Seventeenth-century Oxford was a byword for scholarly stagnation until Laud reformed it.

Evidence

James I was arguably the only learned king ever to sit on England’s throne, apart from Alfred, and it was natural that learned clerics were preferred by him. William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633 until his beheading in 1645, was pre-eminent among those learned clerics. He had been a pupil of Andrewes and was strongly influenced by his style of Christian scholarship, as well as his commitment to Oriental learning. Laud collected Oriental manuscripts, which were eventually acquired by Oxford’s Bodleian Library. In 1630 Laud, who at that time was still Bishop of London, had become Chancellor of Oxford University and, horrified by the somnolent complacency of the place (nothing changes, some would say), he decided to try to raise its scholarship to continental standards. When the seventeenth century opened, Oxford enjoyed an international reputation as a centre for intellectual torpor. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 158

Categorization

• CANDY: Fun fact: Oxford’s seventeenth-century reputation as a center of intellectual torpor — a quip that plays well in casual conversation.
• XREF: connects to: Elite Oxford education bred contempt for ordinary and colonized people