Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/599

] or caprice, he might suppress the colleges as he had suppressed monasteries, ministers, and chantries, it is nothing wonderful to hear Latimer exclaiming, "It would pity a man's heart to hear what I hear of the state of Cambridge. There be few that study divinity, but so many as of necessity must furnish the college."



Under Edward VI. things became far worse. Then it was a scramble amongst his courtiers who should get the most of the property devoted to religion or learning. Bishoprics, good livings, the remainder of the monastic lands which yet remained with the Crown, did not suffice. These cormorants clutched at the University resources. They appropriated exhibitions and pensions, and, says Warton, in his "History of English Poetry," "Ascham, in a letter to the Marquis of Northampton, dated 1550, laments the ruin of grammar-schools throughout England, and predicts the speedy extinction of the universities from this growing calamity. At Oxford the schools were neglected by the professors and pupils, and allotted to the lowest purposes. Academical degrees were abrogated as anti-Christian. Reformation was soon turned into fanaticism. Absurd refinements, concerning the inutility of human learning, were superadded to the just and rational purgation of Christianity from the Papal corruption." He adds that the Government visitors of the university totally stripped the public library, established by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, of all its books and manuscripts; and Latimer, in one of his sermons about that time, declared his belief that there were then 10,000 fewer students than there had been twenty years before.



Classical literature did not fare better during the persecuting reign of Mary, though Cardinal Pole was a warm friend of the introduction of Greek, notwithstanding the use made of it by the Protestants. When he urged Sir Thomas Pope to establish a professorship of that language in his new college of Trinity, Sir Thomas replied, "I fear the times will not bear it now. I remember, when I was a young scholar at Eton, the Greek tongue was growing apace, the study of which is now a-late much decayed." Nor was it likely when Elizabeth discouraged preaching even, saying that "one or two preachers in a county was enough," that classical studies would be much encouraged. In fact, nothing could be lower than the condition into which both learning and preaching had fallen in Elizabeth's church. The Bishop of Bangor stated that he had but two preachers in all his diocese. Numbers of churches stood vacant, according to Neal, where there was no preaching, nor even reading of the homilies for months together, and in many parishes there could be found no one to baptise the living or bury the dead; in others, unlearned mechanics, and even the gardeners of those who had secured the clerical glebes and income, performed the only service that there was. But no doubt this afforded good scope to the Puritans, who had now the Bible in English, Cranmer's, Coverdale's, and Parker's, or the Bishops' Bible; and these zealous men, spite of the crushing penalties, would find constant opportunities of diffusing their knowledge. In Oxford there were only three divines in 1563 who were considered able to preach a sermon, and these three were Puritans. The knowledge of the classics was fallen so low, that all that Archbishop Parker required of the holders of his three new scholarships in Cambridge, in 1567, was that they should be well instructed in grammar, and be able to make a verse. The classical qualifications in the two universities were below contempt even. It is a satisfaction to turn from this humiliating state of things to the great lights of genius and learning which were burning brightly amid this thick darkness. Here meet us the illustrious constellation of names of More, Ascham, Puttenham, Sidney, Hooker, Bacon, Barclay, Skelton, Sackville, Heywood, Surrey, Wyatt, Spenser, Shakespeare, Marlowe, &c.—names which cast a lustre over this period in which all its faults and failings become dim. Of the prose writers Sir Thomas More is one of the earliest and most famous. He was equally remarkable for the suavity of his manners, his wit, his independence of character, and the eloquence and originality of his writings. We have seen how he served and was served by Henry VIII. Erasmus, who stayed some time at his house, says, "With him you might imagine yourself in the academy of Plato. But I should do injustice to his house by comparing it to the academy of Plato, where numbers and geometrical figures, and sometimes moral virtues, were the subjects of discussion. It would be more just to call it a school, and an exercise of Christian