The college business above mentioned was simply this. Six years before, Whitefield had informed the council of Georgia, that he had already expended £12,000 upon his Orphan House; that he was now anxious to attach to it a college, to which the respectable inhabitants of Georgia, Virginia, and the West Indies might send their sons to be educated; that, in order to accomplish his purpose, he was prepared to lay out a considerable sum of money “_in purchasing a large number of negroes_” for the cultivation of the lands, and for the “future support of a president, professors, and tutors;” and that he now asked the council to grant him, in trust, for the purposes aforesaid, two thousand acres of land, on the north fork of Turtle River. The council yielded his request at once, and with the greatest pleasure. Whitefield then memorialised the king to grant a charter for the founding of the college, stating that, if this were done, he was “ready to give up his present trust, and make a free gift of all lands, negroes, goods, and chattels, which he now possessed in Georgia, for the support of the proposed institution, to be called by the name of Bethesda college, in Georgia.” A long official correspondence followed. The government were not unwilling to grant a charter, but they insisted that the president of the college should be a minister of the Church of England, and that there should be a daily use of the Church liturgy. These were conditions which Whitefield respectfully declined; and hence the charter asked for was refused. The result was, Whitefield added to his Georgian orphan house a public academy, by the erection of two additional wings, one hundred and fifty feet each in length; and, a month before Wesley wrote his letter, opened the new building, by preaching before his excellency the governor, and before the Georgian council and assembly, from, “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundations of this house, His hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you; for who hath despised the day of small things?” Thus Whitefield left behind him, in America, a complex orphanage and college, for the support of which he had obtained grants of land to the extent of 3800 acres, and had bought seventy-five male and female negroes for the purpose of cultivating his extensive farm, and making it productive.[84]