Growing boldness of the town authorities.

CHAP. I had not been allayed, and it was foreseen that at next Sturbridge fair the fray between 'town' and 'gown' would probably assume serious dimensions. Another element had also been imported into the dispute. The jurisdiction of the two 'taxors' of the university, exercised throughout the year conjointly with two burgesses of the town, included a right of search of vitail' at the fair'. The mayor and burgesses now boldly declared their intention of excluding the taxors from the fair and also of claiming exemption from taxation for certain articles of consumption. In other ways they had also thwarted the legitimate action of the university: they had failed to appear on the juries summoned to the two half-yearly assizes which the university was empowered to hold, and when appearing, under compulsion, had refused to convict offenders'. Their malice, their subterfuges, and their continual encroachments appear to have often tried the temper of the academic authorities to the utmost. "They are wonderfull maliciouse," wrote Ralph Aynsworth, proctor of the university and afterwards master of Peterhouse, nor does he hesitate to accuse them, in connexion with one particular suit, of " uncharitable lyes3.”

However faint the interest that now attaches to the

1 Stat. Antiq. lxv, lvi; Documents,
1 349-50; Peacock, Observations,
pp. 25-6.
The real cause of the
sore feeling between the town and
the university at this period appears
to have been the loss of trade to the
town owing to the developement of
the college system. The colleges
made and baked their own bread and
brewed their own ale, and thus be-
came independent of the town brew-
ers and bakers. This appears very
plainly from an appeal, addressed in
1532 to the lord chancellor of the
realm and the chief justices by the
mayor and burgesses of Cambridge,
in which they urge that 'at the time
of the said grants made to the uni-
versity for the said assize of bread
and ale, the substance and greatest
part of the said university consisted
in hostels, halls, and other small
places ordained for students, which
at that time were furnished of all

their bread and ale and other victual of the poor occupiers and inhabitants of the said town; now at this present time, the great substance and more part of the said university consisteth in colleges as well of old time as more lately builded, which by reason of their great riches, substance, and possessions wherewith they be endowed, been waxen so politic and wise that they have provided brewhouses and bakehouses of their own, and so at these days the more part of the said colleges do brew and bake in their own houses, by means whereof the officers of the said university give the less care and diligence to the true and just assize of bread and ale, but many times for lucre, meed, gifts and reward do suffer great misusage in that behalf.' Cooper, Annals, 1 349.

2 Ibid. 1 372-3.

Lamb, Documents, p. 34.

CHAP. I.

interposes

the univer

history of these local grievances, it is probable that as a
serious source of disquiet they were, for the time, more Cromwell
effective than either the Royal Injunctions or the Oath of on behalf of
Supremacy. In the preceding year, Dr Heynes, the vice- sity.
chancellor, had already addressed a letter to the university
suggesting the imperative necessity of concerted action in
defence of their privileges, and significantly adding, 'also I
pray you remember that ye send letters to Mr Crumwell,
thanking him for his goodness and to desyre him to con-
tynew. It was this suggestion that the authorities now
proceeded to carry out. In his interference on behalf of the
body over which he had been elected to rule, Cromwell
displayed his usual tact. Professedly the man of the popular
party, he was anxious not to make enemies among the
burgesses; but at the same time he was well aware that the
announcement of his designs in connexion with the univer-
sity would shortly try its loyalty and temper to the utmost,
and that something must be done to win as far as possible
the favour both of Catholic and Reformer in its midst. He
had already, in conjunction with Sir Thomas Audley, lord
chancellor of the realm, given the townsmen warning to
keep the peace. This was shortly before the fair of 1535.
On the fifth of the following September he issued another
mandate to his loving friends' the mayor and burgesses,
enjoining them to 'permit and suffer' the university 'to use
and exercise their privileges' in the matters above described.
On the 15th of October he reiterated these commands in
somewhat more peremptory language: and on the 15th of
December a fourth letter, after specifying certain direct
violations of the law on the part of the town, concluded with
the following menace: 'yet in cace prayer and gentle
entreatie cannot pull and allure you away from the doing
of wrong and injury, both to the king and his subjects, I will
not fail to advance, to the uttermost of my power, justice,
and to see punished with extremytie the interrupters thereof,
to the example of other".'

1 Cooper, Annals, 1 367-8; Lamb, Documents, p. 35.
2 Ibid. 1 377-8.

CHAP. I.

duct of the

A letter from the corporation to Cromwell, dated on Michaelmas Day in the following year, reveals another source of contention between the town and the university. It was customary for the newly-elected mayor to take a formal oath that it was his intention and wish to observe and enforce due consideration for the rights of the academic community. This oath the vice-chancellor claimed to administer Evasive con- in person. The burgesses now evaded the obligation under the pretext that it rested with Cromwell and the high steward of the town (then the Duke of Norfolk) to appoint the day for the administration of the oath. As however they had altogether omitted to communicate with either authority no day had been fixed, and they could only plead that this was the result of the negligence of the 'olde mayer,' who was so remysse in assembling his brithern to knowe their opynyons and myndes in that behalf'.'

mayor and

burgesses.

They put in

counter

In the year 1537 we find the corporation assuming the allegations. aggressive, alleging 'a certain case of misorder and misdemeanour' done by the proctors' servants. The result of this indictment does not appear, but on the 15th of May a letter from Cromwell to the town authorities shews that his patience was wearing out before the interminable strife. He laments that no entreatie or good meane' can bring about peace between the two bodies, and intimates that it may be his duty to bring the 'perverse inclinacions' of the town under the notice of the king himself". Even this warning however seems to have produced but little effect, for at the ensuing Sturbridge fair the town element distinguished itself by a brutal assault on some members of the university and by other acts involving a breach of the peace. Another letter from Cromwell followed, purporting this time to have been written by the royal direction, wherein he laments that by their 'perverse doings' they should have shewn themselves 'so unkind' to him, 'contempning all my letters written unto you in the favor of the universite,' and enjoining, in his majesty's name, prompt submission and obedience.

mandate.

But still the obstinacy of the townsmen was unsubdued and CHAP. L they responded only by a series of plausible demurrers which roused the royal wrath to the highest pitch. A letter signed The royal with the royal manual now appeared, enjoining instant compliance with the chancellor's commands, 'any contempt of which,' says the letter, 'we shall not fail to see so punished as it shall be heavy for the transgressors of the said commandment to bear it'. The danger they had invited was now too obvious to admit of further trifling, and in their anxiety to escape the penalties that seemed imminent the burgesses resorted to the disingenuous expedient of bringing a series of counter-allegations against the university. Depu- Final exties were hastily despatched to Hampton Court there to of the confront the vice-chancellor and his proctors in the presence of the king and the lords of the Star Chamber. That they met with but indifferent success may be inferred from the brief but pithy comment that accompanies the entry of the expenses in the accounts of the treasurers of the town,-that 'all was lost as it fortuned".'

pedients

townsmen.

ceedings of

as Visitor.

In the meantime Cromwell's influence at Cambridge had Further promade itself felt in another direction, and one much more Cromwell closely concerning the university as a seat of learning. Both there and at Oxford it begun to be clearly discerned that his accession to power portended not merely reformation, but revolution. We have already seen3 how the Royal Injunctions had changed both the ecclesiastical allegiance and the studies of the university,-substituting homage to the Crown for the ancient homage to Rome, and altogether suppressing the faculty of the canon law, enjoining the professors to discard the Sentences for the Bible, and making it lawful for all students to study the sacred volume in private, banishing the prolix commentators, and requiring the colleges to institute lectures in Greek, putting aside the scholastic interpreters of Aristotle and introducing in their place the more scientific

1 Cooper, Annals, 1 339–90.

2 Ibid. 1 391.

3 Vol. 1 p. 630.

4 6

King Henry stung with the dilatory pleas of the canonists at

Rome in point of his marriage, did
in revenge destroy their whole hive
throughout his own universities.'
Fuller (ed. Prickett and Wright),
p. 225.

Commission.

CHAP. L and intelligent expositions of Rudolphus Agricola and Melanchthon, or the simpler manual of George of Trebizond. At the same time that these Royal Injunctions were promulgated, Cromwell had been appointed Visitor to the university', with plenary powers to act according to his discretion, judgment, and experience.' Burdened however as he was with pressing affairs of state, it was impossible for him personally to discharge the office, and he was accordingly content in turn to appoint a delegate. His selection could hardly have The Royal failed to give warning of his purpose. Among the royal commissioners most distinguished during the following three years by their zeal in the work of suppression and confiscation, five names are especially conspicuous, those of Dr London, Dr Tho. Leigh, Dr Richard Leighton, Dr Ap Rice, and Richard Thornton, the suffragan bishop of Dover. Among these five, Leigh and Leighton acquired an unenviable notoriety by their harsh severity. They had both been educated at Cambridge and had graduated in civil law3. Leighton, as we have already seen, was about this time busy in expelling the scholastic writers from Oxford, and we also find him. acting as one of the commissioners sent to interrogate More and Fisher in the Tower. Leigh had recently returned from a diplomatic mission to Flanders. It would probably be unjust to conclude that he was indifferent to learning, for about this very time he rendered kindly assistance to the eminent but unfortunate Leland, whom he may have personally known when the latter was at Christ's College". But all accounts agree in representing him as a man of imperious nature and unyielding will. Even those with whom he was shortly after associated as their fellow-commissioner cried out against him. Ap Rice could not but note his satrapike countenance,' and declared that he was

Dr Leigh.

1 By the 20th clause of the Act of 1533 the right of visitation was transferred from the pope to the king, and Cromwell, as the royal deputy, was invested with plenary powers.

2 The two most active and unpopular of the monastic visitors.'

Froude, Hist. of England, 11 509.

3 Leighton was B.C.L. in 1522; Leigh in 1527, and D.C.L. in 1531. Cooper, Athenae, 1 84, 87.

4 State Papers, 1 431.

5 Leland proceeded B.A. in 15212; Cooper, Athenae, 1 110.