nance for the encouragement of religion and learning in Ireland, Certain lands were appropriated to the sup- port of Trinity College, to the founding of another col- lege in that university with maintenance for teachers, and to the establishment of a free school with support for masters and scholars. At the same time six of the most acceptable preachers in England were sent over to give reputation to the restored university, and they, till the provided endowments should become productive, were to be supported from the public revenue. So con- spicuous had Owen become in connection with public affairs that he was soon required to leave his flock again, and to go with the lord-general into Scotland, where Presbyterianism had anointed the second Charles for king, and was in arms against the commonwealth of England, ' Accordingly he was with Cromwell through that strange campaign in which sermons and theological disputations alternated with sieges and cannonadings, Keturning once more to his home and his parochial ■work, he was soon appointed dean of Christ Church College at Oxford, his great friend Cromwell having been already made chancellor of the university. The next year he became by Cromwell's appointment vice- chancellor, and the chief responsibility for the welfare of the university came upon him. Owen's administra- tion at Oxford was perhaps the most active — certainly not the least useful — period of his life. The university had been brought almost to ruin by the long war, Ox- ford having been for a time the royal residence, and its colleges having exhausted their resources in the vain attempt to sustain the divine right of Charles Stuart to govern England according to his absolute will. When the victories achieved for Parliament had ended the conflict, some of the colleges had been closed, others had been converted into barracks and military storehouses ; the university was overwhelmed with debt ; and the students, diminished in number, were characterized more by insubordination and licentious behavior than by dil- igence in study or by generous aspirations. To Owen was committed the public work of raising the university from its low estate, and of making it, more than it had ever been before, the seat of learning and of religion. He restored order and salutary discipline. He gathered around him men consjjicuous by their ability, such as John Howe, Charnock, Thomas Goodwin, Theophilus Gale, Pocock the Orientalist, and Ward the astronomer — men not of the Independent party onl)', but of various party connections or of none. His government, severe towards licentious practices, was tolerant of honest dif- ferences; he conciliated the Presbyterians by bestowing upon eminent preachers of that party some of the livings of which he was officially the patron ; and, at a time when the use of the old Book of Common Prayer was regarded by law as proof of hostility to the existing government, he silently permitted a meeting of Episcopalians every Lord's day hard b}- his own lodgings. So manifest was the revival and prosperity of learning there that, after the restoration of Charles II, even the enemies of Puri- tanism were compelled to acknowledge the fact. Clar- endon's reluctant testimony for the university as gov- erned b}^ Owen is, " It j-ielded a harvest of extraordinary good and sound knowledge in all parts of learning; and many who were wickedly introduced applied themselves to the study of learning and the practice of virtue; so that when it pleased God to bring king Charles II back to his throne, he found the university abounding in ex- cellent learning, and little inferior to what it was before its desolation." While thus presiding over the univer- sity, Owen never intermitted his work as a preacher, nor was he relieved from the responsibility of often ad- vising those in whose hands were the interests of the commonwealth. It is difficult to see how even he, un- der such burdens, could find time for the labors of au- thorship. But during that period many of his most elaborate and learned treatises were published — some in Latin, others in English. Owen's retirement from the vice-chancellorship followed soon after the crisis at
which Cromwell found himself constrained to decline the title of king, offered to him by the Parliament as a means of restoring the ancient forms of government inuler a new dynasty. Owen opposed that movement, and was the author of the petition which was presented to the protector in the name of his early and best friends, and which overruled in his mind his own judgment, convincing him that, though governing with more than kingly power, he could not assume tlie kingly name without the ruin of •' the good old cause." Cromwell, invested with new dignity in the state, transferred the chancellorship of Oxford to his son Kichard, who ap- pointed a new vice-chancellor. Owen remained in the deanery of Christ Church College till a few months be- fore the restoration of the Stuart monarch}'. From Ox- ford he retired to his native place, where a Congrega- tional Church, previousl)' gathered by his ministrj', received him as its pastor. But the suppression of such congregations, by an Act of Parliament forbidding more than five persons to meet for worship in anv un- authorized place, was an early consequence of the resto- ration; and thenceforward his preaching to little secret assemblies, or sometimes more publicly, when persecu- tion grew less violent, was alwaj's in violation of law. In 16G3 he received, but for some unrecorded reason did not accept, an invitation to New England, The First Church in Boston called him to become the successor of John Cotton and John Norton, and the colleague of John Wilson ; and for several years his coming Mas con- fidently expected. When Charles II, in 1671, proclaimed his "declaration of indulgence," virtually abrogating those acts of Parliament which inflicted penalties on Roman Catholic recusants and Protestant dissenters, there was a measure of liberty which Owen did not hes- itate to use. He began to preach o]icnly in London. Under his ministry a Church was constituted— the same which, in another generation, enjo^-ed the pastoral min- istrations of Isaac Watts. He was still recognised as the leading man of the Independents; and, though un- der the ban of the law for his nonconfirmity, lie was widely honored, and had powerful friends even in the House of Lords. On one occasion, being at Tutibridge Wells, when the king and the duke of York (afterwards James II) were there, he was invited to the royal tent; and Charles talked freely with him about the laws against dissenters. Afterwards, at London, the king invited him to repeated interviews on the same subject, and even intrusted him with a thousand guineas for the relief of suffering Nonconformists. Of course it was well understood, all the while, that the king's synijiathy was not with nonconforming Protestants, but with re- cusant Romanists. Those latest years of Owen's life were in one respect the most productive. Persecuted or tolerated, worshipping in secret conventicles or open- ly preaching the Word, he seems to have been always writing, and the demand for his books seems to have been constant. His greatest and best -remembered works (of which the most voluminous is his Exjwsition of the Epistle to the Ilehrewg) are the product of those years. His last work (destined to be posthumous) was Meditations on the Glory of Christ, and the first sheet of it only had been printed when he departed, rejoicing that he was to see that "(Jlory" face to face. His death took place at Ealing, near London, Aug. 24, 1683. Eleven days afterwards a procession '• of more than sixty noblemen in carriages drawn by six horses each, and of many others in mourning coaches and on horseback," followed his remains along the streets of London to their burial in Bunhill-tields,