aching before
the University at St. Mary's, had this smart passage in his Sermon--that
as at the Olympian Games he was counted the Conqueror who could drive
his chariot wheels nearest the mark yet so as not to hinder his running
or to stick thereon, so he who in his Sermons could preach _near Popery_
and yet _no Popery_, _there was your man_. And indeed it now began to be
the general complaint of most moderate men that many in the University,
both in the schools and pulpits, approached the opinions of the Church
of Rome nearer than ever before."

Archbishop Laud, unlike the bishops of Dr. Newman's day, favoured the
Catholic revival, and when Mr. Bernard, the lecturer of St. Sepulchre's,
London, preached a "No Popery" sermon at St. Mary's, Cambridge, he was
dragged into the High Commission Court, and, as the hateful practice
then was, a practice dear to the soul of Laud, was bidden to subscribe a
formal recantation. This Mr. Bernard refused to do, though professing
his sincere sorrow and penitence for any oversights and hasty
expressions in his sermon. Thereupon he was sent back to prison, where
he died. "If," adds Fuller, "he was miserably abused in prison by the
keepers (as some have reported) to the shortening of his life, He that
maketh inquisition for blood either hath or will be a revenger
thereof."[14:1]

By the side of this grim story the much-written-about incidents of the
Oxford Movement seem trivial enough.

Not a few Cambridge scholars of this period, Richard Crashaw among the
number, found permanent refuge in Rome.

The story of Marvell's conversion is emphatic but vague in its details.
The "Jesuits," who were well represented in Cambridge at the time, are
said to have persuaded him to leave Cambridge secretly, and to take
refuge in one of their houses in London. Thither the elder Marvell
followed in pursuit, and after search came across his son in a
bookseller's shop, where he succeeded both in convincing the boy of his
errors and in persuading him to return to Trinity. An odd story, and
not, as it stands, very credible; but Mr. Grosart discovered among the
Marvell papers at Hull a fragment of a letter without signature,
address, or date, which throws some sort of light on the incident. This
letter was evidently, as Mr. Grosart surmises, sent to the elder Marvell
by some similarly afflicted parent. In its fragmentary state the letter
reads as follows:--

"Worthy S^r,--M^r Breerecliffe being w^th me