Both had expressed the deepest horror at the Rye House Plot.

Cambridge had not only deposed her Chancellor Monmouth, but had marked her abhorrence of his treason in a manner unworthy of a scat of learning, by committing to the flames the canvass on which his pleasing face and figure had been portrayed by the utmost skill of Kneller.

[284] Oxford, which lay nearer to the Western insurgents, had given still stronger proofs of loyalty.

The students, under the sanction of their preceptors, had taken arms by hundreds in defence of hereditary right.

Such were the bodies which James now determined to insult and plunder in direct defiance of the laws and of his plighted faith.
Several Acts of Parliament, as clear as any that were to be found in the statute book, had provided that no person should be admitted to any degree in either University without taking the oath of supremacy, and another oath of similar character called the oath of obedience.
Nevertheless, in February 1687, a royal letter was sent to Cambridge directing that a Benedictine monk, named Alban Francis, should be admitted a Master of Arts.
The academical functionaries, divided between reverence for the King and reverence for the law, were in great distress.