VII. 1654. the blood that had been shed in England, Scot- CHAP. land and Ireland, and naturally a nullifidian in all points of civil honesty, as well as religion. His demeanour therefore, this writer adds, being well weighed, we need say little concerning his faith, as supposing not many will fall in love with him for that, which he seems not much to love; but, if we consider his education, and his alliances with, relations and dependencies upon foreign Papists, we may easily conclude what religion he is of, if any. So that, whether we call to mind the fate and wretchedness of his family, or his own personal qualifications, we conceive it hardly imaginable that any pious, honest and sober-minded man would contribute so much as a thought, much less embroil his country in blood, for the restoring so blood-guilty, perfidious and infamous a house and person. We shall speedily have occasion to resume the proceedings of Cromwel towards his powerful neighbours. Meanwhile it was necessary thus far to sum up the condition of England towards foreign states, during the summer and autumn of the first year of his protectorship. Till now he had played the part of an absolute sovereign: but it was perhaps neither in his power, nor his wish, to continue to hold the reins of an arbitrary government. 86 CHAPTER VIII. IV. of Crom wel. CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE UNIVERSITIES.-AC- BOOK CROMWEL wielded not in vain the sceptre of the commonwealth of England. His eyes, so to Vigilance speak, were in every place, beholding the evil and the good. He was not dismayed, either by the divisions and internal convulsions of his country, in which only a small portion of the people regarded his government, separately from their conviction of his extraordinary endowments, with sentiments of complacency, nor by the forever renewed attempts on the part of the royalists to overturn his authority, to convulse the realms over which he presided, and by means of secret conspiracies to put a sudden close to his existence. He encountered all these evils with unaltered resolution, and trusted to the energy of his character, that he would bring a universal tranquillity out of these elements of tempest and uproar. VIII. Favour he extends to and seats of learning education. One of the subjects that at this time particu- CHAP. larly engaged his attention, was the state of learning, and the establishments for the education of youth and the religious instruction of the people, within his dominions. Though his authority was as yet but young and apparently unfixed, he did not on that account neglect the arts of peace: but on the contrary conducted himself in this matter, precisely as he might have done, if the crown of England had descended to him from a long line of ancestors, and he had had nothing to apprehend, either from the friends of freedom who hated him for his usurpation, the fanatics who regarded him as having set aside the reign of the saints, or the adherents of the exiled family who watched with unabated eagerness for the destruction of the usurper. 1648. State of the The govern ment of the The history of the university of Oxford at this time has many claims on our attention. presbyterian government had been fully esta- university blished there in the year 1648a. But much time of Oxford. did not elapse after that revolution, when it became apparent from the ascendancy of the independents in parliament in the December of that year, that the conduct of this seminary was destined to undergo a further revolution. Nothing sudden and extreme however took place on the subject. A vote of parliament was passed in the See above, Vol. III, p. 92, 93. IV. 1650. 1651. BOOK June of the following year, recommending Owen and Goodwin to be made heads of houses in one or other of the universities". The earl of Pembroke, chancellor of the university of Oxford, died in January 1650; and it was not till twelve months after, that Cromwel was appointed in his place. Goodwin had been made president of Magdalen college in the beginning of the year 1650. Owen was not made dean of Christchurch till March 1652f, and in the September following was appointed by Cromwel to the office of vice-chancellors. Almost all promotions in the university, under the superintendence of the lord general, were of course given in the same direction. 1652. 1653. Alleged conspiracy rature and seats of education. It was in the year following that historians concur to represent a memorable revolution as against lite being threatened, not only in this university, but in the entire state of the church and of learning in England. Having failed, after my utmost diligence, in discovering materials for a history of this affair, I can do nothing more than put together the scattered hints that may be collected froni different quarters tending to establish its reality. Cromwel's The first authority is Cromwel himself, who, in on the sub- his most considerable speech to the committee of statement ject. VIII. 1653. parliament appointed to remove his scruples re- CHAP. specting the taking on himself the title of king in April 1657, speaking of Barbone's parliament, expresses himself thus: "When sober men saw how things were going in that assembly, they came, and returned the power into my hands. Otherwise, the issue of that meeting would have been the subversion of your laws, and of all the liberties of this nation, the destruction of the ministers of the gospel in a word, the confusion of all things; and, instead of order, to set up the judicial law of Moses, in abrogation of all our administrations b." ham's state ment. To the same purpose colonel Sydenham, in his Sydenspeech to Barbone's parliament immediately before their dissolution, affirmed, that "the majority of the members of that assembly aimed at no less, than destroying the clergy, the law, and the property of the subject. Their purpose was to take away the law of the land, and the birth-rights of Englishmen, for which they had been so long contending with their blood, and to substitute in its room a code, modelled on the law of Moses, and which was adapted only for the nation of the Jews. In the heat of their enthusiastical fervour, they had laid the axe to the root of the Christian ministry, alleging that it was Babylonish, and that it was Antichrist. They were h Monarchy Asserted, p. 96. See above, Vol. III, p. 587. |