1660) he excluded from fellowships all who were suspected of royalist leanings. In 1653 he preached at St. Mary's, in reply to a sermon delivered from the same pulpit in the previous year by Sydrach Simpson, master of Pembroke College. Simpson, in a commencement sermon, had maintained the value of classical learning and university culture generally in the training of a clergyman for his vocation. Dell, in his reply, vehemently denounced the notion that such attainments were of any value as a means towards the better understanding of scripture, declaring that ‘the gospel of Christ, understood according to Aristotle, hath begun, continued, and perfected the mysterie of iniquity in the outward church.’ Hoods, caps, ‘scarlet robes,’ ‘the doctoral ring,’ and other academic attire of dignitaries, were inveighed against with equal warmth, while the assumption on the part of the university of the power to confer degrees in divinity was declared by him to be ‘a power received from Antichrist.’ Dell was answered by Joseph Sedgwick of Christ's College, in a sermon entitled ‘An Essay to the Discovery of the Spirit of Enthusiasm and pretended Inspiration, that disturbs and strikes at the Universities,’ &c., London, 1653.
His conduct during his mastership appears to have met with the approval of the government, for we find in 1654, and again in 1656, an order in council ‘to pay to Mr. Dell, master of Gonville and Caius College, his half-year's augmentation of 60l. a year, any order of restraint notwithstanding’ (State Papers, Dom., lxxi. No. 50, cxxvii. No. 41). Herbert Thorndike, in a letter appended to his ‘Just Weights and Measures’ (ed. 1662), p. 213, speaks of him as so strongly inclined to the Calvinistic theory of predestination, ‘that he is thought to have written the book called the “Doctrine of Baptism,” against baptism itself;’ ‘he is now,’ Thorndike goes on to say, ‘and is acknowledged by those commissioners, master of a college in the university (whereof several fellows have been notorious preachers of this hæresie), who cannot be acknowledged a member of this church by any good christian.’
Conjointly with his mastership Dell held the living of Yelden (not Yeldon) in Bedfordshire, from which he was ejected in 1662. He survived his ejection only two years, and was buried at his own desire in unconsecrated ground, the site being a ‘spinny,’ or small copse, on his own estate ‘at Samsill in the parish of Westoning, near Harlington.’ John Pomfret, writing to Zachary Grey (18 March 1738), describes the spot as then ‘grown over with thorns and briers.’ ‘But I cannot learn,’ he goes on to say, ‘that his wife lies there too. The close goes by the name of “Graves,” and was part of the Dells' estate at that time, though sold by the son of the old man. Which son married a great-aunt of mine, by my mother's side. I have heard Mr. Bedford say that old Dell was rector of Yeilden in those precious times of iniquity, I suppose presented by the then Earl of Bolingbroke, who was deep in those confusions. I myself have heard the doctor's father say, pointing to the close as we rode by, “There lyes my old rogue of a grandfather,” which was no small concern to him’ (Baker MS. A 127).
Dell seems to have definitely associated himself with no party; he is described by Calamy as ‘a very peculiar and unsettled man,’ and ‘challenged for three contradictions:’ (1) for being professedly against pædobaptism, and yet he had his own children baptised; (2) for preaching against universities, when yet he held the leadership of a college; (3) for being against tithes, and yet taking 200l. per annum at his living in Yelden.’ ‘But it was not for these things,’ continues the writer, ‘but for his nonconformity that he was ejected. To these a fourth may be added, that he gave his parishioners christian burial, and he himself is buried in the fields’ (Calamy, Nonconformist's Memorial (Palmer), i. 201).
One of his pamphlets, entitled ‘The Right Reformation of Learning, Schools, and Universities, according to the state of the Gospel,’ first printed during his tenure of his mastership, is notable as developing the idea that university culture ought to be placed within the immediate reach of the inhabitants of all the larger towns, where its acquisition might be blended with the ordinary avocations of life, a view much resembling, if not identical with, that which has given rise to the university extension movement of the present day.
The registers of births and burials ‘in the toune of Yelden’ supply the following information with respect to Dell's family: 16 Dec. 1653, Anna Dell, the daughter of William Dell and Martha his wife, born; 16 May 1655, Nathanael Dell, ‘sonne of Willim Dell, rector, and Martha his wife, was borne;’ 16 Feb. 1656, Mary Dell born; 6 July 1655, Nathanael Dell buried; 12 Jan. 1656, Samuel Dell, ‘sonne of William Dell and Matthew (sic) his wife, was buryed’ (Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. v. 221–2).
Dell's works commanded a certain popularity, especially among the quakers, and have twice been reprinted in a collected form: ‘Select Works of William Dell, master of Gonvil and Caius College in Cambridge,’ London, printed for John Kendall in Col-
