It was as Bishop of Ely that he undertook the foundation of Jesus College. There can, I think, be little doubt that for the idea of his projected college he was indebted to his old Cambridge friend and co-chancellor, Thomas Rotherham, at this time Archbishop of York. At any rate, it is noteworthy that each of the friends founded in his Diocese--the Archbishop at his native place of Rotherham, the Bishop of Ely at Cambridge--a college dedicated to the name of Jesus. Jesus College, Rotherham, was founded in 1481; Jesus College, Cambridge, followed fifteen years later. The main object of the two prelates was probably the same. In the license for the foundation of Rotherham's college its objects are stated to be twofold: "To preach the Word of God in the Parish of Rotherham and in other places in the Diocese of York; and to instruct gratuitously, in the rules of grammar and song, scholars from all parts of England, and especially from the Diocese of York." There is no reason to suppose that the needs of the Diocese of Ely, even fifteen years later, were any different. For the fact that Jesus College, Rotherham, should consist of _ten_ persons--a provost, six choristers, and three masters--who can teach respectively grammar, music, and writing, the Archbishop gave the fanciful reason, that as he, its founder, had offended God in His ten commandments, so he desired the benefit of the prayers of ten persons on his behalf. Alcock's motive for fixing the number of his new Society of Jesus at Cambridge at thirteen seems to have been no less characteristic. Thirteen, the number of the original Christian Society of Our Lord and His Apostles, was the common complement of the professed members of a monastic society, and may in all likelihood have been the original number of the nuns of St. Rhadegund, whose house the Bishop was about to suppress to found his new college.