Chapter VI: Oxford and the Reformation (1)

In 1453 Christendom was shocked by the news that the Turks had taken Constantinople. The home of learning and the citadel of philosophy was no more. The wisdom of Hellas, so it seemed to contemporary scholars like Æneas Sylvius, was destined likewise to perish. In fact, it was but beginning to be diffused. Scholars fled with what MSS. they could save to the hospitable shores of Italy. And at the very time that these fugitives were hastening across the Adriatic, it is probable that the sheets of the Mazarin Bible were issuing from the press at Maintz. Thus whilst Italy was rescuing from destruction the most valuable thought of the ancient world, Germany was devising the means for its diffusion in lands of which Strabo never heard, and to an extent of which the Sosii never dreamed. The Italians acquired the Greek language with rapidity and ardour. The student flung aside his scholastic culture; cast away the study of an Aristotle that had been conformed to Christian Theology, and the Sentences in which that theology was enshrined, and tried to identify himself in feeling with the spirit of cultivated paganism. The cowl and the gown were discarded for the tunic and the toga.

But the New Learning did not make its way at once to England. And when at length the Englishmen who had travelled and studied in Italy brought back with them something of the generous enthusiasm with which they had been fired, their ideas were but coldly welcomed by the followers of Thomas or the disciples of Duns. At Oxford the New Movement took but a momentary hold of only a small part of the University, and then was shaken off by the massive inertness of the intellectual stagnation characteristic of the country. "They prefer their horses and their dogs to poets," wrote Poggio; "and like their horses and their dogs they shall perish and be forgotten."

The majority of Englishmen are always slow to accept new ideas. They move ponderously and protestingly in the wake of the Continent. The New Learning was as unwelcome at Oxford as if it had been a motor car. The schoolmen were still busily chopping their logic, when the Medicis were ransacking the world for a new play, when Poggio was writing his "Facetiæ" or editing Tacitus, and Pope Nicholas was founding the Vatican Library at Rome. And the Renaissance, when it did begin to work in England, took the form of a religious reformation; the religious genius of the nation led it to the worship, not of Beauty, but of Truth.

The English were equally late in adopting the new German art of printing. When Caxton introduced it, it had almost reached its perfection abroad. Block books--books printed wholly from carved blocks of wood--had come in and gone out. Arising out of them, the idea of movable types had long been invented and developed on the Continent.

The Bamberg and Mazarin Bibles, the first two books to be printed from movable type, had been produced by Gutenberg, Fust and Schöffer as early as 1453. But it was not till 1477 that Caxton set up his press at Westminster. A year later the first book was issued from an Oxford press. This was the famous small quarto of forty-two leaves, "Exposicio sancti Jeronimi in simbolum apostolorum," written by Tyrannius Rufinus of Aquileia. The colophon of this book, however, distinctly states that it was printed in 1468: "Impressa Oxonie et ibi finita anno domini M.CCCC.LXVIIJ, XVIJ die decembris." But there is every reason to suppose that an X has been omitted from this date and that the true year was 1478. Such a misprint is not uncommon. Exactly the same error occurs in books published at Venice, at Barcelona and at Augsburg. The workmanship is very much the same as, but slightly inferior to, that of the next two books which came from the Oxford Press in 1479. And in the library of All Souls' there is a copy of each of these, which were originally bound up together. A break of eleven years between the production of the first and subsequent books is both inconceivable and inexplicable.

The press from which these books and twelve others were issued at Oxford during the eight years, 1478-1486, was apparently set up by one Theodore Rood of Cologne. The first three books, however, namely the "Exposicio" mentioned, the "Ægidius de originali peccato," and "Textus Ethicorum Aristotelis per Leonardum Aretinum translatus," bear no printer's name, but the type was either brought from Cologne or directly copied from Cologne examples. It strongly resembles that used by Gerard ten Raem de Berka or Guldenschaff. Still, it cannot be proved that Rood printed these first three books, or that he ever used the type in which they alone are printed. The colophon of the fourth book, a Latin commentary on the "De Anima" of Aristotle by Alexander de Hales, a folio printed from new type, gives the name of the printer, Theodore Rood, and bears the date 1481. A copy of it was bought in the year of publication for the library of Magdalen, where it still remains. The price paid was thirty-three shillings and fourpence. A very beautiful copy of the next book, "Commentary on the Lamentation of Jeremiah," by John Lattebury, 1482, is in the library of All Souls'. Four leaves survive in the Bodleian and four in the Merton Library, of the "Cicero pro Milone," the first edition of a classic printed in England. Two leaves of a Latin grammar are to be found in the British Museum.

Rood went into partnership with an Oxford stationer named Thomas Hunt, and together they produced eight other books with a type more English in character than the preceding ones. One of these books, "Phalaris," 1485 (Wadham and Corpus Libraries), has a curious colophon in verse, which describes the printers and their ambition to surpass the Venetians in their work. The partners ceased to produce books after 1486. Rood probably returned to Cologne, and the German art found no exponents in Oxford for the remainder of the century. Subsequently we find Leicester advancing money to set up Joseph Barnes with a new press. Laud and Fell were other great patrons of the University Press.

Meantime the return of the Pope to Rome had attracted many foreign travellers and students to Italy, who could not fail to be impressed by the new birth of art and intellectual life that was taking place in that country.

Among the pupils of Guarino of Verona at Ferrara the names of at least five students from Oxford occur. Of these, Robert Fleming, a relative of the founder of Lincoln College, was an author of some distinction, and he compiled a Græco-Latin dictionary at a time when Greek was almost unknown in England. He brought back from his travels in Italy many precious books, which he gave to the library of Lincoln College. William Grey, another of Guarino's pupils, enriched the library of Balliol with many fine manuscripts redolent of the New Learning. John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, was another scholar who, before paying for his share in politics with his head, presented to the University the valuable collection of manuscripts, which he had made in the course of his travels.

William Selling, a member of the recent foundation of All Souls', was perhaps the earliest Englishman of influence to catch from Italy the inspiration of the Greek muse. On his return from that country, he was appointed to the conventual school at Canterbury. His knowledge of Greek, and his enthusiasm for Greek literature, became the germ of the study in England. Thomas Linacre was one of his pupils, who, after studying at Oxford under Vitelli, journeyed to Italy with Selling. He was introduced to Politian at Florence. Thence he proceeded to Rome, and there perhaps formed his taste for the scientific writings of Aristotle and his devotion to the study of medicine, which afterwards found expression in the foundation of the College of Physicians and of the two lectureships at Merton, now merged into the chair which bears his name. Linacre returned to Oxford and lectured there awhile before being appointed Physician to Henry VIII. His translation of five medical treatises of Galen was, Erasmus declared, more valuable than the original Greek.

We have said that he studied under Vitelli. It was Cornelio Vitelli who, some time before 1475, first "introduced polite literature to the schools of Oxford," by a lecture as prelector of New College, upon which the warden, Thomas Chandler, complimented him in a set Latin speech. This was probably that Cornelius who, in company with two other Italians, Cyprian and Nicholas by name, dined with the President of Magdalen on Christmas Day, 1488. And from the lips of this pioneer William Grocyn himself learned Greek. Grocyn was a fellow of New College (1467-1481), but he afterwards removed to Magdalen as Reader in Theology. He completed his study of Greek and Latin by a sojourn of two years (1488) at Florence, under Demetrius Chalcondylas and Politian. On his return to Oxford he took rooms in Exeter College (1491), and gave a course of lectures on Greek.

A few years later (1496-7) the first step in the revolution against the system under which the study of the Bible had been ousted by the study of the Sentences was taken. A course of lectures by John Colet on the Epistles of S. Paul was the first overt act in a movement towards practical Christian reform.

It was from Grocyn and Linacre that Thomas More and Erasmus learnt Greek. For Gibbon's epigram that Erasmus learned Greek at Oxford and taught it at Cambridge is true, if we qualify it by the reminder that he knew a little before he came to England and learned more in the years which intervened between the time when, much to the chagrin of Colet, he left Oxford and went to Cambridge as an instructor in that language.

Erasmus had taught at Paris. He went to Oxford (1498) to learn and to observe. His return home from London had been delayed unexpectedly. He determined to use the opportunity of paying a visit to Oxford. The reputation of the learned men there attracted him more than the company of "the gold-chained courtiers" of the capital. He was received as an inmate of S. Mary's College, which had been built as a house for students of his own Augustinian order (1435). This house, when it was dissolved (1541), was converted into a hall for students, and then into a charitable institution (Bridewell). The site, on the east side of New Inn Hall Street, is occupied by a house and garden, now called Frewen Hall, which was chosen in 1859 as the residence of the Prince of Wales during his studies at Oxford. The west gateway, a few remains of groining and the wall facing the street north of the gate are practically all that remains of the building as Erasmus saw it, unless we reckon the roof of the chapel of B.N.C., which is said to have been taken from the chapel of S. Mary's College. Erasmus had nothing to complain of in his welcome to Oxford. He found the prior of his college, Richard Charnock, an intelligent companion and useful friend. Colet, having heard from Charnock of his arrival, addressed to him a letter of welcome, which in the midst of its formal civility has a characteristic touch of Puritan sincerity. To this Erasmus replied in his own rhetorical fashion with a letter of elaborate compliment.

His wit, his learning and the charm of his brilliant conversation soon won him friends. Delightful himself, he found everybody delightful. The English girls were divinely pretty, and he admired their custom of kissing visitors. Erasmus made a fair show in the hunting-field, and was charmed with everything, even with our English climate.

"The air," he wrote from Oxford, "is soft and delicious. The men
are sensible and intelligent. Many of them are even learned, and
not superficially either. They know their classics and so
accurately that I seem to have lost little in not going to Italy.
When Colet speaks I might be listening to Plato. Linacre is as deep
and acute a thinker as I have ever met. Grocyn is a mine of
knowledge, and Nature never formed a sweeter and happier
disposition than that of Thomas More. The number of young men who
are studying ancient literature here is astonishing."

In one of his letters he gives a very lively picture of a gathering of witty divines at the house of his "sweet and amiable friend" Colet, when the latter "spoke with a sacred fury" and Erasmus himself, finding the conversation growing too serious for a social gathering, entertained the company with a happily invented tale.

At Oxford, then, the great centre of theological study, he was learning something of the methods of the theologians. They were not strange to him, for he knew Paris. But the Oxford school was in his mind when he poured forth his shafts of ridicule upon scholastic divines in his brilliant satire, "The Praise of Folly." Yet it was at Oxford that Colet had taught him to detest the authority of Thomas Aquinas, and to apply to the study of the New Testament the knowledge and methods indicated by the study of Greek literature. His "Moria" and his "Novum Instrumentum," therefore, the books which prepared the way for the Reformation, were his protest, and the protest of the Christian laity along with him, against the authority of the clergy and against the popular theology which was based on the errors of the Vulgate. Erasmus laid the egg and Luther hatched it--a very different bird, as the former declared. The fact was that throughout Europe the growing intelligence of the educated class was slowly but surely developing in antagonism, not merely to specific doctrines, but to the whole spirit of mediæval theology.

The Old Learning was threatened with destruction. It rose in arms against Greek and heresy. Bishops fulminated. The clergy cried Antichrist, and clamoured for sword and faggot. The Universities forbade the sale of Erasmus's writings, and, seeing what came of the study of Greek, declared that they would have no more of it. Oxford divided itself into two bodies, who called themselves Greeks and Trojans, the Trojans enormously preponderating. The "Greeks," the adherents of the New Learning, were assailed with every kind of ridicule. They were openly derided in the streets and abused from the pulpit. In after years Tyndale, who had been a student at Magdalen Hall, could recall how

"The old barking curs, Duns' disciples and like draff called
Scotists, the children of darkness, raged in every pulpit against
Greek, Latin and Hebrew, and what sorrow the schoolmasters that
taught the true Latin tongue had with them, some beating the pulpit
with their fists for madness, and roaring out with open and foaming
mouth, that if there were but one Terence or Vergil in the world,
and that same in their sleeve, and a fire before them, they would
burn them therin, though it should cost them their lives."

News of what was going on reached the court at Abingdon. At the King's command, More wrote to the governing body of the University to rebuke the intemperance of the Trojan clique. But the Heads of Houses were sleeping over a volcano, and More's letter could not rouse them from their slumber. For the present the result was that the little band of pioneers in the New Learning one by one departed out of their coasts.

"The Cardinal of York," More writes, "will not permit these studies to be meddled with." Wolsey, of course, as well as the King, More and Archbishop Warham, the Chancellor, was on the side of the New Learning. He defrayed the expenses of many lectures, for which the University repeatedly thanked him. He engaged a famous Spanish scholar, Juan Luis Vives, to occupy his new Chair of Rhetoric; and he sent a rising English scholar, Thomas Lupset, from Paris to lecture on the Classics at Oxford.

Vives was the first Professor of Humanity (or Latin) at Corpus Christi, the first of the Renaissance colleges. His special function it was to banish all "barbarism" from the "bee-hive," as the founder fondly called his college, by lecturing daily on the Classics. Tradition says that the professor was welcomed to his new home by a swarm of bees, which, to signify the incomparable sweetness of his eloquence, settled under the leads of his chambers.

The founder of C.C.C., Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, was a prelate, statesman, architect, soldier, herald and diplomatist, who, in the very encyclopædic nature of his talents, was a typical product of the Renaissance. He had been Bishop of Exeter, of Bath and Wells and of Durham before he was translated to Winchester; he had been Keeper of the Privy Seal and Secretary of State, and had played an important part in the history of his country; he had been Chancellor of Cambridge and Master of Pembroke College there; but it was chiefly upon Oxford that he lavished the wealth he had acquired.

Having bought some land between Merton and S. Frideswide's, he proposed at first to establish a college, after the manner of Durham College, directly in connection with the Monastery of S. Swithun at Winchester. But before the building was completed, he determined to make it a college for secular students. Holinshed gives us the words in which Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, who was intimately associated with him in the work--his arms are to be seen in various places in the existing buildings--persuaded him to this course.

"What, my Lord, shall we build houses and provide livelihood for a
company of bussing monks, whose end and fall we ourselves may live
to see? No, no. It is more meet a great deal that we should have
care to provide for the increase of learning, and for such as by
their learning shall do good in the Church and Commonwealth."

The broad-minded founder accepted this view. He drew up statutes, by means of which he hoped to train men who should help the Church to recognise, to lead and to control the New Movement. The verdict of his contemporaries with regard to his work and intentions is expressed by Erasmus, who wrote that "Just as Rhodes was once famous for the Colossus, and Caria for the tomb of Mausolus, so the new College at Oxford dedicated to the most profitable literature would be recognised throughout the civilised world as one of the chief ornaments of Britain."

The influence of the Renaissance is writ large over Foxe's statutes. What is remarkable in them is the provision he made for the teaching of the New Learning. As he furnished his students with a library, rich in classical MSS. and books in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, a "Bibliotheca trilinguis" which Erasmus declared would attract more students than Rome had done hitherto; so also, in addition to the twenty fellows and twenty scholars of his college, he endowed three Readers, in Greek, in Latin, and in Theology. Natives of Greece and Italy were to be specially eligible for these offices; Greek as well as Latin might be spoken in hall, and some acquaintance with the works of Roman poets, orators and historians, no less than with Logic and Philosophy, was to be required of candidates for scholarships, who must also prove their fitness by ability to compose verses and write letters in Latin.

Cicero, Sallust, Valerius Maximus, Suetonius, Pliny, Livy and Quintilian are enumerated in the statutes as the prose writers, and Vergil, Ovid, Lucan, Juvenal, Terence and Plautus as the poets to be expounded by the Professor of Humanity. The works of Lorenzo Valla, Aulus Gellius and Politian are recommended as suitable subjects of study during the three vacations. The Professor of Greek, an officer unknown in any earlier college, was required to lecture, and to lecture to the whole University, not only on Grammar, but also on the works of Isocrates, Lucian, Philostratus, Aristophanes, Theocritus, Euripides, Sophocles, Pindar, Hesiod, Demosthenes, Thucydides, Aristotle and Plutarch.

The third "Reader" appointed by Foxe was to expound the Old Testament and the New in alternate years. He was not, however, to be content with the comments of the schoolmen, but was "to follow so far as possible the ancient and holy doctors both Latin and Greek."

It will be seen that these statutes form, as it were, at once a charter and a corpus of the New Learning. Patristic theology was to be restored to the place of honour whence the quibbles of the schoolmen had banished it; the masterpieces of the ancient world were, in future, to be studied instead of the second-rate philosophers and slovenly writers of the Dark Ages.

Apart from the fascinating hall and library, the buildings of Corpus are less distinguished than her history. The curious sundial, surmounted by a pelican vulning herself in piety, which stands in the centre of the front quadrangle, was erected by a fellow in 1581. As at All Souls' and elsewhere, the name of the college is indicated by sculpture over the gateway--a group of angels bearing a pyx, the receptacle of the sacramental host, the body of Christ (Corpus Christi). The pastoral staff, a chalice and paten, which belonged to the founder, are still preserved. They rank among the finest examples of the work of English mediæval silversmiths.

The connection between Magdalen and C.C.C. was always close. Foxe, indeed, is said to have been at Magdalen, and to have

left Oxford on account of a pestilence. It is at any rate noteworthy that he makes special provision against plagues in his statutes. The severity and frequency of plagues of one sort or another were a serious obstacle to the prosperity of the University, and therefore of the city, throughout this century. The causes are not far to seek. For centuries filth and garbage had been allowed to accumulate in the ill-made, unswept streets. And though the King might write to the burghers and command them to remove the nuisances of this sort from before their doors, the efforts to deal with them were only spasmodic. Brewers and bakers, again, were forbidden by the King's edict (1293) to make use of the foul waters of Trill Mill Stream for the making of their bread and ale. But police was inefficient, and the health of the scholars frequently suffered from a renewal of this insanitary practice. Regrators, who burned before their doors stinking fat and suet, were also forbidden by Edward III. to pursue their habits, and the citizens were enjoined to repair the pavements in front of their houses.

But in spite of regulations and restrictions butchers persisted in slaughtering their beasts in their homes and fouling the Trill Mill Stream with offal. Inundations from the Cherwell and the Thames, not yet regulated and confined by the Conservancy Board, occasionally swamped even the cloisters of Magdalen and left behind a legacy of mud, damp and malaria.

Sweating sickness--a kind of rheumatic fever--struck Oxford hard in 1517. In the following years other loathsome diseases, attributed to the noisome smells which arose from the marshy grounds around the city and the obstructed state of the Thames, manifested themselves and caused the students to fly. Frequent instances are recorded of fellows obtaining permission to leave Oxford on account of the pestilence. In 1513 most of the members of Oriel removed to a farm at Dean; in 1522 the inmates of New College fled on the outbreak of some illness, and the fellows of University College dispersed on the same account in 1525. From Magdalen, in unhealthy seasons, there were frequent migrations of a large portion of the society to Witney or to Brackley, where the hospital had been indicated by the founder as a place to which such migrations might be made. But it was in 1528 that the sweating sickness broke out in its severest form. Many persons died within a few hours of being attacked by the disease; public business was postponed, and the lecture rooms were closed. The Festival of S. John was stopped. It was decreed that all clerks who thought themselves in danger might be absent until October. It might almost have been the influenza (1894).

The plague broke out in 1571, so that the University term had to be deferred. It broke out again in the following years, and culminated, in 1577, in the "Black Assizes." Rowland Jencks, a bookbinder, had been seized and sent to London for railing against the Commonwealth and the established religion. His house was searched for "bulls, libels, and suchlike things against the Queen and religion." He was returned to Oxford to be committed to prison. At the Assizes, held in the Court House at the Castle-yard, he was condemned to lose his ears. No sooner was the prisoner removed from the crowded court than, as Wood tells us,

"there 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 weeks' 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."

The description of the disease given by Wood reminds one of Thucydides' 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 Jencks' ears, but the explanation suggested by a remark of Bacon is more probable. "The most pernicious infection next to the plague," he says, "is the smell of the Jail, when prisoners have been long and close nastily kept."

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 that--

"No 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."

These ordinances, it will be seen, provided against the customary crying evils of a mediæval 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. James's Square was still the receptacle for all offal and cinders, for all the dead cats and dead dogs of Westminster, whilst Voltaire'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 of James 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 streets--"no not so much as dog or cat." 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 mediæval 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:

"A Kynge to me myn habite gave;
At Oxforth the Universyte,
Auvaunsed to that degre
By hole consent of theyr Senate,
I was made Poete Laureate."

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 Cardinal's pride and pomp; at his low birth (his "greasy original") and his lack of scholarship. There was more truth in Shakespeare's description of him as a "scholar and a right good one," for the "Boy Bachelor" had taken his degree of B.A. at fifteen years of age, "a rare thing and seldom seen." 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. Mary'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 "Mæcenas," whom they even came to address as "His Majesty," 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 mediæval academicians.

It was at Wolsey'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 "members of the privilege" 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. "Any 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."

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 a jury 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,

"for," they remarked, "by 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."

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

"Recommend me unto your master and shew him, I am here in this town
the King's Grace'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."

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 "to stand to the law and to obey the commands of the Church," 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 chief incidents in the hard-fought battle are recounted in detail. Complaint is made, for instance, that the commissary

"Doth take fourpence for the sale of every horse-lode of fresh
salmon, & one penny of every seme of fresshe herrings, which is
extorcyon": and again "Another 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."

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

"no 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."

For twenty years the quarrel dragged on, till at last both parties grew weary. In 1542 arbitrators were called in, and Wolsey'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 led by 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 "rightly and nobly ordered minds and characters." At Oxford, at Winchester and at Windsor he had lived under the shadow of the great monuments of Wykeham's genius, and learned to discern "the true nature of the beautiful and graceful, the simplicity of beauty in style, harmony and grace." So that in the architecture of his college--and Architecture, as Plato tells us, as all the other Arts, is full of grace and harmony, which are the two sisters of goodness and virtue--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 "in 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." Inspired by such examples, Wolsey set himself to build a college which should eclipse them,

"Though unfinished, yet so famous,
So excellent in art and yet so rising,
That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue."

Indeed, says Fuller, nothing mean could enter into this man'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 Cardinal'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 Souls' 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 £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 Wolsey's political enemies were quick to avail themselves. The perturbation of the monks is well expressed in Fuller's happy metaphor:

"His 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."

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 "to the full satisfaction, recompense and joyous contentation" of all concerned. The King complained that some of the monasteries would not contribute to his necessities as much as they had contributed to the Cardinal's scheme. Wolsey replied that he had indeed received "from divers mine old lovers and friends right loving and favourable aids towards the edifying of my said College," 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 Cardinal'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.

"Egregium opus. Cardinalis iste instituit Collegium, et absolvit popinam."

So runs one epigram, which being freely translated is:

"The Mountains were in labour once, and forth there came a mouse;--
Your Cardinal a College planned, and built an eating-house!"

It was part of Wolsey'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 "the Hellish Lutherans," could wish. When Martin Luther (1517) nailed his ninety-five theses on the church door of Wittenberg, in protest against what Erasmus had called "the crime of false pardons," the

sale of indulgences, his protest found no echo here. On the contrary, the masters in convocation gladly elected three representative theologians who attended Wolsey'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 Luther'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 "libels and bills."

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

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

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 Tyndale's Bible and the German reformer'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 of Lincoln. Whilst the commissary was at evensong he managed to escape, and made his way to the rooms of Anthony Dalaber, one of the "brotherhood," at Gloucester College. Dalaber has left an account--it is a most tearful tale--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. Matthew'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 Garret's escape, and proceeded to S. Frideswide's.

"Evensong," he says, "was 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 ashes--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." Dalaber describes the interview which followed, outside the choir, between these two and Dr London, the Warden of New College, "puffing, blustering and blowing, like a hungry and greedy lion seeking his prey." 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 "brethren," supping at Corpus ("at which supper we were not very merry"), 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. "This tale," he observes, "I thought meetest, but it was nothing so." Although it were nothing so, he repeated his convincing narrative on oath, when he was examined at Lincoln College by Cottisford, Higdon (Dean of Cardinal's College) and London. He had sworn on a great Mass book laid before him to answer truly, but, as he complacently observes, "in my heart nothing so meant to do." Nor, perhaps, did he mean to betray twenty-two of his associates, and the storehouse of Garret's books, when examined by Dr London, whom he calls the "rankest, papistical Pharisee of them all"--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 "in extreme pensyfness," 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 astrologer'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 Garret'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. Mary's Church to S. Frideswide's, and on the way casting into a bonfire made at Carfax for the purpose certain books which had most likely formed part of Garret'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 Higdon's orders they did at least receive a Christian burial.