Besides cleaning boots, fetching and carrying, running errands and performing other menial services of a like nature, the servitors jumped at the opportunity of earning odd pence by writing out the impositions to which their masters had been condemned by the Proctors. “For should grave Proctor chance to meet A buck in boots along the street He stops his course and with permission Asking his name, sets imposition, Which to get done, if he’s a ninny He gives his barber half a guinea. This useful go-between will share it With servitor in college garret, Who counts these labours sweet as honey Which brings to purse some pocket money.”[6] Other methods of pocket filling to which servitors had recourse were mentioned by Dr Johnson, who, writing to Tom Warton concerning the delay in a work on Spenser caused by the number of his correspondents and pupils at Oxford, said: “Three hours a day stolen from sleep and amusement will produce it. Let a servitor transcribe the quotations, and interleave them with references to save time.” As, however, servitors were not admitted within the sacred precincts of the Bodleian, transcription was necessarily limited. This was a cause of great lamentation and outcry at the time from the men, because they were compelled to do the work themselves, and from the servitors because they were thus deprived of a means of earning a few extra necessary pence. “Dr Hyde complains,” says Wordsworth in his book on the eighteenth century, “that some in the university have been very troublesome in pressing that their servitors may transcribe manuscripts for them, though not capable of being sworn to the Library.” [Illustration: VIEW OF QUEEN’S COLLEGE.] For a commoner to be seen in public in the company of a servitor was a “great disparagement.” Consequently, if a servitor was sufficiently blessed to be able to call a commoner friend, he must needs visit him secretly, or under cover of darkness. It is on record that Shenstone, who was a commoner of Pembroke, visited Jago a servitor, a friend of his, in strict private because of this popular prejudice. When Erasmus was at Queen’s his servitor’s rooms were immediately above his own. The poor wretch, besides being at his master’s beck and call, was very often the slave of his master’s mistress--an employ of vast uneasiness and discomfort. In the _Oxford Chronicle_ in 1859, in a series of articles entitled “Oxford during the Last Century,” Aubrey describes Willis, the servitor of Dr Iles, Canon of Christ Church, as studying in his blue livery cloak at the lower end of the hall by the door, and assisting his master’s wife in mixing drugs.