CONCERNING THE COLLEGE.

§ 40. The college, as has been hinted, was founded by their late majesties, King William and Queen Mary, of happy memory, in the year 1692. Towards the founding of which, they gave one thousand nine hundred and eighty-five pounds, fourteen shillings and ten pence. They gave moreover, towards the endowment of it, twenty thousand acres of land; the revenue of one pence per pound on tobacco exported to the plantations from Virginia and Maryland; and the surveyor general's place, then avoid; and appointed them a burgess to represent them in the assemblies. The land hitherto has yielded little or no profit; the duty of one pence per pound, brings in about two hundred pounds a year; and the surveyor general's place, about fifty pounds a year. To which the assembly had added a duty on skins and furs exported, worth about an hundred pounds a year.

§ 41. By the same charter, likewise, their majesties granted a power to certain gentlemen, and the survivors of them, as trustees, to build and establish the college, by the name of William and Mary college; to consist of a president and six masters, or professors, and an hundred scholars, more or less, graduates or non-graduates; enabling the said trustees, as a body corporate, to enjoy annuities, spiritual and temporal, of the value of two thousand pounds sterling per annum, with proviso to convert it to the building and adorning the college; and then to make over the remainder to the president and masters, and their successors, who are likewise to become a corporation, and be enabled to purchase and hold to the value of two thousand pounds a year, but no more.

§ 42. The persons named in the charter for trustees, are made governors and visitors of the college, and to have a perpetual succession, by the name of governors and visitors, with power to fill up their own vacancies, happening by the death or removal of any of them. Their complete number may be eighteen, but not to exceed twenty, of which one is to be rector, and annually chosen by themselves, on the first Monday after the 25th of March.

These have the nomination of the president and masters of the college, and all other officers belonging to it; and the power of making statutes and ordinances, for the better rule and government thereof.

§ 43. The building is to consist of a quadrangle, two sides of which are not yet carried up. In this part are contained all conveniencies of cooking, brewing, baking, &c., and convenient rooms for the reception of the president and masters, with many more scholars than are as yet come to it. In this part are also the hall and school room.

§ 44. The college was intended to be an intire square when finished. Two sides of this were finished in the latter end of Governor Nicholson's time, and the masters and scholars, with the necessary housekeepers and servants, were settled in it, and so continued till the first year of Governor Nott's time, in which it happened to be burnt (no body knows how) down to the ground, and very little saved that was in it, the fire breaking out about ten o'clock at night in a public time.

The governor, and all the gentlemen that were in town, came up to the lamentable spectacle, many getting out of their beds. But the fire had got such power before it was discovered, and was so fierce, that there was no hope of putting a stop to it, and therefore no attempts made to that end.

In this condition it lay till the arrival of Colonel Spotswood, their present governor, in whose time it was raised again the same bigness as before, and settled.

There had been a donation of large sums of money, by the Hon. Robert Boyle, esq., to this college, for the education of Indian children therein. In order to make use of this, they had formerly bought half a dozen captive Indian children slaves, and put them to the college. This method did not satisfy this governor, as not answering the intent of the donor. So to work he goes, among the tributary and other neighboring Indians, and in a short time brought them to send their children to be educated, and brought new nations, some of which lived four hundred miles off, taking their children for hostages and education equally, at the same time setting up a school in the frontiers convenient to the Indians, that they might often see their children under the first managements, where they learned to read, paying fifty pounds per annum out of his own pocket to the schoolmaster there; after which many were brought to the college, where they were taught till they grew big enough for their hunting and other exercises, at which time they were returned home, and smaller taken in their stead.