When the Board meets to inquire into a violation of the Statutes on the part of the Students, the young gentlemen who are conscious of their guilt assemble in the courts below; they have secured a number of their friends; they are surrounded by a great crowd of their brethren; how many they may have engaged to be of their party is not to be discovered, and they give, perhaps, plain intimations that they will not suffer them to be censured. Trusting in their numbers, they will not suffer any one man to be singled out for an example.... Physical violence is consequently to be expected by the Provost, Senior Fellows, and the Dean proceeding to the Hall to read out censures. Primate Boulter’s letters throw some light upon the state of discipline in the College at this time. Baldwin, now become Provost, most likely from his known devotion to the Whig party and the Hanoverian Succession, and his efforts to subdue the Jacobite faction in College, was a man of a very arbitrary and determined character. He appears to have used the full authority which the Statutes gave him, and frequently summoned the two Deans, and removed from the College books the names of disorderly Students without consulting the Board. Some of the Senior Fellows, notably Dr. Delany, a strong Tory, whose politics were shared by his friend and colleague, Dr. Helsham, were opposed to these arbitrary proceedings, and took measures in London to bring the matter before the Council, in order to have the Provost’s statutable power in these matters curtailed. We learn from Boulter’s letters to the Duke of Newcastle, that early in 1725--