22 A DORSET WORTHY. 



About the period of Edward VI. 's reign New Inn Hall 

 had dwindled in numbers. During the time of the Civil War, 

 1642-1646, it was used as the Mint for King Charles, where 

 the plate of the Colleges and Halls was sent to be melted 

 down. When the garrison of Oxford had surrendered, it 

 became full of Puritans and Parliamentarians ; but after the 

 Restoration, during the Principalship of Mr. Stone, it 

 attained, both in numbers and influence, to a position which 

 in all probability it has never occupied either before or 

 since. 



Other appointments now also fell to Mr. Stone's share, and 

 he may be regarded as having become somewhat of a 

 pluralist. In 1663 he was appointed Vicar of Pottersbury in 

 Northamptonshire, and in the following year he was 

 presented with the sinecure Incumbency of Northop in 

 Flintshire. 



In Oxford he numbered amongst his personal friends Dr. 

 John Hall (who became Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, 

 and Prebendary of Worcester), the celebrated Mr. Obadiah 

 Walker, Master of University College, and the distinguished 

 antiquary and historian, Mr. Anthony a Wood. It is not 

 improbable that it is in some measure due to Stone that 

 Wood's " History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford " 

 has been preserved to us, for it was by his advice, together 

 with that of Obadiah Walker (who, as well as he, privately 

 perused the work and knew the value of it), that the MS. was 

 accepted by the Delegacy of the University for publication. 



Stone remained in Oxford, as Head of New Inn Hall, for 21 

 years. The estimation in w r hich he was held there may be 

 gathered from what is said of him in Reliquiae, Hearniance : 

 " Mr. William Stone, LL.B., and principal of New Inne Hall, 

 was so wise a man and of so much learning, knowledge, and 

 probity, that Dr. Mill used to say ' Now there are many men 

 that think themselves fit and would fain be Archbishops of 



* Reliquue Heamianas [Ed. P. Bliss]. J. R. Smith, London, 1869, 

 Vol. II., page 185. 



