The reign of James II. was fraught with as much danger to All Souls as to the other Colleges of the University. Warden Jeames died in 1686, and every one expected and dreaded an attempt to force a Papist head on the College. What happened was almost as bad. There was in the foundation a very junior Fellow--only elected in 1682--named Leopold Finch, son of the Earl of Winchelsea, whose riotous outbreaks and habitual fits of inebriety had done much to embitter Jeames’ last years of rule. Finch was a hot Tory, and when, on the outbreak of Monmouth’s rebellion, the University proposed to raise a regiment of trained-bands for the King, was one of the leaders in the movement. He enlisted a company of musketeers from members of All Souls and Merton, and this company was the only part of the University battalion that actually took the field. Its not very glorious record of service consisted in occupying Islip for ten days, to secure the London road, and stop all transit of suspicious persons. When the news of Sedgmoor came, Lord Abingdon bade the company dine with him at Rycot, and they came home “well fuzzed with his ale,” insomuch that their very drum was stove in, and remains so to this day, stored, with one of the muskets borne by the volunteers, in All Souls Bursary. Finch had nothing to recommend him save this military exploit, his good birth, and his notorious looseness of life and conscience. He was thought by the King capable of anything in the way of submission--perhaps even of conversion to Papacy--and on the death of Jeames the College, to its horror, learned that Finch had been nominated as Warden. Less courageous than the Fellows of Magdalen, the All Souls men, though they refused to elect Finch in due form, refrained from choosing any other head, and allowed the intruder to take possession of the Warden’s house and prerogatives. Finch, though a man of some learning, made as disreputable a head of the College as might have been expected: he jobbed, he drank, he ran into debt, and finally he was found to have embezzled College money. But when William of Orange landed, his Toryism disappeared, and he saved his place by suddenly becoming a hot Whig. All the punishment that he ever got for his usurpation, was that he was compelled to acknowledge himself as only “pseudo-custos,” and to submit to be re-appointed to his Wardenship in a more legal way. He presided for sixteen years over the College with much disrepute, and died in 1702--with the bailiffs in his house.