The next president, Hannibal Potter, was elected during the disorders of the Civil War. The college buildings were occupied during the siege of Oxford by the courtiers and officers; many of the undergraduates enlisted; the register and accounts are defective; the elections were irregular, and the number of commoners admitted dropped from thirty-two in 1633 to four in 1643, none in 1644, and one in 1645, reviving to twenty-one in 1646. The tenants fell behind with their rents, and in 1647 the arrears from estates and battels amounted to £1385; in November 1642 the King “borrowed” £200, and in the following March Sir Wm. Parkhurst gave the College a receipt for 173 pounds of plate, which included everything given by the Founder and others, except the chalice, paten, and two flagons. In 1647 and 1648 the College sent £145 13_s._ 4_d._ and £45 to the Earl of Downe and his uncle Sir Thomas Pope. In 1647 a lessee of College property, Sir Robert Napier of Luton-Hoo, deposited £160 for emergencies. In 1648 the members of the College were cited before the Puritan Visitors of the University; eventually twenty-six submitted and nineteen were ejected; some of them never appeared, _e. g._ the bursar Josias Howe, who had carried off many of the College documents into the country. Nine persons were intruded by the Visitors at different times. Potter, who, as acting Vice-Chancellor, had for some time baffled the commissioners, was turned out of his house by Lord Pembroke in person, to make room for one of the Visitors, Dr. Robert Harris, of Magdalen Hall. He was an old man, but still vigorous, a good scholar, an orthodox though popular preacher; and was fairly well received by the fellows, some of whom remained without having submitted. Under him things settled down, and the numbers rose again; some scandalous stories were afterwards current of the appropriation of a large sum left behind by Potter, and of the exaction from one of the tenants of an exorbitant fine; but on the whole Harris probably tolerated much of the old _régime_, _e. g._ he allowed payments to absent fellows and the Founder’s kinsmen, and the old saints’-days were still observed as gaudys.