The university was then under the Puritan control of Dr.
John Owen; but not even his effort to redeem the university from its reputation for intellectual laxity rescued it from the "wrangling and ostentation" of the peripatetic philosophy.

Yet it was at Oxford that he encountered the work of Descartes which first attracted him to metaphysics.

There, too, he met Pocock, the Arabic scholar, and Wallis the mathematician, who must at least have commanded his respect.

In 1659 he accepted a Senior Studentship of his college, which he retained until he was deemed politically undesirable in 1684.

After toying with his father's desire that he should enter the Church, he began the study of medicine.