104

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CHAP.

VIII.

1687 .

Proceed-ingsagainstthe Uui-Tersity oiCam-bridge.

deciding in the last resort. From Will’s coffee-house, andfrom the pit of the theatre royal in Drury Lane, an appeal layto the two great national seats of taste and learning. Playswhich had been enthusiastically applauded in London werenot thought out of danger till they had undergone the moresevere judgment of audiences familiar with Sophocles andTerence.*

The great moral and intellectual influence of the EnglishUniversities had been strenuously exerted on the side of thecrown. The head quarters of Charles the First had been atOxford; and the silver tankards and salvers of all the collegeshad been melted down to supply his military chest. Cam-bridge was not less loyally disposed. She had sent a largepart of her plate to the royal camp; and the rest would havefollowed had not the town been seized by the troops of theParliament. Both Universities had been treated with extremeseverity by the victorious Puritans. Both had hailed theRestoration with delight. Both had steadily opposed theExclusion Bill. Both had expressed the deepest horror at theRye House Plot. Cambridge had not only deposed herChancellor Monmonth, but had marked her abhorrence of histreason in a manner unworthy of a seat of learning, by com-mitting to the flames the canvass on which his pleasing faceand figure had been portrayed by the utmost skill of Kneller.**Oxford, which lay nearer to the Western insurgents, hadgiven still stronger proofs of loyalty. The students, underthe sanction of their preceptors, had taken arms by hundredsin defence of hereditary right. Such were the bodies whichJames now determined to insult and plunder in direct defianceof the laws and of his plighted faith.

Several Acts of Parliament, as clear as any that were tobe found in the statute book, had provided that no personshould be admitted to any degree in either University without

• Dryden’s Prologues and Cibber’s Memoirs contain abundant prooTsof the estimation in which the taste of the Oxonians was held by themost admired poets and actors.

** See the poem called Advice to the Painter upon the Defeat of theRebels in the \Vest. See also another poem, a most detestable one, onthe same subject, by Stepney, who was then studying at Trinity College.