←1200
←1200
Appendix to Dr. Buchanan’s Sermons on Eras of Light, and Richmond’s Life, p. 157. “Vice Chancellor and Gentlemen, Whereas his Majesty is informed, that the practice of reading sermons is generally taken up by the preachers before the University, and therefore sometimes continued even before himself; his Majesty has commanded me to signify to you his pleasure that the said practice, which took its beginning from the disorders of the late times, be wholly laid aside, and that the said preachers deliver their sermons, both in Latin and English, by memory, without book, as being a way of preaching which his Majesty judges most agreeable to the use of all foreign churches, to the custom of the University up to now, and to the nature and intention of that holy exercise; and that his Majesty's commands in these premises may be duly regarded and observed, his further pleasure is that the names of all ecclesiastical persons that continue the present supine and slothful way of preaching,be from time to time signified to me by the Vice Chancellor, on pain of his Majesty's displeasure. Monmouth. (Extracted from the Statute Book of the University of Cambridge, page 301. Car. II. Rex)