In like manner, as a member of the University of Oxford (a society he had joined of his own free will; a society from which he did not wish to be withdrawn when, in December, 1810, his father threatened to withdraw him from it), Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley was bound to act as though he were a sincere son of the National Church, and to do nothing that was likely to put his orthodoxy in suspicion. Far from being under 'no obligation to agree with all or any' of the doctrines of the Church of England (as Mr. Rossetti avers), he was under clear, strong, and stringent obligations to agree with every one of those doctrines. It may have always been, and recent legislation has declared that it _was_ (if not in Shelley's time, at least in later time) unjust and impolitic in the law of the land to confine the Universities within limits, and hold them under restrictions, that rendered them at most nothing more than superb seminaries for the larger part of the nation, instead of seats of learning for the whole nation. In the present work, however, there is no need to ask whether those limits and restrictions were ever needful, or whether they were salutary after ceasing to be needful, or whether they should have been removed sooner than the recent year (1871) that saw the abolition of the University Religious Tests. It is enough for Shelley's biographers to know that, when the poet matriculated at Oxford, no one was allowed to enter the University without solemnly declaring himself a member of the National Church, and subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles in demonstration of the truth of his declaration. Conformity to the doctrines and uses, of the Church was the condition of admittance to the University. It was also the condition under which every matriculated student continued to enjoy the privileges and partake of the benefits of the University. Every member of the University, besides being a member of the Church, was required to be a communicant of the Church,--taking the Sacrament at appointed times in the chapel of his college.