The University of Cambridge. Vol. iii. From the Election of Buckingham to the Chancellorship in 1626 to the Decline of the Platonist Movement. By JAMES BASS MULLINGER, M.A. (University Press, Cambridge, 1911.)

CAMBRIDGE may well be proud of its historian; and it will do well to add to its pride a sense of gratitude for his powers of long continuance at a heroic task. His first volume appeared in 1873, and the second in 1884. His ruling passion both for the fulfilment of hi purpose and for consistent completeness in detail shews no sign of failing.

The measure of accomplishment already attained absolves a reviewer from any description of Mr Mullinger's familiar method. Students are prepared now for a Cambridge historian who takes all contemporary academic life within his purview; in fact, a fairly compendious record of the sister University could be compiled from these pages. We also get frequent glimpses of foreign academies, but it is still more interesting to come in mid course upon proposals for provincial Universities in England; in 1642 both Manchester and York desired permission to set up such bodies in their midst, the Lancastrians, because they had 'many ignorant and unlearned ministers amongst us' who were not 'able to convince and discourage Papists', and the Yorkshiremen, because they had two suitable buildings, of which one, St William's College, as Mr Mullinger may care to notice, has recently been 'redeemed by worthy benefactors' to the perpetual uses of the Northern Convocation.

Nevertheless, for the time being Oxford and Cambridge remained without rivals. If they were to be put down at all it was not by the opposition of competitors but by the constant interference on politicoecclesiastical grounds of whatever powers happened to be at Whitehall. Laud in 1635 and Cromwell in 1654 both tried the experiment of a visitation of Cambridge, and both were actuated by ecclesiastical motives. Laud's position was that even in places normally exempt from archiepiscopal interference it was his business 'to see the doctrine of the Church maintained'. Cromwell's Ordinance was equally connected with an attempt 'to draw up in terminis the fundamentals of religion'. By consequence there is no sign during the period of a conviction that either the ecclesiastic or the ecclesiastical layman (such as Cromwell was) can afford to let the ordinary layman alone to pursue his search for truth. For in the earlier years we have Bacon influencing the effort to establish a lectureship in history, for which persons in holy orders were not to be eligible, and we have the lecturer (Dorislaus) at once delated to Laud by the interference of Matthew Wren. At the other end of the story we come upon René Descartes combining with

his distrust of scholastic methods a sincere desire to touch 'the hem of the garment which enshrouded the Immortal and the Divine'.

But the interference of the hierarchy and the Governments in the life of the University was not all that it had to suffer. London as well as Westminster exerted its influence, and the Clerus Londinensis in an age of pluralism included several Cambridge men whose contribution to academic developements operated more from the City than in Cambridge. For instance Mr Mullinger complains rightly of Lazarus Seaman's non-residence and indifference as (the intruded) Master of Peterhouse. But Seaman, who held the City benefice of All Hallows, did not hesitate, though he was admitted Master of Peterhouse in April 1644, to accept office as junior dean of Sion College, London, in April 1645,and to serve the office of President for two years, 1651-2. Among his colleagues on the Court were Arthur Jackson (Mullinger, p. 227) and Thomas Horton, President of Queens'. As Sion College had been founded by a Puritan at the outset of the period covered by this volume for the promotion of 'love in conversing together', it became the meetingplace of many academic divines whose benefices gave them the right of fellowship; Richard Holdsworth, Master of Emmanuel, Brian Walton, of the Polyglott, Sidrach Simpson, of Emmanuel and Arnheim, Simeon Ashe, Manchester's chaplain, and John Arrowsmith, Master of Trinity, are only a few of Mr Mullinger's personae who could use the college in London Wall as a place in which to lay their plans and push their particular men. Indeed, John Lawson, the physician, whom Mr Mullinger (p. 519) describes as being vainly put forward by poor Richard Cromwell's mandate for a fellowship at Queens', enriched the Library of Sion with a benefaction of books which might have gone to Cambridge. if Queens' had been more compliant. That the University should have survived these external interferences and brought itself out at last into the wealthy place of the 'Platonist' search for truth is not the least encouraging feature in our historian's present instalment of his elaborate record.

E. H. PEARCE.

Dr John Walker and 'The Sufferings of the Clergy'. By G. B. TATHAM, M.A. The Prince Consort Prize, 1910. (University Press, Cambridge, 1911.)

A REVIEWER who has found Dr Walker's a fascinating work, whether he is airing the prejudices of the age of Anne or describing the adventures

and afflictions of the clergy in the Civil War, has a gentle quarrel with Mr Tatham, who thinks that of those who are aware of its existence few have had the curiosity to peruse its contents'. And evidently he considers that this public judgement is right, and that only minute students of the Civil War or of local antiquities need trouble themselves with our author. Yet it is very doubtful whether in fact Walker is so little known and appreciated. Mr Tatham has in any case done him excellent service in shewing his honesty in the use of his materials, and his zeal in collecting them. It was obviously not Walker's fault that they were imperfect. From many districts he got few answers to his enquiries, and the libraries offered every obstacle to research. Henceforth the great question as to the fate of the royalist and Laudian clergy will be easier of solution. Mr Tatham has calendared Walker's MSS in the Bodleian, and furnished them with a full index. It is plain that this work is excellently done; there are few obvious mistakes, though 'Hent' on p. 150 should be 'Hext', and 'Devenham' on p. 306 must be' Davenham', not 'Dunham', as Mr Tatham suggests. But there are points at which he should have given ampler information. On p. 156 he says that an authority of Walker's gives the names of seven Suffolk clergymen ; why are they denied to us? On p. 218 we are told of a letter giving the names of twelve parishes in Wiltshire the incumbents of which are ejected those names are not given. As a rule Mr Tatham gives names and places; one wishes he had been quite consistent in this good practice. But he has given a sure starting-point for the next stage in the enquiry. This is the local one, and if as much interest were taken in the antiquities of our counties as in their birds and butterflies, we might soon hope to see it accomplished. Every parish register needs to be examined to see if there be not a change of hand at one of the critical points, or the baptism of children of a new family at the rectory, or the entry of the marriage of a new incumbent of some neighbouring parish. Such a search, carefully conducted over a sufficiently wide area, would produce considerable results; and if all England were subjected to it, probably a larger number of sufferers than 3,500, Mr Tatham's guess, would appear. It would also appear that the holders of fairly good livings had a much worse chance of continuance than those who occupied poor vicarages. But all this lies outside Mr Tatham's scheme. His calendar of Walker's collections, and especially of those which reached him too late for incorporation in the Sufferings, is a most thankworthy piece of work; and his account of Walker himself, his methods, his difficulties, his measure of success, the criticisms he endured, is admirable.

and

The theory of toleration under the later Stuarts. By A. A. SEATON, M.A. The Prince Consort Prize 1910. (University Press, Cambridge, 1911.)

The theory of religious liberty in the reigns of Charles II and James II. By H. F. RUSSELL SMITH, B.A. Thirlwall Dissertation 1911. (University Press, Cambridge, 1911.)

THESE thoughtful and laborious essays were well worth printing. Mr Smith is perhaps the more suggestive, and Mr Seaton the more exhaustive, though the former has read much more literature than he cites, and the latter's book would have been none the worse if its quotations were abbreviated. If they are very equal in merit, they are also very likeminded. Both use as their standard of comparison for the tone of the later seventeenth century that doctrine of toleration which is now dominant among ourselves. It would have been more instructive to compare the prejudices of the age with the contemporary practice and theory of New England, which also was peopled by subjects of the later Stuarts; and modern France might have furnished analogies as well as contrasts. Yet Locke provides a convenient terminus ad quem, and is duly praised by both our authors, though Mr Seaton's approval is more discriminating than that of Mr Smith. If we had to choose between them, Mr Seaton's wealth of facts, as when he states the Independent position and describes the love of liberty which it engendered, would incline us to him; though it would have been interesting if he could have cited champions of freedom who were quite dispassionate in their advocacy. Mr Seaton's style sometimes tends to rhetoric, and Mr Smith's to obscurity, and neither is perfectly accurate in his history. Clare was not a College in Tillotson's day, and the ships at Marathon were not Greek but Persian. Each has an excellent bibliography, and Mr Seaton some useful appendices, especially one which gives a summary of the principal penal and test acts of the period.

E. W. WATSON.

In Pioneers of our Faith (Methuen & Co., 1910) Mr Charles Platts tells the story of the principal figures in the history of the English Church as far as the death of the Venerable Bede. His first three heroes are St Alban, St Ninian, and St Kentigern, all of whose lives are treated at some length, but he has nothing to say of St Columba, and only a word or two about St Patrick, and it is obvious that his main interest lies in that band of notable men and women who made the seventh century the heroic period of our Church's history. It needs no ordinary pen to do justice to that age, but Mr Platts fails neither in

sympathy nor in erudition. He has evidently made a careful study of his sources, and indeed the bibliography at the end is not the least valuable part of his book. Nor has he been content with mere literary research. Much of the interest of the lives of such worthies as Aidan and Cuthbert, Chad and Aldhelm, lies in the local names or traditions that perpetuate their memory, and in this respect Mr Platts displays a very intimate acquaintance with the topography of various historical spots, and with the legends that have grown up around them. But, good as it is both for its scholarship and for its reverent pietas, his book is open to criticism on two grounds. In the first place his selection of materials is at times faulty: he has incorporated too many legends of very slight importance, and in places his pages are a little overloaded with extraneous details. And secondly his arrangement is frequently awkward and difficult to follow; and although it is foreign to his purpose to give a mere series of biographies, yet he would have gained in lucidity by keeping more strictly to the biographical order. These blemishes, however, do not materially impair the usefulness of what is both a learned and an interesting historical study.

H. C. O. LANCHESTER.