Note 168 — VIII. LINCOLN COLLEGE.

Of the three persons nominated by Darby in 1538 as his first Fellows, two, William Villers (his kinsman) and Richard Gill, were undergraduates. One nomination of this kind was eminently unsuccessful; Walter Pitts, nominated by the Visitor in 1568 to the Darby Fellowship for Oxfordshire, was removed in 1573 because he had repeatedly failed to get his degree. The Parliamentary Visitors in 1650 put undergraduates into Fellowships in Lincoln College; one of these, John Taverner, in 1652 was fined 13s. 4d., “for swearing two oaths, as did appear upon testimony.”