University was frequently suspended. So dependent was it in the reign of Henry VIII. that it humbly surrendered all its charters into the hands of Cardinal Wolsey with the request that he should use his own pleasure in amending them; when they were returned five years later, with a new one from the King, they were received with the greatest obsequiousness; even later in the reign they were again in the King's hands for a period of thirteen years. The spoliation of the monastic houses by Henry VIII. and Edward VI. made the University and its component colleges tremble for their own revenues, and when fear of spoliation was past the desire of sharing with the courtiers in the spoils was fully as destructive of independence. With the increasing power of Parliament in the government came the necessity of securing its recognition of the corporate status in an enactment, in 1570 (or 1571),

"that the chancellor of the University of Oxford, and his successors forever, and the masters and scholars of the University of Oxford for the time being, shall be incorporated and have a perpetual succession in fact, deed, and name, by the name of the Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford.''

In 1604, in the first year of the reign of James I., the University was given the right to elect two burgesses to Parliament who should inform that body "of the true state of the university and of each particular college." Even in the reign of Elizabeth, at the time of the statutory incorporation of the University, Parliament had not hesitated to interfere by legislation in its internal affairs. In two acts of the thirteenth and eighteenth years of her reign it was provided, by the earlier, that college estates should be leased for twenty-one years or not to exceed three lives, and by the later, that one third of the rentals reserved in such leases should be rendered in corn or malt estimated at 6s. 8d. and 5s. per quarter; in 1589

followed an act to prevent the sale and collusory resignation of fellowships and corrupt election to them.

The University and the Anglican Church became as dependent on the Crown as the Crown on them. When the civil war broke out the University was more than loyal to the Stuarts; though for other reasons in addition to that of the loyalty of the University, Oxford became the base of Charles's military operations and virtually his capital, the schools and halls being converted into barracks, mints and storehouses, as well as into royal palaces and courts, until the city was captured by the Parliamentary army. When James II., by his Declaration of Indulgence, in 1687, sought to confer on Roman Catholics the right of admission to corporations, and began the enforcement of his policy in the place where his arbitrary will would be most likely to meet with no opposition, he very consistently chose the University of Oxford; on the resistance of Magdalen College to his mandate to elect Parker to its presidency, already filled by a candidate of their own choice, a royal commission expelled the president and twenty-five fellows, though James afterwards reinstated them when the loss of his throne was threatened by the nation. Yet such an affinity seems to exist between corporations enjoying special privileges and the arbitrary rulers upon whom the possession of the privileges depends, that the University of Oxford, notwithstanding the arbitrariness of James II., continued for eighty years to be the stronghold of Jacobitism; not until the accession of George III. were the results of the revolution of 1688 accepted in Oxford otherwise than as an unavoidable calamity. The University had become so dependent on the Crown and had left so little of its spirit of fourteenth-century independence that in 1759 its power to repeal any of the Caroline statutes without the royal consent was denied by the proctors, though they were not sustained in their opposi

tion; the power had certainly not been exercised in an important matter for a century.

In the reign of Henry VIII. began the succession of royal and parliamentary commissions and boards of visitors, so frequent in time and so comprehensive in purpose during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that they threatened at times to form a permanent part of the University constitution. A commission appointed by Edward VI. under the great seal was designed chiefly to eliminate popery from Oxford and in effecting its purpose destroyed "superstitious" emblems, and after expelling all Catholic masters and scholars, introduced Protestants (some of them aliens) in their places; it eventually provided a complete code of new statutes, afterwards known as the "Edwardine statutes." When Mary ascended the throne, the tables were turned. Most of the Protestants fled from Oxford, but such as remained were burned at the stake or expelled by a board of visitors deputed in 1556 by Cardinal Pole, the new Catholic chancellor; English Bibles and Protestant books in the libraries were burned; the code of "Marian statutes" was the work of the visitors. Elizabeth had no sooner succeeded Mary on the throne than she suspended all academical elections at Oxford and appointed a board of visitors for the purpose of enforcing compliance with the act of supremacy on the University; nine heads of colleges and many fellows and others were expelled for non-compliance. With such a chancellor as Laud, Charles I. hardly needed to resort to commissions; a delegacy of convocation spent four years in codifying the University statutes; the code was then corrected and amended by Laud, and, after a year for the suggestion of further amendments by the University and colleges, was finally promulgated by him in 1636 with the confirmation of the king; the new statutes were called the "Caroline" or "Laudian" statutes and remained in force (except during the interregnum of

the Commonwealth) until the middle of the nineteenth century. When Oxford had been captured, in 1646, during the civil war, by the insurgent forces, Parliament at once suspended academical elections and the renewal of leases of college estates "until the pleasure of Parliament be made known therein." In the following year an ordinance was enacted "for the visitation and reformation of the University of Oxford and the several colleges and halls therein," by a board of twenty-four visitors, of whom fourteen were laymen and ten were clergy. It was intended at first largely as an inquisitorial body, having actual power to act in lesser matters, to provide information for a standing committee of lords and commons and to submit reports and appeals to it; the board of visitors, however, soon acquired all necessary powers and used them to depose ten heads of colleges and many professors and fellows, filling many of their places at once with their own nominees; they further supervised and directed the administration of the University and colleges in all its details. Cromwell himself became chancellor in 1650, and in 1652 the board of visitors was merged in a resident commission consisting of the vice-chancellor, three heads of colleges and a prebendary of Christ Church, which should put into permanent effect the more fundamental changes made by the original board of visitors; in 1654, the commission was again changed, but not essentially, and continued to govern the University for four years. The commission exercised substantially all the powers formerly exercised by the chancellor and visitors of the University and colleges; the degree of permanence enjoyed by it had threatened to convert the University into a state institution. When weakness developed in the government of the Commonwealth, the University resumed many of the powers that it formerly exercised and the restoration of the monarchy completed the change. Soon after Charles II. had reached London, he appointed

a new board of visitors to undo the work of Cromwell, but its changes were almost entirely personal, and not constitutional; a few heads and fellows of colleges were replaced by others and little else occurred. The numerous other commissions cannot be examined in detail; the general result of their activity, however, was to reduce the independence of the University and to bring it into greater harmony with the state and with the changes in the Church caused by the interference of the state.

After the Revolution of 1688, the state seemed to sustain a somewhat modified attitude towards the University largely because religious questions had lost their previous importance in national politics and because the University itself had declined in importance. The century following the revolution is rightly called by Brodrick “the Dark Age of academical history." Only when a rebellion in behalf of the Pretender was threatened, early in the reign of George I., did the government consider the strong Jacobite sentiment worthy of notice. On that occasion, it was proposed that the king be empowered for seven years

"to nominate and appoint all and every the Chancellor, ViceChancellor, Proctors, and other officers of the [two] universities, and all heads of houses, fellows, students, chaplains, scholars, and exhibitioners, and all members of and in all and every the college and colleges, hall and halls in the said universities or either of them upon all and every vacancy and vacancies";

another plan suggested contemplated the election of heads of colleges by certain officers of state and the distribution of other positions and the management and disposition of college revenues by a commission. Neither plan, however, was adopted.

2. Much that might be said of the relations of the

1G. C. Brodrick, History of the University of Oxford, page 174.