"This ill company made me very miserable all the way. Only once I could not but heartily laugh to see Fincher be sturdyly belaboured by five or six carmen with whips and prong staves for provoking them with some of his extravagant frolics."
The "violent affection to vice" in the University, or in the country, was, of course, the reaction against the godliness of Puritan captains of horse. Another form of the reaction is discernible in the revived High Church sentiments of Prideaux, Wood, and most of the students of the time.
The manners of the undergraduates were not much better than those of the pot-house-haunting seniors. Dr. Good, the Master of Balliol, "a good old toast," had much trouble with his students.
"There is, over against Balliol College, a dingy, horrid, scandalous ale-house, fit for none but draymen and tinkers, and such as, by going there, have made themselves equally scandalous. Here the Balliol men continually, and by perpetuall bubbing, add art to their natural stupidity, to make themselves perfect sots."
The envy and jealousy of the inferior colleges, alas! have put about many things, in these latter days, to the discredit of the Balliol men, but not even Humphrey Prideaux would, out of all his stock of epithets, choose "sottish" and "stupid." In these old times, however, Dr. Good had to call the men together, and - "Inform them of the mischiefs of that hellish liquor called ale; but one of them, not so tamely to be preached out of his beloved liquor, made answer that the Vice-Chancelour's men drank ale at the "Split Crow," and why should not they too?"
On this, old Dr. Good posted off to the Vice-Chancellor, who, "being a lover of old ale" himself, returned a short answer to the head of Balliol. The old man went back to his college, and informed his fellows, "that he was assured there were no hurt in ale, so that now they may be sots by authority." Christ Church men were not more sober. David Whitford, who had been the tutor of Shirley the poet, was found lying dead in his bed: "he had been going to take a dram for refreshment, but death came between the cup and the lips, and this is the end of Davy." Prideaux records, in the same feeling style, that smallpox carried off many of the undergraduates, "besides my brother," a student at Corpus.
The University Press supplied Prideaux with gossip. They printed "a book against Hobs," written by Clarendon. Hobbes was the heresiarch of the time, and when an unhappy fellow of Merton hanged himself, the doctrines of Hobbes were said to have prompted him to the deed. To return to the Press. "Our Christmas book will be Cornelius Nepos . .
. Our marbles are now printing." Prideaux, as has been said, took no interest in his own work.
"I coat (quote) a multitude of authors; if people think the better of me for that, I will think the worse of them for their judgement. It beeing soe easyly a thinge to make this specious show, he must be a fool that cannot gain whatsoever repute is to be gotten by it. If people will admire him for this, they may; I shall admire such for nothing else but their good indexs. As long as books have these, on what subject may we not coat as many others as we please, and never have read one of them?"
