In 1700, the commissioners of ecclesiastical patronage recommended Bentley to the Crown for the mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge. He arrived an outsider and proceeded to reform the college administration. He started a programme of renovations to the buildings, and used his position to promote learning. He is also credited by the British mathematician Rouse Ball with starting the first written examinations in the West in 1702, all those prior to this being oral in nature. At the same time, he antagonised the fellows, and the capital programme caused reductions in their incomes, which they resented.