Authors, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography; Marvell, Andrew, 1621-1678
The only incident we know of Marvell's undergraduate days is remarkable
enough, for, boy though he was, he seems, like the Gibbon of a later
day, to have suddenly become a Roman Catholic. This occurrence may serve
to remind us how, during Marvell's time at Trinity, the University of
Cambridge (ever the precursor in thought-movements) had a Catholic
revival of her own, akin to that one which two hundred years afterwards
happened at Oxford, and has left so much agreeable literature behind it.
Fuller in his history of the University of Cambridge tells us a little
about this highly interesting and important movement:--
"Now began the University (1633-4) to be much beautified in
buildings, every college either casting its skin with the snake, or
renewing its bill with the eagle, having their courts or at least
their fronts and Gatehouses repaired and adorned. But the greatest
alteration was in their Chapels, most of them being graced with the
accession of organs. And seeing musick is one of the liberal arts,
how could it be quarrelled at in an University if they sang with
understanding both of the matter and manner thereof. Yet some took
great distaste thereat as attendancie to superstition."[13:1]
The chapel at Peterhouse, we read elsewhere, which was built in 1632,
and consecrated by Bishop White of Ely, had a beautiful ceiling and a
noble east window. "A grave divine," Fuller tells us, "preaching before
the University at St. Mary's, had this smart passage in his Sermon--that
as at the Olympian Games he was counted the Conqueror who could drive
his chariot wheels nearest the mark yet so as not to hinder his running
or to stick thereon, so he who in his Sermons could preach _near Popery_
and yet _no Popery_, _there was your man_. And indeed it now began to be
the general complaint of most moderate men that many in the University,
both in the schools and pulpits, approached the opinions of the Church
of Rome nearer than ever before."
Archbishop Laud, unlike the bishops of Dr. Newman's day, favoured the
Catholic revival, and when Mr. Bernard, the lecturer of St. Sepulchre's,
London, preached a "No Popery" sermon at St. Mary's, Cambridge, he was
dragged into the High Commission Court, and, as the hateful practice
then was, a practice dear to the soul of Laud, was bidden to subscribe a
formal recantation. This Mr. Bernard refused to do, though professing
his sincere sorrow and penitence for any oversights and hasty
expressions in his sermon. Thereupon he was sent back to prison, where
he died. "If," adds Fuller, "he was miserably abused in prison by the
keepers (as some have reported) to the shortening of his life, He that
maketh inquisition for blood either hath or will be a revenger
thereof."[14:1]
By the side of this grim story the much-written-about incidents of the
Oxford Movement seem trivial enough.
Not a few Cambridge scholars of this period, Richard Crashaw among the
number, found permanent refuge in Rome.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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