The Nature of the Country scarce yet admits of a Possibility of reducing the Collegians to the nice Methods of Life and Study observed in Oxford and Cambridge; tho' by Degrees they may copy from thence many useful Customs and Constitutions.
When the College shall be compleatly finished, and Scholarships founded, then is the Trust to be transferred from the Trustees to the President and Masters; but at present it is managed by a certain Number of Governors or Visitors, (one of which is chosen yearly Rector) appointed first by the Trustees, elected out of the principal and worthiest Inhabitants.
These appoint a Person, to whom they grant several Privileges and Allowances to board and lodge the Masters and Scholars at an extraordinary cheap Rate.
This Office is at present performed in the neatest and most regular and plentiful Manner, by Mrs. Mary Stith, a Gentlewoman of great Worth and Discretion, in good Favour with the Gentry, and great Esteem and Respect with the common People.
Great Pity it is, but the noble Design of this College met with more Friends to encourage, and Benefactors to advance, its flourishing State.
One Happiness is, that it has always a Chancellor in England, chosen by the Governors or Feoffees; to whose Patronage and Direction it may have Recourse upon emergent Occasions.
The last Chancellor was the late Bishop of London; and the present is his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The Chancellor continues in that Office but seven Years; so that it may happen as soon as he has obtained a perfect Knowledge and Acquaintance with the Persons and Affairs belonging to the College, his Term is expired: Besides their Business in other momentous Affairs at Home may divert them, and the Distance of the Country may prevent them from obtaining true Notions, and exact Accounts of the Nature of the Colony and the College; so that for these Reasons, they can't do for it the Good, which they otherwise might: For their better Information, and for Direction of all, in promoting Religion and Learning in this Plantation, I have made Publick this Account of it, and its Inhabitants.
Fronting the College at near its whole Breadth, is extended a noble Street mathematically streight (for the first Design of the Town's Form is changed to a much better) just three Quarters of a Mile in Length: At the other End of which stands the Capitol, a noble, beautiful, and commodious Pile as any of its Kind, built at the Cost of the late Queen, and by the Direction of the Governor.
In this is the Secretary's Office with all the Courts of Justice and Law, held in the same Form, and near the same Manner, as in England; except the Ecclesiastical Courts.