difficulties. Preceded by his bedels with their gold and silver maces, he would walk "through Gloucester Green, then the acknowledged site of the pig market, and down the whole length of Friars Entry, at the risk of being besprinkled by trundled mops in those straits of Thermopyla, of stumbling over buckets, knocking over children, of catching the rinsings of basins, and ducking under linen lines suspended across from the opposite houses." It is certainly a tribute to his deportment that in spite of these disadvantages he earned the nickname of Old Glory. Owing to the illness of the Vice-Chancellor he was the host of the allied Sovereigns on the occasion of their visit to Oxford in June, 1814. One pleasant trait is recorded of his relations with the College. Owing to the gout he used to be brought to chapel every Sunday morning in a Bath chair. The Fellows present always attended him back to his lodgings, a practice retained to the present day. Another episode renders his Provostship notable. In 1809 F. H. Brickenden was the first member of Worcester College to be appointed proctor. Worcester College was not then, nor till 1863, on the proctorial rota, but proctors were occasionally nominated from its ranks by other colleges. Brickenden was somewhat more severe than discreet, and in the event an action was brought against him by one Williams "for depositing the plaintiff in the castle for one night, and for marching him through the streets next morning to the Vice-Chancellor's justice room without suffering him to lay aside the dress of a mail coach guard in which he was found." Since that date Worcester College has had two proctors, John Moore and James Hannay, before it was admitted to the proctorial rota, and five since. As Dr. Gower will be remembered by Samuel Foote, Dr. Whittington Landon will be remembered by Thomas de Quincey, the most illustrious member of the College in his day. He remained on the College books from 1803 to 1816. There are various accounts of his career at the College. "I neglected" (says he) "my dress habitually, and wore my clothes till they were threadbare, partly under the belief that my gown would conceal defects, more from indisposition to bestow on a tailor what I had destined for a bookseller. At length, however, an official person sent me a message on the subject. This, however, was disregarded, and one day I discovered that I had no waistcoat that was not torn or otherwise dilapidated, whereupon buttoning my coat to the throat and drawing my gown close about me, I went into the hall." His companions asked him whether he had seen the latest Gazette, which was said to contain an Order in Council interdicting the use of waistcoats, and they expressed a hope that so sensible an order would be followed by one interdicting the use of breeches, which are still more disagreeable to pay for. But even at Oxford he appears to have impressed his teachers with an idea of his extraordinary abilities. Dr. Goodenough, one of his examiners, said he was the cleverest man he had ever met with, and he would undoubtedly have taken high honours in the examination had he not disappeared from Oxford the day before the vivâ voce. On the death of Dr. Landon on December 29, 1838, Dr. Robert Lynch Cotton was appointed Provost. He had been elected from Charterhouse to a Holford exhibition at the College in 1812. He became a Clarke scholar in 1815, and was a pupil of Thomas Arnold. He was reading with him when the news came of Arnold's election at Oriel. In 1816 he was elected Fellow, and served the offices of Tutor, Bursar and Dean. In 1823 he became Vicar of Denchworth, a College living which he served from Oxford, still remaining tutor. Stories illustrative of the simplicity of his character and the goodness of his heart still survive. To secure his two servants should not starve, he ordered the butcher to supply a leg of mutton every day, and a friend who once accompanied him was startled to be set down to a mid-day meal of four steaming legs of mutton, the accumulations of the week served in his honour. Bishop Wilberforce, visiting him at his Vicarage, was puzzled by a cupboard full of linen, all marked "W. S." This he found was prepared in readiness for "wet strangers." Dean Burgon, himself an old alumnus of the College, tells how "'Twas sport to see When beggars chased him near the College wall (Some mother of a fabulous brood of bairns), A homily to inattentive hearts— I think the College loved him to a man." For Dean Burgon's sketch of Dr. Cotton as "the humble Christian," the reader may consult his "Lives |