He was therefore sent back to school, and in the summer of 1661 he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Even at college Newton seems to have shown no unusual mental capacity, and in 1664, when examined for a scholarship by Dr.Barrow, that gentleman is said to have formed a poor opinion of the applicant.

It is said that the knowledge of the estimate placed upon his abilities by his instructor piqued Newton, and led him to take up in earnest the mathematical studies in which he afterwards attained such distinction.

The study of Euclid and Descartes's "Geometry" roused in him a latent interest in mathematics, and from that time forward his investigations were carried on with enthusiasm.

In 1667 he was elected Fellow of Trinity College, taking the degree of M.A.the following spring.
It will thus appear that Newton's boyhood and early manhood were passed during that troublous time in British political annals which saw the overthrow of Charles I., the autocracy of Cromwell, and the eventual restoration of the Stuarts.