"Rotherham's College, according to its measure, was intended to meet two pressing needs of his time, and especially of northern England--a preaching clergy, and boys trained for the service of the church. At the end of the fifteenth century 'both theology and the art of preaching seemed in danger of general neglect. At the English universities, and consequently throughout the whole country, the sermon was falling into almost complete disuse.' The disfavour with which it was regarded by the heads of the Church was largely due to fear of the activity of the Lollards, which had brought all popular harangues and discourses under suspicion. When the embers of heresy had been extinguished, here and there a reforming churchman sought to restore among the parish clergy the old preaching activity. In the wide unmanageable dioceses of the north the lack of an educated, preaching priesthood was most apparent. Bishop Stanley is probably only echoing the language of Alcock when he begins and closes his statutes with an exhortation to the society, whom he addresses as 'scholars of Jesus,' so to conduct themselves 'that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be honoured, the clergy multiplied, and the people called to the praise of God.' He enacts that of the five Foundation Fellows (one of Alcock's having been suppressed) four shall be devoted to the study of theology, and he requires that they shall be chosen from natives of five counties, which, owing to the imperfections of the single existing copy of his statutes, are unspecified. If, as is likely, this county restriction was re-introduced by Stanley from the provisions made by Alcock, it is natural to surmise that the founder's native county was one of those preferred. Certain it is that his small society had a Yorkshireman, Chubbes of Whitby, for its first master. He had been a Fellow of Pembroke, and probably from the same society and county came one of the original Fellows of Jesus, William Atkynson.