By 1688 Cambridge had largely been remodelled in the image and likeness of the high churchmen who had dominated its counsels since the Restoration. It saw itself as an integral part of a revitalised Church which was distinguished by its insistence on passive obedience to the Lord's Anointed. Yet eighteenth-century Cambridge was to be known (particularly when compared to its obstinately tory sister university) as a breeding-ground for whigs. It was also widely praised by the supporters of the Hanoverian regime for its adherence to the Revolutionary Settlement which (in whig ideology at least) was characterised by those limitations on the power of kings which the advocates of passive obedience regarded as the province of God rather than man. How, then, to trace the way in which such a transformation took place in the four decades following the Glorious Revolution and how Cambridge's allegiance to the whig cause was still further strengthened during the reign of George II is the subject of this chapter.

Cambridge greeted the Glorious Revolution with unenthusiastic propriety; as William Wotton (a fellow of St John's) commented, the event ‘was observed neither with much rejoycing, nor yet so coldly as to affront any body’ (Bodl., MS Rawlinson D.1232: 63).