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CHAPTER VI.

LATER OXFORD.

The Restoration-James II.-Anne-Musical Entertainments-The House of Hanover and the Jacobites-Methodism-Improvements in the City.

It was a sign of coming change that when Richard Cromwell was proclaimed before St. Marie's Church dore, the usual place where kings have been proclaimed, the mayor, recorder, town clerk, &c., accompanied by Col. Unton Cooke and his troopers, were pelted with carret and turnip tops by young scholars and others, who stood at a distance.' And next year Wood notes 'those that for these twelve years last past had governed and carried all things at their pleasure, looked discontented, plucked their hats over their eyes, and were much perplexed, foreseeing that their being here must inevitably vanish. The common people hugged themselves up with the thoughts of a king, and enjoyed their sports, especially May games, more this year than hath been since. . . . A comedy called The Guardian was acted in the new dancing school against St. Michael's church, about the middle of July,' of which the Puritans complained because it ridiculed their dress and habits.

A Restoration never restores, for men may remember

but they do not recommence; and when the discipline of Owen and Conant was abolished in the orgies of Charles II.'s return, it was not the discipline of Laud that took its place. Wood notes the disordered state both of City and University. He asks, in 1677, Why doth solid and serious learning decline, and few or none follow it now in the university? Answer: Because of coffee-houses, where they spend all their time; and in entertainments at their chambers, where their studies are become places for victuallers, also great drinking at taverns and ale-houses (Dr. Lamphire told me there were 370 in Oxford), spending their time in common chambers whole afternoons, and thence to the coffeehouse.' The first common chamber was at Merton, where in 1661 the chamber above the kitchen was converted into a common room.' In 1662 Wood adds other causes for the numbers falling off-viz. 'the constant expectation of a Parliament to be held at Oxford, and the fear of being turned out to make room for members of both Houses;' and, again, 'all those that we call Whigs, and side with the Parliament, will not send their sons for fear of their being Tories, and a suspicion that the university leant towards popery.' As to discipline, he notes, under 1673: Proctors took their places, great rudeness at Trinity College, the undergraduates and freshmen came into the hall, scrambled for biscuits, took away bottles, glasses, &c.; at Wadham, the like.' And again, September 15, 1673: The election of Oxford mayor; Anthony Hall, vintner, chosen, at which some young scholars and servitors being present heard his speech of thanks out of the balcony, viz. that he thanked them for their choice of him, that he could

neither speak French nor Spanish, but if they would walk to the Bear they should find that he could speak English, meaning, give them English ale and beer. Thereupon the scholars hissed, but the townsmen, brooking it not, turned them out; then the scholars made some resistance by flipping them on the cheek; after that, in the evening, they fought, and so they did on Sunday and Wednesday in St. Peter's in the Bailey; a scholar of Brasen Nose his arm broke, another his head; began by servitors, and carried on by them and commoners and townsmen of the meaner sort. This continued above a week, and would have lasted longer, had not the vice-chancellor and proctors bestirred themselves for the appeasing of it.' And in 1680 Robert Pauling, draper, chose mayor for the ensuing year. Whereas all mayors in memory of man used to be mealy-mouthed, and fearful of executing their office for fear of losing trade; this person is not, but walks in the night to take townsmen in tiplinghouses, prohibits coffee to be sold on Sundays, which Dr. Nicholas, vice-chancellor, prohibited till after evening prayer, viz. till five o'clock; but this R. Pauling hath been bred up a puritan, he is no friend to the university, and a dissuader of such gentlemen that he knows from sending their children to the university, because that, he saith, 'tis a debauched place, a rude place of no discipline; he will not take notice of Quakers' meetings, when he is informed that there is such, but a l'apist he hates as a devil.'

On September 25, 1665, the King and Queen came from Salisbury to Oxford, and lodged at Christ Church and Merton. But the King lodged Lady Castlemaine

also at Merton, a scandal which was cried openly by boys in the street. The Oxford Gazette' first came out on November 7, 1665, during this visit. It was a half-sheet only, on one side of the paper. After eleven numbers it became the 'London Gazette,' the oldest of our papers now in existence. The present Oxford papers are of much later date. Jackson's Oxford Journal' was first published in 1753; the University Herald,' 1806; the Oxford Chronicle,' 1837 (the first Liberal paper); the 'Oxford Times,' 1862, with several later publications; not to mention University publications during term time.

In this session at Oxford the Five Mile Act was passed, which prohibited Dissenting ministers from coming within five miles of any city, town corporate, or borough, under a penalty of 40l. In 1672 however the King, under the pressure of the Dutch war, tried to conciliate the Nonconformists by suspending the penal enactment, provided a licence was taken out. More than one licence was taken out in Oxford, where the Independents and Baptists had meeting-houses. Wood says the Baptists met in Magdalen Street in an 'antiquated dancing school, to which many people did usually resort. Afterwards this meeting was removed to St. Ebbe's parish, where it now continueth (1691), and is carried on by a certain person who has received some education at Cambridge.' After the destruction of the Baptist and Presbyterian chapels in the Jacobite riot of 1715, the members joined in building a new chapel in 1720, on the principle of open communion, behind the present chapel in the New Road. The chapel in St. Ebbe's was restored and

afterwards used as a Sunday school. The New Road Baptists, under the Rev. James Hinton, established several places of worship in the neighbourhood, and at one of them-Woodstock-Hinton was severely injured in a riot in 1774. They afterwards again separated into an 'open' and a 'close' communion. During the previous period Joseph Alleine, tutor of Corpus (author of An Alarm to the Unconverted'), and Richard Alleine, of New Inn Hall, were noted Independents.

In 1666 Wood notes the increase of taxation: 'Paid to the collectors of the pole-money, 17. as a gentleman, and 1s. for his head, towards the carrying on the war. It was the first he ever paid. He paid others afterwards in the reign of King William III.'

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Sorbière, a French physician, who visited Oxford in 1664, says: The meanest college is not inferior to the Sorbonne; there are some that do excel it. There is a physick garden, small, ill-kept, and more like an orchard than a garden. Here is a place of anatomy not worth seeing. The schools were all of them shut up, and there are scarce any lectures read there, because the private ones draw all the scholars thither. Oxford city would be nothing without the colleges: for there are scarce any more inhabitants in it than are enough to serve three or four thousand students, and to cultivate a very delightful plain. We were two days in going by the stage to Oxford, through a fine country, where we were delighted with the sight of Uxbridge, Beconsfield, High Wickham, which they call towns, though they are in strictness nothing more than large unwalled boroughs (bourgs). When robbery is committed, the country people