In the interval between his nomination as Protector and the summoning of his first parliament in September 1654, Cromwell was empowered together with his council to legislate by ordinances; and eighty-two were issued in all, dealing with numerous and various reforms and including the reorganization of the treasury, the settlement of Ireland and Scotland and the union of the three kingdoms, the relief of poor prisoners, and the maintenance of the highways. These ordinances in many instances showed the hand of the true statesman. Cromwell was essentially a conservative reformer; in his attempts to purge the court of chancery of its most flagrant abuses, and to settle the ecclesiastical affairs of the nation, he showed himself anxious to retain as much of the existing system as could be left untouched without doing positive evil. He was out-voted by his council on the question of commutation of tithes, and his enlightened zeal for reforming the "wicked and abominable" sentences of the criminal law met with complete failure. Most of these ordinances were subsequently confirmed by parliament, and, "on the whole, this body of dictatorial legislation, abnormal in form as it is, in substance was a real, wise and moderate set of reforms."[4] His ordinances for the "Reformation of Manners," the product of the puritan spirit, had but a transitory effect. The Long Parliament had ordered a strict observance of Sunday, punished swearing severely, and made adultery a capital crime; Cromwell issued further ordinances against duelling, swearing, race-meetings and cock-fights--the last as tending to the disturbance of the public peace and the encouragement of "dissolute practices to the dishonour of God." Cromwell himself was no ascetic and saw no harm in honest sport. He was exceedingly fond of horses and hunting, leaping ditches prudently avoided by the foreign ambassadors. Baxter describes him as full of animal spirits, "naturally of such a vivacity, hilarity and alacrity as another man is when he hath drunken a cup of wine too much," and notes his "familiar rustic carriage with his soldiers in sporting." He was fond of music and of art, and kept statues in Hampton Court Gardens which scandalized good puritans. He preferred that Englishmen should be free rather than sober by compulsion. Writing to the Scottish clergy, and rejecting their claim to suppress dissent in order to extirpate error, he said, "Your pretended fear lest error should step in is like the man who would keep all wine out of the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon a supposition he may abuse it. When he doth abuse it, judge." It is probable that very little of this moral legislation was enforced in practice, though special efforts were made under the government of the major-generals. Cromwell expected more results from the effects of education and culture. A part of the revenue of confiscated church lands was allotted to the maintenance of schools, and the question of national education was seriously taken in hand by the Commonwealth. Cromwell was especially interested in the universities. In 1649 he had been elected D.C.L. at Oxford, and in 1651 chancellor of the University, an office which he held till 1657, when he was succeeded by his son Richard. He founded a new readership in Divinity, and presented Greek MSS. to the Bodleian. He appointed visitors for the universities and great public schools, and defended the universities from the attacks of the extreme sectaries who clamoured for their abolition, even Clarendon allowing that Oxford "yielded a harvest of extraordinary good and sound knowledge in all parts of learning." In 1657 he founded a new university at Durham, which was suppressed at the Restoration. He patronized learning. Milton and Marvell were his secretaries. He allowed the royalists Hobbes and Cowley to return to England, and lived in friendship with the poet Waller.