Chapter 10

â€œthere arose such an infectious damp or breath among the people, that many there present, to the apprehensions of most men, were then smothered and others so deeply infected that they lived not many hours after. Above 600 sickened in one night; and the day after, the infectious air being carried into the next villages, sickened there an hundred more. The number of persons that died in five weeksâ€™ space were 300 in Oxford, and 200 and odd in other places; so that the whole number that died in that time were 510 persons, of whom many bled till they expired.â€

The description of the disease given by Wood reminds one of Thucydidesâ€™ account of the plague at Athens. The outbreak was attributed by some to the Roman Catholics, who were said to have used magic to revenge themselves for the cropping of Jencksâ€™ ears, but the explanation suggested by a remark of Bacon is moreprobable. â€œThe most pernicious infection next to the plague,â€ he says, â€œis the smell of the Jail, when prisoners have been long and close nastily kept.â€

In 1582 the plague again threatened. This time measures were taken to improve the sanitary conditions of the place. Regulations were introduced, which do not greatly differ from the precautions of modern legislation. It was, for instance, ordained thatâ€”

â€œNo person shall cast or lay any donge, dust, ordure, rubbish, carreyne or any other thing noyant into any the waters ryvers or streams or any the streets, wayes or lanes. But every person shall swepe together & take up the said things noyant out of the channel of the street so far as their ground reacheth and cause the same to be carried away twice every week. All privies & hogsties set or made over upon or adjoining to any the waters or streames leading to any brew-house shall be removed & taken away. No person shall keep any hogs or swine within the said City but only within their own several backsides; no butcher shall keep any slaughter house or kill any oxen kyne shepe or calves within the walls. All pavements shall be made and amended in places defective and all chimneys occupied with fire shall from henceforth be swept four times every year.â€

These ordinances, it will be seen, provided against the customary crying evils of a mediÃ¦val town. Similar provisions against similar evils are to be found in the archives of most cities in England or France in the sixteenth century. But ordinances are one thing and effective street-police is another. A hundred years later S. Jamesâ€™s Square was still the receptacle for all offal and cinders, for all the dead cats and dead dogs of Westminster, whilst Voltaireâ€™s scathing description of the streets of Paris was no exaggeration. It was a state of affairs on which the Plague of London was the grimmest of all possible commentaries.

Another outbreak of plague in 1593 produced an order against plays, which were said to bring too many people, and the plague with them, from London. Regulations were also passed against overcrowding in the houses. At the beginning of the reign ofJames I., however, the infection spread once more from London to Oxford. Term was prorogued; the colleges broke up; and the citizens were so hard hit that they petitioned the University for aid. A weekly contribution from the colleges alleviated the distress that arose from this doleful sickness. The town was almost deserted; the shops were closed; and only the keepers of the sick or the collectors of relief appeared in the streetsâ€”â€œno not so much as dog or cat.â€ The churches were seldom opened, and grass grew in the common market-place. Next year and the next plague broke out again, by which time some arrangements had been made for a system of isolation. Yet the mediÃ¦val attitude of mind towards medicine and sanitation would seem to have lasted on through the Age of Reason. For in 1774, when small-pox had many times scourged the town, all attempts at inoculation were formally forbidden by the Vice-Chancellor and Mayor.

Foxe had aided the rise and rejoiced in the success of Wolsey. But that success was not universally popular. In spite of his benefactions to learning, and the University, it was an Oxford Laureate, one of our earliest satirists, who, when the Cardinal was at the height of his power, more monarch than the King himself, attacked him with the most outspoken virulence.

A crown of laurel would seem to have been the outward sign and symbol of a degree in Rhetoric, and rhetoricians were occasionally styled Poets Laureate. John Skelton, who was perhaps Court Poet to Henry VIII., was certainly tutor to Prince Henry and Laureate of both Universities. He was very proud of this distinction, and, not being troubled by any excess of modesty, he wrote a poem of 1600 lines in praise of himself:

â€œA Kynge to me myn habite gave;At Oxforth the Universyte,Auvaunsed to that degreBy hole consent of theyr Senate,I was made Poete Laureate.â€

So he says; and Cambridge apparently followed suit and admitted him (1493) to a corresponding degree, and likewise encircled his brows with a wreath of laurel.

Skelton jeered at the Cardinalâ€™s pride and pomp; at his low birth (his â€œgreasy originalâ€) and his lack of scholarship. There was more truth in Shakespeareâ€™s description of him as a â€œscholar and a right good one,â€ for the â€œBoy Bachelorâ€ had taken his degree of B.A. at fifteen years of age, â€œa rare thing and seldom seen.â€ He held a fellowship at Magdalen, and was bursar for a short while, as we have seen; for six months he acted as master of Magdalen School, and in 1500 he was instituted to the Rectory of Lymington, thanks to the favour of the Marquis of Dorset, whose three sons had been his pupils at the school. It is not every man who is given even one chance in life, but at last to Wolsey, as to Wykeham, the opportunity came. He pleased the King by the speed with which he performed the first errand on which he was dispatched; and from that time he never ceased to advance in power and the confidence of his sovereign. The account of that episode, which he gave after his fall to George Cavendish, is one of the most profitable lessons in history. It is the secret of success as recorded by a bankrupt millionaire.

Wolsey never allowed his ecclesiastical and political work and honours to make him forget the University which had given him his start in life. In 1510 he took his degree of Bachelor of Divinity.

By the University the need for the codification of its statutes, and the unification of the mass of obscure customs and contradictory ordinances of which they were by this time composed, had long been felt. Some efforts had indeed already (1518) been made in this direction, but they had come to nothing. Graduates who swore to obey the statutes now found themselves in the awkward position of being really unable to find their way through the labyrinth of confused and contradictory enactments.

Now it happened that an outbreak of the sweating sickness in 1517 drove the King and his court from London to Abingdon. Queen Catherine availed herself of the opportunity to pay a visit to Oxford, to dine at Merton and to worship at the shrine of S. Frideswide, whilst Wolsey, who escorted her from Abingdon, attended a solemn meeting of the graduates at S. Maryâ€™s and informed them of his design to establish certain daily lectures for the benefit of the University at large. For this purpose it was necessary to alter existing regulations. The graduates seized the opportunity of inviting the Cardinal, their â€œMÃ¦cenas,â€ whom they even came to address as â€œHis Majesty,â€ to undertake a complete revision of their statutes. In so doing they disregarded the wishes of their Chancellor, the Archbishop Warham. But their action was fruitless, for the Cardinal had no time to examine and codify the chaotic enactments of the mediÃ¦val academicians.

It was at Wolseyâ€™s request that a charter was granted to the University (1523) which placed the greater part of the city at its mercy. It was now empowered to incorporate any trade, whilst all â€œmembers of the privilegeâ€ were exempted from having to apply to the city for permission to carry on business. Many minor rights and immunities were granted to the Chancellor, and no appeal was allowed from his court. â€œAny sentence, just or unjust, by the Chancellor against any person, shall be holden good, and for the same sentence, so just or unjust, the Chancellor or his deputy shall not be drawn out of the University for false judgment, or for the same vexed or troubled by any written commandment of the King.â€

Prior to the issue of this charter there had been grievances arising from the favour shown by the Crown to the University, as, for instance, when, a few years back, the colleges and other places of the University had been exempted from the subsidies charged upon the town. The jealousy which had been slumbering now burst into flames. The bailiffs flatly refused to summon ajury under the new terms. They were imprisoned. A writ was issued to enforce the University charter and for the appearance of the mayor and corporation to answer a suit in chancery.

The same year (1529) the University, not being able to obtain the assistance of the bailiffs, ordered the bedels to summon a jury for their leet. The city bailiffs closed the door of the Guildhall, so that the court thus summoned could not be held. This device they adopted repeatedly. On one occasion Wolsey proposed to submit the question to the arbitration of More. But the city perceived their danger and unanimously refused,

â€œfor,â€ they remarked, â€œby such arbitrements in time past, the Commissary & procters & their officers of the University hath usurped & daily usurpeth upon the town of divers matters contrary to their compositions.â€

The struggle passed through several stages. The mayor, one Michael Hethe by name, refused to take the customary oath at S. Maryâ€™s to maintain the privileges of the University. Proceedings were instituted against him. His answer, when he was summoned to appear at S. Maryâ€™s Church and show cause why he should not be declared perjured and excommunicate, was couched in very spirited terms:

â€œRecommend me unto your master and shew him, I am here in this town the Kingâ€™s Graceâ€™s lieutenant for lack of a better, and I know no cause why I should appear before him. I know him not for my ordinary.â€

The court pronounced him contumacious, and sentenced him to be excommunicated. He was obliged to demand absolution, but he did not abate the firmness of his attitude when he obtained it, for he flatly refused to promise â€œto stand to the law and to obey the commands of the Church,â€ though that promise was proposed as a necessary condition of absolution being granted.

Before the end of this year (1530) the town made a direct petition to the King against the University, in which the chiefincidents in the hard-fought battle are recounted in detail. Complaint is made, for instance, that the commissary

â€œDoth take fourpence for the sale of every horse-lode of fresh salmon, & one penny of every seme of fresshe herrings, which is extorcyonâ€: and again â€œAnother time he sent for one William Falofelde & demanded of him a duty that he should give him a pint of wine of every hogshead that he did set a-broach, for his taste. And the said William answered and said that he knew no such duty to be had, if he knew it he would gladly give it. And thereupon the said Commissary said he would make him know that it was his duty & so sent him to prison: and so ever since, for fear of imprisonment, the said William Falofelde hath sent him wine when he sent for it, which is to the great losse and hindrance of the said William Falofelde.â€

In order to compel submission on the part of the city, the mayor and twenty of the citizens were discommoned in 1533, so that

â€œno schollar nor none of their servants, should buy nor sell with none of them, neither eat nor drink in their houses, under pain of for every time of so doing to forfeit to the Commissary of 6s. and 8d.â€

For twenty years the quarrel dragged on, till at last both parties grew weary. In 1542 arbitrators were called in, and Wolseyâ€™s charter was repealed. But under Elizabeth, when in Leicester they had elected a Chancellor of sufficient power to represent their interests, the University began to endeavour to regain the privileges and franchises which, as they maintained, had only been in abeyance. An Act of Parliament was procured which confirmed the old obnoxious charter of 1523, but with a clause of all the liberties of the mayor and town. This clause led the way to fresh acts of aggression on either side, and renewed recriminations and disputes until, on the report of two judges, a series of orders was promulgated by the Privy Council (1575), intended to set at rest the differences between the two bodies for ever. But the result fell short of the intention. The opposition at this time had been ledby one William Noble, who lived in the old house known as Le Swynstock. Smarting under the sting of false imprisonment, Noble commenced suits in the Star Chamber against the University, and presented petitions both against that body and the mayor and citizens. His popularity was such that he was elected Member of Parliament for the city.

Wolsey, as we have seen, had taken some steps towards establishing public lectureships in the University. But he provided no permanent endowment for these chairs. His designs developed into a grander scheme. He determined to found a college which, in splendour and resources, should eclipse even the noble foundations of Wykeham and Waynflete, a college where the secular clergy should study the New Learning and use it as a handmaid of Theology and in the service of the old Church. And as Wykeham had established in connection with his college a school at Winchester, so Wolsey proposed to found at his birth-place, Ipswich, and at Oxford, two sister-seats of learning and religion.

Through the darkness and stagnation of the fifteenth century a few great men had handed on the torch of learning and of educational ideals. The pedigree of Christ Church is clearly traceable through Magdalen and New College back to Merton. Wolsey at Magdalen had learnt to appreciate, in the most beautiful of all the homes of learning, something of the aims of the great school-master bishop, Waynflete. And Waynflete himself, can we doubt? had caught from Wykeham the enthusiasm for producing â€œrightly and nobly ordered minds and characters.â€ At Oxford, at Winchester and at Windsor he had lived under the shadow of the great monuments of Wykehamâ€™s genius, and learned to discern â€œthe true nature of the beautiful and graceful, the simplicity of beauty in style, harmony and grace.â€ So that in the architecture of his collegeâ€”and Architecture, as Plato tells us, as all the other Arts, is full of grace and harmony, which are thetwo sisters of goodness and virtueâ€”he was enabled to fulfil the Platonic ideal and to provide the youth whom he desired to benefit with a home where they might dwell â€œin a land of health and fair sights and sounds, and receive the good in everything, and where beauty, the effluence of fair works, might flow into the eye and ear like a health-giving breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul from earliest years into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of reason.â€ Inspired by such examples, Wolsey set himself to build a college which should eclipse them,

â€œThough unfinished, yet so famous,So excellent in art and yet so rising,That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue.â€

Indeed, says Fuller, nothing mean could enter into this manâ€™s mind.

Immense as were his private resources, they could not bear the strain of his magnificent plans. He therefore seized upon the idea of appropriating the property of the regular clergy and applying it to the foundation and endowment of Cardinalâ€™s College. The time was ripe for some such conversion. Monasticism was outworn. Whatever the merits of some few monasteries might be, whatever the piety of an occasional Abbot Samson, or the popularity of a monkish institution which did its duty of charity and instruction in this or that part of the country, the monks as a rule had ceased to live up to their original standard. They had accumulated wealth and lost their hold on the people. And where they were popular, it was in many cases with the people they had pauperised. To a statesman with so keen an insight and so broad a mind as Wolsey, it must have seemed both wise and safe to take this opportunity of suppressing some of the English priories. Had not Chicheley, when the alien priories had been suppressed on political grounds, secured some of their lands for the endowment of his foundation, All Soulsâ€™ College?

His first step was to obtain a bull from the Pope and the assent of the King, authorising him (1524) to suppress the Priory of S.Frideswide and transfer the canons to other houses of the Augustinian order. Their house and revenues, amounting to nearly Â£300, were assigned to the proposed college of secular clerks. The scale of that college is indicated by the fact that it was to consist of a dean and sixty canons, forty canons of inferior rank, besides thirteen chaplains, twelve lay clerks, sixteen choristers and a teacher of music, for the service of the Church. Six public professors were to be appointed in connection with the college.

A few months later another bull, which premised that divine service could not be properly maintained in monasteries which contained less than seven professed members, empowered Wolsey to suppress any number of such small religious houses all over the country. This he proceeded to do, and to transfer the inmates to other monasteries. Their revenues, to an amount not exceeding 3000 golden ducats, were to be devoted to the new college.

The plan of thus concentrating the resources of the small and scattered religious houses was both economical and statesmanlike. But, in its execution, it gave rise to fear and irritation, of which Wolseyâ€™s political enemies were quick to avail themselves. The perturbation of the monks is well expressed in Fullerâ€™s happy metaphor:

â€œHis proceedings made all the forest of religious foundations in England to shake, justly fearing the King would finish to fell the oaks, seeing the Cardinal began to cut the underwood.â€

Wolsey found it necessary to write to his royal master more than once to contradict the mis-representations of his opponents. The King had been informed that monks and abbots had been turned out to starve. Wolsey declared that what he had done was â€œto the full satisfaction, recompense and joyous contentationâ€ of all concerned. The King complained that some of the monasteries would not contribute to his necessities as much as they had contributedto the Cardinalâ€™s scheme. Wolsey replied that he had indeed received â€œfrom divers mine old lovers and friends right loving and favourable aids towards the edifying of my said College,â€ but added that these had been justly obtained and exaggerated in amount. But he promised in future to take nothing from any religious person.

Meantime he had set about building Cardinalâ€™s College with extraordinary energy and on an enormous scale. The foundation stone was laid on 15th July 1525. Whilst the Chapter-house and refectory of the old monastery were kept, the western bays of the church were removed to make way for the great quadrangle. The Chapel of S. Michael at South Gate was demolished, and part of the old town wall was thrown down. Room was thus made for the buildings on the south side of the quadrangle. These, the first portion of the college to be finished, were the kitchen and that hall which, in its practical and stately magnificence, can scarcely be equalled in England or surpassed in Europe. But the fact that it was the kitchen and dining-room which first reached completion gave an opportunity to the wits.

â€œEgregium opus. Cardinalis iste instituit Collegium, et absolvit popinam.â€

So runs one epigram, which being freely translated is:

â€œThe Mountains were in labour once, and forth there came a mouse;â€”Your Cardinal a College planned, and built an eating-house!â€

It was part of Wolseyâ€™s design to gather into his college all the rising intellect of Europe. In pursuance of this plan, he induced certain scholars from Cambridge to migrate thither. But they it was, so men afterwards complained, who first introduced the taint of heresy into Oxford. For at first the University was as strictly orthodox as her powerful patron, who hated â€œthe Hellish Lutherans,â€ could wish. When Martin Luther (1517) nailed his ninety-five theses on the church door of Wittenberg, in protest against what Erasmus had called â€œthe crime of false pardons,â€ the

Cloisters, Christ ChurchCloisters, Christ Church

sale of indulgences, his protest found no echo here. On the contrary, the masters in convocation gladly elected three representative theologians who attended Wolseyâ€™s conference in London, and condemned the noxious doctrines of the German reformer. A committee of theologians was also held at Oxford, and their condemnation of Lutherâ€™s teaching won the warm approval of the University. But the leaven of Lutheranism had already been introduced. The Cambridge students whom Wolsey had brought to be canons of Cardinal College, began to hold secret meetings and to disseminate Lutheran treatises. They made proselytes; they grew bolder, and nailed upon the church doors at nights some famous â€œlibels and bills.â€

Archbishop Warham presently found himself obliged to take notice of the growing sect. He wrote to Wolsey invoking his aid,

â€œthat the captains of the said erroneous doctrines be punished to the fearful example of all other. One or two cankered members,â€ he explains, â€œhave induced no small number of young and incircumspect fools to give ear unto them,â€ and he proposes that the Cardinal should give â€œin commission to some sad father which was brought up in the University to sit and examine them.â€

Active measures were now taken to stamp out the heresy in Oxford. Wolsey ordered the arrest of a certain Thomas Garret of Magdalen, a pernicious heretic who had been busy selling Tyndaleâ€™s Bible and the German reformerâ€™s treatises, not only to Oxford students, but even to the Abbot of Reading. His friends managed to get him safely out of Oxford, but for some reason or other he returned after three days. The same night he was arrested in bed in the house of one Radley, a singing-man, where it was well known that the little Lutheran community was wont to meet. Garret was not detained in Bocardo, but in a cellar underneath the lodgings of the commissary, Dr Cottisford, Rector ofLincoln. Whilst the commissary was at evensong he managed to escape, and made his way to the rooms of Anthony Dalaber, one of the â€œbrotherhood,â€ at Gloucester College. Dalaber has left an accountâ€”it is a most tearful taleâ€”of the events which ensued. He had previously had some share in getting Garret away from Oxford, and was greatly surprised to see him back. He provided him with a coat in place of his tell-tale gown and hood, and sent him off with tears and prayers to Wales, whence he hoped to escape to Germany. After reading the tenth chapter of S. Matthewâ€™s Gospel with many a deep sigh and salt tear, Dalaber went to Cardinal College to give Master Clarke, a leading brother, notice of what had occurred. On his way he met William Eden, a fellow of Magdalen, who with a pitiful countenance explained to him that they were all undone. Dalaber was able to give him the joyful news of Garretâ€™s escape, and proceeded to S. Frideswideâ€™s.

â€œEvensong,â€ he says, â€œwas begun, and the Dean and the other Canons were there in their grey amices; they were almost at Magnificat before I came thither. I stood at the Choir door and heard Master Taverner play, and others of the Chapel there sing, with and among whom I myself was wont to sing also. But now my singing and music were turned into sighing and musing. As I thus and there stood, in cometh Dr Cottysford, as fast as ever he could go, bareheaded, as pale as ashesâ€”I knew his grief well enough, and to the Dean he goeth into the Choir, where he was sitting in his stall, and talked with him very sorrowfully.â€ Dalaber describes the interview which followed, outside the choir, between these two and Dr London, the Warden of New College, â€œpuffing, blustering and blowing, like a hungry and greedy lion seeking his prey.â€ The commissary was so much blamed, that he wept for sorrow. Spies were sent out in every direction; and when Dalaber returned to his rooms next morning, he found that they had been thoroughly searched. He had spent the night with the â€œbrethren,â€ supping at Corpus (â€œat which supper we were not very merryâ€),sleeping at S. Alban Hall, consulting together and praying for the wisdom of the serpent, and the harmlessness of the dove. This request would appear to have been in some measure vouchsafed to him, for, when he was interrogated by the prior as to his own movements and those of Garret, he was enabled to furnish forth a tale full of circumstantial detail but wholly untrue. â€œThis tale,â€ he observes, â€œI thought meetest, but it was nothing so.â€ Although it were nothing so, he repeated his convincing narrative on oath, when he was examined at Lincoln College by Cottisford, Higdon (Dean of Cardinalâ€™s College) and London. He had sworn on a great Mass book laid before him to answer truly, but, as he complacently observes, â€œin my heart nothing so meant to do.â€ Nor, perhaps, did he mean to betray twenty-two of his associates, and the storehouse of Garretâ€™s books, when examined by Dr London, whom he calls the â€œrankest, papistical Pharisee of them allâ€â€”at any rate he omits to mention the fact in his narrative.

Of Garret himself, however, no trace could be found; and the commissary, being â€œin extreme pensyfness,â€ consulted an astrologer, who made a figure for him, and told him, with all the cheerful certainty of an eastern astrologer in these days, that Garret, having fled south-eastward in a tawny coat, was at that time in London, on his way to the sea-side. Consulting the stars was strictly forbidden by the Catholic Church, but the Warden of New College, though a Doctor of Divinity, was not ashamed to inform the bishop of the astrologerâ€™s saying, or afraid to ask him to inform the Cardinal, Archbishop of York, concerning it. Luckily for him the commissary did not rely wholly on the information either of Dalaber or the astrologer. The more practical method of watching the seaport towns resulted a few days later in Garretâ€™s recapture near Bristol. Many of the Oxford brotherhood were also imprisoned and excommunicated. Garret, who had written a piteous letter to Wolsey, praying for release, not from the iron bonds which he said he justly deserved, but from the more terrible bonds of excommunication,and who had also made a formal recantation of all his heresies, was allowed to escape. But first he took part in a procession, in which most of the other prisoners also appeared, carrying faggots from S. Maryâ€™s Church to S. Frideswideâ€™s, and on the way casting into a bonfire made at Carfax for the purpose certain books which had most likely formed part of Garretâ€™s stock.

At least three of the prisoners, however, died in prison without having been readmitted to Communion, either from the sweating sickness then raging, or, as Foxe asserts, from the hardships they endured. For they were kept, he says, for nearly six months in a deep cave under the ground, on a diet of salt fish. By Higdonâ€™s orders they did at least receive a Christian burial.

The heretics were crushed in Oxford, but elsewhere the movement grew apace. The printing press scattered wide-cast books and pamphlets which openly attacked the corruption of the Church and the monastic orders. Henry determined to proscribe all books that savoured of heresy. A joint committee of Oxford and Cambridge theologians was summoned to meet in London. They examined and condemned the suspected books which were submitted to them. The publication of English treatises upon Holy Scripture without ecclesiastical sanction was forbidden by royal proclamation. Versions of the Bible in the vulgar tongue were at the same time proscribed.

Yet this orthodox king, to whom as â€œDefender of the Faith,â€ Leo X. had sent a sword still preserved in the Ashmolean, was on the brink of a breach with Rome. For Henry, with his curious mania for matrimony, had determined to marry Anne Boleyn, but he failed to obtain from the Papal Legates in England a decree for the dissolution of his marriage. It was a failure fraught with enormous consequences. The fortunes of Oxford were involved in it. The King gladly availed himself of the suggestion of a Cambridge scholar, Thomas Cranmer, that the Universities should be called on for their judgment. They were thus placed in a position analogous to that of an Å“cumenical council with power to control a pontificaldecree. For the Popeâ€™s predecessor had granted a dispensation for Henryâ€™s marriage with Catherine, his brotherâ€™s wife. Every learned man in Europe, but for bribery or threats, would have condemned Henryâ€™s cause on its merits. But it was evident that the question would not be decided on its merits.

From a packed commission at Cambridge a decision favourable to a divorce was with difficulty extorted; but even so it was qualified by an important reservation. The marriage was declared illegal, if it could be proved that Catherineâ€™s marriage with Prince Arthur had been consummated. Cambridge was praised by the King for her â€œwisdom and good conveyance.â€ Yet that reservation, if the testimony of the Queen herself was to go for anything, amounted to a conclusion against the divorce.

It was not expected that a favourable verdict would be obtained so easily from Oxford. At the end of his first letter, in which the King called upon the University to declare their minds â€œsincerely and truly without any abuse,â€ a very plain threat is added, which left no doubt as to the royal view of what could be considered â€œsincere and trueâ€:

â€œAnd in case ye do not uprightly according to divine learning handle yourselves herein, ye may be assured that we, not without great cause, shall so quickly and sharply look to your unnatural misdemeanour therein that it shall not be to your quietness and ease hereafter.â€

It was proposed that the question should be referred to a packed committee. But the Masters of Arts refused to entrust the matter wholly to the Faculty of Theology. They claimed to nominate a certain number of delegates. Their attitude provoked sharp reproval and further threats from the imperious monarch.

The youths of the University were warned not to play masters, or they would soon learn that â€œit is not good to stir up a hornetsâ€™ nest.â€

Persuasion was used by the Archbishop and the Bishop ofLincoln. The example of Paris and Cambridge was quoted. The aid of Dr Foxe, who had proved his skill by obtaining the decree at Cambridge, was called in. Learned arguments were provided by Nicholas de Burgo, an Italian friar. But there was no doubt about the popular feeling on the question. Pieces of hemp and rough drawings of gallows were affixed to the gate of the bishopâ€™s lodging; both he and Father Nicholas were pelted with stones in the open street; the women of Oxford supported Catherine with such vehemence, that thirty of them had to be shut up in Bocardo. The King had dispatched two of his courtiers to Oxford: the Duke of Suffolk and Sir William Fitzwilliam. The former imprisoned the women; the latter distributed money to the more venal of the graduates. â€œNo indifferency was used in the whole matter.â€

Threats and bribes at last prevailed. A committee carefully packed was appointed with power to decide in the name of the University. A verdict was obtained which corresponded to the Cambridge decree. The important reservation, â€œif the marriage had been consummated,â€ was added to the decision that marriage with the widow of a deceased brother was contrary to the divine and human law.

Cranmer, who had succeeded Warham as Archbishop of Canterbury, pronounced the Kingâ€™s marriage with Catherine null and void. In the following year the University was asked to concur in the foregone decision in favour of separation from Rome. The authority of the Pope in England was abolished, and the monasteries were rendered liable to visitation by commission under the Great Seal. The Act of Supremacy followed. Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More were executed for denying the royal supremacy, and Thomas Cromwell was appointed Vicar-General of England.

His failure to procure a decree invalidating Henryâ€™s marriage meant the downfall of Wolsey. His downfall involved the fortunesof his college. It was rumoured at once that the buildings were to be demolished, because they bore at every prominent point escutcheons carved with the arms of the proud Cardinal. Wolsey had â€œgathered into his College whatsoever excellent thing there was in the whole realm.â€ The rich vestments and ornaments with which he had furnished S. Frideswideâ€™s Church were quickly â€œdisposedâ€ by the King. The disposal of this and other property, lands, offices, plate and tapestries forfeited under the statute of Praemunire, and carefully catalogued for his royal master by the fallen minister, had obvious pecuniary advantages. And as in London, York Place, the palace which the Cardinal had occupied and rebuilt as Archbishop of York, was confiscated and its name changed to Whitehall; so, when â€œbluff Harry broke into the spence,â€ he converted Cardinalâ€™s College into â€œKing Henry VIII.â€™s College at Oxfordâ€ consisting of a dean and twelve canons only (1532).

Henry had been besought to be gracious to the college; but he replied that it deserved no favour at his hands, for most of its members had opposed his wishes in the matter of the divorce. The prospect of the dissolution of his college at Oxford, foreshadowed by that of his great foundation at Ipswich, caused Wolsey infinite sorrow. To Thomas Cromwell he wrote that he could not sleep for the thought of it, and could not write unto him for weeping and sorrow. He appealed with all the passion of despair to the King and those in power, that the â€œsharpness and rigour of the law should not be visited upon these poor innocents.â€ In response to a petition from the whole college, Henry replied that he would not dissolve it entirely. He intended, he said, to have an honourable college there,

â€œbut not so great or of such magnificence as my Lord Cardinal intended to have, for it is not thought meet for the common weal of our realm. Yet we will have a College honourably to maintain the service of God and literature.â€

The purely ecclesiastical foundation of 1532 was not calculated to maintain the service of literature. It was surrendered twelve years afterwards to the King, whose commissioners received on the same day the surrender of the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary at Osney, the new cathedral body formed at the ancient abbey upon the creation of the see and diocese of Oxford (1542). The way was thus cleared for the final arrangement by which (4th November 1546) the episcopal see was transferred from Osney and united with the collegiate corporation under the title it bears to-day, Ecclesia Christi Cathedralis Oxon; ex fundatione Regis Henrici Octavi. Thus S. Frideswideâ€™s Church became the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford, and also the chapel of the college now at last called Christ Church. The foundation now consisted of a dean, eight canons, eight chaplains, sixty scholars and forty children, besides an organist, singing men, servants and almsmen. It was still, then, a foundation of extraordinary magnificence.

Yet there were not wanting â€œgreedy wretches to gape after the lands belonging to the Colleges.â€ They urged Henry to treat them as he had treated the monasteries. But the King refused.

â€œAh, sirrah,â€ he replied to one, â€œI perceive the Abbey lands have fleshed you, and set your teeth on edge, to ask also those Colleges. And wheras we had a regard only to pull down sin by defacing the monasteries, you have a desire also to overthrow all goodness by subversion of Colleges. I tell you, sirs, that I judge no land in England better bestowed than that which is given to our Universities; for by their maintenance our realm shall be well governed when we be dead and rotten.... I love not learning so ill that I will impair the revenues of any one house by a penny, wherby it may be upholden.â€

Henry, in fact, may be credited with a genuine desire for the promotion of learning. He had, besides, no reason to quarrel with the University. It had proved subservient to his will; the colleges were nurseries of the secular clergy, who adopted the new orderof things. They could not be regarded like the monks, as mercenaries of a foreign and hostile power.

But academic enthusiasm was not to be promoted by the despotic methods of Henry. The arbitrary restrictions of the Six Articles, â€œthat sure touchstone of a manâ€™s conscience,â€ struck at the root of intellectual liberty. The revival of academic life which had resulted from the stimulus of the Catholic Renaissance, was suddenly and severely checked by the early developments of the Reformation. The monasteries had been dissolved, and the poor students whom they had supported trudged a-begging. Another outbreak of plague helped to increase the depopulation of the University. The town suffered severely from both causes. The halls and hostels stood empty; very few degrees were taken. Religious controversy usurped the place of education. The University became a centre of politics and ecclesiasticism. The schools were deserted or occupied by laundresses; and, whilst commissioners were busy applying tests, expelling honest fellows, destroying MSS. and smashing organs, men began to discover that, through the invention of printing, it had become possible for them to educate themselves. They no longer needed to go to a monastery or college library to obtain a book; teaching needed no longer to be merely oral. The multiplication of books decentralised learning. With the monopoly of manuscripts and the universality of Latin were taken almost at a momentâ€™s notice two of the chief assets of mediÃ¦val Universities. A man might now read what he liked, and where he liked, instead of being obliged to listen to a master in the schools teaching set subjects that did not interest him. And no â€œtestâ€ was required of the independent reader. No wonder that, as one preacher dismally exclaimed, the Wells of Learning, Oxford and Cambridge, were dried up.

The King had taken the charters of both University and town into his own hands in 1530. He did not restore them till 1543. Two years later Parliament made over all colleges and chantriesto the King, â€œwho gave them very good counsel.â€ Meanwhile, in 1535, a Visitation of the University had been held. Dr London and Richard Layton were the chief Visitors. Their object was to establish ecclesiastical conformity, to supplant the old scholastic teaching and to promote classical learning. They confirmed the public lectures in Greek and Latin which they found, and established others, at Magdalen, New College, and C.C.C., and they settled other lectures of the kind at Merton and Queenâ€™s. The other colleges, they found, could not afford to have such lectures, and accordingly they directed the students of these to attend the courses at the others daily. The study of Aristotle and the Holy Scriptures was enjoined, and the King founded Regius Professorships in Divinity, Hebrew, Greek, Medicine and Civil Law. The University meantime was rewarded for its compliance by being exempted from the payment of tithes. At the same time the professors of the Old Learning were ousted from the academic chairs. Duns Scotus was dragged from his pedestal with an ignominy which recalled the fate of Sejanus.

â€œWe have set Duns in Bocardo,â€ wrote Layton, â€œand have utterly banished him Oxford for ever with all his blind glosses.... The second time we came to New College, after we had declared your injunctions we found all the great Quadrant Court full of the leaves of Dunse, the wind blowing them into every corner. And there we found one Mr. Greenfield, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire gathering up part of the same book leaves, as he said, to make him sewells or blawnshers to keep the deer within his wood, therby to have the better cry with his hounds.â€

That day the downfall of scholasticism in England was at last complete.

During the minority of Edward VI. â€œthere was great expectation in the University what religion would be professed.â€ It was soon evident which way the wind was to blow. Young men began to â€œprotestâ€ in Magdalen Chapel. In 1548 the Protector Somerset and Cranmer determined to reform the Universityin the interests of the new Anglican Church. Theologians were invited from the Continent, and in default of Melancthon, Peter Martyr arrived and lectured in the Divinity Schools on the Epistles of S. Paul and the Eucharist. His teaching roused protest from the Roman Catholics, and polemical divinity, if no other study, flourished for a while in Oxford. But a commission was now appointed with large powers, which proceeded to draw up a code of statutes calculated to eliminate all popery from the constitution of the University. These â€œEdwardine statutes,â€ as they were called, remained nominally in force till the â€œLaudianâ€ statutes replaced them.

The commissioners dealt severely with the colleges. Many of the fellows who had opposed the Reformation fled forthwith; others they ejected and replaced by rigid Calvinists. â€œAll things,â€ the Roman Catholics thought, â€œwere turned topsy turvy.â€ The disciplinary injunctions and acts of the commissioners were wholly admirable. Unfortunately their fanaticism in other directions was of the deplorably iconoclastic sort.

The ancient libraries were rifled; many MSS., guilty of no other superstition than red letters in their titles, were condemned to the fire. â€œTreatises on scholastical divinity were let loose from their chains and given away or sold to mechanics for servile uses, whilst those wherein angles or mathematical diagrams appeared were destroyed because accounted Popish or diabolical or both.â€ The works of the schoolmen were carried about the city â€œby certain rude young menâ€ on biers and finally burnt in the market-place, a proceeding which they styled the funeral of Scotus and Scotists. Some of the books from monasteries were sold at this time to grocers and soapsellers, and some by shiploads to bookbinders abroad, â€œto the wondering of foreign nations,â€ says Bale.

From wall and window, the order had gone forth giving sanction to the popular movement, every picture, every image commemorating saint or prophet or apostle was to be extirpated.Painted glass, as at New College, survives to show that the order was imperfectly obeyed. But everywhere the statues crashed from their niches, rood and rood-loft were laid low and the sun-light stared in white and stainless on the whitened aisles. At Magdalen the high altar and various images and paintings were destroyed, the organ burnt and the vestments sold. At Christ Church the dean and chapter decided that all altars, statues, images, tabernacles, missals and other matters of superstition and idolatry should be removed out of the Cathedral; and the other colleges and churches followed this example.

The magnificent reredos in the chapel of All Soulsâ€™, of which the present work is a conjectural restoration, was smashed; most of the stained glass there was broken, and the altars were removed together with â€œthe thing they call an organ.â€

The Edwardine commissioners proposed to abolish the grammar schools founded in connection with the colleges. The city, however, immediately petitioned the King on behalf of the schools:

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