The cloisters and the groves on the banks of the Isis were no longer the solemn and silent haunts of peaceful, meditative scholars,--they now echoed to the harsh beating of drums; and the young students, instead of pacing slowly in their black academic habits, were dressed in the garb of soldiers, with blue scarfs suspended across their bodies from the shoulder, and with pikes in their hands. At a convocation held in July the University had, with one consent, voted his Majesty all the public money which they had in hand; and, besides this, several of the colleges, as well as private persons, sent in their plate and their ready money also. This act of the convocation, however, was immediately pronounced null and void by Parliament; and any such actions were forbidden for the future. This proclamation pronounced those criminal who had been concerned in advising this diversion of the treasures of their colleges, and commanded each society to secure its own. It also ordered that the Dean of Christ-church, the President of Magdalen, and the Provost of Queen’s, who had been most active in this matter, should be seized and brought to the bar of the House to answer for their conduct. But this could not be accomplished, because the High Sheriff and the Mayor of Oxford, acting upon the commission of array, had called out the train bands of the city, and the scholars had taken arms. To support this show of resistance, Sir John Biron marched to Oxford, and took possession of it for the King. Sir John had with him about five hundred horse; and thus he secured the contributions for the King’s service, and was enabled, though compelled soon afterwards to retire from the city, to carry a considerable portion of it safe to the royal quarters. It was during the period that Oxford was thus held for the King that Sir Oliver and his family came there to reside. They were visited by several of the stanch Royalists and their ladies: these visitors consisted for the most part of the troubled and alarmed clergy, who were connected by office with the University. To some of their wives it was a delight to have a new family into whose ears they might pour all the bitter scandals against the Nonconformists, and others of the Parliament party, which they eagerly collected and minutely detailed. Nor was there any deficiency in spirit; for some of them went so far as to declare that, happen what might, nothing should make them stir from their own houses; that their husbands might run away if they pleased; but no canting Roundheads should ever eject them from their own arm chairs; and generally concluded by observing, that if their husbands were not such a poor set of creatures, they would drive the odious Lord Say out of the county; and that, as it was, there was no chance whatever of his getting into the city. Then they reckoned upon their fingers,--the five hundred men of Sir John Biron, and the four hundred pikes of the train bands, and the two hundred scholars with