The two English Universities had been sufficiently Puritanized long before Cromwell’s accession to the supreme power—­Cambridge in 1644-5, under the Chancellorship of the Earl of Manchester (III. 92-6), and Oxford in 1647-8, under the Chancellorship of the Earl of Pembroke (IV. 51-52).  The Earl of Manchester, who had been living in complete retirement from public affairs since the establishment of the Commonwealth, still retained the nominal dignity of the Cambridge Chancellorship; but Cromwell had already for five years been Chancellor of the University of Oxford himself, having been elected to the office in January 1650-1, after the Earl of Pembroke’s death.  His interest in University matters had been naturally sustained by this official connexion with Oxford, and had shown itself in various ways before his Protectorate; but his Protectorate added fresh powers to those of his mere Chancellorship for Oxford, and brought his native University of Cambridge also within his grasp.  He availed himself of his powers largely and punctually in the affairs of both, and was applauded in both as the steady defender of their honours and privileges.—­To rectify what might still be amiss in them, or too much after the mere Presbyterian standard of Puritanism, he had appointed, by ordinance of September 2, 1654, (Vol.  IV. p. 565), a new body of Visitors for each, to inquire into abuses, determine disputes, &c.  The result was that the two Universities were now in better and quieter working order than they had been since the first stormy interruption of their old routine by the Civil War.  Each reckoned a number of really able and efficient men among its heads of colleges, and in its staff of professors and tutors.  In Oxford there was Dr. John Owen, head of Christ Church, and all but permanently Vice-Chancellor of the University, with Dr. Thomas Goodwin, Dr. John Wilkins, Dr. Robert Harris, Dr. Thankful Owen, Dr. John Conant, Dr. Jonathan Goddard, and others, as heads of other Colleges, and Dr. Henry Wilkinson, Dr. Lewis Du Moulin, Dr. Pocock, and the mathematicians Dr. Seth Ward and Dr. John Wallis among the Professors.  Cambridge boasted of such men as Dr. Ralph Cudworth, Dr. Benjamin Whichcote, Dr. John Worthington, Dr. John Lightfoot, Dr. Lazarus Seaman, Dr. John Arrowsmith, Dr. Anthony Tuckney, Dr. Henry More, and others now less remembered.  And under the discipline and teaching of such chiefs there was growing up in both Universities a generation of young men as well grounded in all the older sorts of learning as any generation of their predecessors, with the benefit also of newer lights, as was to be proved by the names and appearances of many of them in English history to the end of the century.  Even Clarendon admits as much.  It was a wonder to him to find, in the subsequent days of his own Chancellorship of the University of Oxford, that the “several tyrannical governments mutually succeeding each other” through so many previous years had not so affected