First among the fellow-students of Henry Martyn, though soon to leave for India when he entered it, was his future friend, Claudius Buchanan, B.A. of 1796 and Fellow of Queen's College, of which Isaac Milner was president. Magdalene College--which had sent David Brown to Calcutta in 1786, to prepare the way for the other four, who are for ever memorable as 'the Five Chaplains'--had among its students of the same standing as Martyn, Charles Grant's two distinguished sons, of whom one became Lord Glenelg and a cabinet minister, and the younger, Robert, was afterwards Governor of Bombay, the still valued hymnologist, and the warm friend of Dr. John Wilson. Thomason--seven years older than Martyn, and induced afterwards, by his example, to become a Bengal chaplain--was Simeon's curate and substitute in the closing years of the last century, when to Mr. Thornton of Clapham, who had warned him against preaching five sermons a week, as casting the net too often to allow time to mend it, he drew this picture of college life: 'There are reasons for fearing the mathematical religion which so prevails here. Here, also, is everything that can contribute to the ease and comfort of life. Whatever pampers the appetite and administers fuel to sloth and indolence is to be found in abundance. Nothing is left to want or desire. Here is the danger; this is the horrible precipice.' Corrie and Dealtry, also of the Five Chaplains, and afterwards first and second Bishops of Madras, were of Martyn's Cambridge time, the latter graduating before, and the former just after him. Hardly had Henry Martyn returned to college in January 1800 when he received from his half-brother news of the death of their father, whom he had just before left 'in great health and spirits.' The first result was 'consternation,' and then, as he told his sister, I was extremely low-spirited, and, like most people, began to consider seriously, without any particular determination, that invisible world to which he had gone and to which I must one day go. As I had no taste at this time for my usual studies, I took up my Bible. Nevertheless I often took up other books to engage my attention, and should have continued to do so had not Kempthorne advised me to make this time an occasion of serious reflection. I began with the Acts, as being the most amusing, and when I was entertained with the narrative I found myself insensibly led to inquire more attentively into the doctrines of the Apostles.... On the first night after, I began to pray from a precomposed form, in which I thanked God in general for having sent Christ into the world. But though I prayed for pardon I had little sense of my own sinfulness; nevertheless, I began to consider myself a religious man.