sovereign and of a true woman, "methinks this gown and habit become
you very well, and I marvel that you are so strait-laced on this
point--but I come not now to chide." This President complained that
his headship was "more payneful than gayneful," a charge not usually
brought against headships at Oxford.

In the seventeenth century, Magdalen was, for a short time, the very
centre of England's interest. James II, in his desire to force Roman
Catholicism on Oxford, tried to fill the vacant Presidency with one
of his co-religionists. His first nominee was not only disqualified
under the statutes, but was also a man of so notoriously bad a
character that even the king had to drop him. Meanwhile, the fellows,
having waited, in order to oblige James, till the last possible
moment allowed by the statutes, filled up the vacancy by electing one
of their own number, John Hough. When the king pronounced this
election irregular and demanded the removal of the President and the
acceptance of his second nominee, the fellows declared themselves
unable thus to violate their statutes, even at royal command, and
were accordingly driven out. The "demies," who were offered
nominations to the fellowships thus rendered vacant, supported their
seniors, and, in their turn, too, were driven out; they had showed
their contempt for James' intruded fellows by "cocking their hats" at
them, and by drinking confusion to the Pope. When the landing of
William of Orange was threatening, James revoked all these arbitrary
proceedings, but it was too late; he had brought home, by a striking
example, to Oxford and to England, that no amount of past services,
no worthiness of character, no statutes, however clear and binding,
were to weigh for a moment with a royal bigot, who claimed the power
to "dispense" with any statutes. The "Restoration" of the Fellows on
October 25, 1688, is still celebrated by a College Gaudy, when the