The petition is briefly to beg the chancellor to assist the College in obtaining a review of the letters patent with the object of maintaining its ancient privileges and former liberties; the letters patent being said to be contrary to the intentions of its founder, and to its statutes[21]. The wording is humble and courtly. The memorandum that accompanied the petition is more outspoken. It is long, but it is so interesting that I shall venture to quote from or describe it at length. I conjecture that it was composed by Nevile. It contains fourteen assertions or arguments to the following effect: 1. It is inconvenient that so large a College as Trinity should be restrained unto a particular School, and it can be easily shown that other Schools have furnished Trinity with students of much better hope and proof than Westminster hath done or is likely to do, for the whole number of Westminster boys who are eligible to both Universities are but forty, and there are seldom more than eight or nine candidates for the six vacancies at the two Universities. 2. To alter or subvert the ancient liberties of one of the chiefest Colleges in Christendom and to divert from the uses intended by his Majesty's Predecessors a foundation like Trinity in order to satisfy private humour or under the pretence of benefitting an ordinary School is a great indignity to his Majesty's Sacred Person, Power, and Prerogative. 3. The suggestion that boys coming to Trinity do not become Fellows, Doctors, Deans, and Bishops as do boys entering Christ Church is untrue, frivolous, and unfair: it is untrue, because, in fact, of the existing sixty Fellows of the College, more than one-sixth have come from Westminster, and at Trinity the custom is to prefer the worthy: it is frivolous, for the fact of a man having once been at school at Westminster is not the cause of his advancement to the position of a Doctor, Dean, or Bishop: and it is unfair, "for although Christ Church in Oxford be a most magnificent and royal foundation, and hath bred in all ages as learned, wise, and worthy prelates as the kingdom hath, yet Trinity College in Cambridge hath had no less royal founders, and if we fail in our Westminster brood (as otherwise I hope we do not) either the defect hath been in themselves or else (which rather we suppose) it may be imputed to those good means the other College hath, being also a Cathedral Church and having Cannons both richly beneficed and highly dignified which doth enable them to Doctorships, Deaneries, and Bishopricks--a great blessing of God that our poor College wanteth."