tinually resident in the university, from the period of their CHAP. III. first admission until they had attained to the honours of the doctorate,—a period of nineteen years in the faculty of theology, and of at least thirteen years in those of civil law and medicine. The continued commorancy of bachelors of arts in the university, during the three years which separated the first and second degrees in arts, and the actual continuance of the regency during an additional period of five years, though partially enforced by the obligation of an oath, would appear to have been habitually disobeyed from the period of the first promulgation of the statutes: and the necessary supply of the public service, both in church and state, was incompatible with their continued residence in the university, and with the performance of that strict succession of academical duties and exercises which the statutes contemplated.' The same careful investigator of the statutory history of the university inclines however to the opinion, derived from one or two significant facts, that the subsequent administration of the statutes was 'very irregular,' and that 'some of their most essential provisions were neglected or violated'.' 'They were destined,' he observes, in summing up his criticism, 'to experience the fate which has attended. all systems of statutes or laws which have attempted, by being themselves unchangeable, to fix immutably the changeable character of the wants and habits of mankind. Elizabethan statutes provided most cautiously against the introduction of those amendments in the academical constitution and administration which might adapt them to the changes, which the lessons of experience, or the advancement of knowledge, might render necessary or expedient; and we consequently find that, in later ages, they either tended to check or to retard the progress of improvement in the system of academical education, or assumed, when their provisions were no longer maintainable, that unreal yet embarrassing character which belongs to laws, which, though enforced by the most solemn obligations, are either im 1 Observations, pp. 55–56. The CHAP. IIL possible to be obeyed, or have long been habitually and systematically neglected'.' General results of this contest as regards the parties. poses to leave Cambridge but is dis so doing. The friction resulting from the above memorable contest did not tend to improve the relations of the two parties in relations of the university. Whitgift, if we credit the petitioners, conducted himself in an arbitrary, and on one occasion in an illegal, manner. His determined nature was roused by the opposition he encountered, and his alienation from the Puritan party had now become complete. In his own college the animosity he had evoked manifested itself in so decided a manner that he at one time formed the design of altogether Whitgift pro- quitting the university. The other Heads, however, held him to be one whom, to quote their expression in a letter to suaded from Burghley, 'they could not want. The chancellor's intervention was solicited and successfully exerted; and Whitgift's rule at Trinity was prolonged, greatly to the advantage of that society, for another six years. He still however continued to be the most prominent leader of the Anglican party at Cambridge, and the appearance of his Answer to His Answer the Admonition to Parliament (at that time supposed to be the work of Cartwright) exposed him to renewed attacks from the Puritans. He had ventured to compare them to the Arians of old, whose policy was that of constant unvarying opposition to the ordinances and observances of the church. On the other hand, the writers of the Admonition had, by their vehemence, still further widened the breach between their party and the supporters of the existing university discipline, by their denunciation of all theological degrees, which they declared ought to be abolished to the Admo nition. as inconsistent with the primitive constitution of the CHAP. III. Church'. oppor popularity of Chark's ser consequences. The other Heads shared, for the most part, in Whitgift's General ununpopularity, although in a minor degree in proportion as their the Heads. inferior abilities and energy rendered them less conspicuous. Their position, in not a few cases, was rendered indeed almost untenable owing to the opposition they encountered in the several societies over which they respectively presided. In a letter addressed to Burghley in the year 1572, we find them declaring that, in many of the colleges the fellows 'study and devise only how to molest and disquiet their governors.' The immediate occasion of this complaint was a William sermon preached at St Mary's by William Chark, a fellow of mon and its Peterhouse, wherein he had availed himself of the tunity to deliver a violent tirade against all kinds and degrees of office and dignity in the Church, stigmatising them as mere devices of Satan. His indiscretion drew upon him the censure of the authorities; and as, like Cartwright, he stubbornly refused to retract his assertions, he too was ultimately expelled both from his fellowship and from the university'. The severity of his treatment would seem to be to a certain extent justified by the licence in which the Puritan preachers at Cambridge were at this time indulging, the scurrilous personalities to which they resorted being such, that Whitgift, Perne, and Mey, in a letter to Burghley, can only compare them to the scandalous satire of individuals which distinguished the productions of the comic muse of the ancient Athenian stage3. 1 Academic as well as ecclesiastical dignitaries were especially denounced by the writers: 'Lordly lords, archbishops, bishops, suffraganes, deanes, universitie doctors and bachelors of divinitie, archdeacons, chancellors, and the rest of that proud generation must downe, hold they never so hard: bicause their tyrannous lordship cannot stand with Christ's Kingdome.' Pref. to the Admonition. Similarly we find Parker referring to Thomas Aldrich, who had been promoted to the mastership of Corpus on his re M. II. commendation, but had subsequently 2 Strype, Annals, 11, i, c. 20; Life 3 This letter refers to 'divers younge preachers,' who, the writers declare, are not afraide to ympunge openly in pulpette not only the booke 16 CHAP. III. It was while this ferment was still at its height, in the Arrival of the month of August, 1572, that the news of the massacre of massacre of St Bartholomew arrived in England. The impression pro news of the St Bartholo mew. Its effects of learning. of Ramus. duced by that sinister event in the different centres of among men learning throughout Europe was deep and permanent. Joseph Scaliger, bending with a true student's concentration over the page of Homer, to learn only on the following day the Assassination horrors of the night,-Ramus, falling beneath the assassin's hand, to be cast a disfigured corpse into the blood-stained waters of the Seine,-young Casaubon, fleeing with his father to the caves of Dauphiny, there sadly but resolutely to continue his study of Isocrates ad Demonicum,-Cevallerius, taking refuge in the forests and escaping only to fall a tardier victim from the sufferings there endured,-Muretus, at Rome, drawing up in choice classic phrase his eulogy of each foul atrocity,—are but a few of the examples that serve to shew how the fell deeds of les noces vermeilles darkened the career or warped the sympathies of the scholar and the theologian. In England the intelligence was received with unsurpassed emotion. The French envoy had to listen while Elizabeth, forgetful of her wonted guile, and rising to the full height of her imperial nature, uttered words of true womanly scorn,-while Burghley, as he too laid aside his habitual wariness, declared in the council chamber that no more atrocious crime had disgraced humanity since the crucifixion of the Founder of their common faith. The exultation of Sander and Louvain only brought into stronger relief the honest indignation of Parker and Cambridge. The fate of the illustrious Ramus could hardly fail indeed to be heard with peculiar commiseration in the latter university. His conversion to Calvinism, his intrepid assault on the traditional Aristotelian logic, appealed, in almost equal measure, the one to the sympathy of the Puritan and the other to the interest of the logician, and his works, which Ascham appears to have first brought under the notice of his country His name well known of common service: but also par- absent and other that be present, according to the license of the olde poetes.' Cooper, Annals. men, were already well known to not a few Cambridge CHAP. III. scholars. It was felt that his life had been consecrated to a noble purpose, and wise and good men recognised in his fate the martyr to the cause of university reform not less than to that of Protestant belief. taliation pro England by excited by the Monarchia of Violence and wrong ever beget their like; and the most Spirit of reunjustifiable measures directed against the English Catholics voked in under Elizabeth date from the tragedy of St Bartholomew. the massacre. 'This barbarous treacherie will not cease in France,' wrote Sandys to Burghley, 'but will reach over to us;' and his advice, furthwith,' as the first indispensable measure, 'to cutte of the Scottish quene's head','-shews how the spirit of retaliation had been evoked. The treatise of Nicholas Sander, Indignation de visibili Monarchia, which found its way to England de visibili about this time, still further roused the susceptibilities of both Sander. the politician and the theologian. The deliberate and unscrupulous malice which dictated its numerous calumnies and threw a foul slur over the whole character and principles of the English Reformation, rendered small service to the cause of Catholicism, and the disposition which had hitherto to a great extent prevailed, to connive at adherence to the Roman faith and even at the private celebration of its rites, considerably lessened. Among the more illustrious sufferers Dr Caius by this change of national feeling was Dr Caius. The seve- sufferers by rity with which he had treated the malcontents in his own college, his somewhat peevish censures of the prevailing tone and discipline of the university, and his occasional disagreements with those of his own standing, combined to render him at this time singularly unpopular at Cambridge. The loyal Anglican and the zealous Puritan regarded him with almost equal suspicion. It now transpired that he still retained, stored up in the college, a collection of ornaments, books, and vestments, such as were used in the celebration of the Roman religious service. Discoveries of this kind were especially irritating to the ecclesiastical authorities, as indicating on the part of the possessor the expectation and the 1 Ellis's Letters (2) 111 22. among the this feeling. |