the place but that it still “yielded a harvest of extraordinary good and sound knowledge in all parts of learning.”  He attributed this to the inherent virtues of the academic soil itself, which could choke bad seeds, cherish the good, and even defy barrenness by finding its own seeds; but it may be more reasonable to suppose that the superintendence of the Universities under the “tyrannical governments,” and especially under Cromwell’s as the latest of them, had not been barbaric.—­The University Commissioners, it may be added, had authority to inspect Westminster School, Eton, Winchester, and Merchant Taylors’.  But, indeed, there seems hardly to have been a foundation for learning anywhere in England that was not, in one way or another, brought under Cromwell’s eye.  In his inquiries after moneys that might still be recoverable out of the wreck of the old ecclesiastical revenues one can see that, next to the increase and better sustenance of his Established Ministry, additions to the endowed scholastic machinery of the country were always in his mind.  It is clear indeed that one of those characteristics of conservatism by which Cromwell intended that his government should be distinguished from the preceding Governments of the Revolution was greater care of the surviving educational institutions of England and Wales, with the resuscitation of some that had fallen into decay.  The money-difficulties were great, and less could be accomplished than he desired; but, apart from what may have been done for the refreshment of the older foundations, it is memorable that Cromwell was able to give effect to at least one very considerable design of English University extension.  A College in Durham, expressly for the benefit of the North of England, with a Provostship, four Professorships, and tutorships and fellowships to match, was one of the creations of the Protectorate.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Wood’s Fasti Oxon. from 1654 onwards; Orme’s Life of John Owen, 175-187; Clarendon, 623; Godwin, IV. 102-104 and 595; Neal, IV. 121-123; with references to Worthington’s Diary by Crossley, and Cattermole’s Literature of the Church of England.]

While it was chiefly through the organized means afforded by the Universities and Colleges that Cromwell did what he could for the encouragement of learning, his relations to the learned men individually that were living in the time of his Protectorate were always at least courteous, and in some instances peculiarly friendly.

Usher being dead (March 21, 1655-6), and also the great Selden (Nov. 20, 1654) and the venerable and learned Gataker (July 27, 1654), the following were the Englishmen of greatest literary celebrity already, or of greatest coming note in English literary history, who were alive at the midpoint of Oliver’s Protectorate, and could and did then range themselves (for we exclude those of insufficient age) as his adherents on the whole, his subjects by mere compulsion, or his implacable and exiled enemies.  We divide the list into groups according to that classification, as calculated for the year 1656; but the names within each group are arranged in the order of seniority:[1]—­