It is now just five centuries and a half since Robert of Eglesfield founded “the Hall of the scholars of the Queen” in Oxford. The Royal license for its foundation was sealed in the Tower of London on the eighteenth of January, and the statutes of the founder were corrected, completed and sealed in Oxford on the tenth of February in the year 1340 as men then reckoned, or as we should say 1341. Eglesfield was chaplain and confessor to Philippa, Queen of Edward III. He came of gentle blood in Cumberland, and had ten years before received from the King the hamlet and manor of Ravenwyk or Renwick, forfeited through rebellion by Andrew of Harcla. This and the property he had purchased in Oxford as a site for his hall was all that Eglesfield was able of himself to contribute to its maintenance. His relations with the Queen and the King were, however, of priceless service to the new foundation. Eglesfield seems to have continued for the remainder of his life to have fostered by his presence and influence the institution he had founded. In the earliest of the “Long Rolls,” or yearly accounts of the College, which are preserved, that of 1347-8, his name appears at the head of the list of the members. In that year sixteen pence is paid for the hire of a horse for six days, that he may visit London on the Thursday after the feast of St. Augustine, bishop of the English; twenty-three shillings is paid for a horse for him to go to Southampton about the time of the festival of St. Peter _ad vincula_; William of Hawkesworth, Provost of Oriel, a former Fellow, lends him a horse, and a penny is put down for a shoe for the same, and a halfpenny for parchment bought for him for documents executed on the feast of Saints Cosmo and Damian. His funeral is celebrated in 1351-2. They made a “great burning for him,” as of seventeen and a quarter pounds of wax, costing nine shillings, expended during the year, eleven pounds were used at the funeral of the founder. Fourpence halfpenny only seems to have been spent on wine on the same occasion. A casket containing his remains was transferred from the old chapel to the vault under the new chapel when the latter was built. His horn is still used on gaudy-days as the loving-cup. It must have been mounted in something like its present condition almost from the beginning, as in the Long Roll of 1416-7 sixteen pence is paid “pro emendatione aquilae crateris fundatoris.” Other repairs are mentioned later as in 1584-5, “pro reparatione particulae coronae quae circumdat operculum cornu xii d.; item, pro reparandis aliis partibus cornu xviii d.” His name is also kept alive by the “canting” custom observed in the College on New Year’s Day, when after dinner the Bursar presents to each guest a needle threaded with silk of a colour suitable to his faculty (_aiguille et fil_), and prays for his prosperity in the words “Take this and be thrifty.”[138]