College of William and Mary - Colonial Echo Yearbook (Williamsburg, VA)

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that no scholar do presume to appear playing ye billiards, or other gaming tables, or be in any way concerned in keeping fighting-cocks, under ye like severe animadversion and punishment. Nothing could be more amusing than the record of the action taken by the Visitors on a certain occasion in 1769, when the Rev. Mr. John Camm and the Rev. Mr. Josiah Johnson were arraigned for the terrible crime of having lately married and taken up their residence in the City of Williamsburg, by which great inconvenience has arisen to the College, and the necessary attention which those professors ought to pay to the conduct and behavior of the students has been almost totally interrupted. Whereupon they solemnly declare that those profes- sors, by engaging in marriage and the concerns of a private family, and shifting their residence to any place without the College had acted contrary to the principles upon which the College was founded, and their duty as professors. Then follows the broad resolve that all Professors and Masters hereafter to be appointed, be constantly residents of ye College, and upon marriage of such pro- fessor, or master, that his professorship be immediately vacated. However arbitrary and anti-matrimonial these Visitors may seem, they gov- erned the affairs of the College in a wise and judicious manner, as is shown by the unusual degree of prosperity that it enjoyed during their administration. Before 1781 the yearly income of the College, from duties and advantages granted by the charter and from the many handsome endowments that it received from the colonists, was about ,£4,000. By the Revolution it lost all of its endow- ment except $2,500 and the extensive grants of land originally conferred by the favor of King William and Queen Mary. The sale of these lauds and some others in the neighborhood of Williamsburg, voted to the College by the Legisla- ture, enabled the College to realize a sufficient fund to prosecute its work as of old. The organization and courses, however, were entirely changed by Jefferson. At this College, as in other places, this eminent philosopher showed himself to be at least one hundred years ahead of his time. Many changes which he made in the courses at William and Mary, are only just being adopted by other colleges. Being elected in 1779 one of the Board of Visitors, he had the two professorships of Divinity and Oriental Languages abolished and substituted a professorship of Law and Police, one of Anatomy, and one of Modern Languages ; and as the charter confined the Faculty to six professors, he added the ' ' Law of Nature and Nations and the Fine Arts to the duties of the Moral Professor, and Natu- ral History to the duties of the Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. As the English courts refused to permit the rents from the ' ' Brafferton ' ' estate to come to America after the Revolution, the Indian school was abandoned. In 1789 Washington was elected Chancellor, and under the wise guidance of Bishop Madison and his successors, the College continued its career of usefulness. From 1835 to the Civil War the catalogues show an average yearly attendance of 15