All Souls seems to have passed through the storms of the Reformation with singularly little friction from within or without. One single Warden, John Warner--the first Regius professor of Medicine in the University--continued to steer the course of the College from 1536 to 1556, complying with all the various commands of Henry VIII., making himself acceptable both to Somerset and Northumberland, and even holding on for two years into Mary’s reactionary time. It is true that he then resigned his post, but he was evidently no less complying under the Papalist Queen than under her Protestant predecessor, as no harm came to him though he continued to reside in Oxford. Warden Pope, his successor, having died in the first year of Elizabeth, Warner was immediately restored to his old post, and held it till he was made Dean of Winchester in 1565. It was during Warner’s wardenship that we have the first mention of an evil custom in the College, which was to form for a hundred years a subject of dispute between the Fellows and their Visitor the Archbishop. This was the habit of “corrupt resignation.” A member of the College, when about to vacate his Fellowship, not unfrequently had some friend or relation whom he wished to succeed him. This candidate he naturally pushed and supported at the annual election on All Souls’ Day. It came to be the tacit custom of the College to elect candidates so supported; for each Fellow, when voting for an outgoing colleague’s nominee, remembered that he himself would some day wish to recommend a _protégé_ for election in a similar manner. This right of nomination being once grown customary, soon grew into a monstrous abuse, for unscrupulous Fellows, when about to vacate their places, began to hawk their nominations about Oxford. Actual payments in hard cash were made by equally unscrupulous Bachelors of Arts or Scholars of Civil Law, to secure one of these all-powerful recommendations. Hence there began to appear in the College not the poor but promising scholars for whom Chichele had designed the foundation, but men of some means, who had practically bought their places. Cranmer was the first Visitor who discovered and endeavoured to crush this noxious system. In 1541 we find him declaring that he will impose an oath on every Fellow to obey his injunction against the practice, and that every Fellowship obtained by a corrupt resignation shall be summarily forfeited. At the same time we find him touching on other minor offences in the place--misdoings which seem ludicrously small compared to the huge abuse with which he couples them. Fellows have been seen clad not in the plain livery which the pious founder devised, but in gowns gathered round the collar and arms and quilted with silk; they have been keeping dogs in College; some of them have hired private servants; others of them have engaged in “compotationibus, ingurgitationibus, crapulis et ebrietatibus.” All these customs are to cease at once.