The crowning fiction was the celebration in the year 1872 of the millennium of the College, during the mastership of the Rev. G. G. Bradley, afterwards Dean of Westminster. It is said that a distinguished modern historian ironically sent him a number of burned cakes, purporting to have been dug up at Athelney, to entertain King Alfred’s scholars withal. It is not recorded if they were served up or no to the guests, among whom were Dean Stanley and Mr. Robert Lowe, both past tutors of the College. At the dinner which graced this festal occasion, the late Dean of Westminster is said to have ridiculed the idea of King Alfred having bestowed lands and tenements on scholars in Oxford, which place was in A.D. 872 in possession of Alfred’s enemies the Danes; whereupon Mr. Lowe made the happy answer, that this latter fact was itself a confirmation of the legend, for King Alfred was a man much before his time, who in the spirit of some modern leaders of the democracy took care to bestow on his followers, not his own lands, but those of his political opponents. This legend of King Alfred sprang up in the fourteenth century, when people had forgotten the Norman Conquest and time had long healed all the scars of an alien invasion. Then historians began to feel back to a more remote period for the origin of institutions really subsequent. In so doing they fed patriotic pride by establishing an unbroken continuity of the nation’s life. So to-day we see asserting itself, and with better historical warranty, a belief in the antiquity of English ecclesiastical institutions. The best minds are no longer content with that idol of the Evangelicals, a parliamentary church dating back no more than three centuries. It may be even that a good deal of the Aluredian legend was earlier in its origin than the fourteenth century, and shaped itself at the first out of anti-Norman feeling. In the reign of King Richard, anyhow, all sections of the now united nation accepted it, and not only have we the writ of King Richard II., dated May 4th, 1381 (in answer to the French petition), setting down the College to be “the Foundation of the Progenitors of our Lord the King, and of his Patronage,”[5] but in that very reign, if not later, a passage was interpolated in MSS. of Asser’s _Life of Alfred_, identifying the schools--which Alfred undoubtedly maintained--with the schools of Oxford. The Fellows of University only took advantage of a feeling which was abroad, and by which they were also duped, when they declared themselves in the French petition to be a royal foundation. Antony Wood was not deceived by the legend, though he credits it in regard to the University. It is strange to find Hearne the antiquary, and Dr. Charlet, Master, 1692-1722, both acquaintances of Mr. W. Smith, adhering to the belief. Mr. Smith declares that Dr. Charlet did so from vanity, because he thought that to be head of a royal foundation added to his dignity.