sermon of Francis Rous, the provost, and thence in 1660 he was ejected. He returned to his preaching at Berwick-on-Tweed, but was expelled by the Act of Uniformity in 1662, and after spending some time in the West Indies settled (1670) at Boston, Massachusetts, where he was ordained minister of the First Church. He died on the 28th of December 1674. A few sermons are all that he published. His first wife (d. 1658) was “a scholar beyond what was usual in her sex,” and Andrew Marvell, who was their friend, wrote an epitaph for her tomb at Eton which was defaced at the Restoration; his second wife (d. 1659) was Frances Woodward, daughter of the famous vicar of Bray; his third was a widow whom he met at Barbados.
OXENFORD, JOHN (1812–1877), English dramatist, was
born at Camberwell on the 12th of August 1812. He began his
literary career by writing on finance. He was an excellent
linguist, and the author of many translations from the German,
notably of Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit (1846) and Eckermann’s
Conversations of Goethe (1850). He did much by his
writing to spread the fame of Schopenhauer in England. His
first play was My Fellow Clerk, produced at the Lyceum in
1835. This was followed by a long series of pieces, the most
famous of which was perhaps the Porter’s Knot (1858) and
Twice Killed (1835). About 1850 he became dramatic critic of
The Times. He died in Southwark on the 21st of February 1877.
Many references to his pieces will be found in The Life and Reminiscences of E. L. Blanchard (ed. C. Scott and C. Howard, 1891).
OXENHAM, HENRY NUTCOMBE (1829–1888), English
ecclesiologist, son of a master at Harrow, was born there on the
15th of November 1829. From Harrow he went to Balliol
College, Oxford. He took Anglican orders in 1854, but became
a Roman Catholic in 1857. At first his thoughts turned towards
the priesthood, and he spent some time at the London Oratory
and at St Edmund’s College, Ware; but being unable to surrender
his belief in the validity of Anglican orders, he proceeded
no further than minor orders in the Roman Church. In 1863
he made a prolonged visit to Germany, where he studied the
language and literature, and formed a close friendship with
Döllinger, whose First Age of the Christian Church he translated
in 1866. Oxenham was a regular contributor to the Saturday
Review. A selection of his essays was published in Short Studies
in Ecclesiastical History and Biography (1884), and Short Studies,
Ethical and Religious (1885). He also translated in 1876 the
2nd vol. of Bishop Hefele’s History of the Councils of the Church,
and published several pamphlets on the reunion of Christendom.
His Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement (1865) and Catholic
Eschatology and Universalism (1876) are standard works.
Oxenham died at Kensington on the 23rd of March 1888.
See J. Gillow’s Bibliographical Dictionary of English Catholics, vol. v. An interesting obituary notice on Oxenham was written by Vicesimus, i.e. Dean John Oakley of Manchester, for the Manchester Guardian, and published in pamphlet form (Manchester, 1888).
OXENSTJERNA, an ancient Swedish senatorial family, the
origin of which can be traced up to the middle of the 14th
century, which had vast estates in Södermanland and Uppland,
and began to adopt its armorial designation of Oxenstjerna
(“Ox-forehead”) as a personal name towards the end of the
16th century. Its most notable members were the following.
1. Count Axel Gustafsson (1583–1654), chancellor of Sweden, was born at Fönö in Uppland, and was educated with his brothers at the universities of Rostock, Jena and Wittenberg. On returning home in 1603 he was appointed kammerjunker to King Charles IX. In 1606 he was entrusted with his first diplomatic mission, to Mecklenburg, was appointed a senator during his absence, and henceforth became one of the king’s most trusted servants. In 1610 he was sent to Copenhagen to prevent a war with Denmark, but was unsuccessful. This embassy is important as being the beginning of Oxenstjerna’s long diplomatic struggle with Sweden’s traditional rival in the north, whose most formidable enemy he continued to be throughout life. Oxenstjerna was appointed a member of Gustavus Adolphus’s council of regency. High aristocrat as he was, he would at first willingly have limited the royal power. An oligarchy guiding a limited monarchy was ever his ideal government, but the genius of the young king was not to be fettered, so Oxenstjerna was content to be the colleague instead of the master of his sovereign. On the 6th of January 1612 he was appointed chancellor. His controlling, organizing hand was speedily felt in every branch of the administration. For his services as first Swedish plenipotentiary at the peace of Knäred, 1613, he was richly rewarded. During the frequent absences of Gustavus in Livonia and Finland (1614–1616) Oxenstjerna acted as his vice-regent, when he displayed manifold abilities and an all-embracing activity. In 1620 he headed the brilliant embassage despatched to Berlin to arrange the nuptial contract between Gustavus and Mary Eleanora of Brandenburg. It was his principal duty during the king’s Russian and Polish wars to supply the armies and the fleets with everything necessary, including men and money. By this time he had become so indispensable that Gustavus, in 1622, bade him accompany him to Livonia, where Oxenstjerna was appointed governor-general and commandant of Riga. His services in Livonia were rewarded with four castles and the whole bishopric of Wenden. He was entrusted with the peace negotiations which led to the truce with Poland in 1623, and succeeded, by skilful diplomacy, in averting a threatened rupture with Denmark in 1624. On the 7th of October 1626 he was appointed governor-general of the newly-acquired province of Prussia. In 1629 he concluded the very advantageous truce of Altmark with Poland. Previously to this (September 1628) he arranged with Denmark a joint occupation of Stralsund, to prevent that important fortress from falling into the hands of the Imperialists. After the battle of Breitenfeld (September 7th, 1631) he was summoned to assist the king with his counsels and co-operation in Germany. During the king’s absence in Franconia and Bavaria in 1632 he was appointed legatus in the Rhine lands, with plenipotentiary authority over all the German generals and princes in the Swedish service. Although he never fought a battle, he was a born strategist, and frustrated all the efforts of the Spanish troops by his wise regulations. His military capacity was strikingly demonstrated by the skill with which he conducted large reinforcements to Gustavus through the heart of Germany in the summer of 1632. But it was only after the death of the king at Lützen that Oxenstjerna’s true greatness came to light. He inspired the despairing Protestants both in Germany and Sweden with fresh hopes. He reorganized the government both at home and abroad. He united the estates of the four upper circles into a fresh league against the common foe (1634), in spite of the envious and foolish opposition of Saxony. By the patent of the 12th of January 1633 he had already been appointed legate plenipotentiary of Sweden in Germany with absolute control over all the territory already won by the Swedish arms. No Swedish subject, either before or after, ever held such an unrestricted and far-reaching authority. Yet he was more than equal to the extraordinary difficulties of the situation. To him both warriors and statesmen appealed invariably as their natural and infallible arbiter. Richelieu himself declared that the Swedish chancellor was “an inexhaustible source of well-matured counsels.” Less original but more sagacious than the king, he had a firmer grasp of the realities of the situation. Gustavus would not only have aggrandized Sweden, he would have transformed the German empire. Oxenstjerna wisely abandoned these vaulting ambitions. His country’s welfare was his sole object. All his efforts were directed towards procuring for the Swedish crown adequate compensation for its sacrifices. Simple to austerity in his own tastes, he nevertheless recognized the political necessity of impressing his allies and confederates by an almost regal show of dignity; and at the abortive congress of Frankfort-on-Main (March 1634), held for the purpose of uniting all the German Protestants, Oxenstjerna appeared in a carriage drawn by six horses, with German princes attending him on foot. But from first to last his policy suffered from the slenderness of Sweden’s material resources, a cardinal defect which all his craft and tact could not altogether conceal from the vigilance of her enemies. The success of his system
