CHAPTER IX.

THE UNIVERSITY UNDER JAMES I.

[Sidenote: The University patronised by James I.]

The influence acquired by the University of Oxford, as a power in the State, under the Tudor dynasty, was fully maintained by it under the Stuarts. If it had played a humbler part in the earlier stages of the Reformation than in the intellectual movement of the Renaissance, and if for a while the Protestant episcopate had been mainly recruited from Cambridge, it was nevertheless destined to bear the brunt of those storms which, already gathering in the last years of Elizabeth, burst over Church and State in the first half of the seventeenth century. Before the accession of James I., while Church-government had been firmly settled on an Episcopalian basis, there was room for much latitude of opinion within the National Church, and the religious sentiment of the English people was strongly Puritan. This dualism was faithfully reflected in the University, where the Act of Uniformity was strictly enforced, and there was a growing preponderance of academical authority on the side of the High Church party, yet several Regius Professors of Divinity in succession were of the Puritan school, and a deep undercurrent of Puritanism manifested itself again and again among the more earnest college tutors and students. The vigorous protest of the University against the famous Millenary petition was dictated not so much by distrust of its Puritan authorship and tone, as by hostility to its proposals for reducing the value of impropriations in the hands of colleges. Little as he understood the English nation, James I. was not slow to appreciate the advantage of gaining a hold upon the Universities, hastened to show a personal interest in them, and expressed a wish to be consulted about all academical affairs of importance. In the very year of his accession, he granted letters patent to both Universities, commanding each of them to choose two grave and learned men, professing the civil law, to serve as burgesses in the House of Commons. Though he was prevented by the plague from visiting Oxford in that year, he came to Woodstock in the autumn and received the University authorities. Two years later, in 1605, he entered Oxford on horseback, surrounded by an imposing cavalcade of nobles and courtiers, to be received, like Elizabeth, with costly banquets and pompous disputations, to which, on this occasion, was added a grand musical service in the cathedral. The pedantic self-complacency of James enabled him to enjoy in the highest degree all the frivolous solemnities of this academic ceremonial, of which a full account has been preserved in the ‘Rex Platonicus’ of the Public Orator, Sir Isaac Wake. It is remarkable that Anthony Wood dates the progress of luxury, with drinking in taverns and other disorders, from the festivities lavished on this visit. The king gave a further proof of his confidence in Oxford, by entering his son Prince Henry, a youth of great promise, who died prematurely in 1612, as a student at Magdalen College.

[Sidenote: James I.’s attitude towards the University and the Church]

Whatever may be thought of James I.’s character, it is certain that he was animated by a generous partiality for the Universities, not only as bulwarks of his throne but as seats of learning. It is equally certain that he entered upon his reign with serious and practical intentions of Church reform. Accordingly, in 1603, he addressed letters to the Chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge, pointing out the evils and abuses resulting from the wholesale diversion of Church revenues, by means of impropriation, to private aggrandisement. He declared himself ready to sacrifice all the patronage which had thus devolved upon the Crown, and called upon the colleges to imitate his example by re-endowing their benefices with tithes for the support of efficient ministers. He was dissuaded from carrying out his purpose by the remonstrances of Archbishop Whitgift and others, but in 1606, after the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, the Universities received a valuable gift in the right of presenting to all benefices in the hands of Roman Catholic patrons, the southern counties being assigned to Oxford, the northern to Cambridge. They were also formally exempted from liability to subsidies on three separate occasions. In such proofs of partiality for the Universities James was but following out the policy of Elizabeth, who had clearly grasped the expediency of controlling and conciliating the great seminaries in which the national clergy were educated. At first his native Calvinism inclined him to favour the Puritans, whose influence in the University had been greatly strengthened by the example and teaching of the admirable Laurence Humphrey, President of Magdalen, and Regius Professor of Divinity, who died in 1589. But he gradually discovered the natural affinity between Arminian theories of Church authority and his own theories of kingcraft, as well as the preponderance of the former in the clerical order, and decisively cast in his lot with the High Church party. In the grand struggle between the ecclesiastical courts and the common law judges, the Universities with the great body of the clergy supported the King and the archbishop in sustaining the authority of the former. They were again associated with the King when he conferred a lasting benefit on the English Church and nation by initiating the Authorised Version of the Bible. In this great work the two Universities were represented almost equally, and among the Oxford scholars engaged in it we find seven Heads of colleges and four other divines, who afterwards became bishops. There is some reason, however, to believe that he cherished a preference for the sister University, and it is a somewhat remarkable fact that George Carleton, afterward bishop of Chichester, was the only Oxford man among the five academical divines selected by him to represent England at the Synod of Dort.

[Sidenote: Rise and influence of Laud]

In the year 1603, we first hear of ‘Mr. William Laud, B.D. of St. John’s College,’ as proctor; in 1606 he again comes under notice, as preaching in St. Mary’s Church, and ‘letting fall divers passages savouring of popery,’ which brought him under the censure of the vice-chancellor. Thenceforth he became a formidable power, and ultimately the ruling spirit in the University, the discipline of which he persistently laboured to reform. The eighteen years which elapsed between his proctorship and his retirement from the presidency of St. John’s, in 1621, were crowded with events memorable in the history of the English Church. The failure of the Hampton Court Conference, in 1604, drove the Puritan party, at last, into active opposition. The canons enacted in the Convocation of the same year compelled the clergy to subscribe the Three Articles which the Parliament of 1571 had expressly refused to impose upon them; and the immediate consequence was the deprivation of three hundred clergymen. In 1606, the severity of the laws against Popish recusants was increased, and the arbitrary jurisdiction of the High Commission was constantly extended until it was openly challenged by the common law judges. The responsibility of supporting the king in this aggression on the Constitution rests, in part, on Abbot, formerly Master of University College, whom the Calvinistic party at Oxford had regarded as their protector against Laud and his associates, but who, after succeeding Bancroft as archbishop in 1610, strained the powers of the High Commission almost as far as Bancroft himself. There was no such inconsistency in Laud, who, from the first, deliberately set himself to undo the work of Leicester as Chancellor, and Humphrey as professor of divinity at Oxford. An appeal was lodged against him by the opposite party when he was elected President of St. John’s in 1611, but the election was confirmed. It was he who procured the publication, in 1616, of a stringent order from the king, by the advice of the clergy in convention, for the subscription of the Three Articles in the Thirty-sixth Canon by every candidate for a degree, for strict attendance on University sermons, and for the enforcement of other safeguards against heterodoxy. This was not the first time that the Convocation of the clergy had presumed to meddle with the government of the University, for another canon, passed in 1604, had required surplices to be worn in college chapels. But, of course, such decrees could only be enforced by the action of the Crown, the validity of whose jurisdiction over the Universities was, in itself, somewhat doubtful. In this case, the authority of the Chancellor, the Earl of Pembroke, was employed to obtain compliance with the order which, though resented by many, was obeyed. In 1622, the University Convocation gave a further proof of obsequious loyalty, not only by publicly burning the works of Paræus, in deference to a mandate of the Privy Council, but also by passing a declaratory resolution absolutely condemning resistance to a reigning sovereign, offensive or defensive, upon any pretext whatever. This solemn affirmation of the doctrine of passive obedience was the more significant and ignoble, because it came but a few months after the Commons had recorded a solemn protest against the violation of their liberties, and the king had torn it out of their Journal with his own hand. The progress of Arminianism in the Church and University kept pace with that of personal government in the State. It was in 1622 that Coke, Pym, Selden, and others were imprisoned for disputing the royal prerogative, and from this year Anthony Wood dates ‘such an alteration in the University, that the name of Calvin (which had carried all before it) began to lessen by degrees.’ In the great crisis of the next reign it was found that Oxford Puritanism was by no means extinct, but the reactionary creed of Laud had almost exclusive possession of the University pulpit, and soon become dominant. This new faith, half political, half theological, and affirming at once the divine right of kings and the divine right of bishops, found partial expression in James’s own maxim—‘No bishop, no king.’ Absolutism allied itself naturally with the doctrinal system of Arminianism; the creed of Laud, embraced long ago by the fatuous King and the Court, had already been adopted deliberately by Prince Charles; it was now to become the official creed of Oxford for nearly two generations.

[Sidenote: Completion of the ‘Schools,’ and foundation of Wadham and Pembroke Colleges]

During the whole reign of James I. the external condition of the University was prosperous, and it received important accessions, both in buildings and endowments. On March 30, 1619, the day following the burial of Sir Thomas Bodley in Merton College Chapel, the first stone of the New Schools, as they were then called, was laid by his coadjutor, Sir John Bennett. Two colleges, Wadham and Pembroke, owe their origin to the same period. The former was founded in 1610 by Dorothea, widow of Nicholas Wadham, under a royal licence; the latter was founded in 1624 by James I. himself, but endowed at the cost and charges of Thomas Tesdale and Richard Wightwick. No less than six professorships were instituted during the same period. The first two of these—the professorships of geometry and astronomy—bear the name of their founder, Sir Henry Savile, warden of Merton College, who endowed them in 1619. In the quaint language of Anthony Wood: ‘Beholding the Mathematick Studies to be neglected by the generality of men, ’twas now his desire to recover them, least they should utterly sink into oblivion.’ These benefactions, and the growing wealth of colleges, helped to strengthen the University in the esteem of the upper classes, upon which it now depended for its supply of students. According to a census taken in 1611, the number of residents was 2,420, and it continued to increase until the outbreak of the Civil War.