Mr. and Mrs. Evelyn arrived in Oxford “on the eve of the Act,”[188] and next day, after midday dinner, “the Proctor opened the Act at St. Marie’s (according to custome) and the Prevaricators their drollery. Then the Doctors disputed. We supp’d at Wadham College.” On Sunday, Dr. French, Canon of Christ Church, the preacher at St. Mary’s, had his little fling at the Philosophers. “True wisdom,” he said, “was not to be had in the books of the Philosophers, but in the Scriptures alone.” He based his observations on a text from St. Matthew xii. 42: “And, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.” On Sunday afternoon the famous Independent, Dr. Owen, now “Cromwell’s Vice-Chancellor,” preached a wonderful sermon, “perstringing Episcopacy”—a sermon that Evelyn and some others present must have found particularly trying to listen to. They dined that day with Dr. Seth Ward, who had been one of the “Prevaricators” himself, when he was at Cambridge, and was so alarmingly witty on the occasion that he nearly lost his degree. And at night they supped in Balliol College Hall—Evelyn’s own college. On Monday they sat through the whole Act in St. Mary’s;[189]—the long speeches of the Proctors, Vice-Chancellors and Professors, and the creation of Doctors “by the cap, ring, kisse,” etc. The Inceptor[190] made a most excellent oration, “abating his Presbyterian animosities which he could not withhold.” And after all this paraphernalia “there were but 4 in Theologie and 3 in Medicine,” which was thought not bad, “the times considered.” And again there was a magnificent supper with Evelyn’s “dear and excellent friend,” Dr. Wilkins of Wadham.