The clause granting to the Provost and Fellows this power
of making statutes for the University is followed immediately by
a clause prohibiting all persons in any other places (other than
the University) to profess or teach the liberal Arts within the
16 2728. They desired a Patent for the University to dispel the doubts fac- tiously raised concerning the Univer- sity Statutes, and sent a transcript of those then in use ; they had a copy made of the College Statutes also, that they might let the King's advisers see all that had been done about the Statutes under the Charter, and the Patents copied were probably the Patents of Elizabeth and James I. (See Miller, Examination, &c, p. 20). Bedell, in a letter from London to the Fellows (Apr. I, 1628), now among the Col- lege papers, says — " mindful of the business you committed to me, I have made a draught of the University Statutes." These were therefore not the University Statutes " drawn " the year before. "4. The Charter of Charles seems to have withdrawn the power conveyed by the clause supposed to relate to University Statutes, in- clnding it with the other under the uords hanc potestatem." But the Charter of Charles quotes both clauses, and then adds : — " Nos hanc potestatem, Statuta et ordi- nationes condendi et constituendi prasfatis Prseposito et sociis .... prius concessam .... nobismet Ipsis .... modo reversari .... volumus." Here the words of the first clause, relating to the College Sta- tutes, are recited, and nothing is said of the second clause. It is evident, therefore, that the words hanc potes- tatem were intended to refer to the first clause, and that the power really withdrawn by the Charter of Char- les, is the power of making statutes for the College : the power of selecting statutes from the usages of the Univer- sities of Cambridge or Oxford, re- mains as Elizabeth had left it.
No better evidence of this can be desired than the passage from Carte's life of Ormonde, cited in Dr. Miller's Postscript (p 14). We are there told that in 1660 "Bp. Jeremy Taylor was employed in framing statutes for the University, thereby finishing hat the great Arch- bishop Laud had left imperfect, hav- ing oidy digested and established a body of statutes fur the College." But how could Taylor finish Laud's work unless there had been a power originally granted to make statutes for the University, as well as for the College; and if the Charter of Charles, in 1637, had repealed this power, as Dr. Miller thinks, both in reference to the College and the University, by what authority did Taylor employ himself, in 1660, in framing statutes for the University ? Is it not clear that Taylor must have believed that the power of making statutes, as granted in Elizabeth's Charter, still remained, notwithstanding the Char- ter of Charles, and that the Colege
