CHAPTER XIII

SCHOLARS AND SCHOLARSHIP, 1600-60

THE starting-point of English scholarship and learning in the seventeenth century is not the humanism of the early renascence. The main current was diverted from its onward flow by the events of the reign of queen Mary and the political and ecclesiastical exigencies of queen Elizabeth's reign. From the moment of the return of the English exiles from Geneva, Frankfort and Strassburg, the conviction set in of the necessity of a discipline in life and learning founded on the Bible. This conviction permeated every activity of the nation, putting energetic representatives of learning and education in the very front of the propaganda, and reserving meditative scholars as the very bulwarks of defence. William Chillingworth's Religion of Protestants maintained that the Bible alone is the religion of protestants; and, in the thought of the age, the Bible, also, was the centre towards which all scholarship could gravitate most profitably and creditably, and by which it could most certainly gain acceptance and stability. The usefulness of learning became almost axiomatic, so long as 'human' was kept subsidiary to 'divine' learning. The older humanism which dominated Erasmus, Thomas More and Thomas Elyot was crushed. The day had passed for placing Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, side by side, in the joyful enthusiasm for new found comrades, with New Testament writers, or with St Chrysostom and St Jerome, fearlessly running the risk of unifying sacred and profane, in the common appeal to antiquity. The fires of Smithfield in Mary's reign and the penal inflictions of Elizabeth, together with the St Bartholomew massacres in France, stirred, in the minds of both the opposing parties, the intuition that the struggle between Roman Catholics and protestantism was a personal concern as well as a national issue-and, if there was authority on the one side, there must be authority on the other. The issue, necessarily, was the church versus the book.

If the contest was not to be by fire and sword solely, the only alternative was that in the arena of scholarship. The extreme puritan view of a discipline in religion, based only on the Bible, was soon found to be ineffective against opponents like the Jesuits, who commanded all the resources of Bible erudition, as well as of scholarship in ecclesiastical history, for disputational purposes. The most redoubtable protestant advocates were, of necessity, increasingly driven to include in their scholarly studies the early Fathers as well as the Bible, and to agree that the primitive church had at least a high degree of authority. But the main point in tracing the course of this scholarship is to realise that the church, the early Fathers, the Bible, constituted authorities to which appeal could be made, and that both Catholics and their opponents had to pursue, with an intensity of application unequalled before or since, the history of antiquity in so far as it concerned these issues. Christianity, whether of the church or of the Bible, was a historical religion-and to imply either aspect was to bring the argument into the historical environments within which these crucial sanctities had their origin, development and continuity.

The puritans, who staked their all intellectually on Biblecentred knowledge, might have confined English scholarship to the narrowest of limits. England, as J. R. Green has said, became 'the people of one book, and that book the Bible.' But there were other influences at work, in this period, which tended to enlarge the scope of intellectual interests. The spirit of national enterprise and sea exploit that characterised queen Elizabeth's reign continued to mark the Stewart period, and transferred itself into intellectual efforts in new directions. The companies of Merchant Adventurers made a discovery of the east, as Columbus had discovered America. Eastern languages were learned and transmitted, and oriental MSS were triumphantly brought home to eager scholars. Physical adventure in east and west tended to provoke fearlessness of enquiry into natural science. The old sea groups of Hawkins, Ralegh, Frobisher gave place to the camaraderie of intellectual centres like the society of Antiquaries, gatherings of gentlemen-investigators, such as Falkland's group at Great Tew1, Hartlib's group in London and the groups at Oxford, Cambridge, London, which coalesced into the Royal Society2. All these and other groups were fascinated by the expanding spaciousness of physical research and the love of truth, and ideals of 1 See ante, chap. VI. See post, vol. viii.

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independent enquiry stimulated them to complete the knowledge of the Orbis Visibilis and Orbis Intellectualis, and to supply gaps' such as those indicated by Bacon.

Besides native sources of wider development than could be gained from the Bible centre alone, the close connection of English scholars with foreign scholars must be taken into account. England was drawn close to the continent after the return of protestant exiles. Of the twenty-one bishops whom queen Elizabeth appointed, thirteen had passed most of queen Mary's reign in Germany or Switzerland, and the 650 letters on theological subjects published by the Parker society show the close relationship between English protestants and their fellow believers abroad. English bishops remembered Geneva in the days of her tribulation, by the practical method of sending remittances for the relief of distress when the duke of Savoy was harassing that city. In 1583, by royal brief, a collection for the Genevese was made in the churches of England, which brought in £5039. Calvin's Institutes was translated into English in 1559, by Thomas Norton, and ran through many editions. Almost all the chief Elizabethan divines were Zwinglian or Calvinist in doctrine, and were in communication with foreign theologians and scholars. When the Spanish armies of Alva were devastating the Low Countries, distressed protestant Fleming refugees came to England in hundreds1, while the earl of Leicester and Sir Philip Sidney took some thousands of Englishmen to fight for the Dutch cause. Previously, Sir Walter Ralegh had fought for the Huguenots in France. The duke of Buckingham's duplicity and feebleness in attempting the relief of La Rochelle in Charles I's reign caused boundless indignation in England. The sympathy of Cromwell and the English people with the protestants of Piedmont was sufficient, in 1655, to open the national exchequer for grants to schoolmasters, ministers, physicians, even to students in divinity and physic.

The continuity of these close relations, political and personal, with foreign protestants, is of capital importance in understanding the history of English scholarship. For, while England largely owed its concentrative group of Bible studies to Geneva, the greatest classical scholarship of the sixteenth century had been shown by French Huguenots, and the chief glories of scholarship in the seventeenth century were clustered together in

1 The frequent immigrations into England of Huguenots and other foreign religious refugees form an important subject in English commercial history. See Cunningham, W., Alien Immigrants to England, chaps. Iv and vi.

Holland; and France and Holland, in each age, respectively, were the countries with which our divines and scholars were in closest touch. Thus, in the sixteenth century, French scholarship had been transfigured by the genius and research of Budaeus, Turnebus, Lambinus and the Stephenses, and the succession into the seventeenth century included Casaubon and Salmasius. In 1593, Joseph Scaliger went to Holland to the university of Leyden (founded 1575). Dutch scholarship was the ripest in Europe from 1600-60 and included G. J. Vossius, Isaac Vossius (his son), Claude Saumaise or Salmasius, P. Cluverius1, Daniel Heinsius, N. Heinsius (his son), Hugo Grotius, J. F. Gronovius. The interest of this list consists in the fact that all these distinguished scholars were in direct touch with English scholars. The older Vossius corresponded, for instance, with Thomas Farnaby; Isaac Vossius actually left Holland and lived in England, where he held a prebend at Windsor for sixteen years (1673-88). Salmasius had the famous controversy with Milton. From his contemporary, Daniel Heinsius, Ben Jonson borrowed freely in his Timber. Heinsius's son Nicholas travelled in England. Hugo Grotius wrote his famous Mare liberum (1609) to assert the international right of the seas, and John Selden in 1635 published his answer Mare Clausum, written about 1619. The brother-in-law of G. J. Vossius, Franciscus Junius, himself a man of no mean learning, left Holland to come to England as librarian to the earl of Arundel, and remained in this post for 30 years. He published his De Pictura Veterum, in Latin, in 1637, and, in English, in 1638. Junius was drawn into the enthusiasm for British antiquities and produced an edition of Caedmon, in 1655, and the Moeso-Gothic text of Ulfilas in 1664-5; and he left in MS an English etymology which served the turn of Johnson's Dictionary.

The direct influence of these great French and Dutch scholars was reinforced by the general state of culture prevalent among foreign protestants. Travelling was a constituent part of the education of the well-to-do. The travelling of men with messages of goodwill, or of advice to the various churches abroad, brought about an appreciation of standards of knowledge and learning. Correspondence between learned men and religious leaders filled the place of modern reviews and newspapers. Reports of new books and learned investigations penetrated into remote corners and at a pace unexampled in the previous history of the world.

▲ P. Cluverius was one of the many sojourners' with John Prideaux, rector of Exeter college, Oxford.

Frankfort and Leipzig fairs collected and circulated books broadcast. Dutch presses found a large English market. England was thus within reach of the best of foreign culture, because she was protestant after the Genevan type; and much of the most solid foreign scholarship, in the seventeenth century, was directly or indirectly under the spell of Calvin. An interesting indication of the religious sympathies which united English and foreign protestants is the growth of the custom of sending boys and girls to French Huguenot academies and pastors, or English youths to the university of Leyden; on the other hand, an English scholar such as Thomas Gataker could maintain for some time a private seminary in his house at Rotherhithe, and 'many foreigners went and lodged with him, that they might enjoy the benefit of his advice.' Casaubon, when in straitened means in Paris, received lord Herbert of Cherbury as boarder as he had received young Henry Wotton in his house at Geneva. Before the Pilgrim fathers went to America, they had sojourned in Dutch cities, established congregations there and appointed ministers in Amsterdam and Leyden. There was an English congregation at Rotterdam, whose minister was William Ames, who, for twelve years, had been professor in the university of Franeker in Friesland. William Bedell, who was chaplain to Wotton at Venice for about three years, penned his sermons in Italian and Latin, wrote an English grammar so that Italians might learn to read English sermons and translated father Paul's works into Latin for all protestant Europe to read. The great mathematician John Wallis wrote an English grammar (in Latin) for the use of foreigners. The great English disputant John Featley lived three years in France and 'did great honour to his nation and protestantism by disputing successfully against the most learned papists.' Matthew Slade, an Oxford graduate, became rector of the academy at Amsterdam and distinguished himself by entering the lists against the scholar Conrad Vorstius. David Primrose, a Scot, became minister of the Huguenot church at Rouen. The chaplaincies of the Merchant companies of England, especially the Levant company, at Aleppo, furnished important opportunities for the cultivation of oriental languages. The greatest of these chaplains was Edward Pococke. The name of Thomas Davies, resident at Aleppo, is memorable for his services in securing oriental MSS for archbishop Ussher (1624-7).

Many were the distinguished foreigners who found a home in England. Antonio de Dominis, once Roman Catholic arch