^{page 400 note a} The last Visitors were under the stringent direction of Dr. John Owen. They were only temporarily appointed. The Visitors, whose Orders now commence, were appointed by Cromwell on Sept. 2, 1654, under the influence of Goodwin. Those only of them who belonged to the University, and “were constantly to sit,” need be mentioned here. Besides the nine whose signatures appear to the first Order were the following: Dr. John Owen, Peter French, Cromwell's brother-in-law, and Jonathan Goddard, Cromwell's physician, all of whom had been in the last Commission. It will be observed that three of the leaders of the first Commission are here restored, viz.: Harris, Rogers, and Wilkinson, that Conant was a member of all three Commissions, and that Stanton and Basnett have disappeared. But though Dr. John Owen is on the Commission we do not find his signature for three years from this date, which may be accounted for by his resentment of Goodwin's success in filling up the places with a majority of his own friends. He now acts with the University against the Visitors. (Annals, vol. ii. part ii. p. 662.) Delegates, of whom Palmer, Warden of All Souls, was the spokesman, are appointed to confer with them, to propose limitations of their power, to obtain some recognition of the local Visitors of Colleges, and, above all, to claim the election of the Board of Visitors by the University in Convocation. This rivalry of the leaders was a useful circumstance in reference to the growing demand for the restoration of independence. The reformed Colleges now established under Owen's government, in tolerable order, were weary of a succession of governing bodies, which threatened a perpetual “tinkering” of their institutions; and John Owen, however much he may also have been prompted by personal feeling, may be credited with sense enough to see that they were right., The Constitution suggested by the Delegates is noteworthy, inasmuch as it bore some resemblance to that of the Hebdomadal Council created by the Commission of 17 and 18 Vict. To the existing body of nominated Visitors they proposed to add eight Heads of Colleges, eight Fellows of Colleges, and five to be chosen out of Heads, Prebends of Christ Church, ami Professors, all to be elected by Convocation. Thus the Board would combine the principles of nomination, election, and variety of classes. The Visitors, however, though Cromwell was interested in behalf of these proposals, had sufficient power to set them aside. The Protector had already gone too far. The University should have moved sooner: it would not probably have made itself felt at all, except for Owen's countenance. Though no longer the leading Visitor, his power in the University was really increased; and as Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Christchurch he was for some time longer the leading man. Goodwin's personal influence was confined to a narrower sphere.

^{page 401 note a} The Earl of Pembroke, hereditary Visitor. This was Philip, son of the late Chancellor of Oxford University. By the next Order the new Visitors proclaim that they have no intention whatever of abdicating their functions as universal Visitors in favour of local Visitors. It is their first act, and typical. For Roberta's case see Note below.

^{page 401 note b} The present Fellows of Jesus had succeeded to the sturdy spirit of their predecessors. The College had been the last to hold out against the first Visitors; it had lately been pronounced “unsettled”; the Principal had given grounds of offence and distrust, some of which were certainly just; and the Fellows had now actually dared to appeal, according to their Statutes, to their proper Visitor, the head of the great house of Pembroke. He had been nothing loth. The question of University freedom would have been actually settled by his prompt action, as far as a precedent could settle it. Indeed the fourteen days had already expired, when Roberts appeals, and the Visitors peremptorily interpose their veto.

^{page 402 note a} As the Orders of Jan. 30 were the first Orders of the new Visitors, so also they were their only ones for several months, a circumstance which may be accounted for not only by their relations to Dr. John Owen and other leading men but by the unsettled state of the country, which produced “great troubles in the University.” It was on the occasion of the insurrection of certain cavaliers of Wiltshire and other parts, at Salisbury, in March, that Wood explains, how “the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Owen, took great care to secure the University and country.” See Introduction.

^{page 405 note a} In requiring the Canonists to profess Divinity the Visitors were only insisting on the observation of the original scheme of the Foundation. The Civil Lawyers only gradually escaped from the obligation to take Holy Orders, and the Canonists had scarcely as yet established a similar immunity. But they were contending against the tide. The secularization of the Faculty of Law was irrevocable.

This ma be the place to mention the effort which had lately been made to revive the study of Civil Law. A Convocation was held on Nov. 13, 1654, in which Dr. Langbaine complained that the Faculty of Law was almost extinct at Oxford, in spite of the efforts of London Doctors, Cambridge Students, and Oxford Students, working together for the previous fifty years. The University thereupon unanimously petitioned Parliament for some encouragement of “that Profession, beeing one of the principall parts of learning for which this University hath been anciently famous …‥ which, as it is a distinct body from the Cannon Law, wee humbly conceive to bee very suitable to the present Government, as well for forraigne commerce and negotiations abroad (being generally received and practised in other nations) as also for many questions, debates, and decisions fitt to be known and made use of in this nation, not only in Causes Maritime but also in Causes Matrimoniall and Testamentary and others, the cognizance whereof hath formerly been held proper for and allowed to persons of that Profession.” (Reg. Conv. T.)

^{page 406 note a} A year had elapsed since the Visitors had inhibited the Appeal made by the Fellows of Jesus to the Earl of Pembroke, and fixed a day for hearing the charges against their Principal. Nothing appears in the Register to show they had heard them, or made any Order concerning them. Meanwhile the indomitable Fellows appeal once more to another tribunal than the Visitors, the Council of the Protector, either on the old or some fresh charges. They had now gone so far as to depose their Principal. The Council refers the matter back to the Visitors, and the case comes before us at last.

^{page 407 note a} The Visitors, if they appear to have done very little else since their appointment, show the same resolution on this subject of religious exercises as their predecessors. (See above.)

^{page 411 note a} This is a subject which frequently recurs in the Injunctions issued by Visitors of All Souls, and probably of other Colleges. Wood paraphrases the Order thus: “That all members of each College commune together in their public refectory,” a suggestive use of the verb in its old English sense, before it lost its meaning of taking food in common, now only retained in the words “Holy Communion” and its correlatives, the actual partaking of some food provided as “commons” for several persons together. The term could never have been applicable to those who did not partake of the food. At this time there were many useful reforms brought forward by the University itself; e.g., on Dec. 25, 1655, that Bachelors of Arts are to register their names at the end of a year from taking their Degree, and specify what Faculty they intend to study; on the last day of Term to attend and receive directions for their studies from the Doctors of the Faculty; and to give an account of their proficiency at the end of another year, and again three Terms later; that not above six or eight persons at most be examined at a time, and no Undergraduates to be admitted to hear them. On April 3, 1656, the whole system of public oaths is rearranged; and the practice of entertainments, given on the occasion of examinations and exercises for Degrees, is “wholly taken away,” under severe penalties. (Reg. Conv. T.)

^{page 413 note a} The charges “exhibited” against Dr. Michael Roberts may be found in Wynne's Life of Sir Leoline Jenkins. They may be summed up under the two heads of (1) dishonest appropriation of College funds for his own benefit; and (2) arbitrary, partial, and illegal proceedings in the government of the College, and especially in the matter of elections. He would certainly have been infamous and corrupt, as Wynne styles him, if these charges had been proved; yet the Visitors on Feb. 20 were unanimous in deciding that “it doth not appear that he was justly and legally expelled,” and on May 19 they declare, “on mature deliberation that they do not see cause to confirm the act of the Fellows in the amotion of their Principal.” This is not however a very full acquittal, and two years later (we know not the exact circumstances) Roberts resigns, and is superseded by Francis Howell, a Fellow of Exeter, one of the Visitors. After this he “lived obscurely” in Oxford, and died on May 3, 1679, the same year as Howell, who was himself superseded at the Restoration by the former displaced Principal, Dr. Mansell. Roberts was buried in the churchyard of St. Peter in the East.

It may be proper here to mention that one cannot but suspect some connection between the difficulty experienced in “settling” the College and the following fact, which is thus recorded in Sir Leoline Jenkins' Life of Dr. Mansell. This is noticed in the Introduction: we give here the extract. “When our Principall came first to towne [in May 1651] he took up at Mr. Newman's, a baker in Holywell; but the good offices he dayly rendered to the College disposed the then Society so farr to comply with his inclinations (which had been allways to live and dye in the College) as to invite him to accept of one chamber for accommodating himself, where he [had] built severall faire ones for the benefitt of the College. This motion was accepted, and he lived in the College near the stoney staires near the gate for eight years, where he had leisure to observe many changes and revolutions within those walls as without them, till that happy one of His Majestie's Restoration, by God's infinite mercy, to the College as well as to the nation, happily came on.” (P. 21.)

To conclude Mansell's chequered career. The son of Sir F. Mansell, Bart, a Commoner of Jesus, and Fellow of All Souls, he had twice been Principal before his ejection, generously resigning the first time to make way for a benefactor of the College, Sir Eubule Thelwall. When “restored to his Headship, now the third time, his only care was to settle all that he had in the world upon the College, and to transfer the Headship upon some other that would study the interest of the College with the same concern that he had done.” That successor was discovered, after a few months, in his beloved pupil, friend, and biographer, Leoline Jenkins, subsequently Secretary of State to Charles II., and the “second Founder” of Jesus College. Dr. Mansell died in 1665.

^{page 416 note a} The length to which a stated sermon was expected to run, when preached in lieu of a regular exposition or disputation, is shown by this Order to have been about one hour. The “Divines sent beyond the seas” must refer to the travelling Fellowship set apart for three years for a youth, “magnœ expectationis et prœclarœ indolis,” who might travel in Italy or elsewhere, but there was to be one only of these at a time.

^{page 418 note a} The sagacious founder of Corpus, living in days when the election of a Proctor for either “Nation” was the most important proceeding of the year and attended with much turbulence and feasting, seriously affecting the College from which he might be elected, had forbidden his students to stand, in order, as he says, to avoid ambition and contention for the office. The Laudian Cycle had rendered such precautions unnecessary.

^{page 418 note b} As we have arrived at the close of 1656, it may here be remarked that Wood gives us next to no history for that year. Dr. Owen, the Vice-Chancellor, attempted to bring forward in Convocation some useful reforms as to the celebration of the annual “Act,” and other matters, and was so annoyed at their not being accepted that he would fain have overruled Convocation by the direct action of the Visitors. We learn from Wood that four of these were opposed to such a course, viz. Rogers, Harris, Wilkinson, and Conant, while he was supported by Goodwin, Thankful Owen, Baron, and Howell. Failing here, he was bent on obtaining a very objectionable reform of Convocation by the help of Cromwell and the Council, but was at last prevented from taking further action by the entreaties of his friends, French and Goddard. The independence of Convocation was evidently much strengthened by this victory, and the University prepared to enter fully upon its old course of self-government.

^{page 420 note a} This is the first of a series of Orders on a very interesting subject, to which, perhaps from motives of delicacy, attention had never been called till the history of All Souls College made it necessary that a sustained struggle of the last importance in the fortunes of that Society should be dealt with at some length. To chapters xiii. xiv. and xv. and to pages 63, 106, and 209, in the Worthies of All Souls, the reader is referred for a history of “Corrupt Resignations” at that College. The practice was entirely suppressed in 1681, and it never again revived.

It will however he observed that, while the second and third Orders of this series are drawn up specially for New College and All Souls, the first is made out for Colleges in general, showing that the practice was not confined to those two institutions; and Wood remarks that “Magdalen, New, and All Souls Colleges” were those which gave special offence. A passage in Bishop Lowth's Life of Wykeham, p. 193 (2nd edition, 1759,) refers to the abuse as far from extinct in his time at New College; and a letter of Archbishop Sancroft's to a Warden of All Souls speaks of the failure to stop the abuse at Magdalen in the time of President Pierce. Dr. Bloxam, however, has found no trace of the practice during the researches necessary for compiling his Register of Magdalen.

^{page 422 note a} This sentence is not in the engagement required from the members of All Souls. The omission may possibly be accidental, but it is remarkable that All Souls had shown a fair amount of independence in cases of Recommendations.

^{page 422 note b} This paragraph has the above marks of erasure upon it in the MS.

^{page 423 note a} The Order for All Souls fs distinguished by the obligation of the Fellows to give a longer notice of their intention to resign than is thought necessary for other Colleges. How necessary such notice was, may be seen from what took place in 1679. See W. of All Souls, p. 250.

^{page 426 note a} This is the last Order issued under Cromwell's Chancellorship. The following is his letter to the University conveying his resignation of the office:—

“Trustie and well-beloved we greete you well. Amongst the many parts of that Government which is intrusted to us wee doe look upon the Universities as meriting very much of our care and thoughts; and finding that the place of Chancellor of our (Tniversitie of Oxford is at present in our selfe, and withall judging that the continuance therof in our hands may not bee soe consistent with the present constitution of affairs, wee have therefore thought fitt to resigne the sayd office as wee hereby doe, and to leave you at freedome to elect from such other person thereunto as you shall conceive meet for the execution thereof. Our will and pleasure is that you doe proceed to the election of a Chancellor with your first conveniency: not doubting but you will in your choyce have a just regard to the advancement and encouraging of pietie and learning, and to the continuing and further setling of good order and government amongst you; which you may easily find yourselves obliged to have principally in your consideration and designe, whether you respect the University itselfe, or the good of the Commonwealth upon which it hath so great an influence. And although our relation to you may by this means in some sort be changed, yet you may bee confident wee shall still retayne a reall affection to you, and bee ready upon all occasions to seeke and promote your good. Given at Whitehall, this third day of July, 1657.”

This letter having been read in frequentissima Convocatione on July 18, Richard Cromwell was elected Chancellor; and he appointed Dr. Conant, Rector of Exeter, Vice-Chancellor on October 5, 1657. (Reg. Conv. T.) His letter is dated from Hursley, Southampton, at which place he often lived, having married the daughter of Mr. Mayor, of Hursley.

^{page 427 note a} From this place to the end of the Register the Orders chiefly refer to the corrupt election which had taken place at All Souls on the “morrow of All Souls Day.” The quaint and characteristic style of the Visitors covers a great amount of good sense and acuteness in dealing with a long-established evil, which proved, however, beyond their power to eradicate. The obstinacy of the resistance they encountered can only be understood by reference to the history mentioned in the previous Note. Horton's name in that history is wrongly printed “Egerton,” and it appears on the College Register. It will be observed that the Visitors attribute the blame to the old Royalist Fellows, who had been suffered to remain, but without power of voting. They could hardly, however, have succeeded unless they had found some apt pupils among the “Puritans.” The further proceedings between the Visitors and the College may be thus summarised. The elections having been declared null and void on November 16, 1657, the Visitors report their proceedings to the Protector, as representing the Parliamentary authority of their original constitution. The President of the Council, in the name of the Protector and Council, states, on Nov. 27, the approval of that body. On Dec. 3rd the Visitors make the concession that the five persons whose elections had been nullified might stand again for examination by the Visitors, and be elected if found fit; but, on Dec. 16, it is registered that none of them so much as appeared to be examined. They probably preferred exclusion to such an ordeal. On Dec. 24 the Visitors repeat the invitation, with apparently the same result; for on Jan. 11, 1657–8, they repeat their inhibition of the election, and state the facts of the case to the Chancellor and Lord Fiennes, the Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal, referring to a Petition which had been already presented by the College against the Visitors. The last Order of all, on Feb. 21, 1657–8, reciting that the Protector had referred the case to the Chancellor and Lord Fiennes, requires the College to deliver up its Statutes for the purposes of the trial in London. As the Register abruptly terminates just at this point, we are left to conjecture as to the rest. But the critical condition of affairs at this moment suggests that the appeal could hardly have been heard. The Visitors themselves appear to disband; the College goes on in its old way; the “Puritan” Visitors had only added to the previous failures in dealing with this question, made by Cranmer, Parker, Whitgift, and Abbot. It was reserved for Archbishop Sancroft to succeed at last; but not till the battle had been fought out to extremity in the Court of King's Bench, twenty years after the Restoration.

^{page 433 note a} This is the Lawrence immortalized by Milton in his twentieth sonnet:—

“Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son.”

He was a learned and able Cambridge man; and, though he honourably marked his disapproval of the King's execution, he became one of Cromwell's Lords, and President of his Council.

^{page 434 note a} As nothing has appeared to this effect during the previous years it must be supposed that the Visitors discovered that, with all their efforts to establish “religious exercises,” and reports of attendance at lectures and sermons, the success of their plans had been inadequate to their expectations, and that a system of weekly examinations and catechetical lectures was necessary by way of supplement. The term, in reference to lectures at Oxford, has remained on to our own day. It must be admitted that nothing was wanting on the part of the authorities to drill the rising generation of the University into at least a knowledge of the religion they professed; and it should in fairness be remembered that youths entered the Colleges earlier than at present; that the schools of the country had very much broken up during the late troubles; and that the Universities had to do the duty of both home and school to a greater extent than at any other modern period. They were in fact great schools, and not much else.

^{page 436 note a} University, like other very ancient Colleges, only gradually got rid of the ancient tenements which sufficed for early medieval times. The Master's lodgings, which had been renovated in 1564 by Thomas Key, Master of the College, at this time “stood on the east side, beyond the old quadrangle,” which quadrangle was gradually pulled down between 1634 and 1669 to make room for the present one. Dr. Radcliffe's bequest provided for the erection of the present Master's lodgings, now superseded by the handsome buildings just completed. The next Order shows that the College was not borne out by the Visitors in its theory that the Master ought to pay for the repair of his lodgings. They were College property.

^{page 439 note a} It is strange that this abrupt conclusion of the Register should not be noticed by Wood. The work of the Visitors breaks off with a startling and suggestive suddenness. And yet there is no sudden catastrophe to account for it. We are, then, left to the consideration of the circumstances, as far as we can gather them, under which the cessation of Orders takes place; and some notice of these will be found in the Introduction to the Register.