CHAP. IV. turn Travers' treatise into English at Geneva) and those of his party who had invested the questions at issue with such undue and ill-timed importance. St John's still gives trouble. sued by some In his endeavours to restore and establish discipline, considerable the master of Trinity found no small share of his attention claimed by the neighbouring College of St John's. The fellows of that society, still for the most part largely Puritan in their sympathies, were noted for their refractory spirit1; and, if we may credit a statement made by Dr Perne to Burghley, had acquired an unenviable notoriety as 'cunning practitioners' in the art of freeing themselves from the rule of an unpopular Head. The very brief periods during which Dr Metcalfe's successors managed to retain office would certainly seem to lend some colour to this assertion, and each of them, in turn, appears to have been subjected to much the Tactics pur- same ordeal. He was confronted by open denunciation at of the Fel-meetings of the fellows, was traduced in formal appeals to the chancellor, and attacked, either directly or by unmistakeable innuendos, in the exercises delivered in the college chapel or in the sermons preached in the university pulpit. JOHN STILL Of this treatment, Dr Still, who succeeded to the mastership in 1574, came in for his full share. Although his abilities and larity with general fitness for the post could not be gainsaid, he appears to have been especially obnoxious to the Puritan party as one who had risen on the degradation of their leaders. He had not only succeeded to the professorial chair from which Cartwright had been removed, but he had also just supplanted Aldrich in a canonry at Westminster, of which the latter had been deprived on grounds similar to those which, as we have already seen", had led to his resignation of the mastership of Corpus. Within eighteen months of Still's succeed lows. b. 1543. d. 1608. the Puritan 'common ing to the mastership of St John's we accordingly find him CHAP. IV. the object of an attack of more than ordinary coarseness in the college chapel. One John Cock, in a 'commonplace' John Cock's there delivered, openly assailed the master as one, who, while place.' prescribing for others a rigid rule of conduct, was himself a glaring example of greed of lucre and the love of office. 'Make him better,' cried the orator to the assembled college, 'and then mend you me'!' His conduct, it is true, was brought under the notice of Burghley, and he was ultimately compelled to revoke his offensive language in a written apology. On the formal occasion of reading this document aloud, he added however certain extemporaneous comments which Dr Still declared rendered matters even worse than before2. Within less than a year after, another fellow on Assertions a like occasion cast reproach on the whole college by declar- Faulkner. ing that instead of the brotherly feeling and mutual confidence which ought to characterise the relations of the fellows to each other and to their Head, there prevailed such distrust one of the other, that hard lying had become the besetting sin of the whole society. Maurice Faulkner, for such was his name, atoned for his indiscretion on this occasion by a fine; but on taking occasion shortly afterwards to indulge in similar strictures, some of which were interpreted by Dr Still as pointing at himself, he was subjected to the heavier 1 'Make him better, and then mende you me. Tell him of his duety, and guiding with indifferency. Charge him with his othe, and the streams which are to runne from his vowed integrity. And if there be any other thing in him, which is contrary to holesome doctrine, be yt covetousnes, filthy lucre, lack of care to govern God's Church,-this tell you them, before you tell me that.' (Strype, Life of Whitgift, Append. bk. 1, no. xix.) The love of money appears to have been a reproach frequently flung by the Puritans against those of their antagonists who occupied positions of any emolument, and it may be added appears sometimes to have been made where there was nothing else to allege. Harington says of Dr Still: The 2 Strype, Life of Whitgift, bk. i, of Maurice mal-ad as master. CHAP. IV. penalty of imprisonment'. On the other hand, it is evident that the fellows had sometimes just cause for complaint in Shepherd's the administration of their Head. Shepherd, who had been ministration brought in for the express purpose of repressing the Puritan faction at St John's, had altogether disappointed the expectations that had been formed of him. It is noted indeed by Baker, as a point in his favour, that he appears to have shewn a fitting regard for learning in the selection of the men whom he caused to be promoted to fellowships; but his retirement from the mastership would appear to have been on grounds with respect to which the accounts, though conflicting, are in no case creditable'. The extent to which Puritan sympathies still prevailed in the society is proved by the fact, that on Shepherd's retirement an attempt was made to bring about the re-election of his predecessor,-Longworth. This endeavour of the Puritan faction was, however, defeated, Different and in Dr Still, who succeeded to the post, the college found his successor, an administrator of a very different stamp from either Long character of Dr Still. worth or Shepherd. His appointment as Cartwright's successor in the lady Margaret chair may be accepted as satisfactory proof of his reputation as a theologian3; and to respectable attainments as a scholar and a musician and no little inventive faculty as a comic writer, he added great force of character together with much moral worth and intellectual power. An old pupil long after wrote of him that he was one 'to whom he never came but he grew more religious and from whom he never went but he parted better instructed".' 1 Baker-Mayor, p. 591; Cooper, Annals, 11 302; Athenae, 1 383. 2 Strype (Life of Whitgift, bk. i, c. 12) assigns as the chief reason Shepherd's protracted absence from the college, beyond the statutable limits; Baker (Baker-Mayor, p. 166) gives it as 'a tradition' in the society, that having got the keys of the several officers into his hands, he put the seal to some grants or leases for his own emolument, whereupon he was expelled the college.' 3 It also affords fair presumption that he was noted as a man of moderate views, for his name appears as one of those who petitioned Cecil in Cartwright's favour; see supra, p. 219, n. 2. 4 Dr Still was the author of a wellknown production: A Ryght Pithy, Pleasaunt and Merie Comedie: Intytuld Gammer Gwrton's Nedle: Played on Stage not longe ago in Christes Colledge in Cambridge. 5 Harington (Sir John), Briefe View, p. 119. In the opinion of Baker, Dr Still was one 'raised up to root CHAP. IV. out Puritanism in St John's College'.' given to St In the attainment of such a result, it is hardly necessary New Statutes to say that he had the cordial support of Whitgift, but all John's. attempts to place the authority of the head of the college on a satisfactory basis were for a time to a great extent baffled by the perplexing condition of the statutes. The latest code, that given by king Henry VIII', had been subjected to some revision by the Visitors of 1549; but their task had been very imperfectly executed, while numerous additions, erasures, and interpretations in the form of marginal notes, that had been subsequently introduced, often rendered the actual sense only more obscure. Under these circumstances, and probably as the result of consultation with Still and Whitgift, Cox, bishop of Ely, by virtue of his authority as Visitor of the college, assumed the responsibility of suggesting to Burghley the appointment of a Commission,—a proposition which reflects the more credit on its author in that the powers of the Visitor himself were, in the sequel, thereby considerably diminished. The proposed Commission was appointed,-consisting in the first instance of Cox himself, Whitgift, Ithell, Harvey, and Perne; and after three years of protracted labour, and not until Dr Still himself had ceased to preside over St John's, a new code, known as that of 1576, was sent down to the college, and continued with certain modifications to be in force until the statutes of the year 1849. criticism on main fea In the statutes of 1576, observes Baker, 'two alterations Baker's are pretty visible, that the master's power is much enlarged two of their and that of the visitor is equally limited: there might be tures. somewhat of the same reason for both, for as the masters had formerly been able to do little without having recourse to viz. (1) the visitations, so it might reasonably be supposed, that their of the Maspower being now enlarged, the government of the college (2) the dimiwould be more regular and uniform, and that there would be those of the less occasion for a visitor. And yet it seems an odd part in 1 Baker-Mayor, p. 169. 2 See Vol. 1, p. 625. 3 Supra, p. 113. Strype, Life of Whitgift, bk. i, c. 12. enlargement ter's powers; nution of Visitor. CHAP. IV. the bishop of Ely, to part with such a share of his power, to which he was so fully and variously entitled, and which, being one of the queen's commissioners, could hardly be taken from him without his consent. Bill brought into Parlia to prevent and selling of and fellow ships. 'In all the former statutes the bishop of Ely's power had been always preserved pretty entire, at least in a just height, even by Henry the Eighth's statutes; he had not only power of visiting when called in, but once every three years without a call. Whereas by these statutes he has no power of visiting until called in, and that call is rendered so difficult as to leave him little more than a shadow of power. Privileges are such desirable things that they do not use to be parted with without a reason; I can see only two reasons for this, expense to the college and trouble to the bishop. The expenses on the college side were usually high, for the bishop had vastly exceeded his appointments, and the good bishop had had so many uneasy journeys of late from Ely to Cambridge, that he had reason to wish there might be fewer occasions for his coming hither. There was indeed one other reason, that the queen's power of visiting was then so constant that there was less need of a bishop of Ely'.' It is not a little to Whitgift's credit that at a time when ment in 1576 his attention and energies were so largely absorbed by his the buying conflicts with the Puritan party, his vigilance as a watchful scholarships defender of the general interests of his own college and the university was in no way diminished. It was early in the parliamentary session 1576-7, that, in order to protect the colleges against a growing practice which threatened seriously to affect their efficiency as institutions for the encouragement of learning and studious merit, a bill was brought into the House of Commons for the purpose of repressing the buying and selling of fellowships, scholarships, and all offices of emolument in the two universities'. 1 Baker-Mayor, pp. 175–6. 2 Strype, Life of Whitgift, bk. i, c. 13: Stat. 18 Eliz. c. xi, ss. 1, 2, 3. 'It was seen and found by experience,' says Strype, in his summary of the Act of 1589, that the said elections, The measure received dis etc., were many times wrought and brought to pass with money, gifts, and rewards, whereby the fittest persons to be elected, presented, or nominated, wanting money or friends, were seldom or not at all preferred; |