Ecclesiastically and politically the Great Rebellion found the College again on the Conservative side. In 1642 the then Warden, Dr. Robert Pincke, as Pro-Vice-Chancellor, took the lead in preparing Oxford to resist the Parliamentary forces. The University train-bands were wont to drill “under his eyes” in the front quadrangle. Dons and undergraduates alike joined the ranks; among them is especially mentioned the New College D.C.L., Dr. Thomas Read, who trailed a pike. The cloisters were converted into a magazine; and the New College school-boys, being thus turned out of their usual school, were removed “to the choristers’ chamber at the east end of the common hall of the said College: it was then a dark, nasty room, and very unfit for such a purpose, which made the scholars often complaine, but in vaine.” These are the words of Anthony à Wood, then a little boy of eleven, and a pupil in the school. While the school-boys were with difficulty restrained from the novel excitement of watching the drills in the quadrangle, the Warden’s severer studies had been no less interrupted. He had been sent by the University to treat with the old New College-man, Lord Say, who was supposed to be in command of the Parliamentary forces at Aylesbury. Unfortunately for Pincke, Lord Say was not there, and the Parliamentary commander, being without Wykehamical sympathies, sent the Doctor a prisoner to the Gate-house at Westminster. Meanwhile Lord Say had entered Oxford, and immediately proceeded to New College “to search for plate and arms” (no doubt he knew where to look), and even overhauled the papers in the Warden’s study. “One of his men broke down the King’s picture of alabaster gilt, which stood there; at which his lordship seemed to be much displeased.” It is not very clear how Warden Pincke found his way back to Oxford; but soon after the Parliamentary triumph, he came to an untimely end by falling down the steps of his own lodgings. Pincke was evidently a learned as well as an active man, and published a curious collection of _Quaestiones in Logica, Ethica, Physica, et Metaphysica_ (Oxon. 1640); this is a list of problems with a formidable array of references to authorities, classical, patristic, and scholastic. He found time, even in the busy days of his Vice-Chancellorship, to write a narrative of his proceedings in that office, which was still extant in MS. after the Restoration. The only other Wardens who have left any considerable literary remains are Pincke’s predecessor, Lake, afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Shuttleworth (Warden 1822-1840), afterwards Bishop of Chichester, a sturdy opponent of the Tractarian movement.