that, while the question of Church-government was being considered, some decent rule of practical order should be carefully observed, and England should not be allowed to lapse, as the loyalists were giving out, into a mere anarchy of ranters, preaching cobblers, and every fool his own parson. [Footnote: Neal, III. 88-90, and 138-141.] _Visitation of the University of Cambridge_.--While the scandalous and malignant among the parish clergy were being sequestered and ejected, it was not to be expected that Parliament would spare the Universities. Oxford, for the present, was beyond reach; but Cambridge was within reach. Was it to be endured that, while the town of Cambridge was the very centre of the Associated Eastern Counties, the most zealously Parliamentarian region in all England, the University should be a fortress of malignancy, with many of its Heads of Houses and Fellows notoriously disaffected to Parliament, and showing their disaffection by sermons, publications from the University press, continuance of the forbidden usages and symbolisms in the College chapels, and such other acts of contumacy? For a long time Parliament had been asking itself this question. As early as June 10, 1643, the subject of "some effectual means of reforming" the University of Cambridge, "purging it from all abuses, innovations, and superstitions," and dealing with conspicuous malignants in it, had been under discussion in the Commons. There had been a reluctance, however, to proceed too rapidly, or so as to incur the Royalist reproaches of "invasion of University rights" and "ruin of a great seat of learning." Hence, whatever dealings with the University had been necessary had been left very much to the discretion of the ordinary agencies representing Parliament in the Associated Counties, at the head of which, since Aug. 1643, had been the Earl of Manchester. There was even a Parliamentary ordinance (Jan. 6, 1643-4) explaining that, whatever sequestration there might be of the revenues of individual delinquents in the University, every regard was to be paid to the property of the University as such, and not an atom of _it_ should be alienated. By this time, however, it was felt that the malignancy of the University must be dealt with more expressly. Accordingly, on the 22nd of January there was passed "an Ordinance for regulating the University of Cambridge and for removing of scandalous Ministers in the several Associate Counties." By this ordinance it was provided that, "whereas many complaints are made by the well-affected inhabitants of the associated counties of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Hertford, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Lincoln, that the service of the Parliament is retarded, the enemy strengthened, the people's souls starved, and their minds diverted from any care of God's cause, by their idle, ill-affected and scandalous clergy of the University of Cambridge and the Associated Counties" and