says Mr. Quincy, “has discontent with commons been more just and well founded, than under the huswifery of Mrs. Eaton.”  “It is perhaps owing,” Mr. Winthrop observes in his History of New England, “to the gallantry of our fathers, that she was not enjoined in the perpetual malediction they bestowed on her husband.”  A few years after, we read, in the “Information given by the Corporation and Overseers to the General Court,” a proposition either to make “the scholars’ charges less, or their commons better.”  For a long period after this we have no account of the state of commons, “but it is not probable,” says Mr. Peirce, “they were materially different from what they have been since.”

During the administration of President Holyoke, from 1737 to 1769, commons were the constant cause of disorders among the students.  There appears to have been a very general permission to board in private families before the year 1737:  an attempt was then made to compel the undergraduates to board in commons.  After many resolutions, a law was finally passed, in 1760, prohibiting them “from dining or supping in any house in town, except on an invitation to dine or sup gratis.”  “The law,” says Quincy, “was probably not very strictly enforced.  It was limited to one year, and was not renewed.”

An idea of the quality of commons may be formed from the following accounts furnished by Dr. Holyoke and Judge Wingate.  According to the former of these gentlemen, who graduated in 1746, the “breakfast was two sizings of bread and a cue of beer”; and “evening commons were a pye.”  The latter, who graduated thirteen years after, says:  “As to the commons, there were in the morning none while I was in College.  At dinner, we had, of rather ordinary quality, a sufficiency of meat of some kind, either baked or boiled; and at supper, we had either a pint of milk and half a biscuit, or a meat pye of some other kind.  Such were the commons in the hall in my day.  They were rather ordinary; but I was young and hearty, and could live comfortably upon them.  I had some classmates who paid for their commons and never entered the hall while they belonged to the College.  We were allowed at dinner a cue of beer, which was a half-pint, and a sizing of bread, which I cannot describe to you.  It was quite sufficient for one dinner.”  By a vote of the Corporation in 1750, a law was passed, declaring “that the quantity of commons be as hath been usual, viz. two sizes of bread in the morning; one pound of meat at dinner, with sufficient sauce” (vegetables), “and a half a pint of beer; and at night that a part pie be of the same quantity as usual, and also half a pint of beer; and that the supper messes be but of four parts, though the dinner messes be of six.”  This agrees in substance with the accounts given above.  The consequence of such diet was, “that the sons of the rich,” says Mr. Quincy, “accustomed to better fare, paid for commons, which they would not eat, and never entered the hall; while the students whose resources did not admit of such an evasion were perpetually dissatisfied.”