Although Owen rose to the Vice-Chancellorship in September, 1652, it is remarkable that there is no annual oration by him for the year 1653.[245] The circumstance becomes significant on a perusal of the oration for 1654, and some light is thrown on the state of the University during the year when the oration was omitted. In 1654, the speaker pointedly alludes to some extraordinary perils the University had just survived.[246] There had been a conflict, he said, out of which the University rose, not with trophies, spoils, and garlands, but with scars, and with torn standards, dragged in dust. He and his learned colleagues had fought for what had been handed down from antiquity--the depository of past ages, and the seed-plot of precious hopes. They had put to flight wine-shops, ale-sellers, mimics, farces, buffoons, the public riots, and disgraceful scenes infesting the streets. Halls and edifices had been deserted and insulted, tottering to their fall, supporters had gone, props were removed, and things presented a melancholy spectacle; but God had preserved and wonderfully restored the University, after winds and storms had assailed it in vain. Under Owen's rhetorical Latin, so characteristic of the age, we discover the fact that the former year, when the annual oration had been omitted, was one of strange confusion in Oxford. [Sidenote: His Speeches.] The oration of 1657 further indicates the difficulties of the year 1653, and touches upon some which seemed far more threatening than any mentioned in the former speech. Five years--said Owen--had passed since his elevation to office, and for two years after that elevation the critical situation of the University had been a subject for astrologers and newspapers--to such a pitch did things arrive that to have advocated public schools would have been reckoned offensive to religion. Everything disgraceful was imputed to the advocates of learning. Affairs were in confusion, and on the edge of the pit, and the University was saved by a miracle. "When," he adds, "it appeared to what length audacity, rage, and ignorance would carry those from whom better things might have been expected, the Supreme Arbiter of Events so frustrated their efforts in a moment, that with all their strength they scarcely could take care of themselves who _three days before_ were in the act of devouring us. Nothing remained to these wretched creatures except great disgrace, everlasting infamy of the unprincipled attempt upon the seats of learning, which God in His displeasure averted."[247]