Among the “ample donations” obtained by Provost Smith’s “respectable influence,” the first place belongs to the Hastings foundation. The Lady Elizabeth Hastings, daughter of Theophilus, seventh Earl of Huntingdon, of whom Steele says in the _Tatler_, “To love her is a liberal education,” bequeathed to the College in 1739 her Manors, Lands, and Hereditaments in Wheldale in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to found five Exhibitions for five poor scholars that had been educated for two years at one or other of twelve schools in Cumberland, Westmorland, and Yorkshire. Each school was to send a candidate, and the candidates were first to be examined at Abberforth or Aberford in Yorkshire by seven neighbouring clergymen, and the ten best exercises were to be sent to the Provost and Fellows, who were to “choose out of them eight of the best performances which appear the best, which done, the names subscribed to those eight shall be fairly written, each in a distinct paper, and the papers rolled up and put into an Urn or Vase, … and after being shaken well together in the Urn shall be drawn out of the same.… And those five whose names are first drawn shall to all Intents and Purposes be held duly elected.… And though this Method of choosing by Lot may be called by some Superstition or Enthusiasm, yet … the advice was given me by an Orthodox and Pious Prelate of the Church of England as leaving something to Providence.” This method of election was observed as late as 1859, the Urn or Vase then employed being the Provost’s man-servant’s hat. In 1769 the lot not drawn was that of Edward Tatham of Heversham School, afterwards Rector of Lincoln College, probably the most notable person who was ever a candidate for a place on this foundation. A more reasonable provision, that if of the original schools any should so far come to decay as to have no scholar returned by the examiners at Aberford in four successive elections, the College should appoint another school from the same county in its stead, has been of great benefit to the Foundation and to education in the counties. The estate devised has increased in value, coals having been got, which were supposed in Lady Betty’s time to be in the estate. Fourteen schools now enjoy the benefits of the Foundation, and nearly thirty Exhibitioners of £90 a year each now take the place of the original five Exhibitioners of £28 a year. Elaborate regulations were laid down for the election of the Provost, and on one occasion at least the whole course of proceeding had to be gone through.[141] In the oath, which was to precede this as almost all other important ceremonies in the College, the Fellows swear that they will elect the most fit and sufficient of the Fellows to the vacancy.