College Salting and Tucking of Freshmen

A circumstantial account of the tucking of freshmen, as practised in Exeter College, oxford, in 1636, is given in Mr. Martyn's *Life of the First Lord Shaftesbury*, vol. i. p. 42. "On a particular day, the senior under-graduates, in the evening, called the freshmen to the fire, and made them hold out their chins; whilst one of the seniors, with the nail of his thumb (which was left long for that purpose), grated off all the skin from the lip to the chin, and then obliged him to drink a beer-glass of water and salt." Lord Shaftesbury was a freshman at Exeter in 1636; and the story told by his b…