When he returned to England, Laud was in the
Tower of London, but had taken the precaution to make the Arabic chair permanent. Pococke does not seem to have been an extreme churchman or to have been active in politics. His rare scholarship and personal qualities brought him influential friends, foremost among these being
John Selden and
John Owen. Through their offices he obtained, in 1648, the chair of
Hebrew at the
University of Oxford on the death of
John Morris, though he lost the emoluments of the post soon after, and did not recover them until the
Restoration. These events hampered Pococke in his studies, or so he complained in the preface to his
Eutychius; he resented the attempts to remove him from his parish of
Childrey, a college living near
Wantage in North Berkshire (now Oxfordshire) which he had accepted in 1643. In 1649, he published the
Specimen historiae arabum, a short account of the origin and manners of the Arabs, taken from
Bar-Hebraeus (Abulfaragius), with notes from a vast number of manuscript sources which are still valuable. This was followed in 1655 by the
Porta Mosis, extracts from the Arabic commentary of
Maimonides on the
Mishnah, with translation and very learned notes; and in 1656 by the annals of Eutychius in Arabic and
Latin. He also gave active assistance to
Brian Walton's polyglot bible, and the preface to the various readings of the
Arabic Pentateuch is from his hand. ==Post-Restoration==