When the scenes were shifted, and a solemn Visitation of the University was instituted by “The Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament,” Merton College may be said to have set the example of conformity to the new order in Church and State. Sir Nathaniel Brent himself was President of the Commission. Among his colleagues were three Fellows of Merton, Reynolds, Cheynell, and Corbet, who had already been appointed with four other preachers to convert the gownsmen through Presbyterian sermons. The earlier sittings of the Commission were held in the Warden’s dining-room, or, during his absence, in Cheynell’s apartments. When the members of the College, including servants, were called before the Visitors and required to make their submission, about half of them, according to Anthony Wood, openly complied: most of the others made answers more or less evasive, declaring their readiness to obey the Warden, or submitting in so far as the Visitors had authority from the King. French, who, as official guardian of the University Register, had refused to give it up, now made his submission, but justified it on the strange ground that he was bound by the capitulation of Oxford to Fairfax. One Fellow only, Nicholas Howson, boldly refused submission, declaring that he could not reconcile it with his allegiance to the King, the University, and the College. He was of course removed; and the same fate befell Turner, Greaves, French, and one other Fellow, with a larger number of Postmasters, of whom, however, some were condemned as improperly elected, and some were afterwards restored through Brent’s influence. Even while the Commission was sitting, a Royalist spirit must have lingered in the College, since we read that four of the Fellows, three of whom had submitted, were put out of commons for a week and publicly admonished by the Warden for drinking the King’s health with a _tertiavit_, and uncovered heads. Brent resigned the Wardenship in 1651; whereupon the Parliamentary Visitors proceeded to appoint, by their own authority, but on the express nomination of the Protector, Dr. Jonathan Goddard, who had been head physician to Cromwell’s army in Ireland and Scotland--thereby improving on Charles I.’s paternal but constitutional recommendation of Harvey.