the Conquest, though there is no mention of them in the Domesday survey. There can be no doubt that such schools did exist there at a very early period. The first authentic mention, however, of a university at Oxford occurs in the reign of Henry II.; but as early as 1149 Vacarius, an eminent civilian, taught the Roman law there, and his lectures were attended by a large number of students—a circumstance that denotes an approach to the character of a University. The first college at least, according to authentic documents-was established in 1264.

Oxford University received its first charter from Henry III. The learning most esteemed in the thirteenth century was that scholastic theology and metaphysics of which Duns Scotus, an Oxford man, was the great master. In this learning Oxford became especially famous; so that before the reign of Edward III. it was reckoned only second to the University of Paris indeed, it is affirmed that it possessed a more famous band of "subtle and invincible doctors" than any foreign university. Wood dwells with fond enthusiasm on this its time of glory :-" What university, I pray, can produce an invincible Hales, an admirable Bacon, an excellent well-grounded Middleton, a subtle Scotus, an approved Burley, a resolute Baconsthorpe, a singular Ockham, a solid and industrious Holcot, and a profound Bradwardine? all which persons flourished within the compass of one century. I doubt that neither Paris, Bologna, or Rome, that grand mistress of the Christian world, or any place else, can do what the renowned Bellosite hath done." Its fame spread far abroad. Scholars flocked to it from all parts of Europe. Wood says there were at this time three hundred halls and thirty thousand scholars in Oxford. This is undoubtedly rather beyond probability, but it is certain that a very large number of students did assemble there, and that they were of many nations; while the names are still preserved of many halls that have long ceased to exist. The vast number of ecclesiastics required at a time when, as it has been expressed, "the land swarmed with them," and when among them all the learned were ranked, would account for a very large number of scholars being collected in the most celebrated school of theology; and the very extravagance of the numbers handed down by tradition, testifies to the flourishing condition of the University.

From this its palmy state, however, it soon declined. The unsettled condition of the country, the difficulty, perhaps, of keeping up a succession of subtle and irrefragable professors, and, not least, the quarrelsome habits of the students, caused it to undergo many fluctuations. The pugnacious tastes of the students were indeed very marked; for logical disputations they were always famous, but, unhappily, they could not refrain from dealing with more material weapons than the quodlibets of the schools. The argumentum ad baculum was not the least favourite or frequently used of their argumenta; and the streets often witnessed its application. Englishmen fought against

Scotchmen, and Irish against Welsh; while foreigners sided with one or the other of the bands, or occasionally got up an independent battle of their own: but all were ready to join their forces for a match with the townsmen, for whom, of course, they entertained a very proper academic contempt. These quarrels of the scholars among themselves, and with the citizens, produced, indeed, a very serious influence upon the University. More than once, owing to them, the scholars migrated in a body from Oxford, and it was not without much trouble that they were lured back again. In the foundation statutes of several of the oldest colleges, provision is made that "Northmen shall not abuse Southmen, nor Southmen Northmen." Their quarrels were not always, however, confined to themselves or the city: they are charged with having on one occasion assisted the " common rabble" of Abingdon in despoiling the monastery in that town, in revenge for some affront they had received from the Abbot. One of their most serious disputes, and that they came out of with the least success, occurred in 1238. Fuller tells the story in a very lively manner :-" Otho, cardinal, deacon of St. Nicholas, was sent the pope's legate into England; and going to Oxford, took up his lodgings in the abbey of Oseney. To him the scholars of Oxford sent a present of victuals before dinner; and after dinner, came to tender their attendance upon him. The porter, being an Italian, demanded their business; who answered him, that they came to wait on the lord legate; promising themselves a courteous reception, having read in the scripture A man's gift maketh room for him' (Prov. xviii. 16); though here, contrary to expectation, they were not received. . . . But whilst the porter held the door in a dubious posture, betwixt open and shut, the scholars forced their entrance. In this juncture of time, it unluckily happened that a poor Irish priest begged an alms, in whose face the clerk of the kitchen cast scalding water taken out of the cauldron. A Welsh clerk beholding this, bent his bow (by this time the scholars had got weapons) and shot the clerk of the kitchen stark dead on the place.

"This man thus killed, was much more than his plain place promised him to be, as no meaner than the brother of the legate himself; who, being suspicious that he might find Italy in England, and fearing to be poisoned, appointed his brother to oversee all food for his own eating. And now the three nations of Irish, Welsh, and English, fell downright on the Italians. The legate, fearing (as they came from the same womb) to be sent to the same grave with his brother, secured himself fast locked up in the tower of Oseney church, and there sat still and quiet, all attired in his canonical cope. But he, it seems, trusted not so much to his canonical cope, as the sable mantle of night, under the protection whereof he got out, without a guide, to make his escape; not without danger of drowning in the dark, being five times to cross the river, then swelling with late rain as much as the scholars with anger. He made fords where he

found none, all known passages being waylaid; and heard the scholars following after, railing on, and calling him usurer, simoniac, deceiver of the prince, oppressor of the people, &c.; whilst the legate wisely turned his tongue into heels, spurring with might and main to Abingdon, where the Court lay." (Church Hist. b. iii.) We must tell the rest more briefly. The king not only "did most affectionately compassionate" the legate, but sent the Earl Warren next day with a body of soldiers "to deliver the remainder of the Italians, and to seize on the scholars." The earl arrested thirty of the scholars, and sent them bound to Wallingford gaol; while the legate adopted the more efficient revenge of placing under interdict all who had taken part in the fray, which seems to have been tantamount to placing the University itself under ban of the Church. It was only on the intercession of the bishops that the legate would remove the interdict; and then the Oxford clerks were compelled to do penance, and the bishops along with them, by walking from "St. Paul's in London to Durham House in the Strand,-no short Italian (but an English long) mile, all on foot," the scholars being obliged to go shoeless, and without cloaks or capes.

Towards the close of the reign of Edward III., and during the better part of his successor's, Wiclif was professor of theology at Oxford, and his zealous preaching of his new doctrines caused a great commotion in the University. Around him rallied not only the more earnest of the students, but he also gained over the more thoughtful of the clerks; while his devoted regard for the rights of the clergy, in opposition to the encroachments of the mendicant friars, secured for him the good-will of the University. Such was the influence he had won, that when his teaching was pronounced heretical, it went far towards breaking-up the schools of Oxford. Before the University could again grow prosperous, came the long wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, in the train of which followed pestilence; so that at the accession of Henry VII. it was greatly depressed. With the establishment of peace it again flourished. In what is termed the "revival of learning" in England the University took a very active share; and the study of the classics was diligently pursued, though many of the older members sturdily resisted the introduction of the heathen writers; for awhile, as Warton observes (Hist. of Poetry, ii. 4), "the University was rent into factions on account of these bold attempts; and the advocates of the recent improvements, when the gentler weapons of persuasion could not prevail, often proceeded to blows with the rigid champions of the schools." The University continued to prosper till the spoliation of religious houses, and afterwards the Reformation, for awhile, checked its progress. The immediate result of the suppression of monasteries was very disastrous to Oxford. It was, as Ant.-à-Wood says, the monasteries "from whence exhibitions for poor scholars principally proceeded and upon their suppression, many of those students that had not wherewith

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to subsist in the University, were forced to leave it, and betake themselves to another course of life." And under the following year (1538) he states that "most of the halls or hostels were left empty, and threatened a decay; arts declined, and ignorance began to take place again. The canon law was much neglected, and few or none now took degrees in that faculty. Some of the religious houses in the University that were wont to educate many men eminent in their generations, were now dissolved, and their inhabitants, for the most part, turned out into the wide world. The rest expected daily their last doom, and were ready with the poor scholars to trudge a-begging, with bags by their sides, or wallets on their shoulders. Such strange and prodigious things were now performed, both here and throughout England, that the like was never before seen or heard." (Hist. of Univ. of Ox., ii. 67.) And nine years later, he informs us that, "Of hundreds of halls that tradition and record tell us have been in this University, but eight now remain. The dissolution of religious houses did so much discourage scholars, that they, fearing the utter ruin of learning, betook themselves to other employ ments."

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But it was not alone by the loss of its scholars that the University suffered. Thomas Cromwell sent his commissioners as well to Oxford as to other places, and with a like result. That coarse ribald, Dr. Layton, was chosen to examine the University. His letter to Secretary Cromwell sufficiently illustrates his proceedings. We may quote a passage from it; propriety will not permit us to give it entire. He says, "We have set Dunce in Boccardo,* and utterly banished him Oxford for ever. The second time we came to New College, we found all the great quadrant-court full of leaves of Dunce, the winds blowing them into every corner, and there we found one Mr. Greenfield, of Buckinghamshire, gathering part of the said book-leaves (as he said) therewith to make him scuels, or blaunsheers, to keep the deer within the wood, thereby to have the better cry with his hounds." The mischief done on this occasion to what Wood well calls the University's "chief support, the libraries," appears to have been mainly confined to the volumes of scholastic theology. But on future occasions the destruction of MSS. was wider and irreparable — and these are the things we ought to bear in mind, when reading of the paucity of MSS. that have come down to us from what are called "the Dark Ages," and not at once conclude, as many historians have done, that because there are now few such MSS., there never were many. We should remember that all religious establishments in this country underwent a similar purgation.

In the 4th of Edward VI. (1550) commissioners, with Dr. Cox at their head, were sent to Oxford, to * Dunce was Duns Scotus, the text-book of that scholastic learning for which Oxford was so famous; Boccardo was the common prison! but, as he goes on to boast, he had set him in a far viler place.

make search after popish books and superstitious relics. Wood tells the result:

manner.

"The ancient libraries, a glory to the University, as containing among them many rarities, the works of our own countrymen, besides many matters obtained from remote places, were by them, or their appointment, rifled. Many MSS., guilty of no other superstition than red letters in their fronts or titles, were either condemned to the fire or worse. Others also, that treated of controversial or scholastical divinity, were let loose from their chains, were given away, or sold to mechanics for servile uses. Such books wherein appeared angles, or mathematical diagrams, were thought sufficient to be destroyed, because accounted popish, or diabolical, or both. . . . As for the libraries belonging to colleges, they suffered the same fate almost as the public library, though not in so gross a From Merton Coll. library a cart-load of MSS. and above were taken away, such that contained the lucubrations, chiefly of controversial divinity, astronomy and mathematics, of divers of the learned fellows thereof, in which studies they in the last two centuries obtained great renown." Other colleges were similarly rifled, "and the commissioners brought it so to pass, that certain rude young men should carry this great spoil of books about the city on biers; which being so done, to set them down in the common market-place, and there burn them. . . . This was by them styled the funeral of Scotus and Scotists." Wood sorrowfully adds: "Such a general destruction was now and some years before, as well in both the Universities as religious places, that many precious monuments, and thereby the most substantial parts of antiquity and history, were, to the great prejudice of mankind, irrecoverably lost." This reckless destruction was equally lamented by learned and moderate men of both parties, and some books and MSS. were saved by the zeal of private individuals; but such was the amount of spoil, that "books became mere dog-cheap, and whole libraries could be bought for an inconsiderable nothing." Bale, a contemporary, tells us that books were exported by the ship-load, and whole libraries appropriated to the commonest purposes. "I know," he says, "a merchantman, which shall at this time be nameless, that bought the contents of two noble libraries for forty shillings' price, a shame it is to be spoken. This stuff hath he occupied in the stead of gray paper by the space of more than these ten years, and yet he hath store enough for as many years to come."

Although Mary regarded the University with no ill-will, but was rather desirous of raising it in character and fortune, her bitter bigotry effectually frustrated any benefit that might else have resulted from her good intentions. She did some things that were calculated to be beneficial, but they were accompanied by others that more than counterbalanced the advantages they possessed. Commissioners were now sent to Oxford to search for and destroy all Protestant books, and English bibles; and all freedom of opinion

was placed under ban. As a warning to the University, Oxford was chosen as the place where the Protestant leaders, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, should be burnt.

With Elizabeth came brighter and happier days. Learning revived, and learned men were sought out and amply encouraged. Under her fostering care, our University quickly rose to an eminently flourishing condition; and, to borrow the words of Hallam, (Hist. of Lit. ii. 258,) "continued through her reign the seat of a progressive education." Her successor was equally anxious for its welfare. It was in his reign that it received the privilege of sending two representatives to the House of Commons. So long as Charles I. retained power, he manifested a warm regard for its interest, and, at the instigation of Laud, conferred many benefits upon it. But the disputes between Charles and the Parliament from their commencement involved Oxford in turmoil. The University was earnest in support of the king, while a great number of the younger students had adopted the principles of the puritans. When the civil war broke out, the University money, and a good deal of the plate, was sent to the king. Charles, as is well known, made Oxford for some time his head quarters, and assembled his parliament there. Teaching was of course neglected: the halls were most of them turned into barracks: both students and doctors very generally exchanged the cap for the helmet. At the termination of the war the University, as might be expected, was rather roughly treated. The heads of houses were for the most part ejected, and their places supplied by men whose religious principles were more accordant to the notions of the successful party. What had been left undone by previous commissioners in the "rooting out of popish books and pictures," was now completed by their more zealous successors. They did not their work negligently. "Pictures of prophets, apostles, and saints, painted in college chapels both in stalls and windows: the picture of Christ in our Lady's arms, or in other postures, whether cut in stone, wood, or painted: as also history in glass, crosses, &c. well as all other monuments of superstition, as they were pleased to style them," they utterly defaced: to say nothing of "popish books," which they did their best entirely to root out. The clearance was thorough.

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But the University, though depressed, was not destroyed. Cromwell was elected its Chancellor; and he procured John Owen, the celebrated Independent minister, to be appointed Vice-chancellor, in whose hands the government of the University was, of course, in a good measure vested. Owen was a rigid puritan, and, as may be supposed, he made it one of his chief endeavours to eradicate every vestige of those ceremonies and practices against which his party had so loudly and zealously declaimed. The whole habits of the place underwent a change. A stern system of theology was taught, and the slightest departure from its requirements severely condemned. Among the novel apparatus set in motion by the puritan Vice, was