The three Regius Professorships of Divinity, Hebrew and Greek were founded by Henry VIII in 1540, and their stipends of forty pounds a year were originally charged upon the revenues of the Cathedral Church of Westminster. From 1547 onwards, however, these stipends were paid by Trinity, which had been founded by Henry VIII in 1546; and the earliest statutes of that college, which are those granted by Edward VI in 1552, authorised these payments, and enjoined that the three Regius Professors, if Fellows of Trinity, should be of the Senatus, and that they should not lose their fellowships by marriage. But their duties, mode of appointment and conditions of tenure were not prescribed; and it was not until a few years later that this deficiency was supplied. The forty-first chapter of a draft of new statutes for the college, drawn up in the reign of Queen Mary, is exclusively concerned with the three Regius Professors; and though these draft statutes were never formally approved by the Crown, and therefore never became operative, the code which Queen Elizabeth gave to the college was almost identical with them, except for such modifications as the religious changes required.