In the summer of 1904 Brother Bede’s theological studies were interrupted. If he had followed the normal course he would have been ordained priest soon after his twenty-first birthday in August, and continued to study theology either at Hawkesyard, or, more probably, with the Dominicans at Louvain or in Rome. Instead of that he was sent to Oxford in the autumn for a three years’ course of modern history. During his first term there he was a deacon, having been raised to that office on the 19th of September.

This interruption of sacred studies for a secular course in a non-Catholic University was quite without precedent amongst English Dominicans, and though Brother Bede in every way justified the exception made in his favour, the experiment was not repeated in the case of anyone who followed him. Even when he himself became Provincial, students taking a University course in the humanities or secular sciences did so either before joining the Order or at the end of their full course of ecclesiastical study.

Many claim to have had a voice in sending Brother Bede to Oxford, but the deciding factor was clearly his own ardent desire. Though he neither said nor did anything to urge it, everybody knew that he yearned not merely to go there himself, but to see the English Dominicans restored to the position they held in the University from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. His ambition was so consistent with his unselfish zeal for the spiritual welfare of his Order and his country that it turned obstacles into stepping-stones.