Thomas Morell, who had been an Independent minister at St Neots in Huntingdonshire, had become the last theological tutor at Wymondley College in 1821[1] and had restored its reputation after many years of internal discord, mostly relating to accusations of heterodoxy.
While demand for admissions often exceeded capacity in its early years, it tailed off later to the point that the trustees promised the governors at Mill Hill School that they would pay £50 to any pupil who took up further study at Byng Place.
In that same year, 1847, the trust stopped its provision of funding matriculation fees to prospective students and required that they had already been accepted for study by the university before they sought membership of the college.
Now in a busy metropolis rather than the relatively isolated village of Little Wymondley, and with the facilities of the university as a comparison, the students increasingly perceived the college offerings, both in teaching and equipment, as being inferior.
Historia Simon Dixon says that Coward College had been a bold attempt to raise the academic standard of the education provided to candidates for the ministry supported by the founder's Trust.
In the 1880s the secretary of the trustees, Revd Joshua Harrison, was approached by Eleanor Grove who arranged for the building to be used by the new College Hall which allowed women to attend university classes.