asleep; the troubles of Charles's time were beginning to stir.
Oxford was as usual an epitome of English opinion. We see the
struggle of the wildest Puritanism, of Arminianism, of Pelagianism,
of a dozen "isms," which are dead enough, but have left their
pestilent progeny to disturb a place of religion, learning, and
amusement. By whatever names the different sects were called, men's
ideas and tendencies were divided into two easily recognisable
classes. Calvinism and Puritanism on one side, with the Puritanic
haters of letters and art, were opposed to Catholicism in germ, to
literature, and mundane studies. How difficult it is to take a side
in this battle, where both parties had one foot on firm ground, the
other in chaos, where freedom, or what was to become freedom of
thought, was allied with narrow bigotry, where learning was chained
to superstition!

As early as 1606, Mr. William Laud, B.D., of St. John's College,
began to disturb the University. The young man preached a sermon
which was thought to look Romewards. Laud became SUSPECT, it was
thought a "scandalous" thing to give him the usual courteous
greetings in the street or in the college quadrangle. From this time
the history of Oxford, for forty years, is mixed up with the history
of Laud. The divisions of Roundhead and of Cavalier have begun. The
majority of the undergraduates are on the side of Laud; and the
Court, the citizens, and many of the elder members of the University,
are with the Puritans.

The Court and the King, we have said, were fond of being entertained
in the college halls. James went from libraries to academic
disputations, thence to dinner, and from dinner to look on at
comedies played by the students. The Cambridge men did not care to