Christ's College and the Latitude-Men

Abstract

THANKS to the situation brought about at the universities by the imposition of both Covenant and Engagement, the college records for the years of the Commonwealth and early Restoration are provokingly fragmentary. The abrupt dismissal of scores of fellows and masters by both Puritan and Royalist officers in 1648 and 1660, the military situation, particularly at Cambridge, during the years of the Civil War, the occasional wanton destruction of college property, and the inevitable relaxation of both rules and routine, combined to produce a chaos which is reflected in the infrequent and scanty documents. Fortunately, however, there still remain in various libraries unpublished manuscripts which offer interesting comment and often valuable information in regard to the years 1642-65. Examination of a group of such manuscripts for a somewhat different purpose led me to material of much significance in connection with one of the most important groups at Cambridge during the seventeenth century--the latitude-men of Christ's College, commonly called the Cambridge Platonists--and served to clear up many points which have perplexed critics and biographers of the group. As a result of the examination of letters and notebooks, some in the British Museum, others in the Christ's College and Cambridge University libraries, I attempt, in the following pages, to suggest the situation at Christ's College during the years of the Commonwealth which resulted in the union of the Platonists as a consciously moderate and liberal party in theology and politics, and to trace the growing opposition to that liberalism, as seen particularly in the attack of Ralph Widdrington upon Ralph Cudworth, and in the early connotations of the terms latitude-men and latitudinarians. Interpreted in connection with material already known, and with various contemporary pamphlets, these random notes throw new light upon what has been at best an obscure chapter in the history of Cambridge.