It Is Related of the Same Oxford Wag
That having a party to supper with him, and being anxious to play the Dean some harmless trick, as his delight was to annoy him, he seized a potato off the dish, stuck it on a fork, and bolted off with it to the deanery, followed by some of his boon companions. This was at one, two, or three in the morning, when all the rest of the college, and of course the Dean, were locked in the embrace of Somnus. Mr. Lyttleton, however, resolving to have his joke, began thundering away at the Dean’s knocker, till roused at last, he put his head out at the window, and in a rage demanded the wants of the applicant. “Do you think, Mr. Dean,” said Mr. L., holding up to his view the forked potato with the coolest effrontery imaginable; “Do you think, Mr. Dean, that this is a potato fit to put upon a gentleman’s table?” Dr. Westphalinge, Canon of Christ Church, afterwards Bishop of Hereford, and one of the Commissioners sent to Oxford to abolish Popish practices, by Elizabeth, says Bishop Godwyn,