As soon as Sir Thomas White had carried out the necessary repairs, he leased the Hall to William Stocke, a Fellow of St. John's College, for a term of twenty years. On St. John the Baptist's Day, 1560, the first Principal and a hundred scholars took their commons in the old monks' refectory of Gloucester Hall. The first Principal was an old Fellow of Brasenose, from whence, "for his great proficiency in learning, he was taken by Sir Thomas White," and made one of the first Fellows of St. John's. One event only marked his first principality. In September of this year Amy Robsart, whose sudden death and obscure burial at Cumnor had excited general suspicion, was taken up by order of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, that she might be reburied in St. Mary's Church. She was

"secretly brought by night to Gloucester College without the town of Oxford, the which place was hanged with blake cloth, and garnished with skocheons of his armes and hers in pale-that is to say, a great chamber where the mourners did dine, and that where the gentlewomen did dine, and benethe the stairs a great hall, all which places, as aforesaid, were hanged with blake cloth, and garnished with scutcheons: the which being thus furnished, there the corse lay till the burial, and till such time as all things were ready for the same."

Hence she was moved to St. Mary's, where Dr. Babington, "my lord's Chaplaine," making the public funeral sermon at her second burial, "tript once or twice in his speech by recommending to their memories that vertuous ladie so pittefully murdered, instead of so pitifully slain."

In 1563 William Stocke left Gloucester Hall to

become President of St. John's, and he assigned his lease, or sublet, to William Palmer, an old member of Brasenose, who lived to suffer much for the Catholic religion which he professed. But after little more than a year William Stocke came back, having resigned the Presidency of St. John's from a whimsical fear of being deprived, and he remained Principal till 1573, a period during which the Hall flourished greatly. In 1574 he left of his own accord, and "after conferring upon him of several benefices, if not a dignity or two, which he changed for others, such was the rambling of his mind, died, notwithstanding, in a mean condition, yet always in animo Catholicus, in 1607.”

In his time arose a practice of letting apartments in the College to various tenants. The lodgers were mostly men of good position. A list of members of the Hall in 1572 includes twenty-two persons who were not ordinary undergraduates, nor yet ordinary tutors. Of these no less than fourteen were knights, and one an Archdeacon. One of the most distinguished was probably Sir George Peckham, who gave £100 for the repair of the College in 1573. He occupied the Principal's lodgings; for when William Stocke retired from the College in 1573, it was arranged that it might be covenanted that Sir George Peckham might quietly enjoy his lodging there. He was a merchant adventurer, who petitioned the Queen "to allow of an enterprise by them conceived at their charges and adventure to be performed for England, and for the honour of her Majesty." The result was the foundation of a colony in Newfoundland. It is obvious indeed, from the number of people who died there, that the inhabitants of

Gloucester Hall consisted of a different class to that which generally inhabited a college. In 1577 and 1578 alone there were three deaths of members of the Hall, who were buried in the church of St. Thomas. In 1600 we find John Feteplace occupying the Principal's lodgings, for Anthony Bushop, one of the serjeants of Abingdon, died in his house on February 11 of that year. In 1609 Richard Gatagre, M.A., Fellow of All Souls in 1550, and Esquire Bedell of Arts, died in the Hall, aged eighty-eight. Thomas Miller, Fellow of New College, died in the Hall in 1643. These are only a few out of a large number of similar entries.

There were women as well as men in the Hall. The first recorded lady was Lady Catesby, who was here in 1577. Two widows died in the College in 1616—Mrs. Joan Ingram, widow of Mr. Richard Ingram, and Mrs. Anne Coles. Mrs. Susanna Holland, widow of Dr. Thomas Holland, sometime Regius Professor of Divinity, died here on March 4, 1650. And for one of whom we hear in this way there must have been many more of whom we hear nothing.

But a far more interesting, if more obscure, class of tenants were the Roman Catholics, open or concealed. First must be mentioned three Fellows of Trinity— George Blackwell, who was residing in the College in 1572; Thomas Allen, who arrived almost at the same date, and took up his quarters for a sixty-years' residence on No. 9 staircase; and, thirdly, Thomas Warren, who went to Gloucester Hall in 1579.

These facts hardly served to give Gloucester Hall a good reputation. In later days it was always referred to as a hotbed of Popery.

"Fanaticks keep their children at home, or breed them in private schools under fanaticks, or send them beyond seas, though before the war they did not, but did send them to the University to Gloucester College."

The first three Principals of the Hall, at any rate, were all Catholics in animo, if not in profession; and at one or very nearly the same time-namely, between 1570 and 1580-we find a dozen or so of the most prominent Catholics in England among the residents in Gloucester Hall. Scarcely less distinguished than Thomas Allen was Edmund Rainolds, a Catholic, who lived for sixty years next door to Allen on No. 8 staircase. But these were passive, and not active, Catholics. The same cannot be said of George Blackwell, who went straight from Gloucester Hall to Douai. He was one of the priests who carried on active missionary work in England. He lived for three days in the Countess of Arundel's secret chamber, where he was in danger of being starved. In 1597 he was appointed Archpriest by Clement VIII., and his subsequent history with the dissensions he caused in the Catholic party are well known. Not less famous is Dr. William Bishop, who was at Gloucester Hall probably in 1572. He was a bitter opponent of Blackwell, and suffered imprisonment both from Walsingham and Cajetan. In 1622, chiefly by his exertions, the office of Archpriest was abolished, and he became the first missionary Bishop in England, under the title of Bishop of Chalcedon. An even more interesting figure is Sir William Catesby, a Catholic gentleman belonging to a most ill-fated family. He and his wife were resident in the College in 1577. Here a daughter was born to Lady Catesby in the lodgings that Sir George Peckham repaired.

"She did pay her chrysom, and all other duties, to the Vicar and clark of St. Thomas's parish. The said child was not christened by the said Vicar, but by a Popish priest."

Sir William Catesby was deeply compromised as a Catholic. He was a subscriber to the College at Douai, and he was fined for not attending at church. Two of his sons, better known than himself, were members of Gloucester Hall. Ralph Sheldon and Henry Lawson were two other members of the Hall, who came of families that were noted for their devotion to the Catholic cause. The family of Lawson, in particular, has sent more recruits to the Jesuit order than any other in England.

It is no wonder that so ominous a conjunction attracted the notice of the authorities. There are two

point to the

amusing entries in the State Papers which suspicion under which the Hall laboured. The first is a presentment, dated November 15, 1577, in the College of Gloucester, of "William Meredith, suspected to be an Horrible Papist, and esteemed to be worth £50." The second is fourteen years later, dated April 20, 1591:

"John Allyn, of Gloucester Hall, Oxford, said Mass on Good Friday, and made the blood of Christ sent from Rome drop 9 or 10 drops of fresh bloode, for which £20 a drop is given, and it may not be touched till given by a priest those who have it about them can sustain no danger of body. They have private prayers for the Earl of Arundel's preservation."

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At the same time, if English authorities feared as to the state of Gloucester Hall, the many representatives