And of the judges what can be said but that they were, with one exception, the foremost and sternest opponents of all that was identified with Dr. Pusey’s name; and that one of them was the colleague who had volunteered to accuse him?  Dr. Faussett’s share in the matter is intelligible; hating the movement in all its parts, he struck with the vehemence of a mediaeval zealot.  But that men like Dr. Hawkins and Dr. Ogilvie, one of them reputed to be a theologian, the other one of the shrewdest and most cautious of men, and in ordinary matters one of the most conscientious and fairest, should not have seen what justice, or at least the show of justice, demanded, and what the refusal of that demand would look like, and that they should have persuaded the Vice-Chancellor to accept the entire responsibility of haughtily refusing it, is, even to those who remember the excitement of those days, a subject of wonder.  The plea was actually put forth that such opportunities of defence of his language and teaching as Dr. Pusey asked for would have led to the “inconvenience” of an interminable debate, and confronting of texts and authorities.[106] The fact, with Dr. Pusey as the accused person, is likely enough; but in a criminal charge with a heavy penalty, it would have been better for the reputation of the judges to have submitted to the inconvenience.

It was a great injustice and a great blunder—­a blunder, because the gratuitous defiance of accepted rules of fairness neutralised whatever there might seem to be of boldness and strength in the blow.  They were afraid to meet Dr. Pusey face to face.  They were afraid to publish the reasons of their condemnation.  The effect on the University, both on resident and non-resident members, was not to be misunderstood.  The Protestantism of the Vice-Chancellor and the Six Doctors was, of course, extolled by partisans in the press with reckless ignorance and reckless contempt at once for common justice and their own consistency.  One person of some distinction at Oxford ventured to make himself the mouthpiece of those who were bold enough to defend the proceeding—­the recently-elected Professor of Poetry, Mr. Garbett.  But deep offence was given among the wiser and more reasonable men who had a regard for the character of the University.  A request to know the grounds of the sentence from men who were certainly of no party was curtly refused by the Vice-Chancellor, with a suggestion that it did not concern them.  A more important memorial was sent from London, showing how persons at a distance were shocked by the unaccountable indifference to the appearance of justice in the proceeding.  It was signed among others by Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Justice Coleridge.  The Vice-Chancellor lost his temper.  He sent back the memorial to London “by the hands of his bedel,” as if that in some way stamped his official disapprobation more than if it had been returned through the post.  And he proceeded, in language wonderful even for that moment, as “Resident Governor” of the University, to reprimand statesmen and lawyers of eminence and high character, not merely for presuming to interfere with his own duties, but for forgetting the oaths on the strength of which they had received their degrees, and for coming very near to that high, almost highest, academical crime, the crime of being perturbatores pacis—­breaking the peace of the University.