It is remarkable that we do not find any High Church Bishops with the King at Oxford. Even Skinner, Bishop of the diocese, had retired from the city to the rectory of Taunton. The absence of others may be attributed to personal restraint, or the dangers of travelling in a time of civil war, or a sense of duty towards their scattered flocks, or a disinclination to throw themselves into a military camp. But some other prelates and clergymen of a different character come under our notice, as present at Oxford at this critical period. [Sidenote: _Bishops at Oxford._] Bryan Duppa, Bishop of Salisbury--whose fine face and silvery locks, set off to advantage by the robes of the Garter, may be seen in his portrait on the walls of Christ Church--upon being stripped of his episcopal revenues waited on his Majesty, and was entrusted by him with business of the greatest importance. Archbishop Ussher preached before the court, carried on his literary labours in the University, and, as an opponent of the toleration of Papists, took part in a discussion held in the royal presence upon that subject. Soon afterwards he further offended the Roman Catholics by a discourse from the words of Nehemiah, iv. 11:--"And our adversaries said, they shall not know, neither see, till we come in the midst among them, and slay them, and cause the work to cease." In this discourse he contended, that no dependence could be placed on Romanists, and that on the first opportunity they would act towards the Protestants of England as they had recently done towards the Protestants of Ireland. He also preached sermons to his Royalist auditory in a tone of remarkable fidelity and earnestness, dwelling upon the folly of expecting that God would prosper the cause of those who provoked Him to anger by the dissoluteness of their lives.[473] Perhaps Jeremy Taylor also might be found at Oxford, after having lost the rectory of Uppingham, in Rutlandshire. Wood says that he preached before the King, and followed the Royal army in the capacity of a chaplain; and probably it was during this part of his life that he reaped some of those military allusions which we find in his sermons. As, for example, when he compares the man who prays in a discomposed spirit, to him that sets up his closet in the outquarters of an army, and chooses a frontier garrison to be wise in: and when he speaks of the poor soldier, standing in the breach, "almost starved with cold and hunger," "pale and faint, weary and watchful," and of the same person in his tent by dim lantern light, having a "bullet pulled out of his flesh, and shivers from his bones, and enduring his mouth to be sewed up, from a violent rent, to its own dimensions."[474] [Sidenote: 1643.]