UNIVERSITY
The college, whose legal title is "The College of the Great Hall of the University," appears to have no tangible reason for its boast of long and of royal descent. It claims Alfred the Great as its Founder. It contains a bust of Alfred, as its Founder. On more than one occasion, when it was to its benefit to appear as a Royal Foundation, it has appealed to the Crown and to the Courts. And, in June, 1872, it celebrated what it called its thousandth birthday, by giving a dinner-party at which the Chancellor of the Exchequer of Great Britain spoke of Alfred as a man ahead of his time, and drank to Alfred's memory as the begetter of the Institution. The first benefactor of whom there is any authentic account was one William of Durham, who died in the middle of the Thirteenth Century; and the present buildings, although they look much more ancient, date back only to the middle of a century which was four centuries later.
Leonard Digges, chiefly remembered now by his lines prefixed to the 1623 Folio of Shakspere's Plays—
"Be sure our Shakspere thou canst never die,
But crowned with Lawrell live eternally,"
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