After the renaissance some of the statutable exercises were "huddled," that is, were reduced to a mere form. To huddle an act, the proctor generally asked some question such as _Quid est nomen?_ to which the answer usually expected was _Nescio_. In these exercises considerable license was allowed, particularly if there were any play on the words involved. For example, J. Brass, of Trinity, was accosted with the question, _Quid est aes?_ to which he answered, _Nescio nisi finis examinationis_. It should be added that retorts such as these were only allowed in the pretence exercises, and a candidate who in the actual examination was asked to give a definition of happiness and replied, "An exemption from Payne"--that being the name of his questioner--was plucked for want of discrimination in time and place. In earlier years even the farce of huddling seems to have been unnecessary, for it was said in 1675 that it was not uncommon for the proctors to take "cautions for the performance of the statutable exercises, and accept the forfeit of the money so deposited in lieu of their performance." In medieval times acts had been usually kept on some scholastic question or on a proposition taken from the _Sentences_. About the end of the fifteenth century religious questions, such as the interpretation of biblical texts, began to be introduced. Some fifty or sixty years later the favourite subjects were drawn either from dogmatic theology or from philosophy. In the seventeenth century the questions were usually philosophical, but in the eighteenth century, under the influence of the Newtonian school, a large proportion of them were mathematical. Further details about these exercises and specimens of acts kept in the eighteenth century are given in my _History of Mathematics at Cambridge_. Here I will only say that they provided an admirable training in the art of presenting an argument, and in dialectical skill in attack and defence. The mental strain involved in keeping a contested act was severe. De Morgan, describing his act kept in 1826, wrote[35]: I was badgered for two hours with arguments given and answered in Latin--or what we call Latin--against Newton's first section, Lagrange's derived functions, and Locke on innate principles. And though I took off everything, and was pronounced by the moderator to have disputed _magno honore_, I never had such a strain of thought in my life. For the inferior opponents were made as sharp as their betters by their tutors, who kept lists of queer objections drawn from all quarters. Had the language of the discussions been changed to English, as was repeatedly urged from 1774 onwards, these exercises might have been retained with advantage, but the barbarous Latin and the syllogistic form in which they were carried on prejudiced their retention.