Dr. Jacob Hall, of Abingdon, was the second President, and had under him
a faculty of three professors and a chaplain. The school prospered and
had public exhibitions of its students' proficiency from time to time.
It is doubtful if sufficient care was exercised in the expenditure of
money and, in December, 1790, the Trustees felt obliged to contract a
loan of £1000. The charitable contributions fell off, and Asbury was
forced to go from house to house in Baltimore, "through the snow and
cold, begging money for the support of the poor orphans at
Cokesbury."[33] The instruction was good, and Asbury could write to
Coke, then in England, that "one promising young man has gone forth into
the ministry, another is ready, and several have been under awakenings.
None so healthy and orderly as our children, and some promise great
talents for learning."[34] Still, "all was not well there," and on
October 2, 1793, he "found matters in a poor state at college; £500 in
debt, and our employes £700 in arrears." A year later, matters were
desperate and the good Bishop wrote that "we now make a sudden and dead
pause--we mean to incorporate and breathe and take some better plan. If
we can not have a Christian school (_i.e._ a school under Christian
discipline and pious teachers), we will have none."[35] The project of
incorporation was not favored by some, who feared that the College would
not be thereby so directly under the control of the Conference, but was
carried through, and the charter bears date, December 26, 1794.[36] By
it, the institution was allowed to have an income not exceeding £3,000.

How a charter was to avoid increased indebtedness does not appear and
the College's debt had so increased, that the Conference in 1795 decided
to suspend the Collegiate Department and have only an English Free
School kept in the buildings.[37]

Misfortunes never come singly: an unsuccessful attempt to burn the