On his death in 1658, William Hawes was elected, and confirmed by a mandate from the Protector. In 1659 he resigned on his death-bed in order that no time might be lost in electing (illegally, since he was not a member of the College), Dr. Seth Ward, a deprived fellow of Sydney Sussex, Cambridge, who had settled at Wadham, where he became Savilian Professor of Astronomy, and one of the founders of the Royal Society. He was “very well acquainted and beloved in the College,” and less likely to be objected to by the Government than Dr. Bathurst, who was really the mainstay of the society. In 1660 Ward had to retire on the restoration of Potter (with Howe and perhaps a married fellow, Matthew Skinner), was made Dean and subsequently Bishop of Exeter, on the recommendation of the West country gentlemen in the Restoration Parliament, and died Bishop of Salisbury in 1689. On Potter’s death in 1664 Ralph Bathurst naturally became president. Shortly afterwards “A. Wood and his mother and his eldest brother and his wife went to the lodgings of Dr. R. B., to welcome him to Oxon, who had then very lately brought to Oxon his new-married wife, Mary, the widdow of Dr. Jo. Palmer, late Warden of Alls. Coll. which Mary was of kin to the mother of A. Wood. They had before sent in sack, claret, cake, and sugar. Dr. Bathurst was then about forty-six years of age, so there was need of a wife.” He was the fifth son of George Bathurst (commoner 1605) and Elizabeth Villiers, Kettell’s step-daughter; many of his family before and after him were at Trinity, and six of his brothers are said to have died in the King’s service. He was ordained priest in 1644; but submitted to the Visitors, “neither owning their authority nor concurring in his principles with them, but rather acting separately from them,” as he said afterwards; studied medicine (M.D. 1654), and practised in Oxford and as a navy surgeon. During the persecution of the Church he assisted Bishop Skinner as archdeacon at the secret ordinations at Launton and in Trinity chapel. Skinner was the only prelate who ordained regularly, and claimed to have conferred orders on 400 to 500 persons. Bathurst was an original F.R.S., and P.R.S. in 1688; and also a classical scholar of some ability, as his remains show. In 1670 he became Dean of Wells, but refused the bishopric of Bristol, for which Lord Somers recommended him in 1691.