The Senate House is a stately classical building, running east and west, erected in the early decades of the eighteenth century. Up to that date the functions which it now discharges were served partly by the old Schools (now the University Library), which have been already spoken of, and which adjoin it on the west, and partly by the University Church (called here, as at Oxford, "Great St. Mary's"), which stands hard by to the east. The legislative meetings of the Senate were held in the former,[81] the Degrees were conferred, and other gatherings held, in the latter. [Footnote 81: One apartment was called the Regent House, as being thus used by the Governing Body of the University.] This was all very well before the Reformation, whilst reverence for consecrated places still held its own; but, after that great convulsion, the proceedings too frequently were markedly unecclesiastical in tone. The conferring of Degrees was originally a solemn function beginning with High Mass, and continuing with a serious _viva voce_ exercise of the candidates in the presence of the Vice-Chancellor. But when the Reformation had made it fashionable to show a healthy Protestant contempt for the old Catholic superstitions, the whole ceremony was deliberately turned into a farce. The questioning of the candidates was no longer done by grave University officials, but by an "old" (_i.e._ a senior) Bachelor, who sat upon a three-legged stool, and made his interrogations as profane and scurrilous as possible. He was known, from his stool, as "Mr. Tripos," and so essential a part of the proceedings did he become that "Tripos" got to be (as it still is) the regular name for an "Honour" examination at Cambridge. To judge by the few that have come down to us, the jokes current on these occasions were poor to the last degree. Thus, in 1657, we read that two Oxonians, got up as hobby-horses, presented themselves, giving as their qualification that they "had smith's work at their digits' ends," (Smith being a then current writer of school books). They were duly admitted, on the ground that "such _equitation_ gave them an _equitable_ claim!" And all this was in the church; where, indeed, far less innocent performances were constantly given, including stage-plays and recitations in which the most solemn mysteries of the Catholic Faith were often travestied and held up to ridicule.[82] [Footnote 82: As Protestantism lost its first militant fervour, these performances more and more dropped their polemical features. But they still remained most inappropriate for a place of worship. We have seen how the higher minds of the University, such as Dr. Barrow, felt about them before the seventeenth century came to an end. (See p. 104.)]