Awed by the royal acuteness, Haydock confessed that he
was a humbug, and that he had taken to preaching all night by way of
getting a little notoriety, and because he felt himself to be "a
buried man in the University."
That a man should hope to get reputation by preaching all night is
itself a proof that the University, under James, was too
theologically minded. When has it been otherwise? The religious
strife of the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Mary, was not
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.
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