after, when scholars were given more to liberty and frivolous studies."1

The education and discipline that secured the talking, by Englishmen, of Greek and Latin instead of English, were not of the most enlightened sort; but they were better than nothing, and they were of great value according to the standards of those times. Whatever praise is due for such an achievement must be awarded to the puritan rulers of Oxford for cultivating everything then regarded as scholarship far more zealously than it had been during a long time previous or than it came to be during a long time subsequent to the crisis that they brought about. For the first time in the history of the university, they insisted that the gentlemen-commoners should be subjected to the same discipline, educational and social, as was prescribed for the other members of the various colleges and halls-that is, they refused to allow young men of wealth to spend a few years at Oxford in making a pretence of study, but really in using it as a haunt of dissipation, and in thereby exerting a bad influence on the youths who went thither with serious purpose."

There was need for the puritan reformation. Under the early Stuarts, academical pursuits had greatly deteriorated. Oxford had not been so famous as Cambridge in the days of Elizabeth, but it had greatly improved upon the medieval method of teaching, by allowing the study of classical literature to encroach upon, though not to displace, the barren scholasticism that had long starved the minds of its students, while professing to nourish them

1 Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses,' vol. iii., col. 1068.

Queen's College MSS., cited in the Historical Manuscripts Commissioners' Fourth Report, appendix, p. 456.

1652-8.

Et. 20-26..

ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE UNDER THE PURITANS.

39

with all the fruits of philosophy and science. Erasmus had given to it, as well as to the sister university, the beneficial influence of his presence, and it had raised up for itself teachers as eminent, in their own rather narrow way, as Linacre and Grocyn. In the next generation it could not boast of such men as Ascham, Smith, and Clarke, of Cambridge, but it prospered for a time, until both scholasticism and classicism went out of fashion under the rival yet combined influences of men who followed the lead of a courtier like "Steenie" Buckingham, and a prelate like Laud. A typical Oxford man of the first half of the seventeenth century was Bryan Dupper, who was successively dean of Christ Church and vice-chancellor of the university before taking high ecclesiastical office, and concerning whom this was the greatest panegyric that could be uttered by his greatest panegyrist :-" He was a man of excellent parts, and every way qualified for his function, especially as to the comeliness of his person and gracefulness of his deportment, which rendered him worthy the service of a court, and every way fit to stand before princes."

It may seem unfair to blame Archbishop Laud for helping to bring the university to the verge of ruin, and at the same time to commend the puritans for, for the first time, successfully enforcing the academical system that he set up. But, unfortunately, Laud's ecclesiastical bigotry far overtopped his academical zeal, and, while proposing to make Oxford a good school for all the learning that was then in vogue, he laboured so much more heartily to make it a seminary for abject slaves to divine-right archbishops and divine-right kings that his commendable intentions were altogether frustrated. The

1 Wood, 'Athenæ Oxonienses,' vol. iii., col. 542.

clever workman who makes a good tool and puts it to a bad use does not deserve much praise: the praise is due to the person who employs it in a lawful way.

Perhaps, indeed, some special credit is due to the puritans for consenting to adopt the academical schemes of a man whom, as an ecclesiastic and a politician, they so bitterly hated. Looked at from a modern standpointand Locke's was a modern standpoint-the Laudian statutes which the puritans revived cannot be highly commended. But they had not the wit to devise anything better, and, lacking that wit, they honestly set aside all prejudices and did their utmost to work out successfully the best academical system that they found ready at their hands. Religion and morals they thought they understood better than any one else since the days of the apostles, and on these points they took no hints from Laud or any other enemy of Christ; but of the scholarship of this world they did not profess to have any superior understanding, and accordingly they resolutely enforced what they considered to be the most suitable scheme of secular education for Oxford and its thirty-two hundred members of all grades.1

In one respect they must be especially commended. Assigning the theological and kindred professorships, as might be expected, to the best men they could find of their own ways of thinking, they chose most of their other teachers without any sort of bias. In one notable case, that of Dr. Edward Pococke, they even dispensed with the customary declaration of allegiance to Cromwell and the Long Parliament, because, though he was too staunch a royalist to sign that declaration, they did not

1 In 1622 there were 2850 members of the university; in 1651 the number was 3247.-'Foundation of the University of Oxford' (1651), p. 17.

1652-6

Æt. 20-23.

LOCKE'S TUTor.

41

choose, by dismissing him, to forfeit the services of the best oriental scholar then living in England. In employing some scientific teachers who hardly made any secret of their heresy on church and state matters, moreover, they made Oxford for some time the head-quarters of scientific research. Archbishop Laud and his friends would never have shown such liberality.

Locke was twenty years old when he took up his residence at Oxford. He entered the university almost immediately after Dr. Owen had been appointed its vicechancellor, as well as dean of Christ Church, and just at the time when the puritan reformation was fairly beginning. He entered it as a student of the richest, most influential, and most hard-working of all its colleges.

Under the puritans the functions of a tutor were more various and responsible than in the times before and after, or, at any rate, they were more rigidly performed. The tutor found for Locke was Thomas Cole, his senior by only five or six years, and like him a Westminster scholar who had obtained a Christ Church studentship. A churchman by early training, he became an independent at Oxford, and rose to be principal of St. Mary's Hall. He was ejected for his non-conformity in 1660, and thereupon established a school for the sons of independents at Nettlebed, in Oxfordshire, ultimately settling in London, and winning credit as a preacher. He appears to have been an amiable and tolerant man, and an excellent scholar. Even churchmen spoke of him as "a man of good learning, and of a gentle spirit." There is no evi

1

1 Alumni Westmonasterienses,' p. 126; Wood, Fasti Oxonienses,' part ii., cols. 120, 166.

dence, however, that there was any closer intimacy between him and Locke than their relations required, or that, as a tutor, he did more than see that his pupil duly complied with the college and university routine from day to day.1

As at Westminster, Locke would have to rise betimes in order to attend service in the college chapel every morning at five o'clock, where, of course, the ritual of the episcopal church was displaced by forms of worship in accordance with the rule of the Westminster Assembly. Unless now and then a morning sermon intervened, breakfast followed the early service, and between breakfast-time and the mid-day dinner the hours were chiefly occupied with attendance at the lectures of the university professors or the college readers, and with preparation for these lectures under Master Cole's guidance. At dinner-time, if he talked at all, Locke was required to talk in Latin. After dinner he had generally to attend a second public lecture, and, that being over, he was free, and was probably encouraged, to be present at the university disputations and declamations, except on Thursdays, which were appropriated to the Christ Church four-o'clock sermon, and on Saturdays, when he was expected to make preparation for the Sunday Sabbath. We know, on the information of his friend James Tyrrell, that he spent no more time than he could help at the disputations and declama

1 On the 10th of May, 1654, apparently as a tutorial fee, the elder Locke transmitted to "Mr. Cole for Mr. Locke, at Oxford," 81. He also sent, perhaps in payment for clothes or books, 51. to "Mr. Denny, for Mr. Locke, at Oxford," on the 13th of April, in the same year; and another 51. to "Mr. Davis, for Mr. Locke, at Oxford," on the following 16th of June. These notes, and others that will be given hereafter, are from some stray accounts preserved by Locke.-Shaftesbury Papers, series viii., no. 3.