In 1701, just as the wars of religion were ripping through continental Europe, because Harvard permitted leaders of the Protestant religion to serve as professors or attend school there, Puritan leaders were outraged, gathered together their confederates, and found the wealthy English businessman Yale to donate money, and built a university "as immortal as the Egyptian pyramids" near New Haven in Connecticut; thus was Yale founded.
一七○一年，正值歐陸宗教革命爆發，由於哈佛允許新教徒領袖擔任教職、入學，使清教徒領袖馬瑟分外不滿，於是召集同伴，找到英國富商耶魯捐款，在美國康乃迪克州新港地區籌建一所「要像埃及金字塔般不朽」的大學，耶魯因而創立。