In the colony itself a change was taking place through which the college was to go over to the side of the New Lights. In 1755, President Clap had established the College Church in order to remove the students from the party strife that was still distracting the churches. In order to avoid a conflict over the matter, he refused to ask the consent of the Assembly, claiming the right of an incorporated college and the precedent of the English universities, since, in 1745, the Assembly had formally incorporated "The President and Fellows of Yale College," vesting in them all the usual powers appertaining to colleges. In the same year, also, the initial step toward establishing a chair of divinity had been taken, and it became the first toward the founding of the separate College Church. President Clap always maintained that "the great design of founding Yale was to educate ministers in our way,"[135] and the chair of divinity had been established in answer to the suggestion of the Court that the college take measures to protect its students from the New Light movement. President Clap was hurried on in his policy of establishing the College Church both by his desire to separate the students from the New Light controversy in Mr. Noyes's church, where they were wont to attend, and by an appeal to him, in 1753, of Rector Punderson, the priest recently placed in charge of the Church-of-England mission in New Haven. The rector had two sons in college, and he asked that they and such other collegians as were Episcopalians might be permitted to attend the Church-of-England services. President Clap refused to give the desired permission, except for communion and some special services, and he at once proceeded to organize a church within the college. The trustees and faculty upheld him, but the Old Lights, then about two-thirds of the deputies to the Assembly, opposed his course of action, and succeeded in taking away the annual grant that, at the incorporation of the college, had been given to Yale. After this, they regarded President Clap as a "political New Light," but as the latter party increased in the Assembly, and became friendly to Yale, the college gradually reinstated itself in the favor of the legislature.