Within a fortnight from the writing of this letter the founder died. He was buried with solemn ceremonial in the College chapel, where his coffin was found intact when that of Laud was laid beside it nearly a century later. A funeral oration was preached by one of the most brilliant of the junior Fellows, Edmund Campion, soon to win wider notoriety, and eventually to die a shameful death. The loss of the founder made more evident the weaknesses with which the College had had to struggle from the first. It was wretchedly poor. The munificence of Sir Thomas White himself had more than exhausted his purse. He died a poor man; much of what he had intended for the College never reached it,--it would have been less still but for the scarcely judicial assistance, “partly by pious persuasions and partly by judicious delays,” of his executor Sir William Cordell, who was Master of the Rolls,--and some of the estates, like Fyfield, were burdened with encumbrances which he had left behind. Nor was this all. Before the end of the century one of the Bursars seems to have embezzled the College money and fled, becoming a Papist, and getting employment where his antecedents were not known, as paymaster to an Archduke of Austria. As early as 1577 the expenses had to be cut down; the chapel foundation was reduced if not altogether suspended. But the College not only suffered from pecuniary troubles; it seems to have been peculiarly affected by the religious changes of the time. So long as the founder had lived, his tact had smoothed the difficulties of the transition from the Marian to the Elizabethan rule. Two at least of the earlier Presidents were deprived for asserting the Pope’s supremacy, yet the change was managed without disturbance. But when the wise counsels of the founder could no longer be heard, and when the Papal Court had declared itself the bitter foe of Elizabeth, Fellow after Fellow retired, or was deprived, and joined the Roman party. For this cause no less than six members of the foundation are recorded within a few years to have been imprisoned. Some, like Gregory Martin, who had been tutor to the Duke of Norfolk’s children, and was afterwards the translator of the “Rheims Bible,” fled over sea; some died in hiding, some in English gaols. One, Edmund Campion, a brilliant orator and a bold defender of the Papal jurisdiction, became a Jesuit, was mixed up in several political intrigues, and eventually was hanged at Tyburn. It might seem as though the little College, poor and divided, would never weather the storm. That it did so was no doubt due to the patience and devotion of its members. During its darkest years, at the end of the sixteenth century, there were found philosophers and theologians, such as Dr. John Case,[272] and skilful administrators such as Dr. Francis Willis (President, 1577-1590), poets and rhetoricians, and London merchants, who gave their talents and their money to support the fame of the struggling Society.