We have kept him waiting too long. Let me present to you Henry Gunning, Esquire Bedel of the University of Cambridge. He tells us he was a son of a clergyman in the neighbourhood and the descendant of “that admirable prelate,” Dr. Peter Gunning, Bishop of Ely in the reign of Charles II. He entered Christ’s College in 1784, and died in 1855, well over eighty years of age, after a life spent in the University. During his long last illness he dictated his reminiscences.[19] He had, at an earlier period written some memoirs; but, on reflection, after a serious illness he had decided to burn all the papers. In his own words: “I kept an account of the decision of the Heads on any disputed point.... My notes became much swelled by rumours of _jobbing_ among the higher powers, which, though sometimes defeated, were generally so skilfully conducted that they more frequently succeeded. I had collected sufficient materials for publishing a pretty large volume, but was about that time attacked by a sudden and dangerous illness, which afforded more opportunity for serious reflection than I had before accustomed myself to.... I was apprehensive that I might have inserted some things (which I believed to be facts) upon questionable authority.... I feared that the papers might fall into the hands of some bookseller whose only object would be gain, to obtain which he would not scruple to whitewash men whose characters ought to have been drawn in the darkest colours, or to speak in extremely harsh terms of others on whose eccentricities I only wished to pass a slight censure. Too ill to admit of delay, I decided on committing all my papers to the flames, nor did I for fifty years regret the step.” Gunning died before his task was completed: his memoirs terminated abruptly; but the most interesting part of his work has happily survived, and the earlier reminiscences, as is customary with the aged, are more full and vivid than the later. I shall not attempt to moralise or discant much upon his story; but I intend to give it in his own words with a few remarks in passing. Henry Gunning entered Christ’s College as a sizar, a poor scholar who was at one time supposed to be fed by what was left of the meals provided for the fellows (a Christ’s College sizar being the equivalent of a “servitor” at Oxford), though Gunning says nothing of this.[20] As we shall see, he led anything but the life of a humble dependant whilst at the University. His college had been and now is among the most distinguished at Cambridge. It had produced John Milton and Ralph Cudworth, and had been a famous centre of the intellectual life of the seventeenth century. It was the college of William Paley, who was Senior Wrangler in 1763, and it was destined to be the school of many a famous man, among them Charles Darwin. But only three men entered with our hero in 1785.