One curious custom abolished by the Parliamentary visitors before Owen became Vice-Chancellor may be mentioned here. Upon the decease of any one of the heads of houses, or of any other distinguished person, the University bellman put on the gown and formalities of the defunct, and with his bell proclaimed in every hall and college that it had pleased God to take out of this world the individual whom the official so strangely represented. He gave notice, at the same time, that on such a day the deceased would be solemnly interred. Besides abolishing this odd practice, the visitors prohibited the bellman's going before the corpse from the college to the church.[250] Anthony Wood is sadly distressed at the Vice-Chancellor's irregular proceedings with regard to college habits,[251] and, indeed, this is the principal complaint which he urges against his administration. "Instead of short hair, collar-band, and cassock in the pulpit," the Oxford historian complains, "we might have beheld long powdered hair, large hands, and shirts half hanging out at their sleeve, and they themselves accounting nothing more ridiculous than starch formality. As for caps, square or round, none were worn publicly only in some colleges at refection or scholastic exercises." Hoods, he says, were used at length by none but the Proctors, and the Vice-Chancellor sat with his hat on, 'and that cockt.' He went "in quirpo like a young scholar, with powdered hair, snake-bone bandstrings, (or bandstrings having large tassels), lawn band, a large set of ribands pointed, at his knees, and Spanish leather boots with large lawn tops."[252] The representation brings the Puritan before us in the costume of a Cavalier, and, if correct, is certainly irreconcilable with the pictures commonly drawn of the class of persons to whom Owen belonged. A Roundhead thus attired is a very anomalous being, and the description makes us suspect that, let the Dean have dressed as he might, he could not have pleased his angry critic. Indeed the Puritans have been represented by certain historians in such a way as to remind one of the pictures of Brueghel, who so accustomed himself to paint witches and imps, that when he tried to depict a man he was sure to make him look like a devil.[253] [Sidenote: _Oxford Celebrities._] It may be interesting here to pause for a moment, and to notice some of the remarkable individuals who were connected with the University at the time of the Commonwealth.