But as men missed him from the services of the college CHAP. IV. chapel, from which he had before been rarely absent, watchfully observant of the conduct of others, although himself a model of serious devotion, or from his place in the college hall, sharing as was his wont in the simple fare then spread alike for fellow and for scholar',-or from the university pulpit, defending with an earnest manly rhetoric which often rose to true eloquence the sober tenets of the English Church against the invectives of her foes, it was felt that many might have been better spared. It was felt that his virtues were of an order of which the England of that age, though furnishing some splendid examples, was certainly none too fruitful, that he was one in whom a sense of duty triumphed over selfish and sordid motives, and regard for the general good over the desire of personal aggrandizement. quiet in the after Whit The conduct of those who, after Whitgift's departure, continued to direct the conduct of affairs is not suggestive of any desire to reverse his rigorous policy, but no necessity appears to have arisen for further coercive measures. A per- Comparativo ceptible lull succeeded to the storm evoked by the promulga- university tion of the new statutes; and when, in the month of Novem- gift's deparber, 1577, an order from the Privy Council came down, addressed to the vice-chancellor, and requiring him to furnish a list of the names of such members of either hall or college as refused to attend divine service in the university church, 1 'He generally eat his meals with the rest in the college hall, that he might have the more watchful eye over the scholars, and to keep them in awe and obedience; and to teach them likewise to be satisfied with a moderate thrifty diet, such as that of the college was, whereof he was their pattern before their eyes.' Strype, Life of Whitgift, bk. i, c. 13. 2 It is certainly difficult to recog nise a feature in common between the Whitgift sketched by lord Macaulay and the Whitgift known to his contemporaries or to the next generation. According to Izaak Walton [Life of Hooker, Hooker's Works (ed. 1821), 1 27] he was noted to be prudent and affable, and gentle by 6 nature.' Walton's highly favorable ture. testimony to of non-com pliers. Statement of Gabriel CHAP. IV. Howland, who at that time filled the office, certified in his Howland's reply that he could hear of none, either in the university or the absence in the town, who refused compliance'. Gabriel Harvey, writing in 1580 from Pembroke College to his friend Edmund Spenser, the poet', while implying that dissension is still rife in some of the colleges between their respective Heads and the fellows, declares that 'the ado about caps and surplices is at an end' and Cartwright altogether forgotten". To such a result, Whitgift's departure may in a certain measure have contributed. His presence could hardly but have been a source of irritation to the powerful party whom he had defeated, while those whom he had before inspired by his uncompromising spirit no longer felt the animating influence of an able leader. The attention of the governmentdiverted for a time mainly to the Roman Catholic Parsons and For the next few years, again, the repressive measures of Elizabeth's ministers were to a great extent diverted from the Puritan to the Catholic section of her subjects. It was on the seventh of June, 1580, that Parsons and Campian set 1 Cooper, Annals, 11 359; Baker MSS. XXIX 346. Howland's assurances are remarkably explicit: 'notwithstanding,' he says, we used the meanes which was thought best to finde out the truth in this point, I can yet, neyther by myself nor by the certificate of any other (for I have taken a note of everie the heads of colleges and of certayne of everie parishe in the towne under their owne hande, which I kepe for my better discharge or otherwise at your honours commandment) understande that there is any one in the universitie or towne, at this time remainynge, whome we can charge openlie to impugne the truth, or that doth willfullie refuse to come to church and to communicate according unto her Majesties lawes.' State Papers (Dom.) Eliz., vol. cxvIII, no. 35. 2 The poet and his correspondent were both of Pembroke Hall; but the former had entered as a sizar, the latter, as a fellow, and the unfavourable influence exercised by the coarse pedant over the poet's genius may be attributed as much to Harvey's supe rior status in the college as to his seniority in years. Spenser appears to have left Cambridge about 1576, but he had succeeded in gaining during his residence the friendship of some distinguished members of the university. Among these was Dr Still, the author of Gammer Gurton's Needle, which was long supposed to be the oldest comedy in the language, and whose intimacy suggests the sympathetic attraction of kindred tastes. Another was Preston, the accomplished disputant (supra, p.193), afterwards master of Trinity Hall. 3 No more ado about caps and surplices. Mr Cartwright quite forgotten. The man you wot of comfortable with a square cap on his round head.' Quoted in Wordsworth, Eccles. Biography, 1602. For illustration of concluding remark, compare the expression which George Herbert satirically attributes to the celebrated Presbyterian, Andrew Melvill: Pilei quadrum capiti rotundo Rite quadrabit? Angli Musae Responsoriae, Works (Lansdowne ed.), p. 143. out from Rheims (where they had halted for a few days on CHAP. IV. their journey from Rome) for England. The fondest aspirations and warmest sympathies of the little community, proud of their talents and confident in their tact, followed them on their departure'; but before eighteen months had elapsed a sorrowful entry in the college journal recorded the fate of Campian. His martyrdom, as it was regarded by his party, and like cruelties inflicted on his adherents, altogether failed however to check the active sympathies of the English Catholics; and the Douay diaries attest a constant accession of students from Oxford and Cambridge, seeking liberty of conscience or freedom for their persons in voluntary or forced exile. There, amid the calm of a semi-monastic life and English surrounded by another atmosphere of thought, the youthful Rheims. theologian was confirmed again in the faith which Lutheran or Calvinistic influences might have shaken or perplexed'. There the scholar and accomplished disputant composed the trenchant polemic, which, in the opinion of his party, demolished the sophistries of a Jewell, a Hooker, or a refugees at 1 'summus uterque philosophus variisque et Latinis et Graecis doctrinis non mediocriter eruditus, magnus item uterque theologus; Campianus ita comptus sermone et disertus, ut non multos pares, Parsonus ita prudens, ut vix aliquos, ea qua is est aetate, habeat prudentia superiores. De quibus tanta speramus quanta possumus maxima,' etc. Douay Diaries, p. 166. 2 Ibid. p. 184. 3 Though the heretics forbid any one to come to us under pain of death, and use the greatest diligence, especially in the universities, to prevent us from obtaining men of choicer wit, still since the first of March this year, that is during six months, eighty students have come hither from the English universities and public schools; so that in these months we have hardly ever been fewer at Rheims than two hundred, without counting many others whom on account of their youth and because they need instruction suitable for boys, we have sent, partly at 4 Horum unus, D. Bellus, ali- 182. CHAP. IV. Whitaker'. There the lad of gentle English birth' and the grey-haired senior bending under the double burden of penury and old age, alike found shelter, the one from the temptations of the world, the other, from its unpitying frown. Favourable effects upon It cannot but be regarded as something more than a mere learning and coincidence, that the period from which we can date a tem literature re sulting from ed attention bestowed upon theo logical controversy. the diminish-porary abatement of polemical strife is also that which marks the commencement of a rapid improvement in the productions of our English literature. During the six or seven years which preceded the appearance of the Martin Marprelate tracts in 1588,-years in which controversy appears to have been comparatively dormant, we can plainly discern the activity of the scholar and the aims of the author acquiring new value and dignity. The dean of Sarum, in that ponderous tome which by its well-meant endeavour to refute and win over the Puritan party provoked the scurrilous onslaught of the Martinists, exults in the immunity from trouble with which the Church in England was then favoured when compared with other Protestant communions*, and his congratulations were such as Cambridge, the fountain-head of the Anglican teaching, could reasonably accept. The condition Her superiority to Oxford, at this time, whether in numbers, Cambridge in discipline, or in the national esteem, is too marked to be gainsaid. Oxford, indeed, was now suffering, and far more acutely, from a general demoralization such as had marked the climax of Cartwright's influence at the sister university. of affairs at far more satisfactory than that at Oxford, 1 Douay Diaries, pp. 177, 182, 318, 319. 2 Moreover we receive not only men of excellent capacity and education, but, to the great annoyance of our adversaries, many of gentle birth, and sometimes also, though their parents like it not, eldest sons, who in the very flower of their age despise both the present enjoyments which their country offers them and the future prospect of their paternal inheritance, that they become heirs in the house of the Lord,' etc. Ibid. See also a paper by F. W. Holt, S.I., 'How the Catholic Religion was maintained in England during 38 years of One of her scholars, writing in 1575 to Lawrence Tonson, CHAP. IV. pelled to hide its head, not only at the universities but als tanism gains Anthony throughout the realm, the efforts of the Puritan section at Oxford were rewarded by a success proportionate to the less where Puriresolute and effectual resistance which the orthodox party were able there to offer. The encouragement given by Leicester to the former body, in his capacity of chancellor of the university, was such that Anthony Wood, when describ- Assertion of ing the state of affairs in 1586, declares that 'the face of the Wood. university was so much altered that there was but little to be seen of the Church of England, according to the principles and positions upon which it had been reformed'. His assertion, which taken by itself might be liable to suspicion, is borne out in a great measure by the evidence of Whitgift. This corroboThe attention of the latter had been drawn to the university in the same year from the circumstance that, by virtue of his authority as Visitor, he had undertaken to prepare3 a new code for the society of All Souls. In the university at large he seems to have found much that he deemed deserving of censure, and writing to Burghley he adverts to numerous unsatisfactory features which call for speedy reform: the general neglect of public lectures, the insufficient endowment of the professorial body,—the lack of proper guidance of the younger students in the prosecution of their studies, 1 and although the name of the pope be here banished it is he indeed stil here, and in steede of one, not only Englande, but Oxford also hath mani, eche companie his pope, a fayre swarme,' etc. Letter from Nicholas Gybbarde to Lawrence Tonson: 5 July, 1575. State Papers (Dom.) Eliz. vol. cv, no. 4. I somewhat doubt whether the allusions in this somewhat obscure letter are designed, 2 Wood-Gutch, II 228-9. See 'Injunctions and Ordinances for the Government of All Souls' College, Oxford:' Whitgift's Works. rated by the 1589, gift in |