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I3 ( FIRISTOPHER HILL Ttit: universities of Oxford and Cambridge.are, 'historically, unique. Almost every other English „institution was transformed during . the revolutions of the seventeenth century. The machinery of state was drastically •remodelled.
4 The church lost its coercive power and its claim to the 'allegiance of all Englishmen after 1689. Yet in 1800 Oxford and Cambridge were gOverned by statutes drafted respectively by Laud in 1636 and by Whitgift in 1570. Whilst schods escaped from clerical domination, the universities did not : every academic in the ',early nineteenth century had to subscribe to the Thirty- Nine Articles, and his ultimate ambition was a fat college living.
The universities for .which Whitgift and Laud legislated had changed since the Middle Ages. As a 'result of the Reformation, the laicisation of the civil service, and huManist ideals of aristocratic education. Oxford and Cambridge ceased to he concerned overwhelmingly with•the production of priests, and became institutions which it was fashionable for sons of the gentry to attend. The sixteenth century saw the rise of the gentleman commoner and the pensioner. It also saw the rise of the colleges at the expense of the university: the poor scholars for whom the medieval uni- versity and its hostels had provided were corn- pelled to Jilin colleges in which. gentlemen Om-, moners and pensioners. rich Men's sons, were already. at home. '
The changed social cOmposition of the uni- versities and the rise of the colleges were thus connected phenomena. 'Our ... university heads,' wrote Robert Burton, 'a's a rule pray only for the greatest possible number of freshMen to squeeze money from, and ,o not care whether they'are educated or not, provided they are sleek, well-groomed, and good-looking, in one word, men of means.' This had its'effects on. teaching. Very few of these men of means took degrees. They expected, and needed, individual tutorial attention. The tutor was originally a personal guardian and supervisor of his gentleman pupil's conduct and expenditure. But with the increase in the 'number of undergraduates who could be taught if at all—only by individual cramming. college tutoring came to replace university lec- tiires as the most important part of an Oxford and Cambridge education.
The preponderance of colleges • over the uni- versity was accompanied by the, rise of a govern- ing oligarchy: In the words ' of the Victoria County 'History,* Whitgift's statutes 'worked a fundamental. revolution in academic government' at Cambridge. They ended university democracy. 'put supreme control ofaffairs into the hands of an oligarchy consisting of the Vice-Chancellor and the heads of houses,' and gave the heads a right of veto in the business of their .own colleges. The Laudian statutes established a similar regime at Oxford. As at Cambridge, the proctors ceased
* A HisToav of Ito. C'otINTY or CAMBRIDGE AND IF 1st F. DE ELY : Vol. III. TUtE CITY AND UNIVERSITY or CAsitiainur. Edited by J. P. C. Roach. (Victoria County I-I istory. £7 7s.) to he elected by the body of MAs. This concen- tration of power was bitterly resisted in both universities, • but was supported by the govern7 ments of Elizabeth and the early Stuarts. The oligarchy and the government had in common a, desire to control the thoughts of undergraduates and younger dons, and in particular to check Puritanism. But the inevitable result was a frus- tration of all . intellectual activity. Significant thought, went on outside the universities. Those who wanted to modernise the curriculum also had to .attack the oligarchy and clerical. domination: Between 1640 and 1660 an attempt was made to reform the universities. At Oxford the Parlia- mentary commissioners anticipated many of the changes forced on the universities in the, nine- teenth and twentieth centuries. They ended the requirement of celibacy and introduced lay heads. They reduced the power of the oligarchy even after installing their own nominees. They pro- posed the institution of terminable ,fellowships, to prevent men becoming 'drones.' Steps were taken to prevent bribery in fellowship elections, and the sale of scholarships and fellowships. The new men introduced into Oxford included some of the greatest scientists of the age: at Cambridge the future leaders of the Cambridge Platonists. Both universities and their colleges were exempted from taxation, and the stipends of heads of col- leges were augmented in order to put an end to pluralism. Scholarships were, founded, and many men from poorer and socially less distinguished families managed to get to the universities. How- ever, the Restoration put an end to this promising experiment. The old regime returned. John Ray lost his fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, and the scientists left Oxford for London. Doc- trinal tests ensured that dons professed the nar- rowest Anglican orthodoxy. Nuinbers fell steadily.
Only' one other English institution survived the seventeenth-century revolutions • intact- —rotten boroughs. The Stuart kings 'gerrymandered borOugh corporations for their own electoral pur- poses, and when the Whigs took over there was no extension of the. franchise. 'As Parliamentary constituencies the universities had been royal, rotten boroughs in the seventeenth century. But corruption was not restricted to Parliamentary. elections. The Stuart kings had issued mandates for the conferring of degrees at Oxford and Cambridge. and had interfered in the election of fellows and heads of houses. The only difference in the eighteenth century was that now the inter- ference was by the Duke of Newcastle. The independence of ,the colleges was not in itself a guarantee against government control.
So the universities entered their eighteenth- century slumber. There were individual great scholars, like Blackstone. But he failed to get the chair of civil law at Oxford because he would not promise his political support to Newcastle. The custodian of the Anatomy School at Oxford was not dismissed because he was unable to dis- tinguish between a plaster cast and a natural limb, but because he was a Tory. At CaMbridge a Professor of Geometry, appropriately named Lax, held his chair for forty-two years without giving a lecture. The Royal Commission of 1873 found 230 out of 350 fellowships at Cambridge held by non-residents. Yet the governing powers in both universities set their faces against reform of any kind. Official Oxford opposed American independence,. the first Reform Bill, railways, the penny post and London University.
So Oxford • and Cambridge lost contact with enlightened public opinion. The dominant per- sonnel of both universities was drawn front a narrow .class. The problems the universities concerned themselves with were not those of pressing interest to the nation. During the indus- trial revolution there was • virtually no serious scientific study in either university. Although mathematics was compulsory for all taking a BA at Cambridge, the university produced no out- standing mathematician after Newton. The uni- versities turned out politicians who could quOte the classics and eccentric parsons with hobbies. They remained artistocratic and clerical preserves long after the gentry and the church had lost their dominant position in .the community. With the rise of nonconformity the clerical tests became simply a means of excluding the vulgar and the independently-minded from higher education. When reform finally came it was forced on the universities by a reformed Parliament. Apart frOm 'changes in the examination system, every innovation was resisted to the last by the majority of fellows of Oxford and Cambridge .colleges. They preserved intact the financial autonomy of the colleges, and with it their uncontrolled right to select undergraduates and fellows.
The Victoria County History is a reference book rather than one to read through. This volume contains a mass of factual information, presented with the skill and accuracy which one has come to expect of the series. Many of the college histories are excellent, notably that of St. John's by Mr. Miller. Professor Cam contributes an ad- mirable account of the town which the university so long prevented becoming a city. Dr. Roach wrote the main section on the university, from which I have taken many of my facts about Cam- bridge. But his interpretation of those facts is very different. He sees the interregnum not as a moment of hone frustrated by the Restoration, but as an unfortunate interlude, and he accepts the university's viewpoint at all stages of his story, to' such an extent that he sometimes writes like the official biographer of a living poli- tician. • • The academic history of the last century should not be written as if the liberals were always right. The Whewells. even the Perownes and the Corries, mar have been over-cautious, even ob- scurantist., but they perceived one great truth which their opponents sometimes forgot--that a university. tlOtirjshes because of the springs of life within. itself. ,and not because of paper con- stitutions imposed upon it by outside authority. The great problem of the age was to keep alive the ancient spirit and to infuse it into the new forms.
Such a remark would seem to be written with present-day problems in mind. Recent controver- sies have suggested that there, is still some way to go before admission to Oxford and Cambridge colleges is completely democratised, and the older universities freed from the ghosts of the gentle- man commoner and the Latin-speaking cleric. Dr. Roach's careful fairness to obscurantism makes one wonder whether university liberals today will be more successful than their predecessors in bringing about serious reform without outside help. Dr. Roach tells us of a nineteenth-century don who was 'a reformer, even a radical': hut, 'when, his beloved College was concerned . he regarded fundamental change as sacrilege.'
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