Professor Burrows in a most ingenious passage of his _Worthies_ makes a plausible suggestion as to the real origin of the Mallard. He found in Alderman Fletcher’s copy of Anthony à Wood, now in the Bodleian, the impression of a seal bearing a griffin, inscribed “_Sigillum Guilielmi Mallardi Clerici_.” This seal of one Mallard was actually dug up in making a drain on the site of All Souls, to the east of the Warden’s lodgings. Can the exhuming of Mallard’s seal have been turned by oral tradition into the finding of an actual mallard? Down to the time of the great Civil War the College, though always more or less tainted with the evil of corrupt resignations, continued to produce a great number of able men. Since the Reformation laymen are found among them as well as clerics. We may name Lord Chancellor Weston, Mason and Petre, both Privy Councillors of note, and the Persian traveller Sir Anthony Sherley, under Elizabeth; while in the early seventeenth century we meet Archbishop Sheldon--long Warden of the College--Bishop Duppa, and Jeremy Taylor. The election of the last-named illustrates in the most striking way the manner in which corrupt resignations had come to be looked upon as matters of routine. Osborne, a Fellow about to vacate his place, instead of putting his nomination up for sale, made a present of it to Archbishop Laud. Laud, taking the procedure as the most natural thing in the world, bade him nominate Taylor, who was therefore elected, but with great murmurs from the College, for he was a Cambridge man, and of nine years standing since his degree. Those who know only the modern constitution of All Souls, will find it startling to learn that down to the Great Rebellion the College was not without its fair share of undergraduates. There was no provision for them in the statutes, but a number of “poor scholars” (_servientes_) were allowed to matriculate. In 1612 there were as many as thirty-one of them on the books at once. In going through a list of All Souls men who became Fellows of Wadham between 1615 and 1660, I found that about one in three were _servientes_, so their number must have been not inconsiderable. The College narrowly escaped having a regular provision of scholars, for Archbishop Parker had planned the endowment of a considerable number of scholarships from Canterbury Grammar School when he died. After the Restoration the _servientes_ are no more heard of, or at least the four Bible-clerks then appear as their sole successors.