produced an effect he was far from intending: for instead of writing
the answer he determined to renounce Dissent and attach himself to
the Established Church. He dwelt at that time with his mother and an
old aunt, themselves ardent Dissenters, to whom he could not tell his
design. So he arose before daybreak one morning, tramped sixty miles
to Oxford, and entered himself at Exeter College as a poor scholar.
This was in August, 1683.

He took up his residence in Oxford with forty-five shillings in his
pocket. He studied there five years, and during that time received
from his family and friends just five shillings; obtained his
Bachelor's degree, and departed seven pounds and fifteen shillings
richer than when he entered the University. The winter of 1683 was a
hard beginning for a scholar too poor to buy fuel, the cold being so
severe in the Thames valley that coaches plied as freely on the river
from the Temple to Westminster as if they had gone upon the land.
Yet "I tarried," he afterwards wrote, "in Exeter College, though I
met with some hardships I had before been unacquainted with, till I
was of standing sufficient to take my Bachelor's degree; and not
being able to subsist there afterwards, I came to London during the
time of my Lord Bishop of London's suspension by the High Commission,
and was instituted into deacon's orders by my Lord Bishop of
Rochester, at his palace at Bromley, August 7th, 1688."

He had maintained himself by instructing wealthier undergraduates and
writing their exercises for them (as a servitor he had to black their
boots and run their errands); also by scribbling for John Dunton, the
famous London bookseller, whose acquaintance he had made during his
last year at Mr. Morton's. With all this he found time and the will
to be charitable, and had visited the poor creatures imprisoned in