Great Court. One of these was Michael-house, founded in 1324 by Hervey de Stanton, Chancellor to Edward II. The other, King's Hall, was founded in 1337 by Edward III., who assigned it to the King's Scholars, thirty or forty students, maintained at Cambridge by a royal bounty, first granted by Edward II. in 1316. Thus, whilst Michael-house was the older College, King's Hall represented the older foundation. When Henry VIII. united them, the new name, "Trinity College," was probably taken from Michael-house, which, among other titles, had been dedicated to the Holy and Undivided Trinity. The Reformation had been a crisis in the history of the English Universities. In 1546 their fortunes were almost at the lowest ebb. That fact adds significance to the terms in which Henry's charter traces the noble plan of Trinity College. The new house is to be a "college of literature, the sciences, philosophy, good arts, and sacred Theology." It is founded "to the glory and honour of Almighty God and the Holy and Undivided Trinity; for the amplification and establishment of the Christian faith; the extirpation of heresy and false opinion; the increase and continuance of Divine Learning and all kinds of good letters; the knowledge of the tongues; the education of youth in piety, virtue, learning, and science; the relief of the poor, destitute, and afflicted; the prosperity of the Church of Christ; and the common good of his kingdom and subjects."

The King had died before this conception could be embodied in legislative enactment. Statutes were made for Trinity College in the reign of Edward VI., and again in the reign of Mary. Manuscript copies of these are preserved in the Muniment-room of the College; but the first printed code of Statutes was that given in the

second year of Elizabeth. These governed Trinity College until a revision produced the "Victorian" Statutes of 1844. Two features of the Elizabethan Statutes deserve notice. All the sixty Fellowships are left open, without appropriation to counties-whilst at every other Cambridge College, except King's, territorial restrictions existed till this century. And, besides the College Lecturers, maintenance is assigned to three University Readers. These are the Regius Professors of Divinity, Hebrew, and Greek, who are still on Henry VIII.'s foundation. Thus, from its origin, Trinity College was specially associated with two ideas: free competition of merit; and provis ion, not only for collegiate tuition, but also for properly academic teaching.

During the first century of its life-from the reign of Edward VI. to the Civil Wars-the prosperity of Trinity College was brilliant and unbroken. The early days of the Great Rebellion were more disastrous for Cambridge than for Oxford; yet at Cambridge, as at Oxford, the period of the Commonwealth was one in which learning throve. Trinity College was "purged 'purged" of its Royalist members in 1645. Dr. Thomas Hill then became Master. He proved an excellent administrator. Isaac Barrow, who was an undergraduate of the College, had written an exercise on "the Gunpowder Treason," in which his Cavalier sympathies were frankly avowed. Some of the Fellows were so much incensed that they moved for his expulsion, when Hill silenced them with the words, "Barrow is a better man than any of us." The last Master of Trinity before the Restoration was Dr. John Wilkins, brother-inlaw of Oliver Cromwell, and formerly Warden of Wadham College, Oxford; who was "always zealous to promote worthy men and generous designs." He was shrewdly

suspected of being a Royalist, and Cromwell had been wont to greet his visits thus: "What, brother Wilkins, I sup pose you are come to ask something or other in favour of the Malignants?" But his influence is said to have decided the Protector against confiscating the revenues of Oxford and Cambridge to pay his army.*

In the space of forty years between the Restoration and Bentley's arrival, Trinity College had suffered some decline; not through any default of eminent abilities or worthy characters, but partly from general influences of the time, partly from the occasional want of a sufficiently firm rule. Dr. John Pearson-the author of the treatise on the Creed-was Master of Trinity from 1662 to 1673. A contemporary-whose words plainly show the contrast with Bentley which was in his mind-said that Pearson was “a man the least apt to encroach upon anything that belonged to the Fellows, but treated them all with abundance of civility and condescension." "The Fellows, he has heard, ask'd him whether he wanted anything in his lodge-table-linen, or the like; 'No,' saith the good man, I think not; this I have will serve yet;' and though pressed by his wife to have new, especially as it was offered him, he would refuse it while the old was fit for use. He was very well contented with what the College allowed him."

* See a letter, preserved in the Muniment-room of Trinity College, Cambridge, and published by Mr. W. Aldis Wright in Notes and Queries, Aug. 13, 1881. I may remark that Dr. Creyghton, whose recollections in old age the letter reports, errs in one detail. It must have been as Warden of Wadham, not as Master of Trinity, that Wilkins interceded against the confiscation. Oliver Cromwell died Sept. 3, 1658. It was early in 1659 that Richard Cromwell appointed Wilkins to Trinity College.

Pearson was succeeded in the Mastership by Isaac Barrow, who held it for only four years-from 1673 to his death in 1677. Both as a mathematician and as a theologian he stood in the foremost rank. In 1660 he was elected "without a competitor" to the professorship of Greek. Thus a singular triad of distinctions is united in his person; as Lucasian professor of Mathematics, he was the predecessor of Newton; at Trinity College, of Bentley; and, in his other chair, of Porson. In early boyhood he was chiefly remarkable for his pugnacity, and for his aversion to books. When he was at Charterhouse, "his greatest recreation was in such sports as brought on fighting among the boys; in his after-time a very great courage remained . . . yet he had perfectly subdued all inclination to quarrelling; but a negligence of his cloaths did always continue with him." As Master of Trinity, "besides the particular assistance he gave to many in their studies, he concerned himself in everything that was for the interest of his College."

...

The next two Masters were men of a different type. John North was the fifth son of Dudley, Lord North, and younger brother of Francis North, first Baron Guilford, Lord Keeper in the reigns of Charles II. and James II. He had been a Fellow of Jesus College, and in 1677 he was appointed Master of Trinity. John North was a man of cultivated tastes and considerable accomplishments, of a gentle, very sensitive disposition, and of a highly nervous temperament. Even after he was a Fellow of his College, he once mistook a moonlit towel for " an enorm spectre ;" and his brother remembers how, at a still later period, one Mr. Wagstaff, a little gentleman, had an express audience, at a very good dinner, on the subject of spectres, and much was said pro and con." On one occasion he

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travelled into Wales, "to visit and be possessed of his sinecure of Llandinon." "The parishioners came about him and hugged him, calling him their pastor, and telling him they were his sheep;" when "he got him back to his College as fast as he could." In the Mastership of Trinity North showed no weakness. Certain abuses had begun to infect the election to Fellowships, and he made a vigorous effort to remedy them. He was no less firm in his endeavours to revive discipline, which had been somewhat relaxed since the Restoration. One day he was in the act of admonishing two students, when he fell down in a fit. The two young men were "very helpful" in carrying him to the Lodge. Paralysis of one side ensued. He lived for upwards of three years, but could thenceforth take little part in College affairs; and died, six years after he had become Master, in 1683.

Dr. John Mountague, North's successor, was the fourth son of Edward, first Earl of Sandwich. The little that is known of Mountague exhibits him as an amiable person of courtly manners, who passed decently along the path of rapid preferment which then awaited a young divine with powerful connexions. Having first been Master of Sherburn Hospital at Durham, he was appointed, in 1683, to the Mastership of Trinity. His easy temper and kindly disposition made him popular with the Fellows-all the more so, perhaps, if his conscience was less exacting than that of the highly-strung, anxious North. In 1699 he returned, as Dean of Durham, to the scene of his earlier duties, and lived to see the fortunes of the College under Bentley. He died in London, in 1728. There was a double disadvantage for Bentley in coming after such a man; the personal contrast was marked; and those tendencies which North strove to repress had not suffered,