The sudden influx of so many persons into the town was calculated to send up the price of provisions. The Vice-Chancellor accordingly took the precaution of fixing a limit to the market prices. A pound of butter, for instance, sweet and new, the best in the market, was not to cost more than 6d.; six eggs 2d.; or a fat pig, the best in the market, 2s. 6d.; whilst not more than 2s. 8d. was to be charged in every inn for a bushel of the best oats. [Illustration: Oriel Windows Queen's Lane.] Meantime the University was not in too flourishing a state. "All those we call Whigs," Wood complains, "will not send their sons for fear of their turning Tories, and because the Universities are suspected of being Popish." And Stephen Penton, the Principal who built the chapel and library of S. Edmund's Hall (1680), thought it expedient to write that charming little book, "The Guardian's Instruction," in answer to the "rash and uncharitable censure of the idle, ignorant, debauched, Popish University." But the manners of the place are indicated by such facts as these: "The Act was put off because 'twas said the Vice-Chancellor was sickish from bibbing and smoking and drinking claret a whole afternoon." In 1685 the mayor and aldermen, who had been splendidly entertained by the Earl of Abingdon in return for their election of his brother to represent them in Parliament, "came home most of them drunk and fell off their horses." About the same time three masters of All Souls' came drunk to the Mitre in the middle of the night, and because the landlady refused to get up and prepare them some food, they called her "strange names and told her she deserved to have her throat cut, whereupon being extremely frighted, she fell into fits and died." The masters were examined by the Vice-Chancellor and compelled to "recant in the Convocation." A few months later a debauched Master of Arts of New Inn was expelled for biting a piece off the nose of a B.N.C. B.A. At Balliol the buildings were literally falling to pieces, and it was the solace of Dr Bathurst's old age to sit on his garden wall--he was President of Trinity--and throw stones at the few windows that still contained any glass, "as if happy to contribute his share in completing the appearance of its ruin." This was the same Dr Bathurst, who as Vice-Chancellor, according to Prideaux' story, had already done his best to encourage the "men of Belial" to deserve the nickname bestowed upon them by Nicholas Amherst.[39] "There is," wrote Prideaux, "over against Balliol a dingy, horrid, scandalous ale-house, fit for none but draymen and tinkers. Here the Balliol men continually lie and by perpetual bubbing add art to their natural stupidity to make themselves perfect sots." The master (Dr Goode, a good, honest old toast, and sometime a Puritan) remonstrated with them and