without question unstatutable and illegal, and had been simply connived at by the authorities.  To introduce by his own authority a new feature into a system which he had no business to use at all, and to do this for the first time with the manifest purpose of annoying an obnoxious individual, was, on Dr. Hampden’s part, to do more to discredit his chair and himself, than the censure of the University could do; and it was as unwise as it was unworthy.  The strength of his own case before the public was that he could be made to appear as the victim of a personal and partisan attack; yet on the first opportunity he acts in the spirit of an inquisitor, and that not in fair conflict with some one worthy of his hostility, but to wreak an injury, in a matter of private interest, on an individual, in no way known to him or opposed to him, except as holding certain unpopular opinions.

Mr. Macmullen was not the person to take such treatment quietly.  The right was substantially on his side, and the Professor, and the University authorities who more or less played into the hands of the Professor in defence of his illegal and ultimately untenable claims, appeared before the University, the one as a persecutor, the others as rulers who were afraid to do justice on behalf of an ill-used man because he was a Tractarian.  The right course was perfectly clear.  It was to put an end to these unauthorised exercises, and to recall both candidates and Professor to the statutable system which imposed disputations conducted under the moderatorship of the Professor, but which gave him no veto, at the time, on the theological sufficiency of the disputations, leaving him to state his objections, if he was not satisfied, when the candidate’s degree was asked for in the House of Congregation.  This course, after some hesitation, was followed, but only partially; and without allowing or disallowing the Professor’s claim to a veto, the Vice-Chancellor on his own responsibility stopped the degree.  A vexatious dispute lingered on for two or three years, with actions in the Vice-Chancellor’s Court, and distinguished lawyers to plead for each side, and appeals to the University Court of Delegates, who reversed the decision of the Vice-Chancellor’s assessor.  Somehow or other, Mr. Macmullen at last got his degree, but at the cost of a great deal of ill-blood in Oxford, for which Dr. Hampden, by his unwarranted interference, and the University authorities, by their questionable devices to save the credit and claims of one of their own body, must be held mainly responsible.

Before the matter was ended, they were made to feel, in rather a startling way, how greatly they had lost the confidence of the University.  One of the attempts to find a way out of the tangle of the dispute was the introduction, in February 1844, of a Statute which should give to the Professor the power which was now contested, and practically place all the Divinity degrees under the control of a Board in conjunction