Oxford in person, on September 4, 1687, in order to enforce obedience, and did not scruple to intimidate the fellows with rude threats of his royal displeasure in case they should prove contumacious. The conduct of Magdalen on this occasion was eminently constitutional, and had no slight influence in determining the attitude of the nation. The fellows maintained their rights firmly but respectfully, and unanimously declined submission to any arbitrary authority. Thereupon a commission was appointed with full powers to dispossess all recusants by military force, and the new President and twenty-five fellows were actually ejected and declared incapable of Church preferment. Parker died within a twelvemonth, but James substituted one Gifford, a Papist of the Sorbonne, and was proceeding to repeople the college with Roman Catholics when the acquittal of the Seven Bishops and the invitation to William of Orange suddenly opened his eyes to his real position. During the month of October 1688 he made desperate efforts to save himself from ruin, restoring many officers deprived of their commissions, dissolving the Ecclesiastical Commission, and removing Sunderland and Petre from his council. In this death-bed fit of repentance he addressed letters to the bishop of Winchester, as Visitor of Magdalen, reinstating the ejected fellows, who, however, had scarcely returned before James had abdicated, and William and Mary had been proclaimed. C. II. Σ CHAPTER XIV. UNIVERSITY POLITICS BETWEEN THE REVOLUTION AND THE ACCESSION OF GEORGE III. THE Revolution of 1688-9 seems to have been quietly accepted at Oxford as an irrevocable fact rather than Attitude of welcomed as the consecration of civil and re the Univer the Revolu of William III. sity towards ligious liberty. For a while, indeed, the outtion. Visit rageous invasion of academical privileges by James II. produced its natural effect, and deputies from the University were despatched to salute William III. at Crewkerne, after his landing in Torbay. William actually came as far as Abingdon, but, there receiving news of James's flight, sent to excuse himself, and hurried on towards London. Burnet tells us that, at the same time, and at his request, the Association,' or pledge to support him in restoring order and liberty, was signed by almost all the Heads of colleges and the chief men of the University. But he adds that some of the signatories, 'being disappointed in the preferments they aspired to, became afterwards King William's most implacable enemies.' At all events, reactionary tendencies gradually manifested themselves, and it is said that Locke, who had little cause for gratitude to Oxford, urged the King to reform the Universities once more, alleging that otherwise the work of the Revolution 'would all soon go back.' William had been recognised as a deliverer, but Oxford loyalists had not abandoned their allegiance to the Stuart dynasty, however inconsistent with their submission to William as king de facto by the will of a Parliamentary majority. It was not until the autumn of 1695, after the death of Mary, and the complete transfer of power to the Whigs, that he found time to visit the University, for a few hours only, on his way from Woodstock to Windsor. He was received by the Chancellor, the second Duke of Ormond, and one of a family which, as representing the high Tory aristocracy, held this office, as if by hereditary right, for a period of ninety years. All the usual ceremonies were observed; a select body of Doctors and Masters 'rode out in their gowns to meet the King' a mile on the Woodstock road, and a grand procession conducted him down the High Street to the east gate of the schools, through which he passed directly to the theatre, where a sumptuous banquet was prepared for him. Evelyn states that, being coldly received, he declined the banquet and barely stayed an hour; according to another report, in itself improbable, the fear of poison deterred him from tasting the refreshments provided. However this may be, he certainly never courted or acquired popularity at the University, which henceforth became a hotbed of Jacobite disaffection for at least two generations. Oxford The exact source of this sentiment is somewhat difficult to ascertain, but it was probably a survival of Origin of the Puritan Visitation, and was doubtless connected with hearty respect for the Non-jurors, Queen Anne to whose ranks, however, Oxford contributed fewer resident members than Cambridge. But Oxford Churchmen assuredly cherished a genuine hatred of the Visit of latitudinarian opinions attributed to William III., and afterwards patronised by Whig statesmen. Whatever may have been its source, and whether it was in the nature of a settled conviction or of an inveterate fashion, Jacobite partisanship was shared alike by 'dons' and by undergraduates, it was the one important element in the external history of the University under the first two Georges, and, like Scotch Jacobitism, it retained a sort of poetical existence up to a still later period. In their opposition to the Comprehension Scheme promoted by the King, the University of Oxford was supported by that of Cambridge, in which there long continued to be a strong Jacobite minority, but which, by comparison with Oxford, soon came to be regarded as a nursery Whig principles. Still the commission appointed to prepare a scheme of Comprehension included the names of Aldrich, afterwards dean of Christchurch, who had succeeded the Romanist Massey, and Jane, Regius Professor of divinity, who had been converted from extreme Toryism by James II.'s aggression on Magdalen, but was reconverted by William III.'s neglect of his claims. to a bishopric. The hopes of a Jacobite reaction, excited by the accession of Queen Anne, found an enthusiastic echo in the University. On July 16, 1702, a grand Philological Exercise' was celebrated in the theatre for the special purpose of honouring the new Queen. On August 26 of the same year, Queen Anne herself visited Oxford, where a fierce struggle for precedence at her reception took place between the University and City, which afterwards showed more respect for the Stuart dynasty in exile than when it was on the throne. Burnet complains bitterly of the clerical Toryism and ecclesiastical bigotry which prevailed at Oxford in 1704, accusing the University of 'corrupting the principles of its students. Hearne, the learned Oxford chronicler, writing on September 2, 1705, notices a thanksgiving sermon preached by a Mr. Evans, of St. John's, a clergyman of doubtful character, of which Dr. Lloyd, bishop of Worcester, said that 'he was very glad there was one even in Oxford that would speak for King William.' He adds, three days later, that Evans had talked mightily of publishing this sermon, but that there is none in Oxford will print a thing so scandalously partial against the Church of England.' Popularity of Sache verell. Position of the Whig minority 6 During the furious outbreak of High Church fanaticism, which rallied the mass of English clergy and shattered the Whig ascendency at the end of 1709, the gownsmen were active partisans of Dr. Sacheverell, himself a graduate of Magdalen. The vice-chancellor came forward as surety for him, Atterbury, the future dean of Christchurch, defended him with great ability, and Oxford afterwards gave him an enthusiastic reception. The House of Lords marked its sense of this disloyalty in the following year by causing the famous University decree of 1683 to be publicly burned, together with Sacheverell's sermons. No sooner did Queen Anne disavow her Whig advisers and place herself openly under Tory influences, than Oxford, undeterred by this rebuke, paraded its Toryism without disguise, and, had it retained its old place in national politics, the Hanoverian succession would have encountered a still more formidable opposition. But the Whig oligarchy again saved the country. After four years of Tory policy, another crisis occurred, the Tory |