Oxford and Its Story

ary. Affairs were not at first greatly im

a mild and gentle, not rigorous reformation." The Edwardine system was for the most part restored; the ejected fellows were brought back, whilst those who refused to comply with the new Act of Supremacy were expelled in their turn. Of these the largest number w

hen she was there is preserved at the Bodleian. The University had dispatched a deputation to her, with a present of g

scorted to Christ Church. For three days Disputations were held in the royal presence in S. Mary's Church. Elizabeth was a good scholar, one remembers, taught by Roger Ascham, and she really seems to have enjoyed this learned function. On the last day, at any rate, so keen was the argument and the Queen's interest in it, that the disputants "tire

anish Ambassador, or Leicester, or Cecil should speak for her. The courtiers were wise enough to bow dissent. At length she rose, and her op

written by Mr Richard Edwards, and acted, we are told, with very great applause. "In the said play was acted a cry of hounds in the Quadrant upon the train of a fox in the hunting of Theseus, with which the young scholars who stood in the windows were so much taken, supposing it was real, that they cried out

he development of the Elizabethan drama. The University Wits, as they were called, began at this period to lay the foundations of English fiction in their

accomplished scholar, could not abide wits. He preferred the plodding scholar, and used to say that if he wanted wits he would look for them in Newgate. Neither Wits nor t

the University officials attended her to Shotover, and there, at the conclusion of a speech from the Provost of Oriel, "she gave him her hand to kiss, with many thanks to the whole University, speaking then these words, as 'tis reported, with her face

there till it was buried with full heraldic ceremonial on 22nd September 1560 in the choir of S. Mary's Church. The funeral sermon was preached by one of Dudley's chaplains, who had just been transferred from the mastership of Balliol to the rectorship of Lincoln. He, fumbling for a phrase to express her violent death, "tripped once or twice by reco

necessity of obtaining a new charter from each succeeding king. In this year too an Act was passed, supplemented by further enactments in 1575, by which one-third part at least of the rents to be reserved in college leases is required to be payable in corn or in malt. The continual rise in prices wh

and by an Act of the University passed at his instigation (1569) a

l Quad Je

ions of the Black Congregation, consisting of resident masters, were hencefort

rsity. With this object he introduced among other provisions a test which was destined to have the most potent influence on the history of the place. Every student above sixteen years of age was now required to subscribe on his matriculation to the Thirty-nine Articles and the royal supremacy. Intended to exclude the Romanising party only, this rule affected in the future mainly the de

guised as a soldier and armed with a secret printing press, he wandered about the country disseminating Romanist literature. He finally brought off an extraordinary coup at Oxford. In a wood near Henley he prin

in sermonising and lecturing, its lack of religious instruction and education of youth. And as to discipline, he finds fault with the prevailing excess in apparel "as silk and velvet, and cut doublets, hose, deep ruffs and such like, like unto or rather exceeding both Inns of Court men and Courtiers." The streets, he complains, are more full of scholars than of townsmen, and the ordinary tables and ale-houses, grown to great number, are overcrowded day and night with scholars tippling, dicing, carding, tabling and perhaps worse. Ministers and deacons we

and the Calvinists at feud alike with each other and the moderate party of the Reformed Church, whom the Queen favoured, but the old quarrels between North and South and the Welsh broke ou

some scholars of Magdalen who wished to revenge themselves for the punishment inflicted on one of their number for stealing deer in

ing some and endangering others of their lives. It is said that upon the foresight of this storm, divers had got boards, others tables

speech herself. But the bishop either could not or would not sacrifice his beloved periods, and the Queen was obliged to keep her speech for the Heads of Houses next morning. In the middle of her oration she noticed the old Lord Treasurer, Burleigh (Cecil), standing on his lame feet for want of a stool. "Whereupon she called in all haste for a stool for him, nor would she proceed in her speech till she saw him provided with one. Then fell she

dear Oxford," she exclaimed as she viewed its towers and spires from the heights o

l in

Hugh ap Rees, a Welsh Oxonian, at a time when the increase of grammar schools in Wales was likely to produce an influx of Welsh students into the University. The statutes were free from any local or national restriction, but Welshmen always predominated, and Jesus soo

t library is called after its founder, "whose single work clouds the proud fam

at the British Museum. The rest had by this time been lost through the negligence of one generation or the ignorant fanaticism of another. For scholars borrowed books on insufficient pledges, and preferred to keep the former and sacrifice the latter. The Edwardine commissioners, as w

upon the imagination of one Thomas Bodley, an accomplished scholar, linguist and diploma

he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts (1563). In the following year he was admitted fellow of Merton College, where he gave public Greek lectures, without requiring any stipend. He was elected proctor in 1569, and was subsequently University orator and studied sundry Faculties. He next determined to travel, to learn modern languages and to increase his experience i

the State." All his life, whether immersed in affairs of State at home or lying abroad for the good of his country, he had never forgotte

and having sought, as I thought, all the ways to the wood, to select the most pr

, collecting books and endowing the library: a work, says Casaubon, rather for a king than a private man. Two years were spent in fitting up the room and erecting its superb heraldic roof. The ceiling is divided into square compartments, o

ildings

een each compartment are paint

roposal was warmly supported by his countrymen in Devonshire, where, as a contemporary records, "every m

all benefactors, with particulars of their gifts. It consists of two large folios, orname

he met with many rubs and delays, was the precursor of the obligation of the Copyright Acts, by which a copy of every book published has to be presented to the Bodleian and the British Museum. In 1603 Sir Walter Raleigh made a donation of fifty pounds, and he no doubt had some share in influencing the bestowal of many of the books which had once belonged to the library of Bishop Hieron. Ossorius, and were carried off from Faro in Portugal, wh

ce they were gathered. He examined various MSS. and discoursed wisely on them; took up the treatise by Gaguinus entitled "De puritate conceptionis Virginis Mari?," and remarked that the author had so written about purity, as if he wished that it should only be found on the title of his book. The opportunity of thus displaying his learning was so grateful to the King, that he was moved to an astonishing act of generosity. He offered to present from all the libraries of the royal palaces whatever precious and r

e was tempted by Lord Falkland to consult the "Sortes Virgilian?." T

uccour sue fro

ubjects and his

ngth the cruel

tions may he

is turn, hoping that his "lot" might remo

ens Exet

he lit dealt with the u

y of arms, di

ody deeds and

increased by the Chancellor, Oliver Cromwell. This is not the place to catalogue the list of those treasures, the wealth of European literature and the MSS. of the nearer and the farther East; the great collections which immortalise the names of the donors, like Laud and Selden, Rawlinson, Gough, Douce and Sutherland; the books which

ly Magazin

se of the cho

yeelde, heere i

monument, th

liques of the b

strange indeed if we did not feel something of the

as laid. The Bodleian forms the west side of this quadrangle. The east wing of the great library, built (1610-1613) by Bodley when already there was "more need of a library for the books than of books for the library," is panelled like the Divinity School, and stretches over the entrance to it, the Proscholium or "Pig Market," where candidates for degrees were obliged to wait. The west wing extends over Laud's late Gothic Convocation House (1634-1640); the books have usurped the thir

garden of Exeter, till Bodley's own solemn bell calls them back to their resting-place; this, as has been well said, is the very luxury, or rather the very poetry of study. "What a place," exclaimed Elia, "What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians, we

hysician of New College, who obtained some notoriety about this time by preaching at night in his bed. Sermons, he said, came to him by revelation in his sleep, and he would take a text in his slumbers and preach on it, "and though his auditory were willing to silence him by pulling, haling a

had been. The King, we are told, showed himself to be of an admirable wit and judgment. The scholars

we may believe Wood, for a serious change in manners. For he tra

a cordial than a usual liquor, sold also for that purpose in apothecaries' shops, and a heinous crime it w

nce at lectures and the wearing of academical dress was also insisted on by the new Chancellor, Archbishop Bancroft, who added an injunction that long hair was not to be worn: long hair in those days being accounted a sign not of a poet but of a s

ter Gloucester Hall had refused the benefaction, purchased the site of the suppressed settlement of Augustinian Friars and built the front quadrangle with hall and chapel as, externally, we have them to-day. For the interior of the chapel was dealt with by the Gothic revivalists (1834). The Wadhams were West Country folk, and the majority of workmen engaged were Somersetshire men. It is suggested that the extraordinarily fine Perpendicular character of the chapel choir is due to this fa

entre of the national clergy, supported him loyally. In the year of his accession he had granted letters patent to both Universities, empowering them each to choose two grave and learned men, professing the civil la

as at Westminster, theological controversy absorbed all energies. Literature, says Grotius (1613), has little reward. "Theologians rule, lawyers find profit

he influence of Calvin had died away at Oxford, and that the University had adopted, by the end of James' reign, the reactionary creed of Laud, and was ready to support the Stuart claim to absolutism. The Divine Right of Kings and the Divine Right of Bishops, as it was indicated by James' own phrase, "No Bishop, no King," was to be for more than a generation the official creed of Oxford sc

ed with, were muzzled or driven from the country; but their opponents, if they preached against the practices of Geneva, met only with the mildest kind of rebuke. Laud's experience of the University had convinced him of the necessity of revising and codifying the statutes "which had long lain in a confused heap." As Chancellor he at once set about that difficult task. The Caroline or Laudian Statutes were based on the old statutes and customs as colle

t an end to the riots that had hitherto attended the election of proctors. Free elec

ow S. John

make some much-needed reforms in the direction of diminishing the number of ale-houses and enforcing a proper system of licensing in the town. By his own proclamation he named a toll-gatherer for the market; he obtained an order from C

and gratefully accepted by the University. The new code was destined to govern it for two hundred years and more. Though to a great extent a digest of statutes already in force, the Laudian Statutes completed and stereotyped the changes which had long

ted as the fundamental principles of their policy in Church and State. For apart from his narrow Church policy Laud was, in University matters, both an earnest reformer and a great benefactor. He presented the library with a magnificent collection of Oriental MSS.; he founded and endowed the Professorship of Arabic, and, most valuable of all, he obtained for the University the right of printing Bibles, which is one of the most valuable endowments of that insufficiently endowed institution to-day. Besides his buildings at S. John's College, the building of the Convocation House, adjoining the

M.A. degrees. Charles paid special attention to S. John's College, out of compliment to Laud, who entertained the royal party there, and drew attention to the library he had enlarged and the quadrangle he had built, mainly out of the stones obtained from the old Carmelite Convent in Beaumont Palace-once the Palace of Kings. From that time forward S. John's was the most royalist of colleges. One of its most treasured possessions was the portrait of the Royal Martyr, "which has the whole of the book of Psalms written in the lines of the face and the hair of the head." Of this picture, as of other things, the story is told that Charles II. begged it of the college, and promised in return to grant them any request they might make. They gave the picture, and requested His Majesty to give the

much boredom from a play called "Technogamia, or the Marriage of the Arts," in which "there

'Marriage,' done

mates should w

elf did offer

ice or thrice