having already been examined and approved by the assembly; and therefore (the very day after the last mentioned paper bears date) I find the earl of Manchester came in person into the chapel of Peter-house, and there did declare and publish Mr. Lazarus Seaman to be constituted master of the said Peter-house in the room of Dr. Cosin, late master there, but justly and lawfully ejected thence, requiring Mr. Seaman to take upon him that office, putting him into the masters seat, and delivering to him the statutes of the college, in token of his investiture, straightly charging the fellows, etc. to acknowledge and yield obedience to him, notwithstanding he was not elected nor admitted according to the ordinary course prescribed by the said statutes, in this time of distraction and war, there being a necessity of reforming as well of the statutes themselves as of the members of the said house. The earl also gave him an instrument under his hand and seal to the same effect. As Dr. Cosin had been the first master ejected, so was Mr. Seaman the first of all the intruding masters (as far as yet appears to me) that was put upon any of the colleges; but April 12, which was the day following, the earl came; and likewise to Jesus College, where, with the same declarations and ceremony, he gave Mr. Young the possession of that mastership. But the vacant fellowships were not filled up with so much haste; for the first warrant that I have yet met with for supplying any of them was at Peter-house, and bears date June 11, 1644, and ran to this effect that whereas he, the earl of Manchester, had ejected Mr. Beaumont, etc., late fellows of that college, and whereas Mr. Charles Hotham, etc. had been examined and approved by the assembly of divines, these are therefore to require you to receive the said Mr. Hotham, etc. as fellows, in the room of Mr. Beaumont, etc., and to give them place according to their seniority in the University, in preference to all those that are or shall be

hereafter put in by him. But others of the fellowships lay vacant yet much longer; for Mr. Tolly's fellowship in this house, though vacated by ejectment April 8, 1644, was not supplied till September 20 that year; others not till January following; and Mr. Bankes's fellowship was not filled untill May 8, 1645; but I know not the precise time when these last had been made vacant.

Nor was any regard had, in supplying the succession, to the filling up of the places with the natives of such counties as the local statutes directed, if I conjecture right in that matter from many instances which I find of persons succeeding in fellowships who were of quite different counties from their ejected predecessors. And to this must be added, in the last place, that instead of those solemn oaths which the pious and prudent founders and legislators enjoined to be taken, and without taking of which no man could pretend any right to any of their foundations, the new intruders only took the covenant again, and made a protestation to reform all the wholesom laws and statutes according to that covenant.

I have seen the form of that protestation, made by Mr. Seaman before mentioned, when he was admitted to the mastership of Peter-house, and another of that made by the intruding fellows, each of which is the same, varied only in the necessary circumstances; and after the preamble ran in these words: I, etc. do solemnly and seriously promise, in the presence of almighty God, the searcher of all hearts, that during the time of my continuance in that charge I shall faithfully labour to procure piety and learning in my self, the fellows, scholars, and students, that do or shall belong to the said college, agreeably to the late solemn national league and covenant, by me sworn and subscribed, with respect to all the good and wholsome statutes of the said college and of the University correspondent to the said covenant; and by all means to pro

cure the good, welfare, and perfect reformation, both of the college and University, so far as to me appertaineth.

Thus, as the University justly complained, was she loaded with an Iliad of miseries; the knipperdollings of the age reduced a glorious and renowned University almost to a mere munster; and did more in less than three years than the apostate Julian could effect in all his reign, viz. broke the heart-strings of learning and all learned men, and thereby luxated all the joints of Christianity in the kingdom, insomuch that they feared not to appeal to any impartial judge, whether, if the Goths and Vandals, or even the Turks themselves, had overrun this nation, they would have more inhumanly abused a flourishing University than these pretended advancers of religion had done; having, as the complaint is continued, thrust out one of the eyes of this kingdom; made eloquence dumb; philosophy sottish; widowed the arts; drove the muses from their ancient habitation; plucked the reverend and orthodox professors out of the chairs, and silenced them in prison or their graves; turned religion into rebellion; changed the apostolical chair into a desk for blasphemy; tore the garland from off the head of learning, to place it on the dull brows of disloyal ignorance; made those ancient and beautiful chapels, the sweet remembrancers and monuments of our forefathers charity, and kind fomenters of their childrens devotion, to become ruinous heaps of dust and stones; and unhived those numerous swarms of labouring bees which used to drop honey-dews over all this kingdom, to place in their room swarms of senseless drones.

But neither did all this completely regulate the University, and therefore they resolved to reform, even beyond themselves, so very fond were they of further reformation, and so hard are they to be pleased, even when they are their own choosers; for which purposes they continued their projects of this kind; and Nov. 6, 1645, I find a

new debate in the house of commons about regulating the University of Cambridge; and July 6, in the following year, the lords desired a committee of both houses might be appointed to reform it. What the event of this proposal was, I know not; but whilst some were busie in fitting up the old, others perchance thought it as good wholly to erect a new building; and therefore in 1649, one sir Balthazer Gerbier, what or who he was I cannot tell, set up a new academy in Whitefriers for the teaching of all manner of arts and sciences. And in 1650 a project was proposed to the parliament by the gentlemen freeholders, etc. of Durham, containing, among other things, a proposal for erecting the college and houses of the dean and chapter in that city into an academy for the benefit of the northern counties, because they were so far from the Universities. What became of that which was erected by Gerbier, or of the proposal for this to be erected at Durham, I know not; but in the mean time the old project, and the rather, it may be, because they were so much in love with reformation, seems to have been preferred. And therefore, May 4, 1649, it was referred to a committee to regulate the University of Cambridge. But of what number that committee consisted, who they were, or what powers or instructions were given them, I do not find. In 1650 mention is made of a committee for regulating both Universities; and with relation to this University I find them actually sitting and doing business; particularly, October 14, 1650, they dispossessed Dr. Young, who, in 1644, had succeeded Dr. Sterne by warrant from the earle of Manchester, as is before said, of the mastership of Jesus College. Of what persons this committee consisted, or when they were appointed, I am likewise ignorant. In the instrument for ejecting Dr. Young, now mentioned, it is said that he had been returned by the visitors, etc., and I find those visitors mentioned in some other papers likewise;

so that it seems there were also some reformers with that title then on foot in Cambridge, who acted under the committee, which I therefore presume sat at London. Jan. 2, 1649, an ordinance passed for taking the engagement. I have not yet been able to get a sight of it, which if I could, it might perhaps help somewhat to clear up this matter. But Jan. 21, 1650, it was referred to the committee, now mentioned, for regulating the Universities, to examine what masters, fellows, officers, etc. in each of them did neglect or refuse to take that oath; and power was likewise given them to displace such masters, fellows, etc. and to place other fit persons in their room; pursuant to which powers, perhaps, it was that these visitors were appointed, by whose means not only Dr. Young, but several others were, as I find, turned out of this University, on the score of this engagement.* And I guess that all of those who were turned out on that account, of which sort the reader will meet with several in the list of this University, were dismissed by their means; for it must now be further said, that as the independents had refined upon the presbyterians, and invented the test of the engagement, of which more hereafter, to dispossess them, as the presbyterians themselves had that of the covenant to disseize the royalists; so that oath was warmly urged in Cambridge,† as well as in the other parts of the kingdom, about 1650, and by that means several of those who had been put in by the earl of Manchester were again dispossessed, as were likewise some of the loyalists, who had either got

* In an entry in the register of Jesus College (a copy of which I have now before me) it is said that Dr. Young was turned out for not subscribing the covenant; but I presume it is a mistake for the engagement.

As it was likewise in Oxon; but who they were that put it in execution there (unless probably this same committee), I am not informed.