I therefore, and many others with me, for like reason, or others that had no less constraining power, tarried in Oxford, following our usual manner of life, and waiting for what might ensue. And, indeed, it mattered but little to me. My Scholarship was at the best but of small value, something less than three pounds by the year, and now was fallen to about thirty shillings from defect in the revenues of the College, of whose tenants some lacked the ability to pay (having had their farms wasted by the war), and some the will. Nor was I like to exchange it for any better preferment, being well known in my College and elsewhere as a zealous King's man. Having therefore so little to lose that the very scurviest and most beggarly knave under the sun would scarce have perjured himself to gain or to save it, I could abide the end with a calm mind; though, indeed, I do trust I had been no less constant had I had the best preferment in the University, the Deanery of Christ Church, to wit, or the President's place at Magdalen College. And I was further confirmed in this temper by the marriage of my sister Dorothy with Master William Blagrove, Bachelor of Divinity of St. John's College, that had lately succeeded to the vicarage of Enstone. 'Twas an old contract between Dorothy and Master Blagrove, being first entered into in the year 1641, and now completed about the space of a year after my father's death. Yet they thought themselves fortunate that the end was no longer delayed. (And indeed I could name a couple of lovers that were contracted for forty and three years, expecting all the while till a certain rectory should fall vacant.) Nevertheless it may be doubted whether delay had not served them better. 'Tis certain that they had no small share of that trouble in the flesh which St. Paul does prophesy to all them that were not content to abide single as he was. I doubt whether these prophecies, even in the mouth of an apostle, deterred many whose hearts were set on matrimony, and indeed it must be remembered there was gain as well as loss. But of Dorothy and her husband I shall have occasion to speak again. Meanwhile I may say so much, that she being happily married, if it be happiness to have a learned and virtuous husband but poor in this world's goods withal, and my mother going to live with her, I was left master of myself and free to act as might seem most expedient.