er type were William Wilberforce (entered 1776) and Thomas
Clarkson (1779), whose names will always be associated in connection
with the abolition of slavery. The saintly Henry Martyn, Senior Wrangler
in 1801 and Fellow of the College, went out as a missionary to India in
1805, and died at Tokat in Persia in 1812. There have been many
missionary sons of the College since his day, but his self-denial
greatly impressed his contemporaries, and Sir James Stephen speaks of
him as "the one heroic name which adorns the annals of the Church of
England from the days of Elizabeth to our own." With Martyn curiously
enough is associated in College annals another name, that of Henry John
Temple, third Viscount Palmerston, sometime Prime Minister of England;
for Martyn and Temple appear as officers of the College company of
volunteers in the year 1803.

Thomas Denman, afterwards Lord Chief Justice, entered the College in
1796; he resided in the Second Court, staircase G, at the top. When he
brought up his son, the Hon. George Denman, to Trinity he pointed the
rooms out to him, and the latter pointed them out to the present writer,
"in order that the oral tradition might be preserved."

Alexander John Scott, who, as private secretary and interpreter to Lord
Nelson, was present on the _Victory_ at Trafalgar, entered the College
in 1786, and became a scholar of the College 3rd November 1789. Fletcher
Norton, Speaker of the House of Commons from 1770 to 1780, and first
Lord Grantley, entered the College in 1734. With him, in a way, was
connected John Horne (afterwards Horne Tooke), who entered in 1754; for
Horne, for purposes of his own, libelled Fletcher Norton when Speaker.
Horne Tooke's stormy career belongs rather to political than College
history; but it is worth noting that when he presented himself at
Cambridge for the M.A. degree, and the granting of this was opposed in
the senate on the ground that he had traduced the clergy in his
writings, the members of St. John's, headed by Dr. Richard Beadon, then
Public Orator, afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells, carried the grace
for the degree. Horne and Beadon entered the College in the same year.

We have already mentioned Charles Churchill. Another Johnian poet of
this period was William Mason, who entered the College in 1742. Mason
afterwards became a Fellow of Pembroke, where he was the intimate friend
of Thomas Gray. As the biographer of Gray he is perhaps better
remembered than