xii THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS SUED 149 



college by law to admit them, as a test case. A writ was 

 served in November, and the cause came on for hearing in the 

 following year, 1769, but failed for want of stating sufficient 

 grounds. A similar action was therefore brought in 1770, the 

 grounds of the title being shown at great length. The college 

 in return upheld its rules, describing the class of licentiates as 

 unfit to be fellows, and severely characterising their demand 

 for admission. The judges agreed in quashing the motion, 

 on the ground that the matter was governed by the college 

 bye-laws, be they good or bad ; Lord Mansfield added that 

 they appeared to be narrow if not illegal, and hinted that they 

 ought to be mended. 



With the issue of these costly proceedings, the controversy 

 was closed for the tune. The college accepted the verdicts, 

 but not the advice. Privilege died hard in the eighteenth 

 century. The college did indeed frame a new statute by 

 which a licentiate of seven years' standing might be proposed, 

 and after three further examinations balloted for as a fellow. 

 But this was little more than a dead letter. One curious scene 

 is preserved for us in a contemporary epistle. In September 

 1771, ere the heat of litigation was cooled, three licentiates, 

 Scotch graduates who were not of the " rebels," were elected 

 to the fellowship at the comitia of the college. Old Sir William 

 Browne then arose and handsomely proposed Fothergill, 

 arch-rebel though he was, for election. When those present 

 had recovered from their surprise, the nomination was seconded 

 by Heberden and Sir J. Pringle, but was lost upon the ballot, 

 so we are told, by 13 votes to 9. Browne wrote a polite letter 

 to Fothergill afterwards. 1 The Edinburgh graduates had 

 been indignant at Browne's allusion to their ancient founda- 

 tion amongst others as being no university. That body 

 received, however, some discredit from the unlucky admission 

 of the illiterate Leeds in 1766, as already narrated ; he was 

 rejected by the London college for its licence in 1770. Cullen, 

 when president of the Edinburgh College of Physicians in 

 1774, made considerable efforts, following the protests of 

 W. Hunter and others twenty years earlier, to reform the lax 

 practices still maintained at Aberdeen and St. Andrews. 

 Their continuance gave some colourable excuse for the exclu- 

 sive policy pursued in London towards all Scottish graduates. 



A deep sense of injustice still smouldered in the licentiates' 

 minds. A scheme was even mooted about 1782 to erect a 

 new college of physicians on a large and liberal basis, with a 



1 J. Thomson, Life of Cullen, i. 658. 



