The holders of the travelling scholarships for BAs founded by the bequest in 1709 of William Worts. Every year two such scholars were to be chosen who were to travel (separately) to foreign countries and send a monthly letter (in Latin, of course) to the Vice-Chancellor, giving an account of the ‘religion, learning, laws, politics, customs, manners, and rarities, natural and artficial, which they shall find worth observing’ in the countries visited. Three volumes of these letters are preserved among the manuscripts in the University Library (ref. Oo.6.95-97, calendared in A catalogue of the manuscripts preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge , vol. iv (CUP 1861), pp. 515-21). The scholarships were tenable for three years. By a statute of 1861 the travelling bachelorships were discontinued and the funds devoted to making grants ‘for the promotion or encouragement of investigations in foreign countries respecting [all the same features as before] or for the purposes of geographical discovery or of antiquarian or scientific research in foreign countries’. Arrangements for the publication of such research were to be made on an ad hoc basis.
