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Section 11.: Mischief 6— Corrupting the National Morals and Understanding—Oxford University Oaths. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 5 (Scotch Reform, Real Property, Codification Petitions) [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 5.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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Section 11.

Mischief 6—Corrupting the National Morals and Understanding—Oxford University Oaths.

Thin are the partitions by which the moral and intellectual parts of man’s frame are divided: scarcely can corruption gain the one, without making its way to the other.

When, in the shape of an immense mass of unperformable engagements, all sanctioned by an oath, the seeds of perjury had been thus thickly sown, it could not be long ere they began yielding such their fruits: fruits more or less bitter to some stomachs, but at any rate conspicuous to all eyes:—a remedy was deemed necessary.

The simple course would have been to abolish the oath: but this would have been contrary to more than one fundamental principle of ecclesiastical polity.

1. One is—that the church is infallible; that is, that a set of professors, who, at the expense of the people, are paid by the sovereign—such of them as do anything—for reading and endeavouring to explain a most important indeed, but not the less obscure and mysterious book,—written at different times, before the use of printing, in different dead languages,—remain for ever, as they and their predecessors have been for two hundred and fifty years past, under the happy incapacity of putting in any one instance a wrong sense upon it.*

The influence of this attribute displays itself in both departments of the mind; the understanding and the will: opinions, real or pretended, are by it converted,—that is, the words given as containing the expression of them are converted,—into articles of faith: acts of the will, of which, when issuing from the pen of acknowledged authority, the expressions become laws, are converted into—what certain laws of the Medes and Persians were once pretended to be—everlasting and immutable laws or ordinances.

Between the immutability that belongs to articles of faith, and the immutability that belongs to laws,—between the essential characters of these two productions of the one attribute, infallibility,—the nature of the subject-matter has however produced some difference: articles of faith admit neither of subtraction nor yet of addition; nor consequently of change or substitution, which is composed of subtraction and addition put together: ordinances are equally unsusceptible of subtraction,—but of addition, consideration had of the changes and chances to which the affairs of this transitory life are subject,—of addition, so it be made but rarely, nor then but with a sparing hand, they are not altogether unsusceptible.

To herself, Holy Mother Church—Sancta-Mater Ecclesia—younger and revolted sister of the Church of Rome—reserved the superior establishment, the manufactory of articles of faith. It was set up and worked out,—the moulds accordingly all broken up—the necessary assortment being completed, completed for all eternity, so long ago as the year 1562.

To her two daughters—Kind Mother Oxford University, and Kind Mother Cambridge University,—Alma Mater Academia Oxoniensis, Alma Mater Academia Cantabrigiensis—(for thus it is that, as often as they talk in Latin, the two goodly fellowships of heads of colleges, when acting in their legislative capacities, respectively style themselves,) she gave up the subordinate establishment—the manufacture of ordinances: ordinances, by which the minds of the flower of the English youth were and are to be moulded,—to the form at any rate, whatsoever may become of the substance,—of orthodox piety, of virtue, and of what little there may be, that is conducive to such orthodoxy, in knowledge.

The above, how pregnant soever in practical consequences, is itself no other than a theoretical principle: another,—itself a practical one, the practical object and fruit of the theoretical one,—is—that the minds of men are by these their rulers to be kept in a state of perpetual dependence: of dependence as abject and entire as possible.

Lest the conduct of these possessors of power should experience any inconvenient check in the opinions of the persons subject to it, matters were accordingly, and are to be, so ordered, that all notions of duty, moral as well as religious, religious as well as moral, are to be resolved into one much more simple obligation: the imagined obligation, produced by skilful culture out of the liberty, of submitting—submitting on all occasions, and without reserve—to the opinion, real or pretended, and thence to the will of these the ruling and domineering few. Such being the end, behold one necessary means.

When by the ruling powers such is the species of dominion aimed at, a necessary condition is,—and such accordingly is their interest,—that, on the part of the subject herd, transgression should be as universal and as continual as possible: that thus, finding in their own consciences nothing but condemnation, they should, with an intensity of self-assurance proportioned to the enormity and multiplicity of such their transgressions, behold, in the authority of these their spiritual guides, their only hope—their only prospect of deliverance from the wrath to come.

In every community,—it is of the obedience of the men subject to authority, that the power of the man possessed of authority is composed: in proportion to the need which each person so subject conceives himself to have of the beneficial exercise of such authority, will be the strictness of that obedience: proportioned to the self-attested wickedness of the sinner, is the magnitude of the demand he has for absolution, in whatsoever shape and from whatsoever hand such deliverance may peradventure come.

Thus it is, that,—the effective power of the confessor being as the multitude and enormity of the sins, real or imagined, of the penitent,—it is in that respect the interest of the confessor, that, in the eyes of the penitent, and thence that in reality, these sins should be as multitudinous as possible; and thence for example it is, that, without exception or distinction, the words miserable sinners—us miserable sinners—are regularly crammed into their mouths: that so, by a perpetual fever, a perpetual demand for opiates, such as the laboratory of the confessor is furnished with, may be kept up.

Under the Church of Rome, the potion is administered in the retail way,—drop by drop, by hand as it were,—to each patient by himself: and accordingly it is under that one of the two churches that the subjection is most entire: under the Church of England, under the dominion of its universities, it can only be administered in the wholesale way: it can only be administered, as if it were by steam, to the whole flock of penitents in the lump. In this mode, to administer it with any chance of effect, required no small degree of art: it has been, or will presently be seen, what that art has been, and with what success it has been practised.

To the accomplishment of the design thus indicated, the course thus pointed to being, in the situation in question, if not the only, the most promising and directly leading course,—so, of the existence of such design, the taking of that course, which has thus been seen to have been and to continue to be taken, cannot but be acknowledged to be evidence: evidence, the probative force of which is as the degree of pertinacity, wherewith a system necessitating a constant and universal habit of perjury—a system, having certainly for its effect the generation rather than the prevention of so many of the acts which itself prohibits,—a system for which, considered in these its peculiar features, no other assignable use or object can be found,—is upholden and persevered in: persevered in in sullen silence, without defence because without possibility of defence, in the midst of repeated and persevering remonstrance and reproach.

A self-styled explanation of the oath,—bound up indeed in the same volume with the oath, but neither referred to by it, nor so much as, by the operation of the press, placed near to it,—such has been, and such continues to be, the instrument employed to both these purposes.

In pursuance of this design, a new principle in morals and legislation, and that a fundamental one, it was found necessary should be advanced: a principle, which, in itself, considered in an intellectual point of view, will be seen to be not less glaringly absurd than in effect as well as in design pernicious: advanced it required to be, and advanced it was and continues to be accordingly. By any being invested with authority, and acting in pursuance of that authority,—such an one excepted, if such an one there be, whose moral essence is composed of pure malevolence,—punishment (it seems now to be pretty generally understood, unless it be where the influence of such contrary doctrine as is about to be mentioned has been prevalent) is never aimed at or regarded in the character of an end:—prevention, viz. of delinquency, being in every case the end—punishment, a means directed to that end:—an instrument, how unwillingly soever, yet, under the spur of necessity, employed notwithstanding, in the character of a means.

According to this other,—this anile, for such it may be called, anything rather than maternal, theory, which it was found necessary for Mother University to set up in opposition to the theory of common sense and common humanity,—according to this theory, punishment is not a means leading to prevention, but a co-ordinate end placed by the side of it on the same level: so that, when, by a person in authority,—say a parent, say a master, say a legislator,—any act is forbidden to be done,—a punishment being appointed to be inflicted in case of its being done,—in every such case, whether the act be abstained from, or the punishment be inflicted, is—in his eyes, and to his wishes—a matter of indifference.

In the world at large—in the case of murder, for example—suppose a legislator taking up the pen and saying, “Thou shalt not commit murder. Whoso committeth murder shall be hanged.” To this legislator, according to the Oxford theory, it is matter of indifference how many murders are committed, so long as for every man murdered there is another man hanged.

Suppose in this case—(not that there could be any use in it)—suppose an oath taken by every man that he will never commit murder. By this oath, according to the same theory, would any man’s conscience be bound to abstain from committing murder? Not it indeed: all that it could be bound to would be,—in case of his committing murder, and being unfortunate enough to be found out and prosecuted to conviction,—all that the man would stand thus engaged for is—to stand still while the rope is putting about his neck.

As to the subject part of the community,—as it was in the beginning, so it is now,—it is in this explanation, including the theory on which it grounds itself, that such of them as feel any need of any such remedy find an opiate, such as it is—and that the only one—for whatsoever agitation their conscience may have been subjected to, by the consciousness of continually-repeated perjury. As to the rulers, their well-seasoned consciences have needed neither that nor any other sedative. From one sin alone could they receive any sensible spasm;—and that is—the giving up the article of infallibility, nominal or real, as above mentioned. Sooner than give up that, they would all of them promise and vow to say the Bismillah,—as some of them, in the midst of their pious abhorrence of popery, do still, it should seem,* to say mass. As to Laud’s Explanation, if to them it were anything, so far from an opiate, it would be a caustic: for, by it are specially marked as perjuries those things which (omissions included) they are, all of them, doing every day and all day long: under it they are, all of them, so many—(is it the fault of those who thus act, or of those who, that it may be no longer acted, thus speak of it?)—are, all of them, so many specially declared and posted perjurers.†

What is manifest all this while is—that, to the purpose of prevention,—which, except under such tutorage, is everywhere regarded as the sole object of every law considered in the character of a prohibitive one,—the effect of all this apparatus, binding and loosing together, is less than nothing. Without any such system of contradictions, the law of the land,—not quite so well obeyed, any more than quite so well in all points deserving to be obeyed, as could be wished,—does however, upon the whole, obtain a tolerably sufficient measure of obedience. But this theocratical code,—with its oath and its explanations, and its perjuries and its equivocations,—and, under the name of principles of legislation, its principles of misrule,—what, with all its ingenuity, and all its piety, has it done, but to expose itself to contempt, and its religion along with it?

Such would be its inefficiency, if prevention of mischief, its pretended, were its real object: but, its real objects being such as have been above explained, sure, too sure it is,—that, with relation to those objects, inefficiency cannot, with truth and justice, be imputed to it.‡

[* ]Having operated as a stumbling block when employed by the Church of Rome, it seems to be understood, that in and by the Church of England the term infallibility shall not be employed. In practice, however, the thing itself, the attribute so denominated, is not the less assumed (it will be seen) and grounded upon: so that, in the articles of liberty and security, all that is gained to the people by the relinquishment of the term, is the substitution of a circumlocution to the proper appellative, while, by the grammatical impropriety, the political—the despotic—pretension, and its supporters, are screened in some measure from the reproach so justly due.

[* ]Ex. gr. at Magdalen College; viz. by the oath there taken for the observance of the college statute. See, in Ayliffe’s Hist. I. 365, as per Terræ Filius, I. 15, anno 1726; Dialogue between Cartwright, Bishop of Chester and Hough, then President of the College, and by Terræ Filius, styled “the present Bishop of Worcester,” anno 1813, does this oath, with the statute in question unabrogated, continue to be administered? Like quære, in regard to the several other colleges.

[† ]Not to speak of the absurdity of this theory upon the face of it, it is not without full notice of the practical consequences of it, that these reverend guardians and instructors of youth have persevered so determinately in the propagation of it. To one of their own number—to that same Principal of Hertford Hall, afterwards Hertford College—it had been an instrument of grievous annoyance. In despite of both sanctions, political and supernatural,—in despite of prohibition and oath together,—a scholar of his had marooned: in the 40s. penalty, under favour of the explanation of the oath, the fugitive, and the ruling member of a college that received and harboured him, had found, instead of what it professed to be, a bar, what it was in effect, a licence: and, at the price of these 40s., the act of migrating from one of those seats of piety and morality to another,—this act, which, supposing it an offence, is more than ten times as bad an one (so, it will be seen, says the penalty) as that of being taken in the act of fornication without licence,—had received its expiation:—the faith of both sinners, in the power of they know not who, to absolve them from their oaths, having made them whole. Against an abuse thus dangerous to his authority, the reverend disciplinarian, in a lamentation of no fewer than 207 pages, gave vent to his complaints: but, though the root of the mischief lay in the first place in the oath, in the next place in the explanation by which that same oath is explained away,—so fundamental a doctrine is the doctrine of infallibility, and so incompatible with it would have been the abolition of abuse in any shape however flagrant—that, although, in the abolition of one or other or both of these conflicting institutions, he could not but see his only remedy, yet—so perfectly hopeless was the prospect—that the dose of courage, necessary to enable a man to come forward with a proposal for the application of this only remedy, could never, in all these 207 pages, nor at any time afterwards, be mustered up.

[‡ ]Besides scattered articles in other places, in tit. xv. De Moribus Conformandis, to look no further, among the contents of pages from 173 to 179, sections from 2 to 8 inclusive, are found regulations in abundance, from the violation of which no man who ever passed so much as a week—not to say a day—in the university, unless it were in a state of confinement, can, it may safely be said, have been exempt—not to go further back—for these last fifty years.

No. 1, p. 173, § 2. Offence prohibited—walking about at leisure or else in an idle manner, according to the construction which the interpreter finds himself disposed to put upon the word otiosi) in the city or its suburbs.

Penalty—For the first offence, in the case of an undergraduate, reproof or chastisement at the discretion of the vice-chancellor or of the proctors: in the case of a graduate, fine of two shillings to the use of the university.

Justification or exemption—Reasonable cause, to be approved as such by the proctors or the vice-chancellor. What is meant for the time, at which, to produce the effect of justification, the approbation is to have been bestowed,—viz. before the act, or after it,—i. e. whether an ex post facto allowance will suffice, or a previous and express licence is necessary to have been obtained,—these are among the doubts to which no solution is afforded, either in this case, or in any of the following ones, in some of which it may be found perhaps not altogether so obvious as in this it seems to be.

“Statutum est” (says the next, § 2,) “quòd scholares (præsertim juniores et non graduati) per civitatem, ejusve suburbia, otiosi non obambulent; neque in plateis . . . . aut apud oppidanorum seu artificum officinas, stantes aut commorantes . . . . conspiciantur.

“Si quis absque rationabili causâ, à procuratoribus vel vice-cancellario approbandâ, hâc in parte delinquens deprehensus fuerit; si non graduatus fuerit, pro arbitrio vice-cancellarii vel procuratorum corripiatur, vel castigetur. Si graduatus fuerit, 2s. universitati mulctetur.”

No. 2, § 2. Offence prohibited—Being seen in the streets, standing or staying at the shops or workshops of town’s-people. Penalty and justification, as in No. 1.

After an excursion made to the sessions and the assizes, for the purpose of keeping out the sanctified youth from those seats and sources of profane law, as below, the statute returns to the subject, and declares once more, that scholars and graduates of all sorts shall abstain from the houses (such is the word now) and shops of the town’s-people; viz. in the day time, and now it is added, at night.—Penalty and justification, or exemption—what will be seen, when that very miscellaneous section, with the rest of its contents, comes under review:—“Statutum est, quòd scholares et graduati cujuscunque generis, à domibus et officinis oppidanorum, de die, et presertim de nocte, abstineant.”

From 1759 to 1768 certainly, to 1794 probably, in the occupation of the town’s-people, amongst shops of other descriptions, were, and it is supposed to this day are, coffee-houses, fruit-shops, not to speak of inns and other specially prohibited places, of which further on, and moreover booksellers’ shops: the booksellers’ shops, it is supposed, not wholly unfrequented; the others thronged.

No. 3, § 3, p. 174, § 3. Offence prohibited—Being present at the sessions or assizes.

Penalty—For the first offence, 10s. without distinction of grade or condition: in case of order, by the vice-chancellor or the proctors, to depart, and non-compliance therewith, imprisonment: of the oath, taken, as above, special commemoration made, and also application of it to the purpose of securing—what?—not immediate compliance, viz. departure from the seat of judicature, but the eventual departure to the seat of imprisonment. The offence having, at the time of the enactment or confirmation of this statute, viz. about the year 1634, been, it seems, a very alarming one, the expression then given to the alarm has continued to be repeated ever since.

Justification or exemption.—Reasonable cause, “to be approved by the Vice-chancellor:”—no other approbation sufficient.

“Statutum est,” (says the text, § 3,) “quòd nullus scholaris, cujuscunque conditionis, ad publicos et generales conventus juridicos, vel civitatis vel comitatûs Oxon. (qui sessiones aut assisæ vocantur) nisi ex causâ rationabili, per vice-cancellarium approbandà, accedat, vel iisdem interesse præsumat, sub pœná 10s., unicuique ibidem deprehenso infligendâ; et incarcerationis, etiam omnibus et singulis per vice-cancellarium vel procuratores inde recedere jussis, nec obtemperantibus; cui adeundi carceris mandato, (quia grassanti incommodo alias commode occurri non potest) omnes et singuli virtute juramenti Universitati præstiti, obedire teneantur.

“Juniores autem, tyrones, et alii non graduati (qui illuc spectatum maxime confluere solent) ibidem deprehensi pro arbitrio vice-cancellarii aut procuratorum, pœnas dare teneantur.”

No. 4, p. 174, § 4. Offence prohibited—Being caught—(for to fornication applies, it seems, in this code, the principle which in that of Sparta is said to have been applied in case of theft)—being caught in the day-time in a house in which prostitutes are kept. (Quere, if but one prostitute?) “Precipuè verò, ab ædibus infames seu suspectas mulieres vel meretrices alentibus, aut recipientibus . . . . abstineant.”

Penalty—In the case of an under-graduate, arbitrary; at the discretion of the vice-chancellor or the proctors, by whom the catch has been made: in the case of a graduate, 3s. 4d. Price 3s. 4d. a time, pro quâlibet vice, as often as he pleases.

Justification or exemption—Reasonable cause of entrance or continuance (“nisi rationabilem accessus sui moræve causam reddiderit.”)

No. 5, p. 17, § 4. Offence prohibited—Being caught, as above, with a prostitute in any private chambers:—in privatis cameris; viz. in a man’s own chambers, or those of any other gownsman.

Penalty and justification or exemption—as above.

For so natural an amusement, 3s. 4d. may to some eyes appear rather a high price for a licence: but, when it is considered that it must be a young man’s own fault if ever he is called upon to pay it (and then there is the bawdyhouse-keeper to pay in one case, and the girl to pay in every case) it will scarcely, upon due consideration, be pronounced excessive. If prevention were an object, the act really meant to be prevented would, it should seem, here be—not, as might at first view be supposed, fornication, but stinginess or negligence: in either case, the not giving a bedmaker’s boy 6d. to keep watch: or in the case of the bawdyhouse, choosing one that has not a back-door to it.

“§ 4. De domibus oppidanorum, non frequentandis, statutum est, quòd scholares et graduati cojuscunque generis, à domibus et officinis oppidanorum, de die et præsertìm de nocte abstineant. Præcipuè vero, ab ædibus infames seu suspectas mulieres vel meretrices alentibus, aut recipientibus; quarum consortio scholaribus quibuscunque, sive in privatis cameris, sive in ædibus oppidanorum, prorsus interdictum est. Et si quis de die in iisdem vel earum aliquâ deprehensus fuerit (nisi rationabilem accessûs sui moræve causam reddiderit) si non graduatus sit, pro arbitrio vice-cancellarii, vel procuratorum qui deprehenderint, castigetur. Si vero graduatus fuerit, 3s. 4d. pro qualibet vice universitati muletetur.”

No. 6, p. 175, § 5. Offence prohibited—Being in any inn, cook’s-shop, tavern, or other house, in which wine or any other drink, or tobacco, are ordinarily sold: unless for a necessary and urgent cause, to be approved by the vice-chancellor or the proctors. The offence being in this case so much more serious, the punishment is accordingly so much more severe, than for fornication, or for negligence betrayed in either of the modes above mentioned:—for an under-graduate under the age of 18, a public whipping: for one above that age, or a graduate, 6s. 8d. with a string of ulterior punishments in case of relapse.

“Statutum est quod scholares cujuscunque conditionis a diversoriis, cauponis, œnopoliis, ac domibus quibuscunque intra civitatem vel præcinctum universitatis, in quibus vinum, aut quivis alius potus, aut herba nicotiana sive tobacco ordinarie venditur, abstineant: nisi ex causà necessarià et urgenti, per vice-cancellarium aut procuratores approbandà.—Quodque si quis secus fuerit, octodecim annis minor, nec graduatus, publicè castigetur: major autem annis octodecim, vel graduatus, pro primâ et secundâ vice sex solidis et octo denariis universitati mulctetur.”

Booksellers’ shops, if there be any such places there, are in the houses of town’s-people: and so are coffee-houses:—if the justification allowed in the case of bawdyhouses had been extended to these other lounging-places, would the indulgence have been excessive? Not that any such notion is meant here to be insinuated, as that going to a bawdyhouse, is as bad as going to a bookseller’s shop:—this is not the mark aimed at. All that is meant is—that, as in the case of the bawdyhouse, a reasonable cause, approved as such by his reverend superiors, saves a young man harmless, so might it even in the case of the bookseller’s shop. Homicide has its justifications: and why not the going into a shop, even though it be a bookseller’s?—and so in the case of coffee-houses.

No. 7, p. 173, § 7. Offence prohibited—Being found out of one’s college in the evening, after the Christ Church nine-o’clock bell has tolled, viz. in any house or street within the precincts of the university.—Penalty, in the case of an under-graduate, arbitrary: in case of a graduate, 40s., with eventual imprisonment as for a breach of the peace.—Justification or exemption, showing a reasonable cause, to be approved as suel: by the vice-chancellor and the proctors.

Under this code, the penalty for being caught in the street being 40s., while the penalty for being caught in a bawdyhouse is but 3s. 4d., every prudent young man, who, while he is in the street at a forbidden hour, spies a proctor who he suspects spies him, will, if there happen to be a bawdyhouse within reach, run into it—were it only for refuge: and this, judging of offences by punishments, being of the two so much the less serious, cannot but, as such, obtain at least a comparative approbation, on the part of these reverend disciplinarians. Unfortunately, whatever was the intention, the words are here so extremely general,—“domo quâcunque—every house whatsoever,”—that, if caught, a man would be no better off in the bawdyhouse (supposing it to have struck nine) than in the street. But, if the house has a back-door to it, as every bawdyhouse ought to have, he will not be caught, and then everything will be as it should be.

. . . . “Omnes scholares cujuscunque conditionis . . . . ante nonam horam (quæ pulsatione . . . . &c. denunciari solet) ad collegia et aulas proprias se recipiant . . . . Quodque si quis postea extra collegium proprium vel aulam, in domo quâcunque vel plâtea, vel alibi intra præcinctum universitatis repertus fuerit (nisi causom rationabílem ostenderit per vice-can ellarium et procuratores approbandam) si non graduatus fuerit, pro arbitrio vice-cancellarii vel procuratorum puniatur, vel castigetur pœnà corporali, si per ætatem congruit, alioqui quadraginta solidis mulctetur: quas mulctas a quibuscunque deprehensis exigere, et ipsarum semissem in fiscum universitatis redigere, tenentur procuratores fide suâ datâ universitati.”

No. 8, p. 174, § 8. Offence prohibited—1. Playing at any game at which people play for money; for example, dice and cards:—or with balls, in the courts or gardens of the town’s-people.—Penalty, in case of an under-graduate, of a fit age for being flogged, flogging accordingly: in case of a graduate or an under-graduate above that age, 6s. 8d. Justification or exemption, none.

“Statutum est quod scholares, cujuscunque conditionis, abstineant ab omni lusûs genere, in quo de pecuniâ concertatur; veluti a lusu talorum, alearum, et chartarum pictarum, necnon a lusu globorum, in privatis oppidanorum areis hortisque; nec hujusmodi publicis lusibus per statuta regni prohibitis, intersint; quodque nemo intra universitatem hujusmodi ludis se exercentes excipiat: sub pœna castigationis corporalis non graduatis (quibus per ætatem congruit,) aliis vero et graduatis, 6s. et 8d.”

No. 9, § 2. Offence prohibited—Sportsmanship in all its branches. Of the genus of offence, the description is—every kind of play or exercise by which, to other persons, danger, injury, or inconvenience, is produced; species exemplified, amongst others, hunting wild beasts (such as deer, hares, and rabbits:) among things, mentioned as being in this account to be abstained from, are—dogs, ferrets, nets and snares, guns, crossbows, and hawks.

“Item, quod abstineant ab omni genere lusûs vel exercitii, ex quo aliis periculum, injuria, vel incommodum creatur; veluti a venatione ferarum (ut damarum, leporum, et cuniculorum) cum canibus cujuscunque generis, viverris, retibus, aut plagis; necnon ab omni apparatu et gestatione bombardarum, et arcubalistarum; sive etiam accipitrum usu ad aucupium; sub pœná castigationis corporalis, &c. . . . . præter suspendium canum, et forisfacturam . . . . retium,” &c.

Unless in the interval of about forty-four years the state of things in this seat of learning, morality, and piety, has undergone, in the above respects, a total change, very little less than the quicquid agunt homines, not only in Laud’s time was, but to this day remains, involved in this catalogue of transgressions.