Chapter VI: Oxford and the Reformation (2)

The heretics were crushed in Oxford, but elsewhere the movement grew apace. The printing press scattered wide-cast books and pamphlets which openly attacked the corruption of the Church and the monastic orders. Henry determined to proscribe all books that savoured of heresy. A joint committee of Oxford and Cambridge theologians was summoned to meet in London. They examined and condemned the suspected books which were submitted to them. The publication of English treatises upon Holy Scripture without ecclesiastical sanction was forbidden by royal proclamation. Versions of the Bible in the vulgar tongue were at the same time proscribed.

Yet this orthodox king, to whom as "Defender of the Faith," Leo X. had sent a sword still preserved in the Ashmolean, was on the brink of a breach with Rome. For Henry, with his curious mania for matrimony, had determined to marry Anne Boleyn, but he failed to obtain from the Papal Legates in England a decree for the dissolution of his marriage. It was a failure fraught with enormous consequences. The fortunes of Oxford were involved in it. The King gladly availed himself of the suggestion of a Cambridge scholar, Thomas Cranmer, that the Universities should be called on for their judgment. They were thus placed in a position analogous to that of an oecumenical council with power to control a pontifical decree. For the Pope's predecessor had granted a dispensation for Henry's marriage with Catherine, his brother's wife. Every learned man in Europe, but for bribery or threats, would have condemned Henry's cause on its merits. But it was evident that the question would not be decided on its merits.

From a packed commission at Cambridge a decision favourable to a divorce was with difficulty extorted; but even so it was qualified by an important reservation. The marriage was declared illegal, if it could be proved that Catherine's marriage with Prince Arthur had been consummated. Cambridge was praised by the King for her "wisdom and good conveyance." Yet that reservation, if the testimony of the Queen herself was to go for anything, amounted to a conclusion against the divorce.

It was not expected that a favourable verdict would be obtained so easily from Oxford. At the end of his first letter, in which the King called upon the University to declare their minds "sincerely and truly without any abuse," a very plain threat is added, which left no doubt as to the royal view of what could be considered "sincere and true":

"And in case ye do not uprightly according to divine learning
handle yourselves herein, ye may be assured that we, not without
great cause, shall so quickly and sharply look to your unnatural
misdemeanour therein that it shall not be to your quietness and
ease hereafter."

It was proposed that the question should be referred to a packed committee. But the Masters of Arts refused to entrust the matter wholly to the Faculty of Theology. They claimed to nominate a certain number of delegates. Their attitude provoked sharp reproval and further threats from the imperious monarch.

The youths of the University were warned not to play masters, or they would soon learn that "it is not good to stir up a hornets' nest."

Persuasion was used by the Archbishop and the Bishop of Lincoln. The example of Paris and Cambridge was quoted. The aid of Dr Foxe, who had proved his skill by obtaining the decree at Cambridge, was called in. Learned arguments were provided by Nicholas de Burgo, an Italian friar. But there was no doubt about the popular feeling on the question. Pieces of hemp and rough drawings of gallows were affixed to the gate of the bishop's lodging; both he and Father Nicholas were pelted with stones in the open street; the women of Oxford supported Catherine with such vehemence, that thirty of them had to be shut up in Bocardo. The King had dispatched two of his courtiers to Oxford: the Duke of Suffolk and Sir William Fitzwilliam. The former imprisoned the women; the latter distributed money to the more venal of the graduates. "No indifferency was used in the whole matter."

Threats and bribes at last prevailed. A committee carefully packed was appointed with power to decide in the name of the University. A verdict was obtained which corresponded to the Cambridge decree. The important reservation, "if the marriage had been consummated," was added to the decision that marriage with the widow of a deceased brother was contrary to the divine and human law.

Cranmer, who had succeeded Warham as Archbishop of Canterbury, pronounced the King's marriage with Catherine null and void. In the following year the University was asked to concur in the foregone decision in favour of separation from Rome. The authority of the Pope in England was abolished, and the monasteries were rendered liable to visitation by commission under the Great Seal. The Act of Supremacy followed. Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More were executed for denying the royal supremacy, and Thomas Cromwell was appointed Vicar-General of England.

His failure to procure a decree invalidating Henry's marriage meant the downfall of Wolsey. His downfall involved the fortunes of his college. It was rumoured at once that the buildings were to be demolished, because they bore at every prominent point escutcheons carved with the arms of the proud Cardinal. Wolsey had "gathered into his College whatsoever excellent thing there was in the whole realm." The rich vestments and ornaments with which he had furnished S. Frideswide's Church were quickly "disposed" by the King. The disposal of this and other property, lands, offices, plate and tapestries forfeited under the statute of Praemunire, and carefully catalogued for his royal master by the fallen minister, had obvious pecuniary advantages. And as in London, York Place, the palace which the Cardinal had occupied and rebuilt as Archbishop of York, was confiscated and its name changed to Whitehall; so, when "bluff Harry broke into the spence," he converted Cardinal's College into "King Henry VIII.'s College at Oxford" consisting of a dean and twelve canons only (1532).

Henry had been besought to be gracious to the college; but he replied that it deserved no favour at his hands, for most of its members had opposed his wishes in the matter of the divorce. The prospect of the dissolution of his college at Oxford, foreshadowed by that of his great foundation at Ipswich, caused Wolsey infinite sorrow. To Thomas Cromwell he wrote that he could not sleep for the thought of it, and could not write unto him for weeping and sorrow. He appealed with all the passion of despair to the King and those in power, that the "sharpness and rigour of the law should not be visited upon these poor innocents." In response to a petition from the whole college, Henry replied that he would not dissolve it entirely. He intended, he said, to have an honourable college there,

"but not so great or of such magnificence as my Lord Cardinal
intended to have, for it is not thought meet for the common weal of
our realm. Yet we will have a College honourably to maintain the
service of God and literature."

The purely ecclesiastical foundation of 1532 was not calculated to maintain the service of literature. It was surrendered twelve years afterwards to the King, whose commissioners received on the same day the surrender of the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary at Osney, the new cathedral body formed at the ancient abbey upon the creation of the see and diocese of Oxford (1542). The way was thus cleared for the final arrangement by which (4th November 1546) the episcopal see was transferred from Osney and united with the collegiate corporation under the title it bears to-day, Ecclesia Christi Cathedralis Oxon; ex fundatione Regis Henrici Octavi. Thus S. Frideswide's Church became the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford, and also the chapel of the college now at last called Christ Church. The foundation now consisted of a dean, eight canons, eight chaplains, sixty scholars and forty children, besides an organist, singing men, servants and almsmen. It was still, then, a foundation of extraordinary magnificence.

Yet there were not wanting "greedy wretches to gape after the lands belonging to the Colleges." They urged Henry to treat them as he had treated the monasteries. But the King refused.

"Ah, sirrah," he replied to one, "I perceive the Abbey lands have
fleshed you, and set your teeth on edge, to ask also those
Colleges. And wheras we had a regard only to pull down sin by
defacing the monasteries, you have a desire also to overthrow all
goodness by subversion of Colleges. I tell you, sirs, that I judge
no land in England better bestowed than that which is given to our
Universities; for by their maintenance our realm shall be well
governed when we be dead and rotten.... I love not learning so ill
that I will impair the revenues of any one house by a penny, wherby
it may be upholden."

Henry, in fact, may be credited with a genuine desire for the promotion of learning. He had, besides, no reason to quarrel with the University. It had proved subservient to his will; the colleges were nurseries of the secular clergy, who adopted the new order of things. They could not be regarded like the monks, as mercenaries of a foreign and hostile power.

But academic enthusiasm was not to be promoted by the despotic methods of Henry. The arbitrary restrictions of the Six Articles, "that sure touchstone of a man's conscience," struck at the root of intellectual liberty. The revival of academic life which had resulted from the stimulus of the Catholic Renaissance, was suddenly and severely checked by the early developments of the Reformation. The monasteries had been dissolved, and the poor students whom they had supported trudged a-begging. Another outbreak of plague helped to increase the depopulation of the University. The town suffered severely from both causes. The halls and hostels stood empty; very few degrees were taken. Religious controversy usurped the place of education. The University became a centre of politics and ecclesiasticism. The schools were deserted or occupied by laundresses; and, whilst commissioners were busy applying tests, expelling honest fellows, destroying MSS. and smashing organs, men began to discover that, through the invention of printing, it had become possible for them to educate themselves. They no longer needed to go to a monastery or college library to obtain a book; teaching needed no longer to be merely oral. The multiplication of books decentralised learning. With the monopoly of manuscripts and the universality of Latin were taken almost at a moment's notice two of the chief assets of mediæval Universities. A man might now read what he liked, and where he liked, instead of being obliged to listen to a master in the schools teaching set subjects that did not interest him. And no "test" was required of the independent reader. No wonder that, as one preacher dismally exclaimed, the Wells of Learning, Oxford and Cambridge, were dried up.

The King had taken the charters of both University and town into his own hands in 1530. He did not restore them till 1543. Two years later Parliament made over all colleges and chantries to the King, "who gave them very good counsel." Meanwhile, in 1535, a Visitation of the University had been held. Dr London and Richard Layton were the chief Visitors. Their object was to establish ecclesiastical conformity, to supplant the old scholastic teaching and to promote classical learning. They confirmed the public lectures in Greek and Latin which they found, and established others, at Magdalen, New College, and C.C.C., and they settled other lectures of the kind at Merton and Queen's. The other colleges, they found, could not afford to have such lectures, and accordingly they directed the students of these to attend the courses at the others daily. The study of Aristotle and the Holy Scriptures was enjoined, and the King founded Regius Professorships in Divinity, Hebrew, Greek, Medicine and Civil Law. The University meantime was rewarded for its compliance by being exempted from the payment of tithes. At the same time the professors of the Old Learning were ousted from the academic chairs. Duns Scotus was dragged from his pedestal with an ignominy which recalled the fate of Sejanus.

"We have set Duns in Bocardo," wrote Layton, "and have utterly
banished him Oxford for ever with all his blind glosses.... The
second time we came to New College, after we had declared your
injunctions we found all the great Quadrant Court full of the
leaves of Dunse, the wind blowing them into every corner. And there
we found one Mr. Greenfield, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire
gathering up part of the same book leaves, as he said, to make him
sewells or blawnshers to keep the deer within his wood, therby to
have the better cry with his hounds."

That day the downfall of scholasticism in England was at last complete.

During the minority of Edward VI. "there was great expectation in the University what religion would be professed." It was soon evident which way the wind was to blow. Young men began to "protest" in Magdalen Chapel. In 1548 the Protector Somerset and Cranmer determined to reform the University in the interests of the new Anglican Church. Theologians were invited from the Continent, and in default of Melancthon, Peter Martyr arrived and lectured in the Divinity Schools on the Epistles of S. Paul and the Eucharist. His teaching roused protest from the Roman Catholics, and polemical divinity, if no other study, flourished for a while in Oxford. But a commission was now appointed with large powers, which proceeded to draw up a code of statutes calculated to eliminate all popery from the constitution of the University. These "Edwardine statutes," as they were called, remained nominally in force till the "Laudian" statutes replaced them.

The commissioners dealt severely with the colleges. Many of the fellows who had opposed the Reformation fled forthwith; others they ejected and replaced by rigid Calvinists. "All things," the Roman Catholics thought, "were turned topsy turvy." The disciplinary injunctions and acts of the commissioners were wholly admirable. Unfortunately their fanaticism in other directions was of the deplorably iconoclastic sort.

The ancient libraries were rifled; many MSS., guilty of no other superstition than red letters in their titles, were condemned to the fire. "Treatises on scholastical divinity were let loose from their chains and given away or sold to mechanics for servile uses, whilst those wherein angles or mathematical diagrams appeared were destroyed because accounted Popish or diabolical or both." The works of the schoolmen were carried about the city "by certain rude young men" on biers and finally burnt in the market-place, a proceeding which they styled the funeral of Scotus and Scotists. Some of the books from monasteries were sold at this time to grocers and soapsellers, and some by shiploads to bookbinders abroad, "to the wondering of foreign nations," says Bale.

From wall and window, the order had gone forth giving sanction to the popular movement, every picture, every image commemorating saint or prophet or apostle was to be extirpated. Painted glass, as at New College, survives to show that the order was imperfectly obeyed. But everywhere the statues crashed from their niches, rood and rood-loft were laid low and the sun-light stared in white and stainless on the whitened aisles. At Magdalen the high altar and various images and paintings were destroyed, the organ burnt and the vestments sold. At Christ Church the dean and chapter decided that all altars, statues, images, tabernacles, missals and other matters of superstition and idolatry should be removed out of the Cathedral; and the other colleges and churches followed this example.

The magnificent reredos in the chapel of All Souls', of which the present work is a conjectural restoration, was smashed; most of the stained glass there was broken, and the altars were removed together with "the thing they call an organ."

The Edwardine commissioners proposed to abolish the grammar schools founded in connection with the colleges. The city, however, immediately petitioned the King on behalf of the schools:

"Where your poor orators have always had received and enjoyed by
the means of your Colleges founded by your grace's most noble
progenitor's singular treasure, help & commodity for the education
of their sons, and especially the more part of us being not
otherwise able to bring up our children in good learning and to
find them at grammar.... There be in danger to be cast out of some
college thirty, some other forty or fifty, some other more or
fewer, & the most part of them children of your poor orators,
having of the said college meat, drink, cloth & lodging & were
verie well brought up in learning in the common grammar scoole at
the College of S. Marie Magdalen, & so went forward & attained to
logicke & other faculties at the charges of the said College &
likewise of other houses and little or nothing at the charge of
their parents, after their admission into any of the said colleges,
wh. thing hath always heretofore been a great succour unto your
said poor orators."

The petition was successful, though some schools were suppressed.

Magdalen College School, thus preserved, was intended by the

founder to be to Magdalen what Winchester was to New College. It had been housed in his life-time in a building (1480), a picturesque fragment of which yet remains, in what is known as the Grammar Hall. The Grammar School buildings stood outside the west gate of the college, on the ground between the modern S. Swithun's buildings and the present "Grammar Hall," which belonged in part to this school building and in part (including the south portion and the little bell-tower) to other buildings that were added to it (1614). All these buildings, save the fragment that remains to be used as undergraduates' rooms, were removed in 1845 together with the houses that faced the gravel walk between them and Long Wall. The present school-room, facing the High, was erected shortly afterwards (Buckler), in the Perpendicular style, and recently (1894), across the bridge, on the site once occupied by Turrel's Hall, a handsome house for the master and fifty boarders has been built (Sir Arthur Blomfield). At the same time the ground by the river below the bridge was converted into gardens and a cricket ground for the choristers and schoolboys, a conversion which has greatly improved the aspect of the bridge.