No More Learning

The explanation may perhaps be that, till the last year of his
reign, the force which he maintained in England consisted chiefly of
household troops, whose pay was so high that dismission from the service
would have been felt by most of them as a great calamity. The stipend
of a private in the Life Guards was a provision for the younger son of a
gentleman. Even the Foot Guards were paid about as high as manufacturers
in a prosperous season, and were therefore in a situation which the
great body of the labouring population might regard with envy. The
return of the garrison of Tangier and the raising of the new regiments
had made a great change. There were now in England many thousands of
soldiers, each of whom received only eightpence a day. The dread of
dismission was not sufficient to keep them to their duty: and corporal
punishment their officers could not legally inflict. James had therefore
one plain choice before him, to let his army dissolve itself, or to
induce the judges to pronounce that the law was what every barrister in
the Temple knew that it was not.

It was peculiarly important to secure the cooperation of two courts;
the court of King's Bench, which was the first criminal tribunal in the
realm, and the court of gaol delivery which sate at the Old Bailey, and
which had jurisdiction over offences committed in the capital. In both
these courts there were great difficulties. Herbert, Chief Justice of
the King's Bench, servile as he had hitherto been, would go no further.
Resistance still more sturdy was to be expected from Sir John Holt, who,
as Recorder of the City of London, occupied the bench at the Old Bailey.
Holt was an eminently learned and clear headed lawyer: he was an
upright and courageous man; and, though he had never been factious,
his political opinions had a tinge of Whiggism. All obstacles,
however, disappeared before the royal will. Holt was turned out of the
recordership. Herbert and another Judge were removed from the King's
Bench; and the vacant places were filled by persons in whom the
government could confide. It was indeed necessary to go very low down
in the legal profession before men could be found willing to render such
services as were now required. The new Chief justice, Sir Robert Wright,
was ignorant to a proverb; yet ignorance was not his worst fault. His
vices had ruined him. He had resorted to infamous ways of raising money,
and had, on one occasion, made a false affidavit in order to obtain
possession of five hundred pounds. Poor, dissolute, and shameless,
he had become one of the parasites of Jeffreys, who promoted him and
insulted him. Such was the man who was now selected by James to be
Lord Chief justice of England. One Richard Allibone, who was even more
ignorant of the law than Wright, and who, as a Roman Catholic, was
incapable of holding office, was appointed a puisne judge of the King's
Bench. Sir Bartholomew Shower, equally notorious as a servile Tory and
a tedious orator, became Recorder of London. When these changes had been
made, several deserters were brought to trial. They were convicted
in the face of the letter and of the spirit of the law. Some received
sentence of death at the bar of the King's Bench, some at the Old
Bailey. They were hanged in sight of the regiments to which they had
belonged; and care was taken that the executions should be announced in
the London Gazette, which very seldom noticed such events. [282]

It may well be believed, that the law, so grossly insulted by courts
which derived from it all their authority, and which were in the habit
of looking to it as their guide, would be little respected by a tribunal
which had originated in tyrannical caprice. The new High Commission had,
during the first months of its existence, merely inhibited clergymen
from exercising spiritual functions. The rights of property had remained
untouched. But, early in the year 1687, it was determined to strike at
freehold interests, and to impress on every Anglican priest and prelate
the conviction that, if he refused to lend his aid for the purpose of
destroying the Church of which he was a minister, he would in an hour be
reduced to beggary.

It would have been prudent to try the first experiment on some obscure
individual. But the government was under an infatuation such as, in a
more simple age, would have been called judicial. War was therefore at
once declared against the two most venerable corporations of the realm,
the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

The power of those bodies has during many ages been great; but it was
at the height during the latter part of the seventeenth century. None
of the neighbouring countries could boast of such splendid and opulent
seats of learning. The schools of Edinburgh and Glasgow, of Leyden and
Utrecht, of Louvain and Leipzig, of Padua and Bologna, seemed mean to
scholars who had been educated in the magnificent foundations of Wykeham
and Wolsey, of Henry the Sixth and Henry the Eighth. Literature and
science were, in the academical system of England, surrounded with
pomp, armed with magistracy, and closely allied with all the most august
institutions of the state. To be the Chancellor of an University was a
distinction eagerly sought by the magnates of the realm. To represent
an University in Parliament was a favourite object of the ambition
of statesmen. Nobles and even princes were proud to receive from an
University the privilege of wearing the doctoral scarlet. The curious
were attracted to the Universities by ancient buildings rich with the
tracery of the middle ages, by modern buildings which exhibited the
highest skill of Jones and Wren, by noble halls and chapels, by museums,
by botanical gardens, and by the only great public libraries which the
kingdom then contained. The state which Oxford especially displayed
on solemn occasions rivalled that of sovereign princes. When her
Chancellor, the venerable Duke of Ormond, sate in his embroidered mantle
on his throne under the painted ceiling of the Sheldonian theatre,
surrounded by hundreds of graduates robed according to their rank,
while the noblest youths of England were solemnly presented to him as
candidates for academical honours, he made an appearance scarcely
less regal than that which his master made in the Banqueting House of
Whitehall. At the Universities had been formed the minds of almost all
the eminent clergymen, lawyers, physicians, wits, poets, and orators of
the land, and of a large proportion of the nobility and of the opulent
gentry. It is also to be observed that the connection between the
scholar and the school did not terminate with his residence. He often
continued to be through life a member of the academical body, and to
vote as such at all important elections. He therefore regarded his old
haunts by the Cam and the Isis with even more than the affection which
educated men ordinarily feel for the place of their education. There
was no corner of England in which both Universities had not grateful and
zealous sons. Any attack on the honour or interests of either Cambridge
or Oxford was certain to excite the resentment of a powerful, active,
and intelligent class scattered over every county from Northumberland to
Cornwall.

The resident graduates, as a body, were perhaps not superior positively
to the resident graduates of our time: but they occupied a far higher
position as compared with the rest of the community. For Cambridge and
Oxford were then the only two provincial towns in the kingdom in which
could be found a large number of men whose understandings had been
highly cultivated. Even the capital felt great respect for the authority
of the Universities, not only on questions of divinity, of natural
philosophy, and of classical antiquity, but also on points on which
capitals generally claim the right of deciding in the last resort. From
Will's coffee house, and from the pit of the theatre royal in Drury
Lane, an appeal lay to the two great national seats of taste and
learning. Plays which had been enthusiastically applauded in London
were not thought out of danger till they had undergone the more severe
judgment of audiences familiar with Sophocles and Terence. [283]

The great moral and intellectual influence of the English Universities
had been strenuously exerted on the side of the crown. The head quarters
of Charles the First had been at Oxford; and the silver tankards and
salvers of all the colleges had been melted down to supply his military
chest. Cambridge was not less loyally disposed. She had sent a large
part of her plate to the royal camp; and the rest would have followed
had not the town been seized by the troops of the Parliament. Both
Universities had been treated with extreme severity by the victorious
Puritans. Both had hailed the restoration with delight. Both had
steadily opposed the Exclusion Bill. Both had expressed the deepest
horror at the Rye House Plot. Cambridge had not only deposed her
Chancellor Monmouth, but had marked her abhorrence of his treason in a
manner unworthy of a scat of learning, by committing to the flames the
canvass on which his pleasing face and figure had been portrayed by the
utmost skill of Kneller. [284] Oxford, which lay nearer to the Western
insurgents, had given still stronger proofs of loyalty. The students,
under the sanction of their preceptors, had taken arms by hundreds
in defence of hereditary right. Such were the bodies which James now
determined to insult and plunder in direct defiance of the laws and of
his plighted faith.

Several Acts of Parliament, as clear as any that were to be found in
the statute book, had provided that no person should be admitted to any
degree in either University without taking the oath of supremacy,
and another oath of similar character called the oath of obedience.
Nevertheless, in February 1687, a royal letter was sent to Cambridge
directing that a Benedictine monk, named Alban Francis, should be
admitted a Master of Arts.

The academical functionaries, divided between reverence for the King
and reverence for the law, were in great distress. Messengers were
despatched in all haste to the Duke of Albemarle, who had succeeded
Monmouth as Chancellor of the University. He was requested to represent
the matter properly to the King. Meanwhile the Registrar and Bedells
waited on Francis, and informed him that, if he would take the oaths
according to law, he should be instantly admitted. He refused to
be sworn, remonstrated with the officers of the University on their
disregard of the royal mandate, and, finding them resolute, took horse,
and hastened to relate his grievances at Whitehall.

The heads of the colleges now assembled in council. The best legal
opinions were taken, and were decidedly in favour of the course which
had been pursued. But a second letter from Sunderland, in high and
menacing terms, was already on the road. Albemarle informed the
University, with many expressions of concern, that he had done his best,
but that he had been coldly and ungraciously received by the King. The
academical body, alarmed by the royal displeasure, and conscientiously
desirous to meet the royal wishes, but determined not to violate the
clear law of the land, submitted the humblest and most respectful
explanations, but to no purpose. In a short time came down a summons
citing the Vicechancellor and the Senate to appear before the new
High Commission at Westminster on the twenty-first of April. The
Vicechancellor was to attend in person; the Senate, which consists of
all the Doctors and Masters of the University, was to send deputies.

When the appointed day arrived, a great concourse filled the Council
chamber. Jeffreys sate at the head of the board. Rochester, since the
white staff had been taken from him, was no longer a member. In his
stead appeared the Lord Chamberlain, John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave.
The fate of this nobleman has, in one respect, resembled the fate of his
colleague Sprat. Mulgrave wrote verses which scarcely ever rose above
absolute mediocrity: but, as he was a man of high note in the political
and fashionable world, these verses found admirers. Time dissolved the
charm, but, unfortunately for him, not until his lines had acquired a
prescriptive right to a place in all collections of the works of English
poets. To this day accordingly his insipid essays in rhyme and his
paltry songs to Amoretta and Gloriana are reprinted in company with
Comus and Alexander's Feast. The consequence is that our generation
knows Mulgrave chiefly as a poetaster, and despises him as such. In
truth however he was, by the acknowledgment of those who neither
loved nor esteemed him, a man distinguished by fine parts, and in
parliamentary eloquence inferior to scarcely any orator of his time. His
moral character was entitled to no respect. He was a libertine without
that openness of heart and hand which sometimes makes libertinism
amiable, and a haughty aristocrat without that elevation of sentiment
which sometimes makes aristocratical haughtiness respectable. The
satirists of the age nicknamed him Lord Allpride. Yet was his pride
compatible with all ignoble vices. Many wondered that a man who had so
exalted a sense of his dignity could be so hard and niggardly in all
pecuniary dealings. He had given deep offence to the royal family by
venturing to entertain the hope that he might win the heart and hand of
the Princess Anne. Disappointed in this attempt, he had exerted himself
to regain by meanness the favour which he had forfeited by presumption.
His epitaph, written by himself, still informs all who pass through
Westminster Abbey that he lived and died a sceptic in religion; and we
learn from the memoirs which he wrote that one of his favourite subjects
of mirth was the Romish superstition. Yet he began, as soon as James was
on the throne, to express a strong inclination towards Popery, and at
length in private affected to be a convert. This abject hypocrisy had
been rewarded by a place in the Ecclesiastical Commission. [285]

Before that formidable tribunal now appeared the Vicechancellor of the
University of Cambridge, Doctor John Pechell. He was a man of no
great ability or vigour, but he was accompanied by eight distinguished
academicians, elected by the Senate. One of these was Isaac Newton,
Fellow of Trinity College, and Professor of mathematics. His genius was
then in the fullest vigour. The great work, which entitles him to the
highest place among the geometricians and natural philosophers of all
ages and of all nations, had been some time printing under the sanction
of the Royal Society, and was almost ready for publication. He was the
steady friend of civil liberty and of the Protestant religion: but
his habits by no means fitted him for the conflicts of active life. He
therefore stood modestly silent among the delegates, and left to men
more versed in practical business the task of pleading the cause of his
beloved University.

Never was there a clearer case. The law was express. The practice had
been almost invariably in conformity with the law. It might perhaps have
happened that, on a day of great solemnity, when many honorary degrees
were conferred, a person who had not taken the oaths might have passed
in the crowd. But such an irregularity, the effect of mere haste and
inadvertence, could not be cited as a precedent. Foreign ambassadors of
various religions, and in particular one Mussulman, had been admitted
without the oaths. But it might well be doubted whether such cases fell
within the reason and spirit of the Acts of Parliament. It was not even
pretended that any person to whom the oaths had been tendered and who
had refused them had ever taken a degree; and this was the situation in
which Francis stood. The delegates offered to prove that, in the late
reign, several royal mandates had been treated as nullities because
the persons recommended had not chosen to qualify according to law, and
that, on such occasions, the government had always acquiesced in the
propriety of the course taken by the University. But Jeffreys would hear
nothing. He soon found out that the Vice chancellor was weak, ignorant,
and timid, and therefore gave a loose to all that insolence which
had long been the terror of the Old Bailey. The unfortunate Doctor,
unaccustomed to such a presence and to such treatment, was soon harassed
and scared into helpless agitation. When other academicians who were
more capable of defending their cause attempted to speak they were
rudely silenced. "You are not Vicechancellor. When you are, you may
talk. Till then it will become you to hold your peace. " The defendants
were thrust out of the court without a hearing. In a short time
they were called in, again, and informed that the Commissioners had
determined to deprive Pechell of the Vicechancellorship, and to suspend
him from all the emoluments to which he was entitled as Master of
a college, emoluments which were strictly of the nature of freehold
property. "As for you," said Jeffreys to the delegates, "most of you are
divines. I will therefore send you home with a text of scripture, 'Go
your way and sin no more, lest a worse thing happen to you. '" [286]

These proceedings might seem sufficiently unjust and violent. But the
King had already begun to treat Oxford with such rigour that the rigour
shown towards Cambridge might, by comparison, be called lenity. Already
University College had been turned by Obadiah Walker into a Roman
Catholic seminary. Already Christ Church was governed by a Roman
Catholic Dean. Mass was already said daily in both those colleges.
The tranquil and majestic city, so long the stronghold of monarchical
principles, was agitated by passions which it had never before known.
The undergraduates, with the connivance of those who were in authority
over them, hooted the members of Walker's congregation, and chanted
satirical ditties under his windows. Some fragments of the serenades
which then disturbed the High Street have been preserved. The burden of
one ballad was this:

"Old Obadiah Sings Ave Maria. "

When the actors came down to Oxford, the public feeling was expressed
still more strongly. Howard's Committee was performed. This play,
written soon after the Restoration, exhibited the Puritans in an odious
and contemptible light, and had therefore been, during a quarter of
a century, a favourite with Oxonian audiences. It was now a greater
favourite than ever; for, by a lucky coincidence, one of the most
conspicuous characters was an old hypocrite named Obadiah. The audience
shouted with delight when, in the last scene, Obadiah was dragged in
with a halter round his neck; and the acclamations redoubled when one of
the players, departing from the written text of the comedy, proclaimed
that Obadiah should be hanged because he had changed his religion. The
King was much provoked by this insult. So mutinous indeed was the temper
of the University that one of the newly raised regiments, the same which
is now called the Second Dragoon Guards, was quartered at Oxford for the
purpose of preventing an outbreak. [287]

These events ought to have convinced James that he had entered on a
course which must lead him to his ruin. To the clamours of London he
had been long accustomed. They had been raised against him, sometimes
unjustly, and sometimes vainly. He had repeatedly braved them, and
might brave them still. But that Oxford, the scat of loyalty, the head
quarters of the Cavalier army, the place where his father and brother
had held their court when they thought themselves insecure in their
stormy capital, the place where the writings of the great republican
teachers had recently been committed to the flames, should now be in a
ferment of discontent, that those highspirited youths who a few months
before had eagerly volunteered to march against the Western insurgents
should now be with difficulty kept down by sword and carbine, these were
signs full of evil omen to the House of Stuart. The warning, however,
was lost on the dull, stubborn, self-willed tyrant. He was resolved
to transfer to his own Church all the wealthiest and most splendid
foundations of England. It was to no purpose that the best and wisest
of his Roman Catholic counsellors remonstrated. They represented to him
that he had it in his power to render a great service to the cause of
his religion without violating the rights of property. A grant of two
thousand pounds a year from his privy purse would support a Jesuit
college at Oxford. Such a sum he might easily spare. Such a college,
provided with able, learned, and zealous teachers, would be a formidable
rival to the old academical institutions, which exhibited but too many
symptoms of the languor almost inseparable from opulence and security.
King James's College would soon be, by the confession even of
Protestants, the first place of education in the island, as respected
both science and moral discipline. This would be the most effectual
and the least invidious method by which the Church of England could be
humbled and the Church of Rome exalted. The Earl of Ailesbury, one of
the most devoted servants of the royal family, declared that, though a
Protestant, and by no means rich, he would himself contribute a thousand
pounds towards this design, rather than that his master should violate
the rights of property, and break faith with the Established Church.
[288] The scheme, however, found no favour in the sight of the King. It
was indeed ill suited in more ways than one, to his ungentle nature. For
to bend and break the spirits of men gave him pleasure; and to part with
his money gave him pain. What he had not the generosity to do at his own
expense he determined to do at the expense of others. When once he was
engaged, pride and obstinacy prevented him from receding; and he was
at length led, step by step, to acts of Turkish tyranny, to acts which
impressed the nation with a conviction that the estate of a Protestant
English freeholder under a Roman Catholic King must be as insecure as
that of a Greek under Moslem domination.

Magdalene College at Oxford, founded in the fifteenth century by William
of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester and Lord High Chancellor, was one of
the most remarkable of our academical institutions. A graceful tower, on
the summit of which a Latin hymn was annually chanted by choristers at
the dawn of May day, caught far off the eye of the traveller who came
from London. As he approached he found that this tower rose from an
embattled pile, low and irregular, yet singularly venerable, which,
embowered in verdure, overhung the slugish waters of the Cherwell. He
passed through a gateway overhung by a noble orie [289], and found himself
in a spacious cloister adorned with emblems of virtues and vices, rudely
carved in grey stone by the masons of the fifteenth century. The table
of the society was plentifully spread in a stately refectory hung with
paintings, and rich with fantastic carving. The service of the Church
was performed morning and evening in a chapel which had suffered much
violence from the Reformers, and much from the Puritans, but which was,
under every disadvantage, a building of eminent beauty, and which has,
in our own time, been restored with rare taste and skill. The spacious
gardens along the river side were remarkable for the size of the trees,
among which towered conspicuous one of the vegetable wonders of the
island, a gigantic oak, older by a century, men said, than the oldest
college in the University.

The statutes of the society ordained that the Kings of England and
Princes of Wales should be lodged in Magdalene. Edward the Fourth had
inhabited the building while it was still unfinished. Richard the
Third had held his court there, had heard disputations in the hall,
had feasted there royally, and had mended the cheer of his hosts by a
present of fat bucks from his forests. Two heirs apparent of the crown
who had been prematurely snatched away, Arthur the elder brother of
Henry the Eighth, and Henry the elder brother of Charles the First, had
been members of the college. Another prince of the blood, the last
and best of the Roman Catholic Archbishops of Canterbury, the gentle
Reginald Pole, had studied there. In the time of the civil war Magdalene
had been true to the cause of the crown. There Rupert had fixed his
quarters; and, before some of his most daring enterprises, his trumpets
had been heard sounding to horse through those quiet cloisters. Most of
the Fellows were divines, and could aid the King only by their prayers
and their pecuniary contributions. But one member of the body, a Doctor
of Civil Law, raised a troop of undergraduates, and fell fighting
bravely at their head against the soldiers of Essex. When hostilities
had terminated, and the Roundheads were masters of England, six sevenths
of the members of the foundation refused to make any submission to
usurped authority. They were consequently ejected from their dwellings
and deprived of their revenues. After the Restoration the survivors
returned to their pleasant abode. They had now been succeeded by a new
generation which inherited their opinions and their spirit. During the
Western rebellion such Magdalene men as were not disqualified by their
age or profession for the use of arms had eagerly volunteered to fight
for the crown. It would be difficult to name any corporation in the
kingdom which had higher claims to the gratitude of the House of Stuart.
[290]

The society consisted of a President, of forty Fellows, of thirty
scholars called Demies, and of a train of chaplains, clerks, and
choristers. At the time of the general visitation in the reign of Henry
the Eighth the revenues were far greater than those of any similar
institution in the realm, greater by nearly one half than those of the
magnificent foundation of Henry the Sixth at Cambridge, and considerably
more than double those which William of Wykeham had settled on his
college at Oxford. In the days of James the Second the riches of
Magdalene were immense, and were exaggerated by report. The college
was popularly said to be wealthier than the wealthiest abbeys of the
Continent. When the leases fell in,--so ran the vulgar rumour,--the
rents would be raised to the prodigious sum of forty thousand pounds a
year. [291]

The Fellows were, by the statutes which their founder had drawn up,
empowered to select their own President from among persons who were, or
had been, Fellows either of their society or of New College. This power
had generally been exercised with freedom. But in some instances royal
letters had been received recommending to the choice of the corporation
qualified persons who were in favour at court; and on such occasions it
had been the practice to show respect to the wishes of the sovereign.

In March 1687, the President of the college died. One of the Fellows,
Doctor Thomas Smith, popularly nicknamed Rabbi Smith, a distinguished
traveller, book-collector, antiquary, and orientalist, who had been
chaplain to the embassy at Constantinople, and had been employed to
collate the Alexandrian manuscript, aspired to the vacant post. He
conceived that he had some claims on the favour of the government as
a man of learning and as a zealous Tory. His loyalty was in truth as
fervent and as steadfast as was to be found in the whole Church of
England. He had long been intimately acquainted with Parker, Bishop
of Oxford, and hoped to obtain by the interest of that prelate a royal
letter to the college. Parker promised to do his best, but soon reported
that he had found difficulties.
"The King," he said, "will recommend no
person who is not a friend to His Majesty's religion. What can you do
to pleasure him as to that matter? " Smith answered that, if he
became President, he would exert himself to promote learning, true
Christianity, and loyalty. "That will not do," said the Bishop. "If so,"
said Smith manfully, "let who will be President: I can promise nothing
more. "

The election had been fixed for the thirteenth of April, and the Fellows
were summoned to attend. It was rumoured that a royal letter would come
down recommending one Anthony Farmer to the vacant place. This man's
life had been a series of shameful acts. He had been a member of the
University of Cambridge, and had escaped expulsion only by a timely
retreat. He had then joined the Dissenters. Then he had gone to Oxford,
had entered himself at Magdalene, and had soon become notorious there
for every kind of vice. He generally reeled into his college at
night speechless with liquor. He was celebrated for having headed a
disgraceful riot at Abingdon. He had been a constant frequenter of noted
haunts of libertines. At length he had turned pandar, had exceeded even
the ordinary vileness of his vile calling, and had received money from
dissolute young gentlemen commoners for services such as it is not good
that history should record. This wretch, however, had pretended to
turn Papist. His apostasy atoned for all his vices; and, though still
a youth, he was selected to rule a grave and religious society in which
the scandal given by his depravity was still fresh.

As a Roman Catholic he was disqualified for academical office by the
general law of the land. Never having been a Fellow of Magdalene College
or of New College, he was disqualified for the vacant presidency by a
special ordinance of William of Waynflete. William of Waynflete had also
enjoined those who partook of his bounty to have a particular regard to
moral character in choosing their head; and, even if he had left no such
injunction, a body chiefly composed of divines could not with decency
entrust such a man as Farmer with the government of a place of
education.

The Fellows respectfully represented to the King the difficulty in which
they should be placed, if, as was rumoured, Farmer should be recommended
to them, and begged that, if it were His Majesty's pleasure to
interfere in the election, some person for whom they could legally
and conscientiously vote might be proposed. Of this dutiful request no
notice was taken. The royal letter arrived. It was brought down by one
of the Fellows who had lately turned Papist, Robert Charnock, a man of
parts and spirit, but of a violent and restless temper, which impelled
him a few years later to an atrocious crime and to a terrible fate. On
the thirteenth of April the society met in the chapel. Some hope was
still entertained that the King might be moved by the remonstrance which
had been addressed to him. The assembly therefore adjourned till the
fifteenth, which was the last day on which, by the constitution of the
college, the election could take place.

The fifteenth of April came. Again the Fellows repaired to their chapel.
No answer had arrived from Whitehall. Two or three of the Seniors, among
whom was Smith, were inclined to postpone the election once more rather
than take a step which might give offence to the King. But the language
of the statutes was clear. Those statutes the members of the foundation
had sworn to observe. The general opinion was that there ought to be no
further delay. A hot debate followed. The electors were too much excited
to take their seats; and the whole choir was in a tumult. Those who were
for proceeding appealed to their oaths and to the rules laid down by the
founder whose bread they had eaten. The King, they truly said, had no
right to force on them even a qualified candidate. Some expressions
unpleasing to Tory ears were dropped in the course of the dispute;
and Smith was provoked into exclaiming that the spirit of Ferguson had
possessed his brethren. It was at length resolved by a great majority
that it was necessary to proceed immediately to the election. Charnock
left the chapel. The other Fellows, having first received the sacrament,
proceeded to give their voices. The choice fell on John Hough, a man
of eminent virtue and prudence, who, having borne persecution with
fortitude and prosperity with meekness, having risen to high honours and
having modestly declined honours higher still, died in extreme old
age yet in full vigour of mind, more than fifty-six years after this
eventful day.

The society hastened to acquaint the King with the circumstances which
had made it necessary to elect a President without further delay, and
requested the Duke of Ormond, as patron of the whole University, and the
Bishop of Winchester, as visitor of Magdalene College, to undertake the
office of intercessors: but the King was far too angry and too dull to
listen to explanations.

Early in June the Fellows were cited to appear before the High
Commission at Whitehall. Five of them, deputed by the rest, obeyed the
summons. Jeffreys treated them after his usual fashion. When one of
them, a grave Doctor named Fairfax, hinted some doubt as to the validity
of the Commission, the Chancellor began to roar like a wild beast. "Who
is this man? What commission has he to be impudent here? Seize him. Put
him into a dark room. What does he do without a keeper? He is under
my care as a lunatic. I wonder that nobody has applied to me for the
custody of him. " But when this storm had spent its force, and the
depositions concerning the moral character of the King's nominee had
been read, none of the Commissioners had the front to pronounce that
such a man could properly be made the head of a great college. Obadiah
Walker and the other Oxonian Papists who were in attendance to support
their proselyte were utterly confounded. The Commission pronounced
Hough's election void, and suspended Fairfax from his fellowship: but
about Farmer no more was said; and, in the month of August, arrived a
royal letter recommending Parker, Bishop of Oxford, to the Fellows.

Parker was not an avowed Papist. Still there was an objection to him
which, even if the presidency had been vacant, would have been decisive:
for he had never been a Fellow of either New College or Magdalene. But
the presidency was not vacant: Hough had been duly elected; and all the
members of the college were bound by oath to support him in his office.
They therefore, with many expressions of loyalty and concern, excused
themselves from complying with the King's mandate.

While Oxford was thus opposing a firm resistance to tyranny, a stand not
less resolute was made in another quarter. James had, some time before,
commanded the trustees of the Charterhouse, men of the first rank and
consideration in the kingdom, to admit a Roman Catholic named Popham
into the hospital which was under their care. The Master of the house,
Thomas Burnet, a clergyman of distinguished genius, learning, and
virtue, had the courage to represent to them, though the ferocious
Jeffreys sate at the board, that what was required of them was contrary
both to the will of the founder and to an Act of Parliament. "What is
that to the purpose? " said a courtier who was one of the governors. "It
is very much to the purpose, I think," answered a voice, feeble with
age and sorrow, yet not to be heard without respect by any assembly,
the voice of the venerable Ormond. "An Act of Parliament," continued the
patriarch of the Cavalier party, "is, in my judgment, no light thing. "
The question was put whether Popham should be admitted, and it was
determined to reject him. The Chancellor, who could not well case
himself by cursing and swearing at Ormond, flung away in a rage, and was
followed by some of the minority. The consequence was that there was
not a quorum left, and that no formal reply could be made to the royal
mandate.

The next meeting took place only two days after the High Commission
had pronounced sentence of deprivation against Hough, and of suspension
against Fairfax. A second mandate under the Great Seal was laid before
the trustees: but the tyrannical manner in which Magdalene College had
been treated had roused instead of subduing their spirit. They drew up a
letter to Sunderland in which they requested him to inform the King that
they could not, in this matter, obey His Majesty without breaking the
law and betraying their trust.

There can be little doubt that, had ordinary signatures been appended to
this document, the King would have taken some violent course. But
even he was daunted by the great names of Ormond, Halifax, Danby, and
Nottingham, the chiefs of all the sections of that great party to
which he owed his crown. He therefore contented himself with directing
Jeffreys to consider what course ought to be taken. It was announced at
one time that a proceeding would be instituted in the King's Bench, at
another that the Ecclesiastical Commission would take up the case: but
these threats gradually died away. [292]

The summer was now far advanced; and the King set out on a progress, the
longest and the most splendid that had been known for many years. From
Windsor he went on the sixteenth of August to Portsmouth, walked round
the fortifications, touched some scrofulous people, and then proceeded
in one of his yachts to Southampton. From Southampton he travelled to
Bath, where he remained a few days, and where he left the Queen. When he
departed, he was attended by the High Sheriff of Somersetshire and by
a large body of gentlemen to the frontier of the county, where the High
Sheriff of Gloucestershire, with a not less splendid retinue, was
in attendance. The Duke of Beaufort soon met the royal coaches, and
conducted them to Badminton, where a banquet worthy of the fame which
his splendid housekeeping had won for him was prepared. In the afternoon
the cavalcade proceeded to Gloucester. It was greeted two miles from the
city by the Bishop and clergy. At the South Gate the Mayor waited with
the keys. The bells rang and the conduits flowed with wine as the King
passed through the streets to the close which encircles the venerable
Cathedral. He lay that night at the deanery, and on the following
morning set out for Worcester. From Worcester he went to Ludlow,
Shrewsbury, and Chester, and was everywhere received with outward signs
of joy and respect, which he was weak enough to consider as proofs that
the discontent excited by his measures had subsided, and that an easy
Victory was before him. Barillon, more sagacious, informed Lewis that
the King of England was under a delusion that the progress had done
no real good, and that those very gentlemen of Worcestershire and
Shropshire who had thought it their duty to receive their Sovereign and
their guest with every mark of honour would be found as refractory as
ever when the question of the test should come on. [293]

On the road the royal train was joined by two courtiers who in temper
and opinions differed widely from each other. Penn was at Chester on
a pastoral tour. His popularity and authority among his brethren had
greatly declined since he had become a tool of the King and of the
Jesuits. [294] He was, however, most graciously received by James, and,
on the Sunday, was permitted to harangue in the tennis court, while
Cartwright preached in the Cathedral, and while the King heard mass at
an altar which had been decked in the Shire Hall. It is said, indeed,
that His Majesty deigned to look into the tennis court and to listen
with decency to his friend's melodious eloquence. [295]

The furious Tyrconnel had crossed the sea from Dublin to give an account
of his administration. All the most respectable English Catholics
looked coldly on him as on an enemy of their race and a scandal to their
religion. But he was cordially welcomed by his master, and dismissed
with assurances of undiminished confidence and steady support. James
expressed his delight at learning that in a short time the whole
government of Ireland would be in Roman Catholic hands. The English
colonists had already been stripped of all political power. Nothing
remained but to strip them of their property; and this last outrage was
deferred only till the cooperation of an Irish Parliament should have
been secured. [296]

From Cheshire the King turned southward, and, in the full belief that
the Fellows of Magdalene College, however mutinous they might be, would
not dare to disobey a command uttered by his own lips, directed his
course towards Oxford. By the way he made some little excursions to
places which peculiarly interested him, as a King, a brother, and a son.
He visited the hospitable roof of Boscobel and the remains of the oak
so conspicuous in the history of his house. He rode over the field of
Edgehill, where the Cavaliers first crossed swords with the soldiers of
the Parliament. On the third of September he dined in great state at
the palace of Woodstock, an ancient and renowned mansion, of which not
a stone is now to be seen, but of which the site is still marked on
the turf of Blenheim Park by two sycamores which grow near the stately
bridge. In the evening he reached Oxford. He was received there with
the wonted honours. The students in their academical garb were ranged to
welcome him on the right hand and on the left, from the entrance of
the city to the great gate of Christ Church. He lodged at the deanery,
where, among other accommodations, he found a chapel fitted up for the
celebration of the Mass. [297] On the day after his arrival, the Fellows
of Magdalene College were ordered to attend him. When they appeared
before him he treated them with an insolence such as had never been
shown to their predecessors by the Puritan visitors. "You have not dealt
with me like gentlemen," he exclaimed. "You have been unmannerly as
well as undutiful. " They fell on their knees and tendered a petition. He
would not look at it. "Is this your Church of England loyalty? I could
not have believed that so many clergymen of the Church of England would
have been concerned in such a business. Go home. Get you gone. I am
King. I will be obeyed. Go to your chapel this instant; and admit the
Bishop of Oxford. Let those who refuse look to it. They shall feel
the whole weight of my hand. They shall know what it is to incur the
displeasure of their Sovereign. " The Fellows, still kneeling before him,
again offered him their petition. He angrily flung it down. "Get you
gone, I tell you. I will receive nothing from you till you have admitted
the Bishop. "

They retired and instantly assembled in their chapel. The question was
propounded whether they would comply with His Majesty's command. Smith
was absent. Charnock alone answered in the affirmative. The other
Fellows who were at the meeting declared that in all things lawful
they were ready to obey the King, but that they would not violate their
statutes and their oaths.

The King, greatly incensed and mortified by his defeat, quitted Oxford
and rejoined the Queen at Bath. His obstinacy and violence had brought
him into an embarrassing position. He had trusted too much to the effect
of his frowns and angry tones, and had rashly staked, not merely the
credit of his administration, but his personal dignity, on the issue of
the contest. Could he yield to subjects whom he had menaced with raised
voice and furious gestures? Yet could he venture to eject in one day
a crowd of respectable clergymen from their homes, because they had
discharged what the whole nation regarded as a sacred duty? Perhaps
there might be an escape from this dilemma. Perhaps the college might
still be terrified, caressed, or bribed into submission. The agency
of Penn was employed. He had too much good feeling to approve of the
violent and unjust proceedings of the government, and even ventured to
express part of what he thought. James was, as usual, obstinate in the
wrong. The courtly Quaker, therefore, did his best to seduce the college
from the path of right. He first tried intimidation. Ruin, he said,
impended over the society. The King was highly incensed. The case might
be a hard one. Most people thought it so. But every child knew that His
Majesty loved to have his own way and could not bear to be thwarted.
Penn, therefore, exhorted the Fellows not to rely on the goodness of
their cause, but to submit, or at least to temporise. Such counsel came
strangely from one who had himself been expelled from the University
for raising a riot about the surplice, who had run the risk of being
disinherited rather than take off his hat to the princes of the blood,
and who had been more than once sent to prison for haranguing in
conventicles. He did not succeed in frightening the Magdalene men. In
answer to his alarming hints he was reminded that in the last generation
thirty-four out of the forty Fellows had cheerfully left their beloved
cloisters and gardens, their hall and their chapel, and had gone forth
not knowing where they should find a meal or a bed, rather than violate
the oath of allegiance. The King now wished them to violate another
oath. He should find that the old spirit was not extinct.

Then Penn tried a gentler tone. He had an interview with Hough and
with some of the Fellows, and, after many professions of sympathy and
friendship, began to hint at a compromise. The King could not bear to be
crossed. The college must give way. Parker must be admitted. But he was
in very bad health. All his preferments would soon be vacant. "Doctor
Hough," said Penn, "may then be Bishop of Oxford. How should you like
that, gentlemen? " Penn had passed his life in declaiming against a
hireling ministry. He held that he was bound to refuse the payment of
tithes, and this even when he had bought land chargeable with tithes,
and hallowed the value of the tithes in the purchase money. According
to his own principles, he would have committed a great sin if he
had interfered for the purpose of obtaining a benefice on the most
honourable terms for the most pious divine. Yet to such a degree had
his manners been corrupted by evil communications, and his understanding
obscured by inordinate zeal for a single object, that he did not scruple
to become a broker in simony of a peculiarly discreditable kind, and to
use a bishopric as a bait to tempt a divine to perjury. Hough replied
with civil contempt that he wanted nothing from the crown but common
justice. "We stand," he said, "on our statutes and our oaths: but, even
setting aside our statutes and oaths, we feel that we have our religion
to defend. The Papists have robbed us of University College. They have
robbed us of Christ Church. The fight is now for Magdalene. They will
soon have all the rest. "

Penn was foolish enough to answer that he really believed that the
Papists would now be content. "University," he said, "is a pleasant
college. Christ Church is a noble place. Magdalene is a fine building.
The situation is convenient. The walks by the river are delightful. If
the Roman Catholics are reasonable they will be satisfied with these. "
This absurd avowal would alone have made it impossible for Hough and his
brethren to yield. The negotiation was broken off; and the King hastened
to make the disobedient know, as he had threatened, what it was to incur
his displeasure.

A special commission was directed to Cartwright, Bishop of Chester, to
Wright, Chief justice of the King's Bench, and to Sir Thomas Jenner,
a Baron of the Exchequer, appointing them to exercise visitatorial
jurisdiction over the college. On the twentieth of October they arrived
at Oxford, escorted by three troops of cavalry with drawn swords. On
the following morning the Commissioners took their seats in the hall
of Magdalene. Cartwright pronounced a loyal oration which, a few years
before, would have called forth the acclamations of an Oxonian audience,
but which was now heard with sullen indignation. A long dispute
followed. The President defended his rights with skill, temper, and
resolution. He professed great respect for the royal authority. But
he steadily maintained that he had by the laws of England a freehold
interest in the house and revenues annexed to the presidency. Of
that interest he could not be deprived by an arbitrary mandate of the
Sovereign. "Will you submit", said the Bishop, "to our visitation? "
"I submit to it," said Hough with great dexterity, "so far as it is
consistent with the laws, and no farther. " "Will you deliver up the key
of your lodgings? " said Cartwright. Hough remained silent.