e popular voice loudly accused them of
pusillanimity. The townsmen already talked ironically of a Magdalene
conscience, and exclaimed that the brave Hough and the honest Fairfax
had been betrayed and abandoned. Still more annoying were the sneers
of Obadiah Walker and his brother renegades. This then, said those
apostates, was the end of all the big words in which the society had
declared itself resolved to stand by its lawful President and by its
Protestant faith. While the Fellows, bitterly annoyed by the public
censure, were regretting the modified submission which they had
consented to make, they learned that this submission was by no means
satisfactory to the King. It was not enough, he said, that they offered
to obey the Bishop of Oxford as President in fact. They must distinctly
admit the Commission and all that had been done under it to be legal.
They must acknowledge that they had acted undutifully; they must declare
themselves penitent; they must promise to behave better in future,
must implore His Majesty's pardon, and lay themselves at his feet. Two
Fellows of whom the King had no complaint to make, Charnock and Smith,
were excused from the obligation of making these degrading apologies.

Even James never committed a grosser error. The Fellows, already angry
with themselves for having conceded so much, and galled by the censure
of the world, eagerly caught at the opportunity which was now offered
them of regaining the public esteem. With one voice they declared that
they would never ask pardon for being in the right, or admit that the
visitation of their college and the deprivation of their President had
been legal.

Then the King, as he had threatened, laid on them the whole weight of
his hand. They were by one sweeping edict condemned to expulsion.
Yet this punishment was not deemed sufficient. It was known that many
noblemen and gentlemen who possessed church patronage would be disposed
to provide for men who had suffered so much for the laws of England
or men and for the Protestant religion. The High Commission therefore
pronounced the ejected Fellows incapable of ever holding any church
preferment. Such of them as were not yet in holy orders were pronounced
incapable of receiving the clerical character. James might enjoy the
thought that he had reduced many of them from a situation in which
they were surrounded by comforts, and had before them the fairest
professional prospects, to hopeless indigence.