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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
HIGHER EDUCATION

Volume 22

THE HIGHEST EDUCATION

 THE HIGHEST EDUCATION
A Study of Graduate Education in Britain

ERNEST RUDD
First published in 1975 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
This edition first published in 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 1975 Ernest Rudd
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-138-32388-9 (Set)

ISBN: 978-0-429-43625-3 (Set) (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-33303-1 (Volume 22) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-44585-9 (Volume 22) (ebk)

Publisher’s Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but
points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.
Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome
correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.
CONTENTS

PREFACE ix

1 INTRODUCTION 1

2 THE HISTORY OF GRADUATE STUDY IN BRITAIN 6

3 TODAY'S STUDENTS 22

4 THE PURPOSE OF POSTGRADUATE STUDY 43

5 RESEARCH STUDENTS AT WORK: SUPERVISION AND

INSTRUCTION 60

6 RESEARCH STUDENTS AT WORK: FACILITIES FOR

STUDY AND RESEARCH 90

7 RESEARCH STUDENTS IN THE ACADEMIC COMMUNITY

AND THE WORLD OUTSIDE 100

8 ADVANCED COURSES 115

9 PART-TIME STUDENTS 129

10 STUDENTS1 FINANCES 145

11 POLICY ISSUES 163

NOTES 187

BIBLIOGRAPHY 191

INDEX 195

vi i
PREFACE

This book has two origins. It springs both from six years I spent
as one of the administrators of the postgraduate studentships given
by DSIR, and from research on the problems of graduate education
after Γ had moved to the University of Essex. Generally the one-
time civil servant risks falling foul of the Official Secrets Act
if he tries to write about any field in which his official duties
involved him. However this is no problem in my case as DSIR and
its successor research councils have run their studentships very
openly, explaining in various published reports and in circular
letters the reasons for changes in policy, and showing considerable
willingness to take part in public debate on their activities.
My main assistant in this work has been Mrs Renate Simpson. She
took an active part in most phases of the research and in particular
carried out the research on the history of graduate study up to 1918
(chapter 2, part I) and on part-time graduate study (chapter 9) and
wrote the earlier drafts of these parts of the book. She has con-
tributed in so many ways to this book that I cannot adequately thank
her here. I am also greatly indebted to Stephen Hatch who bore the
main brunt of the study of the careers of part graduate students the
results of which have been published separately but are also used
to a certain extent here. He also produced the method of collect-
ing data on how students spend their leisure time. I am grateful
to Mrs Susan Roberts and Mrs Pamela Ratee, who helped with the
interviewing, as did my colleagues Marie Oxtoby, Roy Cox and Stephen
Hatch. Mrs Aileen Petter and Mrs Pamela King worked their way
through our piles of questionnaires and interview schedules coding,
punching and verifying, and I am glad to be able to thank them here
for their efforts.
I owe an especial debt of gratitude to the registrars and their
staff at the universities at which we interviewed. They took a
great deal of trouble to smooth our path for us. There were too
many people, whose names in many cases I never learnt, to thank
them all individually. Clare College and Queens' College,
Cambridge kindly rented us rooms in which we could interview, but
sent us no bill; we are literally indebted to them.
I wish to thank Christopher Jolliffe and Gareth Williams for
their very helpful comments on the penultimate draft.
χ Preface

The funds for almost all the research described in this book
came from a grant which the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation provided
to set up the short-lived Unit for Research into Higher Education
at the University of Essex. I am grateful to the Foundation for
its support and to Mrs Jean Floud and Dr A.E. Sloman for their part
in setting up the Unit.
I especially wish to thank again the students who came to see us.
We enjoyed meeting and interviewing them, and I hope they too got
something out of the interviews. I am also grateful to those stu-
dents and graduates who completed our questionnaires, and to the
many university staff who have discussed graduate education with me.

ER
Chapter 4

INTRODUCTION

In 1938, when there were 50,000 full-time students in British

universities, 3,000 of them were graduates (apart from those being
trained for school teaching). By 1972 there were five times as
many students but thirteen times as many graduate students - sub-
stantial growth by any standard. This must make graduate education
one of Britain's foremost growth industries; and there can be few
industries that have exported so high a proportion of their products
- though it gets little praise on that account. This rate of
growth alone, implying rapidly rising public and private expendi-
ture, prompts many questions on what has taken place. Is the
increase the result of changes either in the educational system or
in the structure of knowledge? Is it a response to changes in the
needs of employers? Or does it reflect a jockeying for position
when there are more graduates than jobs that graduates want? Or
again, does it represent a kind of luxury expenditure that can be
afforded in increasing measure by our increasingly wealthy society?
Do the students have any precise objectives in entering graduate
education, or just a general feeling that, as education is a 'good
thing 1 , they will benefit from some more of it? How has this
change affected the universities? Have some of them changed from
being predominantly undergraduate into graduate teaching institu-
tions? Has the increase in numbers brought a change in the
character of graduate study? These are only a few of the very many
questions that arise. But although in recent years a great deal of
attention has been given to the system of higher education, with a
substantial amount of research reported, and far more written that
has been based on opinion and intuitive judgment, in Britain, at
least, hardly any attention has been paid to the problems of grad-
uate education. This book therefore deals with an area that is
largely unexplored.
At first sight the problems of graduate education may seem
esoteric, of concern only to a few thousand people in universities.
But this is not so. Because the graduate students are the academic
elite of the rising generation, these problems should be a matter of
concern to everyone with an interest in what kind of country, indeed
what kind of world, we shall have in the future. Earlier stages of
the educational system have tried to put the most able students onto

1
2 chapter 2

the route that will give them the longest education. This is the
end of that road where we are left with the elect from the elect of
the elect. They are the group amongst whom we should expect to
find those who, in many kinds of activity, will make some of the
most substantial contributions. (1) From their ranks will come
many of the leading politicians, industrialists, scientists and
administrators of tomorrow.

THE DIVERSITY OF HIGHER DEGREES AND NOMENCLATURE

This book, then, is about an elite who find themselves in their
early twenties awarded good degrees and offered the chance to enter
graduate education and to work for higher degrees and other post-
graduate qualifications. Many of them immediately begin work for
a doctorate - almost always the somewhat oddly named degree of
doctor of philosophy. Others work for master's degrees, but here,
for reasons that will appear in chapter 2, the nomenclature is some-
what confusing.
Although universities tend to classify their students in terms
of the degrees for which they are registered, a more significant
distinction relates to the form of the student's studies. Here,
rather than a sharp division between one kind of study and another,
there is a continuous spectrum of types of graduate study. At one
extreme are those that are far from postgraduate in level and are
not in any sense built on top of first degree work, being postgrad-
uate only in the sense that they chronologically follow the first
degree, such as training in school teaching, which is not covered
in this book at all. Further across the spectrum are courses that
are wholly postgraduate in level. These will be discussed mainly
in chapter 8.
Many of these courses include a research project, or projects.
There is nothing distinctively postgraduate about the inclusion of
this; teaching by projects now starts in the infants' school. But
when the project becomes the major part of the course of study a
change of some importance has taken place - the transition from a
course of instruction to research - and this distinction is more
useful than that between the different kinds of qualification to
which graduate study leads.
Research is extremely difficult to define. At first sight
there is little in common between a student who is going through a
series of routine and well-tried analytical procedures, applying
them to a different substance and so increasing the stock of infor-
mation but contributing no new ideas, and one who is studying an
author, producing a new critical evaluation of his work stuffed
full of new ideas and insights but adding nothing to the stock of
information about him. In a sense both are augmenting knowledge,
and both come within the broad fold of scholarship and research
which I shall simply call 'research' here. In this book we shall
mainly be concerned with research students, partly because they are
the larger group and partly because their problems are to a larger
extent distinct whereas advanced course students' problems resemble
to a certain extent those of undergraduates.
There is one point of nomenclature to mention. It seems
reasonable to call a student who has not yet graduated an 'under-
3 chapter 2

graduate1, but it is difficult to find any comparable reason for

calling someone who has graduated a 'postgraduate'. Once he has
graduated he is a graduate, and so I avoid the term 'postgraduate'
except in a few cases where the use of 'graduate1 could be ambiguous.

THE DATA
The data used in the study were collected in a number of ways, but
principally by means of (i) structured interviews with some 800
full-time students, centred on their reasons for their choice of
graduate education, the form of their studies and their financial,
social and other problems; (ii) postal questionnaires from some
230 part-time students covering similar topics; (iii) open-ended
interviews with university staff ranging across their views of grad-
uate education and their ideas for reforming it, to their own
careers; (iv) postal questionnaires from some 2,300 past graduate
students, which covered their careers and their retrospective view
of their graduate studies. The following paragraphs briefly des-
cribe how the research was done.

(i) Interviews with full-time students

These lasted about an hour. (3) They started with the interview-
ing of students at Queen Mary College, London, in 1964. Success-
ive drafts of two versions of a questionnaire - one for research
students and one for advanced course students - were tried out on
QMC students until they were satisfactory. Including the last few
students interviewed at QMC, when we were using what was virtually
the final questionnaire, 844 students were interviewed - 696
research and 148 advanced course. The universities covered were:
two colleges of London University (Queen Mary College and the
Imperial College of Science and Technology), one of the Scottish
universities (Edinburgh), one of the two ancient English universi-
ties (Cambridge), three of the 'red-brick' provincial universities
founded in the nineteenth century - Bristol, Leeds and Manchester
(including the Institute of Science and Technology) - one of the
group of smaller provincial universities that received their
charters after 1945, having until then taught for external London
degrees (Leicester), and a college of advanced technology (North-
ampton Polytechnic, then about to become the City University, the
name by which it is referred to below). When we had to choose our
sample of universities a lack of comprehensive statistics meant
that we could base our selection on little more than our own know-
ledge of the universities. Nevertheless, when the University
Grants Committee later published better statistics we found that,
if we had drawn a sample based on the percentages of students who
were graduates, as we would have done had this been possible at the
time, our sample would have been little different.
Within a given university, many of the problems .in interviewing
a sample of graduate students arise from the diversity of graduate
study, and especially of research. Every research student's work
is, or at least ought to be, different from any previous work.
Many of them need to be away from the university from time to time
for shorter or longer periods. Some will be working in other
4 chapter 2

libraries; geologists may be in the field collecting rocks and

mapping; botanists may be collecting plants and meteorologists
reading rain gauges; nuclear physicists may be using the big
machines at Harwell or Geneva. Some students need to visit their
university only rarely, and so live where it is cheapest.
Further, many continue working on their theses for a period, some-
times for many years, after their grants have come to an end. But
in other ways too, the end of the grant does not mark a sharp trans-
ition from student to employee. As their grants come to an end
some students take part-time work in order to prolong their
research, and so, by gradual stages, pass to a full-time job, work-
ing on the thesis at weekends and evenings. Others may succeed in
finding a job a little before the end of their last year of full-
time study.
The more flexible a university's regulations for graduate study
and the more it allows students to fit their manner and place of
work to their individual needs, the more difficulty it has in pro-
ducing an accurate current list of its research students. Some of
the lists we were given were, therefore, unavoidably inaccurate.
We did not try to trace every student who neither came to be inter-
viewed nor replied to our letter, because when we did we generally
found it difficult to get any firm information; frequently we
could find no-one who knew whether the student had left the univer-
sity and taken a job, or was just living somewhere else. Only a
small minority, about a quarter to a third, of the sample that was
drawn did not come for interview, but in the circumstances it was
impossible to try to calculate the percentage of non-response.
Another problem in the drawing of a sample arose from organiza-
tional differences between universities. It proved impossible
both at Cambridge and at Imperial College to draw an overall sample
of all the research students and so it was necessary to take a two-
stage sample, first sampling from among the departments and then
taking a sample of students.
The differences between universities, both in the form in which
the lists of students were kept and in the way in which the sample
had been drawn, might have made it necessary to adopt a complicated
system of weighting in order to be sure that the overall percen-
tages of students answering a given question in a particular way
are correct for each university. In practice it did not prove
necessary to present our results in such a complicated way, partly
because the measurable differences between the experiences of
graduate students at the various universities at which we inter-
viewed were generally too small for such a calculation to be
justified, and partly because, in most respects, the problems and
difficulties of a chemist doing research at Leeds are more like
those of a chemist at Cambridge, Imperial or Edinburgh than those
of a civil engineer at Leeds, so that analysis according to the
fields in which the students were working seems in general to give
the most interesting results.
In those cases where we found differences between the universi-
ties, for example in the extent of students' satisfaction with
their libraries, no amount of re-weighting of the answers seemed to
make much difference to the picture that emerged, and so here too
the results are presented in a straight undoctored form.
5 chapter 2

(ii) Postal survey of current part-time students

During the pilot stage of the survey of current students, we inter-

viewed some part-time students. The difficulties of contacting
them and the extent of their special problems made it clear, how-
ever, that they would have to be covered separately by a postal
survey. This asked, as far as possible, the same questions, but
also covered the specific problems of part-time study, students'
reasons for choosing to study part-time and related topics.

(iii) Interviews with staff

These were tried out first on friends attending the 1964 meeting
of the British Association, then at QMC. I quickly discovered
that any attempt to follow an interview schedule introduced an
element of rigidity into the interview and tended to make the
informant dry up, whereas a more open discussion produced a large
number of valuable and unexpected points. I therefore worked
merely from a list of topics to be covered, tape-recording the
discussion. I also found that drawing a sample of staff brought
in many who had no research students, and many junior staff who
were virtually research students themselves. As, furthermore, I
could not hope to interview enough staff to be able to quantify
their answers, I changed to interviewing staff with whom I was
already acquainted or whose names had been given to me by friends
in the universities in which we were working, selecting those who
had a considerable experience of graduate education, or whose
experience was in some other way of special interest, or who were
known to have interesting ideas on the subject. These interviews
provided an opportunity to discuss the various problems that were
emerging in the course of the interviews with the students. I
also asked respondents if they had themselves been graduate
students and how they had entered the academic world. Altogether
these interviews were especially valuable as a source of ideas and
of insight.
In addition to these more formal interviews with staff, I have
had countless opportunities of discussing the subject with univer-
sity teachers, over the many years that, first as a civil servant
then as a researcher, I have been interested in graduate educa-
tion, and these discussions, too, have been drawn on in this book.

(iv) Survey of past graduate students

In 1966 we sent questionnaires to all the British students who had
begun graduate study as internal students of a British university
in 1957-8. Our response rate was about 70 per cent overall, but
about 80 per cent of those who had succeeded in gaining the quali-
fications at which they were aiming. This survey has been
reported fully in Rudd and Hatch (1968), but some of the results
are used here.
Chapter 4

THE HISTORY OF GRADUATE

STUDY IN BRITAIN

I UP TO THE INTRODUCTION OF THE PHD

Early origins of our higher degree system

To understand the character of our oldest degree, the 'Master of

Arts', we have to go back to the Greek and Roman civilization in
which the whole range of human knowledge came to be classed under
seven heads - later known as the seven liberal 'arts'. They were
the arts of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric, grouped together as
the 'trivium', and of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy,
known as the 'quadrivium'. This meaning of 'the arts' as an over-
all term for knowledge was carried through into the mediaeval
system of education. In the 'Arts Schools' of tenth and eleventh
century Paris, those who taught the trivium and quadrivium were
known as 'magistri artium'. It was when these numerous Masters
of the Arts began to come together to discuss matters relating to
instruction in the arts that the University of Paris came into
existence. The term magister or master at that time was used to
denote simply a teacher and the terms doctor, master and profes-
sor, were interchangeable.
As some of the early universities became more firmly establi-
shed, round about the thirteenth century, the title of master came
to be restricted to those considered qualified to enter the teach-
ing profession and the study for this qualification has often been
likened by historians to the requirements for entry into mediaeval
guilds.
As the universities began to undertake the more professional
forms of teaching, the liberal arts still formed the basic curric-
ulum, but higher faculties were formed, to which students could
progress after they had completed their arts studies. Rashdall
(1936, vol. 1, p. 323), referring to the University of Paris in
the thirteenth century, explains that 'the four faculties of Paris
were theology, canon law or decrees, medicine and arts - the three
former being styled the superior faculties as contra-distinguished
to the inferior faculty of arts, whose course was regarded more or
less as a preparation for the other three.' The term magister at
the University of Paris, and others modelled on it, then began to
be confined to the qualification in arts and that of doctor was

6
7 chapter 2

assigned to those who, having completed their arts studies, went

on to qualify in theology, law or medicine.
Although the origins of Oxford and Cambridge are not entirely
certain, both seem to have had part of their origin in disturbances
and unrest in other universities causing scholars to migrate - to
Oxford from Paris, and to Cambridge from Oxford. Certainly both
universities seem to have been shaped after the model of Paris.
At both universities, during the thirteenth and fourteenth cen-
turies, many students entered at about the age of fourteen, and if
they took the bachelorship at about eighteen this was only an inter-
mediate step on the way to becoming a master some three years
later. However, as the distinction between school and university
became sharper, and the work undertaken by the schools was exten-
ded to a higher level, so the level of knowledge required for the
bachelorship rose. While the period between determinations (BA)
and inception or commencement (MA) was still three years, the
demands made on the aspiring MA were progressively reduced so far
as actual studies were concerned. In theory, however, he was
still expected to benefit from, and mature through, residence
within the learned atmosphere of his university. But in time,
even the residence qualifications became less important and when
it was dispensed with entirely at Cambridge in 1606 it was argued
that it had never been strictly enforced (Winstanley, 1935, p. 3).
The first three Scottish universities, St Andrews, Glasgow and
Aberdeen, were founded in the fifteenth century each by a bishop
who had at one time studied in one of the French provincial uni-
versities which were organized on the lines of the University of
Bologna, or had some direct connections with Bologna itself. Not
surprisingly therefore, in the first place, the Scottish universi-
ties' system of government resembled Bologna's in that the church
had a greater influence and the students participated much more
directly in the running of the university than they did at Paris.
The curriculum was, however, from the beginning, organized on
Parisian lines. All three Scottish universities provided some
higher studies beyond the MA but many students went to European
universities for these.
Edinburgh University, founded by the town council in 1583, drew
its staff, curriculum and degree system largely from the other
Scottish universities.

The nineteenth century

By the nineteenth century, residence requirements for the MA had
virtually disappeared. Oxford, after making an attempt to re-
introduce some kind of examinations for the MA, finally gave up in
1807; moreover in 1860 it also abolished the three week token
residence which until then had been a requirement. And so at
Oxford and Cambridge the MA became a set of initials to be pur-
chased by the graduate of over three to four years' standing. By
the beginning of the nineteenth century the only earned higher
degrees were doctorates, still awarded in the same three subjects
of divinity, law and medicine, to which music had been added at
Cambridge. But the exercises for these had fallen into disrepute,
having become a mere ritual with which it was possible to dispense
8 chapter 2

on payment of a fee. Few were conferred - only five in Oxford in

1822, for example (excluding honorary degrees).
In 1832 a third university was founded in England - Durham -
which in most respects was modelled on Oxford and Cambridge. It
did, however, at first award an MA that could be gained only by
residence and an examination. This lasted only until 1858, when
the Durham MA became similar to those of Oxford and Cambridge.
London University, which was founded in 1836 as an examining
body, instituted the 'earned' MA from the beginning and has never
abandoned the principle that the master's degree requires a further
period of academic work. It also awarded doctorates in medicine
and law from the start, but, as it was founded as a non-sectarian
institution, did not award its first doctorate in divinity until
1904. In 1860 London became the first university with a faculty
of science awarding the degree of Bachelor of Science - up to that
time science could be studied only within the arts degree. Then,
in 1862, London extended the range of subjects within which a doc-
torate could be awarded by instituting the DSc degree, and, six
years later, the DLit.
The next university to award the DSc was Edinburgh, which awar-
ded its first in 1866. This, however, was of a much lower stan-
dard, being achieved after only one year of postgraduate study.
The standard was gradually raised until, in 1895, this degree was
superseded when new statutes introduced the degrees of DLitt,
DPhil and DSc into all four of the Scottish universities.
By this time, new doctorates had already been introduced into
other universities, Durham instituting the DSc in 1882 and
Cambridge the DSc and the DLitt in 1883. The civic universities
founded in the last quarter of the nineteenth century adopted the
new doctorates from the beginning: i.e. the Victoria University
of Manchester (1) in 1880, and the University of Wales in 1896.
Oxford followed in 1900.
Another new development was Durham's pioneering move in being
the first university in the country to introduce the MSc in 1878.
London, despite its lead in science, did not award the MSc until
1914. The MSc, unlike the MA, was in almost all universities an
'earned' degree from the beginning, requiring a period of post-
graduate study and some form of test, either an examination or a
dissertation or both.
Meanwhile the MA (2) continued its somewhat chequered existence
and towards the end of the nineteenth century it took on very
different forms in different universities. In Scotland it was a
first degree. Some universities followed Oxford and Cambridge in
granting it automatically to a BA or an honours BA of three or
four years' standing. Others required candidates for master's
degrees to sit an examination, while Wales was the first university
in Britain to introduce a thesis as a requirement for the MA.
The proliferation of new higher degrees, which was accelerated
by the growth of new universities at the turn of the century, did
not, however, mean that large numbers of students entered for these
new qualifications. The DSc in Edinburgh, during the first twenty-
five years of its existence, for instance, was rarely awarded to
more than two candidates in any one year. During the first forty-
five years of the London DLitt only seven were awarded.
9 chapter 2

Nor must it be thought that the new degrees were introduced

without controversy. For example, when Durham, having introduced
the BSc in 1876 and the MSc in 1878, seemed likely to introduce
yet another degree in science, one member of the staff urged that
Durham should beware of becoming 'infected with the mania for
examinations which is so prevalent nowadays. It seems to be for-
gotten that a man may be examined till he has no brain power left
for practical work. As the standard for the M.Sc. is so high, we
fail to see the object of a further degree in science1 (Durham
University Journal', 17 December 1881.) However, the tide was
too strong and the DSc arrived in 1882.
In 1895, both Oxford and Cambridge took the revolutionary step
of admitting graduates of other universities to membership of their
colleges without taking an entrance examination. New regulations
were introduced so that a graduate of another university could now
engage in research at Oxford or Cambridge and after residence of
only two years be given not a doctorate, nor (immediately) a
master's degree, but simply a bachelor's degree. In the case of
Oxford it was the new BLitt or BSc; in Cambridge it bore the
familiar title of BA. At Cambridge this postgraduate bachelor's
degree could be obtained either by Tripos exams or by research.
Among the first three students to be awarded the BA certificate of
research at Cambridge, in 1897, was Ernest Rutherford who had pre-
viously graduated in New Zealand. Needless to say, there was no
great rush of graduates from other universities in this country,
let alone the rest of the world, to study for a further two years
at Cambridge in order to gain a second BA. The BA by Certificate
of Research was in existence for twenty-seven years and on average
it was awarded to nine students per year. The BA by Tripos for
graduate students ceased in 1913 and in the sixteen years of its
existence it was awarded in all to only fo:fty-four students.
There were instances of other bachelor's degrees of this type;
none however, were long-lived. A BSc by research as a first
degree was instituted in London in 1900; it required a pass in
the intermediate examination, to be followed by two years of
research, but although it was available to students in economics,
science and engineering, in the twenty-four years of its existence
only seventeen were awarded. Bristol appears to have had a simi-
lar degree until 1935; it was open to non-graduates who had to do
three years' full-time research and present a thesis. Alterna-
tively, holders of a bachelor's degree or a diploma of another
university were permitted to present a thesis after only two years
of research.

The early twentieth century and the introduction of the PhD

By the turn of the, century, the British universities were coming to
the end of the first stage in the evoluti6n of higher degrees. An
earned mastership was available - or about to become available - in
most universities other than Oxford and Cambridge; this provided a
goal for students wanting to take their studies beyond first degree
level by a year or two. Doctorates were now awarded in most
fields; however, these required the student to do some high level
research and produce original work of considerable calibre, and,
10 chapter 2

moreover, the thesis could not normally be submitted until at least

five years had elapsed after the first degree. Unlike Germany and
North America, Britain did not yet have the lower doctorate that
could be gained after two or three years' research, the PhD. This
degree was originally introduced in Germany, well before the nine-
teenth century, and had taken a form which is somewhat different
from that to which we are now accustomed in Britain. To under-
stand the nineteenth century German PhD, we have to realize that at
that time it was in effect the only real university degree in that
country. Secondary education continued much longer than in
Britain - often to the age of 19 or 20. The level of the school-
leaving examination was very high indeed. It has been said, 'the
German youth, when he went to the university, had had in his Gym-
nasium a good old-fashioned, well rounded education and had passed
an examination that might well be compared to the British or
American Pass Degree' (Tout, 1929, pp. 10-11). Then, after
approximately three years at university, the student would take the
'Staatsexamen', an examination set by the state, and leading to
government service including teaching. Those students who were
able to continue beyond the Staatsexamen would spend two to three
years in further study, attending seminars and writing a speciali-
zed thesis. They would then be subjected to a rigorous examination
on the more general background as well as the specialized field of
their theses. And after lengthy oral examinations on their theses,
they would, if successful, be awarded the degree of Doctor of Phil-
osophy, the first and only degree conferred by the university.
Another important feature of the German university system was
that it was (and is) quite normal for students to travel from one
university to another, taking courses and attending lectures given
by a variety of teachers of their own choice. This meant that it
was easy for students from other countries to come into the German
university system at the stage when German students had just taken
their Staatsexamen, and to join in the PhD courses. The German
university authorities recognized American, English and other
degrees as a basis on which to begin PhD work, and it has been
estimated that, during the nineteenth century, approximately 10,000
American graduates went to Germany for graduate study (Berelson,
1960, p. 11), most of them towards the end of the century.
It is not surprising then, that America was the next country to
introduce the PhD, the first three being awarded at Yale as early
as 1861, eleven years before the earned master's degree was revived
(at Karvard). In 1876, forty-four PhDs were awarded by twenty-
five institutions. In 1890, the number had risen to 125, and ten
years later had doubled. The PhD had 'taken hold'; it was begin-
ning to be a status symbol, a coveted set of initials, a key to the
door of the professions, and particularly to the academic world.
This commercialization of the PhD was the subject of much argument
and heart-searching, one example being an article written by
William James in 1903, entitled 'The Ph.D. Octopus', much of which
is still topical.
Is not our growing tendency to appoint no instructors who are not
also doctors an instance of pure sham? Will anyone pretend for
a moment that the doctor's degree is a guarantee that its pos-
sessor will be successful as a teacher?... The truth is that the
11 chapter 2

Doctor-Monopoly in teaching, which is becoming so rooted an

American custom, can show no serious grounds whatsoever for it-
self in reason.... In reality it is but a sham, a bauble, a
dodge, whereby to decorate the catalogues of schools and
colleges....
Despite the popularity of the PhD in the USA, American graduate
students continued to flock to Europe in considerable numbers and
in this they were not discouraged by the American university auth-
orities. Indeed, one of the express purposes of an inaugural
meeting of the Association of American Universities in 1900 was to
make representations to foreign universities as to 'the importance
of revising their regulations governing the admission of American
students to the examinations for the higher degrees' - it was,
incidentally, also hoped that the deliberations of the conference
would help to 'raise the opinion entertained abroad of our own
Doctor's degree' (Berelson, 1960, p. 16).
One country whose graduate students took up postgraduate work in
the USA in ever increasing numbers was Canada, since American uni-
versities offered generous fellowships and their own country as yet
provided very little postgraduate education at all. The Canadian
universities, while making an effort to develop their own facili-
ties for graduate study, were, however, conscious of their inabil-
ity to provide a wide range of subjects and, although Toronto
awarded the first PhD in 1902, with McGill following in 1909, the
number of higher degrees conferred was small. There was much
criticism by other Canadian universities, who were not as yet them-
selves offering opportunities for postgraduate study, of the
quality of 'service' provided for graduate students at Toronto and
McGill.
The Canadian universities were not, however, happy to see so
many of their best graduates going to the USA or Germany for grad-
uate study. They would have liked more of them to have gone to
Britain, both because of sentimental and other ties, but also
because they believed that students who went to Britain would be
more likely to return than those who went to the USA.
But what did Britain have to offer the student from overseas?
The actual facilities for study, laboratories, libraries and - most
important - academic staff available at individual universities and
in certain fields, were often excellent. What was missing, how-
ever, was what students had increasingly learnt to expect - a
qualification with a high status, at the end of a period of study
that was not excessively long. This was a matter of considerable
concern to universities of other countries. Indeed, it was the
desire to facilitate the movement of graduate students, which led
to the first imperial conference of universities.
The Allied Colonial Universities Conference met in 1903 and was
attended by representatives from the universities of Canada,
Australia, New Zealand and South Africa as well as from all the
home universities. It provided an opportunity for the discussion
in particular of the need for universities to recognize each other's
degrees, so that students from overseas universities could be accep-
ted more readily for higher degree work in Britain. A similar
theme was taken up at the imperial Conference on Education in 1907.
The first Congress of the Universities of the British Empire, in
12 chapter 2

1912 devoted a whole session to 'Inter-University Arrangements for

Postgraduate and Research Students'. It was here that there is
the first record of a proposal that British universities should
begin to award the PhD. The discussion on this brought out the
objections of the British universities, some of which, it must be
admitted, have proved justified. The principal objections were
that the possibility of a doctorate would draw into research people
who were attracted not by the research but by the degree, that the
status of master's degrees would suffer, and that the doctorate
would be devalued.
After the congress the British universities seem to have started
to consider more seriously the possibility of introducing the PhD.
The outbreak of war, two years later, might have been expected to
bring the informal discussions to an end, but instead it gave them
an added impetus. In the atmosphere of the war years it seemed
unthinkable that the German universities could again be allowed to
play such an important part in the postgraduate education, espe-
cially in science, of students from Britain, Canada and the USA.
Therefore the universities of Canada and the USA put increasing
pressure on the British universities to recognize their degrees and
to introduce the PhD. But even before the resolutions passed by
the organizations of Canadian universities and American professors
arrived in the British universities, discussions were taking place
in and between the British universities, including a conference of
representatives of English universities in Oxford in December 1916
and of northern universities in Manchester in May 1917. These
discussions culminated in all the universities of the United
Kingdom, holding, a week after the Manchester meeting, a conference
on the interchange of students and teachers. It was called by Dr
Alex Hill, Principal of University College, Southampton, who as
Honorary Secretary of the Bureau of the Universities of the Empire
that was set up by the 1912 Congress, had been acting as an inter-
mediary between the universities of Canada and the USA and those
of Britain. The resolutions passed by the conference proposed a
number of improvements in graduate study to attract more overseas
students and, in particular, the introduction of the PhD. The
conference then adjourned for a year to give the universities more
time to consider these proposals.
As might be expected, the year's discussion showed some univer-
sities in favour of the PhD, others against it. One factor which
may well have 'tipped the balance' in favour of the PhD in those
universities that had not yet made up their minds by the time of
the resumed conference in 1918, was the intervention of the Foreign
Secretary, A.J. Balfour. He had recently been on a visit to North
America as head of the British mission to further Anglo-American
co-operation in the war and had, during his visit, become very
much aware of the case for Britain taking the place of Germany as
the European country to which American students would turn for
their graduate studies. He realized that for this it was necess-
ary to improve the facilities for graduate study at British uni-
versities and, being aware of the discussions in progress at the
time, he invited representatives of the universities to meet the
President of the Board of Education, H.A.L. Fisher, and himself
to explore what could be done.
13 chapter 2

At this meeting, which took place on 9 May 1918, on the eve of

the resumed conference, he made a very strong appeal for universi-
ties to devote more attention to the postgraduate facilities
being offered in British universities, 'not merely to fill the
gap inevitably made by the exclusion of Germany from the place she
had hitherto occupied in advanced teaching and in the promotion of
research, but also to strengthen the higher intellectual bonds'
which united Britain with her allies. Second, he urged that
machinery should be found through which the great body of univer-
sity institutions could speak on occasion with a common voice -
thus facilitating 'public relations' between the universities of
this country and those from overseas (Perkin, 1969, p. 24).
His appeal for improved postgraduate facilities at British
universities was made to the (almost) converted. His second
suggestion was taken up immediately. At the conference the
following day it was decided to set up the standing Committee of
Vice-Chancellors and Principals to speak for the universities of
the United Kingdom and the first concrete proposal of this new
committee was for the 'preparation of pamphlets on facilities for
advanced study and research in the several.Universities and their
distribution by the Bureau' of the Universities of the Empire.
And so the issues leading up to the introduction of the British
PhD, were closely bound up not only with the development of inter-
national co-operation among universities but also with the establi-
shment of a permanent body for national co-operation.
When the Conference of the Universities of the United Kingdom
was reconvened on the following day the majority of the universi-
ties had already come to a positive decision and it appears that
all but one of the remainder stated that it was likely that if most
universities agreed to institute the new degree, they too would
concur. The one dissenting university was, however, a rather
important one - London, whose degrees were sat for not only by
London students but also by those of many university colleges that
have since become universities. London had a particular reason
to object to the new PhD in that the conditions of study proposed
for it were very similar to those of the London master's degree.
By May 1919, however, London had decided not to stand out alone
against the PhD and to introduce it for internal students in all
faculties except engineering. Within the following two years the
London PhD was extended to the engineering faculty and to external
students, which completed the adoption of the PhD. It was, and
remains, the only occasion on which all the British universities
have introduced a major innovation in virtually identical form
and virtually in unison.

II AFTER THE INTRODUCTION OF THE PHD

Though the PhD made graduate study more attractive, there could
not be any very substantial expansion of graduate study until more
students could gain grants for their support, and until the uni-
versities could provide the facilities the students needed.
Because money for both grants and facilities has come increasingly
from the government the history of graduate education in the last
half century is largely the history of developing and changing
government policies.
14 chapter 2

Before the First World War most graduate students seem to have
held a junior teaching or research post, often paid by a professor
out of his own salary, or one of a handful of endowed fellowships
or scholarships at a university - for example Oxford and Cambridge
were reported to have had fifty postgraduate scholarships (Maclean,
1917) - or a grant from the Commissioners for the 1851 Exhibition
or the Carnegie Trust. Some will have been supported by parents
and, after the 1902 Education Act, a few perhaps by local educa-
tion authorities. But, although there are no firm figures, it is
clear that support was difficult to find and the students were few
in number.
The first direct state support explicitly for graduate students
was in agriculture as a result of a minor provision in Lloyd
George's 1910 budget. However the development that has proved
historically more important was the setting up in 1915 of the
Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, from whose grants
to graduate students in science and engineering the studentships
now awarded by the research councils, and education departments,
which support the majority of British graduate students, are
linearly descended. The DSIR maintenance awards were initially
presented, at least to the public and the Treasury as a temporary
scheme, until other sources started to provide adequately for re-
search students - so temporary and experimental that for some time
they were deliberately not given a name. However, it was
realized within a decade or so that any early expectation that
they could eventually be wound up was unfounded. But though they
were not brought to an end, neither did they grow in number greatly
until after the Second World War; it was not until then that the
peak number of 252 awards in 1922-3, when the largest number of
ex-servicemen had just graduated, was surpassed.
In 1946 the Barlow Report recommended that the numbers of
scientists graduating each year should be doubled, and as a reper-
cussion from this the number of new DSIR awards given each year
rose to a new plateau of about 400 a year, compared with an annual
average of 82 for the period 1928-38.
Another major increase in the availability of funds for graduate
students came also in 1946 with a change in State Scholarships.
These had started in England and Wales in 1920, and even before
1946 a State Scholar could have his award extended for a year for
further study after graduation. In 1946, however, the Ministry
of Education began to give State Scholarships to the holders of
university and college awards, which meant that if a university
gave a small scholarship for graduate study this was automatically
converted to a full award. Unlike DSIR awards, State Scholar-
ships varied in value according to the parent's income, and so for
most students they were worth appreciably less than DSIR mainte-
nance allowances.

The new arrangements of 1957

In 1957 there were substantial changes in the provision of
students' grants. (i) Supplemental State Scholarships for grad-
uate study came to an end and were replaced in the arts by a new
State Studentship scheme and in science and technology by the
15 chapter 2

awarding of extra DSIR studentships. (ii) Unlike State Scholar-

ships, the new State Studentships were not subject to any parental
means test, so that, for the first time, the central government
was providing substantial numbers of graduate studentships in the
humanities and social studies that were of sufficient value by
themselves to maintain a student. (iii) A new kind of award was
offered alongside the DSIR Research Studentships - Advanced Course
Studentships given for graduate level courses of instruction.
The coming into existence of these awards led to a proliferation
of new courses alongside those that were already in existence. By
the end of 1960 some 240 courses had been 'accepted' by the DSIR as
suitable for these studentships and as only 274 Advanced Course
Studentships were awarded that year the students must have been
somewhat thinly spread. (iv) With the introduction of these new
arrangements the DSIR gave up any pretence at being able to select
students centrally. Instead the universities were given 'quotas'
of awards and were in general left to select the students to fill
them. The quota system has been adopted also by the new research
councils set up in the 1960s. It allows the universities more
independence but increases the importance attached to the grade
awarded in the first degree as a criterion for selection for re-
search - partly because selection is carried out in the summer
after the degree results become available whereas under other
systems it has to be carried out earlier, and partly because the
degree result is the main criterion for eligibility for an award,
(v) They inaugurated more than a decade of rapid expansion in the
numbers of awards, and so of graduate education.

Since 1957
In 1957 the boom in higher education, of which the even more rapid
boom in graduate education was part, was still in its early stages.
In 1954 there were just over 80,000 full-time students in British
universities, only a little more than one and a half times the
figure on the outbreak of war fifteen years earlier. By 1957 the
total had risen to 95,000, an increase by one-sixth over three
years, and the trend that was to take the total to 200,000 by 1967
and to 240,000 by 1972 had begun. In 1959, one student in six-
teen was postgraduate, in 1957 one in nine and in 1972 one in six.
In 1972 the number of undergraduates was 2.4 times as large as in
1957 but the number of graduate students was 3.5 times as large.
The reasons for the expansion in graduate study were similar
to those for the expansion in undergraduate study which fed it.
The students, their parents and the schools increasingly believed
that there were benefits to be gained from higher education while,
at the same time, economic prosperity made it: easier for children
to stay longer in education. Not everyone was necessarily wholly
sure what these benefits were, but most would have included
easier access to attractive jobs - when belief in the degree as a
road to a good job came to an end, in 1970, the expansion slowed
down. For the government, the willingness to provide the money
for the expansion arose from a belief that increasing numbers of
graduates were needed by the economy, especially the most highly
trained, those with higher degrees. In particular there was a
16 chapter 2

belief that, as one of the causes of economic growth is technolo-

gical change, training scientists in research would stimulate
economic growth. One measure of the way in which this belief in
the value to Britain of increased graduate education was able to
loosen the Treasury's purse strings is the increase in the numbers
of research studentships awarded. The largest share in the in-
crease in numbers went to science where the DSIR awarded 650
research students in 1957 and its successor research councils, the
Science Research Council and the Natural Environment Research
Council awarded 2,400 in 1970 and 4,200 in 1972; but the biggest
percentage increase came in the social sciences which moved from a
mere handful awarded by DSIR, the Ministry of Education and the
Scottish Education Department in 1957 to some 700 awarded by the
Social Science Research Council in 1970 and 1,700 in 1972. These
new research councils had been set up in 1965 and 1966 and their
creation led to some reshuffling of responsibility for the support
of graduate students; but all of them maintained a basic contin-
uity from the awarding system developed by the DSIR.

Direction from the University Grants Committee

One of the most notable changes in recent years has been a shift
in the University Grants Committee's perception of its role.
Until 1946 the UGC saw its role, at least formally, as no more than
a buffer between the government and the universities, advising the
government on the total size of grant needed, and then allocating
the money between the universities. This limited formal role did
not prevent the committee from, for instance, encouraging the
development of the Federated Superannuation Scheme for Universi-
ties, or suggesting to universities that they should spend more on
their libraries and ask for more money on that account, but such
nudging of the universities seems to have been of a fairly minor
kind.
In 1946 an important addition was made to the UGC's terms of
reference:
... and to assist, in consultation with the universities and
other bodies concerned, the preparation and execution of such
plans for the development of the universities as may from time
to time be required in order to ensure that they are fully
adequate to national needs.
At first the committee saw its function under its extended
terms of reference as two-fold: (i) ensuring that the universities
were expanding sufficiently fast to provide enough places for
students, and, in a general way, enough graduates for the country's
needs, and (ii) mediating between the universities and the various
official and unofficial bodies, who were convinced that they knew
what the nation's needs were and what the universities should do
to meet them.
Mediating in this way inevitably took the committee further and
further along the road towards directing the universities on the
numbers of students they should admit into each field of study and
on how they were to spend the funds allocated to them. For
example when the Ministry of Health decided, in 1961, that there
was a need for a 10 per cent increase in entrants to medical
17 chapter 2

schools, the committee had to arrange for the implementation of

this decision by negotiating with the medical schools and provid-
ing extra grants for buildings, equipment and staff. In doing
this, the committee was virtually deciding how many medical students
each university should admit. The UGC's quinquennial report for
1957-62 lists fifteen subject areas in which the committee had made
some intervention. Most of these interventions had only an in-
direct effect on graduate study; for example, as science and tech-
nology graduates are relatively likely to enter graduate study, the
encouragement of growth in the number of students in science and
technology would indirectly increase the number of graduate
students.
The UGC has frequently conveyed its view to the universities
informally, but the kind of advice that is given is sometimes made
public in the quinquennial reports, in the speeches and writings of
the committee's chairman, and, since 1965, in the 'Annual Survey'.
The report on 1957-62, after discussing the length of first degree
courses and concluding that the increasing pressure of numbers
seeking admission ruled out a general lengthening to cover the
growth of knowledge, suggested that selected students could instead
follow a one year postgraduate course (para. 272). Similar views
had been put forward some five years earlier by the committee's
chairman, Sir Keith Murray (now Lord Murray of Newhaven) ; and the
Robbins Committee also made similar recommendations.
The deciding of overall policy by the UGC was taken a step
further and their policy on graduate education was drastically
changed when the quinquennial grant for 1967-72 was announced.
Each university received a statement setting out a number of
details of the way the sums allocated to it had been arrived at,
including the numbers of students that it was expected the univer-
sity would have, how many would be scientists, and how many would
be graduate students. Also a 'Memorandum of General Guidance1 was
issued to universities and published. (3) Now it is true that
hardly any of the recurrent grant given to the universities is ear-
marked for any specific purpose, and that the universities, having
been given the money, can spend it entirely how they wish. But in
practice the universities do their best to meet the wishes of the
UGC, not merely because they believe that this will be taken into
account in deciding the size of future grants, but also because
they wish to meet national needs if they can discover what these
needs are. Any 'guidance1 issued by the UGC therefore has con-
siderable force.
In its 1967 'Memorandum of General Guidance' the committee said
that its allocation of money was based on the belief that the uni-
versities should take fewer graduate students than they had planned
to take because:
(a) the committee ... think that the flow from the schools into
the undergraduate places should be a real priority; (b) the
numerical proportion of the first degree output which embarks
on postgraduate work already exceeds the Robbins estimate; (c)
there is uneasiness that the rise in the proportion of grad-
uates who stay in the Universities for postgraduate studies
rather than moving into teaching or the outside world is
greater than the country can afford at present; (d) with the
18 chapter 2

slackening of the rate of growth of student numbers there will

be less need in most disciplines for recruitment to university
staff, via the higher degree than has been the case during the
past few years.
Nevertheless, 1967-72 was a period of rapid expansion of graduate
study, fed by greatly increased numbers of studentships provided
by the research councils.
In both science and technology the UGC asked for a reversal of
the trend towards more MSc courses lasting at least one year, and
suggested that there should be more shorter courses aimed at people
who had worked in industry for a period. For such courses and
others designed to meet the special needs of graduates who were
working or likely to work in industry they guardedly offered 'pump-
priming' grants, the details of which, and especially the need for
some element of collaboration with industry, were spelt out more
clearly in the 'Annual Survey' for 1967-8. In all these recomm-
endations the UGC were clearly influenced by the views of the Swann
Committee (see below).
In 1969-70 there was another new departure - the issuing to
universities of a 'Preliminary Memorandum of General Guidance on
Quinquennial Planning, 1972-77'. The purpose of this was to tell
the universities for what kinds of development they would be expec-
ted to plan when putting in their bids for money. The policy on
graduate students was basically a reiteration of that in the 1967
'Memorandum of General Guidance'. There were three main points:
the ratio of graduate students to undergraduates should not be
allowed to rise; there should be more 'part-time and short-course
postgraduate and post-experience courses, many of which make rela-
tively small demands on the physical capacity of universities and
sometimes generate substantial fee income'; lastly, the 'pump-
priming' grants for collaboration between industry and universities
were likely to continue.
A report on the degree of success achieved by these schemes for
collaboration between universities and industry was given in the
'Annual Survey' for 1970-1 (pp. 24-6). Of the twenty-one courses
covered by the report, only four could be classed as successful,
though many of the remainder were partly successful. The report
comments:
So far as post-experience industry-orientated courses are con-
cerned, there is evidence to confirm the general belief that the
longer courses are very unpopular with employers and potential
students. A recurring feature is of courses being shortened
to overcome this difficulty. In full-time courses the optimum
length appears to be one or two weeks. Intensive technical
courses which need to be longer are more likely to succeed if
arranged in modular form, each module occupying a short period
and capable of being taken singly or separately, or by part-
time study over a longer period.
This problem, of attracting to graduate courses students who have
had a period in employment, will be discussed more fully in
chapters 8 and 9.
19 chapter 2

COMMITTEES AND REPORTS

The whole period since 1945, but especially the last decade and a
half, has seen a long series of reports that have related in one
way or another to graduate education, though for most of these
graduate education was a very minor and remote interest because
their main concern has been with wider educational issues or with
various aspects of science policy, and especially scientific and
technological manpower. Most but not all of these reports have
come from official committees - there has also been a series of
reports from subcommittees of the Royal Society that looked at
graduate education in various branches of science, and other learned
societies have set up similar committees from time to time. The
recommendations of some of these reports will be referred to in
later chapters. Two, however, have been of especial significance
for graduate education, and so need to be discussed at greater
length. These were the reports of the Robbins and Swann
Committees.

Robbins Committee
To a certain extent the decision in 1961 to set up the Committee
on Higher Education, under the chairmanship of Professor Lord
Robbins, was itself a reflection of changes in attitudes towards
higher education to which I have already referred. The increas-
ing realization of the importance of higher education had led, on
the one hand, to increased competition for university places and
pressure on the universities to expand and provide more places,
and, on the other hand, to a greater willingness on the part of
the government to provide the funds needed for expansion - even
before the committee reported, many of the more important decisions
that made possible the rapid expansion of the 1960s, such as the
decision to found most of the new universities, had already been
made. At the same time there was a realization that a larger
system of higher education must be in some respects a different
system, and that there was a need, while planning for expansion,
to question the whole structure and purpose of the higher educa-
tion system as well as the detailed way in which it operates.
The Robbins Committee can now be seen to have made an impact
in five ways. Its most important recommendations concerned the
future demand for places in higher education and the need to meet
it without lowering academic standards. The committee not only
reinforced the belief in expansion that had led to its being set
up, but also provided the first fairly realistic estimates of the
future size of the expansion. Extrapolation of trends is always
chancy, and the calculations of future demand made for the commit-
tee by Moser, Layard and their staff (together with government
statisticians) were intentionally conservative, in the belief that
only conservative estimates would gain acceptance. The result
was that, when the ink on the report was barely dry, the numbers
of qualified applicants for university places had already risen
above the predicted figures. Even so, the predicted increases in
demand for places were startling enough to ensure that the govern-
ment was aware of the scale of the problem that was coming and
that provision was made for a massive expansion.
20 chapter 2

The second way in which the Robbins Report has shaped events is
through a number of other recommendations that have been accepted,
such as the granting of university status to the former colleges
of advanced technology. The fact that many of the committee's
recommendations were not accepted should not be allowed to detract
from the importance of those that were. Third, a whole series of
pertinent comments, backed by careful factual analysis, have
changed the climate of opinion on many issues within higher
education.
Fourth, the committee's invitations to put in evidence had a
catalytic effect, generating thought, research and discussion, so
that its mere existence was in this way alone having an impact on
the climate of opinion long before it reported. Lastly the
committee's own report and the massive volumes of appendices
summarizing the researches done on its behalf and, more broadly,
the state of knowledge on higher education, gave a further stimu-
lus to research and ideas.
The committee's main impact on graduate education came, however,
not from its comments and recommendations on graduate education,
but, indirectly, from the massive expansion of undergraduate
numbers. To provide extra university teachers in anticipation of
the rise in student numbers, there was a sharp increase in the
numbers of graduate students. It might have been expected that
the increase in the number of graduates emerging from the univer-
sities as a consequence of the growth in undergraduate numbers
would also augment the numbers of graduate students; but, by the
time the 'bulge' generation was graduating, the UGC was trying to
restrain the growth of graduate education, and, although the
larger crop of graduates produced more graduate students, it did
so to a lesser extent than might have been expected.
The committee's recommendations that explicitly related to
graduate education fell into two parts: those related to
the numbers of graduate students and those concerned with the form
and organization of their graduate studies. The latter will be
discussed in later chapters, in the general context of the prob-
lems with which they were concerned. Their recommendations on
numbers were that there should be more graduate students especi-
ally in the arts, and that most of the expansion should be in
taught courses rather than research.

Swann Committee
The Swann Committee (4) was like the Robbins Committee in that the
decision to appoint it reflected a changing climate of opinion,
and its report and the discussion that this engendered reinforced
the trends that had led to the committee's creation. The prob-
lem into which the committee was asked to look was that the
absorption by the universities of a substantial proportion of
their better qualified graduates in science and technology was
leaving industry and the schools with only those who, on the
evidence of their academic performance, seemed the less able.
Scientists with PhDs were on the whole reluctant to leave univer-
sity work for industry. Evidence of the widespread concern at
this situation can be found in the decision of the SRC, before
21 chapter 2

the Swann Committee issued its interim report, to keep the number
of awards it made to a constant percentage (18 per cent) of the
students graduating, whereas for some years this percentage had
been increasing. Also, before the final report was issued, the
UGC had issued its first 'Memorandum of Guidance' asking universi-
ties to reduce the rate of increase in their graduate student
numbers. Of course these changes in policy were not independent
of one another and of the Swann Committee's thinking - there were
both formal and informal links between the bodies responsible for
these decisions and also between these bodies and the Swann
Committee. The committee's recommendations relevant to graduate
education were for a brake on the rate of expansion of graduate
study, a shift from PhD work to course work, which should not
immediately follow the first degree but should come after a period
of employment, a broadening of the PhD and a more experimental
approach to the form of the degree, and various measures to make
industry and school teaching attractive to the ablest science
graduates.
The committee's recommendations take on added point when it is
realized that, although it was composed largely of university
scientists and technologists, it came to conclusions that were at
variance with at least the short-term interests of university
departments of science and technology.
Chapter 3

TODAY'S STUDENTS

The considerable differences between full-time and part-time

students make it necessary to look at each separately, and we
shall take the full-time students first. CD Of these three were
doing research in 1971 for every two following a taught course.
Both the research students and the advanced course students were
distributed very unevenly between subjects (Table 3.1) . Two-
fifths of the students doing research for a degree were in science
alone. Engineering and technology had over a sixth of the re-
search students, the two arts groups together another sixth, and
the social studies group had a seventh. The comparison with the
distribution of undergraduates shows that the relatively large
numbers doing research in science are partly due to the large
numbers of undergraduates in science, but also partly due to either
a relatively high proportion of scientists entering research or to
scientists spending longer on their research Cor both). However,
science is relatively under-represented amongst the advanced
courses, while social studies is the other way round, being rela-
tively under-represented amongst the research students and over-
represented amongst the advanced course students. The large
numbers following courses in social studies are, in part, explained
by graduates from other fields, especially those that do not lead
to any definite occupation, taking vocational courses in, for
example, social work, personnel management or business management.
The highest ratio of graduate students to undergraduates is to
be found neither in science nor in social studies but in architec-
ture and other professional and vocational subjects. This is a
somewhat diverse group of subjects - including catering, house-
hold science, archive management and librarianship - within which
over half the graduate students are to be found in town and
country planning, having come into this field after graduating in
other subjects. Other subject groups which have higher than
average ratios are, in order, the agriculture group, science, the
social studies group, engineering and technology. The lowest
ratios are to be found in the medical group and the language
group. In the case of the medical group, this reflects, in part,
the greater length of medical studies, which inflates the number
of undergraduates. This is only part of the explanation, however,

22
23 chapter 2

TABLE 3.1 Subject and type of study of full-time graduate

students, UK, December 1971

Subject Under- Graduate students

group grads Re- Taught Diploma All Grads
search courses students grads as %
for a for and of all
degree higher others stu-
degrees dents
%
% % % % %

Education* 3.9 1.1 4,.0 - 1.6 -

Medicine, dent-
istry, health 10.8 6.1 5,.6 3.8 6.3 10 .0
Engineering,
technology 15.5 17.2 21..7 4.5 17.1 17 .3
Agriculture,
forestry,
vet. science 1.7 2.9 2,.5 1.1 2.7 23 .1
Science 24.3 39.3 17,.9 6.8 29.8 18 .9
Social,
administrative,
business studies 20.4 14.9 30,.7 18.2 22.9 17 .5
Architecture,
other prof, and
vocational 1.6 1.7 1 .0 4.5 4.2 27 .8
Language, lit.,
area studies 12.3 8.8 7,.9 3.1 8.2 11 .2
Arts other than
languages 9.5 8.8 5,.1 2.2 7.4 12 .6
All groups 100 100 100 100 100 15 .8
Ν (= 100%) 201,083 22,097 9,,683 6,046 37,826

* Diploma students in education are counted as undergraduates.

for when the numbers of graduate students are related to the

number of degrees awarded, the medical group is still found to
have below the average number of graduate students, although not
very greatly below. Many of the research students here are
drawn from other fields - after their long period of study and
apprenticeship, few medical graduates want to become research
students; and although they attend postgraduate courses, these
are mainly either very short or part-time.
There are a number of reasons why the figures given in Table
3.1 provide no more than a very rough indication of the relative
likelihood of going into graduate study from various fields,
(i) Changes of field on graduation result, especially, in an
understatement of the share of science graduates, many of whom do
research in medicine, agriculture and engineering, or follow
24 chapter 2

courses in social studies (ii) The graduate students include a

substantially higher proportion of overseas students than the
undergraduates, so that the ratios of undergraduates to British
graduates would in most cases be substantially different. (iii)
As courses generally last a year whereas research generally takes
three, those fields with a high proportion of advanced course
students will, other things being equal, have fewer graduate
students. Civ) Graduate students are compared with current under-
graduates, whereas they were themselves undergraduates, in the main,
from one to six years earlier, and the proportions of undergraduates
in various fields have been changing in recent years, the share of
arts and social studies rising and that of science and technology
falling.

TABLE 3.2 Percentage of graduates entering research, academic

study or training for social work on graduation, 1968-9

Subject of Men Women All Total

first degree % % % no.

Applied science
with first class 37 42 37 811
all degrees 15 15 15 8,281
Pure science
with first class 68 46 64 1,471
all degrees 30 16 27 13,544
Social studies
with first class 59 45 56 364
all degrees 16 14 15 12,519
Arts
with first class 65 49 59 605
all degrees 20 11 15 10,659

Note: These figures are derived from UGC, 'First Employment of

University Graduates 1968-69' and the classification into subject
groups differs somewhat from that of other UGC statistics used in
this chapter.

It is not possible to compensate completely for these points and

to produce figures which show precisely the relative probability of
graduates in various fields going on to graduate study. An alter-
native approach is, however, provided by figures for the numbers of
graduates continuing their studies immediately after graduation, in
Table 3.2. It differs from Table 3.1 in that (a) it relates only
to the graduates of British universities; (b) it covers only those
who go into graduate education immediately on graduation, and any
fields in which there is a tendency for students to have a period
in employment before going into graduate education will consequent-
ly be under-represented; (c) students are classified by the sub-
jects in which they graduated, not those of their graduate studies;
(d) certain kinds of university graduate-level courses are excluded
from these figures, the only professional and vocational courses
25 chapter 2

covered being those in social work; (e) as the figures relate to

persons awarded first degrees, the figures for the number of first
degrees in science is inflated by degrees awarded to medical
students at the end of their clinical training, reducing slight-
ly the percentage proceeding to graduate study.
One of the most striking aspects of this table is the difference
between the percentages of men and women going into graduate study.
The figures for the women vary little from one subject to another
except that women without first class honours degrees are less
likely to go into graduate study from arts departments than from
other fields. Differences between fields amongst the men are
greater. Graduates in the applied sciences are only half as like-
ly as those in the pure sciences to go straight into graduate
education, regardless of the class of their first degree. Amongst
the remaining subject groups, the likelihood that a man with a
first will go straight into graduate education does not vary
greatly. For men without firsts, however, there are much greater
subject differences, the percentage being highest in pure science
and lowest in social studies. Overall, the percentage of social
studies students going straight into graduate education was only
half that in pure science.

SUBJECT DIFFERENCES
Within the subject groups, there are variations between the indi-
vidual subjects that resemble those between the groups. For
Table 3.3, which illustrates this, I have selected, from the 76
subjects separately distinguished in the UGC statistics, those
that are of particular interest, either because they are amongst
the largest subjects in their group or because they represent
either the top or the bottom extremes of a tendency towards
research or courses.
Two aspects of this table particularly stand out: (i) The
uneven distribution of students within some of the subject groups -
nearly half the students in the 'other arts' group are in history,
and nearly half those in the language and literature groups
in English. Chemistry has the largest number of students of any
subject separately distinguished; in 1971 it had 29 per cent of
the full-time graduate students in science and 8.7 per cent of
all full-time graduate students. Chemistry's share of the total
is, however, falling; in 1966 the comparable figures were 35 per
cent and 12.4 per cent, and in the early 1920s some three-quarters
of the graduate students in science were chemists.
(ii) There are wide variations within some of the groups in the
percentages of graduate students doing research. There are
fairly simple explanations of some of these variations. Mathe-
matics has a higher proportion of advanced course students than
other science subjects because substantial numbers of students,
including many from other fields, take advanced courses in comput-
ing or statistics. The UGC's category 'sociology' includes
departments of social science and social administration which pro-
vide a large number of courses of professional training. Business
management departments do most of their teaching at postgraduate
level and in the form of professional training. At the other
26 chapter 2

TABLE 3.3 Percentage of full-time graduate students who were doing

research for a higher degree in selected subjects, UK, December
1971

% No.

Medicine, dentistry and health 56 2,406

Medicine 58 1,576
Engineering and technology 58 6,507
Chemical engineering 67 650
Civil engineering 51 896
Electrical engineering 62 1,316
Metallurgy 87 565
Agriculture, forestry, vet. science 62 1,034
Science 77 11,351
Biological sciences 84 3,068
Mathematics 53 1,910
Physics 79 2,089
Chemistry 85 3,298
Social, admin., business studies 38 8,714
Business management studies 16 1,771
Economics 42 1,342
Geography 83 576
Government 51 1,015
Law 31 643
Psychology 65 668
Sociology 27 1,936
Architecture, other professional
and vocational studies 18 1,234
Town and country planning 18 704
Language, literature and area
studies 62 3,117
English 61 1,394
French language and studies 81 291
Oriental, Asian, African languages
and studies 74 266
Classical studies 85 203
Russian language and studies 40 96
Arts other than languages 71 2,734
History 83 1,212
Philosophy 70 446
Theology 60 440
Art and design 28 285

extreme, within social studies, psychology departments, which in

many universities count as science departments, show a percentage
of research students that is close to the average for science;
and geography departments, which are sometimes in science or arts
faculties, have the same percentage of research students as his-
tory and biological sciences.
27 chapter 2

DISTRIBUTION BETWEEN UNIVERSITIES

The differences between types of universities (2) in their percen-

tages of graduates amongst their students are, as Table 3.4 shows,
as great as the difference between groups of subjects. London
University has the largest number of graduate students in relation
to its size, closely followed by Oxford and Cambridge; then follow
the larger of the English provincial universities and the new uni-
versities founded in the 1960s; then, after a gap but fairly close
together, the technological universities, the smaller of the re-
maining English provincial universities, and the rest of the Univ-
ersity of Wales. Then after a further gap come the remaining
Scottish universities.

TABLE 3.4 Numbers of full-time graduate and undergraduate students*

by type of university, Great Britain, December 1971

University Graduates Undergraduates Grads as %

no. % no. % of all
students

London 8,466 23 .1 25,423 12 .8 25 .0

Oxbridge 5,026 13 .7 16,917 8 .5 22 .9
New 2,981 8 .1 17,222 8 .7 14 .8
Technological 3,354 9 .2 23,528 11 .9 12 .5
Other Scottish 3,306 9 .0 30,377 15,.3 9 .8
Other Welsh 1,435 3 .9 11,402 5,.7 11 .2
Larger English 8,165 22 .3 45,728 23 .1 15 .2
Smaller English 3,861 10 .6 27,787 14 .0 12 .2
All 36,594 100 198,384 100 15 .6

Categories
London includes Graduate School of Business and Chelsea
College.
New those opening during the 1960s - East Anglia,
Essex, Kent, Lancaster, Stirling, Sussex, Warwick
and York.
Technological Aston, Bath, Bradford, Brunei, City, Loughborough,
Salford, Surrey, UWIST, Heriot-Watt.
Larger English universities with over 4,500 undergraduates (ex-
cluding graduate students in education) - Birming-
ham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester (includ-
ing UMIST and Graduate Business School), Newcastle,
Sheffield.
* Education students are counted as undergraduates.

What do these figures mean and what are the causes of the
differences? One possibility can be dismissed immediately - that
these figures reflect only differences between the balance of
28 chapter 2

subjects in different universities, with those universities that

concentrate on the subjects that have relatively large numbers of
graduate students appearing at the top of the list. If that were
the case, Oxford and Cambridge, which have a high proportion of
arts students, and Londonf which has a high proportion of medical
students, would be at the bottom of the rank order instead of the
top, and the technological institutions that have been colleges of
advanced technology, with their preponderance of scientists and
technologists, would be at the top instead of towards the bottom.
Of course differences in the balance of subjects do affect the rank
order - the position of the ex-CATs would be even lower if it were
not for their concentration on science and technology and, amongst
social studies, on management, which is taught almost entirely at
graduate level. But on the whole the differences shown in Table
3.4 are independent of it.
There are probably two factors at work here. (i) As the
majority of British graduate students do their graduate study
where they gained their first degree„ the numbers of graduate
students are, to a certain extent, linked to the extent to which a
university gives its undergraduates an orientation towards grad-
uate study, and especially towards research. (ii) The size of
its graduate schools reflects the perceived attractiveness of a
university as an institution for teaching graduates and for re-
search - the extent to which it is able to attract students from
outside and to hold its own graduates. Its attractiveness for
graduate study in any given field comes largely from the perception
of the quality of its scholarship held by potential graduate stu-
dents and those advising them, and this, in its turn, is influenced
by the extent to which its staff have a national or international
reputation in their fields.
These differences in the attractiveness for graduate study of
the different universities can also be seen in differences in the
classes of first degree held by students, those universities that
are more attractive being able to gain a higher proportion of stu-
dents with good degrees. An analysis of the class of degree held
by our 1957 cohort of graduate students (3) showed that in general
in each field of study the percentage of students with first class
honours degrees fell from Oxbridge at the top to the smaller pro-
vincial universities at the bottom, exceptions from the rank order
of Table 3.4 being the Welsh and Scottish universities, which in
many fields came above London (Rudd and Hatch, 1968, p. 22) (the
high position of the Welsh and Scottish universities was partly
due to their relatively slow development of advanced courses, for
which the entry standards are lower). Similar results emerged
from an analysis of classes of degree held by the research students
we interviewed at each university or college. The highest per-
centages of students with first class degrees were at Cambridge
and the two colleges of London University we covered, while the
highest percentage with thirds and degrees without honours was at
the City University.
29 chapter 2

RESEARCH ORIENTATION

Within most of the conventional groupings of institutions used in

Table 3.4, there are wide variations in the ratio of graduate stu-
dents to undergraduates, as Table 3.5 shows. This lists institu-
tions in a rank order of their ratio of graduates to undergraduates,
omitting certain small institutions that are largely or wholly post-
graduate in character. Two factors largely account for the posi-
tion of any institution in this list: the strength of its orienta-
tion towards research and graduate teaching and the extent of its
emphasis on science and technology. Thus Chelsea College and
Queen Elizabeth College, which concentrate almost wholly on the
natural sciences, appear 13th and 14th, although in science alone
their rank ordering would be 30th and 36th respectively out of 56.
Similarly, the concentration on engineering, science and management
of the technological universities puts them further up the list
than they would otherwise be.

TABLE 3.5 Percentage of graduate students in total number of full-

time students, December 1971. Universities and colleges arranged
in descending order

40--49 .9% LSE

30--39 .9% Imperial, Wye
25--29 .9% UCL, UMIST, Oxford
20--24 .9% KCL, Birmingham, Sussex
15·-19 .9% Essex, Southampton, Cambridge, QEC, Chelsea,
Reading, Bedford, Lancaster, Aston, QMC,
Bangor, Bradford
10--14 .9% Sheffield, School of Pharmacy, Leed$, Manches-
ter, Loughborough, Warwick, Liverpool, Surrey,
Edinburgh, Durham, Salford, Kent, Strathclyde,
Westfield, City, Royal Vet. Col., Newcastle,
Leicester, Bristol, UWIST, Nottingham,
Swansea, York, East Anglia, Cardiff, Brunei
5--9.9% Aberystwyth, St Andrews, Bath, Hull, Dundee,
Royal Holloway, Keele, Aberdeen, Heriot-Watt,
Glasgow, Stirling, Exeter
0--4.9% Lampeter

The first evidence for a general component of orientation

towards research and graduate teaching in the placing of each ins-
titution is the existence of a relationship between (a) the number
of graduate students each institution has, expressed as a percen-
tage of all students, and (b) the income it receives for research
grants and contracts, expressed as a percentage of its total in-
come. The product moment coefficient of correlation between these
two variables is fairly strong (R = 0.59).
A second piece of evidence is the tendency for universities and
colleges that have a high percentage of graduate students in one
30 chapter 2

group of subjects to have high percentages of graduates in other

groups of subjects too - if there is no institutional factor here
an institution that has a high percentage of graduate students in
one field will be no more likely than any other to have a high
percentage in any other field. Here again the correlation co-
efficients are fairly high - mostly between 0.5 and 0.8. High
correlations between science and engineering and also between the
two arts groups might perhaps have been expected, but in fact the
highest correlation is between science and the 'other arts' group.
Taken together, these results suggest that there is some institu-
tional factor, which I will call research orientation, that makes
an institution that gains recognition for its research also a
strong centre for graduate study, and one that is a strong centre
for graduate study in one field also a strong centre in others.
Institutions can be grouped according to the strength of their
research orientation by taking their position on the two variables
- graduate students as a percentage of all students and income
from research grants and contracts as a percentage of all income.
They can be subdivided into groups by splitting them at the upper
and lower quartile on each variable.
Those groups that are of particular interest are the high and
low. The high group consists of Oxford and Cambridge, three
major London colleges (Imperial, LSE and UCL), a large provincial
university (Birmingham), two new universities (Sussex and Essex)
and two smaller London colleges whose presence in this group is
due to their concentration on science. On the whole this is a
group of institutions of high status. (4) If we extend the
group somewhat to include institutions that are above the upper
quartile on one of these variables and above the median on the
other, we bring in the University of Manchester Institute of
Science and Technology, one smaller provincial university (South-
ampton) and two more new universities (Warwick and York).
At the other extreme, the institutions that have a low research
orientation, coming below the lower quartile on both variables,
are four technological institutions (Brunei, City, the University
of Wales Institute of Science and Technology and Heriot-Watt),
three relatively small Scottish universities (Dundee, St Andrews
and Stirling) of which one is a new foundation, and two smaller
English universities (Exeter and Hull). If we again extend the
boundaries of this group a little by bringing in those institu-
tions below the lower quartile on one variable and below the
median on the other, we add in a larger Scottish university
(Aberdeen), another technological university (Bath) and a college
of the University of Wales (Aberystwyth). (For a fuller discus-
sion of these groupings see Rudd (1973).)
The extended groups of high and low research orientation with
the residue counting as a medium group, provide a basis for the
analysis of university statistics that differs markedly from the
conventional groupings because, with one exception (Oxford and
Cambridge), it is a grouping that cuts across the conventional
boundaries. London University comes into both the high and
medium groups, with three of the five largest colleges in the high
group (however, most of the small London institutions were exclu-
ded from this classification). Of the seven larger English
31 chapter 2

universities, one is in the high group, and six are in the middle
group. The smaller English universities are represented in all
three groups, but on balance tend towards the bottom of the spec-
trum. Of the seven new English universities (counting Keele as
no longer new), four are in the high group. The Scottish univer-
sities and the technological institutions that were CATs are to be
found in the medium and low groups, but are disproportionately
represented in the low group.
We know that the institutions classified as having a high
research orientation have relatively large numbers of graduate
students because this is one of the two variables by which they
have been classified. The important questions, which Tables 3.6
and 3.7 try to answer are how large a share of the graduate
students they have and whether they are predominantly graduate
institutions.

TABLE 3.6 Percentage distribution of graduate and undergraduate

students between institutions of high, medium and low research
orientation, Great Britain, 1969

Subject Research orientation

group High Medium Low Other* All
% % % %

Engineering, tech.
graduates 44.2 51.4 4,.4 0 100
undergraduates 22.1 60.4 17..4 0 100
Science
graduates 39.5 49.8 8..4 2.2 100
unde rgraduate s 28.2 56.0 15,.8 0 100
Social studies
graduates 47.5 38.6 8..3 5.6 100
unde rgraduate s 26.8 56.6 16..3 0.3 100
Language, lit., area
studies
graduates 42.0 40.5 6..2 11.3 100
undergraduates 29.1 58.4 10,.1 2.3 100
Other arts
graduates 46.9 30.3 4.,6 18.2 100
unde r graduate s 22.8 55.9 19,,4 1.9 100
All groups**
graduates 40.6 44.7 7,.0 7.8 100
undergraduates 23.8 56.5 15,,1 4.6 100

* Birkbeck, SOAS, School of Pharmacy, medical schools of univer-

sities of London and Wales, Manchester and London Schools of
Business Studies, Institutes of University of London, Wye
College, Lampeter.
** Including medical, agricultural and professional studies
32 chapter 2

TABLE 3.7 Graduate students as a percentage of all students, by

research orientation of university or college, and subject group,
Great Britain, 1969

Research Engineering, Science Social Language, Other

orientation technology studies litera- arts
ture, area
studies

High 27..21 33..04 24..46 14,.74 21..89

Medium 13,.75 17..34 11..10 7..67 6,.89
Low 4,.50 11..23 8..49 6..83 3,.15
All univs 15..78 19..09 15..46 10..71 12,.01

Of the universities and colleges classed as high, medium and

low, a little over half come into the medium category, leaving a
quarter classified as high and a fifth as low. The low group,
however, are, on average, rather smaller institutions than the
other two groups, and they have only 15 per cent of the under-
graduates. The medium group, with two and a half times as many
undergraduates as the high group, has roughly the same number of
graduates, while the low group, has four undergraduates but only
one graduate for every six in the high group. This is a sub-
stantial measure of concentration, but a long way from complete
concentration. All the highly research oriented institutions
have more undergraduates than graduate students, and less than a
quarter of the students in the whole group are graduates. This
puts them a long way from being specifically, or even mainly,
graduate institutions. On the other hand, the low group, with
one graduate for every thirteen undergraduates, are far from
being solely undergraduate teaching institutions.
Although the different subject groups show a surprising degree
of "uniformity, the differences between groups of institutions are
smallest in languages, where there is little difference between
the low and medium institutions, and both have about half the per-
centage of graduate students to be found in the high group, and
greatest in other arts, where the high institutions have seven
times the percentage found in the low ones.
The number of degrees awarded by the institutions of high,
medium and low research orientation, presents a very similar
picture, in that the share of the higher degrees of each group is
close to its share of the graduate students. We might have
expected a concentration of doctorates in the highly research
oriented institutions, but there is no sign of this; the institu-
tions of high research orientation are awarding virtually the
same percentages of the doctorates that they are of the master's
degrees. However, the institutions with a low research orienta-
tion award relatively few degrees in relation to their numbers of
students, at both first degree and higher degree level. At first
degree level this is due to the high wastage rates of some of
these instituions and the greater length of some degree courses
33 chapter 2

at Scottish universities and ex-CATs. At graduate level it is

probably due to higher wastage rates alone.

A COMPARISON WITH THE USA

Some similar findings in relation to the USA emerge from a number
of studies, and in particular from one carried out by Cartter in
1964 and repeated by Roose and Anderson in 1969. Cartter asked
a sample of teaching staff to rate the faculty of each university
producing PhDs in their own field for their quality, and the grad-
uate programmes of the universities for their effectiveness. In
his analysis he distinguished twenty-nine academic disciplines,
and listed the institutions that were judged to have a 'disting-
uished1 faculty or an 'extremely attractive' graduate programme in
each. There was a strong tendency for the same institutions to
be listed near the top of the rank order under both headings in
subject after subject. When he grouped his disciplines into five
divisions - humanities, social sciences, biological sciences,
physical sciences and engineering - Harvard came first in four of
the categories and MIT in the fifth, while Berkeley came second
in all categories. The other nine universities that appeared
high on the list have almost as high an international reputation
as these three.
The later replication of this study by Roose and Anderson pro-
duced very similar results although there had been some slight
shifting of position, with new institutions entering at the
bottom, and older ones working their way up.
Another study (National Academy of Sciences, 1967, p. 18) has
ranked departments in the order of the number of doctorates they
awarded and then compared for each of the subjects for which both
sets of data were available, the η departments whom Cartter's
respondents rated as 'extremely attractive' or 'attractive' with
the top η for the number of doctorates awarded. The extent to
which they corresponded ranged from 91 per cent in anthropology
to 46 per cent in philosophy. The institutions that were rated
high for quality but not for size were mainly private universities,
while those high for size but not quality were mainly public.
This study also showed that three-quarters of the doctorates
are awarded by a quarter of those institutions awarding the doc-
torate, and US government statistics show that those institutions
awarding the doctorate form only a quarter of those awarding
bachelor's degrees. This is probably no greater a degree of con-
centration than in Britain, when account is taken of all the
institutions at which it is possible to study for a degree -
those that are not universities make an almost negligible contri-
bution to the number of higher degrees awarded. It is clear that,
in both Britain and the USA, there is a well-recognized rank order
by quality of the institutions providing graduate education, that
the rank order varies a little, but not very much, from one sub-
ject to another, and that the institutions ranked high for quality
also have disproportionately large numbers of graduate students.
34 chapter 2

OVERSEAS STUDENTS

In 1971 one in four of all graduate students, including diploma

students in education, came from overseas. Figures that do not
include education students are not available, but it seems likely
that about 30 per cent of the graduate students in other fields
came from overseas, about half from the Commonwealth and half from
other countries.
We shall see in chapter 5 that most British students prefer to
stay for their graduate studies at the university at which they
graduated. As by contrast, all the overseas students are, of
course, changing universities, there is more scope for them to be
attracted to the more prestigious ones. Moreover these are the
universities that are relatively well known in the countries from
which they come. It is therefore to be expected that the over-
seas graduate students should be more heavily concentrated than
the others, and Table 3.8 shows that half of them are in London,
Cambridge and Oxford. At the other extreme, the technological
universities and the 'smaller others' which have more undergrad-
uates have only 18 per cent of the overseas graduate students.

TABLE 3.8 Full-time graduate students from overseas (including

education students) Great Britain, December 1971

No. As % of As % of all
full-time full-time
graduate students
students

London 3,818 39 11.2

Oxbridge 1,659 30 7.6
New 699 22 3.5
Technological 897 25 3.3
Other Scottish 971 26 2.9
Other Welsh 309 14 2.4
Larger English 2,414 23 4.5
Smaller English 1,072 18 4.1
All 11,839 27 5.0

For the subject areas in which the overseas students were work-
ing we have to turn to the data collected in our interviews. The
chief difference we found in comparison with the British research
students was that a higher proportion of the overseas students (44
per cent compared with 30 per cent) were in various branches of
the applied sciences (technology, medicine, agriculture, architec-
ture, etc.), and in the humanities (31 per cent: 16 per cent),
but fewer in pure science (25 per cent: 44 per cent).
35 chapter 2

WOMEN STUDENTS

At each stage of education after the age of 15, women seem to have
lower educational aspirations than men. They are more likely
either to drop out of education by not going on to the next rung
of the educational ladder, or to make a choice that will result in
their full-time education ending at an earlier rather than a later
age. Of those who get Ό 1 level at GCE, fewer stay to take Ά '
level. Of those who get Ά ' level, fewer go to university, more
go to a college of education, where they are unlikely to gain a
degree and, even if they do, are unlikely to continue their educa-
tion full-time beyond degree level. Those women who graduate
from universities are about as likely as the men to continue their
studies, but far more of them take a professional training for
school teaching in preference to the forms of study with which
this book is concerned. At undergraduate level 32 per cent of
the students were women in 1972, and at graduate level (outside
education) 19 per cent. In other words, at undergraduate level
there were 48 women to every 100 males, but only 23 at graduate
level. A little of the low percentage of women is due, as Table
3.9 shows, to their being less heavily concentrated in the scien-
tific subjects, where more students stay on for graduate study.
But even there, the percentage of women drops sharply from 27 at
undergraduate level to 12. In general, the drop is smallest in
those fields into which students move on graduation, for example
in medicine, where many of the research students have graduated
in biological subjects; and in architecture, etc., where courses
in town planning attract students from other specialities, there
is no drop at all.
Some of this reduction in the percentage of women is due to the
influx of overseas students, amongst whom there are even fewer
women (under 16 per cent even including education) than amongst
the British graduate students; but this can account for only a
tiny part of it. A very small part of it too can be accounted
for by women getting relatively fewer first class degrees; in
1970-1 4.2 per cent of the women graduating got firsts, compared
with 7.5 per cent of the men. Some of this difference in the
proportion of firsts is due to the men being concentrated in the
scientific and technological subjects where a higher percentage of
firsts (and thirds) is awarded than in arts and social studies -
the percentages of firsts awarded were: engineering and technology
8.9 per cent, science 11.6 per cent, social studies 3.1 per cent,
arts 5.9 per cent. (5) Also, women are more likely to enter
courses leading only to degrees without honours; and as these are
sometimes shorter this is another symptom of their tendency to
leave education earlier. However, when both these factors have
been allowed for, there is still a tendency for those women within
the honours school of a given subject to gain a smaller percentage
of firsts. For example, of the honours degrees in history, 7.1
per cent of men and 2.3 per cent of women gained firsts; in
French 8.0 per cent and 6.1 per cent; in psychology 9.1 per cent
and 3.5 per cent; in mathematics 19.7 per cent and 12 # 2 per cent.
That women gain fewer firsts may be related to differences in the
distribution of their scores in intelligence tests - there is some
36 chapter 2

TABLE 3.9 Percentage of women amongst full-time students, UK,

December 1971

Subject Under- Graduates

group grad Re- Taught Diplomas All No. of
search courses and grads women
for for others grads
degree higher
degrees

Education* 49.8 28.5 21.2 - 24.0 151

Medicine, dent-
istry, health 31.1 24.7 28.0 25.9 25.7 619
Engineering,
technology 2.6 2.7 1.9 6.0 2.8 179
Agriculture,
forestry,
vet. science 22.6 15.6 10.6 7.5 13.2 137
Science 27.0 11.8 12.5 12.4 12.0 1,358
Social,
administrative,
business studies 33.9 20.1 19.0 42.9 26.2 2,281
Architecture,
other prof, and
vocational 19.3 16.8 15.6 26.5 20.9 258
Language, lit.,
area studies 58.7 35.2 37.2 38.0 36.1 1,125
Arts other than
languages 50.5 20.7 29.8 29.2 23.5 665
All subjects
except educ. 31.3 15.3 16.1 29.4 17.8 6,622
All subjects
including
education* 32.0 15.4 16.3 17.9 6,775

* Counting students other than higher degree students as under-

graduates .
evidence that they are less likely to have extremely high or low
IQs (see e.g. Vernon, 1963, p. 16). One might on this account
expect to find four boys scoring an IQ of 140 or over for every
three girls (Terman and Oden, 1959, p. 4) . Perhaps also a partial
explanation of women getting fewer firsts is that they are less
strongly motivated towards a high level of success (6) , fewer of
them wanting a very good degree as an entry into research or for
any other reason. Here again the lower educational and career
aspirations of women show up. In any case, the importance in
relation to the relatively low percentage of women going into
graduate education of the low percentage gaining firsts can be
overstated? women do not in general gain fewer upper seconds than
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diligence de la part des Anglais, délivraient la Rochelle, et fesaient passer
Richelieu pour un téméraire.
On peut juger du caractère des hommes par leurs entreprises. On peut
bien assurer que l’ame de Richelieu respirait la hauteur et la vengeance; que
Mazarin était sage, souple, et avide de biens. Mais pour connaître à quel
point un ministre a de l’esprit, il faut ou l’entendre souvent parler, ou lire ce
qu’il a écrit. Il arrive souvent parmi les hommes d’état ce qu’on voit tous
les jours parmi les courtisans; celui qui a le plus d’esprit échoue, et celui qui
a dans le caractère plus de patience, de force, de souplesse, et de suite,
réussit.
En lisant les Lettres du cardinal Mazarin, et les Mémoires du cardinal de
Retz, on voit aisément que Retz était le génie supérieur. Cependant Mazarin
fut tout puissant, et Retz fut accablé. Enfin il est très vrai que, pour faire un
puissant ministre, il ne faut souvent qu’un esprit médiocre, du bon sens, et
de la fortune; mais pour être un bon ministre, il faut avoir pour passion
dominante l’amour du bien public. Le grand homme d’état est celui dont il
reste de grands monuments utiles à la patrie. [440] Le monument qui
immortalise le cardinal Mazarin est l’acquisition de l’Alsace. Il donna cette
province à la France dans le temps que la France était déchaînée contre lui;
et, par une fatalité singulière, il fit plus de bien au royaume lorsqu’il y était
persécuté que dans la tranquillité d’une puissance absolue[441].
 CHAPITRE VII.
Louis XIV gouverne par lui-même. Il force la branche d’Autriche espagnole à lui céder partout la
préséance, et la cour de Rome à lui faire satisfaction. Il achète Dunkerque. Il donne des secours à
l’empereur, au Portugal, aux états-généraux, et rend son royaume florissant et redoutable.
Jamais il n’y eut dans une cour plus d’intrigues et d’espérances que
durant l’agonie du cardinal Mazarin. Les femmes qui prétendaient à la
beauté se flattaient de gouverner un prince de vingt-deux ans, que l’amour
avait déjà séduit jusqu’à lui faire offrir sa couronne à sa maîtresse. Les
jeunes courtisans croyaient renouveler le règne des favoris. Chaque ministre
espérait la première place. Aucun d’eux ne pensait qu’un roi élevé dans
l’éloignement des affaires osât prendre sur lui le fardeau du gouvernement.
Mazarin avait prolongé l’enfance de ce monarque autant qu’il l’avait pu. Il
ne l’instruisait que depuis fort peu de temps, et parceque le roi avait voulu
être instruit.
On était si loin d’espérer d’être gouverné par son souverain, que de tous
ceux qui avaient travaillé jusqu’alors avec le premier ministre, il n’y en eut
aucun qui demandât au roi quand il voudrait les entendre. Ils lui
demandèrent tous: «A qui nous adresserons-nous?» et Louis XIV leur
répondit: A moi. On fut encore plus surpris de le voir persévérer. Il y avait
quelque temps qu’il consultait ses forces, et qu’il essayait en secret son
génie pour régner. Sa résolution prise une fois, il la maintint jusqu’au
dernier moment de sa vie. Il fixa à chacun de ses ministres les bornes de son
pouvoir, se fesant rendre compte de tout par eux à des heures réglées, leur
donnant la confiance qu’il fallait pour accréditer leur ministère, et veillant
sur eux pour les empêcher d’en trop abuser.
Madame de Motteville nous apprend que la réputation de Charles II, roi
d’Angleterre, qui passait alors pour gouverner par lui-même, inspira de
l’émulation à Louis XIV. Si cela est, il surpassa beaucoup son rival, et il
mérita toute sa vie ce qu’on avait dit d’abord de Charles.
Il commença par mettre de l’ordre dans les finances dérangées par un
long brigandage. La discipline fut rétablie dans les troupes, comme l’ordre
dans les finances. La magnificence et la décence embellirent sa cour. Les
plaisirs même eurent de l’éclat et de la grandeur. Tous les arts furent
encouragés, et tous employés à la gloire du roi et de la France.
 Ce n’est pas ici le lieu de le représenter dans sa vie privée, ni dans
l’intérieur de son gouvernement; c’est ce que nous ferons à part[442]. Il
suffit de dire que ses peuples, qui depuis la mort de Henri-le-Grand
n’avaient point vu de véritable roi, et qui détestaient l’empire d’un premier
ministre, furent remplis d’admiration et d’espérance quand ils virent Louis
XIV faire à vingt-deux ans ce que Henri avait fait à cinquante. Si Henri IV
avait eu un premier ministre, il eût été perdu, parceque la haine contre un
particulier eût ranimé vingt factions trop puissantes. Si Louis XIII n’en
avait pas eu, ce prince, dont un corps faible et malade énervait l’ame, eût
succombé sous le poids. Louis XIV pouvait sans péril avoir ou n’avoir pas
de premier ministre. Il ne restait pas la moindre trace des anciennes
factions; il n’y avait plus en France qu’un maître et des sujets. Il montra
d’abord qu’il ambitionnait toute sorte de gloire, et qu’il voulait être aussi
considéré au-dehors qu’absolu au-dedans.
Les anciens rois de l’Europe prétendent entre eux une entière égalité, ce
qui est très naturel; mais les rois de France ont toujours réclamé la
préséance que mérite l’antiquité de leur race et de leur royaume; et s’ils ont
cédé aux empereurs, c’est parceque les hommes ne sont presque jamais
assez hardis pour renverser un long usage. Le chef de la république
d’Allemagne, prince électif et peu puissant par lui-même, a le pas, sans
contredit, sur tous les souverains, à cause de ce titre de César et d’héritier
de Charlemagne. Sa chancellerie allemande ne traitait pas même alors les
autres rois de majesté. Les rois de France pouvaient disputer la préséance
aux empereurs, puisque la France avait fondé le véritable empire
d’Occident, dont le nom seul subsiste en Allemagne. Ils avaient pour eux
non seulement la supériorité d’une couronne héréditaire sur une dignité
élective, mais l’avantage d’être issus, par une suite non interrompue, de
souverains qui régnaient sur une grande monarchie plusieurs siècles avant
que, dans le monde entier, aucune des maisons qui possèdent aujourd’hui
des couronnes fût parvenue à quelque élévation. Ils voulaient au moins
précéder les autres puissances de l’Europe. On alléguait en leur faveur le
nom de très chrétien. Les rois d’Espagne opposaient le titre de catholique;
et depuis que Charles-Quint avait eu un roi de France prisonnier à Madrid,
la fierté espagnole était bien loin de céder ce rang. Les Anglais et les
Suédois, qui n’allèguent aujourd’hui aucun de ces surnoms, reconnaissent le
moins qu’ils peuvent cette supériorité.
 C’était à Rome que ces prétentions étaient autrefois débattues. Les
papes, qui donnaient les états avec une bulle, se croyaient, à plus forte
raison, en droit de décider du rang entre les couronnes. Cette cour, où tout
se passe en cérémonies, était le tribunal où se jugeaient ces vanités de la
grandeur. La France y avait eu toujours la supériorité quand elle était plus
puissante que l’Espagne; mais depuis le règne de Charles-Quint, l’Espagne
n’avait négligé aucune occasion de se donner l’égalité. La dispute restait
indécise; un pas de plus ou de moins dans une procession; un fauteuil placé
près d’un autel, ou vis-à-vis la chaire d’un prédicateur, étaient des
triomphes, et établissaient des titres pour cette prééminence. La chimère du
point d’honneur était extrême alors sur cet article entre les couronnes,
comme la fureur des duels entre les particuliers.
(1661) Il arriva qu’à l’entrée d’un ambassadeur de Suède à Londres, le
comte d’Estrades, ambassadeur de France, et le baron de Vatteville,
ambassadeur d’Espagne, se disputèrent le pas. L’Espagnol, avec plus
d’argent et une plus nombreuse suite, avait gagné la populace anglaise: il
fait d’abord tuer les chevaux des carrosses français; et bientôt les gens du
comte d’Estrades, blessés et dispersés, laissèrent les Espagnols marcher
l’épée nue comme en triomphe.
Louis XIV, informé de cette insulte, rappela l’ambassadeur qu’il avait à
Madrid, fit sortir de France celui d’Espagne, rompit les conférences qui se
tenaient encore en Flandre au sujet des limites, et fit dire au roi Philippe IV,
son beau-père, que s’il ne reconnaissait la supériorité de la couronne de
France et ne réparait cet affront par une satisfaction solennelle, la guerre
allait recommencer. Philippe IV ne voulut pas replonger son royaume dans
une guerre nouvelle pour la préséance d’un ambassadeur: il envoya le
comte de Fuentes déclarer au roi, à Fontainebleau, en présence de tous les
ministres étrangers qui étaient en France (24 mars 1662), «que les ministres
espagnols ne concourraient plus dorénavant avec ceux de France.» Ce n’en
était pas assez pour reconnaître nettement la prééminence du roi; mais c’en
était assez pour un aveu authentique de la faiblesse espagnole. Cette cour,
encore fière, murmura long-temps de son humiliation. Depuis, plusieurs
ministres espagnols ont renouvelé leurs anciennes prétentions: ils ont
obtenu l’égalité à Nimègue; mais Louis XIV acquit alors, par sa fermeté,
une supériorité réelle dans l’Europe, en fesant voir combien il était à
craindre.
 A peine sorti de cette petite affaire avec tant de grandeur, il en marqua
encore davantage dans une occasion où sa gloire semblait moins intéressée.
Les jeunes Français, dans les guerres faites depuis long-temps en Italie
contre l’Espagne, avaient donné aux Italiens, circonspects et jaloux, l’idée
d’une nation impétueuse. L’Italie regardait toutes les nations dont elle était
inondée comme des barbares, et les Français comme des barbares plus gais
que les autres, mais plus dangereux, qui portaient dans toutes les maisons
les plaisirs avec le mépris, et la débauche avec l’insulte. Ils étaient craints
partout, et surtout à Rome.
Le duc de Créqui, ambassadeur auprès du pape, avait révolté les
Romains par sa hauteur: ses domestiques, gens qui poussent toujours à
l’extrême les défauts de leur maître, commettaient dans Rome les mêmes
désordres que la jeunesse indisciplinable de Paris, qui se fesait alors un
honneur d’attaquer toutes les nuits le guet qui veille à la garde de la ville.
Quelques laquais du duc de Créqui s’avisèrent de charger, l’épée à la
main, une escouade des Corses (ce sont des gardes du pape qui appuient les
exécutions de la justice). Tout le corps des Corses offensé, et secrètement
animé par don Mario Chigi, frère du pape Alexandre VII, qui haïssait le duc
de Créqui, vint en armes assiéger la maison de l’ambassadeur (20 août
1662). Ils tirèrent sur le carrosse de l’ambassadrice, qui rentrait alors dans
son palais; ils lui tuèrent un page[443], et blessèrent plusieurs domestiques.
Le duc de Créqui sortit de Rome, accusant les parents du pape, et le pape
lui-même, d’avoir favorisé cet assassinat. Le pape différa tant qu’il put la
réparation, persuadé qu’avec les Français il n’y a qu’à temporiser, et que
tout s’oublie. Il fit pendre un Corse et un sbire au bout de quatre mois; et il
fit sortir de Rome le gouverneur, soupçonné d’avoir autorisé l’attentat: mais
il fut consterné d’apprendre que le roi menaçait de faire assiéger Rome,
qu’il fesait déjà passer des troupes en Italie, et que le maréchal du Plessis-
Praslin était nommé pour les commander. L’affaire était devenue une
querelle de nation à nation, et le roi voulait faire respecter la sienne. Le
pape, avant de faire la satisfaction qu’on demandait, implora la médiation
de tous les princes catholiques; il fit ce qu’il put pour les animer contre
Louis XIV: mais les circonstances n’étaient pas favorables au pape.
L’empire était attaqué par les Turcs: l’Espagne était embarrassée dans une
guerre peu heureuse contre le Portugal.
 La cour romaine ne fit qu’irriter le roi sans pouvoir lui nuire. Le
parlement de Provence cita le pape, et fit saisir le comtat d’Avignon. Dans
d’autres temps les excommunications de Rome auraient suivi ces outrages:
mais c’étaient des armes usées et devenues ridicules: il fallut que le pape
pliât; il fut forcé d’exiler de Rome son propre frère, d’envoyer son neveu, le
cardinal Chigi, en qualité de légat a latere[444], faire satisfaction au roi; de
casser la garde corse, et d’élever dans Rome une pyramide, avec une
inscription qui contenait l’injure et la réparation. Le cardinal Chigi fut le
premier légat de la cour romaine qui fut jamais envoyé pour demander
pardon. Les légats, auparavant, venaient donner des lois, et imposer des
décimes. Le roi ne s’en tint pas à faire réparer un outrage par des
cérémonies passagères et par des monuments qui le sont aussi (car il permit,
quelques années après, la destruction de la pyramide); mais il força la cour
de Rome à promettre de rendre Castro et Ronciglione au duc de Parme, à
dédommager le duc de Modène de ses droits sur Comacchio; et il tira ainsi
d’une insulte l’honneur solide d’être le protecteur des princes d’Italie.
En soutenant sa dignité, il n’oubliait pas d’augmenter son pouvoir. (27
octobre 1662) Ses finances, bien administrées par Colbert, le mirent en état
d’acheter Dunkerque et Mardick du roi d’Angleterre, pour cinq millions de
livres, à vingt-six livres dix sous le marc. Charles II, prodigue et pauvre, eut
la honte de vendre le prix du sang des Anglais. Son chancelier Hyde, accusé
d’avoir ou conseillé ou souffert cette faiblesse, fut banni depuis par le
parlement d’Angleterre, qui punit souvent les fautes des favoris, et qui
quelquefois même juge ses rois.
(1663) Louis fit travailler trente mille hommes à fortifier Dunkerque du
côté de la terre et de la mer. On creusa entre la ville et la citadelle un bassin
capable de contenir trente vaisseaux de guerre, de sorte qu’à peine les
Anglais eurent vendu cette ville, qu’elle devint l’objet de leur terreur.
(30 août 1663) Quelque temps après le roi força le duc de Lorraine à lui
donner la forte ville de Marsal. Ce malheureux Charles IV, guerrier assez
illustre, mais prince faible, inconstant, et imprudent, venait de faire un traité
par lequel il donnait la Lorraine à la France après sa mort, à condition que
le roi lui permettrait de lever un million sur l’état qu’il abandonnait, et que
les princes du sang de Lorraine seraient réputés princes du sang de France.
Ce traité, vainement vérifié au parlement de Paris, ne servit qu’à produire
de nouvelles inconstances dans le duc de Lorraine; trop heureux ensuite de
donner Marsal, et de se remettre à la clémence du roi.
Louis augmentait ses états même pendant la paix, et se tenait toujours
prêt pour la guerre, fesant fortifier ses frontières, tenant ses troupes dans la
discipline, augmentant leur nombre, fesant des revues fréquentes.
Les Turcs étaient alors très redoutables en Europe; ils attaquaient à-la-
fois l’empereur d’Allemagne et les Vénitiens. La politique des rois de
France a toujours été, depuis François Iᵉʳ, d’être alliés des empereurs turcs;
non seulement pour les avantages du commerce, mais pour empêcher la
maison d’Autriche de trop prévaloir. Cependant, un roi chrétien ne pouvait
refuser du secours à l’empereur, trop en danger; et l’intérêt de la France
était bien que les Turcs inquiétassent la Hongrie, mais non pas qu’ils
l’envahissent: enfin ses traités avec l’empire lui fesaient un devoir de cette
démarche honorable. Il envoya donc six mille hommes en Hongrie, sous les
ordres du comte de Coligni[445], seul reste de la maison de ce Coligni,
autrefois si célèbre dans nos guerres civiles, et qui mérite peut-être une
aussi grande renommée que cet amiral, par son courage et par sa vertu.
L’amitié l’avait attaché au grand Condé, et toutes les offres du cardinal
Mazarin n’avaient jamais pu l’engager à manquer à son ami. Il mena avec
lui l’élite de la noblesse de France, et entre autres le jeune La Feuillade,
homme entreprenant et avide de gloire et de fortune. (1664) Ces Français
allèrent servir en Hongrie sous le général Montecuculli, qui tenait tête alors
au grand-vizir Kiuperli ou Kouprogli, et qui depuis, en servant contre la
France, balança la réputation de Turenne. Il y eut un grand combat à Saint-
Gothard, au bord du Raab, entre les Turcs et l’armée de l’empereur. Les
Français y firent des prodiges de valeur; les Allemands mêmes, qui ne les
aimaient point, furent obligés de leur rendre justice; mais ce n’est pas la
rendre aux Allemands, de dire, comme on a fait dans tant de livres, que les
Français eurent seuls l’honneur de la victoire.
Le roi, en mettant sa grandeur à secourir ouvertement l’empereur, et à
donner de l’éclat aux armes françaises, mettait sa politique à soutenir
secrètement le Portugal contre l’Espagne. Le cardinal Mazarin avait
abandonné formellement les Portugais, par le traité des Pyrénées; mais
l’Espagnol avait fait plusieurs petites infractions tacites à la paix. Le
Français en fit une hardie et décisive: le maréchal de Schomberg, étranger
et huguenot, passa en Portugal avec quatre mille soldats français, qu’il
payait de l’argent de Louis XIV, et qu’il feignait de soudoyer au nom du roi
de Portugal. Ces quatre mille soldats français, joints aux troupes
portugaises, remportèrent à Villa-Viciosa (17 juin 1665) une victoire
complète, qui affermit le trône dans la maison de Bragance. Ainsi Louis
XIV passait déjà pour un prince guerrier et politique, et l’Europe le
redoutait même avant qu’il eût encore fait la guerre.
Ce fut par cette politique qu’il évita, malgré ses promesses, de joindre le
peu de vaisseaux qu’il avait alors aux flottes hollandaises. Il s’était allié
avec la Hollande en 1662. Cette république, environ vers ce temps-là,
recommença la guerre contre l’Angleterre, au sujet du vain et bizarre
honneur du pavillon, et des intérêts réels de son commerce dans les Indes.
Louis voyait avec plaisir ces deux puissances maritimes mettre en mer tous
les ans, l’une contre l’autre, des flottes de plus de cent vaisseaux, et se
détruire mutuellement par les batailles les plus opiniâtres qui se soient
jamais données, dont tout le fruit était l’affaiblissement des deux partis. Il
s’en donna une qui dura trois jours entiers (11, 12, et 13 juin 1666). Ce fut
dans ces combats que le Hollandais Ruyter acquit la réputation du plus
grand homme de mer qu’on eût vu encore. Ce fut lui qui alla brûler les plus
beaux vaisseaux d’Angleterre jusque dans ses ports, à quatre lieues de
Londres. Il fit triompher la Hollande sur les mers, dont les Anglais avaient
toujours eu l’empire, et où Louis XIV n’était rien encore.
La domination de l’Océan était partagée, depuis quelque temps, entre ces
deux nations. L’art de construire les vaisseaux, et de s’en servir pour le
commerce et pour la guerre, n’était bien connu que d’elles. La France, sous
le ministère de Richelieu, se croyait puissante sur mer, parceque d’environ
soixante vaisseaux ronds que l’on comptait dans ses ports, elle pouvait en
mettre en mer environ trente, dont un seul portait soixante et dix canons.
Sous Mazarin, on acheta des Hollandais le peu de vaisseaux que l’on avait.
On manquait de matelots, d’officiers, de manufactures pour la construction
et pour l’équipement. Le roi entreprit de réparer les ruines de la marine, et
de donner à la France tout ce qui lui manquait, avec une diligence
incroyable: mais, en 1664 et 1665, tandis que les Anglais et les Hollandais
couvraient l’Océan de près de trois cents gros vaisseaux de guerre, il n’en
avait encore que quinze ou seize du dernier rang, que le duc de Beaufort
occupait contre les pirates de Barbarie; et lorsque les états généraux
pressèrent Louis XIV de joindre sa flotte à la leur, il ne se trouva dans le
port de Brest qu’un seul brûlot, qu’on eut honte de faire partir, et qu’il fallut
pourtant leur envoyer sur leurs instances réitérées. Ce fut une honte que
Louis XIV s’empressa bien vite d’effacer.
(1665) Il donna aux états un secours de ses forces de terre plus essentiel
et plus honorable. Il leur envoya six mille Français pour les défendre contre
l’évêque de Munster, Christophe-Bernard Van-Galen, prélat guerrier et
ennemi implacable, soudoyé par l’Angleterre pour désoler la Hollande;
mais il leur fit payer chèrement ce secours, et les traita comme un homme
puissant qui vend sa protection à des marchands opulents. Colbert mit sur
leur compte non seulement la solde de ses troupes, mais jusqu’aux frais
d’une ambassade envoyée en Angleterre pour conclure leur paix avec
Charles II. Jamais secours ne fut donné de si mauvaise grace, ni reçu avec
moins de reconnaissance.
Le roi ayant ainsi aguerri ses troupes, et formé de nouveaux officiers en
Hongrie, en Hollande, en Portugal, respecté et vengé dans Rome, ne voyait
pas un seul potentat qu’il dût craindre. L’Angleterre ravagée par la peste;
Londres réduite en cendres par un incendie[446] attribué injustement aux
catholiques; la prodigalité et l’indigence continuelle de Charles II, aussi
dangereuse pour ses affaires que la contagion et l’incendie, mettaient la
France en sûreté du côté des Anglais. L’empereur réparait à peine
l’épuisement d’une guerre contre les Turcs. Le roi d’Espagne, Philippe IV,
mourant, et sa monarchie aussi faible que lui, laissaient Louis XIV le seul
puissant et le seul redoutable. Il était jeune, riche, bien servi, obéi
aveuglément, et marquait l’impatience de se signaler, et d’être conquérant.
 CHAPITRE VIII.
Conquête de la Flandre.
L’occasion se présenta bientôt à un roi qui la cherchait. Philippe IV, son
beau-père, mourut (1665): il avait eu de sa première femme, sœur de Louis
XIII, cette princesse Marie-Thérèse, mariée à son cousin Louis XIV;
mariage par lequel la monarchie espagnole est enfin tombée dans la maison
de Bourbon, si long-temps son ennemie. De son second mariage avec
Marie-Anne d’Autriche était né Charles II, enfant faible et malsain, héritier
de sa couronne, et seul reste de trois enfants mâles, dont deux étaient morts
en bas âge. Louis XIV prétendit que la Flandre, le Brabant, et la Franche-
Comté, provinces du royaume d’Espagne, devaient, selon la jurisprudence
de ces provinces, revenir à sa femme, malgré sa renonciation. Si les causes
des rois pouvaient se juger par les lois des nations à un tribunal
désintéressé, l’affaire eût été un peu douteuse.
Louis fit examiner ses droits par son conseil, et par des théologiens, qui
les jugèrent incontestables; mais le conseil et le confesseur de la veuve de
Philippe IV les trouvaient bien mauvais. Elle avait pour elle une puissante
raison, la loi expresse de Charles-Quint; mais les lois de Charles-Quint
n’étaient guère suivies par la cour de France.
Un des prétextes que prenait le conseil du roi était que les cinq cent mille
écus donnés en dot à sa femme n’avaient point été payés; mais on oubliait
que la dot de la fille de Henri IV ne l’avait pas été davantage. La France et
l’Espagne combattirent d’abord par des écrits, où l’on étala des calculs de
banquier et des raisons d’avocat; mais la seule raison d’état était écoutée.
Cette raison d’état fut bien extraordinaire. Louis XIV allait attaquer un
enfant dont il devait être naturellement le protecteur, puisqu’il avait épousé
la sœur de cet enfant. Comment pouvait-il croire que l’empereur Léopold,
regardé comme le chef de la maison d’Autriche, le laisserait opprimer cette
maison, et s’agrandir dans la Flandre? Qui croirait que l’empereur et le roi
de France eussent déjà partagé en idée les dépouilles du jeune Charles
d’Autriche, roi d’Espagne? On trouve quelques traces de cette triste vérité
dans les Mémoires du marquis de Torci[447]; mais elles sont peu démêlées.
Le temps a enfin dévoilé ce mystère, qui prouve qu’entre les rois la
convenance et le droit du plus fort tiennent lieu de justice, surtout quand
cette justice semble douteuse.
Tous les frères de Charles II, roi d’Espagne, étaient morts. Charles était
d’une complexion faible et malsaine. Louis XIV et Léopold firent, dans son
enfance, à peu près le même traité de partage qu’ils entamèrent depuis à sa
mort. Par ce traité, qui est actuellement dans le dépôt du Louvre, Léopold
devait laisser Louis XIV se mettre déjà en possession de la Flandre, à
condition qu’à la mort de Charles l’Espagne passerait sous la domination de
l’empereur. Il n’est pas dit s’il en coûta de l’argent pour cette étrange
négociation. D’ordinaire ce principal article de tant de traités demeure
secret.
Léopold n’eut pas sitôt signé l’acte qu’il s’en repentit: il exigea au moins
qu’aucune cour n’en eût connaissance; qu’on n’en fît point une double
copie selon l’usage; et que le seul instrument qui devait subsister fût
enfermé dans une cassette de métal, dont l’empereur aurait une clef et le roi
de France l’autre. Cette cassette dut être déposée entre les mains du grand-
duc de Florence. L’empereur la remit pour cet effet entre les mains de
l’ambassadeur de France à Vienne, et le roi envoya seize de ses gardes-du-
corps aux portes de Vienne pour accompagner le courrier, de peur que
l’empereur ne changeât d’avis et ne fît enlever la cassette sur la route. Elle
fut portée à Versailles, et non à Florence; ce qui laisse soupçonner que
Léopold avait reçu de l’argent, puisqu’il n’osa se plaindre.
Voilà comment l’empereur laissa dépouiller le roi d’Espagne.
Le roi, comptant encore plus sur ses forces que sur ses raisons, marcha
en Flandre à des conquêtes assurées. (1667) Il était à la tête de trente-cinq
mille hommes; un autre corps de huit mille fut envoyé vers Dunkerque; un
de quatre mille vers Luxembourg. Turenne était sous lui le général de cette
armée. Colbert avait multiplié les ressources de l’état pour fournir à ces
dépenses. Louvois, nouveau ministre de la guerre, avait fait des préparatifs
immenses pour la campagne. Des magasins de toute espèce étaient
distribués sur la frontière. Il introduisit le premier cette méthode
avantageuse, que la faiblesse du gouvernement avait jusqu’alors rendue
impraticable, de faire subsister les armées par magasins; quelque siége que
le roi voulût faire, de quelque côté qu’il tournât ses armes, les secours en
tout genre étaient prêts, les logements des troupes marqués, leurs marches
réglées. La discipline, rendue plus sévère de jour en jour par l’austérité
inflexible du ministre, enchaînait tous les officiers à leur devoir. La
présence d’un jeune roi, l’idole de son armée, leur rendait la dureté de ce
devoir aisée et chère. Le grade militaire commença dès-lors à être un droit
beaucoup au-dessus de celui de la naissance. Les services et non les aïeux
furent comptés, ce qui ne s’était guère vu encore: par là l’officier de la plus
médiocre naissance fut encouragé, sans que ceux de la plus haute eussent à
se plaindre. L’infanterie, sur qui tombait tout le poids de la guerre, depuis
l’inutilité reconnue des lances, partagea les récompenses dont la cavalerie
était en possession. Les maximes nouvelles dans le gouvernement
inspiraient un nouveau courage.
Le roi, entre un chef et un ministre également habiles, tous deux jaloux
l’un de l’autre, et cependant ne l’en servant que mieux, suivi des meilleures
troupes de l’Europe, enfin, ligué de nouveau avec le Portugal, attaquait avec
tous ses avantages une province mal défendue d’un royaume ruiné et
déchiré. Il n’avait à faire qu’à sa belle-mère, femme faible, gouvernée par
un jésuite, dont l’administration méprisée et malheureuse laissait la
monarchie espagnole sans défense. Le roi de France avait tout ce qui
manquait à l’Espagne.
L’art d’attaquer les places n’était pas encore perfectionné comme
aujourd’hui, parceque celui de les bien fortifier et de les bien défendre était
plus ignoré. Les frontières de la Flandre espagnole étaient presque sans
fortifications et sans garnisons.
Louis n’eut qu’à se présenter devant elles. (Juin 1667) Il entra dans
Charleroi comme dans Paris; Ath, Tournai, furent prises en deux jours;
Furnes, Armentières, Courtrai, ne tinrent pas davantage. Il descendit dans la
tranchée devant Douai, qui se rendit le lendemain (6 juillet). Lille, la plus
florissante ville de ces pays, la seule bien fortifiée, et qui avait une garnison
de six mille hommes, capitula (27 août) après neuf jours de siége. Les
Espagnols n’avaient que huit mille hommes à opposer à l’armée
victorieuse; encore l’arrière-garde de cette petite armée fut-elle taillée en
pièces (31 août) par le marquis depuis maréchal de Créqui. Le reste se
cacha sous Bruxelles et sous Mons, laissant le roi vaincre sans combattre.
Cette campagne, faite au milieu de la plus grande abondance, parmi des
succès si faciles, parut le voyage d’une cour. La bonne chère, le luxe, et les
plaisirs, s’introduisirent alors dans les armées, dans le temps même que la
discipline s’affermissait. Les officiers fesaient le devoir militaire beaucoup
plus exactement, mais avec des commodités plus recherchées. Le maréchal
de Turenne n’avait eu long-temps que des assiettes de fer en campagne. Le
marquis d’Humières fut le premier, au siége d’Arras[448], en 1658, qui se fit
servir en vaisselle d’argent à la tranchée, et qui y fit manger des ragoûts et
des entremets. Mais dans cette campagne de 1667, où un jeune roi, aimant
la magnificence, étalait celle de sa cour dans les fatigues de la guerre, tout
le monde se piqua de somptuosité et de goût dans la bonne chère, dans les
habits, dans les équipages. Ce luxe, la marque certaine de la richesse d’un
grand état, et souvent la cause de la décadence d’un petit, était cependant
encore très peu de chose auprès de celui qu’on a vu depuis. Le roi, ses
généraux, et ses ministres, allaient au rendez-vous de l’armée à cheval; au
lieu qu’aujourd’hui il n’y a point de capitaine de cavalerie, ni de secrétaire
d’un officier général qui ne fasse ce voyage en chaise de poste avec des
glaces et des ressorts, plus commodément et plus tranquillement qu’on ne
fesait alors une visite dans Paris d’un quartier à un autre.
La délicatesse des officiers ne les empêchait point alors d’aller à la
tranchée avec le pot en tête et la cuirasse sur le dos. Le roi en donnait
l’exemple: il alla ainsi à la tranchée devant Douai et devant Lille. Cette
conduite sage conserva plus d’un grand homme. Elle a été trop négligée
depuis par des jeunes gens peu robustes, pleins de valeur, mais de mollesse,
et qui semblent plus craindre la fatigue que le danger.
La rapidité de ces conquêtes remplit d’alarmes Bruxelles; les citoyens
transportaient déjà leurs effets dans Anvers. La conquête de la Flandre
entière pouvait être l’ouvrage d’une campagne. Il ne manquait au roi que
des troupes assez nombreuses pour garder les places, prêtes à s’ouvrir à ses
armes. Louvois lui conseilla de mettre de grosses garnisons dans les villes
prises, et de les fortifier. Vauban, l’un de ces grands hommes et de ces
génies qui parurent dans ce siècle pour le service de Louis XIV, fut chargé
de ces fortifications. Il les fit suivant sa nouvelle méthode, devenue
aujourd’hui la règle de tous les bons ingénieurs. On fut étonné de ne plus
voir les places revêtues que d’ouvrages presque au niveau de la campagne.
Les fortifications hautes et menaçantes n’en étaient que plus exposées à être
foudroyées par l’artillerie: plus il les rendit rasantes, moins elles étaient en
prise. Il construisit la citadelle de Lille sur ces principes (1668). On n’avait
point encore en France détaché le gouvernement d’une ville de celui de la
forteresse. L’exemple commença en faveur de Vauban; il fut le premier
gouverneur d’une citadelle. On peut encore observer que le premier de ces
plans en relief qu’on voit dans la galerie du Louvre[449] fut celui des
fortifications de Lille.
Le roi se hâta de venir jouir des acclamations des peuples, des adorations
de ses courtisans et de ses maîtresses, et des fêtes qu’il donna à sa cour.
 CHAPITRE IX.
Conquête de la Franche-Comté. Paix d’Aix-la-Chapelle.
(1668) On était plongé dans les divertissements à Saint-Germain,
lorsqu’au cœur de l’hiver, au mois de janvier, on fut étonné de voir des
troupes marcher de tous côtés, aller et revenir sur les chemins de la
Champagne, dans les Trois-Évêchés: des trains d’artillerie, des chariots de
munitions, s’arrêtaient, sous divers prétextes, dans la route qui mène de
Champagne en Bourgogne. Cette partie de la France était remplie de
mouvements dont on ignorait la cause. Les étrangers par intérêt, et les
courtisans par curiosité, s’épuisaient en conjectures: l’Allemagne était
alarmée: l’objet de ces préparatifs et de ces marches irrégulières était
inconnu à tout le monde. Le secret dans les conspirations n’a jamais été
mieux gardé qu’il le fut dans cette entreprise de Louis XIV. Enfin le 2 de
février il part de Saint-Germain avec le jeune duc d’Enghien, fils du grand
Condé, et quelques courtisans: les autres officiers étaient au rendez-vous
des troupes. Il va à cheval à grandes journées, et arrive à Dijon. Vingt mille
hommes assemblés de vingt routes différentes se trouvent le même jour en
Franche-Comté, à quelques lieues de Besançon, et le grand Condé paraît à
leur tête, ayant pour son principal lieutenant-général Montmorenci-
Boutteville, son ami, devenu duc de Luxembourg, toujours attaché à lui
dans la bonne et dans la mauvaise fortune. Luxembourg était l’élève de
Condé dans l’art de la guerre; et il obligea, à force de mérite, le roi, qui ne
l’aimait pas, à l’employer.
Des intrigues eurent part à cette entreprise imprévue: le prince de Condé
était jaloux de la gloire de Turenne, et Louvois de sa faveur auprès du roi;
Condé était jaloux en héros, et Louvois en ministre. Le prince, gouverneur
de la Bourgogne, qui touche à la Franche-Comté, avait formé le dessein de
s’en rendre maître en hiver, en moins de temps que Turenne n’en avait mis
l’été précédent à conquérir la Flandre française. Il communiqua d’abord son
projet à Louvois, qui l’embrassa avidement, pour éloigner et rendre inutile
Turenne, et pour servir en même temps son maître.
Cette province, assez pauvre alors en argent, mais très fertile, bien
peuplée, étendue en long de quarante lieues et large de vingt, avait le nom
de Franche[450], et l’était en effet. Les rois d’Espagne en étaient plutôt les
protecteurs que les maîtres. Quoique ce pays fût du gouvernement de la
Flandre, il n’en dépendait que peu. Toute l’administration était partagée et
disputée entre le parlement et le gouverneur de la Franche-Comté. Le
peuple jouissait de grands priviléges, toujours respectés par la cour de
Madrid, qui ménageait une province jalouse de ses droits, et voisine de la
France. Besançon même se gouvernait comme une ville impériale. Jamais
peuple ne vécut sous une administration plus douce, et ne fut si attaché à ses
souverains. Leur amour pour la maison d’Autriche s’est conservé pendant
deux générations; mais cet amour était, au fond, celui de leur liberté. Enfin
la Franche-Comté était heureuse, mais pauvre, et puisqu’elle était une
espèce de république, il y avait des factions. Quoi qu’en dise Pellisson, on
ne se borna pas à employer la force.
On gagna d’abord quelques citoyens par des présents et des espérances.
On s’assura l’abbé Jean de Vatteville, frère de celui qui, ayant insulté à
Londres l’ambassadeur de France, avait procuré, par cet outrage,
l’humiliation de la branche d’Autriche espagnole. Cet abbé, autrefois
officier, puis chartreux, puis long-temps musulman chez les Turcs, et enfin
ecclésiastique, eut parole d’être grand doyen, et d’avoir d’autres bénéfices.
On acheta peu cher quelques magistrats, quelques officiers; et à la fin
même, le marquis d’Yenne, gouverneur général, devint si traitable, qu’il
accepta publiquement, après la guerre, une grosse pension et le grade de
lieutenant-général en France. Ces intrigues secrètes, à peine commencées,
furent soutenues par vingt mille hommes. Besançon, la capitale de la
province, est investie par le prince de Condé, Luxembourg court à Salins: le
lendemain Besançon et Salins se rendirent. Besançon ne demanda pour
capitulation que la conservation d’un saint-suaire fort révéré dans cette
ville; ce qu’on lui accorda très aisément. Le roi arrivait à Dijon. Louvois,
qui avait volé sur la frontière pour diriger toutes ces marches, vient lui
apprendre que ces deux villes sont assiégées et prises. Le roi courut aussitôt
se montrer à la fortune qui fesait tout pour lui.
Il alla assiéger Dôle en personne. Cette place était réputée forte; elle
avait pour commandant le comte de Montrevel, homme d’un grand courage,
fidèle par grandeur d’ame aux Espagnols qu’il haïssait, et au parlement
qu’il méprisait. Il n’avait pour garnison que quatre cents soldats et les
citoyens, et il osa se défendre. La tranchée ne fut point poussée dans les
formes. A peine l’eut-on ouverte, qu’une foule de jeunes volontaires, qui
suivaient le roi, courut attaquer la contrescarpe, et s’y logea: le prince de
Condé, à qui l’âge et l’expérience avaient donné un courage tranquille, les
fit soutenir à propos, et partagea leur péril pour les en tirer. Ce prince était
partout avec son fils, et venait ensuite rendre compte de tout au roi, comme
un officier qui aurait eu sa fortune à faire. Le roi, dans son quartier, montrait
plutôt la dignité d’un monarque dans sa cour, qu’une ardeur impétueuse qui
n’était pas nécessaire. Tout le cérémonial de Saint-Germain était observé. Il
avait son petit coucher, ses grandes, ses petites entrées, une salle des
audiences dans sa tente. Il ne tempérait le faste du trône qu’en fesant
manger à sa table ses officiers généraux et ses aides de camp. On ne lui
voyait point, dans les travaux de la guerre, ce courage emporté de François
Iᵉʳ et de Henri IV, qui cherchaient toutes les espèces de danger. Il se
contentait de ne les pas craindre, et d’engager tout le monde à s’y précipiter
pour lui avec ardeur. Il entra dans Dôle (14 février 1668) au bout de quatre
jours de siége, douze jours après son départ de Saint-Germain; et enfin, en
moins de trois semaines toute la Franche-Comté lui fut soumise. Le conseil
d’Espagne, étonné et indigné du peu de résistance, écrivit au gouverneur
«que le roi de France aurait dû envoyer ses laquais prendre possession de ce
pays, au lieu d’y aller en personne.»
Tant de fortune et tant d’ambition réveillèrent l’Europe assoupie;
l’empire commença à se remuer, et l’empereur à lever des troupes. Les
Suisses, voisins des Francs-Comtois, et qui n’avaient guère alors d’autre
bien que leur liberté, tremblèrent pour elle. Le reste de la Flandre pouvait
être envahi au printemps prochain. Les Hollandais, à qui il avait toujours
importé d’avoir les Français pour amis, frémissaient de les avoir pour
voisins. L’Espagne alors eut recours à ces mêmes Hollandais, et fut en effet
protégée par cette petite nation, qui ne lui paraissait auparavant que
méprisable et rebelle.
La Hollande était gouvernée par Jean de Witt, qui dès l’âge de vingt-huit
ans avait été élu grand pensionnaire, homme amoureux de la liberté de son
pays, autant que de sa grandeur personnelle: assujetti à la frugalité et à la
modestie de sa république, il n’avait qu’un laquais et une servante, et allait
à pied dans La Haye, tandis que dans les négociations de l’Europe son nom
était compté avec les noms des plus puissants rois: homme infatigable dans
le travail, plein d’ordre, de sagesse, d’industrie dans les affaires, excellent
citoyen, grand politique, et qui, cependant, fut depuis très malheureux[451].
 Il avait contracté avec le chevalier Temple, ambassadeur d’Angleterre à
La Haye, une amitié bien rare entre des ministres. Temple était un
philosophe qui joignait les lettres aux affaires; homme de bien, malgré les
reproches que l’évêque Burnet lui a faits d’athéisme; né avec le génie d’un
sage républicain, aimant la Hollande comme son propre pays, parcequ’elle
était libre, et aussi jaloux de cette liberté que le grand pensionnaire lui-
même. Ces deux citoyens s’unirent avec le comte de Dhona, ambassadeur
de Suède, pour arrêter les progrès du roi de France.
Ce temps était marqué pour les événements rapides. La Flandre, qu’on
nomme Flandre française, avait été prise en trois mois; la Franche-Comté
en trois semaines. Le traité entre la Hollande, l’Angleterre, et la Suède, pour
tenir la balance de l’Europe et réprimer l’ambition de Louis XIV, fut
proposé et conclu en cinq jours. Le conseil de l’empereur Léopold n’osa
entrer dans cette intrigue. Il était lié par le traité secret qu’il avait signé avec
le roi de France pour dépouiller le jeune roi d’Espagne. Il encourageait
secrètement l’union de l’Angleterre, de la Suède, et de la Hollande; mais il
ne prenait aucunes mesures ouvertes.
Louis XIV fut indigné qu’un petit état tel que la Hollande conçût l’idée
de borner ses conquêtes, et d’être l’arbitre des rois, et plus encore qu’elle en
fût capable. Cette entreprise des Provinces-Unies lui fut un outrage sensible
qu’il fallut dévorer, et dont il médita dès-lors la vengeance.
Tout ambitieux, tout puissant, et tout irrité qu’il était, il détourna l’orage
qui allait s’élever de tous les côtés de l’Europe. Il proposa lui-même la paix.
La France et l’Espagne choisirent Aix-la-Chapelle pour le lieu des
conférences, et le nouveau pape Rospigliosi, Clément IX, pour médiateur.
La cour de Rome, pour décorer sa faiblesse d’un crédit apparent,
rechercha par toutes sortes de moyens l’honneur d’être l’arbitre entre les
couronnes. Elle n’avait pu l’obtenir au traité des Pyrénées: elle parut l’avoir
au moins à la paix d’Aix-la-Chapelle. Un nonce fut envoyé à ce congrès
pour être un fantôme d’arbitre entre des fantômes de plénipotentiaires. Les
Hollandais, déjà jaloux de la gloire, ne voulurent point partager celle de
conclure ce qu’ils avaient commencé. Tout se traitait en effet à Saint-
Germain, par le ministère de leur ambassadeur Van-Beuning. Ce qui avait
été accordé en secret par lui était envoyé à Aix-la-Chapelle, pour être signé
avec appareil par les ministres assemblés au congrès. Qui eût dit trente ans
auparavant qu’un bourgeois de Hollande obligerait la France et l’Espagne à
recevoir sa médiation?
Ce Van-Beuning, échevin d’Amsterdam, avait la vivacité d’un Français
et la fierté d’un Espagnol. Il se plaisait à choquer, dans toutes les occasions,
la hauteur impérieuse du roi, et apposait une inflexibilité républicaine au
ton de supériorité que les ministres de France commençaient à prendre. «Ne
vous fiez-vous pas à la parole du roi?» lui disait M. de Lyonne dans une
conférence. «J’ignore ce que veut le roi, dit Van-Beuning, je considère ce
qu’il peut.» Enfin, à la cour du plus superbe monarque du monde, un
bourgmestre conclut avec autorité (2 mai 1668) une paix par laquelle le roi
fut obligé de rendre la Franche-Comté. Les Hollandais eussent bien mieux
aimé qu’il eût rendu la Flandre, et être délivrés d’un voisin si redoutable:
mais toutes les nations trouvèrent que le roi marquait assez de modération
en se privant de la Franche-Comté. Cependant il gagnait davantage en
retenant les villes de Flandre, et il s’ouvrait les portes de la Hollande, qu’il
songeait à détruire dans le temps qu’il lui cédait.
 CHAPITRE X.
Travaux et magnificence de Louis XIV. Aventure singulière en Portugal. Casimir en France. Secours
en Candie. Conquête de la Hollande.
Louis XIV, forcé de rester quelque temps en paix, continua, comme il
avait commencé, à régler, à fortifier, et embellir son royaume. Il fit voir
qu’un roi absolu, qui veut le bien, vient à bout de tout sans peine. Il n’avait
qu’à commander, et les succès dans l’administration étaient aussi rapides
que l’avaient été ses conquêtes. C’était une chose véritablement admirable
de voir les ports de mer, auparavant déserts, ruinés, maintenant entourés
d’ouvrages qui fesaient leur ornement et leur défense, couverts de navires et
de matelots, et contenant déjà près de soixante grands vaisseaux qu’il
pouvait armer en guerre. De nouvelles colonies, protégées par son pavillon,
partaient de tous cotés pour l’Amérique, pour les Indes orientales, pour les
côtes de l’Afrique. Cependant en France, et sous ses yeux, des édifices
immenses occupaient des milliers d’hommes, avec tous les arts que
l’architecture entraîne après elle; et dans l’intérieur de sa cour et de sa
capitale, des arts plus nobles et plus ingénieux donnaient à la France des
plaisirs et une gloire dont les siècles précédents n’avaient pas eu même
l’idée. Les lettres florissaient; le bon goût et la raison pénétraient dans les
écoles de la barbarie. Tous ces détails de la gloire et de la félicité de la
nation trouveront leur véritable place dans cette histoire[452]; il ne s’agit ici
que des affaires générales et militaires.
Le Portugal donnait en ce temps un spectacle étrange à l’Europe. Dom
Alfonse, fils indigne de l’heureux dom Jean de Bragance, y régnait: il était
furieux et imbécile. Sa femme, fille du duc de Nemours, amoureuse de dom
Pèdre, frère d’Alfonse, osa concevoir le projet de détrôner son mari, et
d’épouser son amant. L’abrutissement du mari justifia l’audace de la reine.
Il était d’une force de corps au-dessus de l’ordinaire; il avait eu
publiquement d’une courtisane un enfant qu’il avait reconnu: enfin, il avait
couché très long-temps avec la reine. Malgré tout cela, elle l’accusa
d’impuissance; et ayant acquis dans le royaume, par son habileté, l’autorité
que son mari avait perdue par ses fureurs, elle le fit enfermer (novembre
1667). Elle obtint bientôt de Rome une bulle pour épouser son beau-frère. Il
n’est pas étonnant que Rome ait accordé cette bulle; mais il l’est que des
personnes toutes puissantes en aient besoin. Ce que Jules II avait accordé