CHAPTER XJACOBITE OXFORD—AND AFTER

“The rising ground to the north was protected by many strong bulwarks flanking one another. Round about the line, both upon the bulwarks and the curtain, was strongly set with storm poles. Outside the ditch was a strong palisade beyond which were many pits dug so that a single footman could not without difficulty approach to the trench. Within the city were 5000 foot, and the place was well supplied withstores. All this strength being apprehended and considered by Sir Thomas Fairfax, he concluded that this was no place to be taken at a running pull, but likely rather to prove a business of time, hazard and industry.”

Accordingly he proceeded to make a fortified camp on Headington Hill, to make a bridge over the Cherwell near Marston, and establish a post between the Cherwell and Isis on the north for the main body of his troops. Lines were drawn from Headington to S. Bartholomew’s common road, and from thence to Campus pits. A memento of the siege, a cannon shot which is said to have struck the gateway tower of S. John’s College, is preserved in the library of that college.

Little progress, however, had been made with the siege, though the defence was for a lost cause, when Charles, who had been handed over by the Scots to a Committee of the House, sent orders to the governor to make conditions and surrender the place to Fairfax.

Honourable terms were granted. Fairfax had expressed his earnest desire to preserve a place “so famous for learning from ruin.” His first act, for he was a scholar as well as a soldier, was to protect the Bodleian. A clause to the effect that all churches, colleges and schools should be preserved from harm was inserted in the Articles of Surrender. The liberties and privileges of the city and the University were guaranteed, and on 24th June the garrison, some three thousand strong, marched out in drenching rain over Magdalen Bridge, colours flying and drums beating, between files of Roundhead infantry.

So ended the Great Rebellion. And the history of it remained to be written by Edward Hyde, the Earl of Clarendon, who came to the task equipped with a wisdom that is born of a large experience of men and affairs. A moderate but faithful adherent of the Royalist cause, he could say of himself that he wrote of events “quorum pars magna fui.” He had been one of the King’s mosttrusted advisers at Oxford. There he lived in All Souls’ College, and the King wished to make him Secretary of State. “I must make Ned Hyde Secretary of State, for the truth is I can trust nobody else,” wrote the harassed monarch to his Queen. In his great history, so lively yet dignified in style, so moderate in tone and penetrating in its portrayal of character, he built for himself a monument more durable than brass. A monument not less noble has been raised for him in Oxford out of the proceeds of that very book. For the copyright of the history was presented to the University by his son, and partly out of the funds thus arising the handsome building north-east of the Sheldonian Theatre was erected, from designs by Sir John Vanbrugh (1713). Here the University Press was transferred from the Sheldonian Theatre, where it had found its first permanent and official home. The “Clarendon” Press was removed in 1830 to the present building in Walton Street, when it had outgrown the accommodation of the Clarendon building.

Like Sir Harry Vane, Clarendon had been educated at Magdalen Hall. The chair in which he wrote his history is preserved at the Bodleian, and there too may be seen many of the notes which his royal master used to throw him across the table at a Council meeting.

There had been another inhabitant of Oxford in these stirring days much affected by these events, a youth endowed with unbounded antiquarian enthusiasm and an excellent gift of observation. This “chiel amang them taking notes” was Anthony Wood, to whose work every writer on Oxford owes a debt unpayable. Born in the Portionists’ Hall, the old house opposite Merton and next door to that fine old house, Beam Hall, where, he says, the first University press was established, Wood was carried at the age of four to see the entry of Charles and Rupert, and was a Royalist ever after. Educated first at a small Grammar School near S. Peter le Bailey and then at New College School, he became familiar

The Cloisters New CollegeThe Cloisters New College

with the aspect of old Oxford as it was before the changes wrought by the siege, and he was able to transcribe into his notebooks many old inscriptions and memorials just before a period of wanton destruction. When the war broke out there was much ado to prevent his eldest brother, a student at Christ Church, from donning the armour with which his father decked out the manservant. The New College boys grew soldier-struck as they gazed from their school in the cloister upon the train-bands drilling in the quadrangle. They were presently turned out of their school to make room for the munitions of war.

But I have no space to write of the vicissitudes of “A. W.’s” life; of the fate which befell his biographies of Oxford writers; of his quarrels with Dean Fell, that staunch Royalist and stern disciplinarian of whom every child learns to lisp in numbers:

“I do not like thee, Dr Fell;The reason why I cannot tell.But only this I know full well,I do not like thee, Dr Fell.”

The first step taken for the “reformation” of Oxford was a Parliamentary order (July 1646) suspending elections in the University and colleges, and forbidding the granting or renewing of leases. The University petitioned Fairfax to obtain the recall of this order, on the ground that it was contrary to the Articles of Surrender. The prohibition was not enforced. But the condition of the University was deplorable. The quadrangles were empty, the courts overgrown with grass. Scholars ceased to come up, and those who were in residence were utterly demoralised by the war. Before the changes and chances of war and religion, learning shrank in dismay and discipline disappeared.

Six Presbyterian preachers were now sent down to supersede the Royalist preachers, to beat the pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, and convince the University. All they succeeded in doing was to rouse the Independentsamong the garrison who had already been practising in the schools and lecture-rooms. The Military Saints now set themselves, “with wry mouths, squint eyes, screwed faces, antic behaviours, squeaking voices and puling tones,” to out-preach the proselytising Presbyterians. Royalist Oxford rocked with laughter and congratulated itself prematurely that the revolution had begun to devour its own children.

But a commission was appointed to visit the University in May 1647. Sir Nathaniel Brent, Warden of Merton, was chairman, and Prynne a member. Their proceedings were delayed by an absurd trick. The University had been summoned to appear before them in the Schools between nine and eleven. But the preliminary sermon in S. Mary’s was of such length that eleven had struck and the University had dispersed before the commissioners could get to work. The University appointed a delegacy to act on its behalf, which drew up a very able and moderate series of reasons for not submitting to the tests that were to be proposed. The authority of the Visitors was challenged. Time was thus gained, and the struggle that was going on between the Presbyterians and the Independents paralysed the Visitors. A committee of the Lords and Commons, however, presently armed them with fresh powers. After three hours of preliminary prayer, “a way” says Wood, “by which they were wont to commence their actions for all sorts of wickednesses,” they proceeded to inquire “into the behaviour of all Governors, Professors, Officers and members.” Dr Fell and the majority of the University offered a firm resistance.

Fell was seized and imprisoned. The action of the Visitors, however, was still paralysed by the lack of constitutional authority. They were once more strengthened by the London Committee. The business of deprivation began. Sentence was passed upon half a dozen Heads of Houses, “but not a man stirred from his place.” The University, in fact, continued to ignore the proceedings of the Visitors. Even after the arrival of the Chancellor, Lord Pembroke,and of Fairfax’s troops, whom the Visitors were empowered to use, the expelled Heads refused to leave their colleges. Mrs Fell held the deanery of Christ Church valiantly. When the Chancellor, with some soldiers, appeared there and desired Mrs Fell to quit her quarters, “she refused that kind proposal, had very ill language given to her by him, and then she was carried into the quadrangle in a chair by soldiers,” and her children on boards. The buttery book was then sent for and Fell’s name dashed out. Passive resistance of this kind and the use of every legal device to delay the action of the Visitors were adopted everywhere.

The University fought every inch of the ground, standing firmly on the vantage ground of constitutional right. But the gown usually has to yield to arms. New Heads were appointed, new M.A.’s created, and the Visitors proceeded to purge the colleges. Every fellow, student and servant was asked, “Do you submit to the authority of Parliament in this present Visitation?” Those who did not submit were turned out. Presently the Negative Oath was tendered, and subscription to “the Engagement” was required. Rather than submit to these tests over four hundred fellows preferred to be ejected. Puritans, men for the most part of real learning and piety, were substituted, though those who suffered described “the new plantation of saints” as an illiterate rabble, “swept up from the plough-tail and scraped out of Cambridge.”

At New College a very large proportion of the fellows were expelled: fifty at the lowest computation. The inquisition even extended its investigations to the college servants. The organist, sexton, under-butler, manciple, porter, groom and basket bearer were all outed, when they could not in conscience submit. At Merton Wood refused to answer, but by the goodwill of the warden and Arch Visitor, a friend of his mother, “A. W. was connived at and kept in his place, otherwise he had infallibly gone to the pot.”

The Visitors acted, on the whole, in the spirit of genuine reformers. Apart from imposing a system of Puritan morals, theyworked with a sincere desire to make the colleges fruitful nurseries of learning. What they did, and still more what they wished to do, with regard to the discipline of the place was on the right lines of educational advance.

In July an attempt was made to recapture the guard and magazine in New College. The conspiracy was revealed by a boozing and boastful conspirator. Two years later a mutiny of the garrison, in protest against excise, tithes and lawyers, was checked by the vigilance of Colonel Ingoldsby, the governor.

Fairfax and Cromwell visited Oxford to see how the reformation was progressing (17th May 1649), and lodged at All Souls’. They dined at Magdalen, where they had “good cheer and bad speeches, and afterwards played at bowls in the College Green.” They both received a D.C.L. degree, and Cromwell assured the University that he meant to encourage learning. Next year he became Chancellor, and besides presenting some MSS. he resisted the proposal to reduce the academical endowments which Milton supported.

Learning and discipline were never popular; long sermons, compulsory attendance at innumerable religious exercises, and catechisms in the tutors’ rooms were not more so. As the sands of the Commonwealth ran out the approaching Restoration found a welcome at Oxford. It was a sign of the times that, when Richard Cromwell was proclaimed Protector, the mayor and the troopers were pelted with turnip-tops by the scholars in front of S. Mary’s. Without waiting for a formal proclamation of the new order, men reverted to it by a kind of spontaneous instinct. Six weeks or more before the Restoration, a bold man read the Common Prayer in S. Mary Magdalen Church in surplice and hood, and that church was always “full of young people purposely to hear and see the novelty.”

At the news of the Restoration all England “went mad with joy”; at Oxford the rejoicing “lasted till the morning.” And whenCoronation Day came, “Conduit ran a hogshead of wine.” Common Prayer was restored and surplices; Puritan preaching went out of fashion; the organs of Magdalen, New College and Christ Church sounded once more; plays were performed and the Solemn League and Covenant was burnt.

Yet the prejudice against surplice and organ was deep. Many still denounced organ-music as the whining of pigs. At Magdalen men clad in surplices, with hands and faces blackened, paraded the cloisters at twilight to encourage the story that Satan himself had appeared and adopted the surplice. Filthy insults and ribald abuse were heaped upon the innocent garment.

A Royal Commission visited the University to eject the intruders and restore those whom Parliament had expelled. The Presbyterians took the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy, and were allowed to hold their places unless some ejected fellow or scholar appeared to claim them. But at Lincoln, where the Independent faction was strong, several fellows were turned out, George Hitchcock among them. He defied the bedel who was sent to arrest him when he refused to go. With a drawn sword and a sported oak Hitchcock remained master of the situation until the arrival of the military who, undaunted, stormed the Independent’s castle and marched him off to jail.

Life at Oxford resolved itself at last to peace and quiet study.

“The tumult and the shouting dies,The Captains and the Kings depart”—

and the groves and quadrangles that had echoed with the clash of arms, the loud laugh of roystering Cavaliers, or the gentle rustle of sweeping trains, or the whining of a Puritan, now resounded with the noise of the bowling-green and tennis-court, or the chamber music of such scholarly enthusiasts as Anthony Wood with his fiddle, and Edmund Gregory with his bass viol.

With the Restoration a new kind of student came intoprominence. Very different from his mediæval brother was the new type of rich “young gentleman” so wittily satirised by Dr Earle, as one who came to Oxford to wear a gown and to say hereafter that he had been at the University. “His father sent him thither because he heard that there were the best fencing and dancing schools.... Of all things he endures not to be mistaken for a scholar.” For it was now the fashion for students to live like men of the world, to keep dogs and horses, to swash it in apparel, to wear long periwigs. They discussed public affairs and read the newsletters in the coffee-houses. For Canopus, the Cretan, had set the example of drinking coffee, and in 1651 Jacob the Jew opened a coffee-house at the Angel. Four years later Arthur Tillyard, “an apothecary and great Royalist, sold coffee publicly in his house against All Souls’ College. He was encouraged to do so,” says Wood, “by some royalists and by the company of ‘Vertuosi,’ chiefly All Souls’ men, amongst whom was numbered Christopher Wren.”

With the Restoration, too, the study of mere Divinity began to go out of fashion, and a humane interest in letters began to manifest itself. Plays, poems and drollery, the old-fashioned scholars complained, were in request. Science, too, suddenly became fashionable. Charles and the Duke of Buckingham took a keen interest in chemistry; Prince Rupert solaced his old age with the glass drops which are called after his name. At Oxford many scholars already had private laboratories. Robert Boyle and Peter Sthael had for some time been lecturing on chemistry at the Ram Inn (113 High Street) to the curious, John Locke included. The King now gave its title to the Royal Society, which had its origin in the inquiries of a little group of scientific students in London before the end of the Civil War. It was now divided into two by the removal of its foremost members, Dr Wilkins, Warden of Wadham, and Dr Wallis, Savilian Professor of Geometry, to Oxford. The Oxford branch of the

View from the Sheldonian Theatre.View from the Sheldonian Theatre.

society was strengthened by such men as Sir William Petty, the first of English economists, Dr Ward, the mathematician, Robert Boyle and Christopher Wren. In the lodgings of Wilkins or Petty they would meet and discuss the circulation of the blood or the shape of Saturn, the Copernican hypothesis, the improvement of telescopes or Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum—any subject, in fact, which did not lead them into the bogs of theology or politics.

“That miracle of a youth,” Dr Christopher Wren, was one of those deputed by the University (1667) to take a letter of thanks to Henry Howard, heir to the Duke of Norfolk, for his princely gift of the Arundel Marbles to the University. This gift the University owed to the kindly offices of John Evelyn, the diarist. The marbles were laid in the Proscholium till the Sheldonian Theatre was finished. Ingeniously designed by Wren to accommodate the University at the “Act” or “Encænia,” this theatre was consecrated by Archbishop Sheldon (1669), at whose cost it was erected. Sheldon was a warden of All Souls’, put out under the Commonwealth and afterwards restored, before being promoted to the Primacy.

Wren left many other marks of his genius upon Oxford. The chapel of B.N.C. is said to be from his design, and may be, for it reveals the struggle that was going on (1656) between the Oxford Gothic, as the beautiful fan-tracery of the ceiling and the windows bear witness, and the Italian style of the rest of the building. Wren migrated from Wadham to All Souls’, presenting on his departure a clock (now in the ante-chapel) to the college where he had been a fellow-commoner. In the college of which he, with Sydenham, was made a fellow under the Commonwealth, he made the great and accurate sun-dial, with its motto “Pereunt et Imputantur,” that adorns the back quadrangle. His pupil Hawksmoor it was who designed the twin towers of All Souls’ and the quadrangle at Queen’s, whilst Wren himself designed the chapel, which he reckoned one of his best works. At Trinity he gaveadvice to Dean Aldrich, made suggestions which were not taken, and actually designed the north wing of the garden quadrangle, one of the first Italian buildings in Oxford. At Christ Church he added, as we have seen, the octagonal cupola to Wolsey’s Tower. The buttresses in Exeter Garden which support the Bodleian are also the result of his advice. The beautifully proportioned building close to the Sheldonian was presently built (1683, Wood, architect) by the University to house the valuable collection of curiosities presented to it by Elias Ashmole.

When the plague broke out in London, Charles and his court fled to Oxford (September 1665), where, since July, a watch had been set to keep out infected persons flying from London. The King and Duke of York lodged at Christ Church; whilst, all under the rank of master at Merton having been sent to their homes, the Queen took up her abode there till the following February. Once more courtiers filled the college instead of scholars; the loose manners of the court were introduced into the college precincts; the King’s mistress, Lady Castlemaine, bore him a bastard in December, and libels were pinned up on the doors of Merton concerning that event. It is sadly recorded that founders’ prayers had to be recited in English, because there were more women than scholars in the chapel. And as for the courtiers, though they were neat and gay in their apparel, yet were they, so says the offended scholar, “very nasty and beastly; rude, rough, whoremongers; vain, empty and careless.”

The House of Lords sat in the Geometry School, the House of Commons in the Convocation House, whilst the Divinity School and the Greek School were employed as a committee room and the Star Chamber. After sitting for a month and passing the Act which prohibited dissenting ministers from coming within five miles of any city, Parliament broke up in October. When this Act was suspended in 1672 and Nonconformists were allowed to meet in towns, provided they took out a licence, the Independents

Quadrangle & Library All Souls’ College.Quadrangle & Library All Souls’ College.

and Baptists set up meeting-houses in Oxford, the Baptists meeting first in Magdalen Street and then in S. Ebbe’s Parish. The Nonconformist chapels were destroyed in the Jacobite riot of 1715, but in 1720 a new chapel was built behind the present chapel in the New Road by the Baptists and Presbyterians in common.

TheOxford Gazettemade its first appearance during Charles’ visit, the first number coming out on 7th November 1665.

Again, in 1681, Parliament was summoned by Charles II. to meet at Oxford on 21st March. He had written in January choosing Merton, Corpus and Christ Church to house him, his Queen, his Court[38]and his Parliament. The scholars as usual departed, but in a week the King dissolved the wicked, or week-ed, Parliament, and the collegians returned to their quarters and the use of their silver plate, which they had wisely hidden from their guests.

“We scholars were expelled awhile to let the Senators in,But they behaved themselves so ill that we returned again,”

sang the poet of the day. For the rest of his reign the monarch was nearly absolute. “Now I am King of England, and was not before,” he remarked; and he signalised his victory over the Exclusionist Party, who wished to guard against the danger of a Catholic king, by procuring, at Oxford, the condemnation of Stephen College, a Protestant joiner, who was forthwith hung in the Castle-yard.

The sudden influx of so many persons into the town was calculated to send up the price of provisions. The Vice-Chancellor accordingly took the precaution of fixing a limit to the market prices. A pound of butter, for instance, sweet and new, the best in the market, was not to cost more than 6d.; six eggs 2d.; or a fat pig, the best in the market, 2s. 6d.; whilst not more than 2s. 8d. was to be charged in every inn for a bushel of the best oats.

Oriel Windows Queen’s Lane.Oriel Windows Queen’s Lane.

Meantime the University was not in too flourishing a state. “All those we call Whigs,” Wood complains, “will not send their sons for fear of their turning Tories, and because the Universities are suspected of being Popish.” And Stephen Penton, the Principal who built the chapel and library of S. Edmund’s Hall (1680), thought it expedient to write that charming little book, “The Guardian’s Instruction,” in answer to the “rash and uncharitable censure of the idle, ignorant, debauched, Popish University.” But the manners of the place are indicated by such facts as these: “The Act was put off because ‘twas said the Vice-Chancellor was sickish from bibbing and smoking and drinking claret a whole afternoon.” In 1685 the mayor and aldermen, who had been splendidly entertained by the Earl of Abingdon in return for their election of his brother to represent them in Parliament, “came home most of them drunk and fell off their horses.” About the same time three masters of All Souls’ came drunk to the Mitre in the middle of the night, and because the landlady refused to get up and prepare them some food, they called her “strange names and told her she deserved to have her throat cut, whereupon being extremely frighted, she fell into fits and died.” The masters were examined by the Vice-Chancellor and compelled to “recant inthe Convocation.” A few months later a debauched Master of Arts of New Inn was expelled for biting a piece off the nose of a B.N.C. B.A.

At Balliol the buildings were literally falling to pieces, and it was the solace of Dr Bathurst’s old age to sit on his garden wall—he was President of Trinity—and throw stones at the few windows that still contained any glass, “as if happy to contribute his share in completing the appearance of its ruin.” This was the same Dr Bathurst, who as Vice-Chancellor, according to Prideaux’ story, had already done his best to encourage the “men of Belial” to deserve the nickname bestowed upon them by Nicholas Amherst.[39]

“There is,” wrote Prideaux, “over against Balliol a dingy, horrid, scandalous ale-house, fit for none but draymen and tinkers. Here the Balliol men continually lie and by perpetual bubbing add art to their natural stupidity to make themselves perfect sots.”

The master (Dr Goode, a good, honest old toast, and sometime a Puritan) remonstrated with them and

“informed them of the mischiefs of that hellish liquor called ale. But one of them, not willing to be preached so tamely out of his beloved liquor, made reply that the Vice-Chancellor’s men drank ale at the Split Crow and why should they not too? The old man, being nonplussed with this reply, immediately packeth away to the Vice-Chancellor, formerly an old lover of ale himself,”

who informed him that there was no hurt in ale. Accordingly the master told his men that since the Vice-Chancellor said there was no hurt in ale, though truly he thought there was, he would give them leave to drink it. “So now,” Prideaux concludes, “they may be sots by authority.”

In 1682, Wood notes, “fighting occasioned by drunkenness fell out in S. John’s common chamber.” Common rooms, it may be observed, which were regarded as a luxurious innovation, had beenintroduced into Oxford in 1661 by Merton, where the room over the kitchen, with the cock-loft over it, was turned into a room “for the common use of the Fellows.” Other colleges quickly followed an example which had been set eleven years before in the Combination Room of Trinity at Cambridge.

The accession of James II. was hailed at Oxford with many expressions of loyalty. A large bonfire was lit at Carfax and five barrels of beer broached in the Town Hall, to be drunk by all comers. There were bonfires in all the colleges, where the respective societies drank a health, kneeling, to the King and Royal Family. At Merton, Wood tells us, “the gravest and greatest seniors of the house were mellow that night, as at other Colleges.” And the coronation was celebrated by a sermon and bonfire at S. Mary’s and “great extraordinaries in eating and drinking in each College.” But there were many townsmen who had been ready (1683) to shout for “a Monmouth! a Monmouth! no York!” and after Monmouth’s Rebellion, when the University raised a regiment, whose uniforms at any rate were gallant, several of the citizens were arrested as rebels. It was not long before the bigotry and tyranny of James drove the University itself into that resistance to the royal authority which was so alien to its teaching and tradition. For James set himself to convert the training-place of the English clergy into a Roman Catholic seminary.

The accession of a sovereign attached to the Roman Church had been the signal for many who had hitherto concealed their opinions to avow their devotion to that communion. The Master of University College was one of those who had conformed to the rites of the Anglican Church whilst supporting so far as he dared, in the pulpit and the press, the doctrines of Rome. He now openly avowed his conversion and did his utmost to promote the Roman Catholic cause. Ave Maria Obadiah, as he was nicknamed from an academic catch of the time, was authorised by the King to appropriate some college rooms for a chapel under the Romanritual. He had already been absolved by a royal dispensation from the duty of attending the services of the Church of England, and from taking the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy. Walker’s doings were at first received with ridicule and then with indignation. But secure of the King’s favour, he continued on his Romanising way. He erected a press at the back of the college, and published, under royal licence, a series of controversial books maintaining Romish doctrines. The University was disgusted and alarmed at this deliberate attempt to undermine the National Church in the very centre of its chief stronghold. A pamphlet war ensued, but it was a war in which the King made it evident on the occasion of a visit to Oxford in 1687 that he was on the side of Obadiah. A statue of the monarch was set up over the gateway of the large quadrangle of University College to commemorate the visit of the royal “reformer of heresy.”

At Christ Church, meanwhile, Massey, a convert and creature of Walker, had been appointed dean by the Crown and installed without protest by the Chapter. The old refectory of Canterbury College was fitted up as a private chapel for the dean’s use, and James attended mass there. At All Souls’, too, the fellows had admitted as warden the nominee planted on them by the royal prerogative. But James was not to have it all his own way with the colleges. Men had stiffer backs at Magdalen.

The office of President was vacant. The King recommended for election Anthony Farmer, a disreputable Cantab of notoriously bad character, who had migrated to Oxford, and who, never having been fellow either of Magdalen or New College, had no qualification for the presidentship. But he was reputed to be inclined to Romanism. This virtue was apparently sufficient in James’ eyes; he ignored the objections stated by the fellows. The fellows in turn ignored the mandate of James and elected Dr Hough, a man to whom there could be no objection. Cited to appear before theEcclesiastical Commission on complaint that they had disregarded the King’s mandate, the Vice-President and fellows, through their delegates, justified their action by reference to their statutes and the character of Farmer. Jefferies, who presided, had to admit that Farmer was proved to the court to be “a very bad man.” The college was commanded to elect another tool of the King’s, Parker, Bishop of Oxford. The college held that the place of President was already filled. To enforce obedience, James now came over from Woodstock (3rd September) in person.

The King wore a scarlet coat, and an old beaver hat edged with a little lace, not worth a groat, as some of the people shouted. He proceeded very slowly to the North Gate, where he found eight poor women all clad in white, some of whom strewed the way before the King with herbs,

“which made a very great smell in all the street, continuing so all the night till the rain came. When he came to Quatervois he was entertained with the wind music or waits belonging to the city and University, who stood over the Penniless Bench—all which time and after the Conduit ran claret for the vulgar.”

The fellows of Magdalen were summoned to the royal presence in Christ Church Hall, where they were rudely reprimanded and bidden to go to their chapel and elect the bishop forthwith or they should know what it was to feel the weight of a king’s hand. “Is this your Church of England loyalty?” James cried. “Get you gone. I am King. I will be obeyed!” Curious to think that William Penn, who had formerly been sent down from Christ Church for Nonconformity, was present at this scene; and a servitor of Exeter, the father of the Wesleys, quitted it, “resolved to give the tyrant no kind of support.” The fellows protested their loyalty, but declared that it was not in their power to do what the King required. Penn, the courtly Quaker, endeavoured to bring about a compromise, but seems to have been convinced at last that anagreement was impossible. Hough’s comment on these negotiations was, “It is resolved that the Papists must have our College. All that we can do is, to let the world see that they take it from us, and that we do not give it up.” A commission was appointed. Hough, who refused to surrender his lodgings, was declared contumacious, and his name was struck off the books. His lodgings were broken open; Parker was introduced. Twenty-five of the fellows were expelled, and were declared incapable of ecclesiastical preferment. The demies, who refused to recognise Parker, were not interfered with by the commission; they remained in the college holding chapel services and disputations among themselves and ignoring the Papist fellows who were being introduced. When they refused to obey the officers nominated by the King, eighteen of them were expelled. Parker died, and Gifford, a Papist of the Sorbonne, was appointed. All but two of the original fellows were now ejected, and their places were being filled up with Roman Catholics when it was brought home to James that he had been going too fast. He began to bid desperately for the support he had alienated. He restored the ejected fellows, but they had scarcely returned when William’s supporters, under Lord Lovelace, entered Oxford in force. They were received at the East Gate by the mayor and magistrates in their black gowns, who went with them up the High Street amid the shouts and congratulations of the people.

Meantime the Master of University had fled to London with his nominee, the Dean of Christ. He was captured by the mob and thrown into the Tower on a charge of high treason. And at Oxford “trade,” to use the judicious metaphor of an Oxford priest, “declined.” The Jesuits, who had been “in a very hopeful way and had three public shops (chapels) open” there, found all their schemes frustrated. The intrigue and plotting of years were brought to nought.

The Coronation of William and Mary was observed by aspecial Act ceremony, in which one of the pieces recited was “Magdalena Ridens,” Magdalen smiling in triumph at the flight of her oppressor. October 25, 1688, was the day on which James had restored the ejected fellows. Ever since the college has observed that day, and yearly the members pledge each other in a loving-cup,Jus suum cuique.

AMONG the demies elected at Magdalen the year after the expelled fellows returned was Joseph Addison, whose name is traditionally connected with the northern part of the Magdalen walks, where the kingfisher “flashes adown the river, a flame of blue,” and Henry Sacheverell, his friend and chamber-fellow. The former outlined the pacific policy of the Hanoverians in the Freeholder; for the latter, when he hung out his “bloody flag and banner of defiance” against the existing order, as for Atterbury, Oxford was loud with the cheers of “honest” men. For during the first half of the eighteenth century Oxford was violently Jacobite.

John Locke, who had been suspected of complicity in Shaftesbury’s design against the succession, and had been removed (1684) from his student’s place at Christ Church in accordance with the directions of a royal mandate, had warned William that the good effects of the revolution would be lost if no care was taken to regulate the Universities. But the Hanoverians avoided oppressive measures. The Tory Wine Club, under the cabalistic name of High Borlace, to which no member of a Whig college like Wadham, Christ Church, Exeter or Merton might belong, was allowed to meet annually at the King’s Head Tavern on 18th August to toast the King across the water and drink confusion to the rival Constitution Club. But the triumph of the Whigs at the accession of George I. and the disappointment of “honest” men,led to a great riot on the first anniversary of the birthday of the new sovereign.

“Mobs paraded the streets, shouting for the Pretender and putting a stop to every kind of rejoicing. The Constitution Club had gathered to commemorate the day at the King’s Head. The windows were illuminated and preparations made for a bonfire. Tossing up their caps and scattering money among the rabble that flocked to the front of the hotel, the Jacobite gownsmen egged them on with shouts of ‘No George,’ ‘James for ever,’ ‘Ormond,’ or ‘Bolingbroke!’ The faggots were torn to pieces, showers of brickbats were thrown into the clubroom. The Constitutioners were glad to escape with their lives by a back-door. Thus baffled the mob rolled on to attack all illuminated houses. Every Whig window was smashed. The meeting house was entered and gutted.... At last the mob dispersed for the night, publicly giving out that ‘the glorious work’ was left unfinished till to-morrow. The twenty-ninth of May was associated with too significant reminiscences to be allowed to pass in quiet. Sunday though it was, the streets were filled with people running up and down with oak-boughs in their hats, shouting, ‘King James, the true King. No usurper! The Good Duke of Ormond.’ The streets were brilliantly illuminated, and wherever disregard was shown to the mob’s fiat, the windows were broken.... The crowds grew thicker and noisier towards even. A rumour had got abroad that Oriel had given shelter to some of the Constitutionalists. The mob rushed to the attack and threatened to break open the closely-barred gates. At this moment a shot from a window wounded one of the ringleaders, a gownsman of Brasenose, and the crowd fled in confusion to break fresh windows, gut the houses of dissenters, and pull down the chapels of Anabaptists and Quakers” (Green).

The omission of rejoicings on the birthday of the Prince of Wales led to further disturbance. The major of a recruiting party then in Oxford drew out his regiment to celebrate the day. They were attacked by the crowd, and were obliged to have resource to blank cartridges. The matter was made the occasion of a grand debate in the House of Lords. But in the meantime the Government had shown its appreciation of the dangerous disloyalty ofOxford by dispatching Major-General Pepper thither with a number of dragoons, on the outbreak of Mar’s Rebellion. Martial law was at once proclaimed, and suitable measures were taken “to overawe the University.” The Crown had recently purchased Bishop Moore’s magnificent library and presented it to Cambridge. The difference in the treatment of the two Universities inspired Dr Trapp, the first Professor of Poetry, to write the famous epigram:

“The King, observing with judicious eyesThe wants of his two Universities,To Oxford sent a troop of horse; and why?That learned body wanted loyalty.To Cambridge books he sent, as well discerningHow much that loyal body wanted learning.”

To which the Cambridge wit, Sir Thomas Browne, retorted with still greater neatness and point:

“The King to Oxford sent a troop of horseFor Tories own no argument but force;With equal care to Cambridge books he sent,For Whigs admit no force but argument.”

The famous county election of 1754, when the Jacobite rioters held the approach to Broad Street, but the Whigs managed to slip through Exeter College and so gain the polling booths, shows that Oxford had not changed its sentiments, but when Tory principles mounted the throne with George III., Jacobitism disappeared like a dream. The reign of Toryism did little to promote the cause of learning or conduct. During the eighteenth century examinations for a degree were little better than a farce;

“E’en Balaam’s assIf he could pay the fee, would pass,”

sang the poet. Lecturers ceased to lecture; Readers did not read. In many colleges scholars succeeded to fellowships almost as a matter of course, and tutors were as slow to enforce, as “GentlemenCommoners” would have been swift to resent, any study or discipline as part of the education of a Beau or Buck. Though Oriel produced Bishop Butler, for Oxford was still the home of genius as well as of abuses, the observance of religion dwindled down to a roll-call. And corrupt resignations of fellowships, by which the resigning fellow nominated his successor, in return for a fee, were paralleled in the city by wholesale corruption at elections. The mayor and aldermen in 1768 even had the effrontery to propose to re-elect their representatives in Parliament for £7500, the amount of the municipal debt! This bargain, in spite of a reprimand from the Speaker and a committal to Newgate for five days, they succeeded in striking with the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Abingdon.

For the rest, it was the age of periwigs and patches, of coffee-houses and ale, of wine and common rooms, of pipes and newsletters, of a University aping the manners of London and Bath in Merton College Gardens or the race-course of Woodstock.

Bucks and Bloods were succeeded by the Smarts, whose beautiful existences Terræ Filius has described for us. Called by the servitor at six, they tumbled out of bed, their heads reeling with the last night’s debauch, to attend a chapel service. For the habit of early rising was still in vogue, and though a Smart might rise late, his lateness seems early to us. For it was held disgraceful to be in bed after seven, though carried there over-night drunk but not disgraced. But the Smart’s breakfast was scarce over by ten; a few notes on the flute, a glance at the last French comedy, and in academic undress he is strolling to Lyne’s coffee-house. There he indites a stanza or a billet-doux to the reigning Sylvia of the town; then saunters for a turn in the park or under Merton wall, while the dull regulars, as Amherst has it, are at dinner in hall according to statute. Dinner in his rooms and an hour devoted to the elaborate business of dress, and the Smart is ready to sally forth in silk-lined coat with laced ruffles at breast and wrist, redstockings and red-topped Spanish leather shoes, and laced hat or square cap most rakishly cocked. So emerging from his rooms, with tripping gait and jaunty dangle of his clouded amber-headed cane, he is about to pay a visit to the coffee-house or parade before the windows of a Toast when he stops to jeer at some ragged servitor of Pembroke, a Samuel Johnson perhaps, going round shamefacedly in worn-out shoes to obtain second-hand the lectures of a famous Christ Church tutor, or a George Whitefield, wrestling with the devil in Christ Church walks, or hesitating to join the little band of Methodists who, with Charles and John Wesley of Christ Church and Lincoln at their head, are making their way through a mocking crowd to receive the Sacrament at S. Aldate’s, S. George’s in the Castle or S. Mary’s.

But the Smart cares for none of these things. Sublimely confident in his own superiority he passes on; drinks a dram of citron at Hamilton’s, and saunters off at last to chapel to show how genteelly he dresses and how well he can chaunt. Next he takes a dish of tea with some fair charmer, with whom he discusses, with an infinite nicety of phrase, whether any wears finer lace or handsomer tie-wigs than Jack Flutter, cuts a bolder bosh than Tom Paroquet, or plays ombre better than Valentine Frippery. Thereafter he escorts her to Magdalen walks, to Merton or Paradise gardens; sups and ends the night, loud in song, deep in puns, put or cards, at the Mitre. Whence, having toasted his mistress in the spiced cup with the brown toast bobbing in it, he staggers home to his college, “a toper all night as he trifles all day.”

Meantime certain improvements were taking place in the city. Under the Commissioners Act (1771) the streets were widened and paved, and most of the walls and gates removed—Bocardo along with them. Turnpike Roads and the Enclosures Acts led to the disappearance of the highwaymen, by whom coaches, ere railways took the place of the “flying coach,” which first went to London in one day “with A. W. in the same coach” (1669), had sofrequently been held up near Oxford. Curiously enough highwaymen were most popular with the fair sex, and the cowardly ruffians occasionally returned the compliment so far as to allow them to ransom their jewels with a kiss. Dumas, the prince of highwaymen, after capturing a coachful of ladies, was satisfied with dancing a coranto with each in turn upon the green. He was executed at Oxford. He had maintained his nonchalance to the end; played “Macheath” in the prison, and threw himself off at the gallows without troubling the hangman. It was not death, he declared, but being anatomised that he feared. And, lest their hero should be put to so useful a purpose, a large body of bargemen surrounded the scaffold, carried off the body in triumph to the parish church and buried it in lime forthwith.

At length, after the Age of Reason and Materialism, came the Age of Revival and Romance. The spirit of mediævalism summoned up by Sir Walter, was typified in Oxford architecture by Sir Gilbert Scott and Pugin. In the University the beginning of a new order of things, which was to end in throwing open the Universities to the whole Empire and rendering them on every side efficient places of education, was begun in 1800 by the system of Honours Lists, long advocated by reformers like John Eveleigh of Oriel and brought into being by the energy of Cyril Jackson, Dean of Christ Church, and Parsons, Master of Balliol. The work of nationalising the Universities was developed by the two University Commissions and by that “Extension” movement, of which the pioneer was William Sewell, a remarkable tutor of Exeter, who, in 1850, urged that “It may be impossible to bring the masses to the University, but may it not be possible to carry the University to the masses?” This development of the University, which must ever be closely connected with the name of Dr Jowett, Master of Balliol, and has received a further significance from the last testament of Cecil Rhodes, of Oriel, is illustrated on every side by new buildings; by the Indian Institute, the Nonconformistcolleges, Mansfield and Manchester, the Women’s Halls, the Science Buildings and the new foundation of Hertford College, grafted on that of old Hart Hall and Magdalen Hall by Mr Baring. Intellectually the spirit of revolt produced by the French Revolution at the beginning of this period, is illustrated by the careers of Shelley and Landor, and the musical lyrics of Swinburne; the deep questionings prompted by the Tractarian Movement are voiced in the poems of Clough, Keble and Arnold. For in the first half of the nineteenth century there was a revival of spirituality, and men followed the lead, not of a Wycliffe, an Erasmus or a Wesley, but of Keble, Pusey and Newman. Oriel College, whose fellowships were confined neither to members of the college nor, in most cases, to candidates from certain places, was the centre whence men like Hurrell Froude, Keble’s pupil, preached their doctrine of reaction; men who, finding the Church of England in a very parlous state, counselled a return to what was best in mediævalism, and, protesting against the Protestantism of the English Church, taught Newman to look with admiration towards the Church of Rome. The name of Keble and the impulse which he gave to Anglicanism are commemorated in Keble College; the prominence of the chapel, which contains Holman Hunt’s “Light of the World,” and the arrangement of the buildings emphasise the fact that it was founded to provide the poorer members of the Church of England with higher education on Church lines.

The revival of mediævalism in Religion was echoed by a revival of mediævalism in Art. John Ruskin, who had matriculated at Christ Church in 1836, lectured intermittently as Slade Professor of Art from 1870 till 1884. William Morris, “poet, artist, paper-hanger and socialist,” came up to Exeter in 1853 and there, in intimate friendship with Sir Edward Burne-Jones, looked out upon “the vision of grey-roofed houses and a long winding street and the sound of many bells,” which was, for him, Oxford. The two friends have left behind them signs of their genius in thefamous tapestry at Exeter Chapel and in the windows of the Cathedral; whilst at Corpus and in the Schools the great teacher gathered round him a circle of enthusiastic young men, and like an Abelard, Wycliffe, Wesley or Newman in the religious world, so advised and inspired them with his social and artistic gospel, that when, in pursuance of the old monastic principle “laborare est orare,” he called upon them to mend a farmer’s road at Hincksey, they laid aside their bats and oars, and marched, with the professor at their head, to dig with spade and shovel. Out of such inspiration grew the various University Settlements in the East End of London, inaugurated by Arnold Toynbee.

Oxford owes much to the stimulating if incoherent teaching and the generosity of John Ruskin,[40]but architecturally his influence was responsible for several bad buildings in the would-be Venetian style—the Christ Church New Buildings and the Natural History Museum in the parks, for instance, proving deplorably enough that the critic was no creator.

Last, but not least, it is good to be able to record that City and University have gradually settled their differences. The new Municipal Buildings and the Town Hall in S. Aldate’s would seem, by their deliberate variety of styles, to give municipal sanction to every style of architecture that can be found in the University, and to look back upon the history of the town, and of the learned institution with which for good and evil it has been so closely connected, with no ungracious feeling.

A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,R,S,T,U,V,W.

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