On 22 September 1800 a royal charter for the incorporation of a new college at Cambridge, to be styled Downing College, passed the Great Seal, and as several of the colleges had far fewer undergraduates than they could easily accommodate, this addition to an overstocked market was probably considered by some persons as particularly inopportune. Yet however unwelcome the foundation of Downing was to such colleges as were ruefully examining their lists of annual admissions, there was a hope that it might mark a turning point in the history of the University. The youngest of the existing colleges had been founded more than two hundred years before, and all of them were living under statutes which belonged to a by-gone age and precluded them from meeting the needs and requirements of a changed world, even if they had desired to do so. The wish, indeed, was not there, but it might very well arise if they found themselves unsuccessfully competing with a rival institution which owed its prosperity to its more enlightened statutes. Thus the foundation of Downing gave an opportunity of pointing the way to reform, and, if the venture had prospered, that steep and stony road might have been taken.