Charles I. had matriculated at Oxford in 1616; his brother Henry had been a student at Magdalen. On his accession to the throne, an outbreak of plague in London led to the meeting of Parliament at Oxford. For the accommodation of members, the colleges and halls "were ordered to be freed from the Fellows, Masters of Arts and students." Christ Church was prepared for the reception of the Privy Council by the same process. The Houses sat in the Divinity Schools. And some said that they caught the theological infection of the place, and that ever after that the Commons thought that the determining of all points and controversies in Divinity belonged to them. Parliament returned the compliment by infecting Oxford with the plague, which they had fled from London to avoid. The coming struggle was foreshadowed by conflicts between town and gown. Once more the alarm bells of S. Mary's and S. Martin's rang out and summoned the opposing parties to the fray; once more it was true that when Oxford drew knife England would soon be at strife. Nothing, Laud had noted, could be transacted in the State, without its being immediately winnowed in the parliament of scholars. Windows were broken, proctors jostled; books were burnt by order of Parliament; young Puritans from New Inn Hall or Lincoln were forced to eat their words. Prynne's ears had been cut off, but the Puritans multiplied their conventicles in Oxford. But it was not till after Laud's impeachment, and his short pathetic resignation of his chancellorship, dated from the Tower, 1641, that they grew so bold as to preach and discourse as they listed. Then the Puritan feeling grew rapidly not only among the townsmen but also in the colleges. A maypole set up in Holywell in derision of a certain Puritan musician was pulled down by the scholars of New Inn and Magdalen Hall. The report that the Mitre Inn was a meeting-place for recusants, gave occasion for the enemies of Laud to allege in the House of Commons that through his influence the University was infected with Popery. A certificate was accordingly drawn up by the Heads of Houses to the effect that "they knew not any one member of this University guilty of or addicted to Popery." Parliament, however, requisitioned the records of the University in order to obtain evidence against Laud. Some of his regulations, such as the encouraging of the use of copes and of Latin prayers in Lent, were indeed used to support the charge of high treason against him.