CHAPTER II.

EDUCATION AND RESIDENCE AT CAMBRIDGE.

When he was fellow of Emmanuel
Much learning in his solid head did dwell.

SAMUEL STONE: Elegiac Verses, 1648.

THE Cambridge at which Thomas Hooker arrived in 1604, bore many traces of that Puritan influence which in this university, much more than at Oxford, had marked the history of the previous century. A very considerable number of the members of the university who after the Marian exile returned to their former or to higher posts in its service, came back with more pronounced views of nonconformity than those they carried with them abroad. At Zurich, Geneva, Frankfort, or Basel they had been received with hospitality by the continental reformers, and had come in many instances still more fully to sympathize with the theological opinions and the practices in church usage which characterized the theologians of Southwestern Germany and Switzerland. Men like the two brothers Pilkington, successively masters of St. John's College, and Roger Zelke, master of Magdalen, brought back with them from their exile an opposition to "ceremonies as pro

nounced almost as that of any Separatist; an opposition which the elder Pilkington carried with him into the exercise of his bishopric of Durham when promoted thither.

But the most potent influence which had affected Cambridge emanated from Thomas Cartwright, Margaret Professor of Divinity, who preached and taught both the doctrine and polity of Geneva, and profoundly influenced the younger and rising class of fellows and scholars. Under his powerful impression the spirit of dissent from the prescribed ritual grew rapidly. Undergraduates and fellows in many of the colleges objected to the surplice, declined to kneel at the sacrament, and deemed the hierarchical orders of the ministry unscriptural. Theological degrees were denounced as being an attempt on the part of secular institutions to determine who might properly teach in religious matters.

And even when, as in the case of Dr. Whitgift, successively Margaret and Regius Professor of Divinity, master of Trinity, and vice-chancellor of the university, no sympathy with nonconformity was found, there was often a high degree of accordancy with the continental divines in matters of theology. It was in 1595 that what are known as the Lambeth Articles so called from the place of their subscription at the palace of that name in London, and beyond comparison the most vigorous symbol of Calvinism ever framed as an expression of English faith were written by Dr. Whitaker, who succeeded Whitgift as Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and were approved

by Whitgift himself, now elevated to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. The prevalent tone of teaching in the university was Calvinistic. The most celebrated preacher in Cambridge for nearly twenty years before Hooker's coming there was Rev. William Perkins, fellow of Christ College and lecturer at Great St. Andrews, a thorough Puritan in principles and a vigorous expounder of Genevan theology.

Mr. Perkins was repeatedly summoned before the High Commission on account of his irregularities in matter of ritual, and authorities are somewhat at variance as to his having been or not having been ultimately put under interdict. But at his death in 1602 the town and the university contended for the privilege of being foremost in bemoaning his loss. Into the rather warmly heated atmosphere of doctrinal and ecclesiastical controversies such as are thus indicated, young Hooker was introduced on his university entrance at about eighteen years of age. Cotton Mather says that he was born" of parents that were neither unable nor unwilling to bestow upon him a liberal education." But to one acquainted with the narrow conditions of life, such as must have been lived at Marfield, it can occasion no surprise that, like many another university scholar destined to after eminence, Hooker entered college in a position implying some inferiority of pecuniary resource. He was matriculated at Queen's College as sizar, March 27, 1604;

1 Magnalia (ed. 1820), 1. 303.

2

2 Records of the College, and letters of librarians of that institution and Emmanuel.

a sizar at Cambridge being, like a batteller at Oxford, a student who waits upon the fellows at table, and who generally, in consideration of these and other services, is personally exempt from college charges. At some uncertain date, however, he was transferred to Emmanuel College, where he appears to have been on taking his B. A. degree in January, 1608, and his M. A. in 1611.

Occupying one of the two Wolstan Dixie fellowship foundations he remained for an indeterminable but considerable period, prosecuting his studies, and, in the latter part of the time certainly, engaging in some form of clerical work. Here then at Cambridge, as a student for certainly seven years, and as a fellow resident for some years more, Thomas Hooker was, from eighteen to probably at least twenty-eight years of age, in the focus of Puritanism, and in the midst of some of the most considerable actors in the great events of the time. How much of acquaintanceship was had among particular students of the university, it is impossible of course more than to conjecture; but it is interesting to note that there were in Cambridge during these important years of college experience several men who in the chances of after life were to be thrown more or less intimately, and some of them quite intimately, into Hooker's fellowship.

Nathaniel Ward, afterward to be minister of the gospel in Ipswich, New England, and author of the "Simple Cobbler of Agawam," had just taken his master's degree at Emmanuel in 1603, a year before

Hooker entered the university, and was pursuing there his divinity studies. William Ames, with whom Hooker was subsequently to be joined in the care of the church of exiles in Rotterdam, and in the publication of Ames's book against Ceremonies, a graduate of Christ College, was resident in Cambridge nearly all the time till Hooker became a fellow at Emmanuel, and was already challenged by the authorities for his outspokenness against church vestments, and his public denunciation of games countenanced by the clergy. Peter Bulkley, afterward to be associated with Hooker in the moderatorship of more than one historic New England assembly, and pastor of the church in Concord, was taking his M. A. at St. John's College in 1605, a year after Hooker's arrival at Cambridge. John Cotton, a year older than Hooker, and a student of earlier start in letters, who was to sail in the same vessel with him across the seas, and to be to Massachusetts what Hooker was to Connecticut, reached his B. A. at Emmanuel a year before Hooker was matriculated, and arrived at his M. A. in 1606. Francis Higginson, Hooker's junior by a year, who was to precede both him and Cotton in the American enterprise, attained his B. A. at Jesus College a year later, and his M. A. two years later, than Hooker's arrival at the same standing. John Wilson, Hooker's junior by two years, and afterward so long Cotton's associate in the pastorate of the Boston church, entered Kings College in 1602, and after pursuing the usual university course, and attempting awhile the study of law, returned in 1610 to Cambridge to put himself under