1

of modesty and piety, in which, alas, too many of the students indulge. "For the first two years," he said in a later oration, "we were a mere rabble. Our critical situation and our common interests were discussed in journals and newspapers, by the most ignorant and despicable. Such was the pitch of madness, that to have stood up for gownsmen would have been reckoned a violation of religion and piety."2 Matters reached such a pass, indeed, that advantage was taken of it, not only by a few extreme puritans who held that all learning save that to be attained by study of the Bible was damnable, but even by a man as different from them as Thomas Hobbes, to urge the suppression of the universities altogether; and with this object a "plot" was set on foot, happily in vain, in the Barebones Parliament.3

Owen and the more liberal puritans who worked with him found it no easy task to mend matters. That they did so, or at any rate that matters were mended under their rule, was admitted even by royalists. "It yielded," Clarendon wrote concerning the puritan rule, "a harvest of extraordinary good and sound knowledge in all parts of learning, and many who were wickedly introduced applied themselves to the study of good learning and the practice of virtue: so that when it pleased God to bring King Charles the Second back to his throne, he found that university abounding in excellent learning, devoted to duty and obedience, and little inferior to what it was before its desolation." There were many, even royalists, who

1 Orme, p. 170.

2 Ibid., p. 172.

3 Godwin, History of the Commonwealth' (1828), vol. iv., p. 94; Wood, History and Antiquities of Oxford,' vol. iii., p. 657.

4 History of the Rebellion' (1849), vol. iv., p. 283.

thought that the condition of the university at the era of the Restoration, instead of being a little inferior, was a great deal superior to its condition while Charles the First was reigning.

The reformers, as the royalist historian admitted, set themselves to improve both the study of learning and the practice of virtue. As regards the former, however, they attempted to do little more than revive the academical, apart from the ecclesiastical, appointments of Archbishop Laud, while as regards the latter they were really innovators.

Before Owen assumed authority at Oxford the students had of course been relieved from the ordinary oaths and declarations of obedience to the rules of the episcopal church, and from compulsory performance of the slight religious services previously appointed for them, and some efforts had been made to insist on conformity to the religious opinions then in the ascendant; but these efforts were never very harshly made, and, in Owen's time at any rate, there was considerable toleration. The chief sign of the puritan supremacy in the university was in the unprecedented zeal with which the moral and religious well-being of its members was looked after.

In 1651, for instance, arrangements were made by the visitors for dispensing with the secular duties assigned to Saturday afternoon, and the substitution for them of a sermon to be preached at four o'clock in the chapel of Magdalen, to be followed by exercises preparatory to the solemn services of the morrow. The visitors also appointed that there should be a sermon every Sunday morning at eight o'clock at Corpus Christi, and one at four o'clock at St. Mary Magdalen, besides the usual noontide sermons in the various churches and chapels;

that there should be a seven o'clock morning sermon at St. Mary's every Tuesday, a four o'clock afternoon sermon at Christ Church every Thursday, and a seven o'clock morning sermon at All Hallows every Friday, besides an afternoon presbyterian meeting at Dr. Rogers's house on the same day, and Dr. Goodwin's independent meeting every Wednesday. Not content with all these religious opportunities, the visitors, in November, 1653, "upon consideration that one main use of the university is to train up young men in divine as well as human learning, and that exercise in the things of God doth much increase knowledge and favour therein," directed that there should be frequent additional preaching in every college, and regular services every Sunday morning, between seven and nine o'clock.1

Shortly before that appointment of more preaching, on the 27th of June, 1653, the visitors had called for a return of all the tutors in the several colleges, and of all the undergraduates committed to their charge, and directed that all tutors who were not devout puritans should be dismissed, and further, that every undergraduate should be provided with some suitable tutor. On the same day they ordered that all bachelors of arts and undergraduates should, on every Sunday evening, between six and nine o'clock, "give an account, to some person of known ability and piety, to be appointed by the heads of houses, of the sermons they had heard, and their attendance on other religious exercises that day." And on the 4th of July following they decreed that all students under the

1 Wood, History and Antiquities of Oxford,' vol. ii., pp. 645, 656. For accounts of these and other religious exercises, see Calamy's 'Continuation of Mr. Baxter's History of his Life and Times' (1713), and the Account of the Life and Death of Philip Henry' (1712).

1652-8. 1 RELIGIOUS DISCIPLINE UNDER THE PURITANS.

Et. 20-26.1

RARY

་

35

care of tutors should repair to those tutors' chambers every evening, for so long as they were required, "to hear private prayers, and give an account of their time spent that day."1

Those regulations were certainly tolerably strict; but they do not seem to have pressed very hardly on the less devout students, while to zealous puritans they afforded great satisfaction. All that Dr. Owen and the visitors appear to have insisted upon was that each student, besides devoting nearly the whole of Sunday to occupations considered suitable to the day, should hear at least one sermon on a week-day, and take part in so much evening worship and catechising as his tutor required. Much depended upon the religious temperament of the tutor, more upon the inclination of the student. If some students seized all the additional opportunities open to them, others probably found very irksome so much as was compulsory; but there could not have been much real hardship to any in the rules of the puritan masters of Oxford, and for those rules there is good excuse, if not ample justification, in the strong religious sentiment that prompted them. Finding that vice and indolence had taken possession of the university, the puritans sought to correct the latter by enforcing old and neglected academic appointments, and were yet more earnest in their endeavours to purge out the former by the introduction of, for Oxford, altogether novel "means of grace." In both ways they to a great extent succeeded, and in their success is their apology.

In religious matters there was a good deal of toleration. Those members of the university who were faithful to the episcopal church were not, of course, allowed publicly

1 Wood, History and Antiquities of Oxford,' vol. ii., pp. 653, 654.

to follow their favourite modes of worship, or to proclaim their prohibited theological opinions; but they held their opinions in private, and a half-private use of their ritual was winked at.

In political matters, Dr. Owen and his assistants were more strict. No sign of opposition to Cromwell and the protectorate was allowed, and, however strong may have been the secret allegiance of many to their exiled king, it was altogether secret. The clandestine royalists were as loud as the puritans in their professions of agreement with the new order of things, and of admiration for the men who had instituted it.

When Locke took his bachelor's degree, in February, 1655-6, England seemed to have settled down to a millennium of republicanism; and Oxford, full as it was of the revered relics of ecclesiasticism and royalty, appeared to be more contented and prosperous under the revolution than it had been for many previous years. Mainly through Owen's energy and shrewdness, the university had been brought from a state of chaos into comparative quiet and good order; both political and religious differences had been repressed, though by no means extinguished, and the colleges were fairly devoted to the educational purposes for which they existed.

That the parliamentary visitors should have set themselves to check the social disorders that prevailed at Oxford when the Commonwealth was established, and to bring the university into agreement with their own. religious convictions, is not so strange as that they should have undertaken to revive the most rigid academical discipline that had ever been prescribed for it. This, however, they not only attempted, but in great measure effected.