So he arose before daybreak one morning, tramped sixty miles to Oxford, and entered himself at Exeter College as a poor scholar.
This was in August, 1683.
He took up his residence in Oxford with forty-five shillings in his pocket.

He studied there five years, and during that time received from his family and friends just five shillings; obtained his Bachelor's degree, and departed seven pounds and fifteen shillings richer than when he entered the University.

The winter of 1683 was a hard beginning for a scholar too poor to buy fuel, the cold being so severe in the Thames valley that coaches plied as freely on the river from the Temple to Westminster as if they had gone upon the land.
Yet "I tarried," he afterwards wrote, "in Exeter College, though I met with some hardships I had before been unacquainted with, till I was of standing sufficient to take my Bachelor's degree; and not being able to subsist there afterwards, I came to London during the time of my Lord Bishop of London's suspension by the High Commission, and was instituted into deacon's orders by my Lord Bishop of Rochester, at his palace at Bromley, August 7th, 1688." He had maintained himself by instructing wealthier undergraduates and writing their exercises for them (as a servitor he had to black their boots and run their errands); also by scribbling for John Dunton, the famous London bookseller, whose acquaintance he had made during his last year at Mr.Morton's.

With all this he found time and the will to be charitable, and had visited the poor creatures imprisoned in the Castle at Oxford--many for debt.

He lived to take the measure of this kindness, and to see it repeated by his sons.
_Maggots: or Poems on Several Subjects never before Handled_ was no very marketable book of rhymes.