole 's design,
in his Model, to make good.
BANCROFT'S IDEAL. 585
rational learning they pretend to being neither the old CHAP. v.
philosophy nor steadily any one of the new1.'... 'I find not
that old genius and spirit of learning generally in the college
that made it once so deservedly famous ; nor shall I hope to
retrieve it any way sooner, than by your directions who
lived here in the most flourishing times of it2.'
His advice thus invoked, the rector of Thurcaston did \v right
not fail to seize the opportunity of expressing a hope, that ii'ope that
. the statute
nothing would be done towards bringing the statute, de mora <le Mora
Sociorum
-sociorum (which had deprived him of his fellowship)3, again 7eivi°edtbe
into operation, — a suggestion with which Bancroft expresses theh°oUyai
his full concurrence. He had himself, he says, been con- p" thTsa^e
• • • ITT ' 1 > 'S nOt
sidermg the matter, prior to the receipt of W right s letter, forthcoming.
'' The King's suspension of that statute,' he goes on to relate,
* is, for ought I can learn, lost during these last times ; you
will easily guess how. But I have recovered the first
draught of it under my Lord of Ely's own hand (whom the
King appointed to pen it), and a copy of which I found
among my uncle Dr Bancroft's papers, and have preserved
it ever since. If I cannot inquire out the original, I will, if
I live, get it to pass the seal once more4.' But just as Nothing
Charles felt little disposed to do aught that seemed to u done",
contravene his father's design, so Sancroft felt an equal dis-
inclination to reverse the policy of his uncle; and the statute
de mora sociorum, — a measure which, if carried into effect,
would probably have averted some of the gravest abuses
(whether at Emmanuel or elsewhere) with regard to college
administration at both universities during the next two
centuries, — was thus consigned to oblivion.
It is, however, sufficiently clear, from what Sancroft says inadequate
elsewhere in his letter, that the main difficulty with which thedM
• • T-I i • difficulty at
the authorities at Emmanuel had to contend at this time Emmanuel
at this time,
was the inadequacy of their resources for holding out induce-
ments to poor but promising students. He expressly asserts
1 By ' steadily ' Sancroft is perhaps their allegiance,
glancing at the opposition to the 2 Shuckburgh, Ibid. p. 111.
Cartesian philosophy which was now 3 See supra, pp. 213-214; also
springing up and causing not a few references in Index to Vol. n 677
even of those who had been its most under Statutes.
enthusiastic defenders to falter in 4 Shuckburgh, u.s. p. 112.
586
THE RESTORATION.
CHAP. V.
for which
Poole's
Model
would have
provided a
remedy.
The
University
as Sancroft
saw it.
His desire
to revert to
the former
discipline.
that, as regards the fellowships, ' the statutable allowance ' is
'so miserably scant that if the crowd [i.e. numbers] fail us,
they afford not a competent subsistence'; while the scholar-
ships ' are so many, and so few to fill them, that there is
never any competition1.' Here again, the plan set forth
in Poole's Model, whereby deserving students were to be
guaranteed an adequate maintenance throughout a seven
years' course of study, would have afforded precisely that
assistance of which Emmanuel, in consequence partly of
political changes, now stood especially in need2.
The above letter, it is to be noted, has no small value as
a confidential resume of the grounds on which, in the year
1663, so many of those who were intimately acquainted with
the former history of the university and honestly desired to
promote what they held to be its interests, hailed the reaction
which was now unmistakeably setting in with unqualified
approval. They had seen, for years past, as it seemed to
them, the bark of Faith rushing perilously on, — its pilot lost
and only strange lights gleaming from among the rocks or
on the distant shore. There had been nothing for it, but to
cast anchor and await the dawn; and then, if possible, regain
the harbour, — that is to say (to drop the metaphor), to bring
back the old studies, the obsolete text-books, the frivolous
disputations in the schools, and the Latin discourses in the
pulpit. 'Not so after the Restauration3,' is the expression
wherewith Anthony Wood more than once sums up his
description of what was most characteristic in the ordinances
and discipline of the Presbyterian or Independent regime at
Oxford; and it is applicable almost equally to Cambridge.
And to Sancroft, as he recalled those quiet days when he
himself was college lecturer on Greek and Hebrew, and able
to take counsel with his esteemed tutor and other seniors, it
seemed that the very best thing, not only for Emmanuel but
for the university at large, would be to restore, as far as
possible, the conditions that then prevailed.
1 Shuckburgh (u. s.), pp. 110, 111.
2 See also Wood (Ant.), Life and
Times, ed. Clark, i 301, n. 2.
3 See Life and Times («.*.), i 297,
301, etc.
THE RETURN TO SCHOLASTICISM. 587
The failure of the Savoy Conference in 1661, and the CHAP. v.
passing of the Act of Uniformity in the following year, im- ACT °p um-
parted additional strength to the policy of retrogression, and 19 May 166i
nowhere was its operation more sensibly felt than at the
universities. Clarendon, when entering upon office as Election of
CLARENDON
chancellor at Oxford, had dwelt with special emphasis on the chlncei-
necessity of restoring the ancient discipline. In the following oxfoX°f
year he visited Cambridge, to hear Pearson's inaugural
lecture as Lady Margaret professor ; when the lecturer, in ^su°nnces
his prefatory oration, saluted him as 'Lord Chancellor of int^Vtioli1^
this realm and most distinguished son of the other univer- returnstotne
Schoolmen,
sity1': while, in the lecture2, he proceeded to define the and
» especially
plan and method of his treatment as that of the Schoolmen,
and of Thomas Aquinas more especially, in preference to
the Master of the Sentences.
How much further this reactionary movement might ^
have extended, if it had not been held in check by counter ^
influences, may be to some extent conjectured if we turn to
note the change that supervened at the chief centres of
education in France, after Cartesianism had been denounced
and the scholastic philosophy again expounded from the
chairs of the Sorbonne and by Jesuit teachers throughout
the provinces ; while the Academy at Saumur was formally
closed and its professors expelled3. That an equally sweep-
ing reaction did not take place in the English universities
1 ' Tuque Dom. Cancellarie hujus ' Programme des Cours de PAcade-
regni, et alterius Academiae ornatis- mie ' for 1680, which he prints in
sinie Fill.' Oratio I (Inauguralis), the Appendix (pp. 153—5), is an in-
Pearson-Churton, i 399. teresting illustration of the higher
2 Lectio I. ' Lectionum Ratio et Catholic education in France in the
Methodus, quare Scholastica ' [see latter part of the 17th century, a few
Ibid, i 1, and n. (a)]. ' Cum cathe- years before the Revocation of the
dram in scholis theologicis occupave- Edict of Nantes, — a measure which
rim, in proclivi est colligere, et quod struck a like blow to the industrial
theologiam profi tear, et quod scholas- welfare of France, that the suppres-
ticam (IMd.)....Verbodicam, metho- sion of the Academic at Saumur had
dum illam quae in Summa Aquinatis dealt to the higher education of the
continetur, ut celebriorem, ut me- country: ' c'etait, par tradition,
liorem sequimur.' Ibid, i 9. Pe"tablissement favori de la noblesse
3 See the interesting account given protestante, comme La Fleche etait
by Prost of the ' Dissolution de celui de la noblesse catholique. De
P Academic, ' in the final chapter of plus, P activity intellectuelle entre-
his La Philosophic a I' Academic tenait un commerce de librairie im-
Protestante de Saumur (1907). The portant.' Ibid. p. 136.
588 THE RESTORATION.
CHAP, v. may certainly be partly attributed to the influence of the
newly founded Royal Society at Oxford, and at Cambridge
to that of a new group of thinkers (the so-called Platonists),
who, working partly in harmony with, and partly in diver-
gence from, Cartesianism, now began to exert an influence
which, for a time, threw that of all other teachers of philo-
sophy into the shade.
The ' I know not how it cometh to pass, but too many Christians have
PLATONIST^. too much of heathen talk ; and so also, in a reciprocation, some heathen
have very much of that which seemeth correspondent unto sacred
Scripture.' p. 25.
'The Teacher of the Gentiles instructeth us Christians not to
disembrace goodnesse in any, nor truth in any. Plato's rule is good, —
Ov ris, a\\a ri. Let us not so much consider who saith, as what is
said ; who doeth, as what is done. Let not the authority of the
teacher tempt thee to erre ; as Vincentius Lirinensis saith, — the
errors of the Fathers were temptations to the Church.' p. 21.
'God expressed Himself to them [the Gentiles] in the vast and
ample volume of the world.' p. 39. ' Nature's light is a subcelestiall
starre in the orb of the microcosme ; God's voice, man's usher in the
school of the world. As truths supernaturall are not contradicted by
reason, so neither surely is that contradicted by Scripture which is
dictated by right reason.' p. 1 l.
SHERMAN: The above sentiments form part of a series of discourses,
rizaTof as or ' Commonplaces,' as they were termed, delivered in Trinity
BJLUM. College chapel, at the time when Dr Comber was Master
stawta*"1" (1631-45), by John Sherman, a fellow of the society and
coiTege also bachelor of divinity. Sherman had been educated at
Chapel: circ.
1636-40. Charterhouse and the volume itself is dedicated to the
Governors of that School, at that time already becoming
widely famed, alike for the humane spirit which dictated its
foundation and the enlightened views which found expres-
sion in its teaching. The author expressly states that he
had been prevented from giving to his pages the amount of
revision that he would have liked to bestow upon them, the
Commonplaces out of which they were composed having been,
1 A Greek in the Temple: some John Sherman, Bachelour in Divi-
Commonplaces delivered in Trinity nity and Fellow of the same College.
College Chapell in Cambridge, upon Daniel, Cambridge, 1641.
Acts xvii, part of the 28 verse. By
THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS. 589
he explains, almost the first he had ' ever made1,' but the CHAP, v.
sentiment and the phraseology alike suggest that he must Ij:vi<?e^eri
have been well acquainted with Whichcote ; his references to Apa
Aristotle, as accepting the theory of the immortality of the
Soul (p. 75), and his belief in the indebtedness of ' Pytha- More.
•goras, Trismegist and Plato' 'to Scripture' (p. 30), afford
almost equally strong presumption of an intimacy with the
author of the Psychozoia Platonica ; while the title suffices
to indicate that his appeal is from the traditions of the Latin
Church to that pagan philosophy from which he, and those
with whom he was in sympathy, derived much of their
inspiration. As, however, Sherman was slightly the senior
in academic standing, it is at least open to question whether
his printed discourses may not have contributed, to a far
greater degree than is on record, to aid the movement
the origin of which has generally been attributed to Which-
cote's unprinted discourses alone. The chief incidents in
the official career of the latter, during his tenure of the
provostship of King's College, have already come under our
notice2 ; his remarkable influence as a teacher and a philo-
sopher requires to be dealt with somewhat more fully. Ac-
cording to his biographer, his discourses as lecturer at Trinity
Church were mainly designed to counteract the 'fanatic
enthusiasm and senseless canting3' then in vogue; and we
learn from Tillotson that his tenure of the lectureship wi
-1 the Socrates
extended over twenty years, — from the time that is to say ofthe
J J J movement.
when the troubled state of the Reformed Churches, was
beginning, both at home and abroad, to excite increased
attention, down to the days of the Barebones parliament.
1 'They are next unto the first civae (ed. 1676), p. 359, 'Adloannem
Common-places which I ever made. Shermannum, A. M. Coll. Trin.
Since, much time, and years have Socium, de eruditissimo suo Tractatu,
run, wherein I might have added in illud Paulinum, Act. xvii 28, ToO
much, varied somewhat, polished yap KO.I yfros fff/j^v.' Here Duport
all,' etc. Duport, who contributes introduces the name of Aratus, the
some complimentary verses, declares reputed author of Paul's quotation, —
that the author of the entire Dis- ' Quando igitur verus fuerit de nu-
course, which extends to some eighty mine testis, Cum Sole et Luna semper
quarto pages, ' Sacrum gentili de Aratus erit. '
stercore colligit aurum,| Dum vertit 2 See supra, pp. 296-8.
Graeci jugera multa Soli.' Ibid. s Salter, Preface to the Eight
See also in Duport's Musae, Subse- Letters, p. xxii.
590 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v. Whatever, consequently, the lecturer might say during that
eventful period, would naturally be listened to with more
than ordinary attention, especially when (as was the case
with Whichcote) he combined considerable social influence
with an amount of personal popularity and a reputation for
sound judgement and discernment unrivalled in the univer-
sity. Seniors and juniors alike thronged to the afternoon
sermons •
churc°ity' Inures at Trinity Church, with a regularity equal to that
which had marked their attendance in the days when
ms audience Preston's reputation was at its height ; and with a critical
a critical
one. vigilance which was probably unprecedented, — the very
fame of the preacher only serving to quicken the attention
of those whose standing and position in the university
justified, to a certain extent, their assumption of a right
to exercise a kind of censorship. As, however, Whichcote
published nothing during his lifetime, and his discourses
were delivered from hastily written and very imperfect
notes, it was difficult for critics to do more than comment
on the tone and general tenour of his preaching1; while his
amiability of temper, which led him to refer in terms of
commendation and forbearance even to those from whom
he differed widely, disarmed most of his opponents. Of
Arrowsmith, for example, whose fervid controversial spirit
has already come under our notice, we find him speaking in
language of the highest respect2. His comparative wealth,
again, would enable him to face the contingency of depriva-
tion of office with more equanimity than most ; while among
his friends and former pupils he could count on the effective
support of Worthington, Culverwel, and John Smith (the
cSdocl: Platonists), of John Wallis, the mathematician, and Samuel
d!i706. Cradock. It is to the last-named, at this time a fellow of
Fellow of
Emmanuel, Emmanuel, that we really owe the commencement of that
1 Salter, Preface to the Aphorisms either spoken or thought better of a
(ed. 1753), pp. x, xiv. man ; in respect of the sweetness of
2 '...a later acquaintance indeed, his spirit, and amiableness of his
but my friend of choice ; a com- conversation. ' Eight Letters of Dr
panion of my special delight, whom Antony Tuckney and Dr Benjamin
in my formeryears I have acquainted Whichcote, etc. Written in Septem-
with all my heart, I have told him her and October, 1651, p. 7 [see also
all my thoughts; and I have scarcely note 2 on following page].
TUCKNEY AND WHICHCOTE. 591
notable correspondence between Tuckney and Whichcote in CHAP. v.
which the germ of the new movement is distinctly to be
traced. Cradock, in his intercourse with other members of
the university, appears to have become aware that certain
seniors (Tuckney among the number) were giving expression
to opinions unfavourable to some of Whichcote's utterances1,
and he ventured, accordingly, himself, in turn, to suggest He accuses
' . . J , i Whichcote's
that these would-be critics were not dealing altogether critics of a
1 want of frank
'ingenuously' with the eminent divine whom they were thus dealins-
singling out -for censure2. As Whichcote, at this time, was
not only provost of King's but also vice-chancellor, there
were few, probably, who felt themselves at once willing and
entitled to lead the attack ; but eventually, Tuckney, who Tuckney
determines
still held the mastership of Emmanuel and had formerly to broach. *«
J matter with
been Whichcote's college tutor, determined that he would ^'a'p^vite
write on the subject to his quondam pupil, — being induced letter'
to take up his pen, according to his own account, by ' that
ancient and still continued love and respect I bear you,'
although he, at the same time, admits that he has ' seldom
heard him preach, without also hearing something that hath
very much grieved me.' Certain ambiguous expressions,
such as ' divinest reason,' ' of more than mathematical
demonstration,' had alone sufficed to disquiet him; but
it was one particular discourse, delivered on 'Sunday, 7th
September, 1651,' that decided him to write to the preacher,
1 '...I understood that Mr Cradock were written between the months of
was pleased not long since to say August and December, 1651, during
(he knows, to whom) that some of which time Whichcote was himself
us deal disingenuously with you: vice-chancellor; but they were not
as speaking against some of your given to the public until more than
tenents, without dealing with you a century afterwards, when Samuel
in private,' etc. Tuckney to Which- Salter, master of the Charterhouse
cote, Ibid. p. 1. Cradock was elder and a friend of Bentley, printed
brother of Zachary Cradock, provost them, along with the Aphorisms,
of Eton; and probably related to from a transcript made under the
Matthew Cradock, whose widow superintendence of his grandfather,
Whichcote afterwards married. See archdeacon Jeffery of Norwich,
D. N. B. xn 436-8. whose daughter Salter's father had
2 Ibid. p. 1. A careful abstract, married. As literature, the Letters
with copious quotations, of this con- were consequently unknown to the
troversy has been given by Tulloch university during the seventeenth
in his Rational Theology in England century. See Preface to second edi-
in the Seventeenth Century (ed. 1872, tion of the Aphorisms, London, 1753.
vol. n 59-81). The Eight Letters
592
THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP. V.
He demurs
to Which-
cote's theory
that the
definition of
doctrine
should be
in Scripture
language
solely.
Whichcote
replies that
the student
who searches
the Scrip-
tures in a
prayerful
humble
spirit is
entitled to
state the
conclusions
at which he
arrives.
Tuckney
replies that
if this be
done publicly
it may give
' offence.'
Sept. 15.
which he did on the ensuing day1. Whichcote, as Tuckney
understood, had then and there ventured to affirm, ' that all
those things wherein good men differ, may not be deter-
mined from Scripture,' inasmuch as Scripture itself ' in some
places seems to be for the one part and in some other places
for the other.' 'This,' says his critic, 'I take to be unsafe
and unsound ' ; while he holds it as yet ' more dangerous ' to
advise, as Whichcote had done, that Christians, — in seeking a
common ground of agreement, — should be willing to restrict
the expression of orthodox belief, solely to ' Scripture words
and expressions/ and ' not press other forms of words, which
are from fallible men.' ' Christ by his blood,' says the writer,
' never intended to purchase such a peace, in which the most
Orthodox, with Papists, Arians, Socinians, and all the worst
of haeretiques, must be all put into a bag together2.' To
this, Whichcote's rejoinder (had he thereupon expressed his
whole mind) would doubtless have been, that, as he him-
self lays it down in his Aphorisms, ' Determinations beyond
Scripture, have indeed enlarged faith, but lessened charity
and multiplied divisions3.' For the present, however, he
contented himself with simply affirming, 'that an ingenuous-
spirited Christian, — after application to God, and diligent
use of means to finde out truth, — might fairely propose,
without offense taken, what upon search he findes cause to
believe, and whereon he will venture his own soule4.' Tuck-
ney replies, that it is of material difference whether this be
done 'onely in private, or alsoe in publique5.' Whereupon
1 Eight Letters, pp. 2-5. '...altho'
your Speech and Answers the last
Commencement were, in the judge-
ment of abler men than myself,
against my Commencement Position
the former year, and your first yester-
day advice directly against my Com-
mencement Sermon; and what you
delivered yesterday about Reconci-
liation, flatly against what I have
preached for you in Trinity pulpit';
etc. Ibid. pp. 4-5.
2 Ibid. pp. 2-3.
3 Campagnac, p. 71. The sting
of this Aphorism consisted in its
application, as expressed in another :
'The world will never be released
from the superstitions of the Eoman
Church, till men confine themselves,
in matters of Religion, to free Reason
and plain Scripture.' Aphorisms
(1753), Cent, xi 1086.
4 Eight Letters, u. s. p. 13.
6 'The truth,' he says, 'may be
so fundamentall, and so established,
both by God, in his worde and by
Christian magistrates, in their con-
stitutions and lawes, that the con-
trarie will verie hardly be so fairlie
proposed, as not to fall foule and
with offense both on the weake, to
their staggering, and the strong, to
their greefe.' Ibid. p. 29.
TUCKNEY AND WHICHCOTE. 593
Whichcote (in a lengthy second letter occupying twenty- CHAP. v.
four pages) reasserted his position in the following pregnant winchcote
terms : ' Truth is truth, whosoever hath spoken it, or howsoever comesUtothe
it hath been abused : but if this libertie may not bee allowed ^evr toty in
to the university, wherfore do wee study ? Wee have no- what Is the
thing to do, but to gett good memories, and to learn by
heart1.' It was an utterance which may fairly be described Tins maxim
becomes the
as the key-note of nearly all that was said or written by the £ft'j£ote
Platonist party, from the provost of King's himself down to £'£0°"^'
Rust and Glanvil ; but, in writing thus plainly, Whichcote, in
the opinion of Tuckney, had only aggravated his offence,
and, besides his sermons at St Mary's and at Trinity Church,
there was also his Commencement Oration, delivered only a Exceptions
. ' <l taken by
few weeks before in his capacity as vice-chancellor. Tuckney wMc.Se°s
himself, as vice-chancellor in the year 1650, had also delivered SUS"*"**"
his Commencement Oration, and he now thought to discern °'
in his former pupil's discourse a distinct rejoinder to his own
highly wrought Calvinistic conceptions2. Nor was this mere
imagination on his part, he adds, but the opinion of men
abler than himself; and his concern was greater than he
could express, to hear, on the one hand, the human reason,
' the recta ratio' extolled as indispensable to a genuinely
ennobling and vivifying conception of the Truth, while
Scripture, on the other hand, like some ancient oracle of
Paganism, was represented as embodying utterances which
were not merely difficult of interpretation but sometimes
contradictory of each other !
Their final letters, each occupying less than two pages, Their final
while retracting nothing that either writer had before ad-
vanced, alike give expression to sentiments of mutual esteem.
Tuckney, however, pleads that his ' spare time is short and
1 Eight Letters, p. 57. So also in 2 'But I pray, Sir, look over the notes
hissermon, ' I say, if so be a man doth of one of your late sermons in St Marie's
not admit what he receives, with (I do not remember the text) : and
satisfaction to the reason of his towards the latter end of it, if I do not
mind, he doth not receive it as an much forgett, you did, with some con-
intelligent agent, but he receives it fidence, assert the last resolution in
as a vessel receives water ; he is rationem rei, as the like was asserted
continem rather than recipient.* The in the dispute at theCommencement.'
Work of Reason, Campagnac, p. 53. Third Letter (8th Oct. 1651), p. 68.
M. in. 38
594 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v. little ' and defers his reply for the present, but expresses a
hope that it will not be long before he is able to ' putt down
in writing some kind of reply to what in your papers ' [mean-
ing Whichcote's previous letters] ' I am not satisfied in, that,
although I willingly forbear your trouble, yett at least, when
I am dead, some, that shall light on my papers, may see
that it was not because I had nothing to say, that I now say
nothing1.' Whichcote, on the other hand, — whose equable
animadverts
of Christum nature was probably just at this time roused to unwonted
shevmby the indignation, as he marked the unsparing severity with which
party' el m the Engagement was now being pressed home throughout
Oct. 1651. . . . .
the university, — had already, in his previous letter, spoken
out his mind, and, unable to refrain from sarcasm, had
denounced the ' croud of menne,' — the graceless bigots
among whom they both lived, — as those ' who indeede pro-
fesse some zeal for that happie point, of "Justification by
Faith," yet are sensiblie degenerated into the devilish nature
His final of malice, spight, furie, en vie, revenge2.' He was, however,
reply to .
Tuckney in already weary of the strife ; and in his brief fourth letter, —
deteermhisa^is written in the after-part of the day on which he had laid
ty"he h°ld down his office of vice-chancellor, — he contents himself with
3™ov.'i65i. simply deprecating Tuckney 's implied reproaches, while he
concludes by saying, ' Sir, wherein I fall short of your expec-
tation, I fail for truth's sake, whereto alone I acknowledge
myself addicted3.'
While these letters may be regarded as decisive evidence
of the incompatibility of the Platonists' point of view with
that of the Presbyterians, it is to be remembered that they
were seen by few, and remained altogether unknown to the
1 Eight Letters, p. 131. language which is certainly rare in
2 Ibid. p. 126. The facts relating what survives of his writings. It
to the enforcement of the Engage- was in a calmer mood that he wrote,
ment shew that the sweeping changes ' a man hath his religion to little
thereby involved at King's College purpose, if he doth not mend his
were of quite recent occurrence at the nature and refine his spirit by it.'
time when Whichcote thus wrote Aphorisms, Cent, m no. 247.
(see supra, pp. 378-380), and the 3 Ibid. p. 134. 'Nullius addictus
sudden removal of the majority of jurare in verba magistri,' Whichcote
the younger fellows, in whose wel- had deserted his former tutor to take
fare he took a deep interest, may service under the banner of 'Truth.'
naturally have impelled him to use
WHICHCOTE. 595
majority of those members of the university who were in CHAP, v.
residence at the Restoration ; but from the very commence-
ment of that great reaction the Provost and his disciples
were seen to be unmistakably at issue with the Anglican
party. A late distinguished scholar, in an able criticism of whichcote-s
conception
Whichcote, has noted it as a marked defect in his teaching, oflhe8™**1
that he had but ' an imperfect conception of the corporate Sud^d by
character of the Church, and of the divine life of the Chris- W
tian society.' Whichcote, he adds, ' had little or no sense of
the historic growth of the Church'; and he pronounces 'his
teaching on the Sacraments' 'vague and infrequent1.' The
word ' Church ' is, unquestionably, of rare occurrence in
either the Sermons or the Aphorisms, but the views of their ms views on
-1 the subject
author on the subject of a State Church are sufficiently jj.1^^*
indicated in some of his most weighty dicta, of which the APhorismt-
following may serve as examples : ' There is but One Church
[one Religion] in all ages. It is thought, the World does
not grow old ; it is certain, the Church does not2.' ' The
world will never be released from the superstitions of the
Roman Church, till men confine themselves, in matters of
Religion, to free Reason and plain Scripture3.' ' The sense
of the Church is not a rule, but a thing ruled. The Church
is bound unto Reason and Scripture, and governed by them,
as much as any particular person4.' ' Religion is not a system
of Doctrines, an observance of Modes, a heat of Affections, a
form of Words, a spirit of Censoriousness5.' ' If this be not
admitted, — "that difference of opinion, in some matters
about Religion, should not make difference in Affection,"
— we shall all be the worse for our Religion6.' ' Nothing
spoils human Nature more than false Zeal. The Good nature
of an Heathen is more God-like than the furious Zeal of a
The
Christian7.' ' We must not put Truth into the place of a attainment
Means, but into the place of an End8.' ultimate
That Whichcote's ' defects ' are to any extent attri-
1 Westcott, in Masters in English * Ibid. Cent, x no. 921.
Theology (1877), p. 170. s Ibid. Cent. xnno. 1127.
2 Moral and Religious Aphorisms, 8 Ibid. Cent, x no. 984.
Cent, xn no. 1107. 7 Ibid. Cent, n no. 114.
3 Ibid. Cent, xi no. 1086. 8 Ibid. Cent, vra no. 795.
38—2
596
THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP. v.
Whichcote's
claims to be
reckoned a
leader of
his party
considered.
HENKT
MOKE:
6. 1614.
d. 1687.
butable, as Westcott suggests, to his familiarity with the
' abstractions of Plotinus,' may be questioned. And in fact,
notwithstanding the statement of bishop Burnet1, there
appears to be little to shew that his knowledge of either
Plato or Plotinus, at the time when he was tutor of
Emmanuel, was sufficiently profound to render it probable
that he would himself be inclined to urge upon others the
study of those authors ; while we have to bear in mind his
own disclaimer of ever having been a hard student2; and
although he had said enough, both in his letters and in the
pulpit, to indicate the high value he attached to evidence
derived from a prae-Christian past, his claims to rank as the
founder of a school or the leader of a party in the university
would hardly have survived, any more than those of his
predecessor Collins, — of whom he often reminds us both in
the character of his genius and his personal influence, — had
not his efforts been seconded, his learning surpassed, and
the range of his intellectual survey greatly transcended by
Henry More.
If Whichcote succeeded in evading the obligation to sign
the Covenant, More (as has been already noted)3 was less
fortunate ; but his aversion from the spiritual bondage which
that test involved was equally intense. The second son of a
gentleman of fair estate at Grantham, the whole genius of
the lad ran counter alike to parental admonitions and to the
bias which his early education was designed to impart4. He
tells us, however, that his father, rigid Calvinist though he
1 'He set young students much
on reading the ancient philosophers :
chiefly Plato, Tully and Plotin.'
Hist, of my own Time, 1 186-7 ; (ed.
Airy) i 331.
2 See supra, p. 532. Tuckney,
in his second letter, had besought
Whichcote not to ' runne-out in
schoole-notions,' and had referred to
an impression entertained by ' some,'
' that your great authors, you steere
your course by, are Dr FIELD, Dr
JACKSON, Dr HAMMOND, — all three
very learned men, the middle suffi-
ciently obscure, and both hee and
the last too corrupt. ' Eight Letters,
p. 38. This proved to be mere con-
jecture on Tuckney's part, and had
no foundation in fact.
3 Supra, p. 303, n. 1 ; that he had
signed the Engagement appears to
be beyond doubt ; see Peile, Christ's
College, p. 171 ; Carey, Memorials of
the Civil War, n 244.
4 'being bred up, to the almost
14th year of my age, under Parents
and a Master that were great Calvi-
nists, but withal very pious and
good ones.' The Dr's Little Nar-
rative of himself, in Life by Ward,
p. 5.
HENRY MORE. 597
was, would often in winter evenings read aloud Spenser's VCHAP. \.
Faerie Queene to his elder brother and himself, while in his HI»
education at
conversations with them, he frequently ' commended philo- ^t°f g,^"1
sophy and learning,' little deeming, we may feel assured,
how poetry and commendation alike were destined to fire
the imagination and decide the subsequent career of one of
his auditors1. At the age of fourteen, Henry was sent
to Eton, ' for the perfecting of the Greek and Latin
tongue,' and there, according to his biographer, his master
would ' at times be in admiration at his exercises,' an ex- Excellence of
his school
pression which can only be interpreted as implying, in exercises,
relation to the Eton of the seventeenth century, a special
facility in Latin verse composition2, varied occasionally by
translation from Latin authors, which may account for that
mastery of the language of which More's writings subse-
quently gave evidence. According to his own narrative, His early
J ° & ' religious
however, he was, even at this early age, ' of an anxious and misgivings,
ibfcbughtful genius,' — often murmuring to himself, as he
strolled in the playground, the plaintive lines of Claudian3,
and at times depressed as he pondered over the dark doctrine
of predestination4. From Eton he went up to Cambridge, HU
f . admission
where, in his seventeenth year, he was admitted a pensioner conlge**'8
of Christ's College. This was in December 1631, and as it 163L
was not until the following July that Milton, having pro-
ceeded M.A., finally ' went down,' the newcomer can hardly
have failed, during the brief period of their joint residence,
to have heard a good deal about him, as one of the most
notable students of the society, and distinguished as the
writer of some exceptionally clever occasional verses. There
is, however, no evidence that the two became acquainted.
1 The brother was an elder brother in London. See Foster Watson,
named Alexander, who afterwards English Grammar Schools, 479-480;
married and became a spendthrift, D. N. B. xxvn 299.
dying before his father. Documents 3 Saepe mihi dubiam traxit sen-
preserved in Consistory Court, Lin- tentia mentem \ Curarent Superi
coin. terras, an nullus inesset \ Rector, et
2 Latin verse composition was at incerto fiuerent mortalia casu. Clau-
this time receiving new stimulus dian, in Rufinum, i 1-3.
from the writings of Charles Hoole 4 Life by Ward, p. 22; see also
(of Lincoln College, Oxford) and Ibid. pp. 4-6; Dicine Dialogues
also from his ability as a teacher (1668), i 478-9.
598 - THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v. Otherwise, it seems difficult to suppose that, with so much
in common, — their skill in Latin, their love of philosophy
and admiration of Plato, and their poetic feeling — ' the lady '
of Christ's would not have recognized in the young freshman,
who was afterwards to be known as its 'Angel/ a genius
kindred to his own. In college, More had for his tutor ' a
person,' whom he describes as not only ' learned and pious,'
but also, to his great relief, ' not at all a Calvinist,' and who
evinced, moreover, an intelligent interest in his pupil's
His studious progress. The pupil, he soon discovered, required rather to
and subs™6 ^6 restrained than urged on ; for More, at this time, was
quentiy. possessed by an almost consuming passion for knowledge,
and especially, to quote his own words, a knowledge of ' that
which was natural,' and, above all others, that which was
held ' to dive into the deepest causes of things,' pronounced
by Aristotle 'the first or highest philosophy or wisdom1/
The tutor, — somewhat concerned, it would seem, at seeing a
young man of fortune thus carried away by a passion so rare
at that early age, — could not forbear from expressing his
surprise, but was unable to elicit any more definite explana-
tion than was contained in the reply, ' That I may know' —
'for even at that time/ continues More, 'the knowledge of
natural and divine things seemed to me the highest pleasure
His father's and felicity imaginable2/ His father, on the other hand,
concern at J °
cou^ onty regard this unaccountable devotion to study as
almost an absurdity; and even deemed it expedient to point
out to him that the acquisition of so much knowledge would
certainly prove prejudicial to that legitimate and reputable
acquirement of wealth so desirable for the country gentleman,
while the mere possession of such exceptional attainments
might even seem an impertinence to those who would, other-
wise, be most likely to be helpful to him in his advancement
in life3. These remonstrances, however, proved of little
1 Praefatio Generalissimo, to Opera your after-advertisements, how con-
Omnia (ed. 1679), i vi. temptible learning would prove with-
2 Life by Ward, pp. 9-10. out riches, and what a piece of un-
3 ' Your early encomiums of mannerlinesse and incivility it would
learning and philosophy did so fire be held to seem wiser then them that
my credulous youth with the desire are more wealthy and powerfull, could
of the knowledge of things, that never yet restrain my mind from her
HENRY MORE. 599
avail ; and a few years later, Henry More published at the CHAP. v.
University Press his Philosophicall Poems1, with an Epistle The son,
dedicatory, addressed to his ' dear Father,' wherein he directly Dedication
J J of liis Philo-
attributes the appearance of the volume to the paternal 'p^^^n
influence. But as it was in these poems that the Mthor*a«nii
first gave definite intimation of his erratic opinions, while a impressioM
,. T 1-1 of his youth
quotation from Lucretius on the title-page plainly indicated underthe
his consciousness of their novelty, it can hardly be doubted roof-
that the father's first impressions, as he glanced through the
volume, must have been those of surprise and deep concern.
Who, however, it might be asked, was responsible ? The
poems themselves were composed in that very same familiar
Spenserian stanza, which, as it fell on the ears of the listen-
ing lads on those well-remembered wintry evenings, beside
the crackling log-fire on the hearth at Grantham, had so
often moved them to wonder and enthusiasm, while the
entire volume was manifestly the result of laying to heart,
only too faithfully, those paternal precepts enforcing the
advantages of learning. Alexander More himself could
hardly deny the truth of these reminiscences, which his son
adroitly recalls in the Epistle above referred to : nor can it He further
pays a high
be doubted that he was touched by the filial tribute at the *r.i'),u*e. *°
•» his father's
same time paid to his own virtues as a leading inhabitant $
of Grantham, — 'your faithfulness, uprightnesse, sedulity for
the publick welfare of the place, your generous opennesse and
veracity2.' As for himself, the author goes on to aver that,
first pursuit. ' Epistle to his Father , 2 The Documents preserved at
prefixed to Philosophicall Poems. Lincoln (above refeiTed to), which
More here refers, perhaps sarcas- were incorporated with the father's
tically, to a theory of education, will and admitted to probate, shew
frequently to be met with long after that the father-in-law of Alexander
the time at which he wrote, accord- More junior, had impeached the
ing to which the young were to be honesty of the father, in relation to
taught only what was appropriate to a certain estate property, and Alex-
their actual condition and prospects ander More senior consequently
in life. deemed it necessary to append to his
1 Philosophicall Poems, by Henry last will (which was proved at Gran-
More : Master of Arts and Fellow of tham 23rd April 1649) a formal vin-
Christ'g College in Cambridge. 'Avia dication of his own character. This
Pieridum peragro loca, nullius ante | fact serves to explain why, in 1647,
Trita solo, juvat integros accedere Henry availed himself of the publi-
fontes. Lucr.' Cambridge, printed cation of his Poems as an opportunity
by Roger Daniel Printer to the Uni- for bearing testimony to his father's
versity, 1647. good name.
600 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP. v. ' let this bookish disease make me as much poor as it will, it
shall never make me the lesse just. Nor will you, I hope,
esteem me the lesse dutyfull, that without your cognescence
I become thus thankfull1,' — an admission, apparently, that
the volume had gone through the press without the father
More's SONO having any knowledge of his son's intentions. It must have
son. been, accordingly, with very mingled feelings that Alexander
More opened and perused the volume forwarded to him from
Cambridge, in which, while the author, in his Dedication,
frankly confesses himself 'not much solicitous, how every
particle of these Poems may please you/ he. in the opening
stanzas, like some ancient champion, on the eve of battle,
defiantly proclaims, that
He now ' . . .if what's consonant to Plato's school
himself the (Which well agrees with learned Pythagore,
Plato and Egyptian Trismegist, and th' antique roll
restorers^ Of Chaldee wisdome, all which time hath tore
SaditioL of But Plato and deep Plotin do restore)
philosophy. Which is my scope, I sing out lustily:
If any twitten me for such strange lore,
And me, all blamelesse, brand with infamy,
God purge that man from fault of foul malignity2.'
If, however, as Ward would lead us to suppose, the father's
rigid Calvinism was by this time to some extent relaxing,
the p^™eares we mav weH believe that, although the fate of Galileo was
Ga^ieVu) stiH a warning to the scientific world, the assertion that the
wheoGsoaught Ptolemaic theory was, none the less, destined ultimately to
give place to the Copernican, would probably commend itself
to his approval ; and he would read, not without admiration,
the vigorous lines in which the author, after apostrophizing
those
' Blest souls first authours of Astronomie !
Who clomb the heavens with your high reaching mind,
Scaled the high battlements of the lofty skie,
To whom compar'd this earth a point you find3,'
subsequently proceeds to compare their assailants to those
1 Epistle (u.s.). 2 ibid. p. 2.
3 Philosophicall Poems, p. 155.
HENRY MORE. 601
fabled ' ancient Giants,' who, piling Pelion upon Ossa, CHAP, v.
themselves, in turn, strove, 'with raging wind,' 'to clamber
up to heaven.'
'But all in vain, they want the inward skill. Patient
What comes from heaven only can there ascend. toi?''ursued
Not rage nor tempest that this bulk doth fill in sub-
r servience to
Can profit aught ; but gently to attend reason the
• only right
The soul's still working, patiently to bend method of
. ... , . . attaining to
Our mind to sifting reason, and clear light celestial
That strangely figured in our soul doth wend
Shifting its forms, still playing in our sight,
Till something it present that we shall take for right1.'
Nor woulcl Alexander More have been disposed to gainsay
the truth of the following rebuke to the persecutors of
Galileo : —
'0 you stiff-standers for ag'd Ptolemee, The
T / ... .11 Ptolemists
1 heartily praise your humble reverence refuse to
H.,,. , . . ,. ... recognize
willingly given to Antiqmtie ; the truth
But when of him* in whom's your confidence, because it is
Or your own reason and experience vritifthe"06
In those same arts, you find those things are true ™n\«dfrom
That utterly oppugne our outward sense, the senses.
Then are you forc'd to sense to bid adieu,
Not what your sense gainsayes to holden straight untrue2.'
Calvinism itself had had its martyrs, and even Alexander
More could not deny that the suffrages of his party were, by
this time, mainly on the side of Galileo.
It is evident, however, that his son was, at this juncture, The author
' •> himself at
passing through an experience such as is not unfrequently "^n™6
to be observed in the developement of genius, when the crk?£uhstage
youthful imagination, under the influence of an ardent intellectual
desire to penetrate the mysteries that encompass human ment
existence, seeks to fathom the abyss of Finality, and to
analyse those spectral conceptions, the Infinitudes and the
1 Philosophicall Poems, pp. 155-6. Guide ; a natural voice, we cannot
Lines singularly descriptive, it may but hear.... They therefore are
be presumed, of his own mental pro- greatly mistaken, who in Religion
cesses ; see Preface (p. 1) to his oppose points of Reason and matters
Grand Mystery of Godliness (1660) ; of Faith ; as if Nature went one
also Ward, Life, pp. 151-5. way, and the Author of Nature went
1 Ibid. So Whichcote, — 'Where another.' Aphorisms, Cent. rxnos. 877,
Reason speaks, it is the voice of our 878.
602 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP. v.^ Immensities, — whether of Space, Time, or Being. But such
conceptions, whether in connexion with the natural or with
the supernatural world, with which they are equally inter-
woven, must ever defy the powers of the finite being to
comprehend or grasp them ; and the mere effort to do so has
been described, by a wise thinker, as giving rise to a kind
of disease, to which pensive youth in its progress towards
maturity is especially liable1. It was, however, in connexion
with the external world and the problems which Nature
herself places before her children, that Henry More, although
now past thirty, found his genius most deeply stirred, and
stood mentally harassed, overawed, and, at times, even
: appalled. The design of this remarkable Song of the Soul,
had, accordingly, for its object, not merely to set forth, once
more, the riddle of the Universe, but even to propound at
least a partial solution of some of its mysteries. Nor is this
endeavour to be contemptuously dismissed as mere rhapsody
and pure imagination. In marked contrast to more than
one of the tall folios in which the author afterwards preferred
to enshrine his disquisitions, this small octavo of 436 pages
certainly does not, at first sight, suggest the amount of
intellectual effort really involved in its production; while,
although the author himself afterwards affected to speak
slightingly of his toil2, the admiration it evoked among his
contemporaries is unquestionable.
The Song is in five Books; each being prefaced by an
' Address to the Reader,' wherein the author discusses, in
plainer prose, that phase of his subject with which the Book
itself is especially concerned, and thus successively treats,
though very briefly, of those several problems which suggest
themselves in connexion with the theory of the Soul's in-
dependent existence, — its Life, Immortality, Sleep, Unity3,
1 'Our young people are diseased was then hurried in (dispatching
* with the theological problems of them [the Poems] in fewer moneths
original sin, origin of evil, predesti- then some cold-pated Gentlemen
nation and the like.' Emerson, have conceited me to have spent
Essay on Spiritual Laws, Essays years about them)' etc. To the
(1883), p. 107. Reader, Upon this second Edition,
2 'For I must confesse such was sig. B.
the present haste and heat that I 3 The 'Unity' as maintained by
HENRY MORE. 603
and (in opposition to the theory of the fabled Lethe) its CHAP. v.
Memory after Death, — the last-named tenet being thus con-
cisely summed up at the commencement of its discussion : —
' The life that here most strongly kindled was More rejects
(Sith she awakes in death) must needs betray theo^tbat
The soul to what nearest affinity has existence
With her own self; and likenesses do sway oblivion M
The mind to think of what ever did play prl^ntwl
In her own self with a like shape or form ;
And contraries do help the memory :
So if the soul be left in case forlorn,
Remembrance of past joy makes her more deeply mourn1.'
We have no evidence that More had any acquaintance
with Italian literature, from which, indeed, his Calvinistic
training was entirely averse, but the similarity of the idea
embodied in the above stanza to that more concisely ex- Resemblance
• to Dante and
pressed in Dante's familiar verse2, is worthy of note; while toMilton-
the lines may also serve to suggest that Milton, although
unacquainted with the author during the brief period of
their common residence at Christ's, may have been among
the readers of the Song of the Soul, when, some twenty years
later, he described it as the employment of certain doomed
spirits in purgatory, to be for ever engaged in
' high reasonings
Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute,
And find no end, in wandering mazes lost3.'
Happily, however, the conditions under which Henry More
pursued his studious career and propounded his philosophical
Plotinus in his discussion of the 1 Poems, p. 292. • And by the same
question, apa yap w's air6 /uas, 17 pia reason, Platonists, Aristoteleans,
at ira.ffa.1 ; see Enneads iv ix; Diibner, Stoicks, Epicureans, and whatever
p. 296. 'This,' says More, in his sects and humors are on the Earth,
discussion of the latter alternative, may in likelihood be met with there
' is that which both Plotinus and I [i.e. in the other world] so far as
endeavour to destroy, which is of that estate will permit ; though they
great moment : for, if one onely soul cannot doubt of all things we doubt
act in every body, whatever we are of here.' Immortality of the Soul,
now, surely, this body laid in the iii c. 9, Philosophical Writings
dust, we shall be nothing.' To the (1662), p. 180.
Reader, prefixed to the Antipsycho- 2 Inferno, v 121-3.
pannychia, in Poems, u.s. 3 Paradise Lost, n 558-561.
604 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v. theories differed materially from those that surrounded and
ultimately silenced Galileo. Nor was he. again, the strug-
_ •
S^S' impecunious scholar, with whom it was almost an
imperative necessity that he should commend himself to the
the pressure good opinion of those who were likely to aid him, — his
of poverty. .....
position, in this respect, presenting an equally marked
contrast to that of the ill-fated John Hall of St John's,
whom he had himself sought to befriend in his struggling
career1. Already in possession of a competence, and soon
afterwards of a fortune, he was not only the exemplary
student, whose special studies were those with which certain
of the authorities of his college were most in sympathy, but
also the genial, accomplished, and well-connected fellow,
whose charms of manner and of person, combined with a
conscientious discharge of the duties entrusted to him.
His seem to have won the loving favour of all. His pupils, —
popularity
as a Tutor, among whom, his biographer tells us, were 'several persons of
great quality,' — much admired 'the excellent lectures he
would deliver to them of Piety and Instruction, from the
His punctual chapter that was read on nights in his chamber2'; his seniors
attendance *
!ndrothers recognized the value of the example he set, by his regular
exemsTs. attendance at chapel and at ' the publick ordinances ' of the
His. Church3: while the persistent refusals with which he put
persistent -1
offer?of°f aside all offers of preferment disarmed the criticism of those
preferment. WJJQ mjgn^ otherwise have been his rivals in the unceasing
pursuit of pelf or place in the wider world without4. In
that retired and solitary life into which he ultimately sub-
sided, More exhibited an amount both of good sense and
oUse^-anw fervid enthusiasm not often found in conjunction. He fully
understood 'the benefit of exercise and the fresh air,' and
paid particular attention to his diet, with regard to which
his views were certainly peculiar5; while he was well aware
that human nature, after more than ordinary effort, demands
1 See supra, p. 350. Imagination,' in his Discourse of
2 Ward (Ri.), Life, pp. 191-192. Imagination, sect. viii. Philosophical
3 Ibid. pp. 104-5. Writings, p. 6; also his explanation
4 Ibid. pp. 58-61. of 'What is meant by Temperance,"
5 See a singular chapter, «The in his Discourse of Enthusiasm, Ibid.
power of Meats to change the p. 37.
HENRY MORE. 605
a period of repose. On the other hand, his habits cannot CHAP, v.^
justly be termed ascetic in the monastic sense of the word,
as involving self- mortification. He drank the college small
beer with relish, and occasionally wine ; and, inasmuch as a
fish diet did not suit his constitution, he often, during Lent,
dined in his own chamber1. In such matters, indeed, he
appears to have imitated Plotinus, whom he took for his
exemplar in many other respects; and Plotinus, as Zeller
has pointed out2, set no value on the ascetic life per se, but
only according as it served to liberate the mind from the
temptations of the flesh ; while so far was that philosopher HIS
• f • • TIT admiration
from inculcating contempt for the beautiful in Nature, that, °fthe., ,
* f ' beautiful in
like Plato, he discerned in it ' the shimmering of the Divine Nature-
ideas3.' In that ' holy Art of Life,' which, as his biographer
tells us, he planned out for himself, More's attitude towards
the charms and loveliness of the external world was, accord-
ingly, altogether different from that of Calvinistic divines,
and constitutes almost as noteworthy a point of divergence
from their teaching in connexion with the life that is, as did
his rejection of the theory of predestination, with regard
to the world to come. Although, therefore, Ward sums up
his impression of the manner in which the recluse of Christ's
College passed his time, as ' one continuous course of retire-
ment and contemplation,' More himself could describe his
days as spent in subservience to one dominating aim, that of
' Resolving for to teach all willing men The aim of
T .- , j ., , his studies
Life s mystery, and quite to chase away as described
Mind-mudding mist sprung from low fulsome fen4.'
But this same mystery of Life, like that of Godliness,
fully revealed itself, as he held, only to the devout spirit
thus isolated from the ordinary avocations of men ; and, by
degrees, those around him began, to a certain extent, to
understand and accept his theory of his own employment5.
1 Ward, pp. 94-5. 4 Philosophical Poems, p. 102.
2 Phil. d. Griechen, n* iii 522. 5 'He was sensible that he should
3 Ofn-w fjLiv 817 TO Kci\bv ffuna be, as it were, alone; perceiving the
ylyvercu \6yov airb deuiv £\06t>ros bent and genius of the world another
Koivuvlq.. Enneads i bk. vi; Diibner, way, and that it was not likely to
p. 31 ; Muller, p. 46. come over, on the sudden, to such
606
THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v.
His visits
admiration
responden'ce
Descartes,
philosophy
was perhaps
John
B.A. 1621.
S.T.B. 1636.
More's first
letter to
Descartes :
7 Dec. 1648.
Extrava-
Faudation
in same.
He became known as the 'Angel of Christ's'; and, as the
story is told, Alexander More (it is the last we hear of him),
on one day mounting the staircase to his son's college rooms
and finding him with his books about him, could not repress
his emotion. ' Better thus,' the visitor doubtless thought,
as he recalled how this son, amid all his wayward fancies,
had lived to throw his aegis over a father's good name1 and to
achieve a reputation for himself — 'better thus' than, like
his elder brother, to pass away prematurely from life, bank-
rupt alike in fortune and in character ! ' Better thus,' — and
with his former chidings exchanged for blessings, Alexander
More returned home to Grantham2.
The monotony of such an existence, passed within the
precincts of a college, was to some extent relieved by
occasional visits to Ragley, the seat of the Conways in
Warwickshire (which also served to reinvigorate an overtaxed
brain), or was varied by correspondence with other philoso-
phers, and especially with Descartes. It is, however, the
opinion of Dr Peile, that Cartesianism was first introduced
into Cambridge by one of the senior fellows of Christ's, —
John Allsopp, rector of Fordham, who had made the ac-
quaintance of Descartes when abroad in the earlier years of
the century3. If such were the case, the fact may partly
account for the extreme cordiality and unqualified eulogy
which characterize More's first letter to the great French-
man4,— a composition in which the overweening confidence
of the writer in his own ability to pronounce judgement on
the merits of the new philosophy, tends somewhat to lower
our estimate both of his discretion and his modesty, and
a new and surprising scene of things.'
Ward, p. 72.
1 See supra, p. 599, n. 2.
2 Ward, p. 60.
3 Crossley, without -citing any
authority, makes a like claim for
John Smith of Queens'.
4 'Liberedicamquodsentio:omnes
quotquot exstiterunt, aut etiamnum
existunt, arcanorum naturae antis-
tites, si ad magnificum tuam indolem
comparentur, Pumilos plane videri
ac Pygmaeos.' Henrici Mori Epis-
tolae quatuor ad Renatum Descartes.
Londini, 1662, p. 61. [In Philoso-
phical Writings (1662).] More signs
himself ' Singularis tuae sapientiae
cultor devotissimus,' p. 66. Des-
cartes, in his reply, writes, — 'Laudes
quas in me congeris, Vir humanis-
sime, non tarn ullius mei meriti,
utpote quod eas aequare nullum
potest, quam tuae erga me benevo-
lentiae testes sunt.' 5th Feb.
1649. See Adam and Tannery,
Correspondence, v 237, 267-279.
HENRY MORE. 607
was probably afterwards regretted by himself. Descartes, CHAP. v.
indeed, although he could scarcely fail to be gratified by the
praises showered upon him by his correspondent, evidently saw
that the significance of his own philosophic terminology was
imperfectly discerned by his would-be critic ; and Tulloch,
while fully admitting that the Cartesian theory of ' spirit ' is
defective, is not less candid in pronouncing many of the
arguments afterwards advanced by More in disproof of the
same, to be ''absurd and irrelevant1.' Down to the year He advises
1662, however (when Descartes had been dead twelve years), Descartes-
J " treatises
More continued to speak of the new philosophy as affording g^1^1*
unrivalled guidance to the student of the laws of Nature ; uJ
and he even put forth the advice, — as 'the most sober and public l
faithful ' that could ' be offered to the Christian world at
large,' — ' that the reading of Descartes in all publick schools
or universities, should be systematically encouraged,' 'in
order,' he adds, ' that the students of philosophy may be
thoroughly exercised in the just extent of the mechanical
laws of matter — how farre they will reach, and where they
fall short, — which will be the best assistance to religion
that Reason and the knowledge of Nature can afford2.'
Such is the language employed by More in the preface to
his treatise on The Immortality of the Soul, first published in
1659 and again in 1662, and dedicated to one of his favourite
pupils at Christ's College, Edward, viscount Con way; and it
is in this Dedication that he takes occasion to refer to an
incident in their common experience when they were travel-
ling together abroad. In the course of their tour they had
1 See Rational Theology, n 383- his transcendent Mechanical inven-
385. tions;...Nor is it any more argument
2 See The Immortality of the Soul, that Descartes was not inspired,
go farre as it is demonstrable from because he did not say he was, then
the Knowledge of Nature and the that others are inspired, because
Light of Reason. Preface, p. 13. they say they are." Conjectura Cab-
By Henry More, D.D. London, 1662. balistica. Or, a Conjectural Essay
So again, in the same year, he of interpreting the Mind of Moses in
writes, 'for mine own part.... I the three first Chapters of Genesis,
should look upon Descartes as a according to a Threefold Cabbala etc.
man more truly inspired in the Appendix, p. 104. By Henry More,
Knowledge of Nature than any that D.D. London, 1662. Both treatises
have professed themselves so this are in his Philosophical Writings,
sixteen hundred years, and being ed. 1662.
even ravished with admiration of
608
THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP. V.
More reads
Descartes
with his
mint
Conway in
Paris.
He recalls
his pleasant
visits to
Ragley, and
the way in
which he
there
conceived
bis Poem.
spent some time in Paris, where they had visited the gardens
of the Luxembourg ; and there seating themselves, we may
suppose, under the shadow of the graceful fa$ade wherewith
the genius of Debrosse had recently adorned that historic
site, the tutor had read aloud to his pupil Descartes' newly
published treatise on The Passions of the Soul1. It had been
written in French expressly for Elizabeth, the Princess
Palatine, and niece of Charles I, and was designed by the
author to place the whole theory of man's emotional nature
on a more scientific basis than that afforded either by the
philosophy of Plato or that of Seneca. After this reminis-
cence, More proceeds also to 'call to minde that pleasant
retirement I enjoyed at Ragley during my abode with you
there ; my civil treatment from that perfect and unexcep-
tionable pattern of a truly noble and Christian matron, the
Right Honourable your mother ; the solemness of the place,
those shady walks and woods, wherein often having lost
sight of the world and the world of me, I found out, in
that hidden solitude, the choicest theories in the following
Discourse2.' It is evident, indeed, that More felt himself
perfectly at home at Ragley; and as his father's death had
left him in affluent circumstances3, there was none of that
sense of indebtedness, on the one hand, or of apprehension
of demands upon a patron's liberality, on the other, which, in
those days, would sometimes diminish the sense of freedom
in the relations between a scholar and his entertainer. ' It is
1 TraiU des Passions de VAme.
Amsterdam, 1649.
2 The Epistle Dedicatory (prefixed
to Preface, M.S.), p. 2.
8 Alexander More's will, made in
1648 and proved 23rd day of April
1649, makes provision for his 'three
loveing sonnes, Gabriell More,
William More and Henry More,'
bequeathing to the last-named 'and
to the heires of his body lawfully
begotten All those my lands pas-
tures closes tenements and heredita-
ments by me purchased of Edward
Skipwith Esquire lyinge and beinge
within the ffeild territories and pre-
cincts of ffleete in the partes of Hol-
land in the said count of Lincoln ' . . .
together with ' the Patronage Eight
ffree disposition and advowson of the
Parsonage Bectorie and Church of
Ingoldesby...in the foresaid count of
Lincoln.' Consistory Court Lincoln
1649 fol. 236. As Henry More also
continued to hold his fellowship at
Christ's, he was in a position that
enabled him to decline various offers
of preferment, among which were the
mastership of Christ's (said to have
been offered to him when Cudworth
was elected) , the provostship of Trinity
College, Dublin, and the deanery of
St Patrick's.
CUDWORTH. 609
the best result of riches,' More himself once observed to her CHAP. v.
ladyship, ' that finding ourselves already well provided for, More's
we may be fully masters of our own time1.' thaut
J J _ is the best
But notwithstanding that his time was entirely at his "'^"imt
own disposal, it is undeniable that a certain precipitancy in leUuM?*
pronouncing judgement was one of his most serious defects,
and one which offers a marked contrast to the habitual
deliberation of Cudworth, which was itself, in turn, perhaps
carried to excess.
It so happened that More, in his Mystery of Godliness, a«achednbe
when dealing with the interpretation of Daniel's prophecies, ^rpreta^
had found himself unable to arrive at a decision on one Daniel's
important point, — namely the day in the last week of Christ's
earthly career on which His Passion took place. Personally,
he inclined to place it in the middle of the week ; but under
a sense of the difficulties involved in arriving at a conclusion,
he had gone so far as to declare, that ' whoever out of his
industry and skill in history and chronology shall demon-
strate to the world, that the Passion of our Saviour fell out
some two or three years \? days'] before the ending or else
after the beginning of the last week, his invention will be
more to Christian religion than either the Venae Lacteae or
the circulation of bloud to physick and philosophy2.' There
is no positive evidence that, when thus placing so high a
value on such a service, More himself was aware that it
would devolve upon him in the Preface to his treatise to
acknowledge that the requisite proof had already been sup-
plied by the learning of the head of his own college ; but it
seems clear that it was during the interval between the
printing of the foregoing lines and the writing of the Preface,
that Cudworth delivered in the Public Schools his Discourse aYecTuJfoL"
concerning Daniel's Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks3; and that
1 See Dedication of his Antidote to Discourse, but Birch prints a letter
Atheism ' to The Bight Honorable the from Cudworth to Secretary Thurloe
Lady Anne, Viscountess Conway and written 'Jan. 20, 1658' (that is in
Kilulta,' A 3 v. the beginning of 1659), in which he
2 An Explanation of the Grand refers to the subject as one on which
Mystery of Godliness (1660), Bk. vn he is engaged, and describes it as
c. iv, p. 296. one ' never yet sufficiently cleared
3 There is nothing that enables and improved' and his own exposi-
us to fix the exact delivery of this tion as ' extricating many difficulties
M. in. 39
610 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v. his lecture was received with unwonted enthusiasm. The
pwp°"°t?na applause of the audience was, however, largely due to the
cW MHullOIl ••• -M. ' O «/
belief that their lecturer had succeeded in refuting the theory
recently promulgated by the greatest living scholar of the
to theology, time, Joseph Scaliger, with regard to the exact date of the
manifestation of the Messiah, and, consequently, that of the
Passion. Cudworth's arguments were forthwith accepted by
More as unanswerable, — ' the world,' he declared, ' had been
misled too long by the over-great opinion they had of Joseph
Scaliger'; while he now averred the master of Christ's con-
clusions to be an epoch-making discovery, ' of as much price
and worth in theology,' he reiterated, ' as either the circula-
tion of the blood in physic or the motion of the earth in
natural philosophy1.'
Although Cudworth was no more likely than Descartes
himself to derive pleasure from being singled out for such
extravagant laudation, he made no formal disclaimer; and
we must picture him to ourselves as resuming in his study
the labours most congenial to his temperament, there to
prosecute his researches ohne Hast, ohne Hast, — his sole
reward the consciousness of approaching nearer to a mastery
of his subject, or, at least, of some main question therein
Cudworth involved. But unlike More, he was often hampered by his
trammelled *
dutief a^dcial official duties, and we find him intimating, in the letter to
fnfe°rioyritysto Thurloe already referred to, that his leisure was limited to
Latins a ' such vacant hours ' as he was able ' to redeem ' from his
engagements as a preacher, or from ' the perpetual distrac-
tions of the bursarship.' Another point of contrast between
SSrrSrtin t^e Master and the fellow is to be noted in the fact, that the
education. former was not a public school man. Cudworth had been
educated at home by his father-in-law, one Dr Stoughton,
and had been admitted a pensioner of Emmanuel at the age
of Chronologic.' It was his declared in the British Museum, was never
intention to publish it under the printed. Birch (Thos.), Life of Cud-
title Upon Daniel's Prophecy of the worth prefixed to edition of his In-
LXX Weeks, wherein all the Inter- tellectual System, etc., Vol. i, p. x.
pretationn of the Jews are considered London, 1743.
and refuted, with several of some 1 'To the Reader,' prefixed to An
learned Christians; but the manu- Explanation, etc., p. xvi.
script, in two folio volumes, now
CUDWORTH. 611
of thirteen. His instructor, it is true, had ventured to assert CHAP, v.
that ' he was as well grounded in school-learning as any boy
of his age1,' but he did not matriculate until two years later,
and it does not appear that he afterwards achieved any
distinction as a disputant. It is probable, accordingly, that
Cudworth never attained to the same facility in Latin,
whether colloquially or in composition, as More appears to
have acquired at Eton; nor, again, had he received the
invaluable stimulus by which natural ability is roused to
effort, on finding itself surrounded by an atmosphere of
rivalry and criticism like that of a great public school.
Although, therefore, we find him, when introducing promising importance
members of the university to the notice of Thurloe, as J^P®"™ m
' proper to be employed in political and civil affairs2,' espe- ^phoi0n^cial
cially commending some of them as ' good Latinists,' while mc
he speaks of himself as being, at this time, occupied with cudworth's
. . . leisure
the preparation of certain Latin discourses in defence of
Christianity against Judaism3, it would seem that his
studious hours, as became the duties of his chair, were
chiefly given to Hebrew and its antiquities. In the course of
the year 1665, however, it transpired that the master of
Christ's was hoping shortly to publish a treatise on Moral
Good or Evil, or Natural Ethics. It was a subject which vaiueof
J these in c
had already been indicated by Whichcote as one of supreme "h^""^
interest ; ' the moral part of religion,' that eminent teacher It'hiS?1
had declared to be ' the knowledge of God's Nature,' and, he
added, 'it never alters4.' Cudworth had not infrequently
1 Birch-Cud worth, i vi. political and civill employments';
2 Among those whom he thus at Emmanuel, Mr Croone, ' of ex-
commends, are ' Mr Page, fellow of cellent parts and a general scholar ' ;
King's College, an excellent Latinist, Mr Miles, fellow of Clare, ' one that
and one that hath travelled abroad hath no mind to professe divinity,
for above ten years together'; 'Dr but a very good scholar '; Mr Leigh,
Bagge, fellow of Caius College and of Christ's College; while 'Mr George
Doctor of Physick, a singularly good Eust, fellow of Christ's,' is himself
and ready Latinist ' ; at Trinity the bearer of the letter containing
College, among certain 'very good these commendations and also per-
Latinists and well furnisht with all sonally charged to satisfy Cromwell's
the politer learning, Mr Valentine ' ; secretary of state, with respect to
also ' Mr Linne, well known for an any further enquiries he may wish
excellent poet'; at Peterhouse, Mr to make. Ibid, i viii-ix.
Mildmay, 'whose inclination seems 3 Ibid, i viii-ix, x.
to be peculiarly carried out towards 4 ' The Moral part of Eeligion is
39—2
612
THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP. V.
Cudworth's
design in
proposing
to write a
treatise on
Natural
Ethics.
He learns!
that More
was already
engaged on a
work on the
same subject.
had his attention called to it in the course of his historical
researches, and had often discussed it with his friends, More
included ; and from his wide acquaintance with both Pagan
and Semitic antiquity, he now proposed to shew that,
throughout the history of humanity, a certain consensus
with regard to the moral law had ever been observable, —
a fact which he regarded as in itself supplying one of the
strongest arguments in disproof of Atheism. The point of
view from which he approached the subject, it is hardly
necessary to point out, was in harmony with that from which
those of his friends with whom he was in fullest agreement,
regarded the whole history of Religion. There had been, as
St Paul had admitted, religious belief anterior alike to the
Old and to the New Dispensation ; and there had also been
a pagan morality, anterior to the promulgation of the Law
by Moses. Clearly to set forth such an argument, with all
the resources of an adequate erudition, would in itself repre-
sent a noteworthy recurrence to that rational faculty which,
along with his fellow Platonists, Cudworth regarded as the
final court of appeal in the search after Truth. That he
himself was admirably qualified for the task, admits of no
doubt, and it is equally clear that he had set his heart on its
performance; while an additional incentive to his under-
taking (as Tulloch conjectures) was, not improbably, ' that
the course of thought since the Restoration had alarmed
him, and re-awakened his anxiety to clear up the essential
idea of morality, and place its fundamental principles on a
rational basis1.' It is easy, therefore, to understand that
when he learned that More, — who was not only well aware
of his design but had strongly urged him to its accomplish-
ment,— was also engaged upon a treatise on the same subject,
apparently with a view to anticipating him, Cudworth
manifested some irritation. The former was now at the
zenith of his reputation, and his published works were
the Knowledge of God's Nature....
The Moral part of Religion never
alters. Moral Laws are laws of
themselves, without sanction by Will,
and the Necessity of them arises
from the Things themselves.' Apho-
risms, Cent, i no. 29; Cent, in no.
221.
1 Rational Theology, n 215.
CUD WORTH AND MORE. 613
numerous. Since the appearance of his Philosophicall Poems CHAP,
in 1647. he had put forth, in 1652, his Antidote aqainst More;»
" principal
Atheism,, to be followed, the next year, by his Conjectura
Cabbalistica, and in 1656, by his Enthusiasmus Triumphatus.
His prose dissertation on the Immortality of the Soul, with
a Preface in which he sought to explain, more fully, his
philosophic standpoint, had appeared in 1659, and a second
edition in 1662; his Grand Mystery of Godliness, aimed at
Enthusiasm and Infidelity alike, came forth in 1660, and in
1662 he published a Collection of his more important writ-
ings, including his correspondence with Descartes. In 1664,
his Mystery of Iniquity had again aroused the public interest
in past history, by its denunciations of the claims of Popery,
while it also revived forebodings as regarded the future, by
discussions on the fulfilments of Prophecy under the reign of
Antichrist. Well might such a succession of discursive
tractates, all skilfully conceived ad captandum in relation to
the passing mood of a religious public, both ' rule the book-
sellers,' and also afford a fair presumption that their author,
whatever the subject to which he might next address himself,
would not fail to command a hearing and be regarded as an
oracle.
Cudworth, on the other hand, — who, it should be borne in comparative
mind, was three years More's j unior, — had published nothing Cu{J1"t?IS'8
since his Discourse before the House of Commons1; and writings-
prior to that time had been known as an author only by two
brief treatises, — the first a Discourse on the Lord's Supper H« *£°
(long afterwards pronounced by Warburton to be ' a master- Sermons-
piece of its kind'), wherein he endeavoured to substitute for
the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation, a purely Platonic
conception of the rite, as ' not in itself sacrificial, but deriving
all its special meaning and virtue from the great Sacrifice
which it commemorates'; the second, entitled The Union of
Christ and the Church, in a Shadow, in which he aimed, in
opposition alike to Romanist and Protestant, at vindicating
for the institution of matrimony a certain ' mystical notion,'
1 See infra, p. 659 and n. 1.
614 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v. involving, in the natural union of man and wife, an adum-
bration, — in harmony with another well-known Platonic
conception, — of the relation between those archetypal forms
of being or existence which belong to the spiritual world and
those ectypal forms of the material world, which are the
image or copy of the former1. ' He expounds,' says Tulloch,
' this thought under several heads, and heaps around it a
multiplicity of quotations from diverse mystical authorities,
amongst others from the " masters of the Cabala, a kind of
secret and mystical divinity," as he defines it, "remaining in
part yet among the Jews2.'"
worth- Worthington, at this time removed to London and still
ington's o '
affhu'time occupied with his labours on Mede, would seem to have
ridh\dthre thought it would be well if Cudworth did publish something,
and writing to a friend, in the November of 1664, says that
he had ' earnestly pressed him to despatch his studies upon
Daniel's Weeks,' which Worthington himself holds to be 'the
most considerable place in the Testament for the interest
of Christianity3.' Writing, however, three weeks later, to
More, then at Ragley, he says, ' Your book of the Soul's
Immortality had its birth or growth at Ragley, and so may
your Ethics too, which may conduce to a happy immortality.
...I wish Dr Cudworth may despatch his in time; but if he
should delay, it will not have been amiss that you let your
meditations run to the end of their course4,' — meaning, appa-
rently, that More himself might then profit by what he
found in the pages of the Master's treatment of the same
He acts as subiect. The dispassionate view taken by the writer, of the
intermediary »
themewnh comparison which a twofold treatment of such a subject,
atftiilged appearing at nearly the same time, would necessarily invite,
onethenpart was however by no means shared by Cudworth himself, from
r' whom, about a month later, Worthington received a stern
letter of remonstrance, pointing out that, although he himself
1 Indicated by St Paul as nwrr^piov Evans was licensed preacher at St
fjLtya. .Ephesians, v 23, 29-32. Benet Fink in London, and Wor-
2 Tulloch, n 200-1. thington appears to have officiated
3 Worthington, Correspondence, n for him there to the time of the
140-1. His correspondent is George Great Fire. See Ibid, n 136, n. 2.
Evans, a fellow of Jesus College and 4 Ibid, n 153-4.
afterwards a canon of Windsor.
CUDWORTH AND MORE. 615
had commenced his treatise a year ago, ' a friend (whom you CHAP, v.
know)... about three months since, unexpectedly told me on
a sudden he had begun a discourse on the same argument';
and the Master then proceeds to state his grievance against
their common confidant as follows:
'I was struck into an amaze, and could hardly believe ^udworth's
representa-
what he said, but, after some pause, told him that he knew "on of MS
case to
I was engaged a good while in the argument and had taken ^o"1 :
a great deal of pains in it, and it would be not only super- ^oVa^r
fluous but very absurd for two friends at the same time to t^wrifeoi?1
write upon the same argument ; and therefore, though I ^EthicsT'
wondered very much at this, yet, if he were resolved to go wttho™86 '
. ' informing
on and take the argument from me, I would desist, and not llim>
1 commenced
seem guilty to the world of the vanity of emulation. Here- u'
upon he was mute.' At a subsequent interview, More had
sought to offer something between an apology and an expla-
nation, by representing, Cudworth goes on to say, ' that he
could not tell whether I would despatch and finish it or no,
because I had been so long about it; that Mr Fulwood1 and
Mr Jenks2 had solicited him to do this, and that you [i.e.
Worthington] were very glad that he would undertake it;
but now he understood I was resolved to go through with it,
he was very glad of it, and that he would desist and throw
his into a corner.' Subsequently, however, the Master He canno
J J % - m _ understan
learned that More was, notwithstanding, still going on with thaTu^
his .treatise, ' though truly,' he continues, ' I have so strong [t
a persuasion of the morality, ingenuity, and friendship of More"sre"
that person, that I cannot yet think that he can do such a thTilu'erV
. . . . reputation is
thing. I have been far from envy, rejoicing in his perform- j!1^,*!
ances as if they were my own. He hath credit and fame as ^18|{fto°bl
1 Francis Fulwood, one of Charles's years. He died in College and was
nominees for the degree of D.D. in buried at St Michael's 1 Sept. 1697.
1661 : he was author of The Pillars He was author of a volume entitled
of Rome broken (1679). The Christian Tutor (1683), which
2 Henry Jenks, B.A. King's Col- gives a descriptive account of certain
lege, Aberdeen, 1646. Admitted at works which a tutor would consider
Emmanuel, 1646; incorporated at especially to be recommended to a
Oxford, 1669. Senior fellow of Caius young student of that time (Venn,
College 1653 to 1697, and Greek and Biog. Hist, of Gonville and Caius
Hebrew lecturer in the College, as College, i 387).
well as dean and chaplain for several
t
tand
616 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v. much as he can desire. That he, my intimate friend, should
entertain such a design as this, to depress and detract from
d"mursrtat mv single small performance what he can, and assume to
tooked-for" himself the credit of this ethical business, is so strange to
asa^Tai?6 me that I do not believe it. And if he should violate
friendship in this kind, it would more afflict me than all
that Dr Widdrington ever did, and make me sick of Christ's
College, and of all things in this life There were some other
slight pretences mentioned, that his would be in Latin, mine
in English, his shorter, mine longer, which signify nothing1.'
More Further correspondence ensued ; in which More appears
assures . . . *
worth- as intimating to Worthmgton his ultimate conclusion to
towa'ft'for await the publication of the Master's treatise, — 'I do not
ttreea«se8ter's intend,' he writes, ' to publish my book (if at all) till he has
pubushel his published his ' ; while, in defence of what he had before
own. but he .
Jjoids that proposed to do, he alleges the persuasions of his personal
friends and especially those of Morden, the Cambridge book-
seller ; as for ' emulation,' there was nothing of the kind,
the Master and he were simply alike seeking ' to profligate
and destroy' a common enemy, namely ' vice and falsehood,'
— he himself ' stabbing with a dagger (my Enchiridion),' the
other 'slashing with a broadsword'; and with regard to his
personal intentions, he avers ' I never meant more simply
and sincerely in anything than I did in this ; nor do I think
that any man can undertake a business with greater plain-
He notwith- ness and integrity of spirit2.' In the sequel, however, what
publishes his actually took place corresponded exactly with what he had,
Enchiridion • J
according to Cudworth's own statement, originally suggested,
and in May 1667, the Enchiridion appeared. It was printed
in London, but published at Cambridge by Morden3; and
being in Latin, directly appealed to a much wider public
abroad than Cudworth's promised treatise, which was in
process of composition in English ; while, at the suggestion
1 Worthington, Correspondence, n tern vitae perpetuo accommodate.
158-161. Per Henricum Morum Cantabrigien-
2 Ibid, ii 163-7. sem. Londini; Excudebat J. Flesher,
3 Enchiridion Ethicum, praecipua venale autem habetur apud Guiliel-
MORALIS PHILOSOPHIAE Rudimenta mum Morden Bibliopolam Canta-
complectens, illustrata ut plurimum brigiensem [second edition] 1669.
Veterum Monumentis, et ad Probita-
CUD WORTH AND MORE. 617
of his friends, More's treatment was essentially popular, and CHAP, v.^
the book itself only a ' portable, little' octavo volume, setting
forth, 'for the instruction of beginners, and in lucid and
connected fashion the elements of Ethics, so as to render the
methods of the recognized teachers on the subject, more easily Learners
»• >i i , • , 1-1 i>i -111 i now require
intelligible 1. EOT such, he says, it had been represented to have
to him was the spirit of the time, that the learner expects ™i$1eei£lear
to have everything explained to him, it being held that the
human intellect is bound to recognize no authority save that
of right Reason2.' Believing, therefore, that such a manual
was urgently required to meet the needs of the age, and
that it was the duty of every individual to postpone his
private interests to the public good, More represents himself
as setting aside his own ' delightful studies ' in order to
render a pressing 'service to the State3.'
During the two years which had elapsed before the
Enchiridion Ethicum appeared, we may fairly assume that
the grievance of which Cudworth complained and the corre-
spondence to which it gave rise, had alike been, in some
measure, forgotten ; while Worthington, by the publication
of his first edition of Mede, now emerges into celebrity.
Among those to whom copies of the two portly folios were
sent, were William Dillingham (at this time living in com-
parative obscurity with his brother at Oundle)4 and Wid- ^lingham
drington of Christ's ; and the former could not forbear, in o^'raeFvfn™
making his acknowledgements, from giving expression to the
hope that the public acceptance of the work might in some
measure reward the editor for his 'Herculean labours'; while
1 ' Se vero Systema Ethicum desi- forte desunt,feliciteringeneraturum. '
derare; nee tamen justum Volumen, Ibid.
sed Enchiridium potius, librum par- 3 'Amoeniora ilia porrostudia quod
vum, portatilem, et Tyronibus eru- attinet, deponi ea posse ad tempus,
diendis non inidoneum.' Ad Lecto- et postmodum resumi: nee privatae
rem, A3. More's notion of a 'justum cujusvis voluptati utilitatem publi-
Volumen' was, a folio. cam posthaberi.' Ibid.
2 • Hoc enim esse praesentis seculi 4 Crossley observes that Dilling-
ingenium, ut Causas rerum omnium ham 'seems to have been much
reposcant, mentemque humanam ad employed in superintending the
nihil obligari contendant praeter- printing of the more elaborate works
quam Rectam Rationem. Hujus- of the . London and Cambridge
modi Opus tarn affabre confectum presses.' Worthington (u.s.), n 169,
magnopere oblectaturum probos, note.
Divinosque illos animo sensus, quibus
618
THE RESTORATION.
CHAP. V.
Outbreak of
the PLAGUE
in London :
June 1665.
Worth-
ington's
heroism.
Extension
of the
epidemic to
Cambridge :
public
meetings
forbidden
and the
under-
graduates
sent down.
More's
letter to
Worth-
ington :
5 Sept. 1665.
Dr Evans
to same :
8 October
1665:
the latter appears to have held himself bound to make
acknowledgement not only on his own behalf, but also that
of the College, and of the University1. The outbreak of the
Plague, however, soon diverted the thoughts of the editor
and of not a few of his friends to a calamity unprecedented
in their experience; while in London the mere instincts of
self-preservation impelled the great majority of its citizens
to hurried flight. But Worthington, although he sent his
family to Hackney, refused to desert his post ; and with that
rare spirit of self-abnegation which is perhaps the finest trait
in his character, continued his ministrations at St Benet Fink,
amid grass-grown streets and an appalling silence, broken
only by the passing of the coaches bearing the infected to
the pest-house. If, indeed, he ever contemplated a retreat
to Cambridge, he would probably have found his entry
barred, for in the course of August the approach of the pesti-
lence had made it necessary to forbid, by an order in Council,
the holding of Sturbridge Fair2; and soon after, all public
meetings, whether of the University or in the Town, were
prohibited by the Corporation3. Worthington himself could
venture to correspond with More only through an inter-
mediary, and the latter in his reply, dated from Ragley, says,
' you did well to abstain from writing yourself, by reason of
the persons where I am [meaning lord and lady Couway],
whose fear or danger I would not by any means occasion4/
In October a grace passed the Senate for the discontinuance
both of sermons at St Mary's and of exercises in the Schools;
while a letter from the rector of St Benet Fink, Dr Evans,
informed his deputy that the plague at Cambridge was
increasing, especially 'in Bridge Street and from thence
1 '...in this simple paper I must
beg leave to thank you very heartily
for altogether, acknowledging both
your extraordinary kindness to me
and to our College and to the whole
University, in the exceeding pains
you have taken to let the world
peruse so fair and legible a draught
of our incomparable Mr Mede from
his own pen.' 15 March
Worthington («.«.), n 169.
2 'Saturday [1 Sept.] was then
posted up in Cambr. the King's Pro-
clamacion, that Sturbridge fayre
should not this yeare be kept because
of the great Plague at London thereby
prohibiting all Londoners from coming
to the same.' Alderman Neictori's
Diary. Ed. J. E. Foster for Camb.
Ant. Soc., Communications, xxm 15.
3 Cooper, Annals, m 517.
4 Worthington (M.S.), n 178.
THE PLAGUE. 619
towards Sidney College,' and the whole place 'almost dis- CHAP. v.
universitied,' so that, he adds, ' either there will be no winter ' Cambridge
. . . disuniver-
term, or nothing to do in it1. At this juncture, the conduct sitie<L>
... . . i • Policy of
of the authorities, civic as well as academic, under the those who
remain:
guidance of Francis Wilford, the vice-chancellor, appears to FRANCIS
have been both prudent and energetic. Wilford, who in scholar of
r . ° Trinity,
1661 had succeeded Dr Gunning by royal mandate in the fel^r- 163L
mastership of Corpus Christi, had before been a fellow and Master33'
tutor of Trinity; and, although not distinguished as a divine, Christ/"18
was a man of great energy and much practical good sense. 29 jSne i66i
In concert with certain of the other Heads, measures were 1667-
i IT i f» i r> i K Precautions
adopted somewhat resembling those of defenders of a be- ^en in
most of the
leaguered fortress, — residents in the colleges, whose presence ^fngsf the
would be useless and merely enhance the difficulty of keep- epldenuc-
ing out the foe, being sent away, and only a select few
permitted to remain to administer affairs. Such were the
conditions under which we find the heroism displayed by
Worthington, in the capital, reproduced in Cambridge. At.
Corpus, Thomas Tenison (afterwards archbishop of Canter- THOMAS
bury), a fellow of the society and vicar of St Andrew's Church, j^terbur .
inspired by the example of his Head, continued to reside £. nil
in college and perform the duties of his cure2. At Clare Dr Diiiing-
. . . . ham at Clare
Theophilus Dillmgham continued to reside in his lodge, but £g"jf0ew:s
after according permission to a few other residents to remain jetted
in college, resolutely forbade any addition to their number. topside.
Even Samuel Blythe (afterwards also Head of the society),
notwithstanding that he was, at this time, both fellow and
tutor, received permission to reside only on condition that it
was not construed into a precedent by others3; and, in the
letter according this favour, a postscript added by Robert
Lowe, one of the senior fellows, ran as follows ; ' the Master
desires me to tell you that he hath great suit from divers to
1 Worthington (M.S.), n 179. ment to other fellowes to doe the
2 Masters, Hist, of Corpus Christi like which is not permitted in any
College, p. 161. Tenison's services College of the Towne.' Wardale
were afterwards recognized by his (J. R.), Clare College, Letters and
parishioners by the presentation of a Documents, p. 68. The colleges
piece of plate. D. N. B. LVI 57. west of Trumpington Street did not,
3 'As for your owne returne wee apparently, in 1665 consider them-
shall not bee against it, although selves as ' of the Town.'
wee suspect it may give encourage-
620 THE RESTORATION.
VCHAP. v. return, but he would not suffer one to come in and is resolved
they shall not have that plea that any others are got in. He
saith we have more schollars already in the Coll: then all
Trinity and St John's, and that he could wish these out1.'
Among those at Trinity, Isaac Newton, already B.A., retired to
Boothby in Lincolnshire, to mark the apple falling from the
presented at *ree an(^ *° compute the area of the hyperbola. The chief
college. exception to this prudent policy was Jesus College, where,
under the lax rule of Edmund Boldero, — another of the royal
nominees, who had been appointed on the recommendation of
the Visitor, Matthew Wren, — a system of laissez-faire appears
to have prevailed ; and, according to Mr Gray, 'all the fellows,' as
early as August 7th, ' had leave of absence until the cessa-
tion of the epidemic, but three of them voluntarily remained
disinfectants. a^ their posts2.' Such preventives as the medical science of
those days suggested appear to have been generally adopted ;
and at Corpus, its historian tells us, ' a preservative powder
was bought and administered in wine, whilst charcoal, pitch,
and brimstone were kept constantly burning in the gate-
house3.' With a view to diminishing the panic, a fortnightly
°r weekly bulletin of the actual mortality in the fourteen
colleges. parishes of the Town was issued, in which the deaths result-
ing from the Plague, and those attributable to normal causes,
were placed in separate columns, and the document itself
attested by the signatures of the vice-chancellor and the
mayor. In each issue, the following announcement appeared
over the list : All the Colledges (God be praised) are and
have continued without any Infection of the Plague*. As this
1 Wardale, Documents, p. 71. retired officer than the contemplative
2 Jesus College, p. 130. 'Under divine, and had seen strenuous service
Boldero's sway, ...there can be no as a follower of the great Montrose.
doubt that the College started on the See Sherman, Hist. Coll. Jesu, pp.
downward plane of indolent dilettan- 42-3 ; also supra, p. 263.
tism.' Ibid. 127. Dr Pope (in his 3 Masters (M.S.), p. 161.
Life of Seth Ward, p. 47) speaking * In the muniment room of Clare
of Dr Kettell, president of Trinity College there is a packet of these
College, Oxford, says: 'At my first Reports, probably preserved by Dil-
coming to the university, there were lingham himself; that for the fort-
innumerable bulls and blunders night ending 16 Nov. 1665, gives the
father'd upon him, as afterwards deaths by the plague as 15, of which
upon Dr Boldero of Cambridge.' 8 were in St Clement's parish.
, Boldero was, in fact, much more the
reappearance
in July
occasions a
THE PLAGUE. 621
assurance was, in no case, absent from the bulletins, while in CHAP. vv
March 1666, it was further shewn that there had been no death On the
cessation of
in the Town from the epidemic for six weeks, the students gtudTnu "re
were invited by the authorities to return. But in the relj^*0
following July, the plague returned also ; and on the third us*™*
of August, the holding of Sturbridge Fair was again inter- fnajpuTv
dieted ; while no students appear to have been matriculated complete8 *
A A absence of
throughout the year 1666, and in the ensuing February it ™*£
was found necessary to obtain the royal sanction for enacting ^
that such questionists as might be deterred by the presence "u!
of the epidemic (per grassantem in oppido contagioneni) from however
coming, as usual, to Cambridge on Ash Wednesday, to to them-
receive their bachelors' degree, should not thereby forfeit
their seniority1. The immunity from the malady, resulting
apparently from the precautions observed in the preceding
year, would appear, however, to have emboldened the heads of
colleges to permit residence on the part of some at least of
those already on the boards ; and when, in September, on
the outbreak of the Great Fire in London, certain ' riotous Rioters
threaten to
persons threatened to make Cambridge ' a second London, Jj£ewthe
Dr Wilford, according to Masters, ' issued orders for five or Precautions
taken to
six scholars to keep watch in their respective colleges2.' In protect toe
the Town, on the other hand, the epidemic became so serious,
that, prior to the Fire, the impoverished university had Appeals to
already appointed an agent in London, one Thomas Warren, [^s|gkto
an apothecary, 'to receive what the charity of well-disposed bryuth<ated
persons shall invite them to give for the relief of the Poor of oTtheeak
the place much visited with sickness.' Warren himself, how- septAi666?B'
ever, was, soon after, burnt out from his residence ' at the
Golden Anchor and Hart in Basing Lane,' and became
indebted to Sir Thomas Bonfoye for temporary shelter in
his mansion in Leadenhall Street. A like experience befel worth-
the heroic Worthington, who, after seeing his church of St j°v^lved
Benet Fink burnt down along with his adjoining house, and ^^"y-
losing much of his property, was rescued from absolute sympathy
-° . . shewn him
destitution by the intervention of Henry More, who not only by More-
1 Baker MSS. XLH 37. 2 Masters («.«.), p. 162.
622 THE RESTORATION.
CHAP. v. saved him from despair by presenting him to the living of
v.e is Ingoldsby1, but also aided him in the recovery of his health
rwtory of an<^ spirits by procuring him an invitation to Ragley, where,
24*Nov8bi666. as he shortly afterwards wrote to his wife, then at Alcester,
he was 'kindly and nobly entertained' by the Conways.
This was late in November 1666, and on the following
Christmas Day the new incumbent preached at Ingoldsby2.
The year's retrospect, that Christmas Day, must have
been for him a sombre one, notwithstanding that his own
Experiences fortunes had brightened towards its close, for two of his
of Whichcote
and wiikins. friencls had been involved in like calamity, — Whichcote's
church of St Anne's in Blackfriars having been burnt down;
while Dr Wiikins, as his half-brother, Dr Pope, narrates,
' lost not only his books. . .but the unsatiable and devouring
flames consum'd and reduc'd to ashes all his household-stuff,
his house, and his parsonage also. Add to this,' continues
the biographer, ' he was out of favour both at Whitehall and
Exertions of Lambeth, — for his marriage3.' It was at this juncture that
SethWard ' /. i • •
in behalf of geth Ward s generous nature found expression in a sympathy
which proved as effective as it was active : he succeeded in
obtaining for Wiikins the incumbency of St Lawrence Jewry,
which he had himself just vacated on being nominated to
the bishopric of Exeter, nor did he rest until he saw
ms letter his friend enthroned as bishop of Chester; while to Wor-
to Worth- •*•
Sft"\«« thington he wrote in terms well calculated to raise the
15 Mar. looy. O
spirits of that gentle scholar, who, at Ingoldsby, soon
found himself secretly longing to be ' nearer his ancient
friends and books4.' His friends surmised as much, and did
their best to cheer him. Ward complimented him on ' the
pains that you are always taking for the advancement of the
common stock of learning5.' ' I bless God,' he says, in a
1 See supra, p. 608, n. 3. lord Brereton, and had found among
2 Worthington (u.s.), n 222-3. them unpublished letters of Grotius
3 Pope (Dr Walter) , Life of Seth and of Descartes ; he had also heard
Ward, p. 53. of an autograph copy of Crashaw's
4 Worthington (M.S.), n 232. Poems, which he was proposing
6 Worthington, when on a brief to collate with the two published
visit to Cheshire, had been invited editions, with a view to bringing out
to examine ' two trunks full ' of a third. See Ibid, n 224, 226, 230.
Hartlib's papers, just purchased by
WORTHINGTON'S LAST DAYS. 623
later letter, ' that your affairs are as they are, though far CHAP. v.
short of your deserts and wishes. I do not find that Dr
Wilkins likes his benefice near Oundle so well as you do
yours at Grantham1. I wish and hope that you will both
be accommodated more to the public benefit than you yet
are, and I assure you that if I had opportunity I should
think myself obliged to do my best endeavour to that pur-
pose2.' In a like spirit wrote Henry More, who had intimated, More decides
J . to reside
at the time when he offered Worthington the living, that if {^r*ently at
the latter accepted it, he should himself come to reside at Grantham-
Grantham, ' my native town,' — ' all the time,' he added, how-
ever, ' of lawful discontinuance from Christ's College,' — and
Grantham was only five miles distant from Ingoldsby3. At
first, indeed, Worthington seems to have been sanguine that
he should be able to make himself happy amid his new
surroundings: 'living was cheap' there, he wrote, the people
were ' of good disposition,' the glebe extended to sixty acres,
and there was 'a fair large orchard4.' 'If there be not as
good advantages for converse as you may desire,' suggested
Whichcote, ' it may be in part supplied by journeys abroad,
excursions, and temporary absence5.' And Worthington worth-
himself was only too conscious that those ideals of saintly becomes
~m ' increasingly
life and communings with kindred spirits which had bright- ^^"ufe
ened his earlier years were vanishing from realization, — ' too at In8°ldsby-
many being at a further distance from such a spirit and life,
through the various temptations of the world6.' Then, in Death of
1667, his wife died ; and in a piteous letter to Whichcote he 8 Au«- i'«w.
r . His letter to
descnbed her virtues and his own sense of his irreparable whiciicote
on the
loss7, — his presentation to the prebend of Asgarby, soon after, occasion-
affording him small consolation8. From this time, indeed,
1 In 1666 Wilkins was made vicar was, but matura coelo. ' Ibid, n
of Polebrook in Northamptonshire, 234-6. It is to his 'honoured
D. N. B. LXI 265. uncle, Dr Whichcote, at Dr Cud-
2 Worthington (u.s.), n 227. worth's, in Christ's College, Cam-
8 Ibid, n 221. bridge,' that Worthington commu-
4 'Letter to Dr Ingelo, 10 June, nicates the pathetic story of his
1667.' Ibid, n 232. bereavement.
5 Ibid, n 228-9. 8 The prebend had become void
6 Ibid, n 233. during the vacancy of the see of
7 'God cut her off in the flower of Lincoln, and the presentation con-
her age, being twenty-seven years sequently had become vested in the
old and twelve days. Young she Crown. It is Sheldon, now arch-
624 THE RESTORATION.
CHAP, v. he appears to have suffered much from depression, and his
loneliness and indifferent health now form the burden of his
letters to his friends. More, in his replies, descants with
more than his customary eloquence on his favourite theme
of the virtues of self-mortification, as largely conducive to
' health both of soule and body,' and on the benefits to be
Histetter derived from taking exercise. Whereupon Worthington
29 NOV. leer. expiains that the only exercise he can take, in winter, ' is
descnptio -walking an(J stirring in the parlour' ; for, he adds, ' I am shut
condition, up, no stirring abroad, except I could walk in pattens, nor
riding, except I would ride as if I were treading mortar.*
More had also advised him to give up study for a time, to
which he rejoins, ' if I should totally abstain from books, I
should find this hermitage more tedious, and the short days-
would be as long as in June. I have nobody comes at me.
The neighbors say, they are not fit company, and they are
He suggests abroad with their cattell1.' In the same letter, however, we
should r find him venturing to point out to More that the latter's
publish a •
Natllrai °f recent endeavour to reconsider his position as an unqualified
™L°PSpipahnyt admirer of Descartes, has not been altogether successful;
dortrtaSL8ian and that the high commendation he had, at first, bestowed
on the Frenchman's philosophy, had caused many to become
'enravisht with it, and to derive from thence notions of ill
consequence to religion.' 'And seeing,' he goes on to say,.
' they will never return to the old Philosophy, in fashion
when we were young scholars, there will be no way left to
take them off from idolizing the French philosophy, and
hurting themselves and others by some principles there, but
by putting into their hands another Body of Natural Philo-
sophy, which is like to be the most effectual antidote. And
to do this will be more easy to you than any, because you have
so fully consider d it*.'
More decides Thirteen months later, More appears to have come to the
to reside no L L
conclusion that he should not only be more usefully but
more agreeably employed at Cambridge than at Grantham,
bishop of Canterbury, who writes to 1 See Ibid, n 254, 279-329.
inform Worthington. See Worthing- 2 Ibid, n 254.
ton (u.s.), ii 250-1.
WORTHINGTON'S LAST DAYS. 625
and suddenly announced his intention of no longer residing ^CHAP. v.
at his native town. This, to Worthington, in his depressed
state of mind, seemed a final blow: 'it was your being there,'
he wrote, 'that would have made it a Cambridge to me';
and he then proceeds to express his regret that he had 'not
stayed in London after the Fire,' — 'where,' he says, 'my
three years preaching was of more consequence than my at
least ten years preaching in other places1.' He now roused ^^g"^011
himself, with all the energy still left him, to accomplish, if i^kfsby.
possible, his own removal from Ingoldsby, where, as he wrote
to Lauderdale, his lot had been one 'of sorrow and sick- His letter to
Lauderdale.
ness2'; nor could it reasonably be gainsaid that a somewhat
scattered and purely rustic community was hardly an ideal
sphere of labour for a solitary and elderly scholar in feeble
health and intent on prosecuting his studies. Representa-
tions were also made on his behalf to Sheldon. There was
much, indeed, in Worthington's career and claims that must Features in
" , lus career
have appealed with special force to the archbishop. During * hie^led ^
the Commonwealth, while the master of Jesus had explored ^ti%rof
the archives of learning at Cambridge, Sheldon had pre- sl lon>
served the antiquities of his university from destruction at
Oxford ; they had alike seen much of parish work in the
capital, where the latter, in his younger days had been vicar
of Hackney, and, as archbishop, had held to his palace at
Lambeth throughout the plague, with no less resolution
than Worthington had shewn at St Benet Fink's ; and there,
accordingly, the church having been rebuilt, it was now
decided that its former lecturer should be reinstated as
rector. There was, however, still much to be done before
the services could be resumed; and in the mean time, the who obtains
for him the
primate was able to procure for him the post of lecturer at appointment
his own old church in Hackney. But soon after his removal a^H
from Ingoldsby to Hackney, Worthington was carried off
by an attack of pleurisy, in the fifty-fourth year of his age.
It was in the chancel of the parish church of Hackney,
accordingly, that he was interred ; and a large gathering of
divines, who repaired from all parts of London to be present
1 Worthington (u.s.), n 305. 8 Ibid, n 306.
M. in. 40
626 THE RESTORATION.
CHAP.V. at his funeral, attested the widespread respect and esteem
with which he had been generally regarded, a feeling to
w'buteTo8 which Tillotson, the preacher on the occasion, gave eloquent
ofhualue and forcible expression, — declaring, as he wound up his
"**• impassioned eulogium, that the departed scholar, by his
edition of Mede, had reared for himself 'a monument likely
to stand as long as learning and religion should continue
in the world1.' Such an appreciation of the services ren-
dered by Worthington to the interpretation of Scripture,
however exaggerated it may now appear, was sanctioned,
long afterwards, by the high authority of one yet better able
to assess their value; and among the numerous designs
projected by scholarship in the latter half of the seventeenth
century, there is probably none the non-performance of
which Cambridge has more reason to regret, than the Life
and labours of John Worthington delineated by the pen of
Thomas Baker2,
worth- The former master of Jesus College would appear to
mgtpns _ .o. r
huerestn'toied have kept up his correspondence with friends at Cambridge
Cambridge, to the last, his interest in all that went on there evidently
remaining unabated ; and it is thus that we find him
i>rE™ns-to writing to Dr Evans, only a few weeks before his death, to
e Oct. i67i. refai\ to his patron what he had himself just heard in con-
nexion with the King's first visit to the university, — among
other noteworthy facts being the significant circumstance,
that 'Many that went down in hopes to get degrees of Drs
in divinity, were disappointed, the University desiring that it
might be otherwise*.'
Reaction of For the last five years, indeed, the royal demands on the
feeling in the * J
res'uithigty loyalty °f the colleges had been such as to bring about an
frequency ominous reaction of feeling, and obsequiousness verging upon
mandates 'for servility was now beginning to be exchanged for remon-
fellowships. * . ° ° .
strance and resistance. Mandates for fellowships, which it
cost the Crown nothing to grant, had been sent to the
different colleges, with reckless disregard of the injustice
1 See Life by Author in D. N. B. cellanies (1704).
Lin 40-2. 3 Worthington (M.S.), n 362.
2 Preface to Worthington' s Mis-
THE ROYAL MANDATES. 627
to more deserving candidates which would result from CHAP, v.
compliance, — the force of the argument that those who,
through their devotion to the royal cause, had suffered both
pecuniary loss and deprivation of academic distinction, were
entitled to compensation, being, at first, readily admitted,
and their claims recognized as extending even to their
relatives. At Trinity Hall, Sir Anthony Aucher had ob-
tained a mandamus for the election of his son to a fellowship,
as a reward for his own deservings and great sufferings, and
the compliance of the society was prompt and cordial1. At
Trinity, Nathaniel Willis had been permitted to retain his
fellowship in conjunction with his rectory, notwithstanding
that the annual value of the latter exceeded the statutable
limit2; while Pearson's succession to the mastership, although nVpeareo"'
he was a married man, had met with general acquiescence3. ?o<theeds
St John's College proved less complaisant, and Charles who kprifweT'
had already recommended Dr Paman for the office of Public HESET
• . PAMAN
Orator, withdrew his recommendation4. Two months later, £ff6',gohn>8:
however, it having been represented to his Majesty by KJ^JJ f- of
Sheldon, that compliance with the royal letters and dispen- i647°hns'
sations for fellowships had been attended with ill effects, by orator,
J 1672-1681.
' causing deserving persons to leave the college and to seek Promise of
. ,, . . ° , , , Charles to
interest at court rather than proficiency in learning, he abstain from
formally revoked all such letters and dispensations, 'as yet f^"™
unexecuted,' and promised to grant no more without a It^ohnvf
college certificate ' of the fitness of the person.' Order was 20 Mar- 166^'
at the same time given that this letter should be entered upon
the college Register, 'as a mark of his Majesty's favour5.'
The royal promise appears to have been observed; but in
the other colleges a like interference steadily increased, and
especially at Christ's and Emmanuel. At the former, one
1 Cooper, Annals, v (Additions (Dr Eainbowe), to whom Charles
&c.), p. 437. represents himself as unwilling to
2 Ibid, v 438. pre judice other ' pretenders, 'of whom
3 In this instance, the royal letter there are several, and particularly
expresses no doubt of the assent of one to whom, being ' related to his
the Fellows, inasmuch as the recom- service,' he wishes well, but leaves
mendation ' aims only at the benefit the electors free to choose whom
of the College.' Ibid. p. 439. they will. Ibid.
4 The royal letter, in this instance, 5 Baker- Mayor, i 543 ; see also
is addressed to the vice-chancellor Cooper, Annals (u. «.), v 441-2.
40—2
628 THE RESTORATION.
CHAP.V. of the scholars, Henry Ullock, had been recommended for
the next vacant fellowship, 'on account of the loyalty and
sufferings sufferings of his near relations during the late disaffectionsV
of ' near
relations' At the latter, a dispensation was received for the election
urged in
somtf°f °f one Hancock, 'local statutes notwithstanding2.' Some-
ofcouuty times, in response to importunities from different quarters,
in MUM the royal mandate enjoined the election of two persons to
Election of the same fellowship, and at Christ's College, Henry Halle-
Haiieweii well3, a member of the society and eligible by statute, was
at Christ's : » J
August 1662. eiected in 1662, in preference to Thomas Smoult of St John's,
both having been thus recommended. Smoult preferred his
claims again, in the following year, but with no better
successful success4. In July 1664, Trinity was under the necessity of
resistance at J J
Trinity. petitioning against the presentation of Mr Barton to the
rectory of Orwell, although the living had already been
'bestowed according to statute upon Dr Chamberlaine';
while Barton, 'by reason of frequent distempers of mind,'
was notoriously unfit for such preferment. In this instance,
the joint petition of Dr Pearson and the Senior Fellows
luthorities aPPears to have decided the matter5. At Corpus, however,
summoned ^n *ne following year, it was reported that the society,
i665.ont6inpt' instead of electing a student of Jesus College, recommended
by the Crown (12th Oct. 1665), had 'not only, on receipt of
letters, pre-elected a fellow, but, on his decease, elected
another to a vacant fellowship; whereupon the Master and
the two senior fellows present at said election,' were required
to repair to London, 'to answer for their contempt of His
Majesty's letter6.' At Christ's College, the Master's equable
temper was subjected to a severe test. In 1665, a former
1 State Papers (Dom.) Charles the 78; Lvm no. 17.
Second, LIX no. 65. Henry Ullock 6 Pearson-Churton, i Ixvii, Ixviii.
(B.A. 1661) is described by Peile as In the following year, a petition
'a man of ability' whose non-elec- against all 'pre-elections' was sent
tion was 'probably due to another up from Trinity. State Papers (u. «.),
more pressing "recommendation." ' CXLII no. 36.
He was afterwards dean of Rochester. 6 Ibid. Dr Wilford, the Head,
Christ's College, p. 203. having been promoted to the Deanery
2 State Papers (u.s.), LXV no. 45. of Ely by royal mandate in 1662,
3 Afterwards the editor of the the Crown probably looked, in this
Works of George Rust (see infra, case, for prompt compliance. State
p. 649, n. 1). Papers (u.s.), Lin no. 77; Masters,
4 State Papers (u.s.), xmi no. Corpus Christi College, p. 160.
THE ROYAL MANDATES. 629
student named James Cookson, succeeded in obtaining the CHAP, v.
royal nomination for the manciple's place. This can only
be explained by supposing that he was in exceptionally
indigent circumstances; and, according to Cudworth, such an
instance of the Crown stooping to interfere in the appoint-
ment to a menial office was 'a thing unknown before.' Some
eighteen months later, the society received a mandate for
the election of a son of lord Fanshawe to the next vacant
fellowship ; but on the occurrence of the vacancy, within courageous
» ' resistance
three months afterwards, instead of yielding compliance with authorities of
the royal behest, Cudworth and the fellows elected James college:
Leigh, the son of a retired schoolmaster. The facts were
forthwith reported to lady Fanshawe by Widdrington,
together with a suggestion that the King should write to
the Visitors of the college, and lord Arlington (the secretary
of State) to Dr Wilford, the vice-chancellor, before whom
the case was shortly to be heard. Lady Fanshawe's un-
scrupulous adviser, as we have already seen1, was regarded
with especial dislike by Cudworth, and had been expelled
from the college in 1661 for 'high misdemeanours,' including
fraudulent practices as regarded both the revenues of the
society and his pupils' accounts. Of the vindictive feelings ^f,^"1181011
by which he was now actuated there can be no question; oj1",^
but his interest with the Privy Council was sufficient to ?o?eteHatey
enable him to bring about his restoration to his fellowship, autTontfes.
and he had recently been appointed Lady Margaret preacher.
Eventually, therefore, Cudworth found himself under the cudworth
» apologizes to
necessity of making a formal apology to Arlington ; but bJfvfntures
through the intervention of Joseph Williamson, at this time ^list68*
the royal librarian, he succeeded in making representations mandates.
which served to relieve his conscience, however barren they
might prove of satisfactory results: their 'little College,' he
pleaded, had already 'received and obeyed ten royal letters,'
but it was imperative that their ' oaths should be regarded,'
the 'statutes preserved,' and 'some regard had to the will
of the noble foundress.' When mandates were ' so plentifully
granted, they could not possibly all be obeyed2.'
1 See supra, p. 616. 8 State Papers (u. s.), ccnc no. 137.
630 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP. v. In the mean time, More in his seclusion was carrying on
his studies, taking, apparently, no part in disputes which
threatened to imperil his amicable relations either with
those at Court or with the leaders of the Church. Nor did
he allow himself to be persuaded by Worthington into
attempting the compilation of a manual of Natural Philo-
More sophv. although the appearance of his Enchiridion Meta-
publisheshis r J. . ° _0 , . , , ..j
Enchiridion vhi/sicum in Ioo8, designed as an endeavour to build up
Metaphy- " J . .
ticum in a science of spiritualism, in opposition to the Cartesian
opposition to
Descartes, doctrines, may have been partly the result of his friend's
*sta>ra, representations in the letter above quoted*. Worthington
did not claim to be himself a teacher on such subjects, but
his opinion with regard to the performances of others was
Worthington held in high respect, and the pains he expended on the
John smith's papers left by John Smith, along with his admirable por-
Dtteourtet: traiture of their author and the eloquent tribute paid to the
memory of the latter by Simon Patrick, make up a volume1
of exceptional interest in relation to the entire history of
the Platonist movement.
In order clearly to understand the career and the bent of
the intellectual activity alike of Nathanael Culverwel and of
John Smith, it is to be noted that they were both natives
of Northamptonshire who entered at Emmanuel College
during the time that Whichcote was tutor, — the former in
1633 (when he was probably about sixteen), the latter in
1636, when already eighteen years of age. Culverwel's father,
Ezekiel, was father-in-law to Laurence Chaderton, the
cuiverleiof f°rmer master of the college2; and the son was perhaps
con™!""61 more distinctly Puritan in his sympathies than any other of
Feutei : the Platonists. The father, a personal friend of Sibbes, had
less. been suspended for nonconformity in 1585, and afterwards
1 SELECT DISCOURSES. By JOHN pages) is Worthington himself, who,
SMITH, late Fellow of Queens' College with his usual modesty, suppresses
in Cambridge. As also a SERMON his name on the title but appends it
preached by SIMON PATRICK (then to his 'To the Reader.'
Fellow of the same College) at the 2 See Of the Light of Nature. A
AUTHOR'S FUNERAL: with a brief Discourse by Nathanael Culverwel,
Account of his LIFE and DEATH. M.A. Edited by John Brown, D.D.
London, 1660. The author of the Edinburgh and London, 1857. Pre-
Account (which extends to 31 quarto face, p. xi.
JOHN SMITH. 631
became widely known as the author of a Treatise on Faith CHAP, v.
(1623) which went through seven editions; while the son, NATHANAKL
judging by the evidence afforded in his discourse entitled £f£w of
Mount Ebal, was a Covenanter whose sympathies were faSi.nuel :
altogether with the Puritan party throughout the Civil War,
and especially with Cromwell in his contest with the ' Popish
Rebels' in Ireland1. In 1642, he was elected to a fellowship
at Emmanuel; bub Smith, as a native of the same county JOHN SMITH,
J fellow of
was fain to migrate to Queens' in order to obtain like prefer- <^|™'.
ment, although not before he had become well known both £. Au8g. icsa.
to Whichcote and to Worthinerton, of whom the former, ™* .
o ' obligations
discerning his genius, not only gave him valuable advice whufhc
but also pecuniary aid2, — while the latter, who was the worthi
same age as himself but had entered four years earlier, lived his unler-
... , graduate
to be his life-long friend and, as above noted, the editor or*""**
his Discourses. In the Preface to these, Worthington bears
testimony to the fine qualities of which Smith had already
given evidence before he quitted their society, — 'his early
piety' and 'excellent improvements in the choicest parts of
learning.' 'I thought,' he adds, after referring to Which -
cote's kindness to his friend, that 'to such an one, I owed no
less care and diligence3.' Smith's election to his fellowship He migrates
r from
at Queens' took place in 1644, and the fact that he con- ^'oSe'ens-!
tinued to hold the same to his death, in August 1652, is
sufficient evidence that, like Culverwel, he had taken the Hi»
enthusiasm
Covenant. According to Worthington, he 'studied himself
into a consumption4,' and the extraordinary range of reading
1D.N.B. xm 288; Culverwel, singular regard.' Worthington, 'To
Mount Ebal (1669), p. 94: 'How the Reader,' p. vi.
many are there that have not shed a 3 Ibid. pp. vi-vii.
tear for Ireland!... How do you know, * 'I have sometimes told you of
but that if you had sent up more Mr Smith of Qu: Coll:, a person of
prayers to Heaven, God might have such eminency in Religion and in
freed the distressed Christians by all ingenuous learning. I question
this time?' Ibid. He is here refer- whether we shall long enjoy him in
ring to the events of 1641. this world. He hath for some two
2 '...to whom for his directions years been troubled with a cough,
and encouragements of him in his and I fear hath studied himself into
studies, his seasonable provision for a consumption.... He is now at Lon-
his support and maintenance when don consulting with Doctors, to see
he was a young scholar, as also upon if there be hope.' 'Yours J. W.
other obliging considerations, our April: 6: 1652.' Letter 'To Mr
Author did ever express a great and S. H.' Copied by Thomas Baker
632 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
cHAp.v. of which his writings give evidence would certainly lend
support to the statement; — still more so, when we consider
that he had to discharge the duties of dean and to lecture
in Hebrew in his college, and also on mathematics 'in the
I'^TWCK, Schools1.' The testimony of Simon Patrick, afterwards him-
ofEiy : self head of Queens', is to the same effect. Patrick was a
a. ITOT. poor student who had been admitted into the college soon
after Smith's election to his fellowship, and he would appear,
from the first, to have conceived for the brilliant young
fellow that admiration to which he was afterwards to give
such notable expression when it devolved on him to preach
adjoin?11011 hi8 funeral sermon. In that remarkable discourse, the
fiSera?. departed scholar was held up to the admiration of the
audience gathered together in the college chapel, as one
whose learning and intellectual power were alike abnormal, —
'he had such a huge, wide capacity of soul/ the preacher
affirmed, 'such a sharp and piercing understanding, such a
deep-reaching mind, that he set himself about nothing but
he soon grasped it and made himself a full possessour of it;
if we consider his great industry and indefatigable pains,' he
went on to say, ' his Herculean labours day and night from
his first coming to the university till the time of his long
sickness,... it must be concluded that he was a compre-
hensour of more than I can say or think of2.'
It was a frequent practice with the preachers of this
period, on similar occasions, to usher in any direct allusion
to the character and merits of the departed, by a more
detailed description of the heroic virtues and achievements
of some eminent character in Scripture narrative, — a device
that was not without its advantages, inasmuch as not a few
of the audience, and more especially the less critical among
their number, would thus be led to carry away with them
a vague impression that the terms employed in describing
some ancient prophet or leader of Israel were, to a certain
extent, applicable to the individual whose obsequies they
from original letter by Worthington, l Worthington, 'To the Eeader,'
in his possession, into copy of the p. x.
Select Discourses (xxxix) in St John's 2 Sermon (u. «.), p. 505.
College Library, P. 9. 30.
JOHN SMITH. 633
had attended. It is thus that Worthington, in his 'Address CHAP. v.
to the Reader/ prefixed to Smith's Discourses, is led to
descant on the virtues of Abraham and Moses as recognizable
in the career of his author; Patrick, in his funeral Sermon,
having already set the example by instituting a like com-
parison with the careers of Elijah and Elisha, — a parallel
which he pursues to the extent of finding a resemblance
between the mantle which Elijah let fall, to descend upon
Elisha, and 'the college Gown in which this Holy man used
for to walk1.' It may, however, be observed, in partial Examples of
J r early Church
extenuation of the unmeasured praise which pervades the ^J^^11
whole of Patrick's discourse, that he seems, on this occasion, to f^n is
have taken for his model such pulpit orators as the two m'
Gregorys of Nyssa and Nazianzus, and Dion Chrysostom,
in whose discourses the self-restraint of a Pericles or a
Demosthenes was exchanged for the florid rhetoric which
better suited the congregations that gathered in the early
churches of Cappadocia, or the habits of thought of a Greek
of the second century. 'The lines of the picture,' to quote
Tulloch's expression, 'lose themselves in vagueness and
generality'; and it is a relief to turn to the description, —
also borrowed, it is true, but this time from Eunapius, — of
John Smith as 'a living library,' and 'a walking study,' 'that special
J J merits
carried his learning about with him.' 'I never,' said Patrick, p"[j.^teto by
' got so much good among all my books by a whole day's ["fj^ ?
plodding in a study, as by an houre's conversation I have got
with him. For he was not a library lock'd up, nor a book smith's
» readiness to
clasped, but stood open for any to converse withall that h™^n^hat
had a mind to learn ____ And he was no less happy in express- inhabit Jai
ing his mind, then in conceiving; wherein he seems to have txprSSon,
excelled the famous philosopher, Plotin, of whom Porphyry conversation.
tells us, that he was something careless of his words,
IAOVOV TOV vov €-%6/j,€vo<f, but was wholly taken up into his
mind2.' To the like effect writes Worthington: 'I can very
1 ' ...me thinks I see Elisha bowing gown in which this Holy man used
down with some respect to the very for to walk, out of the great honour
mantle which fel from his Master, which I bear him.' Sermon preached
and taking it up as a precious relique at the Author's Funeral, pp. 500-1.
of so holy a man. And I could very 2 Ibid. pp. 506-7.
well pass some civility upon the
634 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v. well remember, when I have had private converse with him,
Testimony of how pertinently and freely he would speak to any matter
Worthington . . J J J
effect 8ame ProPosed ; how weighty, substantial and clearly expressive
of his sense his private discourses would be, and both for
matter and language much-what of the same importance
and value with such exercises as he studied for and performed
m™deof iQ publick1.' Not less creditable to his good sense, is the
tocoVntry testimony borne by his editor to the endeavour which he
tions. systematically made when preaching to a rural congregation,
'to accommodate his expressions to ordinary vulgar capacities,
being studious to be understood, and not to be ignorantly
wondered at by amusing the people either with high, unne-
cessary speculations, or with hard words and vain ostentations
of scholastic learning2.'
^treatise ^ careful study of John Smith's writings would seem,
indeed, to suggest that, had his life been prolonged, he
would have approved himself not inferior to More, in his
command of literary expression, and his superior as regarded
sound judgement in questions of philosophy; and on com-
paring these two writers, irr their method of dealing with the
same subject, that of the Immortality of the Soul, we have
evidence which further points to such a conclusion, although
the one composed his treatise, extending to only fifty-one
quarto pages, when he was not yet thirty, the other, when he
was in his fifty-fifth year, while his dissertation extends to
writtw°d ^^ pages folio. This disparity in length is, however, partially
different explained by the fact that the younger writer directs his
j^epucism. argument mainly against the ancient scepticism of Epicurus
and Lucretius, while the elder and later writer, although
concerning himself mainly with the philosophy of Hobbes
(at that time assuming an alarming prominence), also brings
forward for discussion certain other difficulties suggested by
Sctor18" n*8 own hi£nty imaginative subjectivity. Notwithstanding,
ofMonf-s however, the ingenuity of More's speculations and the
ision8' remarkable range of reading displayed throughout his pages,
the majority of his readers can hardly fail to experience a
certain disappointment at finding that, after a variety of
1 Preface 'To the Reader,' p. x. 2 Ibid. pp. xxvi-xxvii.
JOHN SMITH. 635
questions have been discussed, with somewhat vague con- VCHAP. v.
elusions, the author himself remains firmly convinced that a
belief in the soul's immortality necessarily involves a recog-
nition of the existence of ghosts, and that all that can with
certainty be predicated respecting its condition in a future
state, is that it will be an entity needing no food and casting
no shadow1.
Very different is the impression left upon the mind by f^es the
John Smith's less discursive treatment of his subject and ^?£M"*
skilful compression of his well-reasoned generalizations. To onfis,"sppor(
... , .-, , i i j j • argument ;
him, it seems that no evidence that can be adduced in he holds the
, , . . • i • belief in
support of the soul s immortality carries with it more potent immortality
conviction than that afforded by the historic fact of the ["^e^le
universality of the belief, — a certain consensus gentium, f^u^t'Lid
discernible throughout pagan times, fondly cherished by the [hecnucfsm
multitude, firmly maintained by philosophers like Plotinus,
Proclus and Aristotle; while he also finds it clearly involved
in a yet grander conception, revealing itself to the sanctified
human intellect2, as an inevitable corollary from the belief
in the Divine beneficence. 'The soul of every good man,'
he says, 'knows that God will never forsake His own life
which He hath quickened in it; He will never deny those
ardent desires of a blissful fruition of Himself, which the
lively sense of His own Goodness hath excited within it, —
those breathings and gaspings after an eternal participation
of Him are but the energy of His own breath within us; if
He had had any mind to destroy it, He would never have
shewn it such things as He has done; He would not raise it
up to such Mounts of Vision, to shew it all the glory of
that heavenly Canaan flowing with eternal and unbounded
pleasures, and then tumble it down again into that deep
1 The Immortality of the Soul, so reason, becomes, to quote the expres-
farre forth as it is demonstrable from sion of Solomon, the true 'candle of
the Knowledge of NATURE and the the Lord' (Proverbs, xx 27), and
Light of REASON. By Henry More, acquires what Culverwel terms a
D.D. Fellow of Christ's College in 'directive force,' as 'the leading and
Cambridge. London, 1662. Fol. guiding power ' (TO fryffj.ovi.K6>>) ' of the
2 To the understanding, that is to soul.' See Culverwel, Light of
say, which, by habitually conform- Nature (ed. 1669), p. 125; Culverwel-
ing to the dictates of the voice of Brown, p. 125.
636 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v. and darkest abyss of Death and Non-entity1.' He then
proceeds to cite from Plotinus the well-known passage wherein
that philosopher declares that it is precisely in proportion
to the extent to which the soul departs from the path of
rectitude that it grows cold to the belief in its own immor-
tality; and that, when a man's life has been given to indul-
gence in 'base and earthly passions,' the wish begets the
disbelief, and men are thus 'led to deny the immortality
which they are unfitted to enjoy2.' On the other hand, all
vice being unnatural to the soul and essentially adventitious,
the truly virtuous man gradually becomes conscious of being
himself participant, like the Angels, in the Divine nature;
and, if all were as he, 'there could be no such Infidels as
would in any sort disbelieve the Soul's immortality3.'
m™dehof But the contrast between these two widely different
aesubjlc7th modes of dealing with a great psychological problem is
w'ith'that of something more than what we should expect to find between
Culverwcl
a series of brief discourses, delivered in a college chapel by a
young divine, as yet unknown to fame, and an elaborate
treatise by a writer with an already established reputation
which it was his aim still further to enhance ; and the really
original features in Smith's treatment of his subject will be
more perceptible, and acquire additional illustration, on a
comparison with another but not less remarkable production
of the Platonist school, first given to the world in the year
in which he died.
In order fully to realize the conditions under which the
1 A Discourse demonstrating the himself to be 'not without some
Immortality of the Soul, c. vii ; Dis- small truth in it, if rightly limited
courses, pp. 102-3. and understood ' (Philosophical Writ-
2 Ato Kcd, el TTO.S ai>6p<inros TOIOVTOS ings (1662), p. 291). The first edition
TJV 17 TrXTjflos TI TOIO.VTO.I.S \f/vxais Kexpr)- of More's Immortality of the Soul
fjievov, ovdeis oi/rws av j\v dirurTos, ws appeared in 1659, the year preceding
/tTj viffTetieii' TO TT)S ^i>x??s allots irdvTrj that in which Worthington published
a6d.va.Tov elvai. Enneads,iv vii 15, ed. John Smith's Discourses; while the
Miiller (H. F.), n 120. More, on the second edition, that contained in the
other hand, while ignoring this foregoing edition of More's Philoso-
passage, prefers to cite another phical Writings, in which some
(Enneads, iv iv 45) wherein Plotinus reference to Smith's volume might
discusses the comparative degrees of have been looked for, is a mere
future happiness, which the good and bookseller's reprint.
the wicked are entitled to cherish, — 3 Discourses, p. 104: Campagnac,
a passage loftily pronounced by More p. 142.
CULVERWEL. 637
Light of Nature was conceived, we must bear in mind that, CHAP, v.
although not published until 1652, it had been written six circum-
stances
years before, when the author was probably under thirty X"ed|^^
years of age1. That he was greatly indebted to Whichcote, written. was
and echoed the doctrine and sentiments of his illustrious Sdlbatedness8
teacher with noteworthy fidelity, has been pointed out by to
his latest editor2; but it is not less certain that his treatise Genuine
originality
displays remarkable originality and that his ideas are as ^^^
striking as they are admirably expressed. As regards general designed'
literary excellence, he may be said to divide with John Smith Sftroauction
. . ., to the inquiry
the claim to rank foremost among the rlatomsts, while in which he had
proposed to
the skilful irony to which he occasionally resorts in the course himself-
of his argument, he is unrivalled among the number. If,
again, Smith's premature end was hastened by his devotion
to study, Culverwel's career was doubtless cut short by the
ardour with which he pursued the end he had in view; and
although what he actually accomplished was little more than
a brilliant exposition of the conditions and assumptions
essential to the prosecution of his main inquiry, the claim
of an eminent critic, — that the Light of Nature ' must ever
assert a prominent place in English speculation on the
origin of knowledge and the foundation of certainty3,' — can
hardly be called in question.
It is evident, from his opening chapter, that the author His own
1 . description
did not conceal from himself the magnitude of the task upon °[[|JgSCOpe
which he had embarked, — that of 'giving to reason the Jhtehlfe
things that are reason's, and unto faith the things that ^phS.
are faith's.' It requires, he says, 'our choicest thoughts, the
exactest discussion that can be,' 'to give faith her full scope
and latitude, and to give reason also her just bounds and
limits.' 'This' [i.e. reason] 'is the first-born, but the other'
1 'The Discourse of the Light of * The Cambridge Platonists, being
Nature (which, though here it beare Selections from the Writings of Ben-
the torch before the rest, is younger jamin Whichcote, John Smith and
brother to them all) was written Nathanael Culverwel, with INTRODUC-
above six years ago.' William Dil- TION by E. T. Campagnac, M.A.
lingham, 'To the Reader,' prefixed Oxford, 1901. See Introduction, pp.
to An Elegant and learned Discourse xxxii-xxxiii.
of the Light of Nature, etc. (4th ed., :i Cairns (Jo.), Critical Essay (pre-
Oxford, 1669) and dated 'Cambr. fixed to edition of The Light of
Aug. 10. 1652.' Nature by Brown), p. xxxix.
638 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP.V. [i.e. faith] 'has the blessing.' In the course of his treatise,
he amplifies this celebrated dictum, and points out that the
Limitations light of reason is 'derived.' 'All created excellency.' he says,
under which , . •* J
cuiverwei 'shines with borrowed beams, so that reason is but "a spark
accepts
°f the Divine light," "a faint breathing of the Divine breeze"
(scintilla divinae lucis, divinae particula aurae)1.' Such is
the assumption which underlies his whole treatment of his
subject, namely that the function of Faith is superior to
that of Reason. Reason discerns the existence of a God;
the eye of Faith, a Trinity of Persons ; the former recognizes
the immortality of the soul, 'Faith spies out the resurrection
of the body.' ' Revealed truths are never against reason ;
they will always be above reason2.' ' It will be honour
enough for reason to shew that faith does not oppose reason;
and this it may, it must, shew ; for else, " those that are
within " the enclosure of the Church will never rest satisfied,
nor " those that are without," Pagans, Mahometans, Jews,
ever be convinced3.'
While thus asserting what Cairns describes as 'the
essential supra-naturalism of the Christian illumination,' it
was the author's design to relegate to a subsequent treatise
the evidence and the arguments whereby he intended to
shew, first, that all the moral law is founded in natural and
common light, — in the light of Reason; and, secondly, that
there is nothing in the mysteries of the Gospel contrary to
Reason, nothing repugnant to this light that shines from
' the candle of the Lord4.' But Cuiverwei was never able to
carry his great design into effect, and there is no evidence
that, at the time of his death, he had even commenced to
put his ideas on paper. In the mean time, his audience in
1 Ed. 1669, p. 71 ; Cuiverwei- of Aquinas, and multitudes of others
Brown, p. 121. that are of the same judgement,
2 Here, accordingly, he sides with that human reason, when it has
the Schoolmen: 'There are some stretched itself to the uttermost, is
authors, of great worth and learning, not at all proportioned to them ;
that endeavour to maintain this but, at the best can give onely some
opinion, that revealed truths, though faint illustrations, some weak adum-
they could not be found by reason, brations of them.' Edit. 1669,
yet when they are once revealed, p. 142; Cuiverwei -Brown, p. 229.
reason can then evince them and 3 Ed. 1669, p. 142 ; Culverwel-
demonstrate them. But I much Brown, pp. 229-230.
rather incline to the determinations * Cuiverwei -Brown, p. 25.
CULVERWEL. 639
Emmanuel chapel were privileged to listen to a series of CHAP, v.
profound disquisitions designed to render more intelligible
what is to be understood by ' Nature,' what by ' Law,' and
what by the ' Light of Reason ' ; while, in the course of his He urges
J that within
argument, he appeals, like John Smith, to the Consent of?™1''"""8
o IT JT tnetcstmioiiy
Nations (a noteworthy chapter) with respect to the ph-^^er1
fundamental laws of nature herself, declaring it to be ' no disregarded.
disparagement to Jew nor Christian, to mix the light of
their candle with that light which comes shining from the
candle of a heathen1.'
So far, however, as it is possible to discern the facts, it HIS mental
break-down.
would appear that for at least five years before his death,
Culverwel's labours were altogether suspended; while a
singular mystery involves his life during that time. He
became haughty and reserved in his bearing, and eventually
fell into a deep melancholy from which he never rallied and
the cause of which can only be conjectured. But it is not
improbable that the marked favour shewn him by Whichcote,
together with a justifiable confidence in his own powers but
a possibly undue self-concentration in his cherished designs,
may have caused others to regard with jealousy his rising
reputation. Former stolid opponents of the statute de Mora
at Emmanuel, occupied chiefly with the discharge of some
college office, while waiting for the preferment which never
came, eyed with sullen aversion the brilliant young fellow
who was thus attracting to himself a popularity which they
deemed altogether beyond his standing and proved attain-
ments; while he, apparently, lacked that personal charm
of manner with which More disarmed his critics, and although
he had published nothing2, sometimes retorted on his oppo-
nents with more courage than discretion. ' There were His personal
popularity
some,' he was heard to say in college chapel, ' so strangely ij?[h£dized
prejudiced against Reason (and that upon sufficient reason sonfe'oTm^
too, as they think, which yet involves a flat contradiction), as
that they look upon it not as the Candle of the Lord, but as
on some blazing Comet, that portends present ruin to the
Church and to the soul, and carries a fatal and venomous
1 Ibid. p. 120. 2 See infra, p. 641, n. 4.
640 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v. influence along with it1.' Considering, again, how much he
and More had in common, it was hardly prudent for him to
differ, so openly as he did, from one whose Poems were
already well known and much admired, — first, by rejecting
the theory of the prae-existence of the Soul, and then, just
when the latter was in the first fever of his early admiration
denunciation °f tne genius of Descartes, to brand the famous Cogito ergo
prim?arCyrtes sum as 'a mere reduplication of the evidence of consciousness
which still left the intellect condemned to hopeless scepti-
cism2,' thus striking at a great reputation towards which the
attitude of Christ's, and Cambridge generally, was at that
time distinctly favourable. Cudworth, with whom he was
^thrMore0ns intellectually far more in sympathy than with More, was
andTuckney- engrossed in his duties as master of Clare; while Tuckney,
as head of Emmanuel, was already gravitating towards those
conclusions which impelled him, a few years later, to write
his first letter to Whichcote3. Culverwel, not improbably,
felt that his tenure of his fellowship was precarious, while
at the same time he was conscious of the vast labours
that still awaited him before he could bring his main project
to accomplishment, — the 'porch,' indeed (to use his own
metaphor), was already erected, and the ante-chapel fully
designed4, but the outlines of the chapel itself were still
incomplete, and his work seemed only half begun. Despair
supervened upon despondency; he discoursed no more, he
wrote no more, but wandered forth from his study, shunning
HU death: intercourse with his fellows, and early in the latter half of
circ. August _ _ *
1651. 1651 passed silently away, the object it would seem of
circum- general commiseration. This was in the interval, appa-
under which rentlv, between the delivery of Whichcote's Commencement
it took place. * ' •
oration, upholding the claims of recta Ratio, and Tuckney 's
1 The Light of Nature (1669), xxxviii, xxxix.
p. 21. Culverwel-Brown, p. 18. 3 See supra, p. 591.
2 Ibid. p. 124; Culverwel-Brown, 4 'But indeed it' [the Spiritual
p. 203. ' Descartes, the French phi- Opticks] ' was intended only to bear
losopher, resolves all his assurances the Mace into the world before that
into thinking that he thinks, — why learned and elegant treatise which
not into thinking that he sees, and this ingenious Author hath left behind
why may he not be deceived in that, him concerning the Light of Nature.'
as in any other operations?' On Dillingham (W.), 'To the Reader,'
which see Cairns, Critical Essay, pp. prefixed to the Spiritual Opticks.
CULVERWEL. 641
angry letter, — the latter dictated, as the writer affirmed, CHAP, v.
'by zeal for God's Glory and Truth,' and the desire that
'young ones may not be tainted1.' Such being Tuckney's
implied accusation, Whichcote's indignant retort was a
skilful homethrust : ' If I have any way tainted the minds
of young ones with error and falsehood,' he rejoined, ' blessed
be the man, whosoever he be, that confutes that error2,' while
in reply to the imputation that he had sought to make the
claims of Reason paramount : ' I have declared/ he writes in
his third Letter, ' the qualitie and fittness of the principle,
as from God, in the hand of God, " the candle of the Lord, —
res illuminata illuminans." With all my heart and soule I
acknowledge and assert, the Holie Spirit's superintendencie,
conduct, presence, influence, guidance, government of man's
mind, — in the discerning of the things of God.' ' I oppose
not rational to spiritual,' he subsequently writes, ' for spiritual
is most rational. But I contra-distinguish rational to con-
ceited, impotent, affected CANTING3.'
It was probably in concert with Whichcote, that William
Dillingham at Emmanuel, now determined, in order to
vindicate the memory of his 'departed friend,' to publish
one of his briefer discourses4, and selected that entitled
Spiritual Opticks, the burden of which is, the essential HIS spiritual
Opticks is
imperfection which, — despite of Ordinances, Schoolmen and l^'
Divines, — must ever envelope all human apprehension of DM.
revealed Truth. ' There remains,' Culverwel had written, in
bringing his Discourse to its conclusion, ' the visio recta, a
sight of God face to face, to know as we are known. But
this hereafter.' 'READER,' subjoined Dillingham,
' What this to know as we are knoion should be,
The Author could not tell, but's gone to see5.'
1 Eight Letters, p. 5. The refer- fection of a Christian's Kn-owledg in
ence, consequently, would be more this Life. By Nathanael Culverwel,
probably to those whom Culverwel Master of Arts, and lately Fellow of
had inspired by his discourses, than Emmanuel Colledge in Cambridge,
(as Tulloch conjectures) to Culverwel Oxford, 1668. Dillingham' s 'To the
himself. See Rational Theology in Reader,' dated 'Emman. Dec. 1651,'
England, n 412. clearly proves that, prior to that
'2 Eight Letters, p. 8. date, none of Culverwel's writings
3 Ibid. pp. 99-100, 108. had been published or printed.
4 Spiritual Opticks: or a Glasse, 5 Ibid. p. 196.
discovering the weaknesse and imper-
M. III. 41
642 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v. We may infer that the Spiritual Opticks was favourably
received, for, in the following August, Dillingham published
the Lifffo of Nature1, with a Dedication to Tuckney and the
Fellows of Emmanuel, as a collection of Discourses ' conceived
in your College and delivered in your Chappel'; and also
Dedication -,11 i • i ' » •• «
to Master and expressing the hope that you, who with much delight were
Emmanuel, sometimes ear-witnesses of it, will now become its Suscep-
tours.' The volume, with its ample margins and typo-
graphical ornamentation, is, as Dillingham describes it, ' an
elegant issue ' ; and he avails himself of the ' opportunity to
let both yourselves and others understand, how deep an
impression your kindnesse to him ' [the author] ' hath left in
the apprehensions and memories of those his friends whom
God and Nature had given the advantage of being more
peculiarly interested in his well-fare.' There is also reference
made, at the commencement of the Dedication, to the 'many
Richard testimonies of your real affection towards this pious and
Culverwel *
klmtaws16 learned Authour, especially while he lay under the discipline
of so sad a Providence2,' an allusion which is further explained
°ntl
to >i°nl by a second ' To the Reader3,' from the pen of the author's
vindicates brother Richard Culverwel, who, remote from the univer-
liim from
the charge sity. and being, as he describes himself, only ' the ruins of a
of arrogance J • o> J
crazie body,' had been unable to come to Cambridge, but now
takes occasion, in turn, to point out how, ' in this treatise we
may perceive how the Gentiles candle outwent us with our
sunbeams ; how they, guided only by the glimmering twilight
of Nature, outstrip't us, who are surrounded with the rays
of supernatural light of revealed Truth'; while he concludes
by urging, — in extenuation, apparently, of any eccentricity of
behaviour his brother may have manifested, — that ' it is hard
for men to be under affliction, but they are liable to cen-
1 An Elegant and Learned Dis- Master of Arts, and lately Fellow of
course of the Light of Nature, with Emanuel Colledge in Cambridge.
several other Treatises: viz. The Oxford, 1669. See also p. 637, n. 1.
Schisme. The Act of Oblivion. The 2 Ibid. A 2.
Child's Eeturne. The Panting Soul. * Unpaged, immediately preced-
Mount Ebal. The White Stone. ing the Discourse. The first 'To
Spiritual Opticks. The Worth of the Reader,' is that by Dillingham,
Souls4. By Nathanael Culverwel, quoted supra, p. 641, n. 4.
CULVEKWEL. 643
sures1'; 'and so,' he goes on to say, 'it fared with him, who CHAP. v.
was looked upon by some, as one whose eyes were lofty and
whose eyelids lifted up ; who bare himself too high upon a
conceit of his parts, although they that knew him intimately
are most willing to be his compurgators in this particular2.'
In reality, none of the Platonists, Cudworth perhaps His
. r impartiality
excepted, appears to have possessed the same genuine philo- j^^fts "!
sophical discernment, while, as Cairns observes, he was ' free a»i^rentf
from the prejudice of all schools'; and, as that able critic schools-
proceeds to point out, ' while he defends " the immortal
name of Aristotle " against Bacon's unfounded charge of
neglecting his predecessors, he is himself just to "the great
and noble Verulam"; though a zealous Protestant, is warm
in his praise of the Jesuit Suarez ; and his strong convic-
tions, as a Christian and a Puritan, do not repress his cordial
appreciation of Lord Herbert of Cherbury3.' It was the His defence
same breadth of judgement that led him (a point of contrast, f£"°S?m
it is to be noted, when compared with John Smith4), to e0Tii°I^*aL
discern the value of the mental discipline resulting from with1 poults
syllogistic reasoning, and consequently to denounce those
' weak and staggering apprehensions which are afraid of
understanding anything; and think that the very name of
Reason, especially in a pulpit, in matters of religion, must
needs have at least a thousand heresies couched in it. If
you do but offer to make a syllogism,' he adds, 'they'l
straightway cry it down for carnal reasoning5.' Such lan-
guage was little calculated to win for the writer the favour
of that Calvinistic party to which he had at one time
belonged, and whose influence, at the time that he delivered
1 The writer is here evidently why, notwithstanding all our acute
designing (as is shewn by his refer- reasonings and subtile disputes,
ence to Luke xiii 2-4) to rebut the Truth prevails no more in the world
notion that his brother's malady, is, we so often disjoyn Truth and
whatever may have been its charac- true Goodness, which in themselves
ter, was to be interpreted as a mani- can never be disunited, — they grow
festation of the Divine displeasure. both from the same Eoot and live in
2 'To the Header' (u. «.). one another.' True Way or Method
3 Culverwel -Brown, p. xxxii. of attaining to Divine Knowledge,
4 'It is but a thin, aery knowledge Discourses, p. 4.
that is got by meer speculation, 8 Discourse of the Light of Nature
which is usher'd in by Syllogisms (1669), p. 2; Culverwel-Brown,
and Demonstrations. '...'The reason p. 18.
41—2
644
THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONLSTS.
CHAP. V.
Romans,
More's
Conjectura
Cabbalistica.
1653.
His
Dedication
of same to
Cudworth
his Discourse, was becoming predominant in the university;
but a yet bolder assertion of his independence as a thinker,
is that presented by his repudiation of what Tulloch goes
so far as to stigmatize as ' the prevalent delusion of the
Cambridge school,' — namely, the theory that all moral as
well as spiritual knowledge may be ultimately traced back
to Jewish sources, and that even Pythagoras and Plato, in
common with ' the whole generality of the Heathen, went a
gleaning in the Jewish fields.' Culverwel admits, indeed,
that those two philosophers were ' especially notable gleaners,'
'so that they stole out of the very sheaves,' — 'out of those
Truths,' that is to say, ' that are bound up in the Sacred
volume,' — referring, of course, to the Hebrew original or the
Septuagint. ' Yet all this while,' he continues, ' they ne'er
stole first Principles nor Demonstrations ; but they had them
oiKoOev, and needed not to take such a long journey for them.
Give then unto the Jew the things of the Jews, and to the
Gentile the things that are the Gentiles; and that which
God has made common, call not thou peculiar. The Apostle
Paul's question is here very seasonable : *H 'lovSaicov 6 @eo<?
/AOVOV; ov%i Se /cat eOvwv; val, KOI effv&v*1.' 'Nowhere,' in
Tulloch's opinion, does Culverwel 'shew higher sense and
penetration2.'
It is with similarly cogent reasoning that he proceeds to
combat a theory which, in less than two years after his
death, was again advanced, with a great parade of learning,
by Henry More, in his Conjectura Cabbalistica3. This eccen-
tric treatise, which, as reprinted in his collected writings in
1662, extends to 184 folio pages, exhibits much of the author's
habitual precipitancy, not to say recklessness, of assertion,
of which indeed the Dedication, to Cudworth, might alone
serve as an example, the latter, who had just been elected to
1 Ibid. p. 55; Culverwel-Brown,
p. 97.
2 Rational Theology, n 424.
3 Conjectura Cabbalistica: or A
Conjectural Essay of interpreting the
Mind of Moses, in the Three first
Chapters of Genesis, according to a
threefold CABBALA: viz. Literal, Phi-
losophical, Mystical, or Divinely
Moral. By Henry More, D.D. Fellow
of Christ's College in Cambridge.
London, 1653 [also in his Collec-
tions: London, 1662. Fol.]
CULVERWEL. 645
the mastership of Christ's College, being singled out by CHAP, v.
More for even more than his customary adulation, to which «hos? ,
* learning he
he gives expression in terms only comparable, in this respect, -nterm^of8
to his first letter to Descartes1. ' Concerning the choice of eulogy?8*"1*
my patron,' he writes at the outset, ' / shall say no more
than that the sole inducement thereto was his singular
learning and piety. The former of which is so conspicuous
to the world, that it is universally acknowledged of all ; and
for the latter, there is none that can be ignorant thereof,
who has ever had the happiness, though but in a smaller
measure, of his more free and intimate converse2.' Forget-
ful, apparently, of what he has already said, he however
returns to the same theme in his conclusion, where in like
fulsome strain, he avers that he does ' not know where to
meet with any so universally and fully accomplished as
yourself, as well in the Oriental tongues and History, as in
all the choicest Kindes of Philosophy; any one of which
acquisitions is enough to fill, if not to swell, an ordinary man
with great conceit and pride ; whereas it is your sole privi-
lege to have them all, and yet not to take upon you, nor to
be anything more imperious, or censorious of others, then
they ought to be that know the least3.' A dedication thus
negligently penned would hardly seem to have been the
proper place for entering into particulars with respect to the
subject-matter of the treatise itself; but, notwithstanding,
we find interposed between the two quotations above given a
description and partial vindication of the theories which 'he
has sought in the subsequent pages to set forth, among ^fc°hri^
them being those of the prae-existence of the soul, of the J™£| back
rotation of the Earth on its own axis, and of the doctrine of oefthelng
the Trinity, all of which he asserts to be distinctly traceable MOSM?
back to Moses, as their original author, adducing, in support
of his conclusions, passages from a vast literature, both
sacred and profane, of history, science and philosophy.
It was this assumption, — whereby, to quote the expres-
sion of Frederick Denison Maurice, ' the un spiritual Hebrew
1 See supra, pp. 606-7. 2 'Epistle Dedicatory,' p. 1.
3 Ibid. Eee v.
646 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v. becomes the necessary and inevitable medium of transmit-
criticismof ting spiritual apprehensions to the equally unspiritual
t^ory by Gentile,' — that, when holding the chair of Moral Philosophy
Ma°urice.r ™ *ne university in the nineteenth century, the same
eminent writer found himself unable to characterize other-
wise than as 'perplexing and unaccountable1'; while, taken
in conjunction with Culverwel's unanswerable censure of
the theory of the involved tradition, it goes far to deprive
the whole movement with which we are now concerned of
i^More's any claim t° be regarded as that of a ' School.' We may,
of^ny6 however, reasonably assume that, although some twelve
^uivemd*.0 months intervened between the publication of The Light of
Nature and that of the Gonjectura Cabbalistica, More had
not read the former when he composed the latter; had he
done so, he might have been able, in some measure, to retort
upon the author with an effective criticism of the passage in
which the latter had ventured to call in question the axiom
His "•«-.. , of Descartes. But before very long, More had himself
nunciation of J
cartesianism mO(jinec[ his opinions ; and when, in 1671, he published his
tieta'phy-™ Enchiridion Metaphysicum*, we find his attitude towards the
DedTcationto Cartesian philosophy completely changed. The work is
Sheldon ; dedicated to Sheldon, and in the prefatory pages we find the
author again seeking to re-adjust his relations with the
philosophers, which he does, with his customary dexterity,
by professing his sympathy with the proceedings of the
Royal Society and avowing his complete severance from the
doctrines of Cartesianism. At Lambeth, the archbishop had
intimated confidentially to More, that personally he was
disposed to look upon the new ' free method of philosophiz-
ing' with far from unfriendly sentiments, but provided always,
he added, ' that the faith, the peace, and the institutions of
the Church were not thereby menaced'; and, in the pages
1 Maurice (Rev. Fred. Denison), Leges Cartesii Mechanicas obiter
Modern Philosophy (1862), p. 349. expenduntur, illiusque Philosophiae
2 Enchiridion Metaphysicum : sive et aliorum omnino omnium qui Mun-
de Rebus incorporeis succincta (& dana Phaenomena in Causas pure
luculenta Dissertatio. Pars prima: Mechanicas solvi posse supponunt,
de Existentia & Natura Rerum In- Vanitas Falsitasque detegitur. Per
corporearum in Genere. In qua H. M. Cantabrigiensem. Londini,
quamplurima Mundi Phaenomena ad 1671.
MORE ATTACKS DESCARTES. 647
of his new treatise, More had taken occasion to point out
how, in not a few instances, the experiments in natural
science, carried on under the auspices of the Society, had
seemed to strengthen rather than impair the presumptive
evidence for the existence of the Supernatural1. The
primate and the philosopher, accordingly, were on this
point in full accord ; but on turning from the Dedication to the
' Address to the Reader,' we find the author's sentiments *oe
with regard to Cartesianism altogether changed. Descartes ttt
himself is styled 'chief of the Nullibists'; and his theory of ^™"8 thc
' mechanical causes,' of which More had before expressed his cartef
unbounded admiration2, is now denounced by him as involv- to'true
........ i T • Religion and
ing a theory inimical, in the highest degree, to the principles exposes the
of religious belief. Considering, however, that a quarter of }||™lv$ in
a century had already passed. since the time when Descartes
first put forth, or ventilated (in letters to his friends) his
hypothesis with respect to the modus operandi recognizable
in various natural phenomena, — not a few of which were
highly ingenious while all were creditable to the originality
of their propounder, — and bearing in mind, at the same
time, the advance made by philosophic observation and
experiment during that eventful interval, — it would have
called for the exercise of no great magnanimity, — while
recording, where necessary, the disproof of any conjecture in
relation to a particular phenomenon, — to criticize such efforts
in the spirit of Bossuet and Leibniz, rather than that of
bishop Parker of Oxford and John Sergeant. As it is, how-
ever, we find More simply exultant in the production of
more than a dozen instances of misconceptions on the part
of Descartes, with respect to the natural processes involved
in certain phenomena,— as, for example, the action of the tides
1 ' Verum et id praeter caetera me nostrae, Theologicas utique, promo-
ad hoc propositum stimulabat, quod vendas in hoc Opere adhibemus ; et
sperabam non injucundum tibi futu- quam clare ex eorum Corporeorum
rum spectaculum, quum videbis Experimentorum lumine Rerum In-
quam apposite nos, Deo aspirante, corporearum existentiam demonstra-
eximia quaedam Experimenta Philo- mus. Quod certe praecipuum est
sophicae illius Societatis Londinen- omnis Religionis veraeque Theologiae
sis, quam Serenissimus Rex ad aeter- fulcrum." Epist. Dedicat., sig. 3,
nam sui Nominis memoriam tarn aus- sig. 3 v.
picato instituit, ad res Facultatis 2 See supra, p. 607.
648 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v. and the attractive properties of the magnet, — and full of
affected commiseration for their author. ' Alas ! ' he ex-
claims, ' for the mechanical philosophy, surpassing all other
superstitions in credulity and folly 1 1 '
Nor is this remarkable change of attitude, — a change
very imperfectly accounted for by Tulloch's observation, that
' More was never a follower of Descartes, in the sense of
having ceased to be a follower of Plato,' — to be looked upon
merely as a further example of his wonted precipitancy and
uncertainty of judgement, a feature in his writings, which
was probably regarded by many of his contemporaries as
more than excusable amid the widespread defection from
former traditions which characterized the period between
unsatisfac- the years 1660 and 16852. It is to be noted that, even
tory features ,„,. , • , i TN i « •
in his final before his correspondence with Descartes was at an end, his
attitude
Descartes correspondent had probably incurred his displeasure, by
declining, firmly though courteously, to embark with him in
an enquiry as to the . personality and attributes of Angels3;
while it is not altogether satisfactory to find, that, on being
informed of Clerselier's design of publishing the foregoing
correspondence, More implored him not to print the originals
OmeHeri* -of his own letters, and proceeded to devote more than a
month to the preparation of revised copies, which were to
appear, it is to be observed, when Descartes was no longer
alive4. The causes of his complete change of tone, as above
described, are to be sought, however, elsewhere.
Down to the Restoration, it had been More's chief claim
and pride to have succeeded in reviving at the university
1 '^0 Mechanicam Philosophiam Divine Dialogues, ' Publisher to the
pra^ omni Superstitione credulam et Header,' sig. a3 to a4.
fatuam!' Ad Lectorem PRAEFATIO 3 '...nee me unquam de iis [i.e.
B v. angelis], de quibus nullam habeo
2 See Tulloch (M.S.), n 373-6. certain rationem, quicquam deter-
More's complete change of tone is minare, et conjecturis locum dare.'
somewhat severely commented on Descartes to More. Ibid, v 402.
by Descartes' latest editors: ' M. 4 '...si tibi visum fuerit, meas ad
Descartes avoit d'autres amis en Cartesium litteras publicare, vehe-
Angleterre d'une plus grande impor- menter hoc abs te efflagito, ut ne
tance, et moins capable de cette fiat juxta ilia exemplaria quae jam
inconstance qui a paru dans la con- habes, quia multo correctiora tibi
duite de M. Morus.' Adam and paro.' Letter of 14 May 1655.
Tannery, Correspondence, iv 583, n. 2; Ibid, v 236.
see also Ward (u. s.), pp. 63-4 ; More,
GEORGE RUST. 649
the study of two great philosophers, — of whom the one had CHAP. v.
taught on the banks of the Ilissus. in the fourth century His studies.
0 * prior to the
before Christ, the other, in Rome, in the third century after ^"ration>
Christ, — and to have exhibited them, as in agreement not o^iT1 to
only with each other but also with Christian doctrine. In phl1
the endeavour so to do, it must be admitted that he ignored,
or was ignorant of, much that philosophy had essayed or
achieved during the six centuries that divide Plato from
Plotinus; and in comparing the two, he seems equally
unconscious that, what Creuzer terms the ' silent soliloquies '
of the latter, are often little more than echoes of the
Dialogues of the former. But from this tranquil atmosphere of The growth
i M ' i • • i p /-^i • •> r^ i* -i of scepticism
philosophic enquiry, the recluse of Christ s College now found with regard
himself suddenly summoned to bear his part in the defence r^°" ™d
of those beliefs which he professed to hold most dear, — the ^"direct wf
considerations which made it especially imperative on him £ontein-n tc
to do so having assumed a new importance at nearly the aspects of
. . . . . Belief-
same time that his admiration of Cartesian doctrines was
beginning thus perceptibly to wane, while the existence and
gravity of these considerations had also recently been pointed
out, with unmistakeable clearness and great force by a fellow
of his own college.
George Rust, who, like Jeremy Taylor, was a native of GEORGE
Cambridge, had graduated in 1647 from St Catherine's, but of Dromons:
two years later had succeeded in gaining a fellowship at ms election
Christ's. Here his abilities soon attracted the notice of fellowship at
Christ's
Cudworth ; and in 1657, we find him employed as bearer ^ege>
of an important letter to Thurloe, in which the master of
Christ's, after commending some ten other members of the
university as highly 'qualified for civill employments,' pro-
ceeds to describe Rust himself as ' an understanding, pious, cudworth-s
discreet man ' of ' exceeding good parts and a general scholar, Jus worth
& & r & and abilities:
but one that seemes not so willing to divert himselfe from 165T-
preaching and divinity, which he hath of late intended1.' At
1 Cudworth-Birch, i viii. This Glanvil, twenty-five years later,
letter is without date in Birch, but points to the same qualities: 'a man
is assigned, on circumstantial evi- he was of a clear mind, a deep judg-
dence, by Tulloch (n 433) to the date ment, and searching wit ; greatly
given. The description of Rust by learned in all the best sorts of know-
650 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v. the time when this letter was written, Rust had already
become well known throughout the university, by his
memorable Discourse of Truth, — delivered in the first
instance, in 1651, as a 'common-place' in Christ's College
chapel, along with a ' Preface,' — his text, on that occasion,
^course at Deing Proverbs xx 27 1) — and again, four years later, from the
stMary-s: pulpit of Great St Mary's, when, in a second prefatory
exposition, he descanted on John xviii 38 2. In the former
Preface, he maintained it to be almost self-evident, that ' by
g£j££ j* " the Candle of the Lord " is meant nothing else but Truth,'
— 'for,' he urges, 'Truth is the Light of the Intellectual
World, and the Soul of Man is so far the Candle of the Lord,
as it is identified with Truth3.' On this latter occasion,
when his pregnant sentences were manifestly designed to call
attention to the gravity of the crisis which had supervened
upon the famous Proclamation of Cromwell4, the orator
roused himself to a notable effort to redeem, if possible, the
conception of ' Truth ' itself, from the reproach of being
nothing more than an accepted form of belief in relation to
religion and morality, which a nation, a community, a sect,
might agree to recognize as embodying the temporary per-
suasions of a certain majority.
The exclusive 'The foundations that men have so long built their opinions and
possession of
Truth the faith upon,' cried the preacher, 'are shaken and staggered in this
claim of r
every sect sceptical age. Every one, upon a particular and several sect, is in
religion both quest of Truth ; and so foolish and full of vain affectation is the mind
and tn^past. of man, that each one confidently believes himself in the right, and,
however others call themselves, that he and those of his party are the
only Orthodox. Should we go abroad in the world, and ask as many
as we meet, What is Truth?, we should find it a changeable and
uncertain notion, which every one cloath's his own apprehensions with.
ledge, old and new, a diligent en- singular contrast to the two 'Pre-
quirer, of a free understanding and faces' by which it was accompanied,
vast capacity, joined with singular and which Tulloch appears not to
modesty and sweetness of temper," have seen. See Halliwell's Preface
etc. Letter prefixed to Discourse of to his Remains of Dr George Rust.
Truth (1682). Of the Discourse itself London, 1686.
Tulloch says that, though ' clearly * See supra, p. 639.
and well written,' 'it has no sub- 2 'Pilate saith unto him, "What
stance or originality of argument'; is Truth?'"
and, as regards vigour and method 3 Halliwell (u.s.), p. 23.
of treatment, it certainly stands in 4 See supra, p. 472.
RUST'S DISCOURSE AT ST MARY'S. 651
Truth is in every sect and party, though they speak inconsistences CHAP, v.^
among themselves and contradictions to one another. Truth is the
Turkish Alcoran, the Jewish Talmud, the Papists' Councils, the Pro-
testants' Catechisms and Models of divinity, — each of these in their
proper place and region. Truth is a various uncertain thing, and
changes with the air and the climate, — 'tis Mahomet at Constantinople,
the Pope at Rome, Luther at Wittemberg, Calvin at Geneva, Arminius
at Oldwater, Socinus at Cracow; and each of these are sound and
orthodox in the circuit of their own reign and dominion1.'
'And as it is mutable according to places, so also according to the
ages of the world : 'Twas one-while Arianism under several Emperors,
in several Councils, among several Fathers. 'Twas, for some hundreds
of years, a company of foppish and ridiculous superstitions and cere-
monies, pardons and indulgences, redemptions from purgatory, and the
like ; and we know in our days into what new shapes this Proteus hath
transformed itself2.'
Not less poignant is the irony with which the preacher
proceeds to characterize the professed reception of Truth, as
dictated by sheer self-interest, by the love of singularity, or
by uncontrolled enthusiasm : —
' 'Tis a State mould committed to the keeping of some Party that
is in greatest favour, whereinto all Opinions are cast;... a piece of proefessed
education, interest, humour, fancy and temper, an inveterate pre- thTsectaries
judice that is bred in our minds, which all arguments that can be ^ciat'ed bv
brought to the contrary, do irritate, but not convince ;... an Opinion thlflovl'of'
first taken up, and then Reason sought out to maintain it. Truth singularity,
. . . . or religious
is that which serves every man s turn or interest ; tis the surest, enthusiasm,
strongest side, which secures a man's estate, liberty and outward
advantages; that which saves a man the cost and expence of self-
denial and patience under the reproach and persecution of a prevailing
sect, which leads the way to applause and preferment and gives the
pompous title "sound in the Faith," — that is, in the opinion of the
place and church where one lives.' Or else it is 'a piece of humoursome
singularity ; the man is unwilling to go with a multitude, or trust
himself in a crowd, lest he be lost, forgotten, and not taken notice of :
'tis a desire to appear ptyas TIS, the authour of some new discoveries ;
the head and Father of a particular sect ; 'tis a piece of over- weening
pride, of fond self-flattery and conceit, that thinks itself wiser than the
Church where it lives and all the world besides.' While, 'many times
it is nothing else but the boilings of an unheated imagination and
untamed Fancy and hence spring most of (he new lights of the present
age3.'
1 Halliwell's Remains (u. «.), p. 44. 2 Ibid.
a Ibid. p. 45.
652 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v. Rarely had such a rendering of Church history, at once
Extended so charged with irony and yet so difficult to challenge, been
set f°rt)h fr°m tne pulpit °f Great St Mary's; and it is
productive of difficult to believe that either Cudworth or More, both of
nty' whom were probably among the audience, could have failed
to be deeply moved, as they heard the watchword of their
party thus decried from the point of view of the cynic and
the sceptic, 'Truth' itself being exhibited as something purely
relative, while the abstract object of their professed pursuit
was passed by as non-existent ! It is evident, however, that
after upholding with so much cogent eloquence the claims
of Reason in connexion with the interpretation of revealed
Truth, the Platonists were now beginning to be confronted
with the fact, that never since the Reformation, had such
diversity of belief prevailed as was apparent in the year
Difficulty of when Rust delivered the foregoing Discourse. Whichcote, in
reconciling
whJhcote'sh one of his most eloquent sermons, had already pronounced it
to be the especial ' advantage ' of Truth, that it possessed ' so
much of self-evidence,' and was ' so satisfactory to the Reason
of an ingenuous Mind,' that ' it could not fail to prevail,
unless there be an indisposition in the receiver,' — ' all things,'
he added, ' being according to the disposition of the receiver1.'
' How then,' men were beginning to ask, ' did it come to
pass, that increased liberty of judgement appeared to be
resulting only in increased disunion ? ' It was a question
that none of Whichcote's followers, if we except Culverwel,
had even sought to grapple with, but was now assuming a
prominence that could not be ignored.
M°re's. It is certain, however, that from about this time, More
disinchna-
become avoided, as far as possible, all controversy with respect to
involved m Doctrine as neld by the Anglican Church, preferring to divide
his own speculations between mysticism and prophecy, to
the wonderment of the uncritical and the edification of the
Remarkable devout. The more, indeed, we study his writings, the less
admixture of . .
anTdeiuslon ^° we seem *° derive the impression of a genuinely philo-
writings.'er sophic mind, gradually, but steadily progressing from doubt
and misgiving to clearer perceptions of truth and more
1 Campagnac (E. T.), The Cambridge Platonists, p. 3.
HENRY MORE. 653
assured convictions. We are not unfrequently, it is true, CHAP, v.
edified by utterances that would seem to bespeak a clear
and unprejudiced judgement, but, alternating with these,
there are others not less suggestive of an intellect taking
refuge, as it were, from perplexity, in beliefs which are little
less than superstitions; and to such, apparently, with ad vane- His growing
. * . . addiction to
ing years, he became increasingly inclined. If we admire ]>tr°|/gfical
the good sense which refuses to be trammelled in the ex-
pression of its ideas by the exigencies of a purely classical
Latin diction1, we can hardly commend his determination,
in his Poems, to fetter his elaborate argument by adapting
it to the metrical requirements of the Spenserian stanza.
While there was much to justify his regard for the example
and authority of Joseph Mede, his excessive admiration for
that eminent teacher's Clavis Apocalyptica seems almost
a craze2, — bestowed, as it was, on labours of a kind which
not only involved a vast misemploy ment of toil and ingenuity,
but produced, in the case of More himself, in his attempt to
follow up the researches of his teacher, an amount of mental
excitement which resulted in a long period of nervous
depression3.
However cordially, again, we may concur in his enlight- contra-
ened repudiation of Hobbes's estimate of human nature, we character
of some
cannot but remember that he himself firmly believed in gon^ugiollg
ghosts, while that philosopher, whom he denounced as an
atheist, was one of the few who had the moral courage,
requisite in those days, to deny their existence. That his
pen was well employed when it was wielded to expose the
1 '...ille stylus optimus ac prae- was not taken notice of suitably to
stantissimus qui perfectissimus fide- his merits in his Apocalyptic elucu-
lissimusque mentis est interpres, brations; which yet are certainly,
quippe quum de essentia sermonis sit as he somewhere speaks, his master-
utmentissensusrepraesentetur. Adeo piece and the peculiar excellency
ut quisquis nimio in sermonibus (amongst many other things) of that
rnunditiarum studio incorruptamque writer.' Ward, Life, pp. 237-8.
servandi Latinae linguae integrita- 3 See Ibid. pp. 145-6. Among
tern, sensus conceptusque Animi the first who ventured to call in
minuat aut obscuret, illius profecto question Mede's interpretations, and
manca, deformis, imperfectaque more especially those contained in
necesse sit evadat oratio.' Praefatio his Apostasy of Later Times, was
Generalissimo, to Opera Omnia (ed. Pearson. See Churton's Memoir of
1679), p. iv. him. Minor Theological Works, i lii,
2 'The Doctor [i.e. More] hath liii.
observ'd, that Mr MEDE himself
654
THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP. v.
His theory
of the prae-
existence
of the Soul.
His
conception
of the
philosophic
life and
precepts
with regard
to the same.
falsities of the pretended science of astrology1, will hardly
be doubted, but it is equally undeniable that the writer
himself went to his grave a firm believer in witchcraft2.
And although our sympathy, and even assent, may be won
by his subtle and ingenious arguments, alike in verse and in
prose, to demonstrate the immortality of the soul, it must be
admitted that the theory of its prae-existence, which after
first advancing as ' worthy the canvass and discussion of
sober and considerate men/ he ultimately affirmed to be 'a
necessary result of the wisdom and goodness of God,' is
one that has gained but few converts and from which many
thoughtful minds have recoiled3. That his secluded habits,
and the emotional raptures by which, as he himself asserted,
his solitude was often irradiated, should have served to gain
for him, as was the case with Plotinus, the awe-inspired rever-
ence of those among whom his days were passed, is sufficiently
intelligible ; but, at the same time, the emphasis with which
he enjoined upon others the practice of habitual humility,
of submission under defamation, and active charity, as
affording the surest prospect of attaining to true spiritual
calm, shews that the observance of something more than the
ascetic virtues entered into his conception of the philosophic
life4; while the manner in which he blends with such advice
1 '...a fancifull study built upon
very slight grounds, and indeed, I
do not question, but a relique of the
ancient superstitions and idolatry
amongst the rude Heathens.' Brief
Discourse of Enthusiasm, p. 30. See
also his Anti-Astrologica in his Great
Mystery of Godliness, afterwards
separately printed as Tetrachys Anti-
Astrologica (1681).
2 This may probably be referred
to his early Presbyterian education.
On the prevalence of the belief at
the time, see Firth, Last Years of
the Protectorate, n 104-5.
3 ...Kal irpb rov ravrv)v TT!JI> yfrfffiv
yevtffBai rffttv e/cet dvOpuirot dXXoi
oWts, Kal rtves *al Qeoi, \jtvxal Ka.0a.pal
Kal vovs ffwtffji/jL^vos ry airdffri ovffia,
fj^pr/ ovres rov voirrov, OVK affxapiff^va
oi>5' a.-TorerfjLti/j^i'a, aXX' o»rej rov
o\ov. OtiSt yap ovdt vvv dirorerfjaj-
fi.eOa, K.T.\. Plotinus, Enneads vi iv
14, ed. Creuzer, p. 444. ' Nor is it
harder to phansie, how these prae-
existent souls insinuate into seed,
embryos, or infants, than how
created ones are insinuated....! do
not contend that this opinion of the
prae-existency of the soul is true, but
that it is not such a self-condemned
falsity but that I might, without in-
curring the censure of any vainnesse
or levity, deem it worthy the discus-
sion of sober and considerate men.'
To the Reader, prefixed to The Prae-
existency of the Soul in Philosophicall
Poems (1647). See also The Immor-
tality of the Soul (1662) in Philoso-
phical Writings, p. 122. Compare
the language of Kirke White, Poems
(ed. Drinkwater), pp. 113-5.
4 'But if you will needs have me
to add anything further, that may
tend to the keeping a man in a per-
petual calmness and peace of spirit,
it is this: To do all the good we can,
expecting nothing again, as from
HENRY MORE. 655
practical suggestions regarding diet, reminds us that the CHAP, v.
conception of the education of those who were designed for
the service of the Church, as involving some knowledge of
medicine, still lingered in the universities1. And, finally,
while he denounced the ' sectaries/ on the one hand, as HIS aversion
alike from
' hugely for the interest of Antichrist2,' and Popery, on j^l^
the other, as ' favouring idolatry3,' it is impossible to gainsay Fopery-
the deliberate verdict of Tulloch, that ' with all his enthu-
siasm of reason, he is an imperfect representative of the
rational movement,' and ' is himself not merely inspired, but
possessed by his favourite ideas4.' As regarded theories of
Church government, he took refuge in the admission that it
was 'above his abilities to give judgement,' the right to do
so depending upon studies which he dismisses as ' too tedious
and voluminous for the strength of my body, as also very His
. * willingness
little gratefull to the rellishes of my mind.' He expresses, ^^f^ ,
however, a decided approval of Thorndike's ' platform,' as church°f
'very accommodate to the present state of things' and 'being |£vaernmenl
such a mixture of episcopacy and presbytery together, as compromise
.„ J , r , . J 6 between
may j ustly, if they would be modest and ingenuous, satisne Episcopacy
the expectation of both parties5.' Presby-
teriamsm.
With the publication of his Divine Dialogues6, in 1668, gj
men, but it may be evil language and in his Divine Dialogues (H 384)
and as harsh deeds : and thus our the Popedom is asserted to be ' the
expectation will never be disap- Kingdome of Antichrist.'
pointed, nor the peace and repose * Rational Theology, n 408.
of our mind disturbed.' Letter ii to 5 'To the Header,' The Grand
Eeverend Dr J. D[avies], Jan. 28, Mystery of Godliness (1660), pp. xvii,
167$, in Select Letters, appended to xix-xx. Similarly Simon Patrick,
Life by Ward, pp. 247-8. See also ' Our Latitudinarians therefore are by
p. 361. all means for a Liturgy, and do pre-
1 ' I will only add, that a due ferre that of our own Church before
temperance, and discreet devotion, all others, — admiring the solemnity,
will beget and maintain a more gravity and primitive simplicity of
kindly and permanent warmth in it, its freedome from affective
the spirits and more constant cheer- phrases, or mixture of vain and
fulness, than any of those grosser doubtful opinions; in a word they
helps in meats and drinks.... Thus esteem it to be so good, that they
have I play'd both the Physician would be loth to adventure the
and the Divine before I was aware.' mending of it, for fear of marring
Letter ii (u. *.), p. 249. it.' Account of the new Sect of Lati-
2 Tulloch, Rational Theology, n tude Men (1662), p. 7.
336-7. 6 Divine Dialogues, containing
3 The first part of his Enquiry sundry Disquisitions and Instruc-
into the Mystery of Iniquity (1664) tions concerning the Attributes of
is mainly concerned with Popery ; God and his Providence in the World.
656 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v. his reputation with the religious world at large appears to
have culminated, and his biographer retails it as an assertion
of Chiswell, the publisher1, ' who told a friend of mine,' that,
for twenty years after the Restoration, More's works ' ruled
all the booksellers in London2,' — an expression which, what-
ever it may imply, Peile inclines to regard as an 'exagge-
The studies ration.' The remainder of his life, however, although chiefly
latter years, occupied with further researches connected with the Cabbala
and with enquiries into the significance of the prophecies
shadowed forth in the mystic pages of St John the Divine,
was also occupied with the task of translating his earlier
works into Latin, in the confident but delusive anticipation
of their being destined to a permanent place in European
literature. The complacency with which he regarded these
performances does not, indeed, tend to suggest that his
judgement ripened with his declining years ; and although he
occasionally amused his leisure with experiments in natural
philosophy, it is evident that speculation concerning the
unknowable was still his ruling passion, as it was, un-
doubtedly, the most effective way of retaining his hold, as
an author, on the attention of the religious world. Pro-
phecy, and its application, alike to the past and to the
future, were more and more becoming the medium through
which those who assumed to be able to act as interpreters,
found it most easy to gain the ear of the credulous. Of this
phase of charlatanism a noteworthy example is afforded in the
Israel Tonge: career of Israel Tonge, whose experiences as a fellow of
university University College, Oxford, somewhat resemble those of
oxf°rd: Lazarus Seaman at Peterhouse. Intruded into his fellowship
0. 1621.
d. 1680.
Collected and compiled by the Care Churchyard. See D. N. B. x 265 ;
and Industry of Franciscus Palaeo- Venn, Biographical History of Gon-
politanus. London. Printed by mile and Gains, i 387.
James Flesher, 1668. The 'general 2 Christ's College, p. 186. Ward,
character' of the interlocutors, it is Life, pp. 162-3. According to the
to be observed, is that of being 'all same authority, there was a certain
free spirits, mutually permitting one ' senior fellow ' of one of the colleges
another the liberty of philosophizing in Oxford ' who would dwell con-
without any breach of friendship.' tinually on the praises of Dr H.
i, sig. b4 v. More, and contend that they ought
1 Richard Chiswell the elder, who to turn out Aristotle, and embrace
carried on his business at the sign More in his room.' Ibid. p. 161.
of the Rose and Crown in St Paul's
HENRY MORE. 657
in 1648, Tonge served the college as bursar in the year ^CHAP. v.^
1650-1, but was immediately afterwards ejected. The
reason of his election is not clear: but in his subsequent?'8
J f » disagreement
endeavours to make interest with the Protector for the $$£*
appointment to the mastership, he became embroiled with
the whole body of the fellows of University, and quitted
Oxford somewhat under a cloud. From this time, unsettled HIS career
subsequent
in purpose as in occupation, he led a wandering life ; now oxf^jing
teaching Latin and Greek at Durham College1, and then in
London, or officiating as a chaplain at Dunkirk and at
Tangier, and afterwards attracting public notoriety as the
dupe and ally of Titus Gates in the notorious Popish Plot2.
In his frequent leisure, Tonge turned his attention to the
study of prophecy, and having made the acquaintance of
Hartlib, appears to have so far insinuated himself into his
good opinion, that in June 1660, we find the latter writing
to Worthington, — at that time occupied with the laborious
task of bringing to a completion his first edition of Mede's
Works, — to the effect that ' Dr Tonge is making ready for HIS studies
the press his Apocalypticall Expositions, wch he is perswaded Apocalypse.
will go beyond all the light and discoveries that ever have
been published3.' This sanguine expectation, however, His
. interpreta-
proved altogether illusive, from the simple fact that the Jj^of the
treatise in question was never published ; and More, accord- ^"^^e
ingly, was able to carry on his own researches comparatively frwltmeu^by
free from rivalry. In the last of his five Dialogues, we find whohyoids0re>
him venturing to particularize the application of those ' six verification
Trumpets' foretold in the Book of Revelation*, — the successive $$$$£*
sounding of which was to usher in the final chapter of the hStorydtoy
world's history, — to certain known historic epochs, in the convincing
1 His interest with the Protector 196-7. Worthington, writing to
was sufficient to obtain for him both Hartlib (14 Nov. 1661), refers to the
a senior fellowship and a tutorship latter's correspondent as 'that
in Durham College. See Cromwell's Tongue who spoke to you about
Cluirter for a Colledge at Durham in great things he had prepared upon
Zachary Grey's Impartial Examiiia- the Apocalypse,' adding 'I did not
tion, iv 112. think they were perfected, for then
2 Carr (W.), University College, you would have written of them.'
pp. 117, 118-120, 135; Wood-Clarke, Ibid, n 69.
Life and Times, n 116. * The Book of Revelation, c. viii
3 Diary and Correspondence, i 7-13, c. ix.
M. ill. 42
658 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.
CHAP, v. following manner : (I) 'the bloudy irruption' of the barbarous
thldterath°off nati°ns into the Roman Empire; (2) the ' dilaceration ' of
than8thaenity the Empire into 'so many Kingdoms,' by Alaric and Gen-
wroughtby seric ; (3) the anarchy amid which 'the sorrowful Western
and the Empire ' came to sway of Augustulus ; (4) the overthrow of
the East Gothic Kingdom by Justinian's generals; 'and
lastly,' to quote More's own language, ' what infinite devasta-
tions, the Locusts (that is, the Saracens) under the fifth
Trumpet, and the Euphratean horsemen (that is, the
Turks) under the sixth,... did upon the Empire, both the
title of the Trumpets (which are called Woe Trumpets)
and the description of the Visions do abundantly declare1.'
' I tell you succinctly, Philopolis,' says Philotheus, — who
throughout the Dialogues sustains the character of ' a zealous
and sincere lover of God and Christ, and of the whole Crea-
tion,'— ' the clear completion of so many prophecies, and so
many hundred years distant from the event, seems to me to
be a more convictive ground of the truth of Christianity,
then all the miracles done by Christ and his Apostles to
those that lived in those days, especially to as many as
did not see them themselves and observe the circumstances
of them.' To which Philopolis, — who is simply ' the pious
and loyall politician,' — replies, ' I should be absolutely of
your minde, could I persuade myself that the Prophecies
would be so vulgarly and universally understood by Chris-
More pre- tians.' Whereupon Philotheus rejoins, 'Do not doubt of
diets that this J
t"onrofreta" that, Philopolis; the times are coming and will be at hand
prophecy before the pouring out of the last Vial, wherein the under-
pin paerty standing of the divine prophecies touching the affairs of the
teaching of Church will be as common and ordinary as of the Children's
the Church.
Catechism2.'
Points of In his literary experiences, as indeed in most other
contrast in x
genius when resPects> the master of Christ's College presented a marked
^"hpthafof contrast to its distinguished fellow, and Cudworth's reputa-
tion as an author was almost entirely posthumous. In the
same year, however, as that in which More published the
1 Divine Dialogues, n 325. 2 Ibid, n 331-2.
CUDWORTH. 659
complete volume of his Poems, he had preached before VCHAP. v.
Parliament a very remarkable sermon1 which sufficiently j^.""^"11
indicated the direction of his sympathies and the extent to commons:
which he shared the views of both his personal friends, i647.ar
Whichcote and More. Although Regius professor of Hebrew
and master of Clare Hall, Cudworth, in 1647, was only
completing his thirtieth year; but his dissatisfaction with ^precates
the prevailing dialectics, and his sense of the advantages to ^"respect
be derived from the study of Nature, were alike made evident queens"8
in the above discourse, wherein he ventures, at the outset, the duty
and the
to affirm that Christ was ' Vitae Magister, not Scholae ' ; and af aa"t^s
that ' he is the best Christian whose heart beats with the of Nature-
truest pulse towards heaven, not he whose head spinneth out
the finest cobwebs2'; and reverting, towards the close, to the
same phase of his theme, declares that ' 'tis not wrangling
disputes and syllogisticall reasonings that are the mighty
pillars that underprop Truth in the world3.' In the en-
deavour to arrive at a clearer understanding of natural laws,
on the other hand, he urged that man was really only dis-
charging a universal religious duty, the neglect of which
was in itself a violation of the homage due from mankind to
its Creator4; while, again, there were divine truths which, ge affirms
the existenc
although transcending the power of the theologian to reduce ^h^ic]
to formal expression in his disquisitions, were nevertheless man"rn
capable of entering into the soul and permeating man's nature9
entire spiritual nature, ' being able to dwell and lodge
nowhere but in a spiritual being, in a living thing, because
itselfe is nothing but Life and Spirit5.'
1 A Sermon preached before the upon the Maker of it.' Ibid. Pre-
Honourable House of Commons at face.
Westminster, 31 March, 1647. By s Ibid. p. 41. A passage which
B. Cudworth, B.D., Cambridge, is all the more remarkable as em-
1647. bodying what may be considered a
2 Ibid. p. 14. fundamental (if not the most original)
3 Ibid. p. 80. conception of our Platonists and one
4 'The noble and generous im- by which Scaliger's admiration was
provement of our understanding especially excited. It is referred to by
faculty in the true contemplation of More, fifteen years later, as Aristote-
the wisdome, goodnesse and other lian in its origin : ' For is it not the
attributes of God in this great fabric saying of that so universally applauded
of the Universe, cannot easily be Aristotle, Kivei yap irwj TrdvTa. rb fv
disparaged without a blemish cast r}fu» Qtiov, \6yov S' apxh ou \6yos,
42 2
660
THE RESTORATION.
CHAP. V.
His True
Intellectual
System of
the Uni verge:
1678.
Apathy or
hostility
with which
it was
received.
Martineau's
explanation
of the same.
Naturally disposed to weigh evidence and carefully
ponder over each conclusion, Cudworth was as deliberate, as
More was unquestionably precipitate, in his judgements;
and at his death, a pile of unpublished manuscripts, mostly
unfinished, gave evidence of a vast amount of patient toil,
the results of which were not destined ever to be given to
the world. Even his great masterpiece was not published
until 1678, when the author was in his sixty-first year, and
the majority of those who had watched most anxiously for
its appearance were dead, while the general standard of
religious sentiment and social morality had declined to an
extent which More, in the following year, did not scruple to
declare to be in itself a matter for the deepest concern1.
When, accordingly, The True Intellectual System of the
Universe at last appeared, it was to meet with a reception
that was for the most part unsympathetic, and in some
quarters distinctly hostile, according as it ran counter to the
prevailing scientific cynicism or to the growing religious
formalism. To quote the language of an able critic, 'it
conceded too much to the Pagan philosophers, recognizing
among them the essence of Christian wisdom, to suit the
assumptions of either the rising High Churchmen or the
retiring Puritans. It placed too little value on the instituted
observances of religion for the former, and on its niceties of
dogma for the latter. It offended the current cynicism of
Society and of the Schools, by finding a Divine element in
human nature, which only the obtuse and the profane could
miss. It contradicted the exclusive pretensions of both
Church and Scripture, as media of sacred light, by planting
in the natural Reason an inward apprehension of Duty and
of God. It laid itself open, here and there, to the rebuke of
scholars, for reading the author's favourite ideas, without
adequate warrant, into the Greek text of Plato, Aristotle, and
dXXa rt KpeiTTOv'? What Plato, nay
what Chrysostome, what Augustine,
could have used more heavenly
language?' Pref. to Philosophical
Writings (ed. 1662), p. viii. Prof.
Jackson has pointed out to me the
passage in the Eudemian Ethics, Q ii
(otherwise called H xiv), 1248" 26,
from whence this quotation is taken,
and is consequently not now accepted
as Aristotle.
1 Opera Omnia, 2 vols. fol. 1679:
Praef. Generalissima, p. xxii.
THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS. 661
Plotinus. It disappointed the demand, recently heightened CHAP, v.
by the vigour and precision of Hobbes, for logical neatness
and compactness of structure, by diffuse repetitions and
enormous digressions, and the heavy flow of overloaded
sentences1.'
It was not until another generation had passed away, services
subsequently
and Le Clerc, in his Bibliotheque Choisie, had called the rendered by
Le Clerc and
attention of Continental scholars to the high merits of *J°^m
Cudworth's treatise, by publishing analyses of its chief merh^under
arguments together with translations of some of the more continental
scholars.
important passages, that the learning of Germany roused
itself to the effort of bringing the 'splendid fragment' more
adequately under the notice of students abroad as well as
of English readers, — by whom its very object, as Hallam
observes, had 'not been fully apprehended2.' On Johann
Lorenz von Mosheim, the chancellor and reformer of the
university of Gb'ttingen, and the disciple of Leibniz, whom
his English contemporaries sometimes designated 'the
Tillotson of Germany,' it devolved to set the vast research
and profound historical insight of the English philosopher
fully before his countrymen. Himself an accomplished
Latin 'stylist,' Mosheim produced a translation of the
Intellectual System which not only attracted readers by its
elegant Latinity, but, by the incorporation of new illustrative
material (largely from Cudworth's own unpublished manu-
scripts), together with a considerable apparatus of notes, and
carefully verified references to the classical authorities cited
by the author, resulted in the appearance of an edition
which may be said to have, in no small measure, superseded
that put forth by Cudworth himself3.
How far the Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable
1 Martineau (Jas.), Types of spects, by that in Martineau («.*.),
Ethical Theory, n 431-2. is on the whole a good one. See
2 This object being 'to establish article by Leslie Stephen, D.N.B.
the liberty of human actions against xin 271-2.
the fatalists.' Hallam, Introd. to 3 Sy sterna intellectuale hujus Uni-
English Literature (1864), iv 64. versi, sen de veris Naturae rerum
Hallam's account of Cudworth, originibus. Jena, 1733 ; Leyden,
although superseded, in some re- 1773.
662
THE RESTORATION.
CHAP. V.
Cudworth's
theory of a
Plastic
Nature.
Funeral of
Matthew
Wren.
His
administra-
tion as
Bishop of
Norwich :
1635-1638.
Morality, which was left in manuscript, may have been
designed, as Chandler conjectures1, to supplement the more
extended enquiry which Cudworth was unable to prosecute to
its completion, it is not easy to determine. So far as it goes,
the Intellectual System, serves only to confirm the belief in
the existence of an over-ruling Power, leaving the question of
the Divine attributes untouched; while the author's assump-
tion, in common with Aristotle and Plato, of 'a plastic Nature,'
restricts the enquiry into final causes within limits which
are unrecognized by the orthodox theologian. ' These laws
of nature/ he says, ' concerning motion are really nothing
else but a plastic nature, acting upon the matter of the
whole corporeal universe'; and, in pursuance of the theory
enunciated by Plato, he finds Nature itself to be a ' distinct
thing from the Deity,' but operating as a subordinate cause
under the Divine reason and wisdom2.
In the month of May 1667, the body of Matthew Wren
was conveyed from Ely House, where he had died, to be
interred in the chapel of Pembroke College, and the funeral
procession in Cambridge was characterized by an almost
unprecedented elaboration of ceremonial and observance3.
During his tenure of the see of Norwich, his administration
of the diocese, on the lines indicated by Laud, had excited
unwonted opposition, and, according to Clarendon, his harsh
dealing with schismatics in Norfolk and Suffolk had driven
1 Edward Chandler of Emmanuel
College, bishop of Durham, 1730-50.
He edited Cudworth's treatise, with
a Preface, in 1731. According to
Professor J. E. B. Mayor, Mosheim
was mainly indebted to Chandler
for the materials in his account of
Cudworth ; see Camb. Antiq.
Society's Communications, i, No.
xxix.
2 'Wherefore since neither all
things are produced fortuitously, or
by the unguided mechanism of
matter, nor God himself may reason-
ably be thought to do all things
immediately and miraculously ; it
may be well concluded, that there is
a plastick nature under Him, which,
as an inferior and subordinate in-
strument, doth drudgingly execute
that part of his providence, which
consists in the regular and orderly
motion of matter ; yet so far as that
there is also, besides this, a higher
Providence to be acknowledged,
which presiding over it, doth often
supply the defects of it, and some-
times over-rule it; for as much as,
this plastic nature cannot act elec-
tively, nor with discretion.' Cud-
worth-Birch, i 150.
3 See account, partly printed from
Alderman Newton's Diary in Cooper,
Annals, in 522-4; and in full in
Camb. Ant. Soc. Publications, Octavo
Series, No. xxm.
MATTHEW WREN. 663
a large number of the ' foreign congregations ' to quit the VCHAP. v.
country, and had permanently depressed ' the wealthy
manufacture ' in those districts \ On his translation to Ely His
• administra-
in 1638 he had pursued a like policy. And when, after ^gtoratfon
eighteen years' imprisonment, he was liberated by an order $ iayf6
of the Commons from the Tower, his resumption of his
episcopate was unmarked by any attempt at conciliation.
Reverting, with senile obstinacy, to what Worthington terms
' his old methods of severity and height2,' he proceeded to
purge his diocese of disaffected ministers ; and in the exercise His
arbitrary
of his authority as Visitor of Peterhouse, ignored altogether ™rochXrefas
two nominations of the fellows to the vacant headship (al- Peterhouse,
though one of these was that of Isaac Barrow 3), peremptorily connexion
intruding Joseph Beaumont, master of Jesus College and co"ege.
the husband of his step-daughter, whom, three years later,
we find giving formal expression to his antipathy to Henry
More and the Platonists4. ' Personal and political considera-
tions,' in the opinion of Mr Gray, equally determined Wren's
choice of Edmund Boldero as Beaumont's successor at Jesus,
where, again, the election of that eccentric hero was mainly
the result of the bishop's influence5. The extent, indeed,
to which the latter permitted his animosities, as regarded
both parties and individuals, to govern his whole policy, was
so manifest that Charles II himself, on one occasion, could
not refrain from uttering a curt remonstrance. On the
other hand, it was undeniable that selfishness and the love
of money were altogether foreign to Wren's nature ; and on
his return to Cambridge, his most conspicuous act was the Se
rebuilding of the chapel of Pembroke College at his own cS
1 Hist, of the Rebellion (1888), vi 4 For Beaumont see INDEX: also
183. See also supra, p. 239, n. 3. his tractate, Some Observations
It has, however, been maintained upon the Apologie of Dr Henry More.
that these migrations were really Cambridge, 1665.
caused by changed economic con- 6 Boldero, who was Wren's chap-
ditions, and that those who went over lain, and had been educated at
to the Low Countries were induced to Pembroke, appears to have been
do so by the prospect of higher wages. rewarded with the mastership of
See Pearson-Churton, n 82-3. Jesus College solely on account of
2 Diary, 11 378. his services in the Civil War. See
:1 The nephew, afterwards master Gray, Jesus College, pp. 126-7; also
of Trinity. supra, p. 620, n. 2.
664 THE RESTORATION.
CHAP, v.^ personal cost, with an endowment for the future mainten-
ance of the edifice in repair. And thus, accordingly, when
Pearson's Over the bier itself, Pearson delivered his Oration, before an
Oration at
nSMUayei667 audience of mourners which included no less than twenty-
four scholars of St John's, Peterhouse, and Pembroke (all
of them relatives of the deceased), and recalled how the
departed prelate, ' ever mindful of the home of his early
education/ had reared anew the fane in which they were
then assembled, 'had endowed it in perpetuity, consecrated it
with his prayers, and built the vault wherein he was himself
to be laid,' — this splendid benefaction, as the orator affirmed,
'being among the least of the acts which bore witness to
his memory1,' — a certain radiance seemed to gather round
the close of a very chequered and troublous career.
ofthe*8* ^n *he course °f another quarter of a century, the last of
^e Cambridge Platonists had passed away: Rust, at Dromore,
within three years after the delivery of Pearson's Oration ;
More and Cudworth, within a year of each other, the former
having outlived, to a great extent, his reputation; the latter,
with his merits still unrecognized. It is, indeed, asserted
by Birch, that the publication of Cudworth's masterpiece
was purposely delayed for seven years, owing to the ' great
opposition ' of the royal courtiers, who endeavoured ' to
destroy its reputation ' when it eventually appeared2. By
this time, in fact, as Tulloch observes, ' the higher philoso-
phical inspiration of the movement had spent itself3 ' ; while
at Oxford, as represented by Fowler, Glanvil, and Norris, it
assumed a more strictly controversial tone, as dealing with
what was then commonly known simply as Latitudinarian-
ism. But the influence of the convictions which these
1 ' ...in memoriam primae insti- minimum tamen ex monumentis quae
tutionis quam gratissimo animo reliquit.' Oratio, etc. Pearson -
quotidie recolebat, capellam hanc Churton, n 94.
impendio maximo exstruxit, perpe- 2 Birch cites as his authority
tuis reditibus dotavit, precibus suis Joannis Clerici Vita, p. 129. Am-
rite consecravit, sub hac dormitorium stelod. 1711, 8vo.
condidit, huic tandem corpus con- 3 Rational Theology, n 439.
credidit. Illustre quidem hoc, sed
THE LAST OF THE PLATONISTS. 665
thinkers represented long survived. In these ancient halls VCHAP. v.
and by the silent river, — athwart which, six centuries before,
the Saxon dwellers around St Bene't's Church had gazed
on the rising walls of the Norman's stronghold, — throughout
the long conflict between Latin ecclesiasticism and English
patriotism, no utterances, at once so cogent and so persuasive,
had been heard. And as a band of ' harpers harping with
their harps,' although their strains grow fainter with the
receding ages, they still recall the celestial song over the
manger at Bethlehem, that told of peace on earth and
goodwill to men.
(A) The Poll of the Election for the Chancellorship in 1626.
(B) The Manner of the Presentation of the Duke of Buckingham his
Grace to the Chancellorship of the University of Cambridge.
(C) Ordinances established for a publique Lecture of Historic in the
University of Cambridge.
(D) Order of the King at the Court at Whitehall the 30th of Aprill 1630,
respecting the Nomination to Lord Brooke's History Lecture.
(E) Matriculations for the Years 1620-1669.
(F) Subscriptions on Admission to Holy Orders during the Common-
wealth and the Protectorate.
APPENDIX
(A)
Electio Cancellarii, 1 Jun. 1626
(Signed by J. Tabor
Henry Moody)
[Note. The original source for the following Lists, is the official
Return, signed by J. Tabor and Henry Moody, preserved in the Registry.
It was pointed out by the late A. W. Haddan (see supra, p. 56, n. 4), that
they required correction, and the version given by Cooper (Annals, in
186-7) contains serious inaccuracies1, while he also gives all the Christian
names in a contracted form, — Drue Bowd thus appearing as ' Dr Bord,'
etc. Many years ago, accordingly, I had formed the design of comparing
Cooper's lists with the originals, when my intention was forestalled by an
offer on the part of the late Registrary (Mr J. W. Clark) to relieve me
from the labour, by himself undertaking the work of verification, an offer
which I gratefully accepted ; and my transcripts from Cooper were
shortly afterwards returned to me with an intimation that the process of
correction had been carried as far as then seemed practicable. Since that
time, however, the available sources at the Registry have been more care-
fully studied and also put in order, and Dr Venn has been able to
subject the original document, above referred to, to a careful scrutiny, the
results of which he has embodied in the Lists herewith printed. The
great majority of the names have consequently now been identified ; but,
to quote his own words, ' in the case of at least a dozen, there is a difficulty,
and it seems probable that the compiler of the Lists has misread the
voting papers'; for, as every voter must, of course, have been of M.A.
standing in 1626, whenever the lists of Graduati fail to furnish a name
corresponding to one in the lists of the Election, it may fairly be presumed
that there has been an error in the transcription, — a conclusion to which
the laxity that prevailed in those days with regard to the spelling of
names lends additional support. In those cases where the voter had been
a migrant from one college to another, he appears as a member of the
society from whence he had graduated as M.A.
1 E.g. for 'Linge,' he prints 'Singe'; for 'Cobb,' 'Hob'; for 'Jurden,' 'Indey.']
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APPENDIX
(B)
THE MANNER OF THE PRESENTATION OF THE DUKE OF
BUCKINGHAM HIS GRACE TO THE CHANCELLORSHIP
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.
Upon the 12th of July, 1626, the vice-chancellor, heads of colleges, and
others appointed to attend in this service, set out to Ware the first night,
and the next morning to London, where, about three or four of the clock
in the afternoon, they all met at Durham House, and there put on their
robes, hoods, habits, and caps ; and the senior bedel and register were sent
by Mr Vice-Chancellor to view the place appointed for the entertainment,
and fit the same with a chair for the duke, if he pleased to sit, and a little
table to stand before the vice-chancellor and orator right before the duke,
for them to make their orations at. But the duke sat not in his chair,
but stood behind it at both the orations, and whilst he delivered his own
speech. When the bedel and register returned from York House, where
the admission was to be, and had signified how things were ordered,
the junior bedel went there before with the masters of arts first, two in
rank, in their usual hoods and habits and caps, and then the non-regents
and bachelors in divinity, in their gowns, hoods, and caps; then the
taxers and proctors, in their hoods and habits, &c. ; and then the proctors
with their books; then the senior bedel, in his gold chain (given him by
the duke), and in his velvet cap went directly before the vice-chancellor ;
the Bishop of Durham and three other bishops in their rochets ; then all
the doctors in their scarlets and caps ; all these two in rank : and in this
order they went until they came to York House forecourt ; and then,
near the door in the garden, the masters of arts and bachelors in divinity
made a stand in care; and then the bedels came to the vice-chancellor,
and went directly before them, through the masters of arts, bachelors in
divinity, and non-regents ; the bishops and doctors following him into the
duke's garden, and all the aforesaid company after them, where they
passed on almost in the midway that leadeth up into the duke's lodgings,
and the duke, with other nobles, met the vice-chancellor, bishops, and
doctors, and saluted them all in very kind manner; and after he had
saluted them, he made a low conge, or courtesy, to all the rest of the
University; and then went forward, and, with Mr Vice-Chancellor, went
up the stairs into the room appointed for the entertainment and orations.
Whither, being come, the vice-chancellor stayed at the aforesaid table,
APPENDIX. 673
and the duke and the nobles went up to the place where his chair stood.
Then the vice-chancellor, after some stay, until the company and crowd
was seated, made low obeisance to him, and began his oration, the heads
whereof, as I remember, were these : the sorrow of the University for the
loss of the former, and the joy of his grace, with many thanks for the
favours he had formerly showed, as before he bore office with us, and
the great hopes the University had of his favour and protection hereafter.
Then the vice-chancellor beckoned to the register for the patent,
which, received, he opened and read ; and then, according to the contents
of the same, he desired his grace to accept of the said office and patent,
and, kissing it, delivered the same to him ; and then the vice-chancellor,
stooping, went forward from the table, and took the duke by the hand,
and said to him thus, or this effect : ' Dabis fidem te observatumm leges,
privilegia, et consuetudines Academice Cantabrigiensis.'
Then the vice-chancellor, still holding the duke by the hand, the
senior proctor also out of his book read as followeth : ' Dabis etiam fidem
in verbo honoris, quod officium Cancellariatus Academic Cantabrigiensis
bene et fideliter prcestabis.'
Then the vice-chancellor called to the bedel for the Book of Statutes,
which he also kissed and delivered it to the duke, telling him that those
were the laws and statutes which they were governed by ; and desired
him to be pleased for his part to see them observed, and to protect the
University in the execution of the same.
Then he signified that the whole senate of the University had sent
their orator, who, in the name of the whole University, was to speak unto
him, and desired his grace to be pleased to give him audience. The
orator's oration ended, the duke made a speech to the whole assembly.
And then they all viewed the duke's lodgings, and walked in the
gardens, where in one of the cloisters there was music. And when the
tables were set, they went to supper. The vice-chancellor sat at the upper
end of the table, by the duke, and nobles, and bishops, and the doctors
sat, and the orator, proctors, taxers, and bedels, then the others in their
seniority at another table, others at a table at the end of that table.
Note that no man was urged to pledge any health. Those that
attended (if any health was to be pledged) gave him a greater or lesser
glass, as he desired, and of what wine he called for.
Remember, that there were two chairs set, one for our chancellor to
sit in at his admission, and another on the left side of it for the vice-
chancellor to sit in, when he admitted the chancellor, and when the
proctor readeth Dabis fidem, &c.
M. in. 43
APPENDIX
(C) pp. 83-84.
ORDINANCES ESTABLISHED FOR 'A PUBLIQUE LECTURE
OF HISTORIE' IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE,
FOUNDED BY FULKE LORD BROOKE, BARON BROOKE
OF BEAUCHAMPES-COURT IN THE COUNTIE OF WAR-
WICK.
1. The founder, and after him his next heire, shall have full power to
nominate, and constitute a Reader of the said Lecture ; either personally
presentinge or by letters nominating him unto the Vice-Chancellor of the
Universitie of Cambridge for the time being. And the person ere by him
or after him by his next heire presented, or nominated, shall performe
all the duties, undergo all the penalties, and enjoy all the profitts, and
advauntages to the same Lecture any waies appertayninge, during his
naturall life, or for such time, as the said ffounder, and after him, his next
heire shall thinke titt.
2. Provided notwithstanding that if the first ffounder, or after him,
his next heire shall finde any fault in the Reader, ere as before presented
or nominated, either for want of naturall judgement, levitie in manners,
defect of reading, as being forced to learne, when hee should teach ;
remissnesse of present Industrie through distraction, by frequenting idle,
and riotous companie ; or other just exception by meanes of which default
or imperfection in the said Reader, such honour, and profitt as the founder
intends shall not redound unto the Universitie, then the said ffounder,
and his next heire successively, upon notice thereof taken, shall at pleasure
dismiss the said Lecturer with a competent gratuitie, and appoint another.
3. Every yeare, in the great vacation, the Lecturer (if hee be required)
shall attend upon the ffounder, and after the flounder's decease, upon his
next heire, so longe as hee shall live ; either duringe all the said vacation,
or soe much thereof as they shall thinke fitt, and at such place, as they
shall appoint.
{Subsequent elections.}
\. After the decease of the ffounder and his next heire, whensoever
the place shalbe voyd, the election thereof shall for ever devolve to the
Universitie of Cambridge, and at the first vacancie the Election shalbe
made presently but ever afterwards betweene the third and the fifteenth
daie of June, a quinquennio, in quinquennium.
2. To which end the ffounder willeth, that whosoever shall be chosen
by the Universitie, after the devolution before specified at anie other time
of the year, shall enjoy the said Lecture, and benefitts thereof, from the
day of his admission untill the third daie of June next followinge, and
from the said third daie untill the end, and expiration of five yeares
followinge, to inpleat.
APPENDIX. 675
3. Ffor the first and all subsequent elections after the said devolution,
the flounder's will and order is: ffirst that the Vice-Chancellor, within
three daies inclusive, after notice of the Vacancie, calling an Assembly of
Regents and Non-Regents in the usuall place and forme : shall then and
there publishe the said Vacancie, and forthwith cause all these orders to
be read openly by the Senior Proctor. Which being done, he shall
appoint a time, after the sixt and before the tenth day next ensewing,
after such publication, for a new election.
4. Wherein that equall and due proportion niaie be observed betwene
the colledges, least otherwise the greater, havinge most voyces, should
joyne, and so exclude the lesser from any possibilitie to prefer anie of
theirs, though perchance more worthy ; The flounder's will and order is,
that everie Colledge in particular shall depute five persons, of whome the
Master or head, and in his absence the Vice- Master or president shalbe
one ; and twoe of the other foure shalbe Regents : all whose names shalbe
testified unto the Vice-Chancellor, twoe daies before the time appointed
for the Election, under the handes of the Master or in his absence of the
President, and two of the senior fellowes of everie severall colledge. And
these persons only, together with the Vice-Chancellor, the twoe Proctors,
the Senior Regent, and the Senior non-Regent, the Universitie Orator,
and the Kinges Professors in Divinity, Lawe, and the Greeke tongue,
shall have their suffrages in this Election.
5. Upon the daie, and time appointed for the Election, the Vice-
Chancellor and heades of Colleges meeting in the Regent house shall cause
all the Electops before specified, or as manie of them as shalbe there
present, to be admitted into the house, and all others excluded. Where
the Vice-Chancellor having first made oath in person, shall administer a
like oath to all, and everie one of the rest, in haec verba: Jurabitis quod
vos, et unusquisque vestrum in locum Historici praelectoris juris vocantem
uuum aliquem nominabitis, quern in conscientiis vestris ad peragendum
munia Loci, juxta Fundatoris statuta, maxime idoneum judicabitis; Sic
vos Deus adjuvet in Jesu Christo. Afterwarde the said Vice-Chancellor
sittinge in scrutinie with the twoe Proctors, the senior Regent, and senior
non-Regent ; everie one of the forementioned Electors (having first taken
the oath before written) shall deliver unto the said Scrutator a tickett
written with his own hand, conteyning his owne name, and the name of
him whom hee electeth. This Scrutinie being ended ; the Senior Proctor,
having openly read all the Nominations, shall pronounce him to be elected
upon whome most voyces have concurred.
6. And in case the suffrages of the said Electors shall happen to be
equall upon twoe or more competitors, whereby the Election can not be
effected, the Vice-Chancellor shall presently pronounce, or cause to be
pronounced, such one of those two or more competitors, soe having equall
voyces, to be elected ; as he upon his conscience, and corporall oath, shall
think fittest for the place.
43—2
676 APPENDIX.
How the Persons eligible must be qualified.
1. None shalbe eligible except hee bee Master of Arts, of five yeares
standing at the least, and thirty yeares of age.
2. None shalbe eligible that is in holie Orders. As well because this
Real me affordeth manie preferments for divines, fewe or none for Pro-
fessors of humane learning, the use and application whereof to the practise
of life is the maine end, and scope of this foundation : and also because
this Lecture must needs hinder a Divine from the studies and offices of
his callinge, due to the church.
3. None shalbe eligible that hath anie charge of wife or children, or
anie office and imployment necessarily distracting him from his studies.
4. None shalbe eligible that hath anie other publique Lecture in the
Universitie of Cambridge, or elsewhere ; except before his admission he
acquitt himself of that Lecture.
5. None shalbe eligible that hath bin convicted, or publiquely famed
for blasphemie, perjurie, incest, rape, adulterie, theft, common drunken -
nesse, vvritinge of infamous libells, or anie other notorious crime.
6. None shalbe eligible that hath procured letters of recommendation
or sued directly, or indirectly for this place and profession.
7. None shalbe eligible, whoe hath not, before the time of election,
either by workes published, or some publique exercise, given sufficient
testimonie unto the Universitie of his abilities as well in the Latine and
Greek tongues, and in cosmographie, chronologie, and the sciences
requisite for this profession.
8. No man shalbe debarred in regard of his countrfe, but as well
ftbreigners, as free denizens and natives of this Kingdom shalbe eligible,
havinge given (as before) sufficient testimonie of their worth.
9. Anie Maister, or fellowe of anie Colledge; anie doctor of the
Lawes, anie Master of Arts though noe fellowe, whether livinge in anie
Universitie, or elsewhere (if hee be not excluded by anie of the cautions
before specified) shalbe eligible.
10. Such as have travelled beyond the seas, and soe have added to
their learning, knowledge of the moderne languages, and experience in
forraigne parts ; and likewise such as have been brought upp, and exercised
in publique affaires, shalbe accounted most eligible ; if they be equall in
the rest.
Of the Lecturer's Office, and Reading.
1. Least this Lecturer, being bound to anie certaine subject, methode
or forme of Reading should be forced to spend his best powers upon some
employment contrary to his nature, and farre differinge from those studies
wherewith he shall stand best furnished with greater toyle to himself, and
lesse honour unto the Universitie. It is ordered that he shall not be tied
to anie mans arbitrament for choice of the subject to be read upon, pro-
vided it be either of secular or Ecclesiastical Historie ; nor to anie methode
or forme of his lectures.
APPENDIX. 677
2. The time of his Reading shalbe from twoe of the clock to three in
the afternoone ; the place the Greeke Schooles, except the Vice-Chancellor
and Heades of Colledges shall appoint other time and place in the publique
Schooles. Hee shall begin his Lectures within three daies after the first
daie of everie term inclusive, and continue them twoe severall daies everie
weeke, reading either of those daies three quarters of one hower at the
least ; without anie intermission, or endinge, untill within twoe daies
before the last daie of everie term.
3. Once every weeke, besides the Reading daies, during all the hower
of his Readinge, hee shall attend in the Schoole appointed for his Lecture,
then and there (if he be asked) to aunswer, and confer with his Auditors,
or others, whosoever, touchinge any doubt or difficulty passed in his
Lectures, or anie other matter touchinge Historic.
4. In the first Oration, or Lecture of everie terme, he shall siguifie
upon what daies he will read, and attend weekly; And in case he shall
kriowe of anie publique or just cause, whereby his reading, or attending
upon anie of the daies, ere by him signified, will be hindered ; then in the
Lecture next foregoing the same, or by a Schedule affixed upon the publique
Schoole doores, he shall declare what daie that week, or the next, hee will
recompense the former hinderance and absence.
5. Once every yeare, instead of the first Lecture in Michaelmas
Terme hee shall read all these Orders openly in the publique Schooles,
and shall withall make some Commemoration of the flounder, upon payne
of fortie shillings sterling for every omission.
6. In the great Vacation, between Midsommer and Michaelmas, he
shall yearly exhibit a copie of his whole yeares Readings unto the flounder,
and his next heyre, during their lives successively, and one other copie
unto the Vice-chancellor, the twoe Proctors, and the Universitie Orator in
Michaelmas tearme followinge, at tyme, and place by them appointed, to
be layd upp, and kept in the University Library to be published, if they
shall think them meet ; upon paine of twenty pounds sterlinge toties
quoties hee shall make default therein.
His stipend and Privileges.
1. His stipend shalbe one hundred poundes sterlinge per annum, to
be paid quarterly by even portions unto himself, or his certaine Attorney,
within foureteene daies after the foure most usuall feastes of the yeare, in
the common hall of Jesus Colledge.
2. He shall be subject to the Statuts of the Universitie, as other
Lecturers and Professors are, and shall enjoy all privileges and immunities
which they doe. If he live in anie Colledge, he shalbe conformable to the
orders thereof, as others of his ranke and qualitie are.
3. The auditors of this Lecture shalbo Batchellors of Arts, and
Gentlemen ffellowe Commoners, beside such as will voluntarily come, or
the Vice-Chancellor and Heades of Colledges, in their wisdomes, shall
appoint1.
1 State Papers (Dom.) Charles I, cxiv, no. 67.
APPENDIX
(D) pp. 83-84.
ORDER OF THE KING 'AT THE COURT AT WHITEHALL
THE 30TH OF APR1LL 1630' RESPECTING THE NOMINA-
TION TO LORD BROOKE'S HISTORY LECTURESHIP.
Whereas his Matie hath bin informed that the late Lo. Brooke did
bestow one hundred pound a yeare for euer to the maintenance of a
Lecture for Historic in the Universitie of Cambridge, appointing further
by his last will, that his heires and executors should hereafter haue the
nomination of the Professor and paie the said Penion to him. Which
course of establishemt. the heads of the saied Universitie have considered
to be soe unfitt as they choose rather to loose the benefitt of the said
Lecture then to receive it upon such termes. His Matie being thereupon
humbly besought by all parties interested to interpose his authoritie for
accomodatou of the businesse is gratiously pleased that the Lo: Keeper
and the Lo: Archbishopp of Yorke assisted by such ludges as they shall
thinke good to call, shall upon some certaine day to be appointed by them,
heare the said cause in the presence as well of the Lo: Brooke that now is,
and the Executors of the Lo: Brooke deceased, as of some of the Heades
of the said Universitie and indeauor soe to compose the difference, as the
Universitie may not be deprived of the honor and benefitt of the said
Lecture.
signed DORCHESTER.
Lo: Keeper.
Lo: Archbishopp of Yorke.
Lo: Chief Justice Hyde.
Sr Thorns Richardson the chiefe
Justice of the Comon Pleas.
Mr Justice Hatton1.
1 • Original Letters in King's College Library, 4th Vol. No. 31.'
APPENDIX
(E)
NUMBERS OF MATRICULATIONS, 1620-1669.
DATE
MATRICU-
M.B.
D.D.
DOCTOR
OF
B.D.
M.D.
M.A.
B.A.
B.L.
or
LATIONS
CIVIL LAW
B.C.L.
1620
425
9
3
19
1
176
293
1
1
453
• «»
9
2
20
2
213
262
...
2
424
...
11
...
18
...
201
235
2
3
454
• • t
9
• • •
26
...
210
299
1
4
449
• ••
• *•
• ••
19
1
199
331
3
5
350
...
4
• . •
16
3
213
293
3
6
413
7
19
2
221
305
1
7
472
...
16
» ••
30
2
237
290
...
8
354
11
2
26
3
216
351
4
9
433
...
4
2
17
2
226
245
1630
75
27
4
13
5
198
302
1
662
...
21
.
35
7
269
324
3
2
404
...
2
1
22
2
207
280
1
3
401
...
4
1
19
248
263
3
4
361
...
4
1
20
3
225
196
6
5
363
9
15
1
214
273
7
6
295
13
3
22
4
189
249
...
7
493
...
9
3
20
2
130
284
8
242
...
5
3
19
2
252
219
3
9
447
...
12
4
18
1
176
209
5
1640
317
4
2
18
4
182
264
2
1
299
• ••
3
8
...
191
212
9
2
222
...
3
7
4
166
• *•
3
3
45
• ••
1
...
9
2
111
1
4
183
1
...
2
1
72
...
3
5
311
. ••
...
...
1
5
78
190
6
417
...
1
2
7
6
121
143
2
7
331
2
4
5
105
130
8
272
2
1
7
1
92
171
9
276
...
6
...
2
3
88
217
i
1650
292
4
5
3
65
221
1
1
254
• ••
4
2
. . •
78
183
2
2
204
• ••
...
'•
1
4
91
167
3
3
183
1
2
3
105
155
1
4
279
1
3
1
123
183
1
5
243
3
10
6
105
165
6
271
...
2
4
5
81
149
1
7
298
• *•
3
7
5
101
193
8
258
. ••
1
• • •
4
4
126
190
2
9
267
1660
356
5
4
14
4
161
161
2
1
295
4
1
• ••
11
7
124
195
2
2
253
2
2
2
9
3
127
187
2
3
279
3
3
2
7
1
113
163
3
4
324
2
5
1
9
2
119
183
3
5
266
2
5
2
9
3
122
199
5
6
0
4
11
...
12
3
73
189
1
7
581
4
1
...
17
1
116
172
3
8
376
2
5
3
4
4
149
222
1
9
328
5
3
1
8
7
125
242
3
680
APPENDIX.
Mandate Degrees pp. 557-8.
DATE
M.B.
D.D.
LL.D.
B.D.
M.D.
M.A.
LL.B.
1660
71
9
6
5
1
1661
47
10
9
, 4
1
1662
2
13
3
1
5
2
5
1669
7
1
6
APPENDIX
(F) pp. 542-5.
SUBSCRIPTIONS ON ADMISSION TO HOLY ORDERS:
1641-1662.
In connexion with the evidence afforded by the Subscription and
Ordination Books, above described, Dr Venn cites the additional facts
supplied by the Consignation Books, as they were termed, in the diocese
of Norwich, being the records of the Visitations of Dioceses by their
bishops, — occasions on which every incumbent and curate of a parish was
cited to appear, and, after the Restoration, every schoolmaster and teacher.
The different dioceses, however, differ materially as regards the amount of
evidence thus afforded, that presented by Norwich being exceptionally
full; a feature which may be at least partially referred to the vigilance
with which Matthew Wren ruled the diocese. But, in any case, if we
were to extend our researches throughout England, and include all the
men educated at the Colleges of both Universities, the aggregate of the
clergy thus obtaining episcopal ordination after Episcopacy had been
legally suppressed would be found to be very considerable ; sufficiently
so, indeed, to warrant us in concluding that those who desired episcopal
ordination had no difficulty in obtaining it during the entire period in
question, down to the very eve of the Restoration ; while it is not less
evident, that certain of those who thus obtained ordination, did so before,
— in some cases, just before, — presentation to a living by the Parliamentary
Committee. Others did so after they had been put in possession of a
APPENDIX. 681
living. But in either case we may assume that, while not actually
rejecting the new form of worship, they were at heart sufficiently in
sympathy with the old to be anxious to satisfy their consciences by the
acceptance of ordination at a bishop's hands. But that they were able to
do so, was owing to the fact that such ordination was simply ignored
by the civil authorities, in common with all that still went on of Anglican
practice with respect to ritual or canonical observance, — a condition of
affairs of which we have noteworthy evidence in the controversy which
afterwards arose between Henry More, the Platonist, and Joseph Beau-
mont, the future master of Peterhouse. The recluse of Christ's College,
whose studious existence was varied only by occasional visits to Ragley
or Grantham, when he published, in 1660, his Mystery of Godliness, in
referring to the condition of the Church (of which he was a professed
member), during the preceding years, implies that it was one of
almost suspended existence, — to quote his own expression, ' she had dis-
appeared, and was wholly under the hatches.' Such a description startled
Beaumont, — who had been bishop Wren's domestic chaplain, and was
himself the restorer of Jesus College chapel, and also one of Charles the
Second's chaplains, — into an indignant disclaimer ; and in his controversy
with More in 1665, we find him calling this description in question, as
unwarrantable. ' It is true,' he replied, that ' the free exercise of their
religion was violently overborne... yet still it was well enough known, that
the Religion was professed (and that with more than ordinary zeal) in
private congregations ; that the Churches daily service was there solemnly
used, and the Sacraments reverently administered ; still many were
ordained by the Bishops, still the Fasts and Feasts were observed by
thousands, still some proselytes, much moved by the pious constancy
of our Confessours, were gained to our religion1.'
1 Some Observations upon the Apologia of Dr Henry More for his Mystery of
Godlinesse. By J. Beaumont, Master of St Peter's College and Chaplain in
Ordinary to his Majesty. Cambridge, 1665, p. 181. •
INDEX.
Abbot, Geo., archbp. of Canterbury,
admonishes Montagu, 30 ; did not
require that college chapels should
be consecrated, 130, n. 2
Aberdaron (Carnarvon), rectory of,
acquired by St John's College, 39
Aberdeen, university of, claim of, to
priority over the other Scotch uni-
versities, 498 and n. 5 ; regarded
with disapproval by Baillie, 499 ;
Hen. Jenks, of Caius College, B.A.
of, 615, n. 2
Absolution, granted by the vice-
chancellor, Dr Hill's scruples as
regarded performance of such duty,
333
Act, to prevent corrupt practices in
sequestrations, 99. See also under
Gospel, Indemnity, Uniformity
Adams, Sir Tho., of Trinity, founds
professorship of Arabic, 95, 96
Agreement of the People, the (1647),
limitations imposed by, on the
power of Parliament, 357 and n. 3
Agriculture, study of, proposed in
seventeenth century, 465
Ainsworth, Hen., of St John's and
Caius, character of George Johnson
described by, 159 ; succeeds to the
pastorate at Amsterdam, 160 ; doubts
respecting, cleared up by Dr Venn,
ib. , n. 2 ; his knowledge of Hebrew,
160-1 ; life of, at Amsterdam, 161
Alabaster, Anne, first wife of Dr Still,
172
Alabaster, Roger, nephew of Anne,
m. sister of Adam Winthrop, ib.
Alabaster, Tho., father of Anne, 172
Alcock, Jo., bp. of Ely, his skill in
the building of Jesus College, 301
Alexander VII, pope, his efforts to
abolish nepotism at the Papal
Court, 519
Alfred, King, legendary benefactor of
the university, 142 ; Cambridge
assumed by Sir Simonds D'Ewes to
have been a seat of learning in his
time, 210
All Souls College, Oxford, state of,
during the siege of the city, 262 ;
corrupt elections at, 505 ; same
quashed by the Visitors, ib.
Allix, Pet., f. of Jesus College, use
made of the Waldensian MSB. by,
514
Almyton, Jo., authorship of England's
faithfull Reprover attributed to,
539, n. 2
Ames, Wm., f. of Christ's, Nathaniel
Eaton a disciple of, 186; teacher
of a congregation at Franeker, 442 ;
his treatise on Ethics studied in the
universities, 465, n. 3 ; see also Vol.
n s. v.
Amesius, see Amen
Amsterdam, fortunes of the Separatist
Church at, 158; freedom conceded
to theological speculation at, 424 ;
Descartes' liking for, 425 ; 470 ;
479 ; description of, by Hall, bp. of
Norwich, see Hall, Jos.
Anabaptists, the, numerous in Lincoln,
124, n. 1; excesses of, in England,
345; 496, n. 2
Anatomy, neglect of, as a study in
17th century, 338; want of in-
struction in, deprecated by John
Hall, and by Milton, 372 and
n. 4
Andreae, Valentine, his description of
Germany in 1648, 357, n. 1
Andrewes, Lancelot, bp., one of the
first to suggest the collation of the
Vulgate with the Greek text, 489;
see also Vol. n *. v.
Andrewes, Roger, master of Jesus
College, 57
684
INDEX.
Angels, the, Descartes declines the
proposal of Henry More to enter
into a discussion respecting the
attributes of, 648 ; ' fancies con-
cerning ' disparaged by Joseph
Sedgwick, 451
Anglo-Saxon, foundation of a lecture-
ship in, by Sir Henry Spelman, 97;
Dictionary of, by Somner, 98 ; verses
in, in the Irenodia, 220
Antichrist, Montagu refuses to identify
the Pope with, 27, 50; Henry More
espouses the contrary view, 655
and n. 3
Antinomianism, in New England,
condemned by Welde, 198, 199;
Arrowsmith employed to write a-
gainst, 303, 353
Apocalypse, the interpretation of, by
Mede, 24; by Burton, 78; by Henry
More, 657-8; projected, but not
carried into accomplishment, by
Israel Tonge, 657
Apollonius, a text-book in the uni-
versity in the 17th century, 465
Apolofjeticall Narration, origin of the,
441 ; character of the treatise, 444 ;
Answer to same, ib., n. 6.
Appello Caesarem, see Montagu, 31,
46, 47, 79
Aquinas, Thomas, studied in middle
of 17th century, 465, n. 3 ; method
of, preferred by Pearson to that of
Peter Lombard, 587 and n. 2
Arabic, value of, in Scriptural studies,
93; MSS. at Cambridge, ib.; value of
a knowledge of the spoken language,
94 ; chair of, endowed by Sir Thomas
Adams, 96; and at Oxford, by Laud,
127 ; lexicon of, by Thorndike, 309 ;
knowledge of, possessed by Comber,
318, n. 2 ; taught by Sheringham at
Rotterdam, 377
Arbella, the, John Winthrop sails in,
for New England, 175 and n. 4 ;
177
Archer, Tho., f. of Trinity College,
memoranda of, relating to the plague,
103, n. 1
Aristotle, authority of, confirmed at
Oxford by the Laudian statutes,
135; treatises of, required to be
studied for the Oxford B.A. degree,
136 ; attacked at Utrecht, 430 ;
deference to, at the universities,
exaggerated by Webster, 462 ; facts
relating to same, 465 ; cited by
Henry More, 598; treatise wrongly
ascribed to, by same writer, 659,
n. 5
Arithmetic, knowledge of, requisite for
second degree at Harvard, 196
Arminius, doctrines of, disavowed by
Montagu, 32 ; espoused by Cosin,
46 ; denounced by Rous, 52
Arnheim, Independent Church at,
441 ; Thomas Goodwin pastor at,
ib. ; the Apologeticall Narration
written by divines at, ib. ; their
account of themselves called in
question by Thomas Edwards, 445-6;
484, n. 2
Arrowsmith, Jo., appointment of, to
mastership of Trinity, 475 ; his
genius naturally combative, ib. ; his
Tactica Sacra, 476; appointments of,
as Regius professor and commis-
sioner to survey the Counties, ib. ;
services of, to the cause of ortho-
doxy, 477 ; his Orationes Weigelianae,
477-80 ; exposure of the doctrines
of Valentine Weigel in same, as of
like tendency with those of Dell and
Webster, 479 ; topics selected by, as
subjects of congratulation in 1654,
481-2 ; suggests discontinuance of
the old controversy as to priority
with Oxford, 482 ; denies that the
language of the early Reformers
with regard to the universities, is
applicable either to Oxford or Cam-
bridge, 483; 498; 518; probable
influence of, in his college, 530 ;
sanctions the scheme of Poole's
Model, 537 ; is referred to with great
respect by Whichcote, 590
Ashe, Simeon, of Emmanuel, chaplain
to Manchester, 273 ; refuses to read
the Book of Sports, 276 ; disclaims
all knowledge of the ' Oathe of
Discovery,' 276-7
Ashton, Ri., f. of Pembroke, disputes
thelegalityof Dowsing'sproceedings,
269 ; ejection of, from his fellow-
ship, 291
Association of the Eastern Counties,
constitution of the, 240 ; counties
comprised in, ib. and n. 4 ; 250 ;
251 ; Ordinance for regulating the
university extended to, 272, n. 6 ;
the Association first opposed by
John Otway, 304
Astrology, growing neglect of, 467
Astronomy, one of the obligatory
subjects in the M.A. course, pre-
scribed by the Laudian statutes for
Oxford, 136 ; similar requirement at
Harvard, 196
Attestation, the Joynt, rejoinder to the
Appello, 48-50 ; signatories to, 49
JNDEX.
685
Attwood, Bi., chronicler of Pembroke
College, 289, n. 3 ; 376 and n. 4
Aucher, ejected f. of Peterhouse, 282;
Sir Anthony, election of his son
to fellowship at Trinity Hall, 627
Audley End, Thomas Howard, lord
of, 9
Augmentations of stipends of master-
ships, conditions attached to, in
1654, 503
Authorised Version, suggestions for
revision of, 16
B
Babington, Humphrey, vice-master of
Trinity College, expelled from fellow-
ship as a refuser of the Engagement,
385 ; created D.D. per literas Regias,
386 ; his living at Boothby Pagnell,
387; family of, 388, n. 2; sermon
by, at Lincoln Assizes, 388-390 ;
dedication of same to Thomas
Harrington, 390 ; election of, to
vice-mastership, ib. ; benefaction of,
to Trinity College, ib.
Bachelor of arts, requirements of the
Laudian statutes for degree of, 136
Bachelor of divinity, requirements for
degree of, at Cambridge, 386-7
Bachiler, E., King's, contributor to
the Luctus et Gratulatio, 517
Bacon, Francis, 4 ; death of, 65 ;
designed benefactions of, to both
universities, ib. ; Williams appointed
executor to, ib. ; declines the sug-
gestion of same, to limit his bene-
faction to Cambridge, 66 ; growing
admiration of the university for,
prior to his death, ib. ; copy of his
Essays sent by Joseph Mede to Sir
Martin Stuteville, 66-7 ; his sense
of his own indebtedness to Cam-
bridge, 67-8 ; tribute paid by the
university to his memory, 68 ; his
estimate of religious controversies,
80 ; on the use of abridgements of
history, 82; advice given by, to
Fulke Greville as to his studies,
82, 87, n. 1
Bagge, Dr, f. of Caius College, re-
commended by Cudworth to Thurloe,
as a good Latiuist, 611, n. 2
Baillie, Eobt., prof, of divinity at
Glasgow, his account of the exiles
in Holland, 442, n. 1 ; his estimate
of Thurloe, 4^7 ; correspondence of,
with William Spang, 494 ; know-
ledge he derives from same of the
contests in the United Provinces,
494-6 ; his concern at the extent to
which scholars there are absorbed in
theological controversy, ib. ; his
correspondence with Voetius, 495 ;
his tractate against the Independents,
495 ; describes the state of the Scotch
universities, 498 ; his hope that
Walton may not be disappointed of
his reward, 500; consults Tuckney
on the drawing up of a course 6f
philosophy, 531
Bainbridge, Christ., ejection of, from
fellowship of Christ's, 302
Bainbridge, Tho., master of Christ's,
administration of, 15 ; eminence of,
as a preacher, 57 ; 295, n. 3 ; 302 ;
partiality of, to his kinsfolk, 352 ;
eulogized by John Hall, ib.
Baker, Tho., on Holdsworth, 121 ;
his estimate of William Beale, 146 ;
accepts the statements of the Querela,
239, n. 1 ; note by, in copy of
Scobell, 247, n. 3 ; his estimate of
Laney, 289 ; testimony of, in favour
of Arrowsmith, 319, n. 2 ; speaks
highly of Whichcote, 531, n. 3 ; note
by, in copy of Baxter's Narrative,
in St John's library, quoted, 548,
n. 1
Balcanquhall, Walt., f. of Pembroke,
rewarded with the deanery of
Kochester, 48 ; his letters from
Dordrecht, 49 ; his expulsion from
Pembroke and subsequent experi-
ences, 290
Baldero, Edw., see Boldero
Ball, Jas., f. of Peterhouse, ejected as
refuser of the Engagement, 279, n. 1
Ball, Sam., f. of Christ's, signature
of, in register of the London diocese,
544
Ball, Tho., f. of Emmanuel, state-
ments of, with respect to the election
to the Chancellorship in 1626, 59
and n. 2
Ball, Mr W. W. Rouse, quoted, 16,
n. 2 and 4, 227, 312, 462
Balliol College, Oxford, state of, during
the siege, 262
Banckes, Christopher, f. of Peterhouse,
ejection of, 283
Bancroft, Ri., archbp. of Canterbury,
bequest of his library, 73 ; 130, n. 2 ;
conditions of same, 335 ; 336, n. 5
Bantoft, f. of Jesus, ejected Presby-
terian, 381 and n. 2
Baptism, infant, dissensions respecting,
in Massachusetts, 187 ; 188, n. 1
Bardsey, Dr Geo., ejected fellow of
Queens', 299
686
INDEX.
Bargrave, Dr Isaac, dean of Canter-
bury, petition of the university
presented by, 211, n. 4
Bargrave, John, f. of Peterhouse,
208, n. 2 ; ejection of, in 1645, 283
Barker, Geo., intruded f. of St Ca-
therine's, 381
Barley in Herts, Thorndike presented
to rectory of, 253 ; his sequestration
from, 309; the same held by three
notable men in succession, 253, n. 3
Barlow, Tho., librarian of the Bodleian,
488, n. 2
Baronius, wish expressed by Kobert
Baillie that scholars would write to
' Vindicate antiquitie ' from, 495
Bartholinus, Caspar, treatise of, de
Studio Theoloffico, 78 and n. 5
Barthomley in Cheshire, Cawdry pre-
sented to rectory of, 339
Batchcroft, Dr Tho., his ability as
head of Caius, 292 and n. 4; ejection
of, 364 ; his qualifications contrasted
with those of his successor, ib. •
his retirement from Cambridge, 365 ;
567
Barrow, Isaac (the nephew), master of
Trinity, a friend of Peter Samways,
386 ; his Euclid published at Uni-
versity Press, 489 and n. 2
Barrow, Isaac (the uncle), bp. of
St Asaph, f. of Peterhouse, ejection
of, Jan. 1645, 283; his flight to
Oxford, 284 ; confusion of, with his
nephew, ib., n. 1 ; joint author of
the Certain Disquisitions, 287, n. 3 ;
created D.D. per literas Regias, 558
Barton, Mr, a person of weak intellect,
presented by the Crown to the Trinity
living of Orwell, 628 ; petition of
the master and fellows of the college
against same, ib.
Barwick, John, dean of St Paul's,
f. of St John's, active in the royal
cause, 232-3 ; 278, n. 1 ; gets the
Disquisitions printed in London,
289; ejection of, 304; brings out
reprint of Querela, 349 ; created
D.D., 558; promoted to deaneries
of Durham and St Paul's, ib.
Barwick, Peter, f . of St John's, author
of Life of John, his brother ;
criticisms of same, 120, n. 2 ; 232,
n. 2 ; testimony of, 240, n. 1 ; ejection
of, 304; quoted, 304, n. 1; 463,
n. 3
Barwick, Wm., f. of St John's, his
ejection from same, 304
Baxter, Hi., effect produced on, by
visit to Cromwell's quarters, 326 ;
quoted, 370; approved the burning
of wizards, 450; 470; seconded Poole's
appeal to the merchants of London,
536; his description of the Inde-
pendents, 548 and n. 1
Bay Psalm Book, the, earliest pro-
duction of the New England Press,
198
Beale, Jerome, master of Pembroke
College (1618-30), contributor to
the Gratulatio, as vice-chancellor,
10-llandn. 1 ; supporter of Bucking-
ham, 54; but abstains from voting,
57; opposed the election of Batch-
croft to the headship of Caius,
364, n. 4
Beale, Wm., master of Jesus College
(1632-Feb. 163f); elected by royal
appointment to mastership of St
John's in 1634, 120; Laud's letter
to, 124; his sermon at St Mary's,
145-6; articles exhibited against,
219; Charles's kind word in his
behalf, 223; 232; arrest of, 237;
his subsequent experiences, 239-40;
ejection of, from the mastership,
273; confined at Ely House, 274;
298
Beaumont, Joseph, master of Peter-
house, his description of royal visit
in 1642, 111, n. 1; a contributor to
the Irenodia, 220, n. 2 ; ejection of,
from fellowship, 282, 284, 404; ac-
count given by, of the college in
1660, 565
Becher, Howard, f. of Peterhouse,
ejection of, as refuser of the Engage-
ment, 279, n. 1
Bedell, Wm., election of, to bishopric
of Kilmore, 20, u. 1
Bedron, the, name of college in York,
206
Bed well, Wm., scholar of Trinity, 93;
compiler of an Arabic lexicon, ib.
Belingham, Sam., student at Harvard,
196
Bendreth, see Pendreth
Benefactors, commemoration of, in-
stituted, 141; instructions given in
connexion with service for same,
- 336, n. 2; point of view from which
such designs are to be estimated, 374
Bene't College, see Corpus Christi
Bene't's Church, St, havoc wrought in,
by Dowsing, 271
Berkshire, earl of, see Howard (Tho.)
Bernard, Nath. , sermon in London,
by, 112; sermon by, at St Mary's in
Cambridge, ib. ; subsequent fate of,
113
INDEX.
687
Bernard, Tobias, student at Harvard,
196
Bertie, Robt., f. of Sidney, votes for
Minshull's election, 254 ; ejection
of, from fellowship, ib., n. 3
Beza, the theologian, studied by Which-
cote, 532
Bible, translation of, into Indian
dialect, 181, n. 2
Bidding Prayer, omission of, anim-
adverted upon by Laud, 133
Billingford, Dr, master of Corpus, in-
scription in memory of his daughter
misinterpreted by Dowsing, 270-1
and n. 1
Bishop Stortford, Herts, John Norton,
curate at, 184
Bishops, attack on the order depre-
cated by Holdsworth, 218-9
Blackstone, Wm., master of arts of
Emmanuel, a loyal churchman in
New England, 179
Blake, Wm. , ejected f. of St Catherine's,
381
Blakestoue, Ra., f. of Jesus College,
a staunch royalist, 301
Blakiston, bachelor of Peterhouse,
ejection of, 282
Blanckes, Wm., senior f. of Caius,
ejection of, 366; befriended by a
former pupil, 367 ; reinstated in
1660, 376; his attainments, ib.
Blythe, Sam., afterwards master of
Clare Hall, permitted to reside in
college during the plague, 619
Bodleian Library, Oxford, Laud's bene-
factions to, 135
Bodurda, Wm. , f. of St John's, ejection
of, and sequestration of his property,
304
Boehme, Jac., Life of, by Charles
Hotham, 418; his influence as a
thinker, 419
Boilston, Jo., f. of Jesus College,
271, n. 4; a migrant from Christ's,
301 and n. 1
Bokenham, Ant. , f . of Pembroke College,
ejection of, 291
Boldero, Edm., master of Jesus College,
f. of Pembroke, disputes Dowsing's
authority, 268; joint author of
Certain Disquisitions, 287, n. 3 ;
committed to prison on his refusal
of the Covenant, 291 ; his supineness
during the plague, 620; his ad-
mitted incapacity for the headship,
ib., n. 2
Bolton, Sam., succeeds Bainbridge
as master of Christ's College, 359 ;
his marriage, ib., n. 3
Bond, Dr Jo., f. of St Catherine's,
election of, to mastership of Trinity
Hall, 295; assigns pews in St
Edward's Church, 533
Book Fish, the, 71 ; comments of Fuller
and Samuel Ward on the pheno-
menon, 71, 72
Boreman, Robt., f. of Trinity, his
sermon at the funeral of Dr Comber,
308 and n. 3 ; the same quoted,
318, n. 2
Boston, Line. ; John Cotton writes
from, 179 ; Cromwell concentrates
his forces at, 258
Boston in Massachusetts, John Daven-
port's reception at, 185 and n. 7
Boughey, Rev. A. H. F., communica-
tions from, 234, n. 8; 385, n. 6
Bowing towards the East, order for
discontinuance of, 220
Bowtell, Jo., stationer at Cambridge,
103, n. 1
Boyle, Chas., 58 n.
Bradford, Tho., signature of, in
Bishops' Register during Common-
wealth, 543
Bradshaw, Hen., former librarian of
the university, quoted, 514
Brasenose College, Oxford, principal
of, bearer of a petition against the
grant of charter for a university at
Durham, 523
Brearly, Wm. , f. of Christ's, ejection
of, 302 and n. 3; goods of, se-
questered, 303
Brent, Sir Nath., president of the
Commission at Oxford, 347, n. 4 ;
reinstated warden of Merton, 367
Brewster, Wm., founder of New Ply-
mouth, educated at Peterhouse, a
teacher at Amsterdam, 161 and
n. 1 ; 163 ; takes his library to
Virginia, 166
Brewster, Wm., senior, 161, n. 1
Bridge, Wm., f. of Emmanuel, exile at
Arnheim, 441 ; successor to Peters
at Rotterdam, 443 ; repudiates his
Anglican ordination, ib. ; ordains,
and is ordained by, Ward, ib. ; say-
ing attributed to, by Thomas
Edwards, 446
Bridgewater, first earl of, interest
taken by, in the proceedings against
Montagu, 45
Briggs, Hen., f. of St John's, member
of the Virginia Company, 151 ;
Savilian professor of astronomy at
Oxford, ib. and 315
Brinsley, Jo., the elder, praised by
John Webster, 459
688
INDEX.
Briscoe, usher at Harvard, cudgelled
by Eaton, 187
Bristol, bishopric of, declined by
Holdsworth, 220; declined by
Collins, 297, n. 2
Broadgate Hall, Oxford, Francis Bous
educated at, 51
Brodrick, Hon. G. C., on the value of
Sanderson's Judgement of the Uni-
versity, 343, n. 2
Brook, Mr, Crashaw's master at
Charterhouse, 318
Brooke, lady, request addressed to, for
payment of arrears of Dorislaus's
pension, 364
Brooke, first lord, 81 ; see Greville,
Fulke
Brooke, Sam., master of Trinity College,
114
Brooke, Sam., ejected f. of St Cathe-
rine's, 381
Browne, G. F. (bp. of Bristol), quoted,
360, n. 5 ; 381
Browne, Jo., of Caius, ordained as
priest in 1654, 543
Browne, Kellam, one of the Mass.
Company at Cambridge, 170, n. 3
Bro\vnrig, Ealph (bp. of Exeter),
succeeds to the mastership of
St Catherine's, 122 ; letter from, to
Laud, 137 ; remonstrates with bishop
Morton, on behalf of the Lutherans,
143, n. 4 ; 145 ; a contributor to
the Irenodia, 220, n. 2 ; summoned
to the Westminster Assembly, 247 ;
253 ; his growing reputation, 269-70
and 269, n. 2 ; vetos the publication
of Certain Disquisitions, 288 and
n. 3 ; expulsion of, from mastership,
305, n. 3 ; 318
Bruce, Philip, quoted, 150, n. 6
'Brusterus,' Nath., a disputant at
Harvard, 196
Bucanus, Wm., prof, of theology at
Lausanne, 292; his Institutes of
theology studied at Christ's Hospit-
al, ib. ; character of the work, ib.,
n. 1
Buck, Tho., f. of St Catherine's,
university printer for forty years,
bound over not to print seditious
books, 360-1; 360, n. 5; his
benefaction to St Catherine's, ib. ;
one of the Esquire bedels, 522,
n. 4
Buckden, Hunts, John Williams's
episcopal seat, 36 ; his activity in
its restoration, 38
Buckeridge, Joh., bp. of Kochester and
Ely, signs the memorial to Bucking-
ham, in favour of Montagu, 34; 45;
opposes appointment of Goodwin to
the lectureship at Trinity Church,
100 ; character of, 118
Buckingham, first duke of (second
creation), see Villiers, George
Bulkeley, Bi., f. of St John's, killed
fighting in the royal cause, 304
Bulkley, Jo., a disputant at Harvard,
196
Bulkley, Pet., f. of St John's, driven
into exile by Laud, founder of Con-
cord, 184
Burgess, Ant., f. of Emmanuel, sup-
ports the scheme of a hall of
residence for students in London,
264
Burghley House, capture of, by
Cromwell, 250
Burghley, lad}7 Mildred, sends Bi. Neile
to St John's, 44
Bumet, Gilb., statement of, respecting
Whichcote, 596 and n. 1
Burroughs, Jer., of Emm., one of the
church at Arnheim, 441 ; probable
share of, in the Apologeticall Narra-
tion, ib.
Burrows, Montagu, quoted, 317 ; 484,
n. 2; testimony of, to results of the
Visitation of Oxford, 346 and n. 1,
528
Burton, Hen., of St John's, his Plea,
etc., 51 ; presented to the rectory of
St Matthew's, 78 ; citation of, before
Privy Council, ib. ; devotes himself
to the study of prophecy, ib. and
n. 3
Burton, Hezekiah, tutor of Magdalene,
550 and n. 3
Burton, Tho., Diary of, quoted, 501,
nn. 1 and 2
Buseey, Cbas. , migrant from Pembroke
to Jesus College, 301
Butler, ' Dr ' Wm. , donor of plate to
Clare, 234
Butts (Dr Hen.), master of Corpus
Christi, an active supporter of
Batchcroft in the election to head-
ship of Caius College, 69, n. 2 ;
difficulties attendant on his own
tenure of office, 115; his suicide,
116
Byfield, Adoniram, clerk of the West-
minster Assembly, 400-1 ; 405; 407,
n. 1
Byne , Edw. , B. A. of Trinity,
harangues against the accepted
canon of Scripture, 354 ; his recan-
tation, ib. and n. 2
Byng, Edw., ejected f. of Clare, 286
INDEX.
689
Cabbala or Cabala, the, 644 and n. 3,
648
Cadbury, North, Somerset, Whichcote
presented to living of, 297
Caius College, study of anatomy at, 17;
Cosin educated at, 46 ; 58 ; 75 ;
state of the chapel, circ. 1636, 134 ;
foundation of Hebrew lectureship
at, 160 ; evaded loss of its plate,
234 ; chapel despoiled by Dowsing,
269 ; ejections at, of refusers of the
Covenant, 292 ; Jeremy Taylor,
fellow of, 350 ; ejections at, under
Dell, 366 ; low state of discipline at,
468, n. 3; 517; clerical members of,
who attested their loyalty by their
signatures, 543 ; 545
Caius, Dr, arguments of, ignored by
D'Ewes, 210
Calamy, Dr Edm., quoted, 310 ; cor-
rection of, ib., n. 3; 472; 531, n. 3;
the younger, distinguished from
others of his family, 535 ; a migrant
from Sidney to Pembroke, ib.
Calvinism, 32 and n. 1 ; aversion of
Henry More from, 596 ; ib., n. 4;
598
Cambridge, Mass. , first so called, 188 ;
192; see Harvard
' Cambridge Platform,' the, 162 ; 183,
n. 4
Cambridge, town of, meeting at, of
members of the Massachusetts Com-
pany in 1629, 170 ; sides with the
parliamentary party in 1642, 235 ;
becomes the rendezvous of their
forces, 240; expectation of attack
upon, 241; rising of royalist party
in, 259; endeavour of, to abolish
university privileges, 326-9; con-
tinues to be a military centre, 353 ;
decree for its representation by one
member only, 515, n. 2
Camden, Wm., friend of Carlton, 49;
81
Cambridge, university of, the expressed
dissatisfaction of Parliament with,
leads to direct interference with,
61-2 ; royal theory of the relations
of the Crown to, ib. ; claim of Laud,
as primate, to visit, 128-30; decision
in his favour given at Hampton
Court, 131 ; state of discipline in,
in 1636, 131-5; migrations from
Oxford to, 136-7; teaching of Cart-
wright and Travers in, continues to
develope, 157 ; comes to be regarded
as a fountain head of Puritan
doctrine, 162 and notes 2 and 3 ;
important part played by members
of in the education of New England,
200-1; state of, in 1641, described
by Holdsworth, 216 ; promptitude of
its response to Charles i for aid,
229-37; efforts of the Lords to
shield the colleges from injury dis-
regarded by Cromwell, 242-3 ; the
university refuses him a subsidy,
244 ; destruction wrought at, by
Dowsing, 267-72; tendering of the
Covenant, commencing early in
1644, ushers in the ascendancy of
the Puritan party, 273 ; ejection
of five Heads, 273-4 ; expulsion of
refusers and sequestration of their
goods, 280-314; intrusion of an
unbeneficed clergy into the Head-
ships occasions serious difficulties,
323 ; attitude of the town authorities
menaces the university with abolition
of its privileges and immunities,
327-9; its government now assumed
by a Commission with two Com-
mittees, one in London, tbe other in
Cambridge, 329 ; tendering of the
Engagement, October 1649, and
onwards, paves the way for the
ascendancy of the Independents in,
369; John Hall demands a Refor-
mation of the Universities, 371-4;
further ejections and sequestrations,
376-92 ; question raised at Peter-
house with respect to the ' negative
voice ' of a Head, 400-17 ; collateral
question also raised with regard
to college statutes enacted prior
to the Elizabethan statutes, 410;
propositions put forth in Parlia-
ment and through the press for the
abolition of the universities, 419-20;
these are justified as called for by
the ceaseless and interminable con-
troversies that prevail there, 420;
the question of the right of private
judgement in relation to dogma comes
again prominently forward, as in-
volved in the philosophy of Descartes
and the teai hing of Voetius of
Utrecht, 420-32; the controversial
spirit continues to find expression in
the views of teachers and writers
such as Tho. Edwards, 443-5 ;
Sidrach Simpson, 452-7; and John
Webster, 457-66, by whom the
whole system of university training
is called in question ; while the
academic defence is maintained by
Seth Ward and Dr Wilkins in
M, III.
44
690
INDEX.
the Vindiciae Academiarum, 460-
67, and by Dr Arrowsmith in his
Orationes, 477-80 ; to the foregoing
assailants must be added Thomas
Hobbes, writing from the point of
view of the scientific sceptic, who
denounces the deference still paid to
Aristotle and his commentators, 433;
Cromwell's Ordinance for the visita-
tion of both universities, 484; powers
conferred on the Commissioners and
also on the Heads, 486; absence in
the colleges of abuses that call for
the intervention of the Visitors, 509;
petition of, against constituting
Durham College a university, 522 ;
renewal of the attack upon the uni-
versities, 546 ; declaration by Parlia-
ment of its design to uphold them,
549 ; becomes ' disuniversitied ' by
the plague of 1665, 619 ; decline of
the influence of the moderate party
in, as represented by the Platonists,
owing to the progress of scepticism
(463-8), the return of its theologians
to the methods of scholasticism
(587), and the absorbing interest in
the natural sciences evoked by the
Eoyal Society (451, 588)
Canon law, proposed revival of study
of, 436
Canterbury, archbp. of, decision in
favour of his right to visit the uni-
versities, 131 ; the same remains
inoperative, ib. and n. 2
Cap and gown, wearing of, in 1636,
132 ; conformity in wearing of former
at Sidney College, 252, n. 3
Cap, the square, disliked by the Re-
formers, 555, n. 4 ; reappearance
of, 556-7
Car, Tho., ?f. of Jesus, supposed editor
of Crashaw's Steps, etc., 285, n. 1
Carlisle, bpric. of, 45 ; declined by
John Bar wick, 558
Carlisle, earl of, see Hay, Jos.
Carlyle, Tho., quoted, 486
Carter, Edm. , on the endowment be-
queathed by lord Brooke, 89, 90
Carter, George, ejected f. of Clare, 286
Cartesianism, see Descartes
Cartwright, Tho., intolerance of, con-
demned by Mede, 17; 25; fallacies
of, exposed by Sutcliffe, 50; de-
velopment of the teaching of, in the
university, 157 ; John Winthrop's
familiarity with the writings of, 172
Cary, Valentine, master of Christ's,
his leanings to Romanism, 15 ;
tenure of office prolonged after his
election to bishopric of Exeter, 40
continued interest of, in St John's,
ib.; selected by Williams, to make
known his designs of benefiting the
college, 41
Casaubon, Isaac, 26, 46, 93, 161, 298
Castell, Edm., on the utility of Arabic,
94, n. 4 ; his services in connexion
with Walton's Polyglot, 492, 493,
n. 1
Castle at Cambridge, magazine at,
seized by Cromwell, 236, n. 1
Castle, Robt., member for the county,
approved the abolition of the uni-
versity, 471, n. 2
Catechising in church, 100; college
office of catechist, 300, n. 4
Cathedrals, endowments of, petition
of the university against the con-
fiscation of, 211 and n. 4
Cavendish, Chas., killed near Gains-
borough, 251
Cavendish, Eliz., countess of Shrews-
bury, see Baker-Mayor, 611
Cavendish, lady Margaret, 40
Cavendish, Wm., afterwards duke of
Newcastle, 40
Cawdry, Zach., tutor of St John's,
305 ; deprived of his office of proctor,
339 and n. 1 ; leaves Cambridge, ib. ;
author of Discourse of Patronage, ib.
Certain Disquisitions, etc., royalist
pamphlet ostensibly printed at Ox-
ford, 287-9; contributors to, ib.,
n. 3; a Cambridge production, 288
and n. 1 ; probably printed in London
and published at Oxford, 289; first
impressions seized and burnt, ib. ;
Gunning's services in connexion
with, 578
Chaderton, Laurence, master of Em-
manuel, 51 ; 86, n. 1 ; deference
shewn to, by Holdsworth, 121 ;
death of, 212 ; his esteem for Holds-
worth, ib.
Chaldee, studied at Harvard, 195;
Dr Comber acquainted with, 318,
n. 2
Chaloner, Jas., signatory to order of
London Committee, 408 ; 412
Chamberlain, Jo., of Trinity College,
statement by, respecting prince
Charles's nomination, 7
Chamberlain, Wm., poet, created D.D.,
558; admired by Southey, 558, n. 4
Chancellorship of the university, con-
tested election for, in 1626, 53-63 ;
Buckingham's candidature supported
by the Crown, 53 ; his principal sup-
porters in the university, 54 ; sudden
INDEX.
691
change of feeling among the aca-
demic body, 55; the earl of Berk-
shire proposed, 55-6; disadvantages
under which his supporters laboured,
56 ; doubts respecting Buckingham's
majority, ib.; analysis of the election
as derived from the lists, 56-9;
abstention of most of the Heads, 57 ;
real nature of the contest, 59-60
Chapel clerk, office of, held by a
scholar, 402
Chapels, unconsecrated college, not
condemned by Abbot but objected
to by Laud, 130, n. 2
Charity, licence to receive from the col-
leges, granted by the vice-chancellor,
141 and n. 1
Charles i, proclamation of hisaccession,
5; nominated when prince for the
chancellorship, 6 ; his father's dis-
pleasure, 7 ; circumstances under
which Northampton succeeded to
the office, 8-9 ; great popularity of,
in the university prior to his acces-
sion, 11 ; deputation to, at Eoyston
in 1623, 10; the Gratulatio, on his
return from Spain, ib. ; Williams
prohibited from taking part in the
Coronation, 36; volume used by,
at the ceremony, now in St John's
library, ib., n. 5; appealed to, by
Williams, 37; consulted by Bucking-
ham with respect to the Appello,
43; 54; his theory respecting the
relations of the Crown to the uni-
versities, 62 ; his letter to the uni-
versity, ib.; proposes to suppress
controversy, 76 ; he sanctions the
appointment of Dorislaus, 85 ; com-
mands the continuance of the
lectureship at Trinity Church, 101 ;
104 ; 107 ; 109 ; 117 ; appoints
William Beale to mastership of St
John's, 120 ; personally revises
Laud's new code for Oxford, 135 ;
146 ; visit of, to Cambridge in 1642,
222-3 ; appeals to the university for
a loan, 229 ; 257 ; enters Oxford and
sets up his court at Christ Church,
259 ; 262 ; doubts respecting his
ability to stay there, 289 ; visit of,
to Childerley Hall, 341 ; disinclined
to revisit either university, ib.; the
students go out to greet him in cap
and gown, 342
Charles n, The Guardian performed
before, when prince, 111 ; at Breda,
276 ; proclamation of, at Cambridge,
554-5; receives, at Whitehall, the
deputation from the university, 557 ;
promises to maintain the universities
in their privileges, ib. ; Spencer,
preaching at St Mary's, asserts it
to be his desire to make the Act of
Indemnity as comprehensive as
possible, 560 ; apprehensions enter-
tained of his assassination, ib. ; his
first designs, to practise strict
economy, 560—1 ; the university de-
cides to reinstate him in possession
of the fee-farm rents, 561 ; and
makes a formal tender of the same,
563 ; intervention of, in the election
to the provostship of King's, 568-9 ;
his sense of Fleetwood's exceptional
deserts, 569
Charlestown, pastorate of the church
in, assumed by Thomas James, 181
Charterhouse School, rising reputation
of, 588 ; Jo. Sherman educated at,
ib.
Chauncy, Chas., lecturer on Greek at
Trinity, supports the election of
Berkshire, 58
Chelsea, Sutcliffe's design to found a
college at, 50; Bancroft designs to
bequeath his library to same, 73
Chemistry, lack of instruction in,
deplored by John Hall, 372 ; cry
raised, for provision of such instruc-
tion, 465
Chester, Granado, secretary to earl of
Berkshire, 55 ; letter of the earl to
same after his defeat at election, 60
Cheynell, Fran., pres. of Merton
College, intolerance of, in enforcing
the Covenant, 321; 347, n. 4;
characterized by Anthony Wood,
348, and by Calamy, ib., n. 1; ib.,
n. 2; 509
Childerley, Bainbowe presented to
living of, 306 ; Charles i takes up
his residence at the Hall, 342
Chillingworth, Wm., f. of Trin. Coll.,
Oxford, insult offered to his memory
by Cheynell, 321
Chirk Castle, death of Walter Balcan-
quhall at, 290
Chiswell, Bi., publisher in St Paul's
Churchyard, 656, n. 1
Choristers, 'dry,' 133 and n. 2
Christ Church, Oxford, Charles i sets
up his court at, 259; Edw. Bainbowe
entered at, 306
Christ's College, 11 ; intimate relations
of, with St John's, 14-5; number
of eminent men educated at, 19 ;
becomes through Mede a centre of
political intelligence, 20 ; 21 ; almost
equally divided at Buckingham's
44—2
692
INDEX.
election to the chancellorship, 59 ;
state of, in 1630, as described by
Mede, 105-6; 161; contributes
neither plate nor money at Charles
the First's behest, 234 and n. 6;
245; 291, n. 4; 301; Bolton, master
of, attends Charles on the scaffold,
359 ; his ability as an administrator,
447; 502; Cudworth elected to
mastership of, 534 ; evidence of a
certain attachment of, to the royalist
cause, 545 ; Pepys' visit to, 549 ;
Henry More admitted pensioner at,
597 ; his retention of his fellowship
at, 608, n. 3 ; royal mandates for
elections to fellowships especially
pressed at, 627-8 ; a former student
nominated for the post of manciple,
628-9; Cudworth's courageous re-
sistance, 629 ; Widdrington seeks to
retaliate on the society for his own
expulsion, -ib.
Christ's Hospital, London, 292
Church, the true, Weigel's definition
of, 478
Church of England, not responsible,
in the opinion of Montagu, for doc-
trines not attributable to her teach-
ing, 28; Laud's ideal of, 91; styled
by the exiles on the Arbella, 'our
deare Mother,' 177 and n. 2; unique-
ness of position of, insisted on by
Holdsworth, 216-7
Churches in Cambridge sometimes
used as chapels to colleges, 285, n. 2
Churchyards in Cambridge, scandalous
condition of, one of Laud's subjects
of complaint, 133
Circle, squaring of the, attempted "by
Hobbes, 468 ; ironically declared by
Duport to have been actually accom-
plished, 556 and n. 1
Civil lawyers, rivalry between and those
of the common law, 361, 362
Clare College, 72 ; 211, n. 4; its plate
saved by Barnabas Oley, 234 ; new
building at interrupted by work at
defences of the town, 243; Dowsing's
destructive work at, 271; ejections
at, 286; 376; 566
Clarendon, earl of, see Hyde, Edw.
Clark, Jo., professor of civil law,
subscribes the Engagement, 377 and
n. 2
Clarke, Jo., former mayor of St Alban's,
exile at Amsterdam, 158
Clarke, Eobt., f. of St John's, ejected
as refuser of the Engagement, 384
Clarke, bam., of Emmanuel, petitions
against execution of the King, 358
Class tuition, Mede's method of, 19
Clavis Apocalyptica, the, Mede's most
enduring monument, 21 ; translation
of, by More, ib.
Clement v, pope, approves the study
of Arabic as of use in converting the
Infidel, 94-5
Clergy, the, bill for depriving, of power
of interference in secular affairs,
211
Clerk, Sir Francis, declared the uni-
versity to be endeared to him by its
observance of discipline, 252, n. 3
Cleveland, Jo., f. of St John's, de-
nounces the election of Oliver
Cromwell as representative of the
borough, 147; a contributor to the
Irenodia, 220, n. 2 ; oration of, as
public orator, on the visit of
Charles i, 222 ; satisfaction of
royalty with same, ib. ; expulsion
of, from university, 304 ; circum-
stances of his death, ib., n. 3
Clitheroe grammar school, John
Webster master at, 457
Cobb, G. F. , on the organ of Trinity
College, 133, n. 2
Colbron, Wm., one of the twelve mem-
bers of the Massachusetts Company
who attended the conference at
Cambridge, 170, n. 3
College chapels, three noted by Laud
as still unconsecrated, 130 and n. 2
College Wallon, the, at Leyden, De Dieu
a teacher at, 92
Colleges, plundered by the soldiery in
1643, 246; exemption of, from taxa-
tion, 324 ; statutes of, not to be
set aside by a later statute of the
university, 409-10; to be regarded
as limited monarchies, 419; absence
of abuses in, calling for visitatorial
intervention, 509 ; Dell's theory of,
as institutions, 457; duty of, to aim
at forming the student's character,
538
Comber, Dr Tho., master of Trinity
College, the Jealous Lovers dedicated
to, 109 ; reports Nathanael Bernard's
sermon to Laud, 113 ; election of, to
mastership, 114; dispute between,
and Dr Butts, 116; his remarkable
attainments, 142 ; a contributor to
Voces votivae, 147, n. 1; oration of,
on visit of Charles i, 222; Trinity
prosperous under his rule, 226 ; ex-
pulsion of, from office, 308; testi-
mony to his merits, 308-9; and in
Boreman's funeral sermon on, 318,
n. 2 ; false rumour of death of, 580
INDEX.
693
Comedy, the, in the university, see
also ffausted, Randolph, Win. John-
son, Cowley ; features which led to
its discontinuance, 108
Comenius, J. A., his praise of Amster-
dam, 440, n. 1
Commencement, the, time in the year
at which it was originally held, 125,
n. 2 ; ceremonies at, dispensed with
in 1643, 248; and in 1645, 322;
projected new building for holding
same, 143
Commencement oration, the, 593 and
n. 2
Commencement sermon, the, Tuckney
accuses Whichcote of preaching in
opposition to his, 592, n. 1
Committee, parliamentary, reappoint-
ment of, with instructions for the
better regulation of the universities,
211 ; 296 and n. 4 ; baffled by Crom-
well's party at Oxford, 344 ; authority
claimed by, in relation to elections
for scholarships, 379
Common law, study of, 182
Common Prayer, Book of, question of
retention of, 211, n. 5; the Prayer
Book mutilated at St Mary's, 246;
objected to as containing a false
translation of the canonical Scrip-
tures, 346 ; use of resumed in Trinity
College chapel in 1653, 474 ; signifi-
cance thereof, ib., n. 4
Commons, House of, decision of, with
respect to Worthington's election
to a fellowship, 213-4; Rouse elected
speaker of the ' nominated ' House,
413
Commonwealth, the, virtually estab-
lished at both universities towards
close of 1647, 341
Communion Table, doing reverence
to, no longer to be required at either
university, 211-2
Comyn, Christ., ejected bye fellow of
Peterhouse, 282
Conant, Jo., f. of Exeter Coll., quits
Oxford and loses his library, 349 ;
his influence at Oxford, 484, n. 2 ;
succeeds John Owen in the vice-
chancellorship, 508 and n. 3; bene-
ficial influence which he exercises in
that capacity, 509 ; opposes the
foundation of a university at Dur-
ham, 515
Conduit at Cambridge, inscription on,
in memory of Hobson the carrier,
105 and n. 2
Convocation, reasserts the doctrine of
Divine Bight, 144; the same im-
posed on the universities, ib. ;
anomaly involved in sitting of,
after Parliament had been dissolved,
145 ; same affirmed by the judges to
be legal, 146
Conway, Edw., secretary of state, inti-
mates to John Williams his dismissal
from office, 35
Conyers, Tobias, the story of, 401-2 ;
matriculation of, at Peterhouse, 401 ;
promotion to the office of chapel
clerk, 402 ; recklessness of, punish-
ment and penitence, 403 ; admission
of, to B.A. degree, ib. ; Hotham's
exertions on behalf of, 404; election
of, to a fellowship, ib. ; the same
annulled by the London Committee,
405 ; but ultimately confirmed by the
college, 409; Hotham brings the
whole story under public notice, ib. ;
he argues that a college statute
cannot be set aside by a later uni-
versity statute, 409-10
Cookson, Jas., manciple at Christ's
College, after having been a student,
628-9
Coptic, Comber acquainted witb, 318,
n. 2
Corbett, Edw., f. of Merton, a member
of the Oxford Commission, 347, n. 4
Corlett, name of master of the school
at Harvard, 193
Corporation, Hotham's argument that
every college is a distinct, 409
Corpus Christi College, 58, n. 2 ; state
of, after the plague of 1630, 106;
state of, at the time, 115-6; suicide
of Dr Butts, the master, 116, 117;
chapel of, unconsecrated, 130, n. 2;
Robert Browne, the Independent, a
member of, 161; last instance of
corporal punishment at, 194, n. 2;
plate of, sold in 1647, 231, n. 3;
escapes being despoiled of its plate
in 1642, 234 ; its chapel spared by
Dowsing, 270, 295; authorities of, to
be consulted, in pursuance of man-
date, on filling up vacant fellowships,
319 ; their resistance, in 1665, to a
royal mandate, causes them to be
summoned to London, 628
Cosin, Jo., f. of Caius, bp. of Durham,
takes part in the conference at York
House, 46; supports the candida-
ture of Buckingham, 55 ; defends
Montagu, 75 ; succeeds to the master-
ship of Peterhouse, 121; introduces
numerous changes in the college
chapel, 122; 132; one of the Com-
mittee appointed to draw up a Roll
694
INDEX.
of Benefactors, 142 ; efforts of, to
bring about the erection of a new
Commencement House, 143 ; con-
cerned as vice-chancellor with the
administration of the Etcetera Oath,
144-5; Dr Beale's letter to, 146;
ordered to be sequestered from his
benefices and declared unworthy to
be a Head, 209; 219; 239; 267-8;
active in forwarding plate to Charles,
274 ; is hunted out of the kingdom,
ib. ; is deprived of his valuable
library, 281; 318; is impeached by
Francis Ilous, 413; visits Hobbes,
in his illness, in Paris, 432 ; restored
to the deanery of Peterborough, 564 ;
and to the mastership of Peterhouse,
ib. ; resignation of same, on his
promotion to the see of Durham,
565 ; his consecration and enthrone-
ment, ib.
Coton, near Cambridge, inscription to
Downes's memory in church at, 3
Cotton, Jo., dealt severely with
Quakers in Massachusetts, 176;
animadverts on the intolerance
shewn by Skelton, 178-9 ; be-
comes the central figure in the
colony, 180; finds himself sur-
rounded by Cambridge men, 181;
orders Eoger Williams to quit the
colony, 189; reproduces the specula-
tions of Joseph Mede in his Churches'
Resurrection, 201 and n. 2; his views
with regard to the reformation of
the universities, 203 and n. 1
Cotton, Sir Jo., sheriff of the county of
Cambridge, 232
Counties, restrictions in elections to
fellowships with respect to, 214 and
n. 2; see also Association
Couterel, Luke, his Act at Utrecht,
427; his defence of 'Elenchtic,'
427-8 ; his printed treatise probably
seen by Descartes, 428
Covenant, the, 218, n. 3; 219; ordered
to be tendered and taken in the
university, 273 ; universally taken
in Suffolk, 274 ; commissioners ap-
pointed for tendering, 274-5 ; formal
tendering of same, 278; ejections
consequent upon, to be distinguished
from those consequent upon tender-
ing the Engagement, ib.; peculiarly
obnoxious to theEnglish universities,
279, 287; taken by the peers who
remained in Westminster, 289; ac-
ceptance of enforced upon all new
comers to the university, 296; ejec-
tions of refusers of, 278-317; excep-
tions taken to the process by Seth
Ward and others, 314 and n. 2;
obligations involved contrasted with
those of the Engagement, 317-8 ;
Jasper Mayne's reasons for rejecting,
^322 ; acceptance of, involved univer-
sity graduates in the guilt of perjury,
333 ; the obligation to sign, evaded
by Whichcote, 596
Coventry, corporation of, charitable to
Philemon Holland, 141
Coventry, Sir Tho., Buckingham gives
the great seal to, 43, n. 2
Cowley, Abr. , f. of Trinity, a ' dry '
chorister, 133, n. 2 ; his plays, Nau-
fragium Joculare, Guardian, and
Cutter of Coleman Street, 111 ; 222 ;
his Davideis, 228; 284, n. 3; ejec-
tion of, 310
Cox, Dr, f. of Queens', sequestration
of his property, 298 ; ejection of, on
non-appearance, 299
Cradock, Math., governor of Massa-
chusetts, 175 ; widow of, married to
Dr Whichcote, 176, n. 1
Cradock, Sam., f. of Emmanuel, sup-
porter of Charles Hotham, 413;
correspondence between Tuckney
and Whichcote attributable to, 590,
591 and n. 1
Cradock, Zachary, f. of Queens',
provost of Eton, younger brother
of Samuel, 591, n. 1
Crashaw, Ei. , poet, f. of Peterhouse,
a contributor to the Voces, 147, n. 1;
a pervert to Borne, 208, n. 2; ejection
of, 282 ; inherited the literary tastes
of his father, 284; influence of his
genius on later poets, ib., n. 3 ; edu-
cated at Pembroke, ib. ; his career
at Peterhouse and afterwards, 285-6 ;
289; educated at Charterhouse by
Brook, 318 ; dedicates his Liber
Epigrammatum to Laney, ib.
Crashaw, Wm., f. of St John's and
father of the poet, commends Ameri-
can colonization in a sermon before
the Council, 150; 152, n. 1; 197;
the follower and executor of Wm.
Perkins, 284
Creed, the, anomalies in bowing at,
134; Pearson on, 576
Creighton, Dr, Hist, of Epidemics
quoted, 103, n. 1 ; 122-3
Creighton, Eobt., f. of Trinity and
Public Orator, 122-3 ; nominated by
the Crown for the mastership of
St Catherine's, ib.
Crewe, Nath., f. of Lincoln College,
Oxford, carries round the Presby-
JNDEX.
695
terian Protest against the obligations
imposed by college oaths, 508, notes
2 and 3
Crittou, B., a contributor to the
Luctus et Gratnlatio, 518; his con-
tribution notable for its martial tone,
ib. and n. 4; his ill-timed denuncia-
tion of the ' Roman Wolf,' ib.
Crofts, Hi., retains his fellowship at
Corpus throughout the troubles,
378 ; aided Fuller (by whom he is
styled ' my good friend ') in his
researches, ib.
Cromwell, Hen., 188 ; appointed a
member of the Commission to visit
the university in 1654, 486; repre-
sentative of the university in Par-
liament, 515, n. 2; significance of
the fact, ib.
Cromwell, Oliver, election of, as bur-
gess for the town, 147 and n. 3 ;
attainments of, as a student, 148 ;
149; 180; 221; seizure of arms
designed for the university by, 235 ;
intercepts the college plate on its
way to the King, 236-7; orders the
arrest of Beale, Martin, and Sterne,
237; his behaviour towards same,
238 ; commences the fortification of
the town, 241-2; disregards the
mandate of the House of Lords,
243; his demand for a subsidy re-
sisted by the Heads, 244 ; harshness
of his subsequent measures, ib. ; his
appeal to the town, after his retreat
from Stamford, 251 ; Minshull, one
of his fellow-students, 254, n. 1 ;
again in Cambridge, Sept. 1643, 258;
earl of Manchester well known to,
264 and n. 3 ; his son Oliver a
pensioner at St Catherine's, 277 and
n. 3; quarrel of, with Manchester,
324 ; 327 and n. 1 ; served on the
Cambridge Committee appointed by
the Commons, 329; interview with
Charles at Childerley, 342 ; his in-
structions at Oxford run counter to
those of the Presbyterian Committee
in London, 344; 359; 362; 374;
election of to the chancellorship of
Oxford, 375 and n. 1 ; praised by John
Lightfoot, 381 ; disposed to favour a
change in the form of government,
416-7; Hobbes's Leviathan probably
designed to strengthen his authority,
433; described by Banke as the
champion of law and property, 470 ;
dissolution of Parliament by, ib. ;
his Proclamation, as Protector, 472 ;
an effort to introduce a more liberal
standard of orthodoxy, 484; ap-
points a Commission for each of
the universities, ib. ; his design
compared with that of Whitgift and
that of Laud, 485; beneficial results
that followed, ib.t n. 1; supports
Walton's Polyglot, 490-1; Baillie's
dissatisfaction with the Proclama-
tion, 498 ; John Owen appointed by,
vice-chancellor at Oxford, 499 ; ap-
peal to, preferred by the fellows of
Jesus College, Oxford, 506; circum-
stances which bring about his resig-
nation of the chancellorship, 515;
his death, ib.; he is succeeded by bis
son, Richard, ib. ; his own sparing
use of patronage in the universities,
and repudiation of any desire to
resort to illegal pressure in its
exercise, 519-21
Cromwell, Oliver, jun., pensioner at
St Catherine's, 277, n. 3; his death
and character, ib.
Cromwell, Ri., succession of, to his
father, in the chancellorship at
Oxford and in the Protectorship,
515 ; representative of Cambridge
university in Parliament, ib., n. 2;
orders issued by, for admissions to
fellowships at the colleges, 521 ;
aimed chiefly at giving effect to his
father's designs, 522; but consents
to postpone the grant for constitut-
ing Durham College a university,
523 ; his deposition, ib. ; the theory
of hereditary succession implied in
his election, ib.
Cromwell, Tho., visitation of the uni-
versity instituted by himself in the
year of his chancellorship, 126
Croone, Wm., f. of Emmanuel, Gres-
ham professor of rhetor'c, recom-
mended by Cudworth to Thurloe,
for official preferment, 611, n. 2
Cross, on Market Hill, Charles n pro-
claimed from, 554 ; position of same,
in 17th century, ib., n. 3
Cross, use of the sign of the, in bap-
tisms, alleged against Cawdry, 339
Crossley, Jas., on the agreement as to
Whicbcote's high merits, 531, n. 3
Crouch, Tho., f. of Trinity, returned
as member for the university in the
Convention Parliament, 552
Crown, the, interference of, in election
to the mastership of Caius College,
69 ; Mede's apparent ignorance of
earlier instances, ib. and n. 3;
Stuart theory of the relations of,
with the universities, 62 ; 98
696
INDEX.
Cryptography, Webster's ignorance as
regards the extent to which it was
known in the universities, 463 ; John
Wallis's special knowledge of, ib.
Cudworth, Ralph, m. of Christ's, voted
for Worthington in election to a
fellowship at Emmanuel, 213-5; a
contributor to the Irenodia, 220, n. 2 ;
318 ; member of syndicate to put
in order the university muniments,
338; elected to mastership of Clare
College, 376 ; a supporter of Charles
Hotham, 413; a contributor to the
Luctus et Gratulatio, 518; aban-
dons his design of quitting the uni-
versity, after receiving his augmenta-
tion as master of Christ's, 534;
supports the scheme of Poole's Model,
537; propounds a solution of the
difficulty in assigning the exact date
of the manifestation of the Messiah,
610; his view pronounced by More
an invaluable discovery in relation
to theology, ib.; largely occupied
with his official duties, 611 ; his
leisure chiefly bestowed on Hebraic
studies, ib. ; perceiving the impor-
tance of the history of natural
Ethics he determines to prepare a
treatise on the subject, 611-2; his
chagrin at learning that More is
already contemplating a similar
work, 612—4; he communicates with
Worthington on the subject, 614-6 ;
More disclaims all intention as ap-
pearing as a rival, but publishes
his own manual notwithstanding,
616-7 ; points of contrast in his
genius when compared with that of
More, 658-60; his sermon before
Parliament in 1647, 659 ; his Intel-
lectual System of the Universe, 660-1 ;
apathy or hostility with which it was
received on its appearance in 1678,
ib.; services subsequently rendered by
continental scholars towards bring-
ing its merits under wider notice,
661 ; his theory of 'a plastic Nature,'
662 and n. 2
Caique suum, the, a satire published
at the University Press, designed to
expose the doctrines of the Catharists,
480 ; outline of the same, 480-1
Culverwel, Ezekiel, father of Nathaniel,
630-1
Culverwel, Nath., f. of Emmanuel,
contributor to the Irenodia, 220,
n. 2; 590; his parentage and Puritan
sympathies, 630-1 ; divides with
John Smith the highest claim to
literary excellence among the Plato-
nists, 637; his Light of Nature,
637-9 ; limits under which he accepts
the guidance of Reason, 638; holds
that within such limits pagan phi-
losophy has a right to be considered,
639 ; his mental breakdown, ib. ;
loses popular favour through his
boldness of speech, 639-40; his re-
lations with More and with Tuckney,
ib. ; his death and the circumstances
under which it took place, 640-1;
his Spiritual Opticks published by
Wm. Dillingham, 641 and n. 4;
dedication by Dillingham of his
Light of Nature to authorities of
Emmanuel, 642; his impartiality of
judgement pointed out by Cairns,
643; his defence of the syllogism,
as a means of mental discipline,
and also of the employment of reason
in relation to points of doctrine, ib. ;
his estimate of the obligations of
pagan philosophy to Jewish sources,
644; contrast it presents to the as-
sertions of Henry More, 644-6
Culverwel, Ri. , brother of Nathaniel,
testifies to the kindness the authori-
ties had shewn his brother, and
vindicates him from the imputation
of intellectual arrogance, 642, 643
and u. 1
Cure of the Kingdom, the, sermon, by
' R. P.' of St John's, dilating on the
evils of war as manifest in 1648,
355 and n. 1
D
Daille [Jean], treatise of, on the Right
Use of the Fathers, 79; translation
of same by Thomas Smith, 438 ; the
author's estimate of the relevancy
of the Patristic writings to modern
controversies, 439; grounds for re-
garding them as still to be studied,
ib.
Danes, Wm., of Emmanuel, tyrannical
conduct of, as Cromwell's delegate,
277-8
Daneus, Ethics of, studied in middle
of 17th century, 465, n. 3
Daniel, Rog. , university printer, in-
junction laid upon by Parliament,
237; endeavoured to persuade the
authorities to establish a second
press, 360, u. 5
Daniel, Sam., poet, patronized by lord
Brooke, 81
Davenant, Jo. , bp. of Salisbury, pres
INDEX.
697
of Queens', a friend of Preston, 43;
48 ; his lectures on Golossians, 49 ;
53 ; uncle of Thomas Fuller, 77 ;
his treatise at press, 143, n. 4 ;
unable to get his nephew elected
to a fellowship at Sidney, 252, n. 5
Davenport, Christopher, his dialectical
encounter with Dr Love, 117
Davenport, Jo., of Merton, Oxford, a
migrant to New England, 162; pre-
vious career of, 185
Davers, Alice, of Cambridge, further
endows the lady Margaret chair,
255-6
Davies, Jo., of St John's, the bio-
grapher of John Hall, 351 ; his too
partial account of same, 352
Davis, Mr Carless, his Balliol College
quoted, 436, n. 2
De Dieu, teacher at Leyden, abandons
the traditional theory with regard to
Hebrew, 92
Deans and chapters, proposal to ap-
propriate estates of, to the erection
of a new library, 336; ordinance
for abolition of, 360
Debden, Geo., ejected f. of Pembroke,
291
Declamations, proposed discontinu-
ance of, 465
Declaration, the, prefixed to Common
Prayer Book, aspect of the theo-
logical world at the time of its
insertion, 79
Dee, Jo., read in the universities in
middle of 17th century, 465; see
also Vol. n, 84, 573
Dell, Wm., master of Caius College,
his election to the office, 364 ; con-
trast he presented to his predecessor,
ib. ; previous career of, 365 ; dis-
course published by, ib. and n. 3 ;
sympathy of, with the Independents,
366 ; declares the universities to be
esteemed chiefly by ' ignorant and
vulgar ' people, 389, n. 1 ; fallacy of,
exposed by Joseph Sedgwick, 450-1 ;
essays the refutation of the ' errors '
of Sydrach Simpson, 452, n. 2,
and 453 ; he denounces the ' Gospel
according to Aristotle,' 454 ; cites the
example of the early Keformers, ib. ;
his misconception with regard to the
historical position of the English
universities, 454-5; his proposals
for a ' reformation of learning,' 455 ;
advises the foundation of new schools
throughout the country, ib. ; these
to be for teaching the vernacular
and the reading of the Bible, ib. ;
his views with respect to study of
the learned tongues and of logic
and mathematics, 455-6 ; holds the
studies of physic and law to be
'exceedingly corrupt and out of
order,' ib. • he deprecates the mono-
poly of the higher education claimed
by Oxford and Cambridge, 456-7;
he is severely taken to task by Seth
Ward, 468-9 ; his frequent non-
residency, 503; receives his aug-
mentation down to his death, 529
Dennington, Lionel Gatford rector of,
242
Descartes, Rene, 93; quoted by John
Hall, 372; early career and associa-
tions of, 420—4; anxiety of, to pro-
pitiate the Sorbonne, 421 ; his attitude
towards the scholastic logic, ib. ;
his sympathy with the Jesuits, ib. ;
and high opinion of their system of
education, 423 ; dissuades a parent
from sending his son to Leyden, ib. ;
motives of, in settling in the United
Provinces, 424; arrival of, at Utrecht,
426; attractions there presented,
ib., n. 2; the printing of his La
Methode, 428 ; its contents probably
known to Voetius before publication,
ib.,n. 3; his depreciatory estimate of
the scholastic logic, 429; his qualified
acceptance of Harvey's theory, 430;
his philosophy condemned at Utrecht,
431; comparison of, with Voetius,
ib. ; denounced by Robert Baillie to
Voetius, 496; rapid progress of his
doctrines in Belgium, 497 ; their
suppression in France, 587 ; first
introduction of his philosophy at
Cambridge, 606; Henry More advises
that his writings should be studied
both in the universities and in the
public schools, 607 ; 610 ; 645 ; but
subsequently changes his tone and
denounces Cartesianism as inimical
to true religion, 646-8 ; possibly
offended by Descartes declining to
discuss the attributes of Angels, ib. ;
see also More
D'Ewes, Sir Simonds, fellow-commoner
of St John's, 2 ; 97 ; 116 ; found
his annual allowance of £50 in-
adequate, 174, n. 1; quoted, 197;
speech of, in House of Commons,
to prove the claim of Cambridge to
priority over Oxford, 209-10; fails
to convince his audience, ib. ; Cooper
mistaken in supposing the earl of
Holland to refer to this speech, 210,
n. 2
698
INDEX.
Devereux, Eobt., earl of Essex, trans-
mits to Fulke Greville, Bacon's ad-
vice as to his studies at Cambridge,
81 and n. 2
Dexter, F. B., professor, quoted, 189
Dexter, H. M. and Son, quoted, 161,
n. 1
Diggons, Joseph, benefactor to Clare
College, 533
Dillingham, Sam., quoted, 370; 376,
n. 1 ; 383
Dillingham, Theoph. , master of Clare,
married to daughter of Dr Paske,
532 ; aided in his administration by
Tillotson, ib. and 533 ; continues to
reside in college throughout the
plague, 619
Dillingham, William, master of Em-
manuel, letter to, from Bancroft,
274 ; attests the kindness shewn by
Tuckney to Culverwel, 530 ; more
devoted to study than to the duties
of his office, 534-5 ; decline of the
college under his rule, 535 ; approves
the design of Poole's Model, 537 ;
writes, as vice-chancellor, to inform
Monck of his election as member
for the university, 552 and n. 2 ;
receives while resident at Oundle,
from Worthington, a copy of the
latter's edition of Mede, 617 ; mainly
occupied, at this time, with super-
intending the printing of elaborate
works, ib., n. 4 ; publishes Culver-
wel's Spiritual Opticks, 641 ; and
subsequently his Light of Nature,
642
Diogenes Laertius, quoted in Babing-
ton's sermon, 389-90
Diplomatic correspondence, languages
used by the Government in, 367-8
Directory, the. Charles i consents to
accept in place of the Prayer Book,
358
Discipline, exceptionally low state of,
in 1630, 107
Disputations, pronounced by Sir Henry
Wotton the bane of the Church, 80
and n. 3 ; held at the first Harvard
Commencement, 196 ; proposal to
abolish them at Cambridge, 465
Dividends, irregular appropriation of,
alleged against Seaman, 403
Divine Right of Kings, re-assertion of
the doctrine of, 144 ; the same im-
posed on all members of the uni-
versity, ib.
Dobson, Jo., f. of Corpus Christi,
retains his fellowship throughout
the 'troubles,' 378
Doctor, degree of, attainment of,
facilitated by the plague, 103
Doctors Commons, buildings of, Har-
vey's motive in acquiring them, 361
Dolor et Solamen, verses on the death
of James i and accession of Charles,
1-3
Dorchester, earl of, representations
made to, in connexion with con-
tinuance of Trinity lectureship, 101
Dorislaus, Isaac, appointment of, to
lectureship in history, 85-6 ; cir-
cumstances under which he com-
menced, as described by Dr Ward,
ib. ; his lectures excite the suspicions
of Dr Wren, who communicates
them to Laud, 86-8 ; he is for-
bidden to lecture, ib. ; the prohibition,
revoked by the Caput, is renewed
by a royal injunction, ib. ; he quits
Cambridge, but lord Brooke con-
tinues him in the lectureship, 89 ;
his career subsequent to his dis-
missal from his chair, 362-3 ; his
researches among the State Papers,
363 ; employed to represent the
Commonwealth at the Hague, ib. ;
assassination of, ib. ; his interment
in Westminster Abbey, ib. ; the
Council of State make application
to lady Brooke forpayment of arrears
due to his family, 364
Dorset, earl of, one of those who
attended the conferences at York
House, 45
Dort, Synod of [see Vol. n, 560-1];
Buckingham advised that the Church
of England is not bound by de-
cisions of, 34 ; divines present at,
maintain that Montagu had im-
pugned the discipline of the English
Church, 48; its decisions defended
by John Eobinson, 164
Douglas, Wm., prof, of divinity at
Aberdeen, claims for his university
an antiquity superior to that of the
other Scotch universities, 498 and
n. 5
Downes, Andr., f. of St John's, prof,
of Greek ; removal of, from his
professorship, 2 ; his obligations to
King James and to Buckingham, 3;
his retirement to Coton, ib. ; see
also Coton
Downing, Geo., adisputant at Harvard,
196 ; parentage of, ib., n. 5 ; grand-
father of the founder of Downing
College, ib.
Dowsing, Wm., visitation of the col-
leges by, 267-72 ; Journal of, 272,
INDEX.
699
n. 5 ; lament of Crashaw over havoc
wrought by, 285
Doyle, Mr John A. , quoted, 167
Dress, academic, licence with respect
to, in 1636, 132 ; see also Cap and
Gown
Drinking Cups, triad of, at Clare
College, 234 ; instances of the vice
of, among the undergraduates,
402
Dryden, Jo., punishment inflicted on,
at Trinity College, 474 and n. 2;
character of, as a student, ib. ;
resentment afterwards manifested
by, ib.
Duckfield, Jo., intruded f. of St
Catherine's, 381
Dudley, Sir Robt., earl of Warwick,
one of those who attended the con-
ferences at York House, 45 ; actively
interested in American colonization,
90, n. 4
Dudley, Tho., one of the twelve
members of the Massachusetts Com-
pany who attended the Conference
at Cambridge, 170, n. 3
Dunster, Hen. , of Magdalene College,
141 and n. 2 ; first president of
Harvard, 186 ; his qualifications for
the office, 187 and n. 2 : 193
Duport, Jas., f. of Trinity, master of
Magdalene, professor of Greek ;
patronized by John Williams, 39 ;
68 ; verses by, prefixed to Hausted's
Jealous Lovers, 109 ; his composi-
tions taken for models at Harvard,
195 ; tribute by, to memory of
Randolph, 110, 227 ; contributor to
the Voces, 147, n. 1 ; to the Irenodia,
220, n. 2 ; one of the Syndicate for
putting in order the university muni-
ments, 338 ; verses of, in the Oliva
Pads, 483 ; on the effect of the war
with Holland, 483-4; on the re-
appearance of the square cap, 555-6 ;
556, n. 1; 589, n. 1
Durham, Cromwell's design of found-
ing a third university at, 515 ;
petition of the universities against
the scheme, 522-3 ; the College at,
restored by Charles n to the dean
and chapter, ib. ; Israel Tonge, a
lecturer at, 657, n. 1
Durham, Jo. Arrowsmith, a native of,
303
Durie, Jo., consults Mede with regard
to the restoration of harmony among
the Reformed Churches, 139
Dutch War, the, financial strain re-
sulting from, 502
E
Eastern Counties, Association of, see
Association
Eastern Counties, royalist party in,
send to masters and fellows of
colleges, urging rejection of the
Covenant, 287
Eaton, Nath., of Trinity, pres. desig-
nate of Harvard, 186 ; dismissal of,
187
Eaton, Robt., of Christ's, signature
of, in the registers of diocese of
Norwich, 544 and n. 2
Eckington, living of, Dr Love pre-
sented to, 247, n. 1
Eden, Dr Tho., master of Trin. Hall,
protests against the high-handed
proceeding of Parliament towards
the university, 61 ; supports Matthew
Wren in his demand for copies of
Dorislaus's lectures, 87 ; elected
member for the new Parliament in
1640, 207; 211; saves the college
plate by his attitude as a politician,
234 and n. 5 ; and also his tenure
of the headship, 293
Edgehill, battle of, ' fought mainly to
decide the question of maintaining
the episcopal order,' 224
Education at the universities, ex-
pensive! i ess of, 174 and n. 1
Edward the Elder, a fabled bene'actor
of the university, 142
Edwards, Mr Gr. M., quoted, 252, n. 2
Edwards, Tho., the author of Gan-
graena, member of Queens', moves
the wonder of Fuller, 77 ; his sermon
at St Andrew's, ib. ; publicly recants
the language there used, ib. ; em-
braces Presbyterianism and assails
the Independents, 77-8 ; condemns
the treatment of Samuel Ward by
thechurchat Arnheim, 443; opinions
passed on him byhiscontemporaries,
444 ; his Antapologia, ib. and n. 6,
445 ; his Gangraena, ib. ; his de-
preciatory estimate of the exiles in
Holland, ib. ; his admission to a
fellowship at Queens', 570-1
Egerton, Jo., earl of Bridgewater,
45
Egerton, Sir Tho., lord Ellesmere,
12 ; chancellor of university of Ox-
ford, ib.
Eight Letters, a correspondence be-
tween Tuckneyand Whichcote, 591,
n. 2 ; edited by Salter, master of
Charterhouse, ib. ; not published
until 1753, ib.
700
INDEX.
Ejections : of Heads, by Manchester,
form of instructions for, 273 and
n. 4 ; made generally operative, on
retrospective evidence, 275 ; names
of those ejected to be cut out at the
Butteries, 275, 283; of fellows, in
1650, 376-92
Ejectors, Commission of, appointed by
the Commonwealth, 545 ; powers
vested in same, 545-6 ; conditions
under which ejected ministers con-
tinued to receive a fifth, 546 ; sub-
scription to the Engagement made
obligatory, ib., n. 4
Elections, corrupt, in the colleges,
necessity of dealing with, 505 ; in-
stances at Oxford, ib. and notes 2
and 3
Elector Palatine, visit of, in March
i-m, 9
Eliot, Jo., of Jesus College, work of,
in New England, 181 and n. 2
Elizabeth, Journals of the Parliaments
of, by D'Ewes, 209 and n. 3
Elizabethan Statutes, see Statutes,
i and v
Ellesmere, lord, see Egerton, Sir Tho.
Ely, bp. of, his visitatorial authority
abolished at Peterhouse, 283 ; limita-
tions on same, imposed by college
statute, 404
Ely House, Holborn, confinement of
Cambridge dignitaries in, 242, 256,
261, 298; Wren's death at, 662
Ely, see of, revenues of, to be applied
to increase of stipends of Heads,
324 ; absence of registers of, from
1580 to 1662, 544
Emden, in East Friesland, Francis
Johnson removes to, 160
Emerson, B. W., quoted, 602, n. 1
Emmanuel College, votes against
Buckingham in the election for the
chancellorship, 58 ; Preston's be-
quest to and prayer for, 64-5 ;
Laud finds the chapel unconsecrated,
130, n. 2 ; many of the students
lived out of college, 134; 173; 212;
the fellows of, petition against the
re-enactment of the statute de Mora
Sociorum, 213 ; contest at, with re-
spect to the election of Worthington
as master, 213-4 ; charges brought
against Holdsworth as master, 248 ;
state of feeling in the college subse-
quent to his imprisonment, 257 ;
escapes injury at the hands of
Dowsing, 272 ; record entry of ad-
missions, 305 ; Tuckney succeeds to
the mastership, 312 ; Holdsworth
makes over his furniture and part
of his library to, ib. ; sequestrations
at, 313; 383; 385; 472; Hill, a
tutor at, and nominated to the
mastership, 473 and n. 3 ; decline
of the society under the rule of
Wm. Dillingham, 534-5 ; evidence
of lax discipline, ib. ; attendance at
tutor's prayers obligatory, 538, n. 1 ;
Wm. Bancroft succeeds to the master-
ship, 582 ; his impressions on his
return, 583 ; proposes to rebuild both
chapel and library, 584 ; his plans
defeated by inadequate revenues,
585-6 ; royal mandates for fellow-
ships especially pressed at, 627-8
Endecott, Jo., governor of Mass., his
friendly reception of the exiles on
the Arbella, 177 ; 179
Endowments, see Cathedrals
Engagement, the, ejections consequent
upon refusal of, to be distinguished
from those resulting from rejection
of the Covenant, 278 ; ejections at
Peterhouse, 279, n. 1 ; refusal of,
by dean of Christ Church at Oxford,
348 ; acceptance of, by Council of
State, 358-9 ; changes at Cambridge
in anticipation of its being ten-
dered, 36H; subscription to, required
throughout the university, 369 ; form
in which it was finally tendered, ib.
and n. 1 ; Ireton's criticism of same,
ib. ; description of, byMasson, 370;
objections to, by Prynne, Baxter,
and Sam. Dillingham, ib. ; involved
the acceptor in the guilt of perjury,
ib. ; not pressed at first in the
university, in pursuance of promise
given by Cromwell, 375 and n. 3 ;
rigorously tendered, after the battle
of Dunbar, throughout Cambridge,
ib. ; principal refusers or acceptors
of, in the university, 380-9; 385;
ultimate repeal of, 386, 472 ; refusal
of, by Edw. Pococke, 389 ; annulled
by Parliament, 551 and n. 4; 594
and n. 2
Engagement, Solemn, of the Army, 342
English, colloquial use of, forbidden
in the colleges, 368
Episcopal government, recognition of,
involved in the Etcetera Oath, 144
and n. 3
Episcopius, Kobinson said to have
defeated him in argument, 163, n. 5
Erastus, the majority of the House of
Commons, in 1645, declared by
Robert Baillie to be followers of,
495
INDEX.
701
Erpenius, his Arabic MSS. in Cam-
bridge, 93
Etcetera Oath, see Oath ,
Eton College, 26 ; Baillie hopes that
Walton may succeed to the provost-
ship, 500; Nicholas Monck elected
to same, ib., n. 4; Hen. More edu-
cated at, 597
Euclid, read in the university in middle
of the 17th century, 465
Evans, Dr, rector of St Benet Fink,
London, letter from, to Worthing-
ton, describing the ravages of the
plague in Cambridge, 618-9 ; letter
from Worthington to, 626
Evelin, Wm., letters mandatory for
his election to a fellowship at St
John's, evaded by the society, 99,
n. 2
Evelyn, Jo., his visit to Cambridge in
1654, 482
Examinations, institution of weekly,
at Wadham, Oxford, 547; for the
B.A. degree at Trinity College, ib.
Exeter, see of, held conjointly with
mastership of St Catherine's by
Dr Brownrig, 247
F
Fabian, Tho., ejected f. of Clare,
286
Fairbrother, Wm., scholar of Eton,
prenominated fellow of King's, 99,
n. 1; a friend of Pepys, 550; made
a prisoner at Naseby, ib., n. 4;
invites the military officers to dinner
at the proclamation of Charles n,
555 ; afterwards vice-provost, ib. ,
n. 2
Fairclough, Sam., f. of Caius, a sup-
porter of Charles Hotham, 413
Fairfax, Hen., f. of Trinity, supports
a scheme for founding a university
at Manchester, 204; testifies to the
esteem in which Oxford and Cam-
bridge are held by Parliament, 207
Fairfax, Jo., intruded f. of Corpus
Christi, 296, n. 3 ; a Covenanter
afterwards ejected as a refuser of
the Engagement, 377
Fairfax, Tho., of St John's College,
knighted in 1640, releases Charles i
from confinement, 341-2 ; has inter-
view with him at Childerley, ib. ; Dell
preaches before him at Marston, 365
and n. 4 ; his efforts on behalf of
liberty of conscience, 542
Fanshawe, lord, endeavour to intrude
a son of, into fellowship at Christ's
College, 629 ; advice given by Wid-
drington to lady Fanshawe after the
miscarriage of same endeavour, ib.
Fasting, practice of, evaded by under-
graduates, 132
Fathers, the, citations from, prohibited
in Westminster Assembly, 388
Feasts, holding of, by candidates for
degrees, forbidden, 338 and n. 6
Featley, Dan., part taken by in the
controversy carried on by Montagu,
51; prospectively appointed to the
mastership of Sutcliffe's College,
ib.
Fee-farm rents, the university decides
to reinstate the Crown in the pos-
session of, 561-3; 562, notes 1
and 2
Fees for instruction, rarely accepted
from poor students in the univer-
sity of Paris, 422, n. 3
Fell, Dr Sam., dean of Christchurch,
baffles the Visitors by dissolving
the assembly in Convocation House,
344
Fell, Mrs, buries the maces of the
Oxford university bedels in the
deanery garden, 262
Fellowships, those intruded into, in
1645, permitted to assume the same
seniority as had been enjoyed by
those whom they displaced, 311 and
n. 3 ; 320 and n. 2
Felton, Jo., the assassinator of Buck-
ingham, his health drunk by scholars
at Oxford, 78
Felton, Nich., bp. of Ely, sole sup-
porter of Berkshire among the voters
from Pembroke College, 58
Fen Ditton, rectory of, held by Worth-
ington, 572-3
Fenn chest, the, funds in expended
without any account being rendered,
338
Feme, Hen., f. of Trinity, 39, 220,
n. 2; prints his Resolving of Con-
science at the University Press,
260-1 ; second edition of same, 580;
services rendered by, as a preacher,
to the royal cause, ib. ; is promised
the reversion of the mastership of
Trinity, 581 ; acts as chaplain to
Charles at Carisbrooke, ib.; retires
into Yorkshire, ib. ; appointment of,
to the mastership, by Charles n, ib.',
his merits as an administrator, ib.;
consecration cf, to bishopric of Ches-
ter, ib. ; death of, 581-2; bequest of,
to Trinity College, 582; his inter-
ment in Westminster Abbey, ib.
702
INDEX.
Fidoe, J., one of three students at
Trinity who publish a defence of
the execution of Charles i, 358,
n. 4
Fiennes, Nath., one of the Visitors
at Oxford in 1654, 486 and n. 2
Fiennes, Wm., viscount Sayeand Sele,
attended the proceedings at Buck-
ingham's conferences, 45; one of the
Visitors at Oxford in 1654, 486 and
n. 2 ; his sons asserted to have
'lived upon' New College, ib.
Fifth Monarchy men, the overthrow of
the universities involved in their de-
mands, 470 and n. 1
Finals of names employed instead of
initials, 460 and n. 3
Finch, the lord keeper, as high steward
of the town, endeavours to forestall
the choice of the burgesses, 147;
failure of the attempt, ib.
Finch, Sir Nath., brother of the lord
keeper, proposed by him as repre-
sentative of the town in Parliament,
147
Firth, prof. C. H., quoted, 148, n. 2;
515; 560, n. 2; letter from, respect-
ing the fee-farm rents, 562, n. 1
Fish Book, the, 71
Fisher, bp. John, name of, first in-
cluded in the Boll of Benefactors,
143 and n. 2
Fleet, the, in London, George Johnson
confined in, 157
Fleetwood, Geo., one of the Visitors of
Oxford in 1654, 486
Fleetwood, Jas., of King's, royal chap-
lain, obtains a mandate from Charles
n for his election to provostship of
King's, 568; previous history of,
569 ; supplicates the royal interven-
tion, on the ground that Whichcote
is statutably disqualified, 568-9; is
ultimately installed as Whichcote's
successor, ib. ; his nomination to the
see of Worcester, 570
Flogging of pupils, late instance of,
403
Foreigner, a, eligible to the lectureship
in history founded by lord Brooke,
84 ; the term used by Bancroft in a
different sense, 584, n. 3; see also
Vol. n, Appendix (E)
Forth, Mary, d. of John Forth, and
wife of John Winthrop, 173
Foster, Sam., of Emmanuel, Gresham
prof, of astronomy, his collected
writings edited and published by
Twysden, 556, n. 1
Fotherby, Chas., f. of Jesus, whither
he migrated from Trinity, a nephew
of Laud, 301
Fotherby, Martin, bp. of Salisbury,
301
Fowler, Abr., praelector of Pembroke,
ejection of, in 1650, 376
' Franciscans,' followers of Francis
Johnson so styled, 160; their con-
tentious character, ib. and n. 1
Francius, Dr Adam, a refugee from
Silesia, f. of Peterhouse, the only
fellow not ejected in 1644, 283 and
n. 3
Franeker, univ. of, character of the
students, 425-6 ; 426, n. 1
Frank, Mark, f. of Pembroke, after-
wards master, expulsion of, in 1644,
290 and n. 4
Frankfort, Marian exiles at, 157 ;
church at, compared with that at
Amsterdam, 159
Freer, Mich., f. of Queens', ejection of,
in 1644, 299
French, Philip Sidney when at school
writes to his father in, 81, n. 2;
study of, 351 ; disuse of, in di-
plomatic correspondence, 368 ; Sir
Thomas Palmer both spoke and
preached in, 300 and n. 4
Frewen, Accepted, archbp. of York,
letter to, from Laud, 136, n. 3; see
also 137
Fuller, Jo., f. of Sidney College,
younger brother of the historian,
77, n. 1 ; elected f. by royal man-
date, 559 and n. 1
Fuller, Tho., sen., father of the his-
torian, f. of Trinity, 77
Fuller, Tho., the historian, of Queens'
College, testimony of, to number of
eminent men educated at Christ's,
19; quoted, 51; 71; 89; 103; 145;
rejects the story of an ' Oath of Dis-
covery,' 276; 299; estimate by, of
comparative merits of the expelled
and intruded in Queens', 300 and
317; probably the supporter of
Charles Hotham, 413-4; 444; cir-
cumstances under which he brings
his Church History to a close, with
his History of the University ap-
pended, 489 ; his last visit to Cam-
bridge, to receive his degree of D.D.,
558 ; evidence that attests his royal-
ist sympathies, 558-9
Fuller, Tho., f. of Christ's, character
of Widdrington given by, 550,
n. 1
Fulwood, Francis, urges Henry More
to write on Ethics, 615 and n. 1
INDEX.
703
G
Gagg, A, for the New Gospel, a chal-
lenge thrown out to Montagu, 28;
condemned, along with the Appello,
by bp. Morton, 46
Galileo, authority of, defended by
Henry More, 600-1, 604
Gangraena, a polemic by Tho. Ed-
wards, 77; cited by ' B. P.' of St
John's, 355; 366
Canning, Nich., f. of Corpus, his right
to take part in a disputation chal-
lenged, 67, n. 3
Garbutt, J., f. of Sidney, assents to
loan to Charles i, 230, n. 4
Gardiner, Dr S. B., quoted, 45, 47, 76,
80, 175, n. 1, 279, n. 1, 306, n. 1,
341, n. 1 ; 359, 367-8, 389, n. 1, 469
Garuett, Dr Bi. , his criticism of Marini
quoted, 284, n. 3
Garret Hostel, the bridge at, demo-
lished, 243
Gatford, Lionel, f. of Jesus, arrest of,
by the Parliament soldiery, 242;
sermon by, urging obedience to the
King, ib. ; confined in Ely House,
ib.
Gee, Dr Edw., of St John's, contro-
versialist of the reign of James n,
denounces 'Father Parsons,' 437
Gell, Bobt., f. of Christ's, a believer
in astrology, proposed a revision of
the Authorized Version, 16
Geneva, Mede, in Gary's opinion,
'looked too much towards,' 17
Geometry, knowledge of, requisite for
second degree at Harvard, 196
Germany, Dr Meddus a student at the
universities of, 47, n. 5
Gibson, Edw., f. of Sidney, joint pro-
tester, with Seth Ward, against the
ambiguous terms in which the order
for their eviction was couched, 314
and n. 2
Gilbert, Wm., f. of St John's, De
Magnete of, praised by Webster,
459
Gildas, cited as an authority by Sir
Simonds D'Ewes, 210
Gill, Alex., the teacher of Milton, his
exultation at Oxford over the fate
of Buckingham, 78, n. 4
Gilman, Dr D. C. , quoted, 152, n. 3
Gilpin, Bernard, George Carlton a dis-
ciple of, 49
Glasgow, university of, excitement at,
in connexion with the Act of Classes,
495-6
Goad, Tho., of King's College, joins
the assailants of Montagu, 48; 220,
n. 2
' Godly Party," Independents known
as the, 508, n. 3
Godman, Wm., senior f. of King's Col-
lege, supports the claims of Which-
cote to the provostship, 568-9
Gog and Magog, identified by Mede
with the Osmanli, 24 ; supposed
location of, in America, 154, 156
Golius, Jas., successor of Erpenius at
Leyden, 93 ; compiler of a Latin-
Arabic Lexicon, ib.
Golius, Pet., translates the De Imita-
tiune into Arabic, ib.
Gooch, Barnaby, master of Magdalene,
abstains from voting at the election
of Buckingham, 57
Goode, Wm., chaplain to Manchester,
273
Goodman, Godfrey, scholar of Trinity,
bp. of Gloucester, refuses the Etce-
tera Oath, 145
Goodwin, Tho. (the elder), of Christ's
College, f. of St Catherine's, elected
pastor of the church at Arnheim,
441 ; president of Magdalen College,
Oxford, 484, n. 2 ; suggests to Crom-
well the appointment of the Com-
mission, -Hi.
Goodwin, Tho., intruded f. of St
John's, writes verses in praise of
Hall's Essays, 352
Gore, Wm., f. of Queens', friend of
Simon Patrick, 380
Goring, Geo., royalist general, John
Pearson a chaplain to his forces,
575
Gospel, Act for the better Propagation
of, 437 ; excitement produced by the
measure, 438
Gostlin, Dr Jo., master of Caius, vice-
chancellor, letter from bishop Neile
to, 53 ; a supporter of Buckingham's
candidature, 53, 54, 56; value of his
influence in the election, 59, n. 2;
Buckingham acknowledges his obli-
gations to, 60; death of, 69
Gower, Dr Humphrey, master of St
John's, explains why the Certain
Disquisitions could not be printed
at Cambridge, 288, n. 3
Grammar, Laud's statutes require
candidates for the B.A. degree to
be examined in, 136
Grand Remonstrance, the, proposes
the reformation of the universities,
221 and n. 4
Grantham, birthplace of Henry More,
596
704
INDEX.
Gratulatio, etc., collection of Verses
presented by the university to prince
Charles at Eoyston, on his return
from Spain, 10 and n. 3
Gray, Mr Arthur, 300, n. 4 ; account
and criticism of John Sherman,
the historian of Jesus College, by,
382 and n. 2
Gray's Inn, ' lectureship ' at, held by
Sibbes and Preston, 70
Greaves, Jo., Savilian professor at
Oxford, procures Seth Ward's ap-
pointment as his successor, 315 ;
Ward's further indebtedness to,
317; quits Oxford for London, 367
Greaves, Tho., brother of John, one
of the translators of Walton's Poly-
glot, 492
Greek history, Cromwell acquainted
with, 148
Greek language, Laud's statutes re-
quire candidates to be examined
in, both for B.A. and M.A. degree,
136; colloquial use of, as an alter-
native to Latin, prescribed in both
universities, 138; quotations in, in
sermons, objected to by members
of the Westminster Assembly, 388;
Wni. Bancroft finds it gone ' out of
fashion,' 584; elegiacs in, in the
Lucius et Gratulatio, 518
Green, Ant., a migrant from Christ's
College to Jesus, 301
Green, Wm., intruded f. of St Cathe-
rine's, 381
Gresham lecturer in Divinity, Holds-
worth, appointed, 95; his lectures
in Latin, ib.
Greville, Fulke, first lord Brooke, en-
tered as fellow-commoner at Jesus
College, 81; his design of founding
a chair of History, ib. and n. 2;
Bacon's influence discernible in Or-
dinances given for same, 85 and 89,
n. 2; Dorislaus installed as first
lecturer, 85 ; presentation to same
vested in the university, 83-4, n. 1
Grey, lord of Warke, enforces proceed-
ings against malignants in the uni-
versity, 243, n. 2 ; 244
Grey, Zachary, nom de guerre of, 267,
n. 2 ; his text of Dowsing's Journal
the more accurate, 272, n. 5; quoted,
333
Grinsted, West, George Heath seques-
tered from living of, 296, n. 1
Groot, Jo., ejected f. of Pembroke, 291
Grosart, A. B., testimony of, to effi-
ciency of the universities during
the Commonwealth, 528, n. 2
Gross, Mr E. J., communication from,
on fee- farm rents, 562, n. 1
Groton estate, the patrimony of the
Winthrop family, 172
Guildhall, London, archives of, studied
by Sir Simonds D'Ewes, 209
Gunning, Peter, bp. of Ely, flight of,
to Oxford, 284 ; ejection of, from
fellowship at Clare, 286 ; services
of, to the royal cause, 287; urges
the university to publish the Cer-
tain Disquisitions, 288 and n. 1;
election of, to mastership of Corpus
and to lady Margaret professorship,
578; Gower's funeral sermon on,
288, n. 3; character of, as described
by Masters, 578, and by Baker, ib.,
n. 4
Gwynne, Owen, master of St John's,
39; 41 ; a warm supporter of Buck-
ingham, 53-4; voted for him, 56;
scandals attaching to his adminis-
tration of his office, 118, 119, n. 1;
120
H
Hacket, Jo., f. of Trinity, bp. of
Coventry, 7 and n. 1; 9; 49; 58
and n. 1, 123, 143, n. 4; rector of
St Andrew's in Holborn, 145; 215,
n. 2
Haddan, A. W., quoted, 56, n. 4;
his tribute to the translators of
Walton's Polyglot, 493
Hague, the, Dorislaus the representa-
tive of the Commonwealth at, 363 ;
see also Holland
Haine, or Hayne, Jos., f. of Sidney
College, 230, n. 4
Hale, Bernard, master of Peterhouse,
created D.D. by royal mandate in
1661, 558 and n. 2; his care for the
interests of the college, 565 ; his
sudden illness and death, ib. • his
benefactions to the society, 565-6
Hall, Jo., pensioner of St John's,
author of the Home Vacivae, 351;
praise bestowed on the volume by
members of the university, 351-2;
he turns satirist, ib.; his Poems, ib.;
his flattery of Bainbridge and Arrow-
smith, 352-3; complete transcrip-
tion of the Poems by Oliver Heywood,
352, n. 1; his Humble Motion to
Parliament, 371-4; his criticism of
the universities compared with that
of Bacon, 371; he accompanies
Cromwell into Scotland, 374; re-
ceives a pension, ib. ; obligations
of, to Milton and Hartlib, ib. ; his
INDEX.
705
career contrasted with that of Henry
More, 604
Hall, Jos., bp. of Norwich, f. of Em-
manuel, description of Amsterdam
by, 158 and n. 3; 215, n. 2; 256
Hall, Nich., f. of Emmanuel, required,
by the statute de Mora, to vacate
his fellowship, 214; 215; his library,
valued at £45, redeemed by himself,
313
Hall, Ste., senior f. of Jesus College,
ejection of, as refuser of the Cove-
nant, 275 and n. 1 ; his property
the first to be sequestered in 1645,
301; his imprisonment in South -
wark, 301, n. 2
Hall, Tho., of Pembroke Coll., Oxford,
his Histriomastix, 467 ; misconcep-
tion of, with regard to, and mistaken
censure of, Mr Jo. Webster, ib. ; his
praise of Gataker, ib., n. 4; defends
the study of logic, 468 ; his limited
conception of the value of learning,
ib.
Hallewell (or Halliwell), Hen., election
of to fellowship at Christ's College,
in pursuance of royal mandate, 628 ;
editor of Remains of George Bust,
649, n. 1
Halliwell, Jo. , librarian of Jesus Col-
lege, editor of Sherman's Historia
Collefiii lesu, 382, n. 2
Hammond, Sam., f. of Magdalene,
356; reputation of, as a divine, ib.,
n. 3; sermon by, on the victory at
Preston, ib.
Hammond, Wm., writes verses in
praise of Hall's Essays, 351—2
Hampden, Jo. , instructed, with others,
to draw up letters of remonstrance
to the two universities, 221 ; be-
comes the friend ofWm. Spurstowe,
305 ; importance of the results by
which their friendship was attended,
ib.
Hampton Court, documents at Oxford
relating to Laud's claim to visit the
universities, produced at, 128 ; hear-
ing of the cause there, ib. to 131 ;
the decision given in his favour,
ib.
Handscomb, Wm., f. of Peterhouse,
403 ; his fellowship not filled up for
eight years after his death, 403-5
Hapton, Norfolk, retirement of Tobias
Conyers to, 403 ; his testimonial
from the inhabitants, ib.
Hardwick, ' Bess ' of, mother of the
countess of Shrewsbury, 39, n. 3
Hardy, Mr E. G., his Hist, of Jesus
M. III.
College, Oxford, quoted, 506 and
notes 2 and 4
Hare, Bobt., documents relating to
the university of Oxford collected
by, 128 and n. 2
Harley, Sir Bobt., instructed, with
others, to draw up letters of re-
monstrance to the two universities
against irregular subscription at
graduation, 221
Harrington, Jas., his Oceana attacked
by Henry Ferae, 581
Harrington, Tho., high sheriff of
Lincoln, a friend of Humfrey
Babington, 387
Harris, f. of Emmanuel, refuses to
admit his superannuation, 215
Hart Hall, Oxford, state of, during
the siege, 262
Hartlib, Sam. , his admiration of Mede's
Clavis, 24 ; Wheelock sends his con-
futation of the Koran to, 96, n. 3;
correspondence of ,withWortbington ,
532, 573; Worthington invited to
inspect his MBS. after his death,
622, n. 5
Harvard, Jo., of Emmanuel, 188-9;
192 and n. 1
Harvard University, Charles Chauncy
assumes the presidency of, 186;
experiences of his predecessor,
186-7 ; foundation of the college,
188-91; the founder's library, 192;
earliest accounts of the institution,
192-5 ; benefactors of, 192 ; condi-
tions of admission to, 193; grammar
eliminated from the undergraduate
course, 195 ; the education of a
learned ministry the founder's aim,
ib. ; requirements for first and second
degrees at, 196 ; the first Commence-
ment, ib. ; the disputants on the
occasion, 196, 197; subsequent de-
velopement of, 200 ; destruction of
the library, ib.
Harvey, Hen., master of Trinity Hall,
361 ; his purchase of a building near
Paul's Wharf, ib.
Harvey, Wm., scholar of Cains and
warden of Merton College, 367 ;
publication of his De Circulations
Sanguinis by the University Press,
ib.
Hausted, Peter, of Queens', his Senile
Odium, 108; his Rival Friends,
108-9
Hay, Jas., earl of Carlisle, present at
Buckingham's conferences, 45
Hay dock, Mr, letter of, to Joseph
Mede, containing suggestions with
45
706
INDEX.
respect to the 'Book' in Revelation,
23-4
Hay wood, Ea., servant to lord
Brooke, 89, n. 4
Hazelrig, Sir Arth., Cromwell's lieu-
tenant, one of those who concurred
in the censure of Charles Hotham,
413
Heads, of Houses, attitude of the
. majority with respect to Bucking-
ham's election to the chancellorship,
57 ; result of changes among, in
1634, favorable to new opinions,
114; opposition offered by, in 1645,
to Town authorities, brings about
the appointment of a Commission,
327-9 ; changes among, consequent
upon the tendering of the Engage-
ment, 376-85 ; the claim of a Head
to ' a negative voice ' in his college
begins to be called in question, 406 ;
eulogized, as a body, by Hotham
for their moderation in the exercise
of same, 411 ; leading position as-
signed them in the Commissions of
1654, both at Oxford and at Cam-
bridge, 486 ; importance of the
powers with which they were in-
vested, 487; Cromwell's design in
granting ' augmentations,' to induce
them to attend more closely to their
official duties, 503-4 ; their diffi-
culties in dealing with the royal
mandates for fellowships, subse-
quent to the Restoration, 628-9
Heath, Geo. F., ejected f. of Corpus,
296 ; sequestration of his property,
ib.
Heath, Jo., ejected f. of Pembroke, 291
Heath, Sir Robt., 296
Heaver, Jo., ejected f. of Clare, 286
Hebrew, study of, 15; 92; endowment
of the chair at Oxford augmented
by Laud, 123; included in the M.A.
course, at Oxford, 136; foundation
of lectureship at Caius College, 160
and n. 2 ; a knowledge of, requisite
at Harvard, 195 ; verses in, con-
tributed to the Irenodia, 220 ; 309 ;
Comber well read in, 318, n. 2;
nucleus of the University Library
collection, 337; 376 ; 377 ; ' speaking
of ' prohibited in the Westminster
Assembly, 388; verses in, con-
tributed to the Luctus et Gratulatio,
518 ; found by Bancroft ' out of
fashion,' ou his return to Em-
manuel, 584
Hegel, Geo. , admired the writings of
Jacob Boehme, 419
Heidelberg, univ. of, Nathaniel Ward
resident at, 182
Henry vn, king, Bacon's Life of,
published on the recommendation
of lord Brooke, 83
Henry, prince, afterwards duke of
Gloucester, verses on his birth by
members of the university, 146-7,
and n. 1
Henry Beauclerc, believed by D'Ewes
to have been sent to be instructed
to Cambridge, 210
Herbert, Geo., obligations of, to John
Williams, 39 ; one of the writers in
the Cambridge tribute to Bacon's
memory, 68 ; Remains of, edited by
Barnabas Oley, 234; 309
Herbert, Phil., 5th earl of Pembroke,
chancellor of university of Oxford,
259
Hertford, grammar school at, endow-
ment of, by Bernard Hale, 566
Hertford, marquis of, succeeds Pem-
broke in the chancellorship of
Oxford, 259
Hertfordshire, included in the Associa-
tion of the Eastern Counties; see
Association
Hewman, Allen, ejected f. of St John's
in 1650, 384 and n. 2
Heylin, Pet., statement by, respecting
Laud, 240, n. 1 ; his library seques-
trated, 282, n. 1 ; his account of the
rise of the Independents, 441-2 and
n. 1
Hey wood, 'sir,' under-butler at Peter-
house, elected f. through Seaman's
influence, 406
Hickman, Jo., ejected f. of Clare, 286
Higgiuson, Francis, contemporary of
archbp. Williams at St John's, 167 ;
his experiences in Leicester, 168 ;
appointed to office by the Mass.
Company, ib.; his farewell sermon
at Leicester, 169 ; departure for
New England, ib. ; establishes a
church at Salem on a Separatist
basis, 169-70; his authorship of the
Conclusions improbable, 175, n. 1;
draws up a new Confession of Faith,
170 ; his death, ib.
Higginson, Timothy, of St John's,
elder brother of Francis, 167
Hill, Jos., f. of Magdalene, joint com-
poser of the Dedication of the
Luctus et Gratulatio, 516; sanctions
the scheme of Poole's Model, 537,
n. 1 ; tutor of his college, 550, n. 2;
entertains Samuel Pepys in his
chambers, 550
INDEX.
707
Hill, Tho., master of Trinity, 319 and
n. 3; 322, n. 2; 327, n. 2; petition
of, to the Lords, 330; his scruples
with respect to his oath as vice-
chancellor, and petition to same
body in connexion therewith, 334;
their reply, embodying his sug-
gestion, ib.; his death, 472; outline
of his earlier career, ib. ; his strin-
gent discipline in Trinity, 472-4;
his care for the university eulogized
by Tuckney, 529
Hills, Dr, master of St Catherine's,
death of, 70, n. 1
History, Mede's knowledge of, re-
garded as exceptional, 17 and n. 1 ;
lord Brooke's design of instituting
a chair of, 83-90 ; Cromwell studied
classical, 148 ; neglect of study of,
deplored by Jo. Hall, 373
Hoadly, Benj., bp. of Winchester,
reply of, to Calamy, 548, n. 1
Hoare, Jo., f. of Queens', ejected, as a
refuser of the Engagement, 380
Hobart, Nath., senior f. of King's,
contributor to the Irenodia, 220,
n. 2
Hobbes, Tho., acquaintance of, with
Descartes, 432; agreement of, with
same, on the merits of university
education, ib. ; his theory of Church
and State, ib. ; his heterodoxy, at
this time, doubtful, ib. ; his Levia-
than, ib. ; his alleged designs in its
publication, 433; his denunciation
of the idolatry of Aristotle, and of
his commentators, ib. ; and of the
clergy who taught that philosophy,
ib. ; 463; his dictatorial tone ob-
jected to, by Seth Ward, 468
Hobson, Tho., the carrier, 102; death
of, 105 and n. 2; 330
Hodges, Tho., f. of Emmanuel, rival
of Worthington in competition for
a fellowship, 213-4
Holbeach, Hen., bp. of Lincoln, 12,
n. 1
Holbeach, Tho., f. of Emmanuel (but
not ejected), 313 and n. 3
Holder, ejected f. of Peterhouse, 282
Holdsworth, Ei., master of Em-
manuel, appointed Gresham divinity
lecturer, 95 ; defeat of, in election
to the mastership of St John's, 119 ;
election of, to that of Emmanuel,
121 ; his reception by Laurence
Chadertou, ib.; maintains that Con-
vocation should not sit after the
dissolution of Parliament, 145 ; 209 ;
his merits as an administrator, 212 ;
his Commencement oration in 1641,
215-9; it is referred by Parlia-
ment to a Committee, 219; he is
appointed oue of the royal chaplains,
220; his contributions to the
Irenodia, ib. ; his sanguine tone in
a sermon at St Mary's, 223 ; 225 and
n. 3; 228; 229; arrest of, 246; the
charges against him investigated,
248; election of, to the Margaret
professorship, 256; the university
forbidden to admit him to the chair,
256-7 ; William Bancroft's letter to
him on the occasion, 257; his re-
lease from confinement and death,
ib. and 261 ; his library bequeathed
to the college, 257; conditions at-
tached to the bequest, 257-8 ; Man-
chester forbids its sequestration,
312
Holland, assassination of Dorislaus
in, 89 and n. 5 ; exiles in, mostly
Cambridge men, 161 ; 182 ; peace of,
with England, in 1654, 483 ; see
also Oliva Pads and Low Countries
Holland, earl of ; see Rich (Henry)
Holland, Hugh, poet, 227
Holland, Philemon, f. of Trinity, 140
and n. 4 ; vicissitudes of his career,
140-1; appointed headmaster of
Free School at Coventry, 141 ; per-
mitted by the vice-chancellor to
receive charity from the colleges, ib. •
his death, ib.
Holies, Gervase, 209
Holmby, arrest of Charles i at, 341,
344
'Holmes, Dr,' named, by error, in the
list of the successors of Dorislaus
in the chair of. History, 90, n. 1
Holstenius, his version of Porphyry
printed at the University Press, 489
Holy Orders, those in, excluded from
the chair of History founded by
lord Brooke, 84
Homer, Mede's accurate acquaintance
with the text of, 17
Honywood, Mich., f. of Christ's, dean
of Lincoln, his special merit, 16 ;
member of Committee for Com-
memoration of Benefactors, 142 ;
his services to the college, 303;
quits Cambridge for Utrecht, ib. ;
his library redeemed by his brother,
ib.
Hooker, Tho., of Emmanuel, his
career and death in New England,
182-3
Hoole, Chas., a promoter of Latin
versification, 597, n. 2
45—2
708
INDEX.
'Hopewell,' the, sailing of exiles for
New England in, 157
Horton in Bucks, living of, held by
Worthington, 572
Horton, Tho., president of Queens',
300 ; subscribes the Engagement,
380; appointment of, to office, ib.;
521, n. 3; 522, n. 4; his merits
as a preacher, 533, 534 ; approves
the scheme of Poole's Model, 537,
n. 1
Hothain, Chas. , f. of Peterhouse, ex-
pulsion of, 376; his description of
the state of the college in 1645, 395 ;
his defence of the probation system
as applied to fellowships, 395-6;
circumstances which had led him to
adopt an academic life, 398; his
retiring disposition, 399; his en-
deavours to advance his pupil,
Tobias Conyers, 401-2; reckless
conduct and subsequent penitence
of the latter, 402-3 ; his endeavours
to obtain for him a vacant fellow-
ship, 403-4 ; he is summoned before
the London Committee, who subse-
quently annul Conyer's election to
the fellowship, 404-6; contest in
which he becomes involved with the
master, Lazarus Seaman, 405-6;
he publishes his Petition, 406 ; he
advances further allegations against
Seaman, 407-8; his disparaging
estimate of the Elizabethan statutes,
410 ; offence given in London by the
publication of his Petition, 412 ; he
is expelled from his fellowship, ib. ;
his censors and supporters com-
pared, ib. and 413-4 ; he brings out
his Corporations Vindicated, 415;
he denounces Seaman as an ad-
ministrator, and exposes his de-
ficiencies as a Latinist, 415-6; is
presented to the family living of
Wigan, 417; there claims the right
to occupy the parson's chancel, 418;
embraces the doctrine of Boehme,
ib. ; his theory of a college con-
sidered, 419; 522
Hotham, Durand, brother of Charles,
publishes his Life of Jacob Boehme,
418
Hotham, Sir John, father of Charles,
executed as a traitor to the Com-
monwealth, 398; 417, n. 3
Howard, Henry, earl of Northampton,
election of, to chancellorship of the
university, 6; subsequent nomina-
tion of prince Charles to same, ib. ;
this annulled by James, but North-
ampton resigns, 7; he is re-elected,
but dies in following year, 9
Howard, Tho., earl of Suffolk, succeeds
his uncle, the earl of Northampton,
in the chancellorship, 9 ; marries
into the family of the Rich's, ib. ;
enjoins the restoration of discipline
in the university, 52 ; death of, in
1626, ib. ; the earls succeed as
Visitors of Magdalene College, 306;
Theophilus, second earl of the
Howard family, sends his two sons
to the college, ib. ; James, third
earl, nominates Dr Rainbowe to the
mastership, ib.
Howard, Tho., earl of Berkshire, rival
candidate to Buckingham in the
election to the chancellorship, 55,
56; disadvantage under which his
supporters labour, ib. ; cause, as-
signed by Fuller, of his defeat, ib. ;
details of the election, 56-9; his
letter to his supporters subsequent
to the election, 60; his connexion
with Oxford and later career, 60-1
Howard, Tho., first earl of Suffolk,
chancellor of the university, see
Suffolk (earl of)
Howorth, Jo., master of Magdalene,
his expulsion as fellow, 307
Howell, Francis, f. of Exeter, in-
stalled by the Visitors principal of
Jesus College, Oxford, 507
Hoyle, Dr, reports to the Westminster
Assembly the names of examinees for
fellowships at Cambridge, 319, n. 4
Hubbard, Wm., a disputant at Har-
vard, 196
Hughes, Mr, esquire bedell, employed
in bringing down the collection
bequeathed by Bancroft from Lam-
beth to Cambridge, 336, n. 2
Humphrey, Jo., one of the members
of the Mass. Company that met at
Cambridge, 170, n. 3
Hunt, Mr Jo., quoted, 445
Hunt, Tho., of Queens', promoted to
a fellowship, 380
Huntingdon, county of, added to the
Association of the Eastern Counties,
240, n. 4
Hutchinson, Anne, tenets of, con-
demned in 1637, 198
Hutchinson, Wm., ejected f. of St
Catherine's, 381
Hutton, Geo., suspension of, from
the function of senior Begent, 339
and n. 1
Hyde, earl of Clarendon, observation
of Sir Edmund Verney to, 224
INDEX.
709
Ignatius, the Epistles of, edited by
Ussher, 260
Impropriators, effect of Spelman's
treatise upon, 97, n. 3
Indemnity, Act of, desire of Charles n
that it should be as comprehensive
as possible, 560
Independents, the, doctrines of assailed
by Tho. Edwardes, 77-8; and by
Wm. Dell, notwithstanding his
partial sympathy with their views,
366; growing strength of, in the
university, 324; gain ground on the
Presbyterians, ib. ; Henry More dis-
claims any sympathy with, 383, n. 1 ;
congregation of, in Rotterdam, 441
and n. 1 ; their doctrinal position
defined, 449; disparaging reference
to, by Baillie, 496; compelled to
give place to the Presbyterians in
Oxford, 508 ; their characteristics
described by Anthony Wood and by
Rich. Baxter, 547-8
Indians in America, projected college
for children of, 152 ; identified by a
Jewish doctor with the Lost Tribes,
201-2
Ingelo, Nath., a migrant from Em-
manuel to Queens' College, 300; a
' skilled musician,' ib.; design of his
Bentivolio and Urania, ib. and n. 5
Ingoldsby, Line., advowson of living
of, bequeathed to Henry More by
his father, 608, n. 3
Injunctions, of 1636, relating to cos-
tume and noctivagation, 107-8
Ipswich, a known centre of Reforma-
tion Doctrine, 30
Irenodia Cantabrigiensis, the, con-
tributors to, 220, n. 2
Ireton, Hen., marriage of, to Crom-
well's daughter, 365
Ita me Deus adjuvet, retention of the
formula in academic oaths down to
the 19th century, 541, n. 1
Jackson, Arth., of Trinity, appointed
to adjudicate on the merits of
translation of Mede's Clavis, 21
and n. 2; his favorable report on
same to Committee of the House,
22; his experiences as an under-
graduate, 226, n. 3; 227
Jackson, Jo., f. of Queens', ejected as
a refuser of the Engagement in 1650,
380
James i, king, 1, 3, 4, 5; 25; 26 ; 32;
annuls the election of Northampton
to the chancellorship of the univer-
sity, 7; his letter to the university
on the subject, 8 ; he enjoins a new
election, ib.
James, Tho., of Emmanuel, becomes
the pastor of the church in Charles-
town, 181
Jeanes, T., student of Trinity, joins
in defending the execution of
Charles i, 358, n. 4
Jeffery, Jo., of St Catherine's, arch-
deacon of Norwich, relationship of
to Samuel Salter, 591, n. 2
Jenkinson, Mr F. J. H., his opinion
cited, 288, n. 1
Jenks, Hen., ofJEmmanuel and senior
f. of Caius, urges Henry More to
write on Ethics, 615 and n. 2;
author of the Christian Tutor, ib.
Jenkyn, Wm., funeral sermon on
Lazarus Seaman, by, 575, n. 1
Jennings, RL, 185 and n. 2
Jerusalem, the New, hypothesis of its
being in America, 153 and n. 3
Jessopp, Dr Aug., description by, of
Sir Simonds D'Ewes' researches,
209, n. 3.
Jesuits, the, the recognized instructors
in the Latin grammar, 464, n. 3;
expulsion of, from Paris, 422; prac-
tice of teaching gratis, ib., n. 3;
Dr Gee's disparaging estimate of,
437; suggestion of Baillie, with a
view to enable Protestant teachers
to dispense with their manuals, 531
Jesus College, 59, 81, 85, n. 2; 134;
succeeds in concealing its plate
from Cromwell, 237, 238 ; Dowsing's
destructive work at, 271, n. 4 ; a
noted centre of Laudian influence,
301 ; noteworthy migrations from
other colleges to, ib. ; popularity of,
in 17th century, ib. ; exempt from
the obligation of presenting names
of candidates for fellowships to a
bishop, before electing, 334 and n.
4; ejections at, of refusers of the
Engagement, 381-2; 502; 531-2;
re-installation of Dr Sterne in the
mastership of. 573 ; see also Worth-
ington
Jesus College, Oxford, state of, during
the siege, 263; revolt of against
Roberts, its principal, 506; appeal
of, to the Visitors, ib. ; Cromwell
refers the same to the Council, ib. ;
expulsion of Dr Roberts by the
fellows, 16. ; election of new princi-
pal, 507, 509
710
INDEX*
Jesus Lane, Samuel Collins resident
during the latter part of his life, in,
297
Job, book of, translated into Greek
verse by Duport, 195
Johnson, lady Arabella, death of, 175,
n. 4
Johnson, Dan., f. of Corpus, 296,
n. 3; examined and approved by
the Assembly of Divines, 319; a
Covenanter ejected as a refuser of
the Engagement, 377
Johnson, Francis, f. of Christ's, ex-
pelled from the university, 157;
subsequent career of, 158-9
Johnson, Geo., brother of Francis,
flight of and imprisonment in
London, 157; an exile, along with
his brother, in Amsterdam, 157-8;
his subsequent career, ib. to 160
Johnson, Isaac, one of the Mass.
Company who assembled at Cam-
bridge, 170, n. 3; death of, at
Boston, 'the wealthiest man in the
colony,' 176
Johnson, Bobt., 74
Johnson, Dr Sam., assertion of, re-
specting cessation of corporal
punishment of students, 'called in
question, 194, n. 2
Johnson, Wm., f. of Queens', comedy
of the Valetudinarium, by, 111
Joyce, cornet, alleged abduction of
Charles i by, 341, 344
Joynt Attestation, A, treatise contra-
vening the representations of Mon-
tagu's Appello, 48-9 ; names of the
signatories to, 49
Junius, Francis, brings out his edition
of Caedmon at Amsterdam, 489
Juxon, Wm., archbp. of Canterbury,
subscription book of the clergy
probably remained in his possession
during the Commonwealth, 543;
evidence of the conscientious loyalty
of the clergy which it afforded, ib.
Kettell, Dr Ra., pres. of Trinity,
Oxford, experiences of, during the
siege, 263
King, Edw., f. of Christ's, Latin
iambics by, 108
King, Robt., first election of, to master-
ship of Trinity Hall, 294 and n. 4 ;
re-election of, to same, 567
King's College, 4, 26, 72 ; reported
corrupt practices at, 134 ; part of its
plate intercepted on its way to the
royal quarters, 234; 237; 249; 297;
ejections at, 298 and n. 2, and 378 ;
financial condition of, circ. 1650,
379 ; 502 ; share taken by its mem-
bers in the Lwc<«s et Gratulatio,
517 ; tone of, under Whichcote, 531 ;
bequest of Barnabas Oley to, 533 ;
statute relating to election of provost,
567 ; circumstances under which
Whichcote retires from office, ib. ;
disputed election of Fleetwood as
his successor, 568-9 ; 569, n. 3 ;
sweeping changes at, consequent
upon the Engagement, 594 and n. 2 ;
see also Whichcote, Flf.ftwood
King's College Chapel, Buckingham
conducted to summit of, 72 and n. 2
Kingston, Mr Alfred, quoted, 240
Kitchingman, mayor of Cambridge,
contempt shewn by, for his oath of
office, 333
Knell, Paul, master of arts of Clare,
invective of, before the Benchers of
Gray's Inn, against the Westminster
Assembly, 354 and n. 3
Knight, Jo., of Oxford, 13
Knightbridge, Jo., founder of the Pro-
fessorship, election of, to fellowship
at Peterhouse, 283
Knightbridge Professorship of Moral
Philosophy, see Knightbridge, Jo.
Knowles, Jo., tutor of St Catherine's,
305, n. 4
Koran, the, Wheelock undertakes a
confutation of, 96
K
Keene, Jo., ejected f. of Pembroke,
291
Kegworth (Leic.), Mich. Honywood's
rectory of, sequestrated, 303
Kennett, Ri., f. of Corpus, a Cove-
nanter ejected as a refuser of the
Engagement, 377-8
Kentish Petition, the (to be distin-
guished from that of Jan. 1641),
its scope and purpose, 223, notes 3
and 4; 224
La Fleche, Jesuit school at, Descartes'
experiences of, 421-2, 423 and n. 1
Lacy (or Lacey), Wm., f. of St John's,
one of the authors of the Certain
Disquisitions, 287, n. 3; expulsion
of, from fellowship, 304
Lady Margaret, see Margaret
Lambe, Sir Jo., of St John's, dean of
the Arches, relations of, with Jo.
Williams, 123-4 ; his unfavorable
report on the diocese of Lincoln,
INDEX.
711
124 ; maintains, at Hampton Court,
Land's claim to visit the universities,
129
Lambert, general Jo., Webster dedi-
cates his Examen to, 458 ; an
energetic supporter of Cromwell, ib. ;
one of the Visitors of the university
appointed in 1654, 487 ; advises
Cromwell on the question of making
Durham College a university, 522
Lambeth Palace, archbp. Bancroft's
collection, stored at, 335 ; petition
of the university that the same may
be sent to Cambridge, ib. See Ban-
croft
Lamplugh, Josiah, f. of Corpus,
ejected as refuser of the Engage-
ment, 377
Lane, Robt., president of St John's
College, 119 ; charges preferred
against, 120; commission of enquiry
appointed, ib. ; circumstances of his
death, ib. ; instigator of the opposi-
tion offered to election of Batchcroft
at Caius, 364 and n. 4
Laney, Benj., bp. of Peterborough,
master of Pembroke, 142; ejection
of, 273, 274 ; flight of, from Cam-
bridge, 289 ; Crashaw dedicates his
Epigrammata to, 318 ; re-installation
of, 566 ; rewarded by both a deanery
and a bishopric, ib. ; consecration of,
567, u.l; his leniency towards dis-
senters, ib.
Langport, victory of Parliamentary
forces at, celebrated in Cambridge,
326 and n. 1
Lapsarian controversy, attitude as-
sumed by Montagu in relation to,
32
Latin, letter in, written by Philip
Sidney when a schoolboy at Shrews-
bury, 81, n. 2; colloquial command
of, required of students at Oxford,
136 ; value of same, in seventeenth
century, 138; this fully recognized
during the Commonwealth, ib. and
n. 2 ; John Winthrop writes to his
sons in, 174-5 ; the obligation to
converse in, with Greek as an
alternative, imposed in the colleges
in 1649, 368 ; speaking in, prohibited
in Westminster Assembly, 388; use
of, in scholastic exercises, objected
to by Webster, 458-9; importance
of a literary command of, at this
period, in connexion with official
duties, 611
Latin sermon, the, popular demonstra-
tion against, in 1643, 245
Laud, Wm., archbp. of Canterbury, 20,
n. 1 ; 21 ; officiates in the place of
Williams at coronation of Charles i,
36 ; 44, n. 3 ; Cosin on friendly
terms with, 46; incorporated D.D.
from Oxford, 72 ; designs the repres-
sion of religious controversy, 76 ;
intercedes on behalf of Alex. Gill,
78 and n. 4 ; acquires a commanding
ascendancy, 80; 85, n. 2; 88; his ideal
of the higher education, 91 ; seeks
to suppress the lectureship at Trinity
Church, 91-101 ; 112 ; letter from,
to Dr Comber, 113 ; 117 ; interest
taken by, in election to mastership
of St John's, 119-20 ; proposes him-
self to undertake a Visitation of the
university, 123-4 ; letter from, to
Dr Beale, 124 ; the validity of the
precedents for such visitation called
in question, 126 ; he petitions the
Crown that both universities be
allowed to state their case, 127 ; his
munificence to Oxford, ib. and 128 ;
appearance of the academic delegates
at Hampton Court, ib. to 131 ; the
decision given by King and Council
in his favour, 131 ; his further efforts
to enforce the colloquial use of
Latin in Oxford, 138; 144; 145;
146 ; 162 ; obtains the withdrawal
of Francis Higginson's licence, 1(58 ;
silenced Tho. Hooker at Chelmsford,
182 ; drives Roger Williams into
exile, 189; 212; 215; 239, n. 2;
240, n. 1; institutes Thorndike
rector of Barley, 253 ; denounced
Dr Francius as a Socinian, 283 ;
Laney denounced as ' one of his
creatures,' 289 j 322; 368; drives
Hugh Peters from Amsterdam to
America, 442 ; effect of his statutes
at Oxford, 499
Lauderdale, duke of, see Haitian d,
Jo.
Lawson, or Lauson, ejected f. of Sidney,
314
League, see Solemn League
Le Clerc, brings Cudworth's Intellectual
System under the notice of Con-
tinental scholars, 661
Lectures, attendance at, ' without any
disturbance by word or gesture,'
obligatory at Harvard, 194
'Lecturers,' in the counties, combine
for restoration of ' Charles Stewart,'
358
Leger, Jean, Waldensian minister at
Geneva, 512 ; his work on the Wal-
denses, ib. and n. 1
712
INDEX.
Legge, Cantrell, printer to the univer-
sity, 1 and n. 2
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, statement
of, with respect to the Fur Praedes-
tinatus, 438 and n. 3
Leicester, town of, Francis Higginson
appointed preacher at, 168
Leigh, Austin, opinion of, with reppect
to removal of the glass in King's
College Chapel, 272; 297, n. 2;
379
Leigh, Jas., of Christ's College, recom-
mended to Thurloe by Cudworth for
official employment, 611, n. 2;
election of, to a fellowship, 629
Lenthal, Tho.. f. of Pembroke, a
defecter to Home, 291
Lenthall, Wm., Speaker of the House
of Commons, 251 ; 327 ; 336 ;
authority of Parliament called in
question by, 504
' Leveller,' Charles Hotham pronounced
to be a, 415
Levett, Christopher, member of the
Council of New England, 177
Leyden, university of, Erpenius a
professor at, 75, n. 4 ; Cambridge
unable to attract Gerard Vossius
from, 85 and n. 2 ; 161 and n. 3 ;
aversion with which the Jesuits were
regarded by its professors, 423 ;
442, n. 1
Liberty of Conscience, how interpreted
by John Cotton, 180
Libraries, private, Brewster's collection
carried by the owner to New Ply-
mouth, 166; that of George Philips
in Mass., 176, n. 3 ; sequestration
of Holdsworth's forbidden by Man-
chester, 312 ; complete loss of John
Conant's, 349 ; burning of John
Harvard's, 200 and n. 2
Library, a good, unnecessary, in
Milton's opinion, for a youug divine,
527 ; cost of one, at that time, ib.
and n. 2 ; wrong orientation of the
building at Emmanuel, 584
Lightfoot, Jo., succeeds to mastership
of St Catherine's, 380 ; historian of
the Westminster Assembly, ib. ;
Gibbon's description of, ib. ; moral
courage evinced by, in an oration
while vice-chancellor, 381 ; oration
of, on retiring from the vice-chan-
cellorship, 471 ; tribute paid by, to
the labours of the translators of
the Polyglot, 490 and n. 1 ; 491-2 ;
493 and n. 1; his sympathy with
the Presbyterians as a body, 534;
dedicates his Horae to his college,
•ib. ; his capacity as an adminis-
trator of the same, ib.
Lincoln Cathedral, documents in the
Consistory, at, quoted, 597, n. 1
Lincoln, county of, added to the
Association of the Eastern Counties,
see Association
Lincoln, diocese of, Laud's design to
visit, 123 ; devolution of the Visita-
tion on John Lambe, ib. ; his un-
favorable report of same, 124
Lincoln College, Oxford, state of,
during the siege, 262; 597, n. 2
Lincoln,Edm., migrant from Magdalene
to Jesus College, 301 ; his library
rescued from the sequestra tors, 302
and n. 2
Lingua, play of, Cromwell supposed to
have acted in, 148, n. 2
Livy, study of, recommended by Bacon,
82
Lloyd, David, exonerates Dr Love, as
professor, from the charge of dis-
loyalty to the Church, 563-4 ; facts
respecting, 563, n. 3
Loan, the forced, of 1641, resistance
offered to, by both universities, 221
Loftus, Adam, archbp. of Dublin,
grandfather of Dudley Loftus, 491,
n. 5
Loftus, Dudley, a supporter of Walton's
Polyglot, 491, n. 5
Logic, study of, required by Laud's
statutes, 136 ; and for ' second
degree,' at Harvard, 196 ; defended
by Tho. Hall, 468
London, proposed Hall of residence in,
for Oxford students, 263 ; proposed
university in lieu thereof, 349, n. 5 ;
noted for loving a ' cheap Gospel,'
575, n. 1
London, office of Town Clerk of, held
by a college Head, 385
Long, Sir Lislebone, M.P., extenuates
non- residency on the part of masters
of colleges, 503-4
Longomontanus, attempts of, to
square the circle, disproved by John
Pell, 556, n. 1
Lords, House of, ordinance of, with
respect to two fellowships in Trinity
College, 311 ; orders of, with respect
to the insanitary conditions of Cam-
bridge, 340
Love, Dr K., dean of Ely, master of
Corpus Christi, his tact in steering
between parties, 114, n. 2 ; election
of, to the vice -chancellorship, 117 ;
a contributor to the Voces, 147, n. 1 ;
and to the Irenodia, 220, n. 2;
INDEX.
713
representative of Derbyshire in the
Assembly of Divines, 247 and n. 1 ;
fails in his endeavour to protect
St Benet's Church from Dowsing,
270-1 ; the only Head who retained
office down to the Restoration, 295
and n. 3 ; 338 ; sanctions Fuller's
researches among the college
archives, 378 ; 535 ; acts as con-
ductor of Charles n to the deputation
from the university, 557 ; his speech
on that occasion, ib. ; his share in
the surrender of the fee-farm rents
to the Crown , 562 ; his installation
as dean of Ely, 563; circumstances of
his death, ib. ; his loyalty to the
Church vindicated by Lloyd, 563-4 ;
Masters's estimate of his merits, 564
Low Countries, the, bishop Wren
accused of having driven the indus-
trial element in his diocese into, 239
and n. 3
Lowe, Robt., sen. f. of Clare, letter
from to Sam. Blythe according the
master's reluctant permission to
reside during the plague, 619-20
Lowes, Jo., M.A. of St John's, burnt
as a wizard, 450
Lowler Hedges, place where Cromwell
planned to intercept the plate sent
from the colleges to the royal
quarters, 236 and n. 2
Lowrey fr. Lowry), Jo., returned as
burgess for the town, 147; his refusal
to take the customary oath as mayor,
327-9; his petition to the Commons,
328-9
Lucas, Hen., of St John's, secretary to
the earl of Holland, 98, n. 1; re-
turned to represent the university,
207 ; founder of the Lucasian chair
of mathematics, 207-8
Lucretius, sentiment of, adopted by
Henry More, 599, n. 1
Luctus et Gratulatio, verses contributed
by the university to celebrate the
death of Cromwell and the succession
of his son, 515-9 ; contrast ob-
servable in those by the senior and
by the junior members of the uni-
versity, 516-9
Luke, Jo., f. of Sidney and professor
of Arabic, one of the authors of
the Dedication of the Luctus et
Gratulatio, 516
Luther anism, the doctrines of, re-
pudiated as authoritative alike by
Montagu and Tho. Fuller, 32 and n.
1 ; increasing antagonism to same,
143 and n. 4
M
M.A. degree, candidates for, at Ox-
ford, required to have a mastery of
good colloquial Latin, 136
Maces of the university of Oxford lost
during the siege, 262
Mackworth, Humphrey, one of the
Visitors of Oxford in 1654, 486 ; his
interment in Westminster Abbey,
ib.
Madan, Mr F., his authority cited,
288, n. 1
Magdalen College, Oxford, corrupt
elections at, 505
Magdalene College, Cambridge, sup-
ports Berkshire in the election for the
chancellorship, 59 ; 187 ; loses much
of its plate in the royal cause, 235,
237 ; Dowsing breaks down many
'superstitious pictures' at, 272;
experiences of, under Dr Rainbowe,
306-7 ; Fuller's testimony to its
good reputation in his time, 307 ;
Pepys visits Joseph Hill at, 550 ;
its right to nominate to the proctor-
ship extended to once in nine years,
579 ; see also Hoicard, Tho.
Mayister Glomeriae,ihe original teacher
of the elements of Latin, 195
Maitland, Jo., first duke of Lauder-
dale, state secretary to Charles u,
567; letter of, to Whichcote, ib.
Major, Gabriel, f. of Peterhouse, ejected
as refuser of the Engagement, 279,
n. 1
Maiden, Mr H. E., quoted, 361
Manchester, earl of, see Montagu,
Edward
Manchester, town of, petitions to be
made the seat of a university,
204-5; arguments advanced in fav-
our of such a measure, ib.
Manciple, the, nature of his office in
a college, 140, n. 1 ; a former stu-
dent of Christ's College is nomi-
nated by the Crown to the post,
629
Mandate Degrees, indiscriminate be-
stowal of, at the Restoration and
subsequently, 557-8 ; see also Ap-
pendix (E), p. 680
Mandates for election to fellowships,
method of dealing with, adopted by
college authorities, 98-9 ; frequency
of same during the five years follow-
ing upon the Restoration, 626-9
Manners, lady Catherine, her marriage
with Buckingham partly brought
about by John Williams, 13
714
INDEX.
Mansell, Dr Francis, principal of Jesus
College, Oxford, continues to reside
in college subsequent to his depriva-
tion of office, 507, n. 2
Man?ell, Jo., president of Queens',
votes at the election to the chan-
cellorship in 1626, 57
Mapletoft, Edm., M.A. of Caius, sig-
nature of, as priest, in the episcopal
register in 1660, 543
Mapletoft, Hen., of Huntingdon, letter
to his cousin, f. of Pembroke, 291,
n. 1
Mapletoft, Jo., 291, n. 1
Mapletoft, Robt., master of Pembroke
College, ejected as a refuser of the
Covenant, 290-1
Marburg, univ. of, demoralization of
the students at, resulting from the
Thirty Years War, 356-7
Margaret, lady, preachership, 245 ; re-
endowment of, 255-6 ; election of
Holdsworth to the chair, 256
Marley, Tho., f. of Queens', ejection
of, as refuser of the Covenant, 299
Marston Moor, battle of, 277
Martin, Andre\ influence of his Philo-
aophia Christiana in advancing Car-
tesianism at Saumur, 424, n. 3
Martin, Edw., president of Queens'
and deau of Ely, significance of
his election, 115; his sympathy
with the royal cause, 230; his ar-
rest and consignment to the Tower,
237-8; 240 and n. 1; his confine-
ment at Ely House, 274; his suffer-
ings, as described by himself, 298
and n. 3 ; his letter from Paris, on
hearing of Monck's designs, 553 and
n. 3; his re-installation at Queens',
570, n. 3; his feelings at witnessing
the havoc wrought by Dowsing, 571;
his promotion to the deanery of Ely
and death within a few days after,
ib.
Martin, Sir Tho., government official
during the Commonwealth, 383,
n. 2
Martineau, Dr Jas., his criticism of
Cud worth's Intellectual System
quoted, 660-1
Marvell, Andr., residence of, at Cam-
bridge, 228 and n. 2
Mary, the Virgin, images of, order
given for their destruction through-
out the university, 220 ; and for
pictures of, to be removed, 266
Mascon, the devil of, 156
Mason, — , secretary to duke of Buck-
ingham, 55
Mason, Ri., f. of Jesus, migrant from
Corpus to Jesus, 301
Massachusetts Bay Company, charter
of incorporation acquired by, 168 ;
transfer of administration of, to New
England, decided on at meeting con-
vened at Cambridge, 170 and n. 3,
171 and n. I ; 175 ; the leading sig-
natories to the Reasons then resolved
upon, 176; further immigrations
into the colony, 191
Masson, David, quoted, 199-200 and
n. 1; 341, n. 1; 370; 438
Masters, Robt., assumption of, with
respect to the intrusion of Inde-
pendents at Corpus Christi, 378
Masters of Colleges, see Heads
Mathematics, neglect of, deplored by
Webster, 459 ; decline of, in the
university, 462 ; Samuel Morland
inclines to the study of, 510 ; see
Pell, Ward, Wilkins
Mather, Cotton, saying of, with respect
to the New World, 153 ; Ecclesiasti-
cal Hist, of New England by, 155
and n. 1 ; holds that the powers of
evil retreat from centres of civiliza-
tion, 156; 169, n. 1
Mather, Increase, son of Ri. Mather,
162
Mather, Ri., of Brasenose, author of
the scheme of Church organization
known as the Cambridge ^Platform,
162, notes 1 and 2 ; design with which
he compiled the same, 183 and n. 4
Matriculations : those in 1648 con-
trasted with those of previous year,
353; numbers of, 1620-69, Appen-
dix (E) ; see also Oaths
Maud, Dan., of Emmanuel, exile to
New England, 183
Maurice, F. D., late professor, quoted,
645-6
Mawe, Dr Leonard, master of Peter-
house and of Trinity, bp. of Bath
and Wells, 54, 56; a supporter of
Buckingham, 75, n. 2; an opponent
of Dr Batchcroft, 69, n. 2 and 364,
n. 4
Maxwell, Patrick, ejected f. of Peter-
house, 282
May, Hen., ejected f. of Pembroke
College, 291
Mayflower, the, departure of, from
Plymouth, 165; the Puritanism of
the exiles who sailed in, distin-
guished from that which character-
ized the later settlers, 167
Mayne, Jasper, of Christ Church, Ox-
ford, archdeacon of Chichester, repels
INDEX.
715
the aspersions cast upon him by
Cheynell, 321; his 'OxXo/wzxJa, 345;
his insight into the crisis of 1647,
ib.
Mayor, the, of Cambridge, orders wine
on the day of thanksgiving for
Naseby, 326, n. 1 ; question of pre-
cedency between, and vice-chan-
cellor argued before the Lords, 330 ;
proclamation of Charles n, by, 555 ;
see also Lowrey
Mayor, the late prof. J. E. B., quoted,
205, n. 1 ; 475
Meautys, Tho., recommended by lord
keeper Finch, for election as burgess
for the Town, 147
Mechanics, instruction in, desiderated,
465
Meddus, Dr J. , correspondent of Joseph
Mede, 14, n. 2; 47
Mede (or Mead), Joseph, f. and tutor
of Christ's College, letters from to
Stuteville, 11 ; his description of the
college in the time of the plague, ib. ;
his early education and acquire-
ments, 15 ; his remarkable range of
information, 17 ; his position as a
theologian, ib. ; his concern for
decency in public worship, 18; his
original method of instruction, 18-
19 ; his regard for individuality, 19 ;
his evening class, ib. ; number of
remarkable men educated at Christ's
during this period, ib. ; his ability as
an administrator, 20; his numerous
correspondents and deep interest
in political events, ib. to 21 ; his
Clavis Apocalyptica, ib. ; transla-
tion of same, by Ri. More, sanctioned
by Parliament, ib.; his treatment of
his subject illustrated, 22-3; solu-
tion of one of his difficulties sug-
gested by a correspondent, 23-4;
his application of the Apocalypse
to contemporary events, 24; wide-
spread popularity of his disserta-
tion, 24-5; letters of, quoted, 36,
54, 55, 56, 61, 67, 69, 72, 74-5;
leaves Cambridge on the recurrence
of the plague, 102; his description
of the college on his return, 105-6 ;
conclusion of his correspondence
with Stuteville, 139 ; appealed to
by John Durie to suggest a means
of restoring theological concord,
ib. ; his sudden death, 140 ; last
will and bequests of, ib. ; one of
Laud's chaplains, ib. ; his corre-
spondence with John Pory, 151,
152 ; his reply to Dr Twisse, 153-4 ;
his theory of the New Jerusalem
reproduced by Cotton Mather, 155-
6 ; writings of, edited by Worthing-
ton, 214; 572; quoted, 364, n. 4;
531
Medicine, Regius reader in, required
to resume his demonstrations, 338 ;
knowledge of, combined with the
clerical profession, 384 ; Regius pro-
fessor of philosophy at Utrecht,
enjoined to restrict himself to, in
his lectures, 430; Dell and Webster
alike desiderate more systematic
attention to, 456, 457
Merchant Taylors' scholars at St
John's, Oxford, sent to Cambridge,
263
Meredith, Dr, f. of Trinity, befriended
when a student by John Williams,
39; mulcted as a refuser of the
Covenant, 310
Merton College, Oxford, Charles Scar-
borough finds refuge at, 367
Metaphysics, a knowledge of, required
for the M.A. degree, by Laud's sta-
tutes, 136
Metcalfe, Robt., f. of Trinity, Regius
professor of Hebrew, votes for Berk-
shire in the election for the chan-
cellorship, 58
Middle Temple, the, Sir Simonds
D'Ewes a student at, 209
Middleton, impropriate rectory of, in-
come of applied to the endowment
of a lectureship in Anglo-Saxon,
97
Middleton, Tho., his Chaste Maid,
194, n. 2
Mildmay, Sir Hen., grandson of the
founder of Emmanuel, advises the
revival of the statute de Mora So-
ciorum, 213
Mildmay, Mr, of Peterhouse, recom-
mended to Thurloe by Cudworth, as
seeking employment in connexion
with politics, 611, u. 2
Mildmay, Sir Tho., marries Alice Win-
throp, 172
Miles, Mr, f. of Clare, recommended
to Thurloe by Cudworth, as ' a very
good scholar,' 611, n. 2
Milles, Dan., intruded f. of St Cathe-
rine's, an industrious student of the
College archives, 381
Millington, Gilbert, the regicide, a
member of the London Committee
in 1651, 412—3 ; reports to sub-
committee on Charles Hotham's
Petition, 412 ; concurs in Hotham's
deprivation of his fellowship, 413
716
INDEX.
Milton (Cambs. ), living of, in the gift of
King's College, held by Whichcote
and by William Cole, 570 and n. 2
Milton, John, entry of at Christ's Col-
lege, 16 ; 24 ; whipping of, when a
student, 194, n. 2 ; attack on the
universities by, 204; sonnet of,
possibly suggested by Holdsworth's
oration, 218, n. 2; appears, in his
Reason of Church Government, as
the avowed antagonist of episco-
pacy, 224 ; Thomas Young preceptor
of, 302; appointment of, as Secre-
tary of Foreign Tongues, 367 ; pro-
bably suggested the adoption of Latin
as the medium of diplomatic corre-
spondence, 368; his criticisms of
university teaching compared with
those of John Hall, 372, notes 1, 2, 3 ;
his friendship with Hartlib, 374; his
estimate of Thomas Edwards, 444;
479 ; his sonnet on the massacre of
the Waldenses, 510 ; calls, in his
Considerations, for the abolition of
the clerical order and of the univer-
sities as the recognized schools for
their education, 525-6; denounces
all theological disputations, 527 ; his
apparent ignorance at this time of
the real condition of the univer-
sities, ib. ; evidence which contra-
venes his representations, 527-8 ;
date at which he quitted Christ's
College, 597; period during which
his residence coincided with that of
Henry More, 603
Minshull, Bi., f. of Sidney College,
elected to the mastership in oppo-
sition to Thorndike, 253-4 ; his
lengthened tenure of the office, 255;
313; 338; 492; his contribution to
the Luctus et Gratulatio, 516 and
notes 4 and 5
Miracles, Jos. Sedgwick challenges the
Enthusiasts to 'shew,' 450; risk
attendant upon the assumption of
such powers at that time, ib.
Model, A, for the maintaining of Stu-
dents, etc., 537, n. 1 ; see also Matt.
Poole
Modell of Divinity, by Jo. Yates, 30
and n. 2; see also Yates, Jo.
Molle, Dr Hen., f. of King's, Public
Orator, a contributor to the Irenodia,
220, n. 2; 222; ejected in 1650
from both fellowship and office,
379 ; Widdrington accused of having
brought about his ejection from the
latter, 383, n. 2
Monck, George, general, duke of Albe-
marle, march of, into England, 549 ;
appointment of, as commander-in-
chief, 551 ; returned as representative
of the university in the Convention
Parliament, 552; prefers to sit for
Devonshire, 552-3; letter from, to
the vice-chancellor, 552 ; his mag-
nanimity praised by Dr Martin,
553
Monck, lady, Fuller dedicates his Mixt
Contemplations to, 558
Montagu, Edw., second earl of Man-
chester, 237, n. 1; main facts in his
early career, 264-5 ; his letter to the
Lords in 1643, 265 ; appointed finan-
cial comptroller of the university,
265-6; 267; 272; 297; 299; 302,
n. 1; marriage of, into the Rich
family, 307 and n. 3; 312; 319;
communicates to Cambridge Com-
mittee a special instruction sent
from London, 320, n. 3; letter of,
to the Lords, respecting the de-
creasing emoluments of a college
mastership, 323; disagreement of,
with Cromwell, 324; 336; uncon-
tested election of, to chancellorship
of the university, 360; influence of,
exercised on behalf of the university,
ib. ; opinion of, as to the proper in-
come of a Head, 504 ; is reinstated
in the chancellorship in 1660, 556;
appointment of, as Lord Chamber-
lain, ib. ; presents the deputation
from the university to the King at
Whitehall, 556-7; his speech on the
occasion, 557, n. 1; endeavours to
reassure Tuckney at the time of his
ejection from St John's, 577
Montagu, Edw., first earl of Sandwich,
advises Cromwell with respect to the
charter for a university at Durham,
522 ; Pepys entertains hopes of
being made secretary to, 550, n. 2
Montagu, Hen., first earl of Manches-
ter, Lord High Steward, letter from,
relating to Laud's proposed visita-
tion of the university, 125 ; testi-
mony of, to the care bestowed on
the preservation of the university
archives, ib., n. 5
Montagu (or Mountagu), Hi., f. of
Eton and of King's College, early
career of, 25-6; his Appello Cae-
sarem, 25-33 ; his controversy with
the Jesuits, 27 ; his Challenge and
the Reply, 27-9; the New Gagg
made the subject of complaint to
the Commons, 30 ; King James
& sanctions the publication of the Ap-
INDEX.
717
pello; impression produced thereby
at Cambridge, 31 ; Montagu declares
himself a non-sectarian, 32 ; his
attitude with respect to the Lap-
sarian controversy, ib. ; the Appello
censured by the Commons, 33; the
party at Oxford who sympathized
with Montagu memorialize Bucking-
ham in his favour, 34-5; Bucking-
ham consults Preston with respect
to the merits of the Appello, 43;
Charles refers the question to five
of the bishops, ib. ; their report
thereon, 44 ; the Conference at York
House, 45-7 ; Cosin's share in the
debate, ib. ; triumph of Montagu's
party, 47 ; the Appeal referred to
the Commons, by a Committee of
which Montagu is censured, ib. ;
his position is next assailed by the
divines who had represented Eng-
land at the Synod of Dort, 48 ; the
Joynt Attestation embodies their
main arguments, 49-50; vehemence
of other assailants, 50-2; Charles
forbids further discussion on the
subject in the House, 62; proroga-
tion of Parliament for nearly two
years, 63 ; the House , on reas-
sembling, reverts to the subject, 75 ;
Montagu is nominated to the see
of Chichester, ib. ; the Appello is
' called in ' by royal proclamation,
but Montagu, having made his sub-
mission, is pardoned, 79
Montagu, Wm., 2nd son of Edward,
first baron Montagu of Boughton,
elected in the place of Monck to
represent the university in the House
of Commons, 553 and n. 1
Montaigne, Geo., archbp. of York, f. of
Queens' College, 44; 52; translation
of, to bishopric of London, 53 ; an-
cestry of, 53, n. 2 ; loyalty of, to the
university, 53 ; a supporter of Buck-
ingham's candidature for the chan-
cellorship, ib. ; his disappointment
at finding that his college is not in
sympathy with him, 55; 88
Moore, Wm., senior f. of Caius, uni-
versity librarian, 96, n. 1 ; styled by
Bradshaw, 'the model librarian,'
293 ; resigns his fellowship in anti-
cipation of expulsion, ib.; continues
to read the Liturgy in chapel as long
as practicable, ib. ; his interment in
Great St Mary's, 513; funeral ser-
mon on, preached by Tho. Smith,
his successor in office, ib.; remark-
able attainments of, and influence
as an educator, ib. and 514; assi-
duity of, in performance of his official
duties, ib. and n. 1
Moore (or More), Wm., f. of Christ's,
succeeds in evading ejection, 302 ;
303, n. 1
Moral philosophy, study of, prescribed
for B.A. course by Laud's statutes,
136 ; required for second degree ex-
amination at Harvard, 196
Morden, Wm., bookseller at Cambridge,
616, n. 3
More, Alex. , father of Hen. More, 596-9 ;
his character vindicated by his son,
599 and n. 1 ; visit of, to same in his
college rooms, 606; last will of, 608,
n.3; his three surviving sons therein
named, ib. ; his bequest to Henry,
ib.
More, Alex., jun., a spendthrift who
dies before his father, 597, n. 1
More, Gabriel, son of Alexander, 608,
n. 3
More, Hen., f. of Christ's, a contri-
butor to the Voces, 147, n. 1; escapes
ejection in 1644-5, 303 ; probably
accepted the Covenant, ib. and n. 1 ;
contributor of verses to Hall's Horae,
351 ; disclaimed having ever taken
the Covenant, 382 ; silence of, re-
specting the Engagement, 383 ; a
friend of Charles Hotham, 413 ; in-
fluence of, in his college, 447 ; pro-
bably intimate with John Sherman,
589; reasons for concluding that he
signed both Covenant and Engage-
ment, 596 and n. 3 ; birth and early
education of, 596-7; his early reli-
gious misgivings, 597 ; his admission
at Christ's, ib.; his studious enthu-
siasm at this time, 598 ; concern of
his father at same, ib., n. 3 ; publi-
cation of his Philosophical Poems,
599; tribute paid to his father's
character in the dedication to same,
ib.; his special motive therein, ib.,
n. 2; hie Song of the Soul, 600; he
avows himself a disciple of Plato,
ib. ; he defends Galileo, ib. ; critical
stage in his intellectual develope-
ment, 601-2; the Song described,
602-3; advantages under which he
pursued his studies, 604 ; his popu-
larity as a tutor, ib. ; his refusals of
offers of preferment, ib.; observance
of the laws of health, 604-5 ; admi-
ration of the beautiful in Nature,
605; the aim of his studies as de-
scribed by himself, 605-6 ; visits of,
to Bagley, 606; his first letter to
INDEX.
Descartes, ib.; excess of his lauda-
tion of same, 606-7; advises that
the Cartesian philosophy should be
studied in schools and in univer-
sities, 607; his Immortality of the
Soul, 607-8 ; his experiences at
Eagley described, 608; in affluent
circumstances after his father's
death, ib. ; importance attached by,
to the interpretation of Daniel's pro-
phecies, 609; he pronounces Cud-
worth's solution to be of supreme
importance in theology, 610 ; his
superiority to Cudworth as a Latin-
ist, ib. ; their early education con-
trasted, ib. and 611; his productive-
ness as an author prior to 1665,613;
comparative paucity of Cudworth's
writings, ib. ; believing that the
latter will never publish his pro-
mised treatise on Natural Ethics, he
puts forth his Enchiridion Ethicum,
616-7; his account of its aim and
contents, 617 and n. 1; his letter to
Worthington during prevalence of
the plague, 618 ; his sympathy with
him in his distress resulting from
the Great Fire, 621-2; he presents
him to the rectory of Ingoldsby,
ib.] letter to same, when settled at
Ingoldsby, 622-3 ; decides no longer
to reside at Grantham, 624-5 ; pub-
lishes his Enchiridion Metaphysicum
repudiating the standpoint of Des-
cartes, 630; his treatise on the
Immortality of the Soul compared
with that by John Smith, 634-6;
639; 640; his Conjectura Cabbal-
istica, 644-6 ; theories which he
traces back to Mosaic traditions,
645 ; his final attitude towards
Cartesianisin, 646-8 ; his letter to
Clerselier, 648 ; his studies in Greek
philosophy, 649; his disinclination
for theological controversy, and
growing addiction to prophetical
studies, 652-3; contradictory char-
acter of some of his conclusions,
653-5 ; belief of, in the prae-exist-
ence of the Soul, 654 ; his conception
of the philosophic life, 654-5; his
aversion both from fanaticism and
popery, 655; willingness to accept
Thorndike's 'platform' in matters
of Church government, ib. ; his
Divine Dialogues, 655-6; studies of
his latter years, 656
More, Hi., a staunch Parliamentarian,
21; publishes a translation of Mede's
Clavis with the sanction of Parlia-
ment, ib., n. 2; approves a solution
suggested to Mede of a special diffi-
culty, 23
More, Wm., son of Alex. More, 608,
n. 3
Morland, Sir Sam., fellow of Mag-
dalene, early career of, 510 ; gains
- the notice of Ussher and Thurloe,
ib.; sent by Cromwell to the courts
of France and Turin, 511 ; his His-
tory of the Piedmontese Churches, ib.
and 512 ; he returns to England and
is appointed Cromwell's secretary,
ib. ; dedicates his History to the
Protector, ib. ; results attributed by
Bradshaw to this connexion, ib.,
n. 3 ; he presents his Waldensian
MBS. to the University Library, 513 ;
Pepys' tutor at Magdalene, 550, n. 2
Morton, Chas., editor of Bradford's
History, 163 and n. 2
Morton, Tho., bp. of Durham, 33 and
n. 4 ; fame of, as a controversialist,
and steady rise in the Church, 45-6;
his severity in criticising the Ap-
pello, 46; 143, n. 4; 215, n. 2
Moses, Wm., master of Pembroke, his
merits as a student, 291-2 ; insti-
tuted a f. under Hi. Vines, ib. ; a
contributor to the Luctus et Gratu-
latio, 518 ; his ability and judgement
as an administrator, 533 ; his resig-
nation of office, 566 ; account of, by
Calamy, ib. ; his subsequent career
and services to the society, ib. and
n. 2
Mosheim, Job. Lorenz von, his edition
of Cudworth's Intellectual System,
661 ; his obligations to Edw. Chand-
ler, 662, n. 1
Mulgrave, first earl of, baron Sheffield,
attends tbe proceedings of the Con-
ference convened by Buckingham,
45
Mundey, Jo., rival candidate to Dr
Butts in the election to mastership
of Corpus Christi, 69, n. 1
Music, degree of bachelor of, granted
to Benj. Rogers although not a col-
legian, 520
Myddelton, Sir Tho., Parliamentary
general, erects a monument to the
memory of Balcanquhall at Chirk,
290
N
Nalson, Jos., f. of Sidney, contributor
to the Luctus et Gratulatio, 516
Nantasket, arrival of Roger Williams
at, 190
INDEX.
719
Naseby, battle of, manner in which the
tidings were received at Cambridge,
325-6
Natural Philosophy, knowledge of, re-
quired for the M.A. degree by Laud's
statutes, 136
Navigation, tables for improvement of,
compiled by Henry Briggs, 151
Neel chest, funds of, expended with-
out any account being rendered,
338
Negative voice, right of a, claimed
by masters of colleges, 394; 406;
their exercise of the same generally
moderate, 411 ; reassertion of the
claim in 1654, 501; explanation of
the claim, by Sir Ki. Onslow, ib.,
n. 4 ; see also Seaman, Laz.
Neile, Ei., of St John's College, archbp.
of York, 44 ; bestows on Cosin a pre-
bend at Durham, 46; strongly sup-
ports the candidature of Bucking-
ham, 53; appointed clerk of the
closet to King Charles i, 78 ; his
friendship with Laud, 88; 114
Neill, Dr E. D., statement of, respect-
ing the founding of a university for
Virginia, 152, n. 3
Nelson, Gilbert, master of Sedbergh
School, thanks the authorities of
St John's for their free election of
Sir J. Otway, a former pupil, 304,
n. 1
Nennius, cited as a historical autho-
rity by Sir Simonds D'Ewes, 210
Neville, Mr, f. of Trinity, sequestration
of goods of, 310
Neville, Clement, brother-in-law of
Henry Feme, 582
' New Chapel,' explanation of the term,
249, n. 1
New College, Oxford, 196, n. 6 ; state
of, during the siege, 262 ; Isaac
Barrow (the uncle) takes refuge at,
284, n. 1 ; corrupt elections at, 505,
509
New England, first commencement
of independence of, 149; Cotton
Mather's Ecclesiastical History of,
155 and n. 1; 162; regarded as a re-
fuge for 'the People of God,' 183; emi-
grants thither begin to return to the
mother country, 198; plot to send
the imprisoned bishops to, 240, n. 1;
identity of religious creed of, with
that of the Reformed Church in the
Low Countries, 446
Newcastle, duke of, see Cavendish,
Wm.
Newcome, Hen., of St John's, state-
ment of, respecting admissions to
the college in 1644, 305
Newcomen, Matt., of St Catherine's,
one of the ' Smectymnuans,' enters
his son at the college in 1660, 305,
n. 4
Newhaven, colony of, founded by Jo.
Davenport of Merton College, Ox-
ford, 185 and n. 7
Newmarket, Charles i selects as a place
of residence in preference to either
university, 341
Newton, Sir Isaac, takes up with the
study of Prophecy, 25 ; an admirer
of Jacob Boehme, 419 ; retires from
Trinity to Boothby in consequence
of the presence of the plague, 620
Newton, Sam., Diary of, 554, n. 3 ;
662, n. 3
Newtown, ' Cambridge,' the site of
Harvard College, originally so
named, 188 and n. 3
Nicholas, Sir Edw., reports on the
contributions of both universities
to the royal cause, 230 and n. 7
Nicols, Mr, f. of Peterhouse, impri-
soned for attacking the royal supre-
macy, 208, n. 2
Nonnus, Christian Greek poet, read at
Harvard, 195 and n. 4
Norfolk, included in the Association of
the Eastern Counties, 240; natives of,
Hen. Ainsworth (160), Wm. Blanckes
(376)
Normanton, Jo., f. of Caius, cited
before the vice-chancellor for a
sermon, 113; subsequent ejection
of, from his fellowship, ib., n. 4
North, Sir Dudley, returned as burgess
for the Town in the Convention
Parliament, 551
Northampton, earl of, see Howard,
Henry
Northern dialect, the, Charles Hotham
describes himself as writing in, 401
Norton, prof. C. E., presentation of,
for doctor's degree, 184, n. 1
Norton, Jo., of Peterhouse, one of
Tho. Shepard's companions to New
Plymouth, 184
Norton, Tho., ejected f. of Christ's, 302 ;
his goods sequestrated, 303
Norwich, episcopate of, 239; injurious
effects resulting from Wren's tenure
of, 239 and n. 3; evidence derived
from the Registers of, 543
Nottingham, town of, college plate
forwarded to Charles's quarters at,
234; Barnabas Oley conveys the
plate of Clare College to, 236;
720
INDEX.
Tuckney finds refuge with friends
resident near, 578
Nova Scotia, the country described by
John Pory, 152, n. 2
Nowell, Increase, one of the Mass.
Company who met at Cambridge,
170, n. 3; services rendered by, to
New England, 176
Nye, Philip, of Magdalen, Oxford, one
of the divines of the Church at
Arnheim, 441
0
Oates, Titus, finds an ally in Israel
Tonge, 657
Oath, the Etcetera, imposed on all
resident members of the university,
144 ; difficulties attending adminis-
tration of same, 145 ; notable omis-
sion in the Cambridge copy, ib. ;
the oath directly opposed to the
Covenant, 279 and n. 2; 308; Oath
of admission to degrees, committee
appointed for consideration of, 330
Oath, 'of Discovery,' story of, rejected
by Fuller, 276
Oaths, growing contempt for, 332-3 ;
334; the customary oath superseded
by a declaration, 369 ; Eobert
Parsons's plea for their abolition,
436; obnoxious to the spirit of
Puritanism, 539; grace for the re-
vision of those administered in the
university, ib.; students at matri-
culation and graduation to receive
copies of those taken, 540; oath of
the royal supremacy and allegiance
included in the same formula, 542,
n. 4 ; new interpretation placed on
academic oaths by the Caput of 1651
commended by Hotham, 411
Offa, king of Mercia, a fabled bene-
factor of the university, 142
Oley, Barnabas, president of Clare,
device by which he saves the college
plate from being intercepted, 234 ;
restores the western range of the
college, 243 and n. 3; is mulcted
of his furniture and becomes a
wanderer, 286 ; bequest of, to King's
College, 533 and n. 3
Oliva Pacis, collection of Verses com-
memorative of the Peace (1654) with
Holland, 483 and n. 3
Ordinances : of 1630, for promotion of
discipline, 107; for regulating the
university, 272-3; extension of same
to the Associated Counties, 272, n. 6;
296 and n. 4; for exempting the
colleges from taxation, 324; the
'Self-Denying' ordinance, 324-5
Ordination to diaconate and priest-
hood on same day, 296; canonical,
evidence of its continuance through-
out the Commonwealth, 542 ; deemed
essential by the Independents, as
conferred among themselves, 449 ;
the ceremony ignored by the State,
545; see also Appendix (F), p. 681
Organs in college chapels, state of, in
1636, 134
Oriel College, Oxford, state of, during
the siege, 262
Orwell, rectory of, deprivation of
Dr Cheney Bow, 310; in the gift
of Trinity College, 628
Ostler, Francis, f. of Trinity, a sup-
porter of Berkshire in the election
to the chancellorship, 58
Otway, Jo., f. of St John's, ejection
of, 275; praised by Peter Barwick
as leader of the opposition to the
Associated Counties, 304
Oughtred, Wm., f. of King's, friend of
Seth Ward, 314
Outram, Wm., f. of Christ's, a sup-
porter of Charles Hotham, 413
Overall, Jo., master of St Catherine's,
bp. of Norwich, his doctrinal views
cited by Montagu, 32-3; Jo. Cosin
librarian to, 46; 81
Ovid quoted in the pulpit, 390
Owen, Mr, the 'divine' of Trinity Hall,
377
Owen, Dr Jo., dean of Christ Church,
Oxford, leader of the Independents,
349; the crisis of 1653 at Oxford,
described by, 471; 481; points of
divergence between his views and
those of Tho. Goodwin, 484, n. 2
Oxford, 20th earl of, see Aubrey de Vere
Oxford, town of, Parliament reas-
sembles at, in 1625, 33; earl of
Berkshire high steward of, 61;
contrast presented by, to Cam-
bridge, in 1643-6, 259 ; becomes
the centre of the royal resistance,
ib. ; siege of, 259-60 ; political vacil-
lation of townsmen at, during that
period, 259, n. 1 ; pronounced by
Charles i unhealthy, 341
'Oxford Tracts,' seven pamphlets so
designated, 224 and n. 1
Oxford and Cambridge, testimony of
Fairfax to the esteem in which both
universities were held by Parliament,
207
Oxford, university of, provision for
instruction in natural philosophy
INDEX.
721
at, in 1618, 65 and n. 4 ; students
at, drink to the health of Felton, the
assassin, 78 and n. 4; 80; theory
maintained by Laud of the royal
authority in the colleges of, 98 and
n. 2; 110; Laud considers his right
to visit as proven, 124-5 ; 130 ;
charter granted to University Press
at, 135; Laud's Code for, 135-6;
consequent modifications in the
curriculum at, 136; institution of
examinations at, ib. ; migrations
from, to Cambridge, 136-7; its an-
tiquity recognized by the House of
Commons as superior to that of
Cambridge, 210 ; depressed state of,
218 ; contributions of, to the royal
cause, 230; suspension of academic
routine at, during the siege, 259;
Ussher carries on his labours at,
260; proposed hall of residence for
its students in London, 263-4; 284;
the Certain Disquisitions published
at, 289; 294 ; character of the intruded
fellows in the colleges at, 317 ; Visi-
tation of, in 1647, 325 and n. 2;
343; entrance of the Visitors into
Oxford, 344 ; obstruction offered by
the academic authorities, 344-5 ;
commencement of their labours, 345-
6 ; description of them individually,
by Anthony Wood, 347-8; election
of Cromwell to the chancellorship,
375; the three Visitations, 484, n. 2;
chief features of the third Visita-
tion, 1654 to 1658 ; reforms effected
during the vice-chancellorship of
John Owen, 501, n. 1 ; weariness
experienced under the protracted
investigations, 508 ; features in the
different colleges calling for visita-
torial intervention, 509; the general
state of discipline and study at,
during this period, vindicated by
Clarendon, 527-8; and also by
Burrows and by Grosart, 528, n. 2
.P
'R. P.,' of St John's College, in
sermon in 1648 declares peace to
be the only remedy, 355 and n. 1
Padua, univ. of, Peter Salmon of
Trinity resident at, 104 ; his account
of same, 104-5 and 105, n. 1 ;
medical studies at, described by Sir
Clifford Allbutt, ib.
Palatinate, the, efforts of Jo. Daven-
port on behalf of distressed ministers
in, 162; funds collected by Fran.
Higginson for exiles in, 168, n. 2
M. III.
Palfrey, J. G., merits of his History of
New England, 200, n. 1
Palmer, Edw., projector of a university
for Virginia, 152, n. 3
Palmer, Herbert, president of Queens'
College, character of, 300 and n. 4;
380 ; demurs to quotations from the
learned languages in the Westminster
Assembly, 388
Palmer, Sir Tho., father of the presi-
dent of Queens', 300, n. 4
Paman, Hen., f. of St John's and
Public Orator, 309; one of the first
to take the Engagement, 383-4 ;
letters of, to Bancroft, his former
tutor at Emmanuel, ib. and n. 4 ;
474 and n. 4 ; recommended by
Charles n for the Oratorship, 627;
the royal recommendation with-
drawn, ib.
Paraeus, Dav., Nath. Ward induced to
take holy orders by, 182, n. 2; see
also Vol. n
Paris, univ. of, statutes of, in 1598,
422; divergent tendencies in, de-
scribed by Jourdain, ib., n. 2
Parliament, dissatisfaction of, with the
universities, 11; assembling of, at
Oxford, in 1625, 33 ; resentment of,
at Buckingham's election, 61; pro-
rogation of , 63 ; dissolution of
Charles's third, 102; the 'Short,'
146 ; new members returned by the
university for, 207 ; rejection of
Charles's overtures by, 240 ; ' De-
claration' of (1642), censured by
Gardiner, 261, n. 2 ; ditto, con-
cerning college estates, 265 ; inter-
vention of, with regard to disorders
in the Town, 354; appeal to, by
Hotham, from the London Com-
mittee, 415; declares its design to
uphold the universities, 549; as-
sembling of, in 1661, 564
Parr, Dr Ei., statement of, with respect
to Ussher, 491, n. 5
Parsons, Dr Bobt., f. and tutor of
Balliol College, Oxford, his Jesuits
Memorial, anticipatory of their at-
tack on the universities, 434; im-
portance of his connexion with their
seminaries, ib., n. 4; criticisms of
Oxford and Cambridge by, 435;
proposals of, for a 'Grand Dispu-
tation,'435-6; pleads for the aboli-
tion of academic Oaths, 436 ; for the
revival of the study of the canon
law, ib.; his treatise edited by Dr
Gee, 437; unfavorable estimate of
the author formed by his editor, ib.
46
722
INDEX.
Paske, Tho., master of Clare College,
a supporter of Buckingham in the
election to the chancellorship, 54, 56
Patrick, Simon, f. of Queens', bp. of
Ely, statement of, respecting the new
element (1645) intruded at Queens',
300; election of, as fellow, 380; his
successor in same, 521; Autobio-
graphy of, ib., n. 3; his admiration
for John Smith, his fellow collegian,
632 ; his sermon at Smith's funeral,
ib. ; character of his oratory, 633
Patronage, Discourse of, by Zacbary
Cawdry, 339
Pattison, Mark, too severe upon
Montagu, 26, n. 2
Paul, 'Father,' intimacy of, with Isaac
Bargrave, 211, n. 4; portrait of,
presented by Sir Henry Wotton to
the society of King's College, ulti-
mately lost, 298 and n. 1
Paul's Cross, candidates for the degree
of B.D. formerly required to preach
at, 386-7
Pauluzzi, Venetian agent, describes
Parliament as aiming at the destruc-
tion of the universities, 469
Pawson, Jo., f. of Sidney and of St
John's, votes for Thorndike at the
election to the mastership of the
former, 254 and n. 2; ejection of,
from Sidney, 314; 351; tutor of
John Hall at St John's, 352
Pearson, Jo., master of Trinity, bishop
of Chester, a contributor to the
Voces, 147, n. 1; sermon by, in
defence of Forms of Prayer, 249;
composes epitaph for Walter Bal-
canquhall, 290 ; early career of, 574 ;
lecturer at St Clement's, Eastcheap,
574-5 ; his Exposition of the Creed,
576 ; inaugural lecture by, as lady
Margaret professor, 587 ; intimation
by, of his intended method in philo-
sophy, t'6. ; 628
Pearson, Ki., nephew of Holdsworth,
statement of, respecting the latter's
election to the mastership of St
John's, 119, n. 3
Pearson, Eobt., of Queens' College,
archdeacon of Suffolk, father of
John, 574
Pechell, Jo., f. of Magdalene, Pepys
calls upon, 551
Peckover, Isaac, f. of Corpus, retains
his fellowship throughout the
troubles, 378
Peile, Dr, late master of Christ's,
quoted, 15; 21, n. 1 ; 104, n. 2 ; 245,
n. 4; 300, n. 3; 352; his estimate
of the intruded fellows at the college,
in 1653, 447 and n. 3; his opinion
with respect to the first introduc-
tion of Cartesianism into the uni-
versity, 606 ; quoted, 656
Peirson, Hen., signature of, as priest,
in the Bishop's Register, during the
Commonwealth, 543 and n. 3
Pell, Jo., f. of Trinity, lecturer of
mathematics at Amsterdam, 312;
his Idea of Mathematics, 373, n. 1 ;
refutes the pretensions of Longo-
montanus, 556, n. 1
Pembroke College, 48 ; sides with
Buckingham in the election to the
chancellorship, 58; 113; well re-
ported of, to Laud, 134; assumed,
by Sir Simonds D'Ewes, to be the
most ancient college, 210; dispute
at, by some of the fellows, with
Dowsing, 268-9; Crashaw's life at,
284-5; ejections at, in 1644, 289-
91 ; ejections of refusers of the En-
gagement, 376; 402; administration
of, by Wm. -Moses, 533; his resigna-
tion of the mastership, and re-
installation of Dr Laney, 566 ; bishop
Wren's interment in the chapel of,
662 and 664, n. 1
Pembroke, fifth earl of, see Herbert,
Philip, i 93
Pendreth, C., f. of Sidney, tutor of
Seth Ward, 230, n. 4; confiscation
of goods of, 313 [where misspelt
' Dendreth ']
Pennyman, f. of Peterhouse, ejection
of, 282
Pepys, Sam., reputed (when a pensioner
at Trinity Hall) a great Roundhead,
377; migrates, to become a sizar at
Magdalene, ib. ; revisits Cambridge
in 1660, 549; is entertained at
Magdalene, 550; transfers his son
from Magdalene to Christ's, ib.,
n. 1
Perjury, Grace for relieving infringers
of a statute from imputation of,
540 and n. 4; revision of former
oath, 541 and n. 1
Perkins, Wm., 15; 25; always referred
to, by Montagu, with respect, 27 ; 33 ;
51; 172; Wm. Crashaw, executor
to, and editor of, 284; Sam. Ham-
mond compared to, 356 ; 442 ;
Whichcote a student of his writings,
532 ; see also Vol. n
Perrinchief, Ri. , f. of Magdalene, re-
tains his fellowship in 1645, 308 ;
ejected as a refuser of the Engage-
ment, 385
1XDEX.
723
Perse, Dr Steph., lapse of his bene-
faction designed for a new library,
73-4
Perse Grammar School, Jeremy Taylor
educated at, 350
Persian, Wheelock commences a ver-
sion of the Gospels in, 96 ; study
of the language, 318, n. 2
Peterborough, Cromwell retreats to,
on being driven out of Stamford,
251
Peterhouse, supports Buckingham at
the election for the chancellorship,
58 ; supposed to have been regarded
with special favour by the duke, 75,
n. 2; succession of Cosin to the
mastership, 121 ; faulty in points of
discipline, 134 ; Cosin accused of
leanings to Popery at, 208 and n. 2 ;
Dowsing's proceedings at, 267-8 ;
ejections at, of refusers of the En-
gagement, 279, n. 1 ; further ejec-
tions, 282; Cosin's books at, ib.,
n. 3 ; Crashaw's life at, 284 ; reasons
for erecting new chapel at, 285, n. 2 ;
all the fellows ejected save one, 284-
6 ; exempted from the obligation to
present names to a bishop at fresh
elections, 334 ; ejections at, in 1650,
376; alleged misgovernment of, by
the master, 407-8 ; stands alone in
its repudiation of its own Head, 411 ;
changes at, 564 ; Cosin reinstated in
mastership of, ib. ; his benefaction to
the library, 565
Peters, Hugh, of Trinity College, ap-
pears in London to plead on behalf
of the colonists in New England,
198-9 ; a disciple of Ames at
Franeker, 442; receives a salary
from the Dutch government, ib. ;
repairs to Eotterdam, where he
draws up his Short Government,
ib.; arrival of, in Boston, N.E.,
443
Petition and Argument, The, by Chas.
Hotham, account of, 406-8; offence
given thereby, to the London Com-
mittee, 412
Phillips, Geo., M.A. of Caius, one of
the members of the Mass. Company
who assembled at Cambridge, 176
Philology, Mede's researches in, 17
Physic, study of, advocated by Dell,
456 ; see also Medicine
Pierce, Mr, friend of Pepys who ac-
companies him to Cambridge, 549
Pierrepoint, Mr, Tuckney under sur-
veillance in the house of, 578
Pink, Dr Kobt., warden of New College,
appoints Isaac Barrow chaplain to
the society, 284
Plague, the, of 1625, 11; at Cambridge
in 1630, 102; recurrence of, in 1647,
339-40; 353; in London (1665), 618 ;
heroism shewn by Worthiugton in
refusing to desert his post, ib. ; it
extends to Cambridge which becomes
'disuniversitied,' 619 ; precautions
taken by those who remain in resi-
dence, ib. ; issue of weekly bulletins,
which attest the immunity of the
colleges, 620-1 and n. 4 ; consequent
absence of matriculations during the
year 1666,621,679; rioters threaten to
fire the Town, ib. ; appeal to London
• for aid for the sick, ib.; measures
there taken frustrated by the Great
Fire, ib.
Plantin Press, at Antwerp, Wm.
Bedwell prints a translation of the
Epistles of St John at, 94 and n. 1
Plate, contributions of, from the col-
leges, in aid of the royal cause,
231; 233; 234; 237; entire loss of,
at Oxford, 259 and n. 3 ; 308, n. 2;
seizure of, at Queens' made good by
the sequestrators, 299 and n. 3 •
Plato, the study of, 596 and n. 1 ; 600 ;
608
Platonists, the Cambridge, favorable
to a certain extent to Cartesianism,
588 ; early evidence of the growth of
their principles, ib.
Plays, public performance of, for-
bidden by Parliament, 111 ; see
also, 108 and n. 1
Plea to an Appeal, A, by Henry Burton
in reply to Montagu, 51
Plotinus, Henry More professes him-
self a disciple of, 600 ; his theory
of the unity of the soul, 602, n. 3 ;
his estimate of the ascetic life,
605
Plymouth, N.E., 151; 162; 166; 167;
178; 184; 190; 200; 442, n. 1
Pococke, Edw., appointment of, by
Laud, as professor of Arabic at
Oxford, 95 ; his experience, as a
preacher, with his rural audience at
Childrey, 388-9; 492; 576
Pole, cardinal, precedent set by his
Visitation of the university, ceased
to have validity, 126
Poley, Jo., f. of Queens', royal agent,
under Charles i, for the collection
of funds at Cambridge, 229-30;
230, n. 2; 233
Poll at Buckingham's election to the
chancellorship, analysis of, 56-9
46—2
724
INDEX.
Polyander, Johann, lectures at the
university of Leyden, 163
Polyglot, the, extent to which the
work was the production of Cam-
bridge scholars, 489-90 ; the pro-
spectus of same, 490, n. 2 ; see also
Walton, Brian
Poole, Matt., pupil of Worthington at
Emmanuel, 536 ; there also becomes
known to Tuckney, whom he succeeds
in his London rectory, ib. ; pleads
on behalf of the universities with
the merchants of London, ib. • his
appeal seconded by Baxter, ib. ;
response of the Presbyterian party
to same, 537 ; publication of his
Model, ib. and n. 1 ; studies pre-
scribed and stipends proposed for
selected students, 537-8 and 537,
n. 3 ; difficulties for which the scheme
would have provided a remedy, 586
' B. P. ' [possibly Ei. Pooly], his Cure
of the Kingdome, 1648 ; see supra,
355, n. 1
Pope, Walter, f. of Wadham College,
his Life of Seth Ward, quoted, 316 ;
620, n. 2
' Popish,' omission of the expression
in the Cambridge copy of the Etcetera
Oath, 145
Popish doctrines, maintainers of, made
liable to ejection from their livings,
546
Porta Linguarum, a Latin Grammar
used at Cambridge, 416
Porter, Dr Geo., of Queens', the only
Doctor who voted for Berkshire at
Buckingham's election to the chan-
cellorship, 58 and n. 3
Pory, Jo., of Caius College, a friend
of Hakluyt, 151 ; letters of, to Mede,
152 and n. 2
Potter, Mr, assumes to have discovered
the number of ' the Beast,' 24
Potter, Simon, f. of Clare, ejected
royalist, 376
Potts, Jo., ejected f. of Christ's, 302,
n. 3
Powell, Eobt., f. of Christ's, arch-
deacon of Shrewsbury, signs the
register of the diocese of London,
544 and n. 4
Power, Dr Wm., senior f. of Christ's,
mobbed on his way to preach the
Latin sermon at St Mary's, 245-6 ;
is sentenced to ejection, 302
Pratt, Dr, on his intrusion into a
vacant fellowship at Trinity, in-
vested with full rights of seniority,
311
Prayer Book, the first of Edward vi,
controversies at Frankfort concern-
ing, 157; ignored by Francis Higgin-
son in Mass. , 170 ; use of, by Zachary
Cawdry, alleged as an offence, 339
and n. 1 ; abolition of, throughout
the kingdom, 358 ; users of, de-
clared liable to ejection from a
benefice, 546
Prayers in tutor's rooms, attendance
at, made obligatory at Harvard,
194 ; extempore, design with which
instituted in college, 538 ; held in
tutor's rooms, ib. ; objections to,
urged by Ei. Samways, 539
Preferments, two ' pieces ' of, not ten-
able with fellowship at Trinity, 309,
n. 5
Prenomination, device whereby it was
sought to anticipate royal mandates
for elections to fellowships, 98-9
Presbyterians, the, Thomas Edwards
secedes to, 77 ; reproached as An-
tinomians, 353, n. 2 ; denounced by
William Dell, 366 ; their supremacy
challenged by the Independents,
494 ; their censure on the Visitors
at Oxford, 507-8; their representa-
tions commended by Burrows, 508 ;
begin, in turn, to gain the advantage
over the Independents, ib. ; support
the scheme of Poole's Model, 537 ;
their sentiments with regard to the
universities, ib. ; their characteristics
described by Anthony Wood and Ei.
Baxter, 547-8 ; 586
Preston, Lancash., thanksgivings at
Cambridge for Cromwell's victory at,
356
Preston, Jo., master of Emmanuel, his
decline in high favour correspondent
with the rise of Montagu, 42 ; success
of, as a preacher at Lincoln's Inn,
43 ; is consulted by Buckingham as
to the merits of the Appello, ib. ;
a disputant at the Conference held
at York House, 45; 57; death of,
64-5 ; 100 ; 212 ; 441
Preston, Wm., B.A. of Sidney, con-
tributor to the Luctus et Gratulatio,
516-17
Printing, limitations imposed on, in
1649, throughout the country, 361
Proctor, senior, pelting of, in 1638, by
undergraduates, 194, n. 2
Proctor's Books, order given in 1649
for transcription of, 338
Prophecy, importance attached to the
study of, see Burton (Hen.), Mede,
Henry More, and Tonge
INDEX.
725
Prost, prof. Jos., his Philosophic a
P Academic de Saumur, quoted, 424,
n. 3 ; 587, n. 3
• Protection,' A, promulgated by the
Lords for the defence of the uni-
versities in 1643, 242-3 and 243, n. 2
Protector, the ; see Cromwell
Protestation, the, to defend the true
Protestant religion, imposed on the
university in 1641, 221 ; 274 and n. 2
Prynne, Wm., his dislike of rubricated
service books, 36, n. 5; his de-
nunciation of stage plays, 111 and
n. 2 ; his account of Bernard's
sermon, 112-13; quoted, 115 ; 134;
268 ; his denunciation of the En-
gagement, 370 and n. 3
Ptolemy, read at the universities in
the middle of 17th century, 465
Pullen, Mr, f. of Magdalene, ejection
of, and sequestration of his goods,
307
Punishment, corporal ; see Under-
graduates
Purnell, Mr E. K., quoted, 237, n. 1 ;
307-8
Pye, Ki., recommended by earl of
Newcastle for a fellowship, 99, n. 3
Pynchon, Wm., one of the Mass.
Company who assembled at Cam-
bridge, 170, n. 3
Quakers, treated with especial severity
in Mass., 176; excepted from Pro-
clamation of religious freedom in
1655, 472 ; contemporary descrip-
tions of, ib., n. 1
Quarles, Robt., president of Peter-
house, a relative of the poet, 404 ;
his honourable conduct, 405 and
n. 2
Quarles. Wm., of Peterhouse, joint
author of the Certain Disquisitions,
287, n. 3 ; ejection of, 291
Queens' College, Tho. Fuller, a bachelor
at, 19; 55; only one voter at, for
Buckingham, 58; Davenant elected
to presidency of, 77 ; reported to
Laud as ' still faulty ' in certain
respects, 134 ; contribution of, to the
royal loan, 230; plate of, sent to
the King, 233; 237; two bridges
at, demolished, 243 ; Fuller misses
his fellowship at, 252, n. 5 ; Dow-
sing's destructive work at, 269 ;
refusers of the Engagement at, 380 ;
John Sherman's election to fellow-
ship at, 382; 502; Horton's ad-
ministration at, 533; Dr Martin
re-installed as president at, 570-1 ;
572; 574
Queen's College, Oxford, meeting in
opposition to the Visitors convened
at, in 1655, 488; completeness of
its registers throughout the Com-
monwealth period, ib., n. 2
Querela Cantabrigiensix, the, account
of, 239, n. 1; 253, n. 1; 280; re-
print of, by Royston, 349 and n. 3 ;
referred to, by Carlyle, 375
R
'Rabbi,' Robt. Sheringham so styled
at Eotterdam, 377
Rainbowe, Dr Edw., master of Mag-
dalene, subscribed the Covenant,
234-5 ; his early career, 306 ; success
as a college tutor, 307; reputation
of the college during his rule, ib. ;
appointment of, as Syndic, 338 ;
resignation of, as refuser of the
Engagement, 384 ; re-installation of,
in the mastership, 579; promotion
of, to deanery of Peterborough, ib. ;
election of, as vice-chancellor, ib. ;
and to bishopric of Carlisle, ib. ;
induces heads of colleges to preach,
in turn, at Great St Mary's, 579,
n. 2 ; letter to, from Charles n, 627,
n. 4
Raleigh, Sir Walter, his History of
the World, 85; 169, n. 1
Randolph, Jo., ejected f. of Pembroke,
291
Randolph, Tho., of Trinity, his threat,
'to put Trinity, lecture' down, 101;
his Aristippus, 109; his Jealous
Lovers, success with which it was
attended, ib. ; his subsequent career,
109-10; death of, 110; comedy at-
tributed to, 227 ; eulogized by Duport
as the Ovid of the age, ib. and
n. 1
Randolph, Wm., relative of the poet,
founder of William and Mary College
in Virginia, 152-3 and n. 1
Ranke, description of Cromwell by,
470
Rawley, Wm., f. of Corpus, secretary
to Bacon, 68 and n. 2
Reasons drawn up by members of the
Mass. Company at Cambridge, 171,
n. 2
Recapitulation of lecture work, the
practice enjoined at Harvard, 196
Reformation, the English, Holds-
worth's theory of its real spirit, 217
726
INDEX.
Regent House, the, see New Chapel
Regent, the senior, nature of his office,
339, n. 2
Regent Walk, the, direction of, 74
Registrarship, the, more efficient dis-
charge of the duties of, declared to
he requisite, 338
Regius, Reneri's distinguished pupil at
Utrecht, 429 ; he is promoted to a
chair of philosophy, 430; he dis-
cards the scholastic terminology in
his lectures, ib.; he is enjoined to
lecture only on medicine, ib.
Remonstrance of the royalist party
in the Associated Counties, calling
on the colleges to reject the Cove-
nant, 287 and n. 2
Reneri, pupil of Descartes, 425 ; 426,
n. 2; his energetic defence of his
master's doctrines, 429 ; his converts
at Utrecht, ib. ; his sudden death,
430
Residence in college, Worthington
pleads inability to reside unless his
augmentation is paid him as Head,
502, n. 3; made obligatory on the
part of officials by Parliament, 503-4
Restoration, the, changes consequent
upon, 547-8; changed conditions in
the university which it inaugurates,
586
Retchford, Wm., B.A. of Clare, con-
tributes Anglo-Saxon verses to the
Irenodia, 220, n. 2
Revelations, Key to the Book of, 22,
n. 1
Revenues of ejected refusers of the
Covenant, a fifth part enjoined to
be disposed of for the benefit of
their wives and children, 273
Reynolds, Edw. , dean of Christ Church,
Oxford, described by Anthony Wood
as an d/j,<piffiov, 348
Reynolds, John, leader of the Presby-
terian party in Oxford, conflict of,
with the Independents, 349
Rhetoric, study of, at Oxford prescribed
by Laud's statutes, 136
Rhodes, Jo., f. of Trinity College, 234,
n. 8; expelled as a refuser of the
Engagement, 385
Rich, Mr Edgar, on the studies at
Harvard, 195, n. 3
Rich, Hen., earl of Holland, election
of, to the chancellorship of the
university, 90 and n. 4; 99, n. 3;
116; commends the course adopted
by the university with regard to
Laud's claim to institute a Visita-
tion, 125; supports the claims made
on behalf of Cambridge at Hampton
Court, 129 ; letter from, to D'Ewes,
210, n. 2; 211, n. 4; execution of,
359; incidents at the same, ib. ; his
prayer on the scaffold for the uni-
versity, ib.
Rich, Robt., 2nd earl of Warwick, 265
Richardson, Jo., master of Trinity,
death of, 43
Ring, the, marrying with, alleged as
an offence on the part of Zachary
Cawdry, 339
Ripley, Mr, his Financial History of
Virginia quoted, 171, n. 2
Ripon, proposal for founding a uni-
versity at, 206, n. 2
Rivett, Dr, in the opinion of Baillie,
one who by his influence, might be
able to divert the theological strife
abroad to things more 'profitable
for the Reformed Churches,' 495
Roberts, Dr Michael, principal of
Jesus College, Oxford, his alleged
maladministration, 506; his appeal
to the newly appointed Visitors, ib.',
his expulsion by the fellows, ib.;
charges brought against him, ib.,
n. 4; his ultimate resignation, 507
Robinson, Jo., doubtful identity of,
161, n. 3 ; migration of, with his
followers, from Amsterdam to Ley-
den, 163; change in the spirit of
his teaching, 164 ; advice given by,
to his disciples prior to their em-
barkment in the Mayflower, 165 ;
his model of Church government
adopted at Arnheiin, 442
Robinson, Matt., election of, to fel-
lowship of St John's, 384; his varied
attainments, ib. ; defeat of, in elec-
tion at Christ's College, 447
Robinson, Tho., nephew of Laud, a
migrant from Queens' College to
Jesus, 301
Rochelle, siege of, departure of Buck-
ingham for, 76; 270, n. 2
Roe, Sir Tho., letter to, from Hartlib,
143, n. 4
Rogers, Benj., admission of, to degree
of M.B. although not a member of
the university, 520 ; his subsequent
popularity as a composer of Church
music, ib.
Romanists, certain fellows of Peter-
house reputed as such, in the time
of Cosin's mastership, 208, n. 2
Rome, identified with 'Babylon' by
Joseph Mede, 24; defections to,
349 ; means of obtaining freedom
from the superstitions of, 592, n. 3
INDEX.
727
Rookby, Tho., intruded f. of St
Catherine's, 381
Rooke, Lawrence, f. of King's, mi-
grates to Wadham College, 316;
appointment of, to professorship of
astronomy at Gresham College, ib. ;
his reputation at his death, ib.; his
gratitude to Seth Ward, 317
Rose tavern, formerly at the end of
Rose Crescent, 551, n. 2
Rotherham, Tho., archbp. of York,
portion of the Schools Quadrangle
named after him, 73
Rotterdam, exiles at, 377; Heylin
ascribes the origin of the Inde-
, pendents to, 440 ; state of religious
parties in, 440-1 ; the exiles at,
described by Tho. Edwards, 445-6;
470
Rouse, Francis, provost of Eton, of
Broad Gate Hall, Oxford, 51; his
Testis Veritatis, 51-2 ; the Commons
stipulate for his non-inclusion in
the Self-denying Ordinance, 325 ;
author of a version of the Psalms,
413; defection of, from the Presby-
terians to the Independents, ib. ;
elected Speaker of the Commons,
ib.; advises Cromwell with respect
to making Durham College a uni-
versity, 522
Row, Dr Cheyney.a friend of DrLaney,
289 ; charged with sending plate to
the King, 310
Royal Society, commencement of, 316;
influence of the principles of pointed
out by Joseph Sedgwick, 451 ; fa-
vorable at Oxford to Cartesianism,
588
Royston, town of, the Gratulatio pre-
sented to prince Charles at, 10
Royston, R., bookseller in London,
289
Rubens, a crucifixion after, saved from
destruction in the chapel of Peter-
house, 268
Rudyerd, Sir Benj., his authority
cited, 53, n. 5
Russell, a Mr, churchwarden of St
Benet's, friendly to Cromwell, 270
Rust, Geo., f. of Christ's, bp. of
Dromore, a supporter of Charles
Hotham, 413 ; circumstances of
his election to fellowship, 447; in-
fluence which he probably exerted
over Tho. Fuller, ib., n. 3; 611,
n. 2 ; recommended by Cudworth to
Thurloe, 649 and n. 1; his Discourse
at Gt. St Mary's on What is Truth?,
650-1; difficulty of reconciling his
conclusions with Whichcote's canon,
652; his death, 664
Rustat, Tobias, first endower of the
University Library, 95
S
CW. S.,' see Spurstowe, William, 269,
n. 2
Saddler, Anne, wife of John Harvard,
189
Sadler, Jo., succeeds to mastership of
Magdalene, 384 ; character of, 385 ;
Town Clerk of London, ib.; mem-
ber for the county of Cambridge,
471, n. 2
St Andrew's Church.ThomasEdwards's
discourse at, 77
St Anne's, in Blackfriars, Whichcote
elected to the cure of, 570
St Benet's, Cambridge, Dowsing is
pleased to find unconsecrated, 270
St Botolph's, Cambridge, Dr Comber
is interred at, 308
St Catherine's College, 57 ; none of the
society voted at Buckingham's elec-
tion to the chancellorship, 59;
sudden death of Dr Hills, the
master, 70; sale of the plate of
the society, 231, n. 3; plate for-
warded to Charles i reached its
. destination, 233-4; 247; Dowsing5 s
proceedings at, 269-70; 277; 303;
state of, in 1651, 381 ; all the fellows
ejected on refusal of the Engage-
ment, 381; 502; 517; administration
of, by John Lightfoot, 534
St Clement's, Cambridge, Lionel Gat-
ford, vicar of, 242, n. 1
St Clement's, Eastcheap, Pearson's
sermons on the Creed delivered at,
575-6
St Florence (Pemb.), living of, bestowed
on St John's College by John
Williams, 39
St Giles's, Cambridge, sermon preached
at, by S. Hammond, 356 and n. 3
St John, Henry, death of, at the siege
of Oxford, 262
St John, Oliver, chief justice and
chancellor of the university, 486;
one of the Visitors appointed in
1654, ib. ; a candidate for the repre-
sentation of the university in the
Convention Parliament, 552
St John's College, 3; 11; 36, n. 5;
catalogue of Williams's French books
at, 38, n. 2 ; 39-42 ; 44 ; 45 ; 53 ; votes
given by, at Buckingham's election,
58 ; 72 ; state of, after plague, 106 ;
728
IXDEX.
113; maladministration of Owen
Gwynne at, 118-9; contested elec-
tion to the mastership at, 119-20;
state of discipline at (in 1636), 134;
numbers at larger than at Trinity,
145, n. 3, and 212; the most orderly
in the university, 146, n. 2; 151;
174, n. 1 ; 209 ; visit of Charles i to,
223; sells its old plate, 231, n. 3;
237; 243; utilized as a prison by
Cromwell, ib. ; 247, n. 3 ; 251 ; 264 ;
271 ; entries in rental book of, 272,
n. 1 ; Arrowsmith installed as master
at, 303; smallness of the entry
in 1644, 305; elections to fellow-
ships at, 334; discontent at, with
imposed restrictions, 339; 355; the
royalist party at, in a minority
(1647), 383; refusers of the Engage-
ment at, 384; bachelors at, enter-
tained at Trinity on Port Latin
Day, 474 ; disturbed state of, during
Arrowsmith's mastership, 475 ; 502 ;
Edward Stillingfleet f. of, 524;
Charles's receipt of loan advanced
by John Barwick still in College
Library, 557, n. 3
St John's College, Oxford, sends its
Merchant Taylors' scholars to Cam-
bridge during the siege, 263
St Mary's the Great, Cambridge, dis-
orders during services at, in Laud's
time, 133 ; the carved cross at,
'ruined' by Cromwell's order, 246;
Gunning's sermon against the Cove-
nant at, 288, n. 2; Dr Feme
permits none but divines of the
Established Church to preach at,
581
St Mary's the Less, Cambridge, 285,
n. 1
St Matthew's, Friday Street, Henry
Burton presented to the rectory of,
78
St Michael's, Cornhill, Nath. Ward
lecturer at, 182
St Paul's School, London, Dr Hill
educated at, 472
St Sepulchre's, Cambridge, Abraham
Wheelock incumbent of, 95
Salem, Mass., arrival of Francis Hig-
ginson at, 169; 170, 176; 178;
190
Salisbury, diocese of, John Sherman
archdn. of, 382
Salloway, Nath., intruded incumbent
of St Martin's in the Vintry, 413
Salmasius, Baillie regrets that he
should so trifle away his time,
494-5
Salmon, Pet., of Trinity College, a
student at Padua, 104
Salter, Sam., his Life of WMchcote,
570
Saltmarsh, Jo., of Magdalene, calls for
unrestricted freedom in matters of
religious belief, 308
Saltonstall, Hen. (grandson of Sir Ri.)»
a student at Harvard, 196
Saltonstall, Sir Ei., f. -commoner of
Jesus College, 176 ; one of the
members of the Mass. Company
who assembled at Cambridge, 170,
n. 3; a friend of Sir Simonds
D'Ewes, 176
Samaritan language, Dr Comber ac-
quainted with the, 318, n. 2
Samways, Pet. , f. of Trinity, a proved
delinquent for sending plate to the
King, 234, n. 8 ; expelled as a refuser
of the Engagement, 385; subse-
quent career of, 386
Samways, Ki., f. of Corpus Christ!
College, Oxford, is deprived of his
fellowship, 539, n. 1; his England's
faithfull Reprover, ib. ; his objections
to extempore prayer, ib. ; approves
the omission of the Ita me Deus
adjuvet in forms of asseveration, 541
Sancroft, Wm., f. and master of
Emmanuel, archbp. of Canterbury,
his letter to Holdsworth in the
Tower, 257; account given by, of
the general acceptance of the Cove-
nant in Suffolk, 274 ; of its entire
refusal at King's College, 298, n. 2 ;
accounts sent to, by Henry Paman,
his former pupil, of Dr Comber's
interment, 308-9, and of the state of
St John's in 1649, 383 ; a friend of
Peter Samways, 386; his description
of the university of Franeker, 426,
n. 1 ; his Fur Praedestinatiis, 438
and n. 3; edits for the University
Press, John Bois's collation of the
Vulgate, 489; 492; shielded by
Tuckney, on his refusal to sign the
Engagement, 530 ; his sermon at
the consecration of Cosin to the
see of Durham, 565 ; appointment
of, to the mastership of Emmanuel,
582; his letter to Ezekiel Wright
giving his impressions on his return,
583-5; he concurs in the suggestion
of his former tutor, that the revival
of the statute de Mora Sociorum
is undesirable, 585
Sandcroft, Wm., master of Emmanuel
and uncle of the archbishop, death
of, 121; 212
INDEX.
729
Sanderson, Kobt., bp. of Lincoln,
autbor of The Judgement of the Uni-
versity of Oxford, 343 ; rector of
Boothby Pagnell in Lincolnshire, 387
Sandys, Edwin, ejected f. of Peter-
bouse, 282
Sandys, Edwin, archbp. of York, the
patron of Wm. Brewster, 161, n. 1
Sandys, Sir Sam., brother of the
archbp., landlord of Brewster's
father, 161, n. 1
Santa Giustina, a Benedictine house
in Padua, compared with Trinity
College, 104
Sarson, Mr, senior f. of Emmanuel
College, 214, n. 2
Saumur, the Academy at, a school
of Cartesian Doctrine, 424; closure
of tbe Academy, 587 and n. 3
Savage, Jo., ejected f. of St Cather-
ine's, 381
Savile, Sir Hen., provost of Eton, a
patroii of Montagu, 26; marriage
of his daughter, 65, n. 4
Savilian professors at Oxford, see
Briggs (Hen.), Ward (Seth)
Savoy Conference, the, 21 ; assembling
of, 564; convened for the purpose
of liturgical revision, 577 and n. 1 ;
Gunning deeply interested in, 578 ;
its ultimate failure, 587
Saxon Chronicle, the, cited as an
authority for Cambridge history by
Sir Simouds D'Ewes, 210
Scaliger, Joseph, discerned the uses of
Arabic in connexion with scriptural
studies, 92 ; Cudworth supposed to
have refuted his theory with regard
to the date of the manifestation of
the Messiah, 610
Scarborough, Chas., f. of Caius, ejec-
tion of, in 1649, 367; takes refuge
in Oxford, ib. ; subsequent career
of, ib.
Scattergood, Anthony, f. of Trinity,
patronized by John Williams, 39 ;
letter from, to St John's College, as
Williams's chaplain, 42
Scholars, poor, compelled to under-
take menial duties as a means of
livelihood, 108
Schoolmen, the, Pearson proposes to
revert to their method in his lectures,
and more especially to that of
Aquinas, 587
Sclater, Sir Tho., f. of Trinity, ex-
pulsion of, 310; a subsequent
benefactor to the society, 310-11;
recognition of his generosity by
same, 311
Scotland, the four universities of, 206 ;
the prospects of, in 1654, deplored
by Baillie, 498 ; apprehensions ex-
cited at by the failure of re-establish-
ment of Presbyterianism, 500 and
n. 3
Scott, Francis, evidence afforded by
the form of his admission to a
scholarship at King's College, 379
Scripture, learning not essential to the
right understanding of, 190-1
Scudamore, lord, generosity of, to
Thorndike, 310
Scultetus, the Ethics of, studied in
the middle of 17th century, 465,
n. 3
Sea, the, service at, in Vacation, en-
couraged among students, 322 and
u. 2
Seaman, Lazarus, master of Peter-
house, succeeds in accomplishing
the transfer of Cosin's library to the
college, 281-2 ; his installation as
master, 282 and n. 3; his Journal,
in the college treasury, 283, n. 1 ;
327, n. 2 ; his relations with the
Committee for Augmentations, 401;
his displeasure at the election of
Tobias Couyers, 402; appropriates
to himself a double dividend, 403-4 ;
is summoned before the London
Committee, 404 ; obtains the an-
nulling of Conyers' election, 405 ;
charges brought against him by
Hotham, 407 ; obtains an adjourn-
ment of the enquiry into his rightful
authority, 408 ; 409 ; further charges
brought against him by Hotham,
411-12; 415-16 ; his deficiencies as
a Latiuist, 416 ; he affects to dis-
parage Voetius, 495; asserts the
claims of the Heads to payment
of their augmentations, 501-2;
impresses both Cromwell and his
son by his persistency of purpose,
ib. ; compliment paid him by Light-
foot, 501, n. 5; a member of the
Commission of 1654, 503; rarely in
residence at Peterhouse, ib. ; his
contribution to Lucius et Grata-
latio, 518 ; prevails on Cromwell to
recommend his son Joseph for
election to a fellowship at Peter-
house, 520 ; obtains from Richard a
concession which the father would
not have granted, 522 and n. 4 ; 529 ;
gives his sanction to the scheme of
Poole's Model, 537, n. 1
Searle, Mr W. G., quoted, 269,
n. 1
730
INDEX.
Sedbergh School, pupils of, — the two
Barwicks, 232; Sir John Otway,
304 and n. 1
Sedley, Sir Win., endowment of a
lectureship in natural philosophy
at Oxford by, 65, n. 4
Sedgwick, Jos., master successively of
Repton and Stamford schools, cir-
cumstances of his election to a
fellowship at Christ's College, 447 ;
sermon of, at St Mary's in 1653,
447-8; his reply to Dell, 448-9;
his defence of learning as necessary
to the divine, 449; the position of
the Independents denned by, ib. ;
his main argument in defence of
university training, ib. ; his denun-
ciation of enthusiasm, 449-50; his
challenge to the enthusiasts, 450;
he defends the Reformation as the
outcome of a more advanced
scholarship, 450-1 ; he advocates
the study of Nature, 451 ; defends
the actual state of discipline in the
university, ib. ; holds that disagree-
ment among researchers is no argu-
ment against the search after truth,
451-2; 479, n. 1
Seeley, Sir John, late professor, his
description of the motives by which
the first settlers in New England
were actuated, 153
Selden, John, 26; 209; election of, to
mastership of Trinity Hall, 294 ; he
declines the same, ib. ; is thanked
for his good offices in connexion
with Bancroft's bequest, 336 and
n. 2; concerned in the purchase of
Thomason's collection of books in
the Eastern languages, 337 ; his
approval of Walton's Polyglot,
490 and n. 3
Semitic languages, the limitations
under which Laud encouraged the
study of, 91
Sequestrations : of rents and revenues
of the university and colleges for-
bidden by the Lords and Commons,
265; committee appointed for re-
ceipt of same, 266; the Report of
same, as preserved in the Record
Office, 280 and n. 1 ; particulars
therein included, 280-2
Seymour, Edward, duke of Somerset,
chancellor of the university, invited
by the university to send Visitors,
126
Sharp, Tho., one of the members of
the Mass. Company who assembled
at Cambridge, 170, n. 3
Shaw, Wm., student of Trinity Col-
lege, concurs in a formal expression
of approval of execution of Charles i,
358, n. 4
Sheffield, baron, see Mulgrave
Sheldon, Gilb., warden of All Souls',
archbp. of Canterbury, procures for
Worthington a lectureship at Hack-
ney parish church, 625; his repre-
sentations to Charles n induce
the latter to abstain from granting
mandates for fellowships at St
John's, 627; More dedicates his
Enchiridion Metaphysicum to, 646;
his sentiments friendly to the new
philosophy, ib.
Shepard, Tho., saying of, respecting
'Satan's policy,' 181
Sheringham, Robt., ejected senior f.
of Caius College, 376; his attain-
ments as a linguist described by
Walker, 377; is compelled to flee
to Rotterdam, ib.
Sherman, Jo., f. of Trinity, his Greek
in the Temple, 588; quotations from
same, pointing to a probable ac-
quaintance with Whichcote and
More, 589 ; aid thus afforded, at an
early stage, to the Platonist move-
ment, ib. ; compliment paid by
Duport to,. 589, n. 1
Sherman, Jo., election of, to fellowship
at Jesus College, 382; account of
him by Mr Arthur Gray, ib. ; re-
lated by descent to Gen. W. T.
Sherman of the Civil War in
America, ib. ; criticism of his His-
toria, ib. ; defects in the editing
of the MS. by Halliwell, ib., n. 2
Shirley, Jas., contributor of verses to
Hall's Horae, 352
Shrewsbury School, Fulke Greville,
first lord Brooke, educated at, 81
and n. 2 ; young scholars at, able to
write in both Latin and French, 81,
n. 2
Shuckburgh, Evelyn, History of Em-
manuel College, by, 313 &nd passim
Sibbes, Ri., master of St Catherine's,
a sympathizer with the Puritan
party, 57 ; his successful adminis-
tration, 70 and n. 4; accepts the
appointment to the lectureship at
Trinity Church, 100; death of, 122;
306; 441
Sidney, Sir Hen., letter from, to his
son Philip at Shrewsbury, 81, n. 2
Sidney College, sides with Berkshire
in the contest for the chancellor-
ship at Buckingham's election, 58;
INDEX.
731
113 ; time of its greatest prosperity,
114, n. 1 ; its chapel unconsecrated
in 1636, 130; Cromwell's college,
147; compulsory on fellows of, to
proceed to their D.D. degree when
of sufficient status, 213, n. 3 ; con-
tributes to the royal loan, '230 and
n. 4; 252 and n. 5; mastership of,
255; 272; ejections at, 313-14; pro-
spectus of Walton's Polyglot pre-
served in library of, 502; share
taken by members of, in the Luctus
et Gratulatio, 516; state of, under
rule of Dr Minshull, 535 ; see
also Sam. Ward and S?th Ward
Sigebert, King of East Auglia, supposed
benefactor of the university, 142
Simpson, Sidrach, of Emm. College,
one of the divines at Arnheim, 441 ;
disagreement between, and Wm.
Bridge at Rotterdam, 443; return
of, to London, ib. ; becomes a mem-
ber of the Westminster Assembly,
ib. ; there asserts the cause of liberty
of conscience, 446; is appointed
master of Pembroke, ib. ; presented
to the rectory of St Bartholomew,
Exchange, i&. and n. 2 ; becomes the
recognized leader of the Indepen-
dents, ib.
Simson, Edw., f. of Trinity, author of
the ' Great Chronology,' 39; patron-
ized by John Williams, ib.
Skeat, professor, quoted, 267, n. 1
Skelton, Sam., of Clare Hall, co-pastor
with Francis Higginson at Salem,
177 ; letter to, from John Cotton, 178
Smith, Jo., of Emmanuel, and f. of
Queens', 590; early career of, 630-1;
known both to Whichcote and to
Worthington before he left Em-
manuel, 'studied himself into a
consumption,' 631 ; testimony of
Patrick to his abilities and acquire-
ments, 632-3 ; his readiness to
impart his knowledge to others, 633 ;
his accuracy of expression in con-
versation, 634; his Immortality of
the Soul compared with More's
treatise on same subject, 634-5 ; his
argument in defence of the belief,
635-6; his method compared with
that of Culverwel, 636-7 ; contrast
observable in their estimate of the
value of syllogistical reasoning,
643 and n. 4
Smoult, Tho., of St John's, twice
obtains the royal mandate for his
election to a fellowship, without
effect, 628
Solemn League and Covenant, see
Covenant
Somerset, duke of, chancellor of the
university, see Seymour
Somersham, rectory of, held by Collins
as Regius professor of divinity, 297
Song of the Soul, the, by Henry More,
600-3
Soulderne, Oxf., patronage of living
of, bestowed by John Williams on
St John's College, 39
Southey, Robt., on supposed etymology
of term ' dowsing,' 267, n. 1
Sowersby, or Sorsby, f. of Emmanuel,
letter from W. Sancroft to, 298,
n. 2
Spain, prince Charles's return from, 9
Spanish, Dr Comber able to speak,
318, n. 2 ; John Hall's knowledge of
the literature, 351
Spang, Wm., minister to Scotch con-
gregations in the Netherlands,
indebted to his cousin R. Baillie for
his knowledge of church affairs in
Scotland, 494 and n. 1; his own
narrative of same, ib.
Specializing, with a view to a pro-
fessorial career, sanctioned at Ox-
ford in 1654, 466 and n. 1
Spedding, Jas., observations by, on
John Williams, 65, n. 3
Speed, Jo., the historian, patronized
by lord Brooke, 81
Spelman, Sir Hen., of Trinity, his
labours on the sources for English
history, 97 ; his candidature for the
representation of the university, 98
Spelman, Sir Jo. (son of above), assists
Wm. Somner with his Anglo-Saxon
Dictionary, 98
Spencer, Jo., master of Corpus Christi,
sermons preached by, at St Mary's,
in 1660, 559-60 ; special value of
his treatise, de Legibus Hebraeonnn ,
ib.
Spenser, Edm., Fairie Queene of, read
aloud by Alexander More to his sons,
597
Spitting in church, the practice de-
nounced by Joseph Mede, 18, n. 2
Spurstowe, Wm., f. of St Catherine's,
269, n. 2 ; account of, 305, 319 and
n. 1; 327, n. 2; ejection of, 380;
declines to be re-instated, ib.
Stafford, Mrs, of Harlow, a benefactress
of St Catherine's College, 70, n. 4
Stafford, Wm., of Blatherwick, a friend
of Tho. Randolph, 110
Stanford Rivers, living of, held by
Ri. Montagu, 27
732
IXDEX.
Stanley, Tho., f. -commoner of Pem-
broke, a liberal patron of authors,
351-2
Stapleton, Sir Philip, letter to, from
Dr Martin, 298, n. 3
Stationers' Company, 1
Statute de Mora Sociorum, revival of
the contest respecting, at Emmanuel
College, 213 ; circumstances that
led to its ultimate suspension, 585
Statutes of the colleges, order given
that they should be again made
operative, 556
Statutes of the university (known as
the Elizabethan), requirements of,
for degree of B.D., 386-7; dis-
paraged as a body, by Charles
Hotham, 410 ; his criticism in es-
sential agreement with that of dean
Peacock, ib. ; Manchester instructed,
in 1660, by the House of Lords, to
make them agaia operative, 556
Stephen, Leslie, quoted, 432, n. 2
Stephens, Tho., sermon by, in 1642,
denouncing the prevailing disloyalty,
225 and n. 3
Sterne, Dr Edw., master of Jesus
College, authorship of statement of
Disorders in the University attributed
to, 132 ; one of the Committee ap-
pointed to draw up the Roll of
Benefactors, 142; 147, n. 1; 220,
n. 2 ; taken into custody in college
chapel, 237; ordered to be im-
prisoned in the Tower, 238 ; 240,
n. 1 ; his subsequent treatment,
298 ; flourishing condition of the
college under his rule, 301 ; 318 ; is
re-instated in the mastership, 573
-4
Sterne, Edw., f. of Pembroke, native of
Cambridge, ejection of, 376; inscrip-
tion in the college attributed to, ib.,
n. 4
Still, Alice, wife of Adam Winthrop,
jun., 172
Still, Dr Jo., master of St John's and
of Trinity, 172
Stillingfleet, Edw., f. of St John's,
advocates in his Irenicum the recon-
ciliation of Presbyterianism and
Episcopacy, 524
Stillingfleet, Jo., gives his sanction to
the scheme of Poole's Model, 537,
n. 1.
Stokes, Dav., f. of Peterhouse, 492
and n. 3; 493, n. 1
Stone, Sir B., 232
Stone, Sam. , of Emmanuel, an assist-
ant teacher to Tho. Hooker, 182
Stoughton, Dr S., vouches for Cud-
worth's attainments as a boy, 610-11
Strange, lord James, supports the
project of founding a university in
Manchester, 206
Strauss, Mr Oscar S., his criticism of
the Plymouth community. 167, n. 1
Strode, Nich., f. of Corpus, ejected in
1654, 378
Stuart, Arabella, 40
Stuart theory, the, with respect to
universities, 135, n. 2
Studies, freedom of choice in, allowed
at Oxford in 1654, 466 and n. 1
Studley, Dan., elder of the Separatist
church at Amsterdam, 158 and n. 1
Studley, Jo., f. of Trinity, in sixteenth
century, 158, n. 1
Sturbridge fair, in 1645, 322 ; the
holding of, in 1655, forbidden on
account of the Great Plague, 618
and n. 2
Stuteville, Sir Martin, relative of
Joseph Mede, 20 ; to whom the
latter sends copy of Bacon's Essays,
67, n. 1 ; Mede takes refuge with,
during plague, 102 ; death of, 139
Subscription on proceeding to degrees,
abolition of, 211, 221
Suckling, Sir Jo., of Trinity College,
his death in Paris, 228
Suffolk, earls of, see Howard
Suffolk, included in the Association of
the Eastern Counties, 240
' Superstition,' edict for abolition of
monuments of, throughout the
kingdom, 266
Sutcliffe, Matt., of Trinity, dean of
Exeter, his project of a theological
college, 50 ; his reply to Montagu,
50-1
Swathe, Mr Geo., Prayers composed
by, 233, n. 3
Swearing, forbidden at Harvard, 194
Sydenham, Col., accusation preferred
against the Short Parliament by,
470
Sydney, Philip, 81, n. 2
Synserfe, f. of Peterhouse, ejection of,
282
Syriac, Lexicon of, compiled by Herbert
Thorndike, 309 ; Dr Comber well
acquainted with, 318, n. 2
Tacitus, pronounced by Bacon ' simply
the best ' of historians, 82 ; Doris-
laus takes the Annals for his ' theme,'
87
INDEX.
733
Ballot, the, Francis Higginson sails
for Salem in, 169
Talbot, Gilbert, 7th earl of Shrews-
bury, St John's disappointed in its
expectation of a bequest from, 40
' Tarquin's riddle,' purport of, applied
by Bancroft to the removal of
1 Heads,' 257
Taylor, Jeremy, features in the career
of, 350 ; his Liberty of Prophesying
characterized by Hallam, ib. ; his
approval of Daille's treatise on the
Fathers, 439
Tenison, Tho., archbp. of Canterbury,
remains in residence at Corpus
Christi throughout the Plague, 619
and n. 2
Teonge, Henry, his signature in the
Begister of the diocese of London
during the Commonwealth, 544 ;
his Diary, as chaplain in the navy,
ib. and n. 6
Terrington (Norf.), rectory of, design
of King James to appropriate to the
endowment of the lady Margaret
professorship, 255 and n. 3, 256
Thexton, Eobt. , ejected f. of St Cathe-
rine's, 381
Thirty Years War, effects of, on the
universities in Germany, 356-7
Thomason, Geo., purchase of library
of Hebrew literature by, for Univer-
sity Library, 337
Thorington (Suff.), rectory of, John
Pearson presented to, 574
Thorndike, Herb., f. of Trinity, pat-
ronized by John Williams, 39 ;
nominated for the mastership of
Sidney, 253-4 ; condition on which
he withdraws from the contest, 255 ;
ejection of, from his living at Barley
and fellowship at Trinity, 309 ;
mulcted of greater part of his
library, 310; his description of
Antinomianism, 353, n. 2 ; cited,
432, n. 3 ; circumstances under
which he co-operated in production
of Walton's Polyglot, 491-2; his
special qualifications for the task,
ib. ; quoted, 541, n. 1; his estimate
of the consequences involved in the
policy of the Presbyterians, 545
Thornton, Is., elected to represent the
county in the Convention Parlia-
ment, 551
Thornton, Tho., president of St John's,
ejected in 1644, 304
Three Tuns, the, inn on Peas Hill, 550
and n. 6
Thucydides, pronounced by Bacon,
chief among the writers concerning
' Greek matters,' 82
Thurcastou (Leices.), Ezekiel Wright's
rectory at, 583
Thurloe, Jo., one of the Visitors to
Cambridge appointed in 1654, 487 ;
described as a ' Courtier,' ib., n. 1 ;
his election to the chancellorship of
Glasgow university, ib. ; suggests to
Morland that he should write his
H istory of the Piedmontese Churches,
511; takes the oath of fidelity to
Hi. Cromwell, 522; 534
Tillotson, Jo., archbp. of Canterbury,
f. and tutor of Clare College, 532 ;
his assiduity in that capacity, 532-
3; bis loyalty to the college, for
which he obtains an endowment,
533 ; 589 ; preaches the funeral
sermon on Worthington, 626
Tilney, Fred., ejected f. of Jesus
College, 381
Toledo, Council of, 249 ; enactment of,
with reference to the Lord's Prayer,
ib.
Tolley, Jo., f. of Peterhouse, ejection
of, 282 ; sequestration of effects of,
286, n. 1
Toiige, Israel, f. of University College,
Oxford, intruded in 1648, 657 ; ap-
pointed bursar, but soon ejected, ib. ;
quits Oxford and is made a lecturer
and fellow of Durham College
through the interest of Cromwell,
ib. and n. 1 ; becomes the dupe of
Titus Gates, ib. ; his studies on the
Apocalypse, ib. ; these never printed,
the field being thus left open to
Henry More, ib.
Tourney (or Tournay), Jo., f. of Pern-
broke, impugns the Church's doctrine
of Justification, 113 ; 318
Tovey, Humphrey, f. of Trinity, votes
for Berkshire in Buckingham's
election to the chancellorship, 58
Tovey, Nath., solitary in Christ's
College during the plague, 106
Tower of London, the, Holdsworth
confined in, 256 ; Selden Keeper of
the Records in, 294
Travers, Walt., developement of the
teaching of, 157
Trent, Council of, one great fault of,
according to Montagu's supporters
at Oxford, 35
'Triers,' the, institution of, 545 ;
changes affecting Episcopalians
involved in same, ib.
Trinity Church, Cambridge, afternoon
lectureship at, reason of its popu-
734
INDEX.
larity, 99 ; endeavour of Laud to
suppress, 99-100 ; successors to the
office, 100 ; increased importance of,
in connexion with the townsmen,
101 and n. 3 ; Charles i orders it to
be continued, ib. ; threat of Thomas
Randolph ' to put the lecture down,'
ib.
Trinity College, 2, 3, 21; John
Williams a generous benefactor to,
39 ; 50 ; centre of the support to
Buckingham in his election to the
chancellorship, 54-5, and 57, n. 5;
77; 95; 97; 98, u. 1; 103 and n. 1;
state of subsequent to the plague of
1630, 106; Cowley's Guardian pro-
duced at, 111, n. 1 ; 'dry choristers'
at, 133 and n. 2; 145 and n. 3;
Adam Winthrop auditor at, 172 and
n. 2; 186; 198; second college with
respect to numbers in 1641, 212 ;
rise of the society during Dr Comber's
mastership, 226 and n. 3 ; reforms
and new culture, 227 ; contempt of
for current prophecy, ib. and n. 4 ;
its bridge demolished, 243 ; petitions
against unauthorized sequestrations,
264 ; expulsions and sequestrations
at, 308-10 ; state of, calls for parlia-
mentary intervention, 311 ; changes
relating both to scholarships and
fellowships, 311-12 ; decline in num-
bers of, 312 ; is empowered by par-
liament to complete the statutable
number of its fellows from without,
334 ; conflicts between its scholars
and Cromwell's soldiery, 353 ;
certain students of, publish a de-
fence of the execution of king
Charles, 358 ; majority of the fellows
refuse the Covenant, 385 ; fellows
of, exempted from obligation to
proceed B.D., 386 ; succession of
Thomas Hill to the mastership,
473 ; its members send no contribu-
tions to the Luctus et Gratulatio,
517; brief rule of Dr Wilkins, at,
579-80 ; he is succeeded by Henry
Feme, 581 ; elections to fellowships
at, confirmed at the Bestoration,
ib.; Sherman's commonplaces de-
livered in the chapel of, 588 and n. 1 ;
Nathaniel Willis permitted to retain
his fellowship at, notwithstanding
statute as regards income, 627
Trinity College, Dublin, Mede invited
to assume the provostship, 20 ;
bestowal of charter on by king
James, 173 ; criticism of, by John
Winthrop, ib. ; two poor students
from, are granted exhibitions by the
university, 225 ; Ussher's library
purchased for, by the State, 491 and
n. 5; its debt to John Owen, the
Independent, 499
Trinity College, Oxford, state of during
the siege, 263 ; election of Seth Ward
to the presidency of, 546-7
Trinity Hall, Cambr., voting of, at
Buckingham's election to the chan-
cellorship, 59 ; plate of, saved by
the good offices of Dr Eden, 234 and
n. 5 ; treatment of, by Dowsing,
271; changes at, in 1647, 292;
purchase of buildings by, near Paul's
Walk, London, which, when re-built
are known as Doctors Commons,
361 ; letter to authorities of, from
Cromwell, 362 ; sequestrations at,
294 ; slender endowment of the
mastership of, ib. ; ' swallowed ' the
Engagement, 377 ; 502 ; sent no
contributions to the Luctus et
Gratulatio, 517 ; incident at, during
mastership of Dr Bond, 533 ; re-
election of Dr King to the master-
ship, 567 ; mandate for election to
a fellowship of son of Sir Anthony
Aucher at, 627
Truth, the discovery of, the keynote
of the Cambridge Platonists' dis-
courses, 593 ; pronounced by Which-
cote to be the ultimate aim of all
philosophical enquiry, 595
Tuckney, Anthony, master of St John's,
his vindication of the character of
the preachers in Cambridge, 526,
n. 2 ; point of view from which he
regarded the other Heads, 529 ; his
dislike of compulsion in matters of
belief, 529-30 ; his sympathy with
Whichcote and Culverwel, 530 and
n. 2 ; distinguished by his resolute
resistance, where needed, to external
authority, ib. ; his maxim in elec-
tions to fellowships, ib. and n. 4 ;
his candid disavowal of any ability
to interpret prophecy, 530-31 ; im-
portance attached to his opinion by
other scholars, 531 ; his austere
Calvinism, ib. ; eulogized by James
Crossley, ib., n. 3 ; his controversy
with Whichcote, 531-2 ; he pub-
lishes John Cotton's Brief Exposi-
tion, 531, n. 1 ; sanctions the scheme
of Poole's Model, 537 and n. 1 ;
evades the summons to the Savoy
Conference, 577 ; arrival of the
mandate for his ejection, ib. ; signs
the resignation of his professorship,
INDEX.
735
ib.; retires to London, 577-8; his
library burnt in the Great Fire, 578 ;
origin of his correspondence with
Whichcote, 591 ; canon of, with
respect to definition of doctrine,
592; criticism of same, by Which-
cote, ib. ; his criticism of Whichcote's
Commencement Oration, 593
Tulloch, Jo., his criticism of More's
arguments in disproof of Cartesian-
ism, 607; on the extent to which
More once followed Descartes, 648 ;
holds him to be an imperfect repre-
sentative of the rational movement,
655
Tunstal, Robt., f. of Corpus Christi,
ejected in 1644, 295
Turner, Dr Pet., of Merton College, his
letter to Laud, 136, n. 1
Twisse, Dr Wm., of New College,
Oxford, consults Mede respecting
the newly-discovered races, 153
Twyne, Brian, antiquary, his argu-
ments put aside by Sir Simonds
D'Ewes, 210
Twysden, Jo., edits the mathematical
writings of Sam. Foster, 556, n. 1
Tyrringham, f. of Peterhouse, ejection
of, as a refuser of the Covenant, in
1644, 282
U
Ullock, Hen., scholar of Christ's Col-
lege, recommended for a fellowship
on account of the sufferings of near
relations, 627-8
Undergraduates, instances of castiga-
tion of, as late as 1638, 194, n. 2
Uniformity, Act of, 587
Universities, the [Oxford and Cam-
bridge in common] denounced by the
Mass. Company, 171 ; the degrees
conferred by, pronounced unneces-
sary, 191 ; Cotton's scheme for
reformation of, 203, n. 1 ; dearness
of living at, a subject of complaint,
and urged as a reason for founding
more, 206 ; styled ' the two eyes of
the realm,' 218; described as the
' two famous fountains of our King-
dom,' 221, n. 4; always regulated
by the nation, 469 ; in imminent
danger in 1653, ib. and 471 ;
Cromwell's Ordinance for visitation
of, 484; renewed attack upon in
1659, 546 ; Parliament declares it to
be its intention to uphold, 549 ;
flourished, according to Jo. Spencer,
' most under Kings,' 560
University, a, Seth Ward's ideal of, 466
University, the, financial condition of,
in 1646, 337-8 ; order given for an
audit of the 'Chests,' 338 ; evidence
of gross neglect, ib. ; new Syndicate
appointed, with instructions to put
the muniments in order, ib.
University Library, outline of facts
relating to condition of, circ. 1625,
72-3 ; bequest of archbp. Bancroft
to, 73 ; proposal of Buckingham to
erect new buildiugs, 74 and n. 5, 75 ;
Cosin's efforts with same design,
143 ; first endowment of the office
of librarian, 95 ; Wheelock's account,
in 1652, of his work as, 97 and n. 1 ;
grant of £2000 by Parliament for
building aud finishing of, 336 and n.
5; commencement of the Hebrew
library, 337 ; reception of Bancroft's
bequest, 481 ; enlargement of, by
incorporation of the Greek Schools,
482 ; John Evelyn's visit to, ib. ;
presentation of the Waldensian
collection by Morland, 512, n. 3 and
513 ; the same, for a long time, sup-
posed to have disappeared, 514
University Press, proposal to establish
a second press, 360, n. 5; the Printers
bound over not to print unlicensed
books, 360-1 ; publications of, in
1655, 489
University College, Oxford, state of,
during the siege, 262
Urbury, Wm., of Brasenose College,
Oxford, appearance of, as a dispu-
tant in a London church, 469
Ussher, James, archbp. of -Armagh,
sermon of, at proclamation of
Charles i, 5 ; offered the provostship
of Trinity College, Dublin, 20 ; au-
thority of, cited by Montagu, 33, n.
4 ; on the ' Book Fish,' 71 ; suggests
the purchase of the library of Erpen-
ius, 75 ; 100 ; 102 ; 113 ; 215 ;
declines the summons to Westmin-
ster Assembly, in order to pursue
his studies at Oxford, 260 ; quits
Oxford, along with prince Charles,
ib., n. 3 ; his connexion with Jesus
College, Oxford, 263 and n. 4 ; 386 ;
support given by to Walton's Polyglot,
490 and n. 3 ; his death, 491 ; his
library purchased by the State, ib. ;
directs the attention of Moiland to
Waldensian history, 510 and 511, n.
2 ; his own study of the iiss. re-
lating to same,tft. ; see also Libraries,
private collections
Utie, Emmanuel, urges his suit for a
college vale, 118, n. 1
736
INDEX.
Utrecht, university of, its aversion
from the Jesuits, 423; belief of
Bobert Baillie that, in concert with
other universities, it may be able to
bring about a remodelling of the
course of philosophy, 497 ; see also
Descartes, Voetius
Valentine, Mr, of Trinity College, re-
commended to Thurloe by Cudworth
for an official appointment, 611, n. 2
Vane, Sir Hen., 176, n. 4
Vassall, Wm., one of the members of
the Mass. Company who assembled
at Cambridge, 170, n. 3
Vaughan, Jo., ejected f. of Pembroke,
291
Venn, Dr Jo., his Biographical Hist,
of Cains College, 160, n. 2; 283, n.
2 ; observations of, on the evidence
afforded by the Registers of the
diocese of London, 542-3
Vere, Aubrey de, 20th earl of Oxford,
opponent of Buckingham and the
Spanish Match, 13
Verney, Sir Edni., comment of, on the
episcopal Order, 224
Vicars, Jo., author of the Burning
Bush, his hope of seeing both uni-
versities purged, 221, n. 4
Viccars, Jo., B.A. of Christ's College,
one of the translators of Walton's
Polyglot, 492
Vienne, Council of, decree issued by
for teaching of Hebrew, Arabic and
Chaldee, 95, n. 1
Villiers, George, 1st duke of Bucking-
ham (2nd creation), arrival of with
prince Charles at Boyston, 10 ; 11
and n. 1 ; John Williams's relations
with, 13 ; he ventures to advise the
duke, 14 ; memorial addressed to, in
favour of Montagu, 34 ; letter to,
from Williams, to which he makes
no response, 37 ; his influence gained,
by episcopal influence, on behalf of
the Appello, 42 ; 43 ; he consults his
brother peers, 45 ; takes part in the
debates at York House, ib. ; his im-
peachment, 47 ; Charles resolves that
he shall succeed to the chancellorship
of the university, 52 ; his contest
with the earl of Berkshire for the
same, 53-9 ; the real question in-
volved, 59 ; the Commons call for
his dismissal, 62-3 ; rupture of his
relations with Preston, 64 ; his visit
to the university in 1627, 72 ; his
proposal to build a new library, 74 ;
his assassination, 75 ; his services to
the university, ib. and 76 ; 85, n. 2 ;
Edward Montagu made a peer through
his influence, 264
Vincentius Lirinensis on the errors of
the Fathers, 588
Vines, Bi., master of Pembroke, his
installation in office, 291 ; condition
of the society, ib. • originally a
schoolmaster at Hinckley, 318 ; his
character contrasted with that of
his predecessor, Dr Laney, ib. ;
appeal of, along with other of the
Heads, to the Lords and Commons
against the conduct of the Mayor,
327, n. 2
Virginia Company, the, express sym-
pathy with Brewster's design of
founding a colony at Plymouth, N.E. ,
166 and n. 5
Virginia, plantation of, advocated by
William Crashaw in sermon before
the Council in London, in 1609,
150 and n. 1 ; the leading colonists
members of the university, 151 ;
Anglican traditions of same, ib. and
152 ; projected university for the
Colony, ib. ; failure of the project,
ib. and n. 3 ; character of the plant-
ers, 153; dissatisfaction with, emana-
ting from England, 166, n. 5 ; aboli-
tion of the Company, 171, n. 2; 191
Visitation of the universities, right to
visit claimed by Laud, as metropoli-
tan, 126 ; appointment of a Commis-
sion for, commended by Charles
Hotham, 406-8 ; Ordinance of Crom-
well for a visitation of both univer-
sities, 485 ; his design compared with
that of Whitgift and of Laud, ib.;
difficulties involved in the constitu-
tion of the Commissions, ib. ; powers
conferred on the Heads, 486 ; the
principal external members, 486-7 ;
Anthony Wood's observation on
those nominated for Oxford, 486,
n. 1 ; disadvantage under which they
laboured when compared with the
residential element, ib. ; amount of
contentious matter involved in their
instructions, 487 ; opposition raised
at Oxford to the same, as encroaching
on the rights of the special Visitors
of the colleges, 488 ; results that
attended the visitation, 501 ; improved
discipline at Oxford, ib., n. 1; the
Commissioners accused of exceeding
their instructions, 501 ; the Heads
still claim a negative voice, ib., n. 4 ;
INDEX.
737
they press for payment of their
augmentations, 501-2; the prolonga-
tion of their powers is opposed as
encroaching on the Protector's prero-
gative, 504 ; doubts expressed as to
the authority of Parliament in the
whole matter, 504-5 ; the Presbyterian
party at Oxford propose the annul-
ling of the Commission, 505 ; under-
lying cause of dissatisfaction, 505-6 ;
expulsion of Dr Roberts from the
headship of Jesus College by the
fellows, 506 ; he is re-instated by the
Visitors, but ultimately resigns, 507 ;
the college Oath shewn to involve
prior obligations which contravene
the requirements of the Visitors,
508 ; freedom of the colleges in
Cambridge from abuses calling for
like interference, 509 ; Diai-y of the
Visitors, as printed in Burrows'
Register, ib.
Visitors of colleges, conflicting nature
of their powers with those of the
Commissioners of 1654, 488
Voetius, Gisbertus, rector of the uni-
versity of Utrecht, 425 ; his inter-
pretation of Descartes' motives in
coming to reside in Belgium, ib. ;
his reputation as a disputant,
426 ; his succession to the chair
of theology at Utrecht, ib. ; his
Disputationes, 427, n. 1 ; duties
of, as rector, ib. ; he condemns
Harvey's theory of the circulation
of the blood, 430 ; his genius con-
trasted with that of Descartes, 431 ;
his method pronounced by Robert
Baillie the right one, 495 ; Baillie
unable to concur in his approval
of a treatise by John Cotton, ib. ;
correspondence between the two,
496-7 ; his regret that Belgium is,
for a time, incapacitated for the
production of a manual of theology,
ib.
Vossius, Gerard, 4 ; invited to fill the
new chair of history at Cambridge,
85 ; a correspondent of Dr Collins,
297-8 ; Baillie's concern at his allow-
ing himself to become absorbed in
theological controversy, 494-5
Vossius, Jo., son of Gerard, admitted
f. of Jesus College by royal mandate,
85, n. 2
W
Wadham College, Oxford, John Knight-
bridge, founder of the professorship,
a bachelor of, 283
M. in.
Waite, Jos., ejected f. of St Catherine's,
381
Walcheren, the classis of, Seaman's
dictum respecting, 495
Waldenses, the, Milton's description
of, 526, n. 1
Waldensian MSS., the, see University
Library
Walker, Jo., his Sufferings of the Clergy
criticized or quoted, 299, n. 2 ; 313,
n. 3 ; 317 ; 377 ; 385 ; 531, n. 3
Walker, Obadiah, f. of Univ. Coll.
Oxford, quoted, 142
Waller, Edm., of King's College, his
stanzas asserting the proud position
of the Protector, 510
Wallis, Jo., of Emmanuel, and f. of
Queens', 300 ; reason of his leaving
Cambridge, 462 ; his reputation as
a cryptographist, 463 ; bearer of
the petition from Oxford against
making Durham a university, 523 ;
his description of Thomas Horton's
style of preaching, 533-4 ; 590
Walsall, Sam., master of Corpus, a
voter at Buckingham's election to
the chancellorship, 57 ; his death,
68, 69, n. 1
Walton, Brian, of Magdalene and
Peterhouse, Memoirs of, by Todd,
quoted, 97, n. 1; the translators of
the Polyglot allowed to carry on
their work in London, 491-3; spirit
in which they pursued their labours,
493 ; Pearson obtains subscriptions
for same, 575 ; commercial success
with which it was attended, 492, n. 4;
honours bestowed on the translators
after the Restoration, 493, n. 1 ;
Baillie's admiration of theirheroism,
499 ; Walton's rejoinder to the cavils
of John Owen, 499 and n. 4; conse-
cration of, to bpric. of Chester, 493,
n. 1, 565 ; his reception in that
city, ib.
Walton, Isaac, Lives of, quoted, 80,
n. 3
Walton, Valentine, the regicide, letter
from Cromwell to, informing him of
his son's death at Marston Moor,
277 ; a friend of Dr Love, 295
Walpole, Arth., f. of Queens', expelled
as a refuser of the Covenant, 299
Ward, Dr A. W., master of Peterhouse,
cited, 357, n. 1
Ward, Nath., of Emmanuel, a disciple
of Paraeus, 182 ; persecuted by
Laud, ib. ; a fugitive to New Eng-
land, where he compiles a Code of
laws adopted by the colony, ib.
47
738
INDEX.
Ward, Sam., master of Sidney College,
appointed lady Margaret professor,
48, 49 ; unable to vote at Bucking-
ham's election to the chancellorship,
57 ; 58 ; supported Batchcroft's
election to mastership of Caius, 69,
n. 2 ; reports the portent of the
' Book Fish ' to Ussher, 71 ; letter
from, to same, 86, n. 1 ; 88 ; de-
scribes the state of the university
during the plague of 1630, 102 ; diffi-
culties of his position in 1634 de-
scribed by himself, 113-4; 142 ; 148;
a contributor to the Irenodia, 220,
n. 2 ; 247 ; death of, in St John's
College, 252-3 ; further endowment
of his chair, for his personal en-
couragement, 255 ; see also Vol. n
Ward, Seth., f. of Sidney, votes a loan
from the college to the King, 230,
n. 4; attends his master, both in St
John's and in Sidney until his death,
252 ; joins in the compilation of the
Joint Disquisitions, 287, n. 3 ; his
ejection from the college, 313-4 ; his
career at Oxford, as Savilian pro-
fessor, 314-5 ; his life at Wadham,
as the friend of Wilkins, 315-7 ; his
friendship with Jo. Greaves, 317;
367 ; position of at Oxford in 1653,
460; exposure of the blunders of Jo.
Webster, by, 463-4 ; reply of, to Wil-
kins's letter, 464 ; his detailed criti-
cism of the Examen, 464-5 ; 467, n. 3 ;
his criticism of Hobbes,468 ; circum-
stances under which the Vindiciae
Academiarum appeared, 469 ; 481 ;
his election as principal of Jesus
College, Oxford, quashed by the
Visitors, 507 ; his election to the
presidency of Trinity College, Oxford,
546 ; his success as an administrator,
547; see also Webster, Jo.
Ware, Herts., Chas. Chauncy for some
time minister at, 186
Warner, Sam., member for Cambridge-
shire, in 1653, 471, n. 2
Warner, Tho., fanatic member for the
Town in 1653, 471, n. 2
Warner, Walt., of Oxford, mathema-
tician, whose MSS. were used by
Hobbes, 468 and n. 1
Warr, Dr, of Trinity, one of those
whom John Williams had aided,
39
Warre(?), Mr, f. of Peterhouse, ejected
in 1644, 282
Warren, Wm., f. of Trinity Hall and
minister of St Edward's Church in
18th century, collector of materials
relating to history of the college,
295, n. 2
Warwick, countess of, presents Edw.
Rainbowe to scholarship at Magda-
lene, 306
Warwick, earl of, see Dudley, Eobt.
Wase, Chris., scholar of King's, 298,
n. 2; ejected f. of, 379
Watson, Ri., master of Perse School,
ejected f. of Caius, 293 ; his dispu-
tatious spirit, ib.
Watts, Sir Jo., a son of recommended
by lord Holland for a fellowship at
St John's, 99, n. 3
Watts, Thos., founder of Greek scholar-
ship at Pembroke College, 291
Webster, Jo., ' Hyphastes,' advises
closer attention to medicine, 457;
his Academiarum Examen, 458 ; chief
points in his argument, 458-9 ;
deprecates disputations in Latin,
459 ; deplores neglect of mathemati-
cal studies, ib. ; animadverts upon
the general supineness of the profes-
sors, ib. ; praises Harvey, Gilbert
and Descartes, ib. ; also Brinsley
and Oughtred, ib. ; Ward, in his
Vindiciae, compares him to Don
Quixote, and shews that his Aristotle
is all taken from Gassendi, 465-7 ;
he is mistaken by John Hall, for
Webster, the dramatist, ib. ; he de-
precates the neglect of the study of
Astrology, ib.
Weedon, Tho., f. of Pembroke College,
ejected in 1664, re-instated at the
Restoration, 291
Weigel, Valentine, his writings ordered
to be burnt throughout Saxony, 477 ;
his teaching inimical to the univer-
sities as being endowed institutions,
478-9; his theories virtually identical
with communism, 480
Weld, Tho., of Trinity, 182 ; along
with Hugh Peters pleads the cause
of the New England colonists in
London, 198 ; himself forwards con-
tributions for the support of Harvard
College, 199
Wells, Ri., f. of Emmanuel, sequestra-
tion of his goods, 313
Wells, Wm., f. of Queens', ejection of,
as refuser of the Covenant, 299
Wemes (or Welmes), Ludovicus, the
sole supporter of Buckingham in
Queens' College, 58 and n. 2
Wendelin, Mark, rector of the gymna-
sium at Anhalt, his summary of
Christian Theology, 478 and n. 1
Wendy, Tho., election of, to represent
INDEX.
739
Cambridgeshire in the Convention
Parliament, 551
Wenman, lord, the host of Charles
Scarborough, 315, 367
West, Nich., one of the members of
the Mass. Company who assembled
at Cambridge, 170, n. 3
Westcott, F., bp. of Durham, quoted,
595 ; criticism of Whichcote by,
595-6
Westley, Jo., rebuilds the west range
of Clare College, 243
Westminster Abbey, interment of
Dorislaus in, 363 ; of Ei. Perrin-
chief, 385 ; of Dr Feme, 582
Westminster Assembly, New England
pastors invited to join, 199 ; Cam-
bridge divines summoned to attend,
247; 302, n.l; 305; S.E.Gardiner's
estimate of, criticized, 306, n. 1 ;
Knell's attack upon, 354 and n. 3 ;
objections taken to quotations in
Latin, Greek or Hebrew by members
of, 388
Westminster Confession, defended by
Tuckney, 529
Westminster, deanery of, succession of
John Williams to, 12 ; 306
Westminster School, Edw. Eainbowe
a scholar at, 306 ; Peter Samways,
385, n. 8
Westmorland, county of, the two Bar-
wicks natives of, 232
Westphalia, Peace of, admits all Pro-
testants in Germany to equal religious
rights, 357
WTharton, Edw., ordination of, as priest,
in 1659, 543, n. 5
Wheelock, Abr., f. of Clare and univer-
sity librarian, 2, n. 2 ; his narrow
circumstances, 95 and n. 3 ; his
ability as librarian, 96 ; his appoint-
ment as professor of Arabic, ib. ;
edits a Persian version of the Gospels,
ib. ; his work in connexion with
* Walton's Polyglot, 97 and n. 1, and
492; is consulted by Sir H. Spelman
with respect to the foundation of a
lectureship in Anglo-Saxon, 97 ; is
himself appointed first lecturer, 98;
a supporter of Spelman in his candi-
dature for the representation of the
university, 98, n. 1 ; a contributor
to the Irenodia, 220, n. 2 ; a Syndic
to put in order the muniments of the
university, 338 ; his experiences as
university librarian, 492; death of,
ib.
Wheelwright, Jo., of Sidney College,
an exile to Mass., 184-5
Whichcote, Benj., provost of King's
College, his lengthened tenure of the
lectureship at Trinity Church, 101-2 ;
helps to redeem the sequestered
property of George Heath, 296 ; his
earlier career, ib. to 297 ; letter of
Holdsworth to, surrendering his
furniture and part of his library, 312
and n. 2 ; 318 ; a Syndic to rearrange
the muniments of the university,
338 ; retains his provostship in 1650,
378 ; unsuccessful in his candidature
for the Gresham professorship, 380 ;
a contributor to the Luctus et Gratu-
latio, 517, 522, n. 4 ; 529, n. 4 ; 530,
531 ; his niece married to Worthiug-
ton, 531 ; disclaims all pretence to
being a well-read man, 532 ; his
influence chiefly that of the preacher,
ib. ; his Sunday afternoon lectures,
ib. and 590 ; gives his sanction to
the scheme of Poole's Model, 537 ;
circumstances under which he vacates
the provostship, 567-9 : Charles
issues a mandate for the election of
Dr Fleetwood, but too late for a
statutable election, 568 ; arguments
adduced by Whichcote in defence of
his own election, ib. ; representations
in his favour advanced by one of the
seniority,568-9 ; absents himself from
his Lodge, where Fleetwood is refused
admission, 569 ; ultimately retires
from Cambridge on being elected to
a living in Blackfriars, 570 and n. 2 :
probably acquainted with John
Sherman, 589 ; chief aim of his
Trinity Church lectures, ib. ; rightlv
to be regarded as the Socrates
of the Cambridge Platonists, ib. ;
Tuckney's first letter to, 591 ; his
Aphorisms quoted, 592 and n. 3 ; he
maintains it to be the chief function
of a university to discover Truth,
593 ; his conception of the One
Church criticized by Westcott, 595 ;
his views on the subject further
illustrated from his Apkoritm$, ib. ;
his acquaintance with the original
text of Plotinus open to question,
596 ; his church in Blackfriars burnt
down, 622 ; aided John Smith when
at Emmanuel, 631 and n. 2 ; be-
friended Culverwel, 637; 641; see
also Tucknry, Whichcote
Whitaker, Wm., 33 ; see also Vol.
ir
White Bear Inn, Commission of 1644
sits at, 275 and n. 3
White, Francis, of Caius, bishop of
740
INDEX.
Carlisle, Norwich and Ely, a partisan
of Laud, 31, n. 1; 45; 118
Whitelock, Bulstrode, friend of earl of
Holland, 360 ; one of the Commis-
sion appointed to visit Oxford in
1654, 486 ; Morland accompanies,
on his mission to the queen of
Sweden, 510
Whitfield, Will., ejected f. of Jesus
College in 1650, 381 and n. 2
Whitgift, Jo., archbp. of Canterbury,
50 ; alleged to have attached no
importance to the consecration of a
college chapel, 130, n. 2
Whiting, Sam., of Emmanuel, a friend
of Tuckney, 185 and n. 1
Widdrington, Ka., f. of Christ's, Public
Orator, Regius professor of Greek,
escapes ejection in 1644, 302 ; state-
ment of, respecting ' the Mores,'
303, n. 1 ; accepts the Engayement,
383 and n. 2 ; succeeds to the Orator-
ship through Cromwell's influence,
501, n. 2 ; a contributor to the
Liictiis et Gratulatio, 518 and n. 2 ;
his assiduity as a tutor, 534 ; Pepys
calls upon, 549 ; entertains Pepys at
Christ's, 551 and n. 1 ; especially
obnoxious to Cudworth, 616 ; is
presented by Worthington with a
copy of his edition of Mede's Works,
617 ; intrigues against the authorities
of Christ's on their refusal to elect a
son of lord Fanshawe to a fellowship,
629
Widdrington, Sir Tho., brother of
Ealph, serjeant for the Common-
wealth, 383 ; a benefactor to Christ's
College, 416 ; Speaker of the House
of Commons, 501, n. 2
Wigan, exclusive right to occupy the
'parson's chancel' at, claimed by
Charles Hotham, 418
Wilding, Tho., f. of Christ's, ejection
and sequestration of goods of, in
1644, 302, 303
Wilford, Francis, scholar of Trinity
and master of Corpus, vice-chancellor
at the time of the appearance of the
Plague in 1665, 619 ; precautions
which, in concert with the other
Heads, he adopts against same, ib.,
621; his promotion to the deanery
of Ely, 628, n. 6; 629
Wilkins, Jo., warden of Wadham,
master of Trinity and bp. of Ches-
ter, marries Cromwell's sister, suc-
cessful rule of, at Wadham College,
315; his friendship with Seth Ward,
ib.; their joint influence in the col-
lege, ib. and 316; his reply to Web-
ster, in the Vindiciae Academiurum,
460; his description of the author
and criticism of the Examen, 461-2 ;
letter from, to Ward, and reply of
the latter, 460, 464; 467 and n. 3;
481 ; election of, to mastership of
Trinity College, Cambridge, 546 ;
regulation respecting examinations
in the college drawn up during his
mastership, 547; his general popu-
larity, 579-80; his services in con-
nexion with the Eoyal Society, ib.;
circumstances under which he re-
tires from the mastership, ib.
Wilkinson, Rev. J. Frome-, letter from,
253, n. 3
Wilkinson, Hen., tutor of Magdalen
Hall, description of, by Anthony
Wood, 348
Wilkinson, Jo., principal of Magdalen
Hall, description of, by Anthony
Wood, 347-8
Wilkinson, Jo., jun., of Oxford,
348
Willet, Andr., f. of Christ's, author of
Synopsis Papismi, 253, n. 3
William and Mary College, Virginia,
foundation of, 153
Williams, Jo., f. of St John's, archbp.
of York and Lord Keeper, 4; is sent
by the Heads to king James at Green-
wich respecting the election to the
chancellorship of the university, 7 ;
early career of, 11-12, n. 1 ; his re-
lations with Buckingham, 13-14 ;
advice tendered by him to the duke,
14; his services to the university
contrasted with those of Joseph
Mede, 14-15; his dismissal from
the lord keepership, 35 ; he is re-
quired to appoint a deputy at the
coronation, 36 ; his letter to Buck-
ingham, 37; his appeal to Charles,
ib.; his fortitude in his disgrace, 38 ;_
his life at Buckden, ib.; relations of,
with Valentine Gary, 40 ; his muni-
ficence to St John's College, 41-2 ;
his benefactions to the college
library, and visit to the new build-
ing, 41 and n. 5 and 42; advocates
Davenant's promotion to the see of
Salisbury, 49 ; supports Buckingham
in the election to the chancellorship,
58, n. 1; Bacon appoints him his exe-
cutor, 65 ; his efforts to procure for
Cambridge the exclusive benefit of
Bacon's bequest to the two univer-
sities, 65-6 ; his merits as an adviser
of the Crown contrasted with those
INDEX.
741
of Laud, 80; obtains for Owen
Gwynue, his cousin, the archdea-
conry of Huntingdon, 118; grounds
on which he opposes the visitation
of his diocese by Laud, 123 ; un-
favorable report of the diocese sent
in to Laud, 124; Williams's argu-
ments the same as those which the
university used in resisting the arch-
bishop's proposal to visit the acade-
mic body, 130; 143, n. 4; favour with
which he regarded John Cotton, 180;
supports the claims of the Heads to
be admitted to magisterial functions,
211; Holdsworth's letter with refer-
ence to Williams's benefaction to the
St John's College library ordered by
the Commons to be made a subject
of enquiry, 248 and n. 2 ; ordains
Whichcote deacon and priest on the
same day, 296 ; 304 ; guided the
studies of Rainbowe at Peterborough,
306; promotes Thorndike to a stall
in Lincoln Cathedral, 309
Williams, Roger, B.A. of Pembroke
College, 176, n. 4; required by John
Cotton to leave Mass., 189 and n. 6 ;
his intolerance in relation to the
Church of England, 190; repudiates
learning as essential to the under-
standing of Scripture, 191; his theory
hostile to the universities, ib. ; his
Hireling Ministry quoted, ib., n. 1 ;
his publication of same in London,
447 and n. 1 ; he predicts the fall of
the universities, ib. ; his Bloody
Tenent burnt bv the hangman, 421;
472, n. 1
Williamson, C., of Trinity, found a
patron in John Williams, 39
Williamson, Jos., royal librarian, in-
tervenes on behalf of Cudworth,
629
Willis, Nath., a ' dry chorister ' of
Trinity, 133, n. 2
Willis, Sir Tho., returned as member
for the Town in the Convention
Parliament, 551
Wilson, Dr, chaplain to Montaigne,
bp. of London, bearer of a letter
advising the election of Bucking-
ham, 53
Wilson, Jo., f. of Peterhouse, ejection
of, as refuser of the Covenant, in
1645, 283
Wilson, Jo., of Christ's College, deals
severely with the Quakers in Mass.,
176; 179 and n. 2
Wilson, Jo., a disputant at Harvard,
196
Winchester House, London, the bishops
assemble at, to determine with re-
spect to Montagu's Appello, 44
Winslow, Edw., governor of Plymouth
colony, a disciple of John Robinson
at Leyden, 165 ; denies that the New
England plantations had their origin
in schism, 166 and n. 1 ; held the
Indians to be identical with the lost
Tribes, 201-2
Winthrop family, the correspondence
of, 173-4
Winthrop, Adam, head of the family,
of Trinity College, 171-2; marriage
of his daughter with Thomas Mild-
may, 172
Winthrop, Adam, jun., auditor at St
John's and Trinity, 172 ; marries a
sister of Dr Still (q.v.),ib. ; continued
intimacy between the two families,
ib., n. 2
Winthrop, Forth, of Emm., second son
of John Winthrop, jun., 173
Winthrop, John, of Trinity, third son
of Adam Winthrop, jun., 172; his
marriage with Mary Forth, 173
Winthrop, Jo., jun., of Trinity Col-
lege, Dublin, 173
Winthrop, Honb'° Robt., receives an
honorary degree at Cambridge, 172,
n. 2
Witchcraft, prevalence in Scotland of
the belief in, 450; held by Henry
More, 654
Wombwell, Tho. , ejected f . of St John's
in 1650, 384
Wood, Ant., on the results that fol-
lowed upon the installation of the
Commons in the divinity school at
Oxford, 34; on the refusal of the
university of Oxford, to lend Laud
the originals of its Privileges, 128;
quoted, 230; 260; 261; 288; on the
spirit in which the Judgement of
the University was received by the
Puritan party, 343 ; his descriptions
of eminent members of Oxford uni-
versity, 347-8; quoted, 469; 484,
n. 2; 547; 586
Woodbridge, Benj., a disputant at
Harvard, 196
Woodcock, Tho., sanctions the scheme
of Poole's Model, 537, n. 1
Worcester, battle of, dissipation of the
Royalists' hopes by, 376
Worcester, deanery of, Holdsworth
nominated to, 121; 257
Wordsworth, Canon Christ., his Coro-
nation of Charles i quoted, 36,
n. 5
742
INDEX.
J
Worthington, Jo., master of Jesus
College, Life of Mede by, 16, n. 1 ;
same, quoted, 139 ; election of, to
fellowship at Emmanuel, 213-4 ;
his Diary quoted, 267 ; a friend of
Nath. Ingelo, 300; a Syndic to
re-arrange the Registry, 338; suc-
ceeds to mastership of Jesus College,
381 ; his disclaimer of all desire for
the appointment, 382; his modest
appeal for payment of his augmen-
tation, 502, n.3; statement respect-
ing his residence in college, ib. ; a
contributor to the Luctus et Gratu-
latio, 518; his activity compared
with that of Whicbcote, 531; his
edition of the Works of Mede, 532 ;
first known by his translation of
Thomas a Kempis, ib. ; his corre-
spondence with Hartlib, ib. ; Mat-
thew Poole one of his pupils, 536;
gives his sanction to the Model, 537 ;
Diary and Correspondence of, 572
and n. 2; 590; his removal to a
lectureship in London, 614, n. 3;
his relations with More and Cud-
worth, 614; acts as intermediary
between them, no alleged grievance
on the part of the latter, 614-7 ;
publishes his edition of Mede's
Works, 617-8; stays at his post in
London throughout the Plague, 618;
the Fire consumes his church of St
Benet Fink along with his house,
621 ; his distress alleviated by Henry
More, who presents him to the living
of Ingoldsby, 622; letters to, from
Seth Ward and More, 622-3 ; death
of his wife, 623 and n. 7; his soli-
tary life and description of his con-
dition, 624; suggests to More that
he should publish a manual of
natural philosophy to supplant Des-
cartes, ib.; his distress when More
decides to discontinue residing at
Grantham, 625 ; Sheldon obtains for
him the appointment to a lectureship
at Hackney, ib. ; his death and fun-
eral, 625-6 ; Tillotson's eulogium on
his character and career, 626; un-
diminished interest evinced by him
in the university to the end, ib. ;
design of Tho. Baker to write his
Life, ib.
Wotton, Sir Henry, a friend of Dr
Collins, 4 ; one of the first to de-
nounce formal disputations, 80, n.
3; a correspondent of Whichcote,
298
Wren, Matt., master of Peterhouse,
and bishop of Hereford, Norwich
and Ely, 54; a supporter of Buck-
ingham at the election to the chan-
cellorship, 56 ; opposed to the
election of Dr Batchcroft at Caius,
69, n. 2 and 364, n. 4; 85, n. 3; his
letter to Laud conveying his impres-
sions of the tendency of Dorislaus's
lectures, 86-8; supports Spelman's
desiprn of founding a lectureship in
Anglo-Saxon, 97; is succeeded at
Peterhouse by Cosin, 121 ; his in-
novations in the diocese of Norwich,
239 ; his committal to the Tower,
238-40 ; project for banishing him to
New England, 240, n. 1 ; his adorn-
ment of Little St Mary's Church,
284-5 and n. 2 ; 289; 444 and n. 5;
institutes, as Visitor, enquiry into
the expulsion of Cosin from Peter-
house, 564 ; his further administra-
tion of his diocese as bishop of
Norwich, 662-3; foreign artisans
compelled to quit the country, 663 ;
his proceedings as visitor of Peter-
house, ib. ; Boldero indebted to his
influence for his appointment to
mastership of Jesus, ib. and n. 5;
his rebuilding of the chapel of
Pembroke, 664 ; elaborateness of the
ceremonies at his funeral, 662 ;
tribute paid to his memory by Pear-
son on the occasion, 664 ; see also
Appendix (F)
Wright, Ezekiel, f. of Emm., deprived
of fellowship by the statute de Mora,
214; 215; Bancroft's tutor, 583 ; re-
ceives at his rectory at Thurcaston a
letter from Bancroft giving the im-
pressions of the latter on his return
to college in 1663, ib.
Wriothesley, Hen., 3rd earl of South-
ampton, of St John's Coll., made
governor of Virginia Company, 151
Wynne, Sir Jo., patron of John Wil-
liams, 7, n. 4 ; letter to, from same,
37, n. 3
Yarburgh, Edm., f. of Jesus College,
expelled as a refuser of the Engage-
ment, 381
Yardley, Sir Geo., governor of Vir-
ginia, John Pory secretary to, 151
Yates, Jo., f. of Emmanuel, a lecturer
at Ipswich, 30 ; proposes to account
for the spread of Arminianism, ib.
York, city of, petitions to be made a
university, 204; the northern coun-
ties combine in the petition, 206;
INDEX. 743
its claims particularized, ib. : two ' Smectynmuans,' ib. ; not a gradu-
colleges already existent, ib. ; pos- ate of either university, ib., n. 1;
session of a printer and a press, 319; ejection of, from mastership
207 in 1650, 381
York House, London, conference at in
1626, 46; 63
Young, Tho., f. of King's, master of Zanchy, Clement, f. of Magdalene,
Jesus College, his ejection in 1644 friend of Pepys, 550; name subse-
and sequestration of his goods, 298 ; quently spelt ' Sankey,' ib., n. 5
his installation in the mastership Zurich, city of, exiles at, during the
by Manchester, 302; one of the Marian persecution, 157
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