I was admitted a Fellow-commoner of Baliol College, Oxford; and, on the 29th, I was matriculated in the vestry of St. Mary's, where I subscribed the Articles, and took the oaths: Dr. Baily, head of St. John's, being vice-chancellor, afterward bishop. It appears by a letter of my father's, that he was upon treaty with one Mr. Bathurst (afterward Doctor and President), of Trinity College, who should have been my tutor; but, lest my brother's tutor, Dr. Hobbs, more zealous in his life than industrious to his pupils, should receive it as an affront, and especially for that Fellow-commoners in Baliol were no more exempt from exercise than the meanest scholars there, my father sent me thither to one Mr. George Bradshaw (nomen invisum! yet the son of an[Pg 9] excellent father, beneficed in Surrey). I ever thought my tutor had parts enough; but as his ambition made him much suspected of the College, so his grudge to Dr. Lawrence, the governor of it (whom he afterward supplanted), took up so much of his time, that he seldom or never had the opportunity to discharge his duty to his scholars. This I perceiving, associated myself with one Mr. James Thicknesse (then a young man of the foundation, afterward a Fellow of the house), by whose learned and friendly conversation I received great advantage. At my first arrival, Dr. Parkhurst was master: and after his decease, Dr. Lawrence, a chaplain of his Majesty's and Margaret Professor, succeeded, an acute and learned person; nor do I much reproach his severity, considering that the extraordinary remissness of discipline had (till his coming) much detracted from the reputation of that College.
There came in my time to the College one Nathaniel Conopios, out of Greece, from Cyrill, the patriarch of Constantinople, who, returning many years after, was made (as I understand) Bishop of Smyrna. He was the first I ever saw drink coffee; which custom came not into England till thirty years after.7
After I was somewhat settled there in my formalities (for then was the University exceedingly regular, under the exact discipline of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, then Chancellor), I added, as benefactor to the library of the College, these books—"ex dono Johannis Evelyni, hujus Coll. Socio-Commensalis, filii Richardi Evelyni, è com. Surriæ, armigr."—
"Zanchii Opera," vols. 1, 2, 3.
"Granado in Thomam Aquinatem," vols. 1, 2, 3.
"Novarini Electa Sacra" and "Cresolii Anthologia Sacra"; authors, it seems, much desired by the students of divinity there.
Upon the 2d of July, being the first Sunday of the month, I first received the blessed Sacrament of the Lord's Supper in the college chapel, one Mr. Cooper, a Fellow of the house, preaching; and at this time was the Church of England in her greatest splendor, all things decent, and becoming the Peace, and the persons that governed.[Pg 10] The most of the following week I spent in visiting the Colleges, and several rarities of the University, which do very much affect young comers.