The next year a charter was granted to the new college, which was located at Saybrook, with the Rev. Abraham Pierson, a metaphysician of some note, as president. The students, eight in number, and “put into classes according to the proficiency they had antecedently made,” lived in the president’s house, under his supervision and instruction. The first commencement was held at Saybrook, September 13, 1702. The French war of the same year had its effect upon the college, and when in 1707 Rector Pierson died, it was found impossible to support a resident professor at Saybrook. Consequently the senior class was sent to Milford and placed under the Rev. Samuel Andrew, while the other classes remained at Saybrook with two tutors. At this time Yale College extended from the senior class at Milford to the juniors, sophomores and freshmen at Saybrook, a distance of forty miles. In 1714, the death of the Rev. James Pierpont, who may be regarded as the founder of the college, struck another blow at its prosperity. At the same time complaints about their accommodations from the Saybrook students made it evident that if the college was to become a permanent institution, some active measures were required. At a meeting of trustees in 1716, after a protracted discussion, and not a little to the dissatisfaction of Hartford, it was decided to locate the college permanently at New Haven. Hartford was appeased by building there a new court house, and the scattered students were gathered at New Haven, which that day became a college town. Among several donations to the college, the most generous was that of Elihu Yale, a former resident of New Haven, and at the time a wealthy London merchant. In view of his munificence, the trustees called the new building which his donation had enabled them to complete, Yale College. It would be superfluous for our purpose to trace the history of the college from this permanent foundation in 1718 to the present time. Among its presidents we find such names as Elihu Williams, Ezra Stiles, Timothy Dwight, Jeremiah Day, Theodore D. Woolsey and Noah Porter—grand men of the orthodox school, some of them rigid and severe in administration, but all respected and honored. The character of the presidents is an index to the institution, which has developed under the severe discipline of New England. The students who of late years have come from distant states have modified the general character of the college, but have not destroyed the old influence. The recognition of religion, which in some universities has well-nigh disappeared, still holds its own, and the same bell which, in years gone by, summoned sleepy and half-dressed students to the murky chapel, at five in the morning, now, at a more convenient hour, assembles in the handsome “Battell” those who have come to college from every state in the Union. Thus the old New England _régime_ makes an impression upon the rising generation of the whole country.