1 UC-NRLF B M D73 E13 - T i^ijjsiir^.'^^^ J TThe Story of Cambridge The Mediaeval Town Series -ASSISI. By LiNA Duff Gordon. [t,th Edn. AVIGNON. By Thomas Okky.' tBRUGES. Bv Ernest Gilliat-Smith. {i^th Edit. tBRUSSELS. By Ernest Gilliat-Smith. tCAlRO. By Stanley Lane-Poole. [2nd Edn. tCAM BRIDGE. By the Rt. Rev. C'. W. Stu^bs, D.D. {■znd Edv. tCHARTRES. By Cecil Headlam. M.A. \,7ndEd>i. CONSTANTINOPLE. By Wm. H. Hutton. \,-3,rd Edn. COVENTRY. By Mary Dormer Hakri?;. tDUBLIN. By D. A. Chart, M.A. tEDINBURGH. By Olihhant Sme.'Vton, M.A. tFERRAKA. By Ella Noye.s. tFLORENCE. By Edmund G. Gardner. [gth &' Revised Edn. tLONDON. By Henry B. Wheatley. {%rd Edn. - MILAN. By Ella Noyes. *MOSCOW. By Wirt Gerrare. [3^^ Edn. ♦NUREMBERG. By Cecil Headlam, M.A. [6M Edn. tOXFORD. By Cecil Headlam, M.A. l-znd Edn. tPADUA. By Cesare Foligno. tPARIS. By Thomas Okey. [^nd Edn. *PERUGIA. By M. Symonds and Lina Duff Gordon. \6th Edn. tPISA. By Janet Ross. ♦PRAGUE. By ColJNT LuTZOw. \ind Edn. tROME. By Norwood Young. Wh Edn. tROUEN. By Theodore A. Cook. {■i.rd Edn. tSEVILLE. By Walter M.Gallichan. [2nd Edn. tSIENA. By Edmund G. Gardner. [yd Edn. ♦TOLEDO. By Hannah Lynch. [2nd Edn. tVKNICE. By Thomas Okey. [ird&^ Rerised Edn. tVERONA. By Alethea WiEL. [yd Edn. Volumes in Preparation : — CANTERBURY. By G. R. Stirling Tayi.ok. With Illustrations by Katharine Kimrall. LUCCA. Written and llhistrated by Nelly Erichsen. SANTIAGO. By C. G. Gai.lichan. With Ilhis- trations by H. Mason T/ie prices 0/ these (*) are .ijr. td. net in cloth, 4$. 6d. net in leather: these (t), 4.^. 6d. net in cloth. 5J. 6d. net in leather. The Story /Cambridge by Charles W. Stubbs, D.D. Dean of Ely, Illustrated by Herbert Railton ^ ^ ^ London : J- M. Dent 2f Sons, LicL Aldine House ^ ^ Bedford Street Covent Garden W,C.. ^ ^, 1912 First Edition, 1 90 5 Reprinted. 1912 Ali 'I'h's resftt-tJ PREFACE 'T'HE condensation of a history, covering so many centuries, and involving tiie consultation of so many authorities, monastic records, college annals, dry-as- dust monographs, antiquarian and architectural papers, into a readable story, which shall be at once con- tinuous, picturesque, and consistent, can never be an easy task. ^'Emmvus eupiaxsro.' Obviously for a complete presentation of the many and various forces at work, and the large issues involved for both university and nation, a much wider canvas than mine would be needed. Apart from the history of the Colleges, it has been possible for me to do little more than to disengage the leading lines of academic history, and to mark the influences and tendencies which seem most to have governed the results as we see them in the university life of to-day. If historical truth is to be reached, even partially, many trivial details are necessary, and such details make dull reading. I trust, however, that I have not anywhere been so absorbed in detail that my reader v/ill find it difficult to see the wood for the trees. And at least where some detail seemed necessary, I am not ashamed to confess that I have always tried to keep an open eye for picturesque and an open ear for humorous detail. I hope also I have shown that I know the value to historical study of a wide grasp of general principles and tendencies, and yet at the same time am not unaware how danger- ous a generalised view may become, if it be forgotten that as generalisations grow wider, they also too often b V 321870 Preface are apt to become obscurer and more useless. I wish that I had had more space to give to the great per- sonalities of Cambridge academic history. 1 feel, as all must feel, how much life and colour must always be given to any picture of Cambridge by the possibility of placing upon its canvas such historic figures as Queen Margaret and Bishop Fisher, as Erasmus and Matthew Parker, as Bacon and Newton and Bentley, as Oliver Cromwell and John Milton, and the long line of Cambridge poets and divines. We cannot afford certainly in such a sketch to lose sight wantonly of great men and memorable lives. The spell of their presence still hovers about the old courts and halls, and is the secret perhaps of the eager patriotism which Cambridge always provokes in a Cambridge man. That some of the poetic glamour of the place and of the witchery and charm of its old romance should have found its way into my pages I fain would hope. At least I have written con amore. If my words have failed in warmth, it certainly has not been because my heart is cold. Ever since the October night, forty years ago now, when for the first time I walked the streets of Cambridge, and saw her buildings dreaming in the moonlight, I have been a reverent and impas- sioned lover of my Alma Mater. And to a lover some touch of poetry must surely come to the expres- sion of his love. If it has been otherwise in this book. I trust my readers may be prepared to forgive much to an author who at least has loved much. In addition to the authorities, to whom I have, I hope, fully acknowledged my obligations in the foot- notes, I should wish to thank my friend Mr T. D. Atkinson, our excellent custos operatorum at Ely, for the assistance I have derived from his " Cambridge Described and Illustrated," especially in compiling the lists of College Portraits, and for his kindness vi Frtface in preparing for me the interesting map of the Fen district as it must have appeared in the early days described in my first chapter. For the rest, I conclude with the hope that, in the spirit of my book, I have not altogether failed to reach something of that simplicity and moderation of judgment which Thomas Fuller, whose words I have so often quoted in these pages, has rightly declared to be "the silken string running through the pearl-chain of all the virtues." c. w. s. Deanery, Elt. yu CONTENTS PAGE Introduction . , . . . , xv Itinerary ....... xix CHAPTER I Legendary Origin of the University ... I CHAPTER II Cambridge in the Norman Time . . . 22 CHAPTER III I he Beginnings of University Life . . . 44 CHAPTER IV The Earliest College Foundation : Peterhouse , 63 CHAPTER V The Colleges of the Fourteenth Century . . 90 CHAPTER VI The College of the Cambridge Guilds o . 122 ix Coiitents CHAPTER VII TtL'o Royal Foundations . . . . I40 PACE CHAPTER VIII Tavo oj the Stualler Halls . . . .189 CHAPTER IX B'tshop Alcock and the Nuns of S. Rhadegund 203 CHAPTER X Colleges of the Neav Learning . . 227 CHAPTER XI A Small and a Great College . . .268 CHAPTER XII Ancient and Protestant Foundations . 301 CHAPTER XIII The University Buildings . . . . 3^3 ILLUSTRATIONS PAti College S. Benedict's Church Benet Street Market Square Great S. Mary's Church, 323 S. Michael's Church Green Street Divinity Schools 3 "2. 5' w o 3 •-I 3 H 5' r* O 3 3" Fitzwilliam Museum, 338 Pcterhouse, 67 Little S. Kfar^'S Church Congregational Church University Press rRidley Silver Street, leading to -/ Newnham Queen's College, 168 l& Selwyn S. Catharine's College, 199 King's, 143 College University Library Senate House, 326 Caius College. 109 Trinity Lane Clare College, 95 Trinity Hall. 190 Trinity College, 278 S. John's College, 243 rr r. c_ (T wvttes greatlye di i applie To have acquaintance by great affection With folke-experte in philosophie. From Athens he brought witli hym downe Philosophers most sovereigne ol renowne Unto Cambridge, playnlyethis is the case, Anaxamander and Anaxagoras With many other myne .\ucthors dothe fare, To Cami)ridge fast came hym spede With philosophers and let for no cost spare In the ScHooles to stujdie and to reede; Of wliose teachinges great piotit that gan spreade 1 Cf. Baker MS. in the University Library. 2 Legendary Origin of the University And great increase rose of his doctrine ; Thus of Cambridge the name gan first shyne As chief schoole and universitie Unto this tyme fro the daye it began By cleare reporte in manye a far countre Unto the reign of Cassibeilan. • • • • " And as it is put eke in memorie, Howe Julius C^sar entrinj; this region On Cassybellan after his victorye Tooke with hym clarkes of famous renowne Fro Cambridg and ledd theim to Rome towne, Thus by processe remembred here to forne Cambridg was founded long or Chryst was borne." But it is not only in verse that this fabric of fable is to be found. Down even to the middle of the last century the ears of Cambridge graduates were still beguiled by strange stories of the early renown of their University — how it was founded by a Spanish Prince, Cantaber (the " Cantebro " of Lydgate's verses), "in the 4321st year of the creation of the worM," and in the sixth year of Gurgant, King of Britain ; how Athenian astronomers and philosophers " because of the pleasantness of the place," came to Cambridge as its earliest professors, ** the king having appointed them stipends'*; how King Arthur, **on the 7th of April, in the year of the Incarnacion of our Lord, 531," granted a charter of academic privi- leges '* to Kenet, the first Rector of the schools " ; and how the University subsequently found another royal patron in the East Anglian King Sigebert, and had among its earlier Doctors of Divinity the great Saxon scholars Bede and Alcuin. I have before me as I write a small octavo volume, a guide-book to Cambridge and its Colleges, much worn and thumbed, probably by its eighteenth-century owner, possibly by his nineteenth-century successor, in which all these fables and legends are set out in 3 The Story of Cambridge order. The book has lost its title page, but it is easily identifiable as an English translation of Richard Parker's Skeletos Cantahrigiensis^ written about 1622, but not apparently published until a century later, when the antiquary, Thomas Hearne, printed it in his edition of Lelland's Collectanea. My English edition of the Skeletos is presumably either that which was " printed for Thomas Warner at the Black Boy, Pater Noster Row," and without a date, or that published by " J. Bateman at the Hat and Star in S. Paul's Church- yard," and dated 1721. As an illustration of the kind of record which passed for history even in the last century — for the early editions of Hallam's " History of the Middle Ages " bear evidence that that careful historian still gave some credence to these Cambridge fables — it may be interesting to quote one or two passages from the legendary history of Nicholas Cantelupe, which is prefixed to this English version of Parker's book : — *' Anaximander, one of the disciples of Thales, came to this city on account of his Philosophy and great Skill in Astrolog-y, where he left much Improvement in Learning to Posterity. After his Example, Anaxagoras, quitting his Possessions, after a long Peregrination, came to Cambridge, where he writ Books, and instructed the unlearned, for which reason that City was by the People of the Country call'd the City of Scholars '•King Cassibelan, when he had taken upon him the Government of the Kingdom, bestowed such Preheminence on this City, that any Fugitive or Criminal, desirous to acquire Learning, flying to it, was defended in the sight of His Enemy, with Pardon, and without Molestation, Upbraiding or Affront offer'd him. For which Reason, as also on account of the Richness of the Soil, the Serenity of the Air, the great Source of Learning, and the King's Favour, young and old. from many Parts of the Earth, resorted thither, some of whom Julil'S CiESAR, having vanquished Cassibelan, carry'd away to Rome, where they afterwards flonrish'd." There then follows a letter, given without any doubt 4 Legendary Origin of the University of authenticity, from Alcuin of York, purporting to be written to the scholars of Cambridge from the Court of Charles the Great : — "To the discreet Heirs of Christ, the Scholars of the unspotted Mother Cambridge, JFAquinus^ by Life a Sinner, Greeting and Glory in the Virtues of Learn- ing. Forasmuch as Ignorance is the Mother of Error, I earnestly intreat that Youths among you be us'd to be present at the Praises of the Supreme King, not to unearth Foxes, not to hunt Hares, let them now learn the Holy Scriptures, having obtain'd Know- ledge of the Science of Truth, to the end that in their perfect Age they may teach others. Call to mind, I beseech you dearly beloved the most noble Master of our Time, Bede the Priest, Doctor of your University, under whom by permission of the Divine Grace, I took the Doctor's Degree in the Year from the In- carnation of our Lord 692, what an Inclination he had to study in His Youth, what Praise he has now among Men, and much more what Glory of Reward with God. Farewell always in Christ Jesu, by whose Grace you are assisted in Learning. Amen." We may omit the mythical charter of King Arthur and come to the passage concerning King Alfred, obviously intended to turn the flank of the Oxford patriots, who too circumstantially relate how their University was founded by that great scholar king. " In process of time, when Alfred, or Aired, sup- ported by divine Comfort, after many Tribulations, had obtained the Monarchy of all England, he trans- lated to Oxford the scholars, which Penda, King of the Mercians, had with the leave of King Ceadwald carried from Cambridge to Kirneflad (rather Crick=^ lade, as above), to which scholars he was wont to distribute Alms in three several Places. He much 5 The Story of Cambridge honourM the Cantabrigians and Oxonians, and granted them many Privileges. "Afterwards he erected and establish'd Grammar Schools throughout the whole Island, and caus*d the Youth to be instructed in their Mother Tongue. Then perceiving that the Scholars, whom he had conveyed to Oxford, continually applied themselves to the Study of the Laws and expounded the Holy Scriptures : he appointed Grimwald their Rector, who had been Rector and Chancellor of the City of Cambridge.'* The severer canons of modern historical criticism have naturally made short work of all these absurd fables ; nor do they even allow us to accept as authentic the otherwise not unpleasing story quoted from the Chronicle, or rather historical novel, of Inpulph, in the quaint pages of Thomas Fuller, written a generation later than Richard Parker's book, which tells how, early in the twelfth century, certain monks were sent to Cambridge by Joffrey, Abbot of Crowland, to expound in a certain public barn (by later writers fondly thought to be that which is now known by the name of Pythagoras' School) the pages of Priscian, Q^uintilian, and Aristotle. There is little doubt, I fear, that we may find the inciting motive of all this exuberant fancy and in- vention in the desire to glorify the one University at the expense of the other, which is palpably present in that last quotation from Parker's book, and which is perhaps not altogether absent from the writings and the conversation of some academic patriots of our own day. We may, however, more wisely dismiss all these foolish legends and myths as to origins in the kindlier spirit of quaint old Fuller in the Introduction to his ** History of the University of Cambridge" : — 6 Legendary Origin of the University " Sure I am/' he says, " there needeth no such pains to be took, or provision to be made, about the pre-eminence of our English Universities, to regulate their places, they having better learned humility from the precept of the Apostle, In honour preferring one another. Wherefore I presume my aunt Oxford will not be justly offended if in this book I give my own mother the upper hand, and first begin with her history. Thus desiring God to pour his blessing upon both, that neither may want milk for their children, or children for their milk, we proceed to the business." Descending then from the misty cloudland of Fable to the hard ground of historic Fact, we are '•hortly met by a question which, I hope. Fuller would have recognised as businesslike. How did it come about that our forefathers founded a University on the site which we now call Cambridge — "that distant marsh town," as a modern Oxford historian somewhat con- temptuously calls it ? The question is a natural one, and has not seldom been asked. We shall find, I think, the most reasonable answer to it by asking a prior question. How did the town of Cambridge itself come to be a place of any importance in the early days ! The answer is, in the first place, geo- graphical ; in the second, commercial. We may fitly occupy the remaining space of this chapter in seeking to formulate that answer. And first, as to the physical features of the district which has Cambridge for its most important centre. *' The map of England," it has been strikingly said by Professor Maitland, ** is the most wonderful of all palimpsests." Certainly that portion of the map of England which depicts the country surrounding the Fenlands of East Anglia is not the least interesting 7 Tloe Story of Cambridge part of that palimpsest. Let us take such a map and try roughly to decipher it.^ If we begin with the seaboard line we shall perhaps at first sight be inclined to think that it cannot have changed much in the course of the centuries. And most probably the coast-line of Lincolnshire, from a point northwards near Great Grimsby or Cleethorpes at the mouth of the Humber to a point southwards near Waynefleet at the mouth of the Steeping River, twenty miles or less north of Boston, and again the coast-line of Norfolk and Suffolk from Hunstanton Point at the north-east corner of the Wash, round past Brancaster and Wells and Cromer to Yarmouth, and then southwards past South wold and Aid borough to Harwich at the mouth of the Orwell and Stour estuary, has not altered much in ten or even twenty centuries. But that can hardly be said with regard to the coast-line ot the Wash itself. For on its western side our palimpsest warns us that there is a con- siderable district called Holland \ that on its south side, a dozen miles or more from the present coast- line, is a town called Wisbech (or Ouse-beach) ; that still farther inland, within a mile or two of Cambridge itself, are to be found the villages of Waterheach and Landheach ; that half-way between Huntingdon and Peterborough there is a place called Saiutrey (or Sahreche, the Salt-reach) ; and that scattered through- out the whole district of the low-lying lands are villages and towns whose place-names have the termi- nation "ey" or **ea," meaning "island" — such as Thorney, Splnny^ Ramsey, IVhhtlesea, Hornmgsea\ and that one considerable tract of slightly higher 1 See the very excellent map given in " Fenland Past and Present," by S. H. Miller and Sidney Skertchley (published, Longmans, 1878), a book full of information on the natural features of the Fen country, its geology, its antiquarian relics, its Hora and fauna. 8 'Fte^e-rervce^ n e^rv •'-. "^cr -*"*-- — Dyke.s tor est ^-^r^'-ih-i /cT 26* JC 41^ SO I , , , -. 1 — , — ( , ^1 Scale of Miles THE AMCILMT i; EN LAND. Legendary Origin of the University ground, though now undoubtedly surrounded by dry land, is still called the Isle of Ely. These place- names are significant, and tell their own story. And that story, as we try to interpret it, will gradually lead us to the conclusion that the ancient seaboard line of the Wash, instead of being marked on the map of England as we have it now, by a line roughly joining Boston and King's Lynn, would on the earliest text of the palimpsest require an extended sea boundary on which Lincoln, and Stamford and Peterborough, and Huntingdon and Cambridge, and Brandon and Down- ham Market would become almost seaboard towns, and Ely an island fifteen miles or so off the coast at Cambridge. Such a conclusion, of course, would be somewhat of an exaggeration, for the wide waste of waters which thus formed an extension of the Wash southwards was not all or always sea water. So utterly transformed, however, has the whole Fen country become in modern times — the vast plain of the Bedford level contains some 2000 square miles of the richest corn-land in England — that it is very difficult to restore in the imagination the original scenery of the days before the drainage, when the rivers which take the rainfall of the central counties of England — the Nene, the Wel- land, the Witham, the Glen, and the Bedfordshire Ouse — spread out into one vast delta or wilderness of shallow waters. The poetic glamour of the land, now on the side of its fertility and strange beauty, now on the side of its monotony and weird loneliness, has always had a strange fascination for the chroniclers and writers of every age. In the first Book of the Liher El'iensis (ii. 105), written by Thomas, a monk of Ely, in the twelfth century, there is a description of the fenlands, given by a soldier to William the Conqueror, which 1 1 The Story of Cambridge reads like the report of the land of plenty and promise brought by the spies to Joshua. In the Htstoria Major of Matthew Paris, however, it is described as a place "neither accessible for man or beast, affording only deep mud, with sedge and reeds, and possest of b:rds, yea, much more by devils, as appeareth in the Life of S. Guthlac, who, iinding it a place of horror and great solitude, began to inhabit there." At a later time Drayton in his Polyolbion gives a picture of the Fenland life as one of manifold industry : — " The toiling fisher here is towing of his net; The fowler is employed his limed twigs to set ; One underneath his horse to get a shoot doth stalk ; Another over dykes upon his stilts doth walk : There other with their spades the peats are squaring out, And others from their cars are busily about To draw out sedge and reed to thatch and stover fit : That whosoever would a landskip rightly hit, Beholding but my Fens shall with more shapes be stored Than Germany or France or Thuscan can atTord." This eulogy of the Fenland, however, Drayton is careful to put into the mouth of a Fenland nymph, who is not allowed to pass without criticism by her sister who rules the uplands : — «* O how I hate Thus of her foggy fens to hear rude Holland prate That with her fish and fowl here keepeth such a coil, As her unwholesome air, and more unwholesome soil, For these of which she boasts the more might sutTered be." But probably the most picturesque and truthful imaginative sketch of the old fenlands is that which was given in our own time by the graphic pen of Ch:irles Kingsley in his fine novel of " Hereward the Wake," somewhat amplified afterwards in the chapters of " The Hermits," which he devoted to the history of St Guthlac : — "The Fens in the seventh century," he says, "were probably very like the fore>ts at the mouth of the Mississippi 12 Legendary Orig'm of the University or the swampy shores of the Carolinas. Their vast plain is now in summer one sea of golden corn ; in winter, a black dreary fallow, cut into squares by stagnant dykes, and broken only by unsightly pumping mills and doleful lines of poplar trees. Of old it was a labyrinth of black wander- ing streams, broad lagoons, morasses submerged every springtide, vast beds of reed and sedge and fern, vast copses of willow and alder and grey poplar, rooted in the floating peat, which was swallowing up slowly, all devouring, yet preserving the forests of fir and oak, ash and poplar, hazel and yew, which had once grown on that low, rank soil, sinking slowly (so geologists assure us) beneath the sea from age to age. Trees torn down by flood and storm floated and lodged in rafts, damming the waters back on the land. Streams bewildered in the flats, changed their channels, mingling silt and sand with the peat moss. Nature left to herself ran into wild riot and chaos more and more, till the whole fen became one 'dismal swamp,* in which at the time of the Norman Conquest 'the Jast of the English,' like Dred in Mrs Stow's tale, took refuge from their tyrants and lived like him a free and joyous life awhile." Such was one aspect, then, in the early days of English history, of the great plain that stretches from Cambridge to the sea. But our map-palimpsest has further physical facts to reveal which had an important influence on the civic and economic development of Cambridge. To the south-east of this great plain of low-lying fenlands rises the upland country of boulder clay, stretching in a line almost directly west and east from the downs at Royston, thirteen miles below Cam- bridge, to Sudbury-on-the-Stour. The whole of this ridge of high ground, which roughly corres- ponds with the present boundaries between Cam- bridgeshire and Suffolk and Essex, was in the early days covered with dense forest. Thus the Forest and the Fen between them formed a material barrier separa- ting the kingdom of East Anglia from the rest of Britain. At one point only could an entrance be gained. Between the forest and the fen there runs a long belt of land, at its narrowest point not more than five 13 The Story of Cambridge miles wide, consisting partly of open pasture, partly of chalk down. In the neck, so to say, of this natural pass into East Anglia lies the town of Cambridge. A careful scrutiny of our map will show, on the under- text of our palimpsest, a remarkable series of British earthworks, all crossing in parallel lines this narrow belt of open land between the fen and the forest, marked on the map as Black Ditches, Devil's Dyke, the Fleam or Balsham Dyke, the Brent or Pampis- ford Ditch, and the Brand or Heydon Way. Of these the longest and most important is the well- known Devil's Dyke, near Newmarket. It is some eight miles long in all, and consists of a lofty bank twelve feet wide at the top, eighteen feet above the levfl of the country, and thirty feet above the bottom of the ditch, which is itself some twenty feet wide. The ditch is on the western side of the bank, thus showing that it was used as a defence by the people on the east against those on the west. It was near this ditch that the defeat of the ancient British tribe of the Iceni by the Romans, as described by Tacitus (" Annals," xii. 3 i ), took place in a.d. 50.^ At Cambridge itself the ancient earthwork known as Castle Hill m.iy belong to this British period, and have formed a valu ible auxiliary to the line of dykes in defending the ford of the river and the pass behind ; but upon this point authorities are divided.'-^ Indeed, there is good ground for the opinion that the Castle Hill is a construction of the later Saxon period, and may, in fact, be referred to the time of the Danish incursions in the ninth century, during which time 1 Cf. Paper by Professor Ridgeway, Proc, Cam. Antiq. Soc, vii. 200. 2 C/. Professor M'Kenny Huglies, Proc. Cam. Antiq. Soc, vol. viii. (1893) 173. C/. also Freeman, "Norman Con- quest," vol. i. 323, &c., and also English Chronicle, under year mx. Ldgetidary Origin of the University Cambridge is known to have been sacked more than once. However that may be, there is ample proof that the site of the Castle at any rate was occupied by the Romans, for the remains of a fosse and vallum, forming part of an oblong enclosure within which the Castle Hill, whether early British or later Saxon, is included, seem to indicate the position of a Roman station here. Moreover, to this place converge the two great Roman roads, of which the remains may still be traced : Akeman Street, leading from Cirencester (Corinium) in the south throu(;h Hertfordshire to Cambridge, and thence across the fen (by the Aldr<.th Causeway, the scene of William the Conqueror's two years* cam- paign against Hereward) to Ely, and so onwards to Brancaster in Norfolk ; and the Fia Devana, which, starting from Colchester (Colonia or Camelodunum), skirted the forest lands of Essex through Cambridge and Huntingdon (Durolifons) northwards to Chester (Deva). Whether the Roman station, however, at the junction of these two roads can be identified as the ancient Camboritum is still a little doubtful. Certainly the common identification of Cambridge with Cambori- tum, because of the resemblance between the two names, cannot be justified. That resemblance is a mere coincidence. The name Cambridge, in fact, is comparatively modern, being corrupted, by regular gradations, from the original Anglo-Saxon form which had the sense of Granta-bridge. The name of the town is thus not, as is generally supposed, derived from the name of the river (Cam being modern and artificial), but, conversely, the name of the river has, in the course of centuries, been evolved out of the name of the town.^ 1 The easiest way for those who are not much acquainted with phonetic laws to understand this rather difficult point 15 The Story of Cambridi^e To return, however, to the Castle Hill. It may be doubtful, as we have said, whether the Roman station there was Camboritum or not, but there can be no doubt that the station, whatever it may have been called by the Romans, must have been a fairly im- portant one, not only as commanding the open pass-way between the forest and the fen leading into East Anglia, but also as standing at the head of a waterway leading to the sea. It is difficult, of course, to estimate the extent of the commerce in these early days, or even perhaps to name the staple article of export that must have found its way by means of the fenland rivers to the Continent, but that it must have been at times considerable we may at least conjecture from the fact is to observe the chronology of this place-name. It is thus condensed by Mr T. D, Atkinson ("Cambridge Described and Illustrated," p. 4) from Professor Skeat's "Place-Names of Cambridgeshire," 29-30: — " The name of the town was Grant ebrijcge in A.D. 875, and in Doomsday Book it is Grenlelrite. About 1 142 we first meet with the violent change Cantcbrieggescir (for the county), the change from Gr to C being due to the Normans. This form lasted, with slight changes, down to the fifteenth century. Grau/itbrigo-e (also spelt Cauntbriggt in the name of the same person^ sur- vived as a surname till 1401. After 1142 the form Cantcbrigge is common ; it occurs in Chaucer as a word of four syllables, and was Latinised as Cantabrigia in the thirteenth century. Then the former e dropped out ; and we come to such forms as Cantbrigge and Cauntbriftge (fourteenth century) ; then Canbrhrge (1436) and Caiviibr cge {idfSi^ wit\\ n. Then the b turned the n into «;, giving Cambrig^e (after 1400) and Caumbrege (1458). The long a, formerly aa in baa, but now ei in "ve'iti, was never shortened. The old name of the river, Granta^ still survives. Cant occurs in 1372. and le Ee and le Rei in the fifteenth century. In the sixteenth century the river is spoken of as the Canij, now called the Rhee\ and later we find both Granta and the Latinised form of Camus. Cam, wliich appears in Speed's map of 16 10, was suggested by the written form Cam-bridge, and is a product of the six- teentli century, having no connection with the Welsh Can. or the British Cambos, "crooked." 16 Legendary Origin of the University that in the records of the sacking of the Fenland abbeys — Ely, Peterborough, Ramsey, and Crowland — by the Danes in the seventh century there is evidence of a great store of weahh, costly embroideries, rich jewels, gold and silver, which can hardly have been the pro- duct of native industry alone, but seem to indicate a fair import trade from the Continent. The geographical position, in fact, of Cambridge at the head of a waterway directly communicating with the sea is a factor in the history of the town the im- portance of which cannot be exaggerated. In direct communication with the Continent by means of the river, and on the only, or almost the only, Hne of traffic between East Anglia and the rest of England, it naturally became the chief distributing centre of the commerce and trade of eastern England, and the seat of a Fair which in a later age boasted itself the largest in Europe. In his ** History of the University," Thomas Fuller gives an account of the origin of this Fair, which is perhaps more picturesque than accurate : — "About this time," he says — that is, about a.d. 1103, in the reign of the first Henry — ** Barnwell, ^ that is, Children's Well, a village within the precincts of Cambridge, got both the name thereof and a Fair therein on this occa&ion. Many little children on Midsummer (or St John Baptist's) Eve met there in mirth to play and sport together; their company caused the confluence of more and bigger boys to the place : 1 " The old spelling is Bernewell, in the time of Henry III. and later. Somewhat earlier is Beornewelle, in a late copy of a charter dated 1060 (Thorpe, Diplnm.^ p. 383). So also in the Ramsey Cartulary. The prefix has nothing to do with the Anglo-Saxon beam, ' a child,' as has often, I believe, been suggested ; but represents Beoman, gen. of Beorna, a pet name for a name beginning with Beorn-. . . . The difference between the words, which are quite distinct, is admirably illustrated in the New Eng. Diet, under the words heme and bairn.'' — Skeat's Place-Names of Cambriageshire^ p. 35, B 17 The Story of Cambridge then bigger than they : even their parents themselves came thither to be delighted with the activity of their children. Meat and drink must be had for their refection, which brought some victualling booths to be set up. Pedlers with toys and trifles cannot be supposed long absent, whose packs in short time swelled into tradesmen's stalls of all com- modities. Now it is become a great fair, and (as I may term it) one of the townsmen's commencements, wherein they take their degrees of wealth, fraught with all store of wares and nothing (except buyers) wanting therein." This description of Fuller is obviously a rough translation of a passage from the Liber Memorandorum Ecclesia He Berneiuelle, commonly called the '* Barne- well Cartulary/* given at page xii of Mr J. W. Clark's " Customs of Augustinian Canons," and dated about 1296. It is possible, of course, that the celebrated Stour- bridge Fair, which in later centuries was held every autumn in the river Meadow, a mile or so below the town, adjoining Barnwell Priory, did date back to these early times, but its two earliest charters un- doubtedly belong to the thirteenth century, one belong- ing to the reion of King John, granting the tolls of the Fair to the Friars of the Leper Chapel of S. Mary Magdalene, the other to Henry II I. 's time, fixing the date of the Fair for the four days com- mencing October 17, being the Festival of S. EtheJdreda, Virgin, Queen and Abbess of Ely. From this time onward at any rate the annual occurrence of this Fair furnishes incidents, not always commendable, in the annals of both town and University. It is said with probability that John Bunyan, who in his Bedford- shire youth may well have been drawn to its attrac- tions, made the Fair at Stourbridge Common the prototype of his "Vanity Fair." And certainly any one who will take the trouble to compare the descrip- tion of the Fair given by the Cambridgeshire historian 18 Legendary Origin of the University Carter with the well-known passage in the " Pilgrim's Progress," cannot but feel that the details of Bunyan's picture are touches painted from life : — "Then I saw in my dream, that when they were got out of the Wilderness, they presently saw a Town before them, and the name of that Town is Vanity ; and at the Town there is a Fair kept, called Vanity Fair . . . therefore at this Fair are all such Merchandise sold, as Houses, Lands, Trades, Places, Honours, Preferments, Titles, Countries, Kingdoms, Lusts, Pleasures, and Delights of all sorts, as Whores, Bawds, Wives, Husbands, Children, Masters, Servants, Lives, Blood, Bodies, Souls, Silver, Gold, Pearls, Precious Stones, and what not. " And moreover at this Fair there is at all times to be seen Jugglings, Cheats, Games, Plays, Fools, Apes, Knaves, and Rogues, and that of all sorts. 'ii\ J»rt=i.-^ , . ..> Hv ^.-,"" "■■ »'\'^, „-'■ •xjvfc-"" ■'." -■• >1"-»J imi sources made an ingenious attempt to reconstruct the whole plan of the priory. The small chapel of S. Andre\y the Less, although it has long been known as the Abbey Church, has, of course, strictly no right to that name. Obviously it cannot be the church of " wondrous dimensions " built by Pain Peverel. The chapel, although in all likelihood it did stand within the Priory precincts, was most probably built for the use of the inhabitants of the parish by the 1 At the time of the Dissolution, Dugdale states the gross yearly value of the estates to have been £'^$1, 15s. 4d.. that of Ely to have been £io%/\. 6s. gd. 35 The Story of Cambridge canons, in order that they themselves might be left undisturbed in the exclusive use of the Conventual Church. It is a building of the early English style, with long, narrow lancet windows, evidently belonging to the early part of thirteenth century. The material remains of the Priory are therefore very meagre, but a most interesting insight into the domestic economy of a monastic house is afforded by the " Consuetudinarium ; or, Book of Observances of the Austin Canons," which forms the Eighth Book of the Barnwell Cartulary, to which we have already alluded. A comparison of the domestic customs of a monastic house in the thirteenth century, as shown in this book, and of the functions of its various officers, with many of the corresponding customs and functions in the government of a Cambridge college, not only in mediaeval but in modern times, throws much light on the origin of some of the most characteristic features of college life to-day.^ Let us retrace our steps, however, along the Barn- well Road from the suburban monastery to the ancient town. There are still some features, belonging to the Norman structure ot Cambridge, which demand our notice before we pass on. At a point where the High Street, now Trinity Street, branches off from Bridge Street stands the church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of the four round 1 Such a small matter, for example, in the domestic economy of a modern college as the separate rendering of a "buttery bill" and a ''kitchen bill," containing items of expenditure which the puzzled undergraduate might natur- ally have expected to find rendered in the same weekly account, finds its explanation wlien we learn tliat in the economy of tiie monastery also the roll of '• the celererarius " and the roll of the " camcr^rius " were always kept rigidly distinct. So also more serious and important customs may probably be traced to monastic origin, 36 Cambridge in the Norman Time churches of England.^ Presumably it must have been built by some confraternity connected with the newly established Military Order of the Templars, and, to judge by the style of its architecture — the only real evidence we have as to its date, for the conjecture that it owes its foundation to the young crusader, Pain Peverel, is purely fanciful, and of " the Ralph with a Beard," of which we read in the Ramsey cartularies as receiving ** a grant of land to build a Minster in honour of God and the Holy Sepulchre," we know nothing — probably between 1 1 20 and 1 1 40. In its original shape, the church must have consisted of its present circular nave with the ambulatory aisle, and in all pro- bability a semi-circular eastern apse. The ambulatory was vaulted, as in all probability was also the central area, while the apse would doubtless be covered with a semi-dom^. The chancel and its north aisle, which had apparently been remodelled in early English times, was again reconstructed in the fifteenth century. At about the same time an important alteration was made in the circular nave by carrying up the walls to form a belfry. The additional stage was polygonal and ter- minated in a battlemented parapet. The Norman corbel table, under the original eaves of what was pro- bably a dwarf spire, was not destroyed, and thus serves to mark the top of the Norman wall. Windows of three lights were not only inserted in the additional stage, but were also substituted for the circular-headed Norman windows of both ambulatory and clerestory. '' Such," says Mr Atkinson, " was the condition of the Church when, in 1841, the Cambridge Camden Society undertook its ' restoration.' The polygonal upper storey of ^ The others are : S. Sepulchre at Northamption, c. iioo- II 27; Little Maplestead in Essex, c, 1300; The Temple Church in London, finished 1185. To these may be added the chapel in Ludlow Castle, c. 1120. 37 The Story oj Cambridge the circular nave, containing four bells, was destroyed ; sham Norman windows, copied from one remaining old one, re- placed those which had been inserted in the 15th century; and new stone vaults and high pitched roofs were constructed over the nave and ambulatory. The chancel, with the ex- ception of one arch and the wall above it, were entirely re- built ; the north aisle, with the exception of the entrance arch from the west, was rebuilt and extended eastwards to the same length as the chancel ; a new south aisle of equal dimensions with the enlarged north aisle was added; and a small turret for two bells was built at the north-west corner of the north aisle; the lower stage of this turret was con- sidered a sufficient substitute for the destroyed vestry. A new chancel arch of less width than the old one was built, and a pierced stone screen was formed above it. In addition to all this, those old parts which were not destroyed were 'repaired and beautified,' or 'dressed and pointed,' or 'thoroughly restored.' What these processes involved is clear from an inspection of the parts to which they were applied; in the west doorway, for instance, theie is not ontr old stone left."^ 1 " Cambridge Described," by T. D. Atkinson, p. 164. 38 Cambridge in the Norman Time Across the road from the Round Church, in the angle of land caused by the branching apart of the High Street and the Bridge Street, was planted one of the earliest Jewries established in England. The coming of the Jews to England was one of the in- cidental effects of the Norman Conquest. They had followed in the wake of the invading army as in modern times they followed the German hosts into France, assisting the Normans to dispose of their spoil, finding at usurious interest ready-money for the impoverished English landowner, to meet his conqueror's requisitions, and generally meeting the money-broking needs of both King and subject. In a curious diatribe by Richard of Devizes (1190), Canterbury, Rochester, Chichester, Oxford, Exeter, Worchester, Chester, Hereford, York, Ely, Durham, Norwich, Lincoln, Bristol, Winchester, and of course London are all mentioned as harbouring Jewish settlements. The position of the Jew, however, in England was all along anomalous. As the member of an alien race, and still more of an alien religion, he could gain no kind of constitutional status in the kingdom. The common law ignored him. His Jewry, like the royal forest, was outside its domain. He came, indeed, as the King's special man — nay, more, as the King's special chattel. And in this character he lived for the most part secure. The romantic picture of the despised, trembling Jew — the Isaac of York, depicted for us in Scott's '* Ivanhoe " — cringing before every Christian that he meets, is, in any age of English history, simply a romantic picture. The attitude of the Jew almost to the last is one of proud and even insolent defiance. In the days of the Red King at any rate, he stood erect before the prince, and seemed to have enjoyed no small share of his favour and personal familiarity. The presence of the unbelieving Hebrew at his court 39 Tloe Story of Cambr'tdge supplied, it is said, William Rufus with many oppor- tunities of mocking at the Christian Church and its bishops. In a well-known story of Eadmer, the Red King actually forbids the conversion of a Jew to the Christian faith. " It was a poor exchange," he said, " which would rob me of a valuable property and give me only a subject." The extortion of the Jew was therefore sheltered from the common law by the pro- tection of the King. The bonds of the Jew were kept, in fact, under the royal seal in the royal archives, a fact of which the memory long remained in the name of ** The Star " chamber ; a name derived from the Hebrew word [tshtar^ for a " bond." The late Mr. J. R. Green, in a delightful sketch on the early history of Oxford in his " Stray Studies," afterwards incorporated into the pages of his '* History of the English People," seems inclined to give some support to the theory which would connect the origin of the University with the establishment of the Oxford Jewry. This theory, however, can hardly be ac- cepted.^ It is very probable indeed that the medical school which we find established at Oxford and in high repute during the twelfth century is traceable to Jewish origin ; and the story is no doubt true also, which tells how Roger Bacon penetrated to the older world of material research by means of the Hebrew instruction and the Hebrew books which he found among the Jewish rabbis of the Oxford Synagogue. It is reasonable also to suppose that the history of Christian Aristotelianism, and of the Scholastic Theo- logy that was based upon it, may have been largely influenced by the philosophers of the Synagogue. It seems, indeed, to be a well-established conclusion, that the philosophy of Aristotle was first made known to the West through the Arabic versions brought from ' Cf. Neubauer's Collectanea, ii. p. ii-j sq. 40 Cambridge in the Norman Time Spain by Jewish scholars and rabbis. But it is un- doubtedly " in a more purely material way " that, as Mr Green truly says, the Jewry most directly influenced academic history. At Oxford, as elsewhere, "the Jew brought with him something more than the art or science which he had gathered at Cordova or Bagdad ; he brought with him the new power of wealth. The erection of stately castles, of yet statelier abbeys, which fol- lowed the Conquest, the rebuilding of almost every cathe- dral or conventual church, marks the advent of the Jewish capitalist. No one can study the earlier history of our great monastic houses without finding the secret of that sudden outburst of industrial 1^ tffl^m: • a V > [J "Vlsl'V.ii-.ocv;/ y)ao activity, to which we owe the noblest of our Ministers, in the loans of the Jew." Certainly at Cambridge, though perhaps hardly to the same extent as at Oxford, the material influence of the Jewry on the town is traceable. At Oxford, it is said that nearly all the larger dwelling-houses, which were subsequently converted into hostels, bore traces of their Jewish origin in their names, such as Moysey's Hall, Lombard's Hall, Jacob's Hall, and each of the successive Town Halls of the borough 41 The Story of Cambridge had previously been Jewish houses. We have some evidence of a similar conversion at Cambridge. In the first half of the thirteenth century, before we hear either of Tolbooth or of Guildhall, the enlarged judicial responsibilities of the town authorities made it necessary that they should be in possession of some strong building suitable for a prison. Accordingly, in 1224, we find King Henry III. granting to the burgesses the House of Benjamin the Jew, for the purposes of a gaol. It is said that either the next house or a part of Benjamin's House had been the Synagogue of the Jewry, and was granted in the first instance to the Franciscan Friars on their arrival in the city. Benjamin's House, although it had been altered from time to time, appears never to have been entirely rebuilt, and some fragments of this, the earliest of Cambridge municipal buildings, are perhaps still to be found embedded in the walls of the old Town Arms public-house — a room in which, as late as the seven- teenth century, was still known as " The Star Chamber " — at the western side of Butter Row, in the block of old buildings at the corner of Market Square, adjoining the new frontage of the Guildhall. With this relic of the ancient Jewry we reach the last remaining building in Cambridge that had any existence in Norman times. And with the close of this age — the age of the Crusades — we already find the Cambridge burgess safely in possession, not only of that personal freedom which had descended to him by traditional usage from the communal customs of his early Teutonic forefathers, but also of many privi- leges which he had bought in hard cash from his Norman conqueror. Before the time ot the first charter of King Joim (1201) Cambridge had passed through most of the earlier steps of emancipation which eventually led to complete self-government. 42 Cambridge in the Norman Time The town-bell ringing out from the old tower of S. Benet's already summoned the Cambridge freemen to a borough mote in which the principles of civic justice, of loyal association, of mutual counsel, of mutual aid, were acknowledged by every member of a free, self- rulins assembly. 43 CHAPTER III The Begirinttigs of University Life " Si toUis liberatatem, tollis dignitatem." — S, Columban. '• Record we too with just and faithful pen, That many hooded csenobites there are Who in their private cells have yet a care Of public quiet ; unambitious men, Counsellors for the world, of piercing ken ; Whose fervent exhortations from afar Move princes to their duty, peace or war; And oft times in the most forbidding den Of solitude, with love of science strong, How patiently the yoke of thought they bear. By such examples moved to unbought pains The people work like congregated bees ; Eager to build the quiet fortresses Where piety, as they believe, obtains From heaven a general blessing ; timely rains And sunshine ; prosperous enterprise and peace and equity." — Wordsworth. Monastic Origins — Continuity of Learning in Early England — The School of York — The Venerable Bede — Alcuin and the Schools of Charles the Great — The Danish Invasions — The Benedictine Revival — The Monkish Chroniclers — The Coming of the Friars — The Franciscan and Dominican Houses at Cambridge — The Franciscan Scholars — Roger Bacon — Bishop Grosseteste — 'i'he New Aristotle and the Scientific Spirit — The Scholastic Philosophy — Aquinas — Migration of Scholars trom Paris to Cambridge — The term *' University "' — The 44 The Beginnings of University Life Colleges and the Hostels — The Course of Study— Trivium and Quadrivium — The Four Faculties — Eng- land a Paradise of Clerks — Parable of the Monk's Pen. I N the centuries which preceded the rise of the Universities, the monks had been the great educators of England, and it is to monastic origins that we must first turn to find the beginnings of University and Collegiate life at Cambridge. In the library of Trinity College there is preserved a catalogue of the books which Augustine and his monks brought with them into England. " These are the foundation or the beginning of the library of the whole English Church, a.d. 66 i," are the words with which this brief catalogue closes. A Bible in two volumes, a Psalter and a book of the Gospels, a Martyrology, the Apocryphal Lives of the Apostles, and the exposition of certain Epistles, represented at the commencement of the seventh century the sum- total of literature which England then possessed. In little more than fifty years, however, the Latin culture of Augustine and his monks had spread throughout the land, and before the eighth century closed England had become the literary centre of Western Europe. Probably never in the history of any nation had there been so rapid a development of learning. Certainly few things are more remarkable in the history of the intel- lectual development of Europe than that, in little more than a hundred years after knowledge of literature had first dawned upon this country, an Anglo-Saxon scholar should be producing books upon literature and philo- sophy second to nothing that had been written by any Greek or Roman author after the third century. But the great writer whom after-ages called the " Vener- able Bede," and who was known to his own con- temporaries as "the wise Saxon," was not the only scholar that the seventh and the eighth centuries had 45 The Story of Cambridge produced in England. Under the twenty-one years of the Archiepiscopate of Theodore (669-690), schools and monasteries rapidly spread throughout the country. In the school established under the walls of Canter- bury, in connection with the Monastery of S. Peter, better known in after-times as S. Augustine's, and over which his friend the Abbot Adrian ruled, were trained not a few of the great scholars of those days — Albinus, the future adviser and assistant of Bede, Tobias of Rochester, Aldhelm of Sherborne, and John of Beverley. The influence of these and other scholars sent out from the school at Canterbury soon made itself felt. In Northumbria, too, the torch of learning had been kept alight by the Irish monks of Lindisfarne, and of Melrose and of lona, " that nest from which," as an old writer playing on its founder S. Columba's name had said, " the sacred doves had taken their flight to every quarter." While Archbishop Theodore and the Abbot Adrian were organising Anglo-Latin education in the monasteries of the south, Wilfrith, the Archbishop of York, and his friend Benedict Biscop were performing a no less extensive work in the north. The schools of Northumbria gathered in the harvest of Irish learn- ing, and of the Franco-Gallican schools, which still preserved a remnant of classical literature, and ot Rome itself, now barbarised. Of Bcde, in the book-room of the monastery at Jarrow, we are told by his disciple and biographer, Cuthbert, that in the intervals of the regular monastic discipline the great scholar found time to undertake the direction of the monastic school. *' He had many scholars, all of whom he inspired with an extraordinary love of learning." " It was always sweet to me," he writes himself, "to learn to teach." At the conclusion of his *' Ecclesiastical History " he has liimsclf given a list of some thirty-eight books 46 The Beginnifigs of University Life which he had written up to that time. Of these not a few are of an educational character. Besides a large body of Scripture commentary, we have from his pen treatises on orthography, grammar, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. His book on " The Nature of Things" was the science primer of the Anglo-Saxons for many generations. He wrote, in fact, to teach. At the school of York, however, was centred nearly all the wisdom of the West, and its greatest pupil was Alcwyne. He became essentially the representative schoolmaster of his age. For fourteen years, attracted by the fame of his scholarship, students not only from all parts of England and Ireland, but also from France and Germany, flocked to the monastery school at York. In 782 Alcwyne left England to join the court of Charles the Great and to take charge of the Palatine schools, carrying with him to the Continent the learning which was about to perish for a time in England, as the result of the internal dissensions of its kings and the early ravages of the Norsemen. '* Learning," to use the phrase of William of Malmes- bury, " was buried in the grave of Bede for four centuries." The Danish invader, carrying his ravages now up the Thames and now up the Humber, de- vastated the east of England with fire and sword. *' Deliver us, O Lord, from the frenzy of the North- men ! " had been a suffrage of a Utany of the time, but it was one to which the scholars and the bookmen, no less than the monks and nuns of that age, found no answer. The noble libraries which Theodore and the Abbots Adrian and Benedict had founded were given to the flames. The monasteries of the Bene- dictines, the chief guardians of learning, were com- pletely broken up. " It is not at all improbable," says Mr Kemble, " that in the middle of the tenth century there was not a genuine Benedictine left in England." 47 l^he Story of Cambridge A revival of monastic life — some attempt at a retuin to the old Benedictine ideal — came, however, with that century. Under the auspices of S. Dunstan, the Benedictine Order — renovated at its sources by the Cluniac reform — was again established, and surviving a second wave of Danish devastation was, under the patronage of King Cnut and Edward the Confessor, further strengthened and extended. The strength of this revival is perhaps best seen in the wonderful galaxy of monastic chroniclers which sheds its light over that century. Florence of Worcester, Henry of Hunting- don, William of Malmesbury, Ingulf, Geoffrey Gaimar, William de Monte, John and Richard of Hexham, Jordan Fantosme, Simeon of Durham, Thomas and Richard of Ely, Gervase, Giraldus Cambrensis, William of Newburgh, Richard of Devizes all follow one an- other in close succession, while Robert of Gloucester, Roger of Wendover, and Matthew Paris carry on the line into the next age. But apart from the Chroniclers, though the monasteries once more flourished in England, the early Benedictine ideal of learning did not at once revive. Indeed, the tendency of the monastic re- formers of the twelfth century was distinctly hostile to the more intellectual side of the monastic ideal. Bv ml the end of the century the majority of the Benedictine convents had sunk into rich corporations of landed pro- prietors, whose chief ambition was the aggrandisement of the house to which they belonged. The new im- pulse of reform, which in its indirect results was to give the thirteenth century in England so dominant a place in the history of her civili.sation, came from a quite different direction. Almost simultaneously, without concert, in different countries, two great minds, S. Francis and S. Dominic, conceived a wholly new ideal of monastic perfection. Unlike the older monastic leaders, dilibcrately turning their backs upon 48 The Beginnings of University Life the haunts of men in town and village, and seeking in the wilderness seclusion from the world which they professed to forsake, these new idealists, the followers of S. Dominic and S. Francis, the mendicant Orders, the Friars Preachers and the Friars Minors, turned to the living world of men. Their object was no longer the salvation of the individual monk, but the salvation of others through him. Monastic Christianity was no longer to flee the world ; it must conquer it or' win it by gentle violence. The work of the new Orders, therefore, was from the first among their fellow-men, in village, in town, in city, in university. "Like the great modern Order (of the Jesuits) which, when their methods had in their turn become antiquated, succeeded to their influence by a still further departure from the old monastic routine, the mendicant Orders early per- ceived the necessity of getting a hold upon the centres of education. With the Dominicans indeed this was a primary object ; the immediate purpose of their foundation was re- sistance to this Albigensian heresy ; they aimed at obtaining influence upon the more educated and more powerful classes. Hence it was natural that Dominic should have looked to the universities as the most suitable recruiting ground for his Order: to secure for his Preachers the highest theological training that the age afforded was an essential element of the new monastic ideal. . . . The Franciscan ideal was a less intellectual one . . . but though the Franciscans laboured largely among the neglected poor of crowded and pestilential cities, they too found it practically necessary to go to the universities for recruits and to secure some theological educa- tion for their members." ^ The Black Friars of S. Dominic arrived in England in 1 22 1, the Grey Friars of S. Francis in 1224. The Dominicans met with the least success at first, but this was fully compensated by the rapid progress of the Franciscans. Very soon after the coming of the Grey Friars they had formed a settlement at Oxford, under the auspices of the greatest scholar-bishop of the age, 1 Cf. Rashdall's <* Universities of Europe," vol. i. p. 347. D 49 The Story of Cambridge Grosseteste of Lincoln, and had built their first rude chapel at Cambridge. In the early days, however, the followers of S. Francis made a hard fight against the taste for sumptuous buildings and for the greater personal comfort which characterised the time. " I did not enter into religion to build walls," protested an English Provincial of the Order when the brethren begged for a larger convent. But at Cambridge the first humble house of the Grey Friars, which had been founded in 1224 in "the old Synagogue," was shortly removed to a site at the corner of Bridge Street and Jesus Lane — now occupied by Sydney Sussex College — and that noble church commenced, which, three centuries later, at the time of the Dissolution, the University vainly endeavoured to save for itself, having for some time used it for the ceremony of Commencement.^ But of this we shall have to speak later in our account of the Foundation of Sidney College. But if the Franciscans, in their desire to obey the wishes of their Founder, found a difficulty in combating the passion of the time for sumptuous buildings, they had even less success in struggling against the passion of the time for learning. Their vow of poverty ought to have denied them the possession even of books. " I am your breviary ! I am your braeviary ! " S. Francis had cried passionately to the novice who desired a Psalter. And yet it is a matter of common knowledge that Grosseteste, the great patron of the Franciscans, brought Greek books to England, and in conjunction with two other Franciscans, whose names are known — Nicholas the Greek and John of Basingstoke — gave to ^ The earliest notice of tliis practice occurs in the University Accounts for 1507-8, when carpenters are em- ployed to carry the materials used for the stages from the scliools to the Church of the Franciscans, to set them up tlicre, and to carry them back again to the schools. Similar notices are to be found in subsequent years. 50 The Beginnings of University Life the world Latin versions of certain Greek documents. Foremost among these is the famous early apocryphal book, The Testament of the Ttuelve Patriarchs, the Greek manuscript of which is still in the Cambridge University Library. There is no better statement, perhaps, of those gaps in the knowledge of Western Christendom, which the scholars of the Franciscan Order did so much to fill, than a passage in the writings of the greatest of all English Franciscans, Roger Bacon, which runs to this effect : — *' Numberless portions of the wisdom of God are wanting to us. Many books of the Sacred Text remain untranslated, as two books of the Maccabees which I know to exist in Greek ; and many other books of divers Prophets, whereto reference is made in the books of Kings and Chronicles. Josephus too, in the books of his Antiquities, is altogether falsely rendered as far as concerns the Chronological f'ide, and without him nothing can be known of the history of the Sacred Text. Unless he be corrected in a new translation, he is of no avail, and the Biblical history is lost. Numberless books again of Hebrew and Greek expositors are wanting to the Latins: as those of Origen, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Damascene, Dionysius, Chrysostom, and other most noble Doctors, alike in Hebrew and in Greek. The Church there- fore is slumbering. She does nothing in this matter, nor hath done these seventy years : save that my Lord Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, of holy memory, did give to the Latins some part of the writings of S. Dionysius and of Damascene, and some other holy Doctors. It is an amazing thing this negligence of the Church ; for, from the time of Pope Damascus, there hath not been any Pope, nor any of less rank, who hath busied himself for the advantaging of the Church by translations, except the foresaid glorious Bishop." 1 The truth to which Roger Bacon in this passage gave expression, the scholars of the Franciscan Order set themselves to realise and act upon. For a con- siderable time the Franciscan houses at both Oxford and Cambridge kept alive the interest of this " new 1 Cf. "The Cambridge Modern History," vol. i. p. 585. The Story of Cambridge learning" to which Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon opened the way. The work, of the Order at Oxford is fairly well-known. And in the Cambridge House of the Order there was at least one teacher of divinity, Henry of Costessey, who, in his Commentary on the Psalms^ set the example of a type of scholar- ship, which, in its close insistence on the exact meaning of the text, in its constant reference to the original Hebrew, and in its absolute independence of judgment, has, one is proud to think, ever remained a character- istic of the Cambridge school of textual criticism down even to our own day. But if the Franciscans, impelled by their desire to illustrate the Sacred Text, had thus become intellectual in spite of the ideal of their Founder, the Dominicans were intellectual from their starting-point. They had, indeed, been called into being by the necessity of com- bating the intellectual doubts and controversies of the south of France. That they should become a prominent factor in the development of the universities was but the fulfilment of their original design. With their activity also is associated one of the greatest intellectual movements of the thirteenth century — the introduction of the new Philosophy. The numerous houses of the Order planted by them in the East brought about an increased intercourse between those regions and Western Europe, and helped on that knowledge of the new Aristotle, which, as we have said in a previous chapter, England probably owes largely to the philosophers of the Synagogue. It is round the University of Paris, however, that the earlier history, both of the Dominican scholars and of the new Aristotle, mainly revolves. Here the great system of Scholastic Philosophy was elaborated, by which the two great Dominican teachers, Albertus Magnus — *' the ape of Aristotle," as he was 5* T^he Begifinitigs of University Life irreverently and unjustly called by his Franciscan con- temporaries — and his greater pupil, Thomas Aquinas, "The seraphic Doctor," vindicated the Christian Creed in terms of Aristotelian logic, and laid at least a solid foundation for the Christian Theology of the future, in the contention that Religion is rational, and that Reason is divine, that all knowledge and all truth, from what- ever source they are derived, are capable of being re- duced to harmony and unity, because the name of Christianity is both Wisdom and Truth. In the year 1229 there broke out at Paris a feud of more than ordinary gravity between the students and the citizens, undignified enough in its cause of origin, but in the event probably marking a distinct step in the development of Cambridge University. A drunken body of students did some act of great violence to the citizens. Complaint was made to the Bishop of Paris and to the Queen Blanche. The members of the University who had not been guilty of the outrage were violently attacked and ill-treated by the police of the city. The University teachers suspended their classes and demanded satisfaction. The demand was refused, and masters and scholars dispersed. Large numbers, avaiUng themselves of the invitation of King Henry III. to settle where they pleased in this country, migrated to the shores of England ; and Cambridge, probably from its proximity to the eastern coast, and as the centre where Prince Louis, in alliance with the English baronage, but a few years before had raised the Royal standard, seems to have attracted a large majority of the students. A Royal writ, issued in the year 1 23 1, for the better regulation of the University, pro- bably makes reference to this migration when it speaks of the large number of students, both within the realm and " from beyond the seas," who had lately settled in Cambridge, and gives power to the Bishop of Ely *'to 53 The Story of Cambridge signify rebellious clerks who would not be chastised by the Chancellor and Masters," and if necessary to invoke the aid of the Sheriff in their due punishment. Another Royal writ of the same reign expressly provides that no student shall remain in the University unless under the tuition of some Master of Arts — the earliest trace perhaps of that disciplinary organisation which the motley and turbulent crowd representing the student community of that age demanded. ^ It will be observed that in these Royal writs the term "university" occurs. But it must not be supposed that the word is used in its more modern signification, of a community or corporation devoted to learning and education formally recognised by legal authority. That is a use which appears for the first time towards the end of the fourteenth century. In the age of which we are speaking, and in the writs of Henry III., universtfas magistrorum et d'lsc'ipulorum or scholar'ium simply means a " community of teachers and scholars." The common designation in mediaeval times of such a body as we now mean bv " university " was stud'wm qenerale, or sometimes studium alone. It is necessary, moreover, to remember that universities in the earliest times had not infrequently a very vigorous life as places of learning, long before they received Royal or legal recognition ; and it is equally necessary not to forget that colleges for the lodging and maintenance and educa- tion of students are by no means an essential feature of the mediaeval conception of a university. " The University of the Middle Ages was a corporation of learned men, associated for the purposes of teaching, and possessing the privilege that no one should be allowed to teach within their dominions unless he had received their sanction, which could only be granted after trial of his ability. The test applied consisted of examinations and ^ Cooper's " Annals," i. 42 54 l.he Beginnings of University Life public disputations ; the sanction assumed the form of a public ceremony and the name of a degree : and the teachers or doctors so elected or created carried out their office of in- struction by lecturing in the public schools to the students, who, desirous of hearing them, took up their residence in the place wherein the University was located. The degree was, in fact, merely a license to teach. The teacher so licensed became a member of the ruling body. The Univer- sity, as a body, does not concern itself with the food and lodging of the students, beyond the exercise of a super- intending power over the rents and regulations of the houses in which they are lodged, in order to protect them from exaction ; and it also assumes the care of public morals. The only buildings required by such a corporation in the first instance were a place to hold meetings and ceremonies, a library, and schools for teaching, or, as we should call them, lecture rooms. A college, on the other hand, in its primi- tive form, is a foundation erected and endowed by private munificence solely for the lodging and maintenance of de- serving students, whose lack of means rendered them unable to pursue the university course without some extraneous assistance."^ It must be remembered, moreover, that when a mediaeval benefactor founded a college his intentions were very different from those which would actuate a similar person at the present day. His object was to provide board and lodging and a small stipend, not for students, but for teachers. As for the taught, they lodged where they could, like students at a Scottish or a Continental university to-day ; and it was not until the sixteenth century was well advanced that they were admitted within the precincts of the colleges on the payment of a small annual rent or " pension '* — whence the modern name of" pensioner " for the undergraduate or pupil members of the college. Indeed, the term "college" {^collegium), 2ls applied to a building, is a modern use of the word. In the old days the term "college" was strictly and accurately applied to the ^ Willis and Clark, "Architectural History of the Univer- sity of Cambridge," Introduction, vol. i. p. xiv. 55 The Story of Cambridge persons who formed the community of scholars, not to the building which housed them. For that building the correct term always used in mediaeval times was "domus" (house), or "aula" (hall). Sometimes, indeed, the two names were combined. Thus, in an old document we find the earliest of the colleges — Peterhouse — entitled, Domus Sancti Petriy s'tve Aula Scholarium Episcopi Eliensis — The House of S. Peter, or the Hall of the Scholars of the Bishop of Ely. In all probability the University in early days took no cognisance whatever of the way in which students obtained lodgings. It was the inconvenience and dis- comfort of this system, no doubt, which led to the establishment ofwhat were afterwards termed" Hostels," apparently by voluntary action on the part of the students themselves. In the first half of the sixteenth century there seem to have been about twenty of these hostels, ^ but at the end of the century there appears to have been only about nine left. There is an interesting passage in a sermon by Lever at Paul's Cross, preached in 1550, which throws light upon this desertion of the hostels, where he speaks of those scholars who " havyng rych frendes or beyng benefyced men dyd lyve of them- selves in Ostles and Inns, be eyther gon awaye, or elles fayne to crepe into colleges, and put poore men from bare lyvynges." The University then, or, more strictly speaking, the Studium Generale^ existed as an institution long before the organisation of the residential college or hall ; and as a consequence, for many a year it had an organisa- tion quite independent of its colleges. The Univer- sity of Cambridge, like the University of Oxford, was modelled mainly on the University of Paris. Its course of study followed the old classical tradition of ^ Cf. list of names given in "Willis and Clark," vol. i. pp. xxv-xxvii. 5^> T OFFiPVM 'ytS^I ^^^"^^^-'^^'Q ^-mM- vNTEBRIGL^r 'W^^ — =^S|1 a srimc fWn ttm^rliii ^iia <^ .^. .la® % ^i n S»?j a iZSQT<^Bfi-igi.A^v4iM-rrt^a « ^'. iffi ''^WU9 ■Vlt-H'C '- Mi^-'M „ ^ .... „ _^ jflUtmift conditcTt Otnl^ihro ma^ni no^nmtsjitjf* i •itcxaefs ruarum aiJracbhuS ah tmtrc w oftn LinaJhmC tra-Ctti. PTtrUruiiiuf'^it uerc conJtUm mmen et rtuyrurmm frmptiernam rauUns dia>K ^ladewg (itfmiii^m TyvUfi auom olimjlit iUajlriorrm cenprvat -.'^Lurt) jiiiju c\n<, : tam hifiorta re^rutlt fri sum i,4?if VaniUS et JaxonwiJ litUis(ut et v^erfm vilnijaciem) COncidip^^J^nruustirttiiS.^n(fli£ ^ejc^tirat annti 'bni.tsis hjia et portis CarUthrloi-am mtinuat Qu£ iemport il'm omira e^aroLitml ixiurtaj et eKfuj-jtones if ^L/njem frJiilarH. Oecutahant ft ietenlil J^Lbro elMm wm turn rurjus ctn^USet n\k ee acpnU Jondujc a Ctlittto Clirtnft Juee occUpato,ni,u ^o give to the new college its first code of statutes. Bishop Simon, one is glad to think, did not forget the good intentions of Bishop Hugh, for in his code of statutes, dated April 1344, he thus speaks of his predecessor ; — " Desirous for the w^eal of his soul while he dwelt in this vale of tears, and to provide wholesomely, as far as in him lay, for poor persons wishing to make themselves proficient in the knowledge of letters, by securing to them a proper maintenance, he founded a house or College for the public good in our University of Cambridge, with the consent of King Edward and his beloved sons, the prior and chapter of our Cathedral, all due requirements of law being observed; which House he desired to be called the House of S. Peter or the Hall {aula) of the scholars of tlie Bishops of Ely at Cam- bridge ; and he endowed it and made ordinances for it {in aliquibus orJina-vit) SO far as he was then able ; but not as he intended and wished to do, as we hear, had not death frus- trated his intention. In this house he willed that there should be one master and as many scholars as could be suitably maintained for the possessions of the house itself in a lawful manner." 1 There can be little doubt that the statutes which Bishop Montagu gave to the college represent the 1 <' Documents,'' ii. 78 70 The Earliest College Foundation wishes of his predecessor, for the Peterhouse statutes are actually modelled on the fourth of the codes of statutes given by Merton to his college, and dated T274. The formula "a^ instar Aulce de Merton " is a con- stantly recurring phrase in Montagu's statutes. The true principle of collegiate endowments could not be more plainly stated, and certainly these statutes may be regarded as the embodiment of the earliest concep- tion of college life and discipline at Cambridge. A master and fourteen perpetual fellows,^ " studiously engaged in the pursuit of literature," represent the body supported on the foundation; the "pensioner" of later times being, of course, at this period provided for already by the hostel. In case of a vacancy among the Fellows *' the most able bachelor in logic " is designated as the one on whom, cateris paribus^ the election is to fall, the other requirement being that, " so far as human frailty admit, he be honourable, chaste, peaceable, humble, and modest." " The Scholars of Ely " were bound to devote themselves to the " study of Arts, Aristotle, Canon Law, Theology," but, as at Merton, the basis of a sound Liberal Education was to be laid before the study of theology was to be entered upon ; two were to be admitted to the study of the civil and the canon law, and one to that of medicine. When any fellow was about to " incept " in any faculty, it devolved upon the master with the rest of the Fellows to inquire in what manner he had conducted himself and gone ^ The actual expression is, of course, scholares, but it is best to translate the word by the later title of yV//o.«j to avoid the erroneous impression which would otherwise be given. That the scholares were occasionally called felloivs even in Chaucer's day may be inferred from his lines — " Oure corne is stole, men woll us fooles call, Both the warden and our fellowes all." 71 The Story of Cambridge through his exercises in the schools, how long he had heard lectures in the faculty in which he was about to incept, and whether he had gone through the forms according to the statutes of the university. The sizar of later times is recognised in the provision, that if the funds of the Foundation permit, the master and the two deacons shall select two or three youths, " indigent scholars well grounded in Latin " — juvenes indigentes scholares in grammatica notahU'iter fundatos — to be maintained, " as long as may seem lit," by the college alms, such poor scholars being bound to attend upon the master and fellows in church, on feast days and other ceremonial occasions, to serve the master and fellows at seasonable times at table and in their rooms. All meals were to be partaken in common ; but it would seem that this regulation was intended rather to conduce towards an economical management than enacted in any spirit of studied conformity to monastic life, for, adds the statute, "the scholars shall patiently support this manner of living until their means shall, under God's favour, have received more plentiful increase." ^ An interesting feature ifi these statutes is the regula- tion with reg.ird to the distinctive dress of the student, showing how little regard was paid at this period, even when the student was a priest, to the wearing of a costume which might have been considered appropriate to the staid character of his profession. "The Students," writes Mr Cooper,^ disdaining the tonsure, the distinctive mark of their order, wore their hair either hanging down on their shoulders in an erfeminate manner, or curled and powdered : they had long beards, and their apparel more resembled that of soldiers than of ^ Document II. 1-42, quoted from Mullinger's " University of Cambridge," i. 232. '^ " Annals of the University," i. 95. 72 The Earliest College Foundation priests ; they were attired in cloaks with furred edges, long hanging sleeves not covering their elbows, shoes chequered with red and green and tippets of an unusual length ; their fingers were decorated with rings, and at their waists they wore large and costly girdles, enamelled with figures and gilt ; to the girdles hung knives like swords. In order to repress this laxity and want of discipline, Archbishop Stratford, at a later period in the year 1342, issued an order that no student of the uni- versity, unless he should reform his " person and apparel," should receive any ecclesiastical degree or honour. It was doubtless in reference to some such order as this that one of the statutes of Peterhouse ran to this effect : — ''Inasmuch as the dress, demeanour, and carriages of scholars are evidences of themselves, and by such means it is seen more clearly, or may be presumed what they themselves are internally, we enact and ordain, that the master and all and each of the scholars of our house shall adopt the clerical dress and tonsure, as becomes the condition of each, and wear it conformably in respect, as far as they conveniently can, and not allow their beard or their hair to grow contrary to canonical prohibition, nor wear rings upon their fingers for their own vain glory and boasting, and to the pernicious example and scandal of others. "^^ " The Philosophy of Clothes," especially in its application to the mediseval universities, is no doubt an interesting one, and may even — so, at least, it is said by some authorities — throw much light upon the relations of the universities to the Church. The whole subject is discussed in some detail in the chapter on " Student Life in the Middle Ages," in Mr Rashdall's " History of the Universities of Europe," to which, perhaps, it may be best to refer those of our readers who are desirous of tracing the various steps in the gradual evolution of modern academic dress from the antique forms. There it 1 "Documents," ii. 72. 73 The Story of Cambridge will be seen how the present doctor's scarlet gown was developed from the magisterial " cappa " or '* cope," a sleeveless scarlet cloak, lined with miniver, with tippet and hood attached of the same material — a dress which, in its original shape, is now only to be seen in the Senate House at Cambridge, worn by the Vice-Chancellor on Degree days ; how the present gown and hood of the Master of Arts and Bachelor is merely a development of the ordinary clerical dress or "tabard " of the thirteenth century, which, however, was not even exclusively clerical, and certainly not distinguished by that sobriety of hue characteristic of modern clerical tailordom — clerkly prejudice in the matter of the "tabard" running in favour of green, blue, or blood red ; — and how the modern " mortar- board," or square college cap, — now usurped by undergraduates, and even choristers and school-boys — was originally the distinctive badge of a Master of Faculty, being either a square cap or " biretta," with a tuft on the top, in lieu of the very modern tassel, or a round cap or "pileum," more or less resembling the velvet caps still worn by the Yeomen of the Guard, or on very state occasions by the Cambridge or Oxford doctors in medicine or law. The picturesque dress of university students of the thirteenth century, still surviving in the long blue coat and yellow stockings, and red leather girdle and white bands of the boys ol Christ's Hospital, is sufficient to show how much we have lost of the warmth and colour of medieval life by the almost universal change to sombre black in clerical or student costume, brought about by the Puritan austerity of the sixteenth century. To return to the fabric of Bishop Hugh de Balsham's College. We have seen how a handsome hall [auhim perpukhrnni) was built with the 300 marks of the Bishop's legacy. This is substantially the 74 ?S?*s: ■*«?t w v0- ^'•^"^Jl!^' ' ^ K The Earliest College Foundation building of five bays, which still exists, forming the westernmost part of the south side of the Great Court of the College. The three easternmost bays are taken up by the dining-hall or refectory, the western- most is devoted to the buttery, the intervening bay is occupied by the screens and passage at either end of which there still remain the original north and south doorways, interesting as being the earliest example of collegiate architecture in Cambridge. The windows of this hall on the south side date from the end of the fifteenth century. The north-east oriel window and the buttresses on the north side of the hall were added by Sir Gilbert Scott in 1870, who also built the new screen, panelling, and roof. At about the same time the hall was decorated and the windows filled with stained glass of very great beauty by William Morris. The figures represented in the windows are as follows (beginning from the west on the north) : John Whitgift, John Cosin, Rd. Tresham, Thos. Gray, Duke of Grafton, Henry Cavendish ; in the oriel — Homer, Aristotle, Cicero, Hugh de Balsham, Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton ; on the south side — Edward I., Queen Eleanor, Hugh de Balsham, S. George, S. Peter, S. Etheldreda, John Holbroke, Henry Beaufort, John War k worth. After the building of this hall, the College evi- dently languished for want of funds for more than a century. But in the fifteenth century the College began to prosper, and a good deal of building was done. The character of the work is not expressly stated in the Bursar's Rolls — of which there are some thirty-one still existing of the fifteenth century, and a fairly complete set of the subsequent centuries — but the earliest buildings of this date are probably the range of chambers forming the north and west side of the great court. The kitchen, which is immediately to the 75 "The Story of Cambridge west of the hall, dates from 1450. The Fellows' parlour or combination room, completing the third side of the quadrangle, and immediately east of the dining-hall, was built some ten years later. Cole has given the following precise description of this room ; — ••This curious old room joins immediately to the east end of the dining-hall or refectory, and is a ground floor called The Stone Parlour, on the south side of the Quadrangle, between the said hall and the master's own lodge. It is a large room and wainscotted with small oblong Panels. The two upper rows of which are filled with paintings on board of several of the older Masters and Benefactors to the College. Each picture has an Inscription in the corner, and on a separate long Panel under each, much ornamented with painting, is a Latin Distic.^ . , ." Then follows a description of each portrait — there are thirty in all — with its accompanying distich. 1. A view of the two antient Hostles of the Brothers of Penance and of Jesus Christ : on the spot where they stood, Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely founded this College in 1280. H'lc Una fuerunt ScholasUcorum Hosp'itia in qua fratres Secu/nres extra HospUale Dhn Johanms trailucehantur, quorum loco hoc collegium est CEclificatum, Qua prceit Oxonium Cancestria longa Vetustas, Primitus a Petri dicitur orsa Domo. 2. King Edward the First in his robes, crown and cap, a globe in his left hand, and a sword in his right, with a Profile Face, and the Arms of England by him. Rdivanlus Rex y^ngliie ejus Nominis primus iJcenticin dedit fnndandi hoc Collegium^ A,D. 1283. ' British Museum, Cole, MSS. xxxv. 112. 76 The Earliest College Foundation Omnia dum curat Princeps, non ultima Cura est, Si Pius est, artes sustinuisse bonas. 3. Hugh de Balsham in his episcopal robes, mitre, pastoral staff in his right hand and a book in his left, with these arms by him, gules three crowns or, for the See of Ely, impaling gules two keys in saltire or ; being designed possibly for those of S. Peter. Hugo de Balsam decimus Episcopus, Ellensis primus Fundator Collegii, Anno Dom. 1284. Utere Divitiis si te Fortuna bearit Hac iter ad Coeluni est, sic ubi Dives eris. 4. Simon de Montacute, Bishop of Ely in his episcopal robes, mitre and crosier : See of Ely impales Argent, a fess lozengee gules, a bordure Barry vert and or for Montacute. Simon Mo7itis-acuti decimus septimus Episcopus Eliensis, Anno Dom. 1344. Lex ubi pulsa silet, regnat pro Lege Libido ; Jusque Pudorque ruunt, mox ruitura magis. 5. Simon Langham, Episcopus Eliensis, Anno Dom, The See of Ely impales Gules two keys in saltire or. But these are not Bishop Langham's arms : neither is the date in Mr Earle's account just : for Bishop Langham succeeded to Ely 1361, removed to Canterbury five years after, and died at Avignon in 1376. He is habited as a Bishop. Laus Pueris, Doctrina, Decus florentibus Annis. Solamen Senio, Perfugiumque Malis. 6. Thomas de Castro-Bernard in a clerical habit, holding an open book. Thomas de Castro- Bernard^ fuit Magis ter Collegiiy Anno Dom. 1 430. 77 The Story of Cambridge Omnibus impendas ultro, tibi Nemo rependat, Non Hominis vox ha?c, sic jubet ipse Deus. 7. John Holbroke, Master in 1430, in a clerical habit, holding a book in his right hand, and a roll in his left. Johannes Holbroke, Magister Collegi'i, Anno Dom. 1430- Partus dant Similes Usura, et Vipera foeta Qui juvat afflictos, foenerat ille Deo. 8. Thomas Lane, Master, 1472, in a clerical habit, holding a book with both his hands. Thomas Lane^ Magister CoUegii, Anno Dom. 1472. Faelix Centurio Synagogae Conditor olim : Nam Deus huic charus, charus et ipse Deo. 9. John Warkeworth, Master in 1498, in a clerical habit, holding an open book with both his hands. Johannes Warkeworthe, Magister Collegii, Anno Dom. 1498. Dives adoptata gaudet Prole ; probates Non cuicunque libet progcnuisse licet. 10. Thomas Denman, Master in 1500; in a Doctor of Physic's robes, with a book in his right hand and an urn in his left. Thomas Denman, Doctor artis Medicina Magister Co//egii, Anno Dom. 1500. 11. Henry Hornbie, Master in 15 16, in a clerical habit, with an open book in both his hands. Henricus Hornbie, Magister Collegii, Anno Dom. 1519. Christus laudator mundus ne Cornua tollat Tollentur justis cornua nulla malis. 12. Edmund Hanson, D.D., in Doctor of Divinity's robes, with a shut book in both his hands. 78 The Earliest College Foundation Edmundus Hanson^ Doctor Theologia^ Anno Dom. 1516. Pectoribus Scopulos Marmorgue evellite prudens Qui se stravit Humi, succubuitque Deo. 13. Mr Lownde, D.D., in Doctor's robes and holding an open book with both his hands. Mcig'tster Loivnde, Doctor Theoligia (sic) Socius Co/kgii, Anno Dom. 1519. Ite procue Zoilus Momusque et livida Turba Et vos Frons, oculus, Lingua superba procul. 14. William Martin, Priest and Fellow of the College in sacerdotal robes, and a closed book in both his hands. M agister Wdlelmus Martin, Sacerdos et Socius Collegii, Anno Dom. i 5 1 6. Qui Dominum metuit, Divinaque Jussa capessit Filius ille Dei, et Filius ejus erit. 15. Thomas Burgoyne, Master in 1520, in his Doctor's robes and holding a closed book with both his hands. These Arms by him Vert a lion salient or, impales argent a Fess Sab. in chief three crows and in base a chevron sable. But these Arms are either painted falsely or so taken : for the Arms of Burgoyne are azure, a talbot passant, and the impaled coat was no doubt designed for this Master's mother Margaret, the wife of John Burgoyne of Impington, near Cambridge, whose Arms on brass are twice on her monument in that church impaled by those of her husband as above, viz. : a Talbot passant impales a fess and in chief three leopard's faces and in base a chevron. Thomas Burgon, Doct. Theol. Magister Collegii, Anno Dom. 1520. 79 The Story of Cambridge 1 6. John Edmondcs, Master in 1527, in Doctor's robes and holding a closed book with both his hands. Johannes Edmondesy Doct. Theol. Maglster Collegii, Anno Dom. I 51 7. Tdui/ /'epc 1/ ay)ioia ypa.(pMV /J^spo-rreffffe Bporo/iJi Movvov ^v/M'rdvrajv alriov sffTi xaxwv. 17. Doctor Shirton, Master of the Pembroke Hall, in his Doctor's robes and holding a book closed in his left hand and a roll in his right, with these Arms by him, viz. : Pembroke Hall impaling party per fess, or in the chief part, paly of four nebule . . . and gules, in chief a table of three points vert. Doctor Shirton y M agister AuU Pemhrokia [j/Vl, Anno Dom. 15 30. Proximus ille Deo, qui paret recte monenti, Dignus et ille Deo qui sibi recta cavet. 18. The widow of Mr Wolfe, in widow's weeds, holding an open book in both hands. Vidua Magistri Wolfe^ Anno Dom. 154O. Mortalem Tabithce Pietas bis vivere Vitam Caslestem vidu?e perpetuamque dedit. 19. Andrew Perne, Master, in his Doctor's robes and holding a closed book in both his hands, by him are his Arms, viz. : or on a chevron between three pelican's heads erased azure, three mullets of the field ; and this motto : AAH0KONTE2 AEN ATAFH [Sic) Bibliothecae Libri Redditus pulcherrima Dona Perne, pium Musis te, Philomusc, probant. Andreas Perne, Doctor Theol., Decanus Ecclesice Elicnsis, Magister Collegii, obiit 26 Aprills Anno Dom. 1573 C^**^^'"]- 80 The Earliest College Foundation 20. Sir Edward North. He has a golden chain round his neck and a flower in his left hand, with these Arms by him : azure a lion passant or, inter three fleurs de lis, argent, for North ; impales sab. on a chevron embattled inter three eaglets displayed argent, three trefoils slipped, vert. This last bearing is wrong taken or falsely painted; for on Sir Edward North's tomb in Kirthing Church, they are quatrefoils. Domimus Ednvardus North, Anno Dom, 1564. Nobilis hie vere, vere si nobilis ullus. Qui sibi Principium Nobilitatis erat. 21. Robert Smith, scholar of the house, in robes turned up with ermine, in a ruff, and a roll in his left hand. Robertus Smith, quondam Scholaris hujus Collegii, ohiit Anno Dom. 1565* Dulcia Musarum qui Pauper Tecta reliqui, Nunc Dives, studiis, consulo, Musa tuis. 22. Archbishop Whitgift in the robes of a Doctor of Divinity, and holding a book closed in his hands. Doctor Whitgift, quondam socius Collegii, Anno Dom. 1569. Quod Paci Whitgifte faves, Studiisque piorum Dat tibi, Pacis amans, Candida Dona Deus. 23. Henry Wilshawe, in a clerical habit, holding a closed book in his left hand. Henricus IVillshawe, Doctor Theologia, Anno Dom. 1578. Quam minime quasris Bona ? te doctissime Willshawe Vita vel invitum Nobilitate beat. 24. Ralph Ainsworth, Master in 1644, in his Bachelor of Divinity's habit holding a book closed in his hand. F 81 The Story of Cambridge M agister Radulpus Ainsavorth^ Raccalarius [sic) in TheologiUy Magtster Col/egiiy Anno IJom. 1644. 25. Robert Slade, in grey hair, in a ruff, and holding an open book in his hands. Rohertus Slade, CEtatls sua 66, Anno Dom. 16 16. 26. John Blythe, in a ruff and clerical habit, holding a book closed in his hands. Johann'is Blythe, Baccalaureus Theologia, Socius Collegii an : Mtat, sua 57, Anno Dom. 1617. 27. Bernard Hale, Master, in a clerical habit. Bernardus Hale, S.T.P. El'unsis E celesta turn Canonicus, turn Arch'idiaconus, hujus Collegii Custos, obitt Anno Dom. 1663. 28. Bishop Cosins in his episcopal robes, without any inscription. 29. Joseph Beaumont, Master of the College, in his Doctor of Divinity's robes. Josephus Beaumont, S.T. P. Regius, Eliensis Ecclesia canonicus, atque hujus, Collegii Custos, ohiit 23 Novembris, 1699. 30. Charles Beaumont in his Doctor of Divinity's robes. Carolus Beaumont, S.T.P. Collegii Socius, Magni, illius Beaumonti fl'ius, obiit 13 Martii, 1726. Most of these pictures have now been brought back from the Master's Lodge, where they had been removed in the eighteenth century and have been placed in the Hall, with the Latin distichs restored according to the above account of them, by Cole. In addition to these ancient panel pictures, there also hang on the walls of the Dining Hall the following portraits — 82 The Earliest College Foundation Left side: — Edmund Law, Master 1754; Bishop of Carlisle, d. 1788. Edward Law, Lord Ellenborough, son of Bishop Law ; Lord Chief Justice, d. 1818. End wall: — Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin). Francis Barnes, Master, 1788, d. 1838. Right side : — William Smyth, Professor of Modern History, 1807, d. 1849. William Hopkins, Mathematician and Geologist, 1793-1866. Edward John Routh, Sc.D. Mathematician. In the combination room, there are also portraits of James Porter, Master, by Ouless in 1897. James Dewar, Jacksonian Professor, 1875, by Richardson; and in the Master's Lodge there are also (dining room) portrait of a man, inscribed *' ^tatis suae 20, Anno 1615." Dr Charles Beaumont, son of Dr Joseph Beaumont. Dr Bernard Hale, Master, 1660- 1663. Dr Joseph Beaumont, Master, 1663- 1699. The windows of the combination room have been filled with stained glass by William Morris, represent- ing ten ideal women from Chaucer's " Legend of Good Women." On the upper storey of the combination room was the master's lodge. The situation of these rooms at the upper end of the hall is almost as invariable in collegiate plans as that of the buttery and kitchen at the other end. The same may be said of that most picturesque feature of the turret staircase leading from the master's rooms to the hall, parlour, and garden, which we shall find repeated in the plans of S. John's, Christ's, Queen's, and Pembroke Colleges. About the same period (1450) the range of chambers on the north side of the court was at its easternmost end 83 The Story of Cambridge connected by a gallery with the Church of S. Mary, which remained in use as the College chapel down to the seventeenth century. This gallery, on the level of the upper floor of the College chambers, was carried on arches so as not to obstruct the entrance to the churchyard and south porch from the High Street, by a similar arrangement to that which from the first existed between Corpus Christi College and the ancient Church of S. Benedict. The Parish Church of S. Peter, without the Trumpington Gate, had from the first been used as the College Chapel of Peterhouse. Indeed, the earliest college in Cambridge was the latest to possess a private chapel of its own, which was not built until 1628. All that remains, however, of the old Church of S. Peter is a fragment of the tower, standing at the north- west corner of the present building and the arch which led from it into the church. This probably marks the west end of the old church, which, no doubt, was much shorter than the present one. It is said that this old church fell down in part about 134O, and a new church was at once begun in its place. This was finished in 1352 and dedicated to the honour of the blessed Virgin Mary. The church is a very beautiful one, though of an unusual simplicity of design. It is without aisles or any structural division between nave c nd chancel. It is lighted by lofty windows and deep buttresses. On the south side and at the eastern gable are rich flowing decorated windows, the tracery of which is designed in the same style, and in many respects with the same patterns, as those of Alan de Walsingham's J^ady Chapel at Ely. Indeed, a com- parison of the Church of Little S. Mary with the Ely l>ady Chapel, not only in its general concej)tion, but in many of its details, such as that of the stone taber- nacles on the outer face of the eastern gable curiously 84 The Earliest College Foundation connected with the tracery of the window, would lead a careful observer to the conclusion that both churches had been planned by the same architect. The change of the old name of the church from S. Peter to that of S. Mary the Virgin is also, in this relation, sug- gestive. For we must remember that it was built at a time — the age of Dante and Chaucer — when Catholic purity, in the best natures united to the tenderness of chivalry, was casting its glamour over poetic and artistic minds, and had already led to the establishment in Italy of an Order — the Cavalieri Godenti — pledged to defend the existence, or, more accurately perhaps, the dignity of the Virgin Mary, by the establishment everywhere throughout western Europe of Lady Chapels in her honour. Whether Alan de Walsingham, the builder of the Ely Lady Chapel, and the builder of the Church of Little S. Mary at Cambridge — if he was not Alan — belonged to this Order of the Cavaliers of S. Mary, we cannot say ; but at least it seems probable that the Cambridge Church sprang from the same impulse which inspired the magnificent stone poem in praise of S. Mary, buij' by the sacrist of Ely. At this period Peterhouse consisted of two courts, separated by a wall occupying the position of the present arcade at the west end of the chapel. The westernmost or principal court is, save in some small details, that which we see to-day. The small eastern court next to the street has undergone great alteration by the removal of certain old dwelling-houses — possibly relics of the original hostels — fronting the street, which left an open space, occupied at a later period partly by the chapel and by the extension eastward of the buildings on the south side of the great court to form a new library, and subsequently by a similar flanking extension on the north. 85 The Story of Caynbj^idge The earliest of these buildings was the library, due to a bequest of Dr Andrew Perne, Dean of Ely, who was master of the College from 1 553 to 1 589, and who not only left to the society his own library, ''supposed to be the worthiest in all England," but sufficient property for the erection of a building to contain it. Perne had gained in early life a position of importance in the University — he had been a fellow of both S. John's and of Queen's, bursar of the latter College and five times vice-chancellor of the University — but his success in life was mainly due to his pliancy in matters of religion. In Henry's reign he had publicly maintained the Roman doctrine of the adoration of pictures of Christ and the Saints ; in Edward VI. 's he had argued in the University pulpit against transubstantiation ; in Queen Mary's, on his appointment to the mastership of Peterhouse, he had formally subscribed to the fully defined Roman articles then promulgated ; in Queen Elizabeth's he had preached a Latin sermon in denuncia- tion of the Pope, and had been complimented for his eloquence by the Queen herself. No wonder that immediately after his death in 1590 he should be hotly denounced in the Martin Marprelate tracts as the friend of Archbishop Whitgift, and as the type of fickleness and lack of principle which the authors considered characteristic of the Established Church. Other writers of the same school referred to him as "Old Andrew Turncoat," "Old Father Palinode," and "Judas." The undergraduates of Cambridge, it is said, invented in his honour a new Latin \tihy pernare^ which they translated "to turn, to rat, to change often." It became proverbial in the University to speak of a cloak or a coat which had been turned as "perned," and finally the letters on the weathercock of S. Peter's, A.P.A.P., might, said the satirists, be interpreted as Andrew Perne, a Protestant, or Papist, or Puritan. 86 The Earliest College Foundation However, it is much to be able to say that he was the tutor and friend of Whitgift, protecting him in early days from the prosecution of Cardinal Pole ; it is something also to remember that he was uniformly steadfast in his allegiance to his College, bequeathing to it his books, with minute directions for their chaining and safe custody, providing for their housing, and moreover, endowing two college fellowships and six scholarships ; and perhaps charity might prompt us to add, that at a time when the public religion of the country changed four times in ten years, Perne probably trimmed in matters of outward form that he might be at hand to help in matters which he truly thought were really essential. The Perne Library at Peterhouse has no special architectural features of any value ; its main interest in that respect is to be found in the picturesque gable-end with oriel window overhanging the street, bearing above it the date 1633, which belongs to the brick- work extension westward at that date of the original stone building. The building of the library, however, preluded a period of considerable architectural activity in the College, due largely to the energy of Dr Matthew Wren, who was master from 1625 to 1634. It is recorded of him that " seeing the public offices of religion less decently performed, and the services of God depending upon the services of others, for want of a convenient oratory within the walls of the college,'* he began in 1629 to build the present chapel. It was consecrated in 1632. The name of the architect is not recorded. The chapel was connected as at present with the buildings on either side by galleries carried on open arcades. Dr Cosin, who succeeded Wren in the mastership, continued the work, facing the chapel walls, which had been built roughly in brick, with stone. An elaborate ritual was introduced into the chapel by 87 The Story of Cambridge Cosin, who, it will be remembered, was a friend and follower of Archbishop Laud. A puritan opponent of Cosin has written bitterly that "in Peter House Chappell there was a glorious new altar set up and mounted on steps, to which the master, fellows, and schollers bowed, and were enjoyned to bow by Dr Cosens, the master, who set it up ; that there were basons, candlesticks, tapers standing on it, and a great crucifix hanging over it . . . and on the altar a pot, which they usually call the incense pot. . . . And the common report both among the schollers of that House and others, was that none might approach to the altar in Peter House but in sandalls." ^ It is not surprising, therefore, to read at a little later date in the diary of the Puritan iconoclast, William Dowsing : — "We went to Peterhouse, 1643, Decemb. 21 with officers and souldiers and . . . we pulled down 2 nnghty great Angells with wings and divers others Angells and the 4 Evangelists and Peter, with his keies, over the Chapell dore and about a hundred chirubims and Angells and divers superstitious Letters . . ." These to-day are all things of the past. The interior of the chapel is fitted partly with the genuine old mediaeval panelling, possibly brought from the parochial chancel of Little S. Mary's, or from its disused chantries, now placed at the back of the stalls, and in front of the organ gallery, partly with oakwork, stalls and substalls, in the Jacobaean style. The present altar- piece is of handsome modern wainscot. The entrance door is mediiisval, probably removed from elsewhere to replace the doorway defaced by Dowsing. The only feature in the chapel which can to-dav be called — and that only by a somewhat doubtful taste — " very ' Prynne, " Canterlniry's Doom," quoted from Willis and Clark, i. 46. 88 The Earliest College Foundation magnificial/' is the gaudy Munich stained-glass work inserted in the lateral windows, as a memorial to Professor Smythe, in 1855 and 1858. The subjects are, on the north side, "The Sacrifice of Isaac," "The Preaching of S. John the Baptist," "The Nativity " ; and on the south side, " The Resurrection," "The Healing of a Cripple by SS. Peter and John," " S. Paul before Agrippa and Festus." The east window containing " The History of Christ's Passion," is said by Blomefield to have been '* hid in the late troublesome times in the very boxes which now stand round the altar instead of rails." 89 CHAPTER V The Colleges of the Fourteenth Century ** High potentates and dames of royal birth And mitred fathers in long order go." — Gray. The Fourteenth Century an Age of Great Men and Great Events but not of Great Scholars — Petrarch and Richard of Bury — Michael House — The King's Scholars — King's Hall— Clare Hall— Pembroke College— GonviUe Hall— Dr John Caius — His Three Gates of Humility, Virtue, and Honour. THE dates of the foundation of the two Colleges, Clare and Pembroke, which, after an interval of some fifty and seventy years respectively, followed that of Peterhouse, and the names of Lady Elizabeth, Countess of Clare, and of Marie de Valence, Countess of Pembroke, who are associated with them, remind us that we have reached that troublous and romantic time which marked the close of the long and varied reign of the Great Edward, and was the seed-time of those influences which ripened during the longer and still more varied reign of Edward III. Between the year 1326, which was the date of the first foundation of Clare College, the date also of the deposition and murder of Edward II., and the year 1348, which is the date of the foundation of Pembroke and the twenty-first year of Edward III., the distracted country had passed through many vicissitudes. It had seen the great conllict of parties under the leader- ship of the great houses of Lancaster, Gloucester, and 90 The Colleges of the Fourteenth Century Pembroke, culminating in the king's deposition and in the rise of the power of the EngHsh Parliament, and in its division into the two Houses of Lords and Commons. It had seen the growth of the new class of landed gentry, whose close social connection with the baronage on the one hand, and of equally close political connection with the burgesses on the other, had welded the three orders together, and had given to the Parliament that unity of action and feeling on which its powers have ever since mainly depended. It had seen the Common Law rise into the dignity of a science and rapidly become a not unworthy rival of Imperial Jurisprudence. It had seen the close of the great interest of Scottish warfare, and the northern frontier of England carried back to the old line of the Northumbrian kings. It had seen the strife with France brought to what at the moment seemed to be an end, for the battle of Crecy, at which the power of the English chivalry was to teach the world the lesson which they had learned from Robert Bruce thirty years before at Bannockburn, was still in the future, as also was the Hundred Years' War of which that battle was the prelude. It had seen the scandalous schism of the Western Church, and the vision of a Pope at Rome, and another Pope at Avignon, awaken- ing in the mind of the nations an entirely new set of thoughts and feelings with regard to the position of both the Papacy and the Church. The early four- teenth century was indeed an age of great events and of great men ; but it was not an age, at least as far as England was concerned, of great scholars. There was no Grosseteste in the fourteenth century. Petrarch, the typical man of letters, the true inspirer of the classical Renaissance, and in a sense the founder of really modern literature, was a great scholar and humanist, but he had no contemporary in England who 91 The Story of Cambridge could be called an equal or a rival. His one English friend, Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham, book lover as he was — for his Philohihlon we all owe him a debt of gratitude — was after all only an ardent amateur and no scholar. When Petrarch had applied to Richard for some information as to the geography of the Thule of the ancients, the Bishop had put him off with the statement that he had not his books with him, but would write fully on his return home. Though more than once reminded of his promise, he left the disappointed poet without an answer. The fact was, that Richard was not so learned that he could afford to confess his ignorance. He corresponds, in fact, to the earlier humanists of Italy — men who collected manuscripts and saw the possibilities of learning, though they were unable to attain to it themselves. There is much in his Phtlohthlon of the greatest in- terest, as, for example, his description of the means by which he had collected his library at Durham College, and his directions to students for its careful use, but despite his own fervid love and somewhat rhetorical praise of learning, there is still a certain personal pathos in the expression of his own impatience with the ignor- ance and superficiality of the younger students of his day. Writing in the Philohihlon of the prevalent char- acteristics of Oxford at this time, he writes : — " Forasmuch as (the students) are not grounded in their first rudiment at the proper time, they build a tottering edifice on an insecure foundation, and then wlien grown up they are ashamed to learn that which they should have acquired when of tender years, and thus must needs even pay the penalty of havin*";- too hastily vaulted into the posses- sion of authority to wliich they had no claim. For these and like reasons, our young students fail to g;ain by their scanty lucubrations that sound learning to whicli the ancients attained, however they may occupy iionourable posts, be called by titles, be invested with tiie garb of office, or be solemnly inducted into the seats of tlieir seniors. Snatched 92 The Colleges of the Fourteenth Century from their cradle and hastily weaned, they get a smattering of the rules of Priscian and Donatus ; in their teens and beardless they chatter childishly concerning the Categories and the Perihermenias in the composition of which Aristotle spent his whole soul." 1 It is to be feared that the decline of learning, which at this period was characteristic, as we thus see, of Oxford, was equally characteristic of Cambridge. Certainly there was no scholar there of the calibre of William of Ockham, or even of Richard of Bury, or of the Merton Realist, Bradwardine, afterwards Arch- bishop of Canterbury. It is not indeed until more than a century later, when we have reached the age of WyclifFe, the first of the reformers and the last of the schoolmen, that the name of any Cambridge scholar emerges upon the page of history. But meanwhile the collegiate system of the University was slowly being developed. Some forty years after the foundation of Peterhouse, in the year 1324, Hervey de Stanton, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Canon of Bath and Wells, obtained from Edward II. permission to found at Cambridge the College of " the Scholars of S. Michael." The college itself, Michael- house, has long been merged in the great foundation of Trinity, but its original statutes still exist and show that they were conceived in a somewhat less liberal spirit than that of the code of Hugh de Balsham. The monk and the friar are excluded from the society, but the Rule of Merton is not mentioned. Two years afterwards, in 1326, we find thirty-two scholars known as the " King's Scholars " maintained at the University by Edward II. It seems probable that it had been the intention of the King in this way to encourage the study of the civil and the canon law, for books on these subjects were presented by him, presumably for the use of the scholars, to Simon de Bury their warden, 1 Philobiblon, c. 9. 93 The Story of Cambridge and were subsequently taken away at the command of Queen Isabella. The King had also intended to provide a hall of residence for these *' children of our chapel," but the execution of this design of establishing a " King's Hall " was left to his son Edward III. The poet Gray, in his *' Installation Ode," has repre- sented Edward III. — " Great Edward with the lilies on his brow, From haughty Gallia torn," in virtue of his foundation of King's Hall, which was subsequently absorbed in the greater society, as the founder of Trinity College. But the honour evidently belongs with more justice to his father. It was, how- ever, by Edward III. that the Hall was built near the Hospital of S. John, " to the honour of God, the Blessed Virgin, and all the Saints, and for the soul of the Lord Edward his father, late King of England, of famous memory, and the souls of Philippa, Queen of England, his most dear consort, and of his children and progenitors." ^ The statutes of King's Hall give an interesting con- temporary picture of collegiate life. The preamble moralises upon " the unbridled weakness of humanity, prone by nature and from youth to evil, ignorant how to abstain from things unlawful, easily falling into crime." It is required that each scholar on his admission be proved to be of *' good and reputable conversation." He is not to be admitted under four- teen years of age. His knowledge of Latin must be such as to qualify him for the study of logic, or ol whatever other branch of learning the master shall decide, upon examination of his capacity, he is best fitted to follow. The scholars were provided with lodging, food, and clothing. The sum allowed for ^ Cooper's " Memorials," ii. p. 196. 94 The Colleges of the Fourteenth Century the weekly maintenance of a King's scholar was four- teen pence, an unusually liberal allowance for weekly commons, suggesting the idea that the foundation was probably designed for students of the wealthier class, an indication which is further borne out by the prohibi- tions with respect to the frequenting of taverns, the introduction of dogs within the College precincts, the wearing of short swords and peaked shoes {^contra honestatem clericalem) ^ the use of bows, flutes, catapults, and the oft-repeated exhortation to orderly conduct. CLARE COLLEGE. Founded by the University as Uni- versity Hall, 1326; refounded by Lady Elizabeth de Clare as Clare Hall, 1338; rebuilt 1638-1715. Name changed to Clare College, 1856. [The arms of the College from the seal of 1338-9. They are those which the foundress adopted on the death of her third husband in 1322. They consist of the arms of De Clare, impaling those of De Burgh, all within a bordure sable guttee or. "She seems in fact " — says Mr St John Hope — *' to have put her shield into mourning by adding to it this black bordure bedewed w^ith tears. The drops are now^ always represented as gold, but I think they should more properly be silver."] Following upon the establishment of Michaelhouse and King's Hall, in the year 1326 the University in its corporate capacity obtained a royal licence to settle a body of scholars in two houses in Milne Street. This college was called University Hall, a title already adopted by a similar foundation at Oxford. The Chancellor of the University at the time was a certain Richard de Badew. The foundation, however, did not at first meet with much success. In 1336 its 95 Ihe Story of Cambridge revenues were found insufficient to support more than ten scholars. In 1338, however, we find EHzabeth de Burgh, Countess of Clare and granddaughter of Edward L, coming to the help of the struggling society. By the death of her brother, the Earl of Gloucester, at the battle of Bannockburn, leaving no issue, the whole of a very princely estate came into the possession of the Lady Clare and her two sisters. Having, by a deed dated 6th April 1338, received from Richard de Badew, who therein calls himself '* Founder, Patron, and Advocate of the House called the Hall of the University of Cambridge," all the rights and titles of University Hall, the Lady Clare refounded it, and supplied the endowments which hitherto it had lacked. The name of the Hall was changed to Clare House [Domus de Clare). As early, however, as 1346 we find it styled Clare Hall, a name which it bore down to our own times, when, by resolu- tion of the master and fellows in 1856, it was changed to Clare College. The following preamble to the statutes of the College, which were granted in 1359, is perhaps worthy of quotation as exhibiting, in spite of its quaint confusion of the " Pearl of Great Price " with " the Candle set upon a Candlestick," the pious and withal business-like and sensible spirit of the foundress : — "To all the sons of our Holy Mother Church, who shall look into these pages, EHzabeth de Burgh, Lady de Clare, wishes health and remembrance of this transaction. Exper- ience, which is the mistress of all things, clearly teaches that in every rank of life, as well temporal as ecclesiastical, a knowledge of literature is of no small advantage: which though it is searched into by many persons in many different ways, yet in a University, a place that is distinguished for tlie flourishing of general study, it is more completely acquired ; and after it has been obtained, she sends forth her scholars wiio have tasted its sweets, apt and suitable men in the Church of God and in the State, men who will rise to 96 •:■'/ ■/ivviif;;:.. 97 The Colleges of the Fourteefith Century various ranks according to the measure of their deserts. Desiring therefore, since this consideration has come over us, to extend as far as God has allovired us, for the furtherance of Divine worship, and for the advance and good of the State, this kind of knowledge which in consequence of a great number of men having been taken away by the fangs of pestilence, is now beginning lamentably to fail ; we have turned the attention of our mind to the University of Cam- bridge, in the Diocese of Ely ; where there is a body of students, and to a Hall therein, hitherto commonly called University Hall, which already exists of our foundation, and which we would have to bear the name of the House of Clare and no other, for ever, and have caused it to be enlarged in its resources out of the wealth given us by God and in the number of students ; in order that the Pearl of Great Price, Knowledge, found and acquired by them by means of study and learning in the said University, may not lie hid beneath a bushel, but be published abroad ; and by being published give light to those who walk in the dark paths of ignorance. And in order that the Scholars residing in our aforesaid House of Clare, under the protection of a more steadfast peace and with the advantage of concord, may choose to engage with more free will in study, we have carefully made certain statutes and ordinances to last for ever."^ The distinguishing characteristic of these statutes is the great liberality they show in the requirements with respect to the professedly clerical element. This, as the preamble, in fact, suggests, was the result of a desire to fill up the terrible gap caused in the ranks of the clergy by the outbreak of the Black Death, which first made its appearance in England in the year 1348, and caused the destruction of two and a half millions of the population in a single year.^ 1 Cooper's " Memorials," vol. i. p. 30. 2 Cf. Rogers' "Six Centuries of Work and Wages," p. 224. "The disease made havoc among the secular and regular clergy, and we are told that a notable decline of learning and morals was thenceforward observed among the clergy, many persons of mean acquirements and low character stepping into the vacant benefices. Even now 99 The Story of Cambridge The Scholars or Fellows are to be twenty in number, of whom six are to be in priest's orders at the time of their admission. The remaining fellows are to be selected from bachelors or sophisters in arts, or from " skilful and well conducted " civilians and canonists, but only two fellows may be civilians, and only one a canonist. The clauses relating to the scheme of studies are, moreover, apparently intended to discourage both these branches of law. Of the further progress of the College in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we have no record, for the archives perished in the fire which almost totally destroyed the early buildings in the year 1521. In the seventeenth century, shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War, it was proposed to rebuild the whole College, but owing to the troubles of that time it was not until the beginning of the eighteenth century, in the year 1 7 1 5, that the work was finished. " The buildings are,'* said the late Professor Willis, " among the most beautiful, from their situation and general outline, that he could point out in the University." There is extant an amusing account of the con- troversy between Clare Hall and King's College, caused by the desire of the former to procure a certain piece of land for purposes of recreation on the east side of the Cam, called Butt Close, belonging to King's. Here are two of the letters which passed between the rival litigants. the cloister of Westminster Abbey is said to contain a monument in the great flat stone, which we are told was laid over the remains of the many monks who perished in the great death. . . . Some years ago, being at Cambridge while the foundations of the new Divinity Schools were being laid. I saw that the ground was full of skeletons, thrown in without any attempt at order, and I divined that this must have been a Cambridge j)lague pit.'' 100 T^he Colleges of the Fourteenth Lenfury" ' The Ansiver of Clare- Hall to Certaine Reasons oy King's College touching Butt-Close. " 1. To the first we answer: — 1°. That y annoyance of ye windes gathering betweene y® Chappell and our CoUedge is farre greater and more detriment to y* Chappell, then any benefitt which they can imagine to receiue by y® shelter of our Coliedge from wind and sunne. " 2°. That ye Coliedge of Clare-hall being sett so neare as now it is, they will not only be sheltered from wind and sunne, but much deprived both of ayre and light. " 3°. That ye removeall of Clare Hall 70 feet westward will take away little or no considerable privacy from their gardens and walkes ; for yt one of their gardens is farre remote, and ye nearer fenced with a very high wall, and a vine spread upon a long frame, under which they doe and may privately walke." . " A Reply of Kings Coliedge to f Answer of Clare-Hall. **i. The wind so gathering breeds no detriment to our Chappell, nor did ever putt us to any reparacions there. The upper battlements at the west end haue sometimes suffered from y^ wind, but y^ wind could not there be straightned by Clare-hall, w^'i scarce reacheth to y fourth part of ye height. "2°. No whit at all, for our lower story hath fewer windowes y*: way : the other are so high yt Clare Hall darkens them not, and hath windows so large y* both for light and ayre no chambers in any Coll. exceed them. " 3°. The farther garden is not farre remote, being scarce 25 yards distant from their intended building ; ye nearer is on one side fenced with a high wall indeed, but y^ wall is fraudulently alleaged by them, and beside ye purpose : for y' wall y' stands between their view and ye garden is not much aboue 6 feet in height: and y"^ we haue any vine or frame there to walke under is manifestly untrue."^ However, the controversy was settled in favour of Clare Hall by a letter from the King. A tradition has long prevailed that Clare Hall was the College mentioned by the poet Chaucer in his " Reeve's Tale," in the lines — " And nameliche ther was a greet collegge, Men clepen the Soler-Halle at Cantebregge." i^. Clarke, '' Cambridge." pp. 85, 86. lOI The Story of Cambridge There appears, however, to be good reason for thinking that the Soler Hall was in reality Garrett Hostel, a soler or sun-chamber being the equivalent of a garret. For the tradition also that Chaucer himself was a Clare man there is no authority. The College may well be satisfied with the list of authentic names of great men which give lustre to the roll of its scholars — Hugh Latimer, the reformer and fellow-martyr of Ridley ; Nicholas Ferrar, the founder of the religious community of Little Gidding ; Wheelock, the great Saxon and oriental scholar ; Ralph Cudworth, leader of the Cambridge Platonists ; Archbishop Tillotson and his pupil the philosopher, Thomas Burnett ; Whiston, the translator of " Josephus " ; Cole, the antiquary ; Maseres, the lawyer and mathematician. College Portraits In the Hall: — Thomas Cecil, K.G., Earl of Exeter, benefactor, 1542- 1623 : by Mirevelt. Thomas Pelham Holies, Duke of Newcastle, Chancellor of the University, d. 1768. Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, 1491- 1555- Peter Gunning, Bishop of Chichester and of Ely, 1613-1684. Martin Polkes, President Royal Society, 1690- 1754. Marquis Cornwallis, Governor-General of India, 1738-1805. Rt. Hon. Charles Townsend 1 725-1 767. In the Combination Room: — Lady Elizabeth de Clare, foundress, d. 1360 : a copy by Freeman. Nicholas Ferrar of f^ittle Gidding, 1592- 1637 : a recent copy. Humphrey Henchman, Bishop of Salisbury and of London, d. 1675. 102 l^he Colleges of the Fourteenth Century John Moore, Bishop of Ely, formerly of Norwich, d. 17 14. John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1630-95. Richard Terrick, Bishop of Peterborough and of London, d. 1777. Thomas Henry Coles, D.D., benefactor, d. 1868. In the Master s Lodge : — William Butler, M.D., d. 1617, John Moore, Bishop of Norwicii and of Ely, d. 1714. Peter Stephen Goddard, D.D., Master, d. 1781. John Pearson, Bishop, Chester 1673, d. 1686 ; a miniature by Loggan 1682. PEMBROKE COLLEGE ' -TtT^rrTrr Founded 1 347 by Marie de Saint Paul, widow of Aymar De Val- ence, Earl of Pembroke. [The arms of the Foundress used by the College from its foundation. They are those of De Valence dimidiated with those of de Saint Paul.] The foundation of Pembroke College, like that of Clare Hall, was also due to the private sorrow of a noble lady. The poet Gray, himself a Pembroke man, in the lines of his " Installation Ode," where he commemorates the founders of the university — " All that on Granta's fruitful plain Rich streams of royal bounty poured," speaks of this lady as «* . . . sad Chatillon on her bridal morn, That wept her bleeding love." 103 ^he Story of Catnbridge This is in allusion to the somewhat doubtful story thus told by Fuller — "Mary de Saint Paul, daughter to Guido Castillion, Earl of S. Paul in France, third wife to Audomare de Valentia, Earl of Pembroke, maid, wife, and widow all in a day (her husband being unhappily slain at a tilting at her nuptials), sequestered herself ^> rf !i r • i on that sad accident from all worldly de- lights, bequeathed her soul to God, and her estate to pious uses, amongst which this is principal, that she founded in Cam- bridge the College of Mary de Valentia, commonly called Pembroke Hall." All that authentic history records is that the Earl of Pembroke died suddenly whilst on a mission to the Court of France in June 1324. His widow expended a large part of her very considerable fortune both in France and England on works of piety. In 1342 she founded the Abbey of Denny in Cambridgeshire for nuns of the Order of S. Clare. The Charter of Foundation of Pembroke College is dated 9th June 1348. It is to be regretted that the earliest Rule given to the College, or to the y/z/A? seu Domus de Faience Alarie, the Hall of Valence Marie, as it was at first called, is not extant. A revised rule of the conjectural date of 1366, and another of perhaps not 1 04 The Colleges of the Fourteenth Century more than ten years later, furnished, however, the data upon which Dr Ainslie, Master of the College from 1828 to 1870, drew up an abstract of its con- stitution and early history. ^ The most interesting feature of this constitution is the provision made in the first instance for the management of the College by the Franciscans, and its abolition on a later revision. According to the first code — " the head of the College was to be elected by the fellows, and to be distin- guished by the title of the Keeper of the House. There were to be annually elected two rectors, the one a Friar Minor, the other a secular. This provision of the two rectors was abolished in the later code, and with it apparently all official connection between the College and the Franciscan Order, and it may be perhaps conjectured all association also with the sister foundation at Denny, concerning which the foundress, in her final Vale of the earlier code, had given to the fellows of the House of Valence Marie the following quaint direction, that " on all occasions they should give their best counsel and aid to the Abbess and Sisters of Denny, who had from her a common origin with them.'' The exact date at which the building of the College was begun is not known, but it was probably not long after the purchase of the site in 1346. Many of the original buildings which remained down to 1874 were destroyed in the reconstruction of the College at that time. It is now only possible to imagine many of the most picturesque features of that building, of which Queen Elizabeth, on her visit to Cambridge in 1564, enthusiastically exclaimed in passing, ** domus antiqua et religiosa / " by consulting the print of the College published by Loggan about 1688. Of the interesting old features still left, we have the chapel at the corner 1 Cf. Mullinger, << Cambridge," vol. i., footnote, p. 237. 105 The Story of Cambridge of Trumpington Street and Pembroke Street, built in 1630 and refaced in 1663, and the line of buildings extending down Pembroke Street to the new master's V /^ * ^nibioke ^kf« Oriel/- 5^Ijilr -^,^- ^'\j 9i^,r Oil ■«• The College of the Cambridge Guilds its members a secular protection of which the latter guilds of the thirteenth century knew nothing, for they were religious guilds pure and simple. It is true that in the first charter of King John, dated 8th Jan. 1201, there appears to be a confirmation to the burgesses of Cambridge of a guild merchant granting to them certain secular rights of toll. But there does not appear to be any historical evidence to show that the Guild Merchant of Cambridge ever took definite shape, or stood apart in any way from the general body of burgesses. King John's charter simply secured to the town those liberties and franchises which all the chief boroughs of England enjoyed at the beginning of the thirteenth century. ^ The first religious guild of which we have any record is the Guild of the Holy Sepulchre, known to us only by an isolated reference in the history of Ramsey Abbey, which tells us of a fraternity existing in 1 1 14-36, whose purpose was the building of a Minster in honour of God and the Holy Sepulchre, and which resulted in the erection of the Cambridge Round Church. Of Cambridge guild life we hear nothing more until the reign of Edward I., when we find record of certain conveyances of land being made to the Guild of S. Mary. From the first this guild is closely associated with Great S. Mary's Church, the University Church of to-day, the Church of S. Mary at Market, as it was called in the early days. The members of it were called the alderman, brethren and sisters of S. Mary's Guild belonging to the Church of the Virgin. Its benefactors direct that should the guild cease, the benefaction shall go to the celebration of Our Lady Mass in her Church. The underlying spirit, however, whatever may have been the super- stitious ritual connected with the organisation, was very 1 Cf. Introduction by Professor Maitland to the ''Cam- bridge Borough Charters," p. xvii. 125 The Story of Cambridge much the same as that of the English Friendly Society of to-day. " Let all share the same lot," ran one of the statutes; '< if any misdo, let all bear it." "For the nourishing of brotherly love," — so the members of another society took the oath of loyalty — " they would be good and true loving brothers to the fraternity, helping and counselling with all their power if any brother that hath done his duties well and truly come or fall to poverty, as God them help." *yj(J y; •45 Two Royal Foundations participate in the Cambridge foundation forms part of the King's scheme in the second charter of his college granted on loth July 1443, '^^ which he says: — " It is our fixed and unalterable purpose, being moved thereto, as we trust, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that our poor scholars of our Royal foundation of S. Mary of Eton, after they have been sufficiently taught the first rudiments of grammar, shall be transferred thence to our aforesaid College of Cambridge, w^hich we will shall be henceforth denominated our College Royal of S. Mary and S. Nicholas, there to be more thoroughly instructed in a liberal course of study, in other branches of knowledge, and other professions." The first site chosen for the College was a very cramped and inconvenient one. It had Milne Street, then one of the principal thoroughfares of the town, on the west, the University Library and schools on the east, and School Street on the north. On the south side only had it any outlet at all. A court was formed by placing buildings on the three unoccupied sides, the University buildings forming a fourth. These buildings, however, were never completely finished, except in a temporary manner, and indeed so remained until the end of the last century, when they were more or less incorporated in the new build- ings of the University Library facing Trinity Hall Lane, erected by Sir Gilbert Scott in 1868. The old gateway facing Clare College, which had been begun in 1444, was at last completed from the designs of Mr Pearson in 1890, to become one of the most beautiful architectural gates in Cambridge. It very soon, however, became evident that the selected site was much too small for the projected college. Little time was lost by the earliest provost and scholars in petitioning the King to provide an ampler habitation for their needs. H7 The Story of Cambridge ** The task was beset with difficulties that would have daunted a mind less firmly resolved on carrying out the end in view than the king's ; difficulties indeed that would have been insuperable except by royal influence, backed by a royal purse. The ground on which King's College now ;5^ "' • > I "K- '>■!■ \ -1'^ stands was then densely populated. It occupied nearly the whole of the parish of S. John Baptist, whose churcli is believed to have stood near the west end of the chapel. Milne Street crossed the site from north to south, in a direction that may be easily identified from the two ends of the street that still remain, under the name of 'I'rinity Hall Lane and Queen's Lane. The space between Milne Street 148 IvDo Royal Foundations and Trumpington Street, then called High Street, was occupied by the houses and gardens of different proprietors, and was traversed by a narrow thoroughfare called Piron Lane, leading from High Street to S. John's Church. At the corner of Milne Street and this lane, occupying the ground on which about half the ante-chapel now stands, was the small college called Goits House, founded in 1439 by William Byngham for the study of grammar, which, as he observes in his petition to Henry VI. for leave to found it, is 'the rote and ground of all other sciences.' On the west side of Milne Street, between it and the river, were the hostels of S. Austin, S. Nicholas, and S. Edmund, besides many dwelling-houses. This district was traversed by several lanes, affording to the townspeople ready access to the river, and to a wharf on its bank called Salthithe. No detailed account has been preserved of the negotiations necessary for the acquisition of this ground, between six and seven acres in extent, and in the very heart of Cambridge. . . . The greatest offence appears to have been given by the closing of the lanes leading down to the river, which was of primary importance to mediaeval Cambridge as a highway. In five years' time, however, the difficulties were all got over ; the town yielded up, though not with the best grace, the portion of Milne Street required and all the other thorough- fares ; the hostels were suppressed, or transferred to other sites ; the Church of S. John was pulled down, and the parish united to that of S. Edward, whose church bears evidence, by the spacious aisles attached to its choir, of the extension rendered necessary at that time by the addition of the members of Clare Hall and Trinity Hall to the number of its parishioners." ^ On this splendid site of many acres, where now the silent green expanse of sunlit lawn has taken the place of the busy lanes and crowded tenements, which in Henry's time hummed with the life of a mediaeval river- side city, there rises the wondrous building, the crown of fifteenth-century architecture, beautiful, unique — a cathedral church in size, a college chapel in plan — seeming in its lofty majesty so solitary and so aloof, and yet so instantaneously impressive. 1 J. W. Clark, ''Cambridge," p. 145. 149 The Story of Cambridge Who was the architect of this masterpiece ? The credit has commonly been given to one of two men — Nicholas Close or John Langton. Close was a man of Flemish family, and one of the original six Fellows of the College. He had for a few years been the vicar of the demolished Church of S. John Zachary. He afterwards became Bishop of Carlisle. Langton was Master of Pembroke and Chancellor of the Uni- versity, and was one of the commissioners appointed by the King to superintend the scheme of the works at their commencement. But both of these men were theologians and divines. We have no evidence that they were architects. Mr G. Gilbert Scott, in his essay on " English Church Architecture," has, how- ever, given reasons, which seem to be almost conclusive, that the man who should really have the credit of con- ceiving this great work was the master-mason Reginald of Ely, who as early as 1443 was appointed by a patent of Henry VI. "to press masons, carpenters, and other workmen " for the new building. According to Mr Scott's view, Nicholas Close and his fellow sur- veyors merely did the work which in modern days would be done by a building conmiittee. It was the master-mason who planned the building, and who con- tinued to act as architect until the works came to a standstill with the deposition of the King and the en- thronement of his successor Edward IV. in 1462. Moreover, the character of the general design of King's Chapel and even its architectural details, such as the setting out of its great windows, the plan ol its vaulting shafts, and the groining of the roofs of the small chapels between its buttresses, lend force to Mr Scott's con- tention. It is evident from the accuracy and minute- ness of the directions given in "the Will of King Henry VI." (a document which w.is not in reality a testament, but an expression of his deliberate purpose and design 150 ^voo Royal Foundations with regard to his proposed foundation), that complete working plans had been prepared by an architect. Whoever that architect may have been, he had evi- dently been commissioned to design a chapel of mag- nificence worthy of a royal foundation. And where more naturally could he look for his model for such a building as the King desired than to that chapel, the largest and the most splendid hitherto erected in England, that finest specimen of decorated architecture in the kingdom, Alan de Walsingham's Lady Chapel at Ely. The relationship between the two buildings is obvious to even an uninstructed eye, but Mr Scott has shown how closely the original design of King's follows the Ely Lady Chapel lines. "Any one," he truly says, "who will carry up his eye from the bases of the vaulting shafts to the springing of the great vault will perceive at once that the section of the shait does not correspond with the plan of the vault springers. There is a sort of cripple here. The shaft is, in fact, set out with seven members, while the design of the vault plan re- quires but five. Thus two members of the pier have nothing to do, and disappear somewhat clumsily in the capital. The section of these shafts was imposed by the first architect, and does not agree with the requirement of a fan-groin (designed by the architect of a later date). . . . The original sections, and the peculiar distribution of their bases, unmistakably in- dicate a ribbed vault, with transverse, diagonal, and inter- mediate ribs. Now, if we apply to the plan of these shaftings at Cambridge the plan of the vaulting at Ely, we find the two to tally precisely. Each member of the pier has its corresponding rib, in the direction of the sweep of which each member of the base is laid down. This might serve as proof sufficient, but it is not all. There exist in the church two lierne-groins of the work of the first period, those namely of the two easternmost chapels of the north range, and these are identical in principle with the great vault at Ely, and with the plan that is indicated by the distribution of the ante-chapel bases. We know then that the first designer of the church did employ lierne and not fan-vaulting, even in the small areas of the chapels, and that these liernes resemble not the later form — such as we may observe in the nave of The Story of Cambridge Winchester Cathedral — but the earlier manner which is ex- hibited at Ely. There can, therefore, as I conceive, be no doubt that this great chapel was designed to be ' chare- roofed ' with such a lierne-vault — it is practically a Welsh- groin — as adorns the next grandest chapel in England only sixteen miles distant." ^ There seems little doubt then that the architect of King's Chapel was its first master-builder, Reginald of Ely, who, trained under the shadow of the great Minster buildings in that city, probably in its mason's yard, naturally took as his model for the King's new chapel at Cambridge one of the most exquisite of the works of the great cathedral builder of the previous century, Alan de Walsingham. Had the original design of Reginald been completed, several of the defects of the building, as we see it to-day, would have been avoided. The chapel vault would have been arched, and the great space which is now left between the top of the windows and the spring of the vaulting would have been avoided. Much of the heaviness of effect also, which is felt by any one studying the exterior of the chapel, and which is due to the low pitch of the window arches, rendered necessary by the alteration in the design of the great vault, would have been avoided. Reginald of Ely's work, however, indeed all work on the new chapel, ceased in 1461, when the battle of Towton gave the crown to the young Duke of York, and the Lancastrian colleges of his rival fell upon barren days. On the accession of Richard III. in 1483, the new king not only showed his goodwill to the College by the gift of lands, but ordered the building to go on with all despatch. In 1 485, however, there commenced another period of twenty years' stagnation. Then in 1506, Henry VIL, paying a visit with his mother to ^ G. Gilbert Scott, "History of English Architecture," p. 181. 152 ;:r^-5 ^ v,A-,/C= -TOT- ■" ' ._/ - ■■■ .., M'^^ ,«_:.; I r 153 ^iJDo Royal Foundations Cambridge, attended service in the unfinished chapel, and determined to become its patron. In the summer of 1508 more than a hundred masons and carpenters were again at work, and henceforth the building suffered no interruption. By July 1515 the fabric of the church was finished, and had cost in all, according to the present value of money, some ;^ 160,000. In November of the same year a payment of ^100, is made to Bernard Flower, the King's glazier, and a similar sum in February 15 17. It would seem that the same artist completed four windows, that over the north door of the ante-chapel being the earliest. Upon his death agreements were made in 1526 for the erection of the whole of the remaining twenty-two windows. They were to represent " the story of the old lawe and of the new lawe." Above and below the transome in each window are two separate pictures, each pair , being divided by a " messenger," who bears a scroll with a legend giving the subject represented. In the lower tier the windows from north-west to south- west represent the Life of the Blessed Virgin, the Life of Christ, and the History of the Church, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. The upper tier has scenes from the Old Testament or from apocryphal sources which prefigure the events recorded below. The whole of the east window is devoted to the Passion and Crucifixion of our Lord. The west window containing a representation of the Last Judgment, is entirely modern. It was executed by Messrs Clayton and Bell, and was erected in 1879. The following list of the subjects in these windows will be found useful. The Heraldry which fills the smaller lights of the tracery consists of these devices : — - I. The Arms of Henry VII. (not crowned) en- circled with the garter. ^55 The Story of Cambridge 2. The Red Rose for Lancaster. 3. The Hawthorn Bush for Richard III. 4. The PortcuUis for Beaufort. 5. The Fleur de Lys. 6. H. E. for Henry VII. and EHzabeth of York. 7. H. R. for Henricus Rex. 8. The Tudor Rose. 9. The White Rose en sole'il for York. 10. H. K. for Henry VIII. and Katharine of Aragon, as Prince and Princess of Wales. 11. The ostrich feather with a scroll of Ich d'ten. The west window contains the arms of Stacy (as donor), of the See of Lincoln, impaling those of Wordsworth (as visitor), of Okes (as provost) and others. North Side WINDOW 1 (westernmost) The rejection of Joachim's Joachim among the shep- offering by the High herds, an angel appear- Priest because he was ing to him. childless. Joachim and Anna meet- The Birth of the Virgin, ing at the golden gate of the Temple. WINDOW n Presentation of the golden Marriage of Tobit and tablet (found by fisher- Sara. man in the sand) in the Temple of the Sun. Presentation of the Virgin Marriage of Joseph and in the Temple. Mary. * ^ * In this window there is a small compartment at the bottom of each light containing a half figure of a man or angel bearing a legend. .56 Two Royal Foundations WINDOW III Eve tempted by the Moses and the Burning serpent. Bush. The Annunciation. The Nativity. WINDOW IV The Circumcision of Visit of Queen of Sheba to Isaac. Solomon. The Circumcision of Adoration of the Magi. Jesus. WINDOW V The Purification of Women Jacob's flight from Esau. under the Law. The Purification B. V. M. The Fhght into Egypt. WINDOW VI The Golden Calf. The Massacre of the seed royal by Athaliah. The Idols of Egypt falling The Massacre of the Inno- down before the Infant cents. Jesus. WINDOW VII Naamanwashing in Jordan. Esau tempted to sell his birthright. The Baptism of Christ. The Temptation of Christ. WINDOW VIII Elisha raising the Shuna- David with the head of mite's son. Goliath. The raising of Lazarus. Entry of Christ into Jerusalem. WINDOW IX The Manna in the wilder- The fall of the Rebel ness. Angels. The Last Supper. The Agony in the Garden. The Story of Camb?'ldge WINDOW X Cain killing Abel. wShimei cursing David. The Betrayal of Christ. Christ blindfolded and mocked. WINDOW XI Job vexed by Satan. Solomon crowned. The Flagellation of Christ crowned with Christ. thorns. EAST WINDOW Christ nailed to the Cross. Pilate washing his hands. Ecce Homo. The Deposition. The Crucifixion. Christ bearing the Cross. South Side WINDOW XII (easternmost) Moses and the Brazen Serpent ^ * ^ The upper portion of this window formerly contained what is now below. The old glass was moved into the lower lights in 1841 ; in 1845 the upper half was filled with new lights, forming a single picture intended to serve as a type to the Crucifixion in the east window. Naomi and her daughter- Christ bewailed, in-law. WINDOW XI The casting of Joseph into The Exodus. the pit. The Entombment. The release of the Spirits from prison. WINDOW X Jonah cast up by the Tobias returning to his whale. mother. The Resurrection. Christ appearing to the 158 Virgin. Two Royal Foundations WINDOW IX Reuben seeking Joseph Darius finding Daniel alive finds the pit empty. in the Lion's den. The Three Maries at the Christ recognised by Mary empty sepulchre. Magdalene. WINDOW VIII The Angel appearing to Habbakuk feeding Daniel. Habbakuk. Christ and the Disciples The Supper at Emmaus. at Emmaus. WINDOW VII The return of the Prodigal Joseph welcoming Jacob. Son. The incredulity of S. Christ blessing the Thomas. Apostles. WINDOW VI Elijah's Translation. Moses receiving the Tables of the Law. Christ's Ascension. The Descent of the Holy Spirit. WINDOW V S. Peter and S. John heal The arrest of S. Peter the lame man at the and S. John. Beautiful Gate. S. Peter preaching on the Ananias struck dead. Day of Pentecost. WINDOW IV The Conversion of S. S. Paul disputing with Paul. Jews at Damascus. S. Paul and S. Barnabas S. Paul stoned at Lystra. worshipped at Lystra. The Story of Cambridge WINDOW HI S. Paul casting out a S. Paul before Nero. Spirit of Divination. S. Paul setting out from S. Paul before the chief Philippi. Captain. WINDOW II The Death of Tobias. The Burial of Jacob. The Death of the Virgin. The Burial of the Virgin. WINDOW I (westernmost) TheTranslation of Enoch. Solomon receiving Bath- sheba. The Assumption of the The Coronation of the Virgin. Virgin. WEST WINDOW The Last Judgment (^one scene) Apostles and Saints. S. Michael between two Other angels. Angels with the Blessed Apostles and Saints. among whom is King Henry VI. Christ on the Throne of Angels with the Lost Judgment. Souls. The Glass in the Side Chapels The second chantry from the west on the south side is that of Provost Hacombleyn, who gave the great Lectern, was Provost at the time of the glazing of the upper windows and died in 1538. In the tracery or croisette lights are various badges and angels, and on the right the four beasts symbolic of the evangelists, and on the left the four Latin Doctors — Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine (holding a heart) and 160 Two Royal Foundations Gregory. In the lower lights are two half length figures. That on the left is King Henry VI. he is crowned and holds a martyr's crown upon an open book. An engraving of this is a common object in Cambridge. That on the right is S. John the Evangelist. In the lower light of the lower window which looks into the ante-chapel are quarries representing lily, rose, pansy and daisy, and the initals R. H. and R. h. one standing for Robertus Hacombleyn and the other for Rex Henricus. In the tracery lights are various devices of the Five Wounds, Sun and Moon, etc. and six figures. These counting from the left are — 1. S. Christopher. 4. The Blessed Virgin. 2. S. Ursula. 5. S. Anne. 3. Angel Gabriel. 6. S. John Baptist. The next chantry to the east is that of Robert Brassie, Provost, 1556-58, who endowed the chapel, during the brief revival of the old religion during Queen Mary's time. The glass in the screen contains the initials R. B. and little else. The outer window contains, however, specially interesting glass. It is part of a series older by many years than any other glass in the chapel, being all of fifteenth century date, and probably not late in that century. There is a vague tradition that this glass came from Ramsey Abbey. The figures from left to right are : — 1. S. Peter, with keys and an extraordinary uncouth visage. 2. S. Philip with a long cross-staff. 3. A Bishop in cope, tunicle, dalmatic and alb, with crosier and book. He is beardless and seems to have a modern head. 4. The Prophet Zephaniah (or ? Daniel) facing right with open book and turban. On his L 161 The Story of Cambridge scroll is Accedam ad nos in indicia et ero {^testis velox). The words are from Malachi, but are often given to Daniel or Zephaniah. 5. King David se;ited with turban and harp. His scroll reads redcmisli me domine deus veritatis. 6. A doctor, possibly a canonist or writer like S. Yves of Chartres. 7. S. Erasmus (?). 8. S. James the Great, with scallop on shoulder, long staff and book. Passing to the chantries on the north side, in the fourth chantry from the east is a mass of fragments of glass belonging to the series of Apostles and Prophets. On the fragments of scrolls may be deciphered almost the whole of the Apostles' Creed, and many portions of the prophecies corresponding thereto. In the Chapel east of this are the remains of the figure of Hosea, which belonged to same series — with a fairly perfect scroll, which reads morsy ero mors tiia. " A bare enumeration of the subjects, however, can give but a poor idea of these glorious paintings. What first arrests the attention is the singularly happy blending of colours, produced by a most ingenious juxta-position of pure tints. The half-tones so dear to the present generation were fortunately unknown when they were set up. Thus though there is a profusion of brilliant scarlet, and liglit blue, and golden yellow, there is no gaudiness. Again all the glass admits light without let or hindrance, the shading being laid on with sparing hands, so that the greatest amount of brilliancy is insured. This is further enhanced by a very copious use of white or slightly yellow glass. It must not, however, be supposed that a grand effect of colour is all that has been aimed at. The pictures bear a close study as works of art. The figures are rather larger than life, and boldly drawn, so as to be well seen from a great distance; but the faces are full of expression and individuality, and each scene is beautiful as a composition. They would well bear reduc- tion within the narrow limits of an easel picture. . . . There 162 Two Royal Foundations is no doubt that a German or Flemish influence is discernible in some of the subjects ; but that is no more than might have been expected, when we consider the number of sets of pictures illustrating the life and passion of Christ that had appeared in Germany and Flanders during the half century- preceding their execution. . . . That these windows should (at the time of the Puritan destruction of such things) have been saved is a marvel ; and how it came to pass is not exactly known. The story that they were taken out and hidden, or, as one version of it says, buried, may be dismissed as an idle fabrication. More likely the Puritan sentiments of the then provost, Dr Whichcote, were regarded with such favour by the Earl of Manchester during his occupation of Cambridge, that he interfered to save the chapel and the college from molestation." ^ The magnificent screen and rood-loft are carved with the arms, badge, and initials (H. A.) of Henry and Anne Boleyn, and with the rose, fleur-de-lis, and portcullis. Doubtless, therefore, they were erected between 1532 and 1535. The doors to the screen were renewed in 1636, and bear the arms of Charles I. The stalls were set up by Henry VHL, but they were without canopies, the wall above them being probably covered with hangings, the hooks for which may still be seen under the string-course below the windows. The stalls are in the Renaissance manner, and are the first example of that style at Cambridge. They appear to differ somewhat in character from Torregiano's works at Westminster, and to be rather French than Italian in feeling, although some portions of the figure- carving recalls in its vigour the style of Michael Angelo. The stall canopies and the panelling to the east of the stalls were the work of Cornelius Austin, and were put up about 1675. '^^^ north and south entrance doors leading to the quire and the side chapel are probably of the same date as the screen. The lectern dates from the first quarter of the sixteenth 1 J. W. Clark, " Cambridge," p. 171. 163 The Story of Cambridge century, having been given by Robert Hacombleyn, provost, whose name it bears. As to the remaining buildings of King's College it is sufficient to say that the great quadrangle projected by the founder was never built. The old buildings at the back of the schools, hastily finished in a slight and temporary manner, continued in use until the last century. In 1723 a plan was furnished by James Gibbs for a new quadrangle, of which the chapel v/as to form the north side. The western range — the Gibbs building — was the only part actually built. The hall, library, provost's lodge, and several sets of rooms at each end of the hall, as well as the stone screen and the porter's lodge, were erected in 1 824-28, at a cost of rather more than ^^ 100,000, from the designs of WilHam Wilkins. A range of rooms facing Trumpington Street were added by Sir Gilbert Scott in 1870. The new court, which when completed will form a court with buildings on three sides and the river on the fourth, was commenced by Mr Bodley in 1 89 1. At present this third side of the court is still left open. To return, however, to the history of the foundation. It is an illustration of the way in which at this time ultramontanist theories were contending for supremacy in England, in the universities as elsewhere, that the King should have applied to the pope for a bull grant- ing him power to make his new college not only in- dependent of the bishop of the diocese, but also of the University authorities. Such a bull was granted, and in 1 448 the University itself consented, by an instru- ment given under its common seal, that the College, in the matter of discipline as distinguished from Instruc- tion, should be entirely independent of the University. By the limitation also of the benefits of this foundation to scholars only of Eton, the founder, perhaps, un- 164 TvDo Royal Foundations consciously, certainly disastrously, created an exclusive class of students endowed with exclusive privileges, an anomaly which for more than four centuries marred the full efficiency of Henry's splendid foundation. This imperium in imperio was happily abolished by a new code of statutes which became law in 1861. " A little flock they were in Henry's hall • • • • • ■ Hardly the circle widened, till one day The guarded gate swung open Avide to all." It may certainly be hoped that there is truth in the late provost's gentle prophecy, that " it is hardly possible that the College should relapse into what was sometimes its old condition, that of a family party, comfortable, indeed, but inclined to be sleepy and self- indulgent, and not wholly free from family quarrels." ^ And yet at the same time it should not be forgotten, as good master Fuller reminds us, that " the honour of Athens lieth not in her walls, but in the worth of her citizens," and that during the lengthened period in which the society was a close foundation only open to scholars of Eton, with a yearly entry therefore of new members seldom exceeding half-a-dozen, it could still point to a long list of distinguished scholars and of men otherwise eminent — mathematicians like Oughtred, moralists like Whichcote, theologians like Pearson, antiquarians like Cole, poets like Waller — who had been educated within its walls. In Cooper's " Memorials of Cambridge," the list of eminent King's men down to i860 occupies twenty pages, a similar list of Trinity men, the largest college in the university, only ten pages more. This hardly seems to justify Dean Peacock's well-known epigram on the unreformed King's as " a splendid Cenotaph of learning." ^ " History of King's College," by A. Austen Leigh, p. 293. .65 The Story of Cambridge CoLLEGF Portraits In the Hall On Left of Door \ — Thomas Rotherham, 1 42 3-1 500 ; Fellow, Archbishop of York, 1480: a modern picture. Henry Bradshaw, Fellow ; University Librarian, 1867-86: by Herkomer. Rev. Richard Okes, D.D., died 1889; Provost, 1850-1889: by Herkomer. Sir Stratford Canning, K.G., Viscount Strat- ford de Retcliffe, 1787-1880 : by Herkomer. End Wall: — John Bird Sumner, D.D., Archbishop of Canterbury, 1848-62 : by E. K. Eddie, 1853- Sir Robert Walpole, K.G., Earl of Oxford, 1676-1745. Sir John Patteson, Judge of King's Bench, 1830 (copy of the picture at Eton). Right Side: — Rev. Charles Simeon, D.D. ; Fellow. Horace Walpole (copy of the picture at Lans- downe House). Charles Pratt, first Earl Camden, 1713-94; Lord Chancellor : by Nathaniel Dance. Sir Henry Dampier, Judge of King's Bench, 1813. In the Large Combination Room Robert Browning, Fellow, 1807. John Price, a Benefactor. William Cox, Archdeacon of Wilts, 1807. King Henry VI., Founder. Frederick Whitling, Vice Provost : by C. W. Furse. Edward Waddington, D.D.; Bishop of Chichester, 1730. 166 TisDo Royal Foundations Stephen Weston, D.D. ; Bishop of Exeter, 1734. Fred. Browning, D.D. ; Fellow, 1770. In the Small Combination Room Sir Robert Walpole, K.G., Earl of Oxford, 1676- T745- Portrait of a man. King Henry VI., Founder (apparently a copy of the picture in Large Combination Room). John Cox, D.D. ; Tutor of Edward VI, ; Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, 1550; Bishop of Ely, I 559, at the age of 84. In the Provost's Lodge Dining-room, Left: — Lady Jane Grey (?). A maid-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth. Jane Shore or (Diana of Poitiers ? The same as picture at Eton). Samuel Collins, Provost, 1615-44. Portrait of a man. Anthony Allen, Master in Chancery, d. 1754. George Thackeray, Provost, 1814-50. King Edward VI. T. Okes, M.D., of Exeter, grandfather (?) of Provost Okes. Stairs: — Sir Robert Walpole. Thackeray, Headmaster of Harrow. Thomas Crouch, Fellow ; Provost of Eton ; M.P. for the University, d. 1679, inscribed Anno Dom. 1647. Cardinal Wolsey (copy of the picture at Christ Church, Oxford). The fountain in the centre of the lawn of the Great Court, surmounted by a statue of King Henry VI., was designed by H. A. Armstead and completed in 1879. 167 The Story of Cambr^idge QUEEN'S COLLEGE Founded on this site i447 by Andrew Doket, under the Patronage of Margaret of Anjou, Queen of Henry VI. Refounded 1465 by Elizabeth Widville, Queen of Edward IV. [The College has since its foundation borne five different shields. The first appears on the original seal of 1448 : it bears the six quarteringSj Hungary, Naples, Jerusalem, Anjou, De Barre and Loraine, of Queen Margaret without any bordure or difl~erence. The second shield occurs together with the arms of Edward IV. and his Queen, Eliza- beth Widville, when the College was refounded 1465, and a new common seal was made to commemorate the Yorkish Queen's magnanimity. In addition to the arms of Edward IV. and Elizabeth, which appear at the sides, there is placed in the base of the seal a shield bearing a Cross of S. George with a sword in the first quarter. These arms are identical with the City of London, but it is difficult to explain their mean- ing or presence on the College seal. The third seal of Queen's Colle^^e is a very interesting composition It is properly blazoned as : Sable, a cross ana crosier in saltire or, surmounted by a boards head argent. The boar's head is usually represented gold, but is obviously derived from Richard lll.'s badge of a white boar, and should therefore be silver. The two staves are the cross generally worn by S. Margaret, and the crosier of S. Bernard. It is interesting to note in connec- tion with these arms, that in 1544 the College possessed an ancient silver seal, " insculptum porcellis seu apris " the gift of Richard, King of England. Fuller ingeniously suggests that the crossed staves in this shield " in form of S. Andrew's cross, might in their device relate to Andrew Doket, so much meriting of this foundation." During the days of the Tudor kings, or at any rate during the second of that family, the arms suggestive of further benefactors seem to have been wholly or in part suspended, and in their stead Queens' College used for its fourth shield the royal arms. France modern and England quarterly, as may be seen in the com- mon seal made in 1529. Finally, in 1575, Robert Cooke, Clarencieux, granted to the College the present arms. 168 Two Royal Foundations together with a crest. The original patent is preserved in the College Treasury. It grants to the College the arms of Queen Margaret of Anjou, but with the addition of a bordure vert, and ior a crest, a black eagle with gold wings issuing from a golden coronet.] " Let us now turn from King Henry's College to the other royal foundation of his reign which claims his consort, the Lady Margaret of Anjou, as its foundress. The poet Gray in his " Installation Ode," speaking of Queen Margaret in relation to Queens' College, calls her *' Anjou's heroine." But those Shakespearean readers who have been accustomed to think of his representation of the Queen in The Second Part of King Henry Fl.y as a dramatic portrait of considerable truth and historic consistency, will hardly recognise the " heroic " qualities of Margaret's character. Certainly she is not one of Shakespeare's "heroines." She has none of the womanly grace or lovableness of his ideal women. A woman of hard indomitable will, mistaking too often cruelty for firmness, using the pliancy and simplicity of her husband for mere party ends, outraging the national conscience by stir- ring up the Irish, the French, the Scots, against the peace of England, finally pitting the north against the south in a cruel and futile civil war, with nothing left of womanhood but the almost tigress heart of a baffled mother, this is the Queen Margaret as we know her in Shakespeare and in history. But *< Our Lady the Queen Margaret," who was a "nursing mother" to Queens' College, seems a quite different figure. She has but just come to England, a wife and queen when little more than a child, *' good-looking and well-grown" [specie et forma prastans), precocious, romantic, a " devout pilgrim to the shrine of Boc- caccio," delighting in the ballads of the troubadour, a lover of the chase, inheriting all the literary tastes 169 The Story of Cambridge of her father, King Rene of Anjou. The motives which led her to become the patroness of a college lire thus given by Thomas Fuller : — "As Miltiades' trophy in Athens would not suffer Themistocles to sleep, so this queen, beholding her husband's bounty in building King's College, was restless in herself with holy emulation until she had produced something of the like nature, a strife wherein wives with- out breach of duty may contend with their husbands which should exceed in pious performance."' Accordingly we read that in 1447 Queen Margaret, being then but fifteen years old, sent to the King the following petition : — "Margaret, — To the king my soverain lord. Besechith niekely Margaret, quene of England, youre humble wif. Forasmuche as youre moost noble grace hath newely ordeined and stablisshed a Collage of S. Bernard, in the Universite of Cambrigge, with multitude of grete and faire privilages perpetuelly apparteynyng unto the same, as in your lettres patentes therupon made more plainly hit appereth. In the whiche Universite is no Collage founded by eny quene of England hidertoward. Plese hit therfore unto your high- nesse to geve and graunte unto your seid humble wif the fondacon and determinacon of the seid collage to be called and named the Queue's Collage of Sainte Margarete and Saint Bernard, or ellis of Sainte Margarett, vergine and maitir, and Saint Bernard Confessour, and thereupon for ful evidence therof to have licence and pouir to ley the furst stone in her own persone or ellis by other depute of her assignement, so that beside the moost noble and glorieus collage roial of our Lady and Saint Nicholas, founded by your highnesse may be founded and stablisshed the seid so called Quenes Collage to conservacon of oure feithe and augmentacon of pure clergie, nanily of the imparesse of alle sciences and facultees theologie ... to the ende accus- tomed of plain lecture and exposicon botraced with docteurs sentence autentiq performed daily twyse by two docteurs notable and well avised upon the bible aforenone and maistre of the sentences afternone to the publique audience of alle men frely, both seculiers and religieus to the magnificence ^ Fuller, " University of Cambridge," p. 161. 170 Two Royal Foundations of denominacon of such a Quene's Collage, and to laud and honneure of sexe feminine, like as two noble and devoute contesses of Pembroke and of Clare, founded two collages in the same Universite called Pembroke hall and Clare hall, the wiche are of grete reputacon for good and worshipful clerkis that by grete multitude have be bredde and brought forth in theym. And of your more ample grece to graunte that alle privileges, immunitees, profites and comoditees conteyned.in the lettres patentes above reherced may stonde in their strength and pouir after forme and effect of the conteine in theyme. " And she shal ever preye God for you." The College of S. Bernard, mentioned in the first paragraph of the Queen's petition, was a hostel, estab- lished by Andrew Dokett, the rector of S. Botolph's Church, situated on the north side of the churchyard in Trumpington Street, adjoining Benet College. For this hostel, Dokett had obtained from the King in 1445 a charter of incorporation as a college, but a year later procured another charter, refounding the College of S. Bernard on a new site, between Milne Street and the river, adjoining the house of the Carmelite Friars. The true founder, therefore, of Queens' College was Andrew Dokett, but he was forcsighted enough to seek the Queen's patronage for his foundation, and no doubt welcomed the absorption of S. Bernard's hostel in the royal foundation of Queens' College. Anyhow, the foundation stone of the new building was laid on the i 5th April 1 448. The outbreak of the Civil War stopped the works when the first court of the College was almost finished. Andrew Dokett, the first master, was still alive when Edward IV. came to the throne, and about the year 1465, he was fortunate to secure for his College the patronage of the new queen, Elizabeth Wydville. Elizabeth had been in earlier days a lady-in-waiting to Margaret of Anjou, and had herself strongly sympathised with the Lancastrian party. It is probable, therefore, that 171 The Story of Cambridge in accepting the patronage of the College she did so, not in her character as Yorkist queen, but rather as desirous of completing the work of the old mistress whom she had faithfully served before the strange chances of destiny had brought her as a rival to the throne. At any rate from this period onwards the pc^sition of the apostrophe after and not before the " s " in " Queens' " adequately corresponds to the fact that the College commemorates not one, but two queens in its title. The earliest extant statutes appear to be those of the second foundress, the Queen Consort of Edward IV., revised at a later time undtr the authority of Henry VIII. It seems indeed likely that the absence of canon law from the subjects required by statute from all fellows, after regency in arts, and the provision of Bible lectures in College, and divers English sermons to be preached in chapel by the fellows, indicates a somewhat remarkable reforming spirit for the end of the fifteenth century, and rather points to the conclusion that these provisions belong to the later revised code of Henry VIII. At the time of the foundation of Queens' College the plan of a collegiate building had been completely developed. It followed the lines not so much of a monastery, though it had, of course, some features in common with the monastic houses, but of the normal type of the large country houses or mansions of the fifteenth century. The late Professor Willis, in his archceological lectures on Cambridge, was accustomed, we are told, to exhibit in support of this view a ground plan of Haddon Hall and Queens' College side by side. And certainly it is surprising to notice how striking is the similarity of the two plans. The east and west position of the chapel at Haddon Hall happens to be the reverse of that of Queens' College, but with that 172 Or'ui IVindoiv, Queens' College 173 TisDo Royal Foundations exception, and the position of the entrance gateway to the first quadrangle, the arrangement of the build- ings in the two mansions is practically identical. The hall, buttery, and kitchen occupy in both the range of buildings between the two courts ; the private dining- room beyond the hall at Haddon is represented at Queens' College by the fellows' combination room ; the long gallery in the upper court of Haddon has more or less its counterpart at Queens' in the President's gallery in the cloister court ; the upper entrance at Haddon is similarly placed to the passage to the old wooden bridge at Queens'. The principal court of Queens' was almost com- pleted before the Wars of the Roses broke out. '< It is," says Mr J. W. Clark, " the earliest remaining quadrangle in Cambridge that can claim attention for real architectural beauty and fitness of design." It is built in red brick, and has a noble gateway flanked by octagonal turrets, and there are square towers at each external angle of the court. The employment of these towers is a peculiarity which perhaps offers presumptive evidence that the architect of the other two royal colleges of Eton and King's may also have been employed at Queens'. This court probably retains more of the aspect of ancient Cambridge than any other collegiate building in the town. Whether Professor Willis' supposition that the original builders had in their minds the intention of making their College a direct copy of the design of such a house as Haddon Hall, or were merely following the customary arrangements of a large Manor House of the period, there is no doubt that the first addition to the principal court was the range of building along the river front, forming the west side of what by still later additions has become the cloister Court. This building with a cloister work on the ground floor was completed The Story of Cambridge about 1460. Some thirty years later, about 1495, this building was connected with the principal court by brick, cloisters on the north and south thus forming an irregular quadrangle, of which the west side measures 75 ft. 9 in., the east side 66 ft., the north side 102 ft. 4 in., and the south side 79 ft. The picturesque building overhanging the cloister on the north side with its double storied oriel windows which give so characteristic a charm to this beautiful cloister court was probably added about 15 10. In its original con- dition it must have been even more picturesque, for Loggan's print, taken about 1688, shows each of the three large oriels on the side next to the Court carried up above the roof as a complete octagon, the top stage being contracted, covered with a conical roof, surmounted by a tall ornamental iron vase. The two smaller oriels on both the north and south sides were carried up only as far as the eaves and had gables above. The whole building is of timber, the walls being carried by carved brackets springing outwards from the cloister walls. The interior of this gallery which now forms the long drawing-room of the President's Lodge is one of the most beautiful and interesting sixteenth century rooms in Cambridge. It has a plain flat ceiling, but the walls were panneled with oak by Humphrey Tyndale, President in 1576 and Dean of Ely and hung with portraits of one of the Foundress Queens, Elizabeth of Widville, of Erasmus and of other worthies of the College. In the corner of the College ground south of the cloister court a third court was formed by the erection of chambers in 1564, which gave place two hundred years later to the Essex building which at its corner overlooks the town bridge. This court is known as Pump Court, or Erasmus Court, the staircase of the Erasmus Tower being in its S.E. corner. To 176 »'■ '^..' v^^^— ^%r?i •_■ . P ,^^ > ^,— I M 177 Tijoo Royal Foundations this period also belong the ancient dial and clock over the old chapel on the north side of the principal court, and the famous wooden Bridge which is one of the features of the river front. The Dial is thus described by Cole ; — " Over ye west end (of the chapel) is a small tower and against ye side of it which fronts ye court is lately placed a very handsome clock, 1733, and directly under it on ye wall of ye Chapel and over ye Door which leads to it is also lately painted a very elegant sun dial with all ye signs. This is no small ornamental to ye Court to enliven it." This tower was taken down in 1804, and replaced by a classical turret, which itself gave place in 1848 to the present wooden turret. The present Dial and the Bridge are commonly associated with the name of Sir Isaac Newton. "Newton's Clock," ** Newton's Bridge," " Erasmus' Walk," " Milton's Mulberry Tree " — the popular association of the great names has so much poetic glamour about it that one would wish to believe in each case in the authenticity of the attribution. But the historic conscience and Cambridge accuracy alike compel the statement, as to clock and bridge, that Newton died in 1728, and the clock and dial are very precisely dated by Cole as being constructed in 1733, ^"^ ^^^ bridge as precisely by Dr Plumptre as built by Essex and designed by Etheridge in 1749. It is true that the Bridge built then, replaced another built in 1700, and that about this earlier bridge it is certainly possible that Newton may have been con- sulted, although it is only fair to remember that just at that time Newton was temporarily absent from Cam- bridge, having been appointed Master of the Mint, and was so conscientiously zealous about his work that he wrote to a friend. ^ ** I do not love to be dunned and teased by foreigners about mathematical things, or to 1 Baily, " Life of Plumsteed," p. 164. 179 The Story of Cambridge be thought by our own people to be trifling away my time about them when I should be about the king's business " But after all perhaps " the mathematical thing " of the Queens' Bridge, complicated and in- genious in its design as it seems, would hardly trifle away much of Newton's time. Of Erasmus' Walk under the trees in the garden across the Bridge, Dr Plumptre in his MS. History writes thus : — <JK,'. «j Y.*- M MA r ? U'^v.-z- ir^ ft "I 'I flife re |_P III fS^ s »*; p» •-^.frl ..^ — •«!•*■ ^•^"i .(^ ^ .^■V ,^^C>..«rt^s- ^. ^ ^. — Two of the Smaller Halls Eachard, master in 1675-97. He built the hall, buttery, west range and south range of buildings as far as the Ramsden Building. He died in 1697, leaving his design incomplete, for Loggan's print of 1688 shows a complete four-sided court, the eastern front of which to the street was to have contained the library. The chapel was built in 1744, on the site of the stables of Thomas Hobson, whose just but despotic method of dealing with his customers gave rise to the phrase " Hobson's choice " : and the Ramsden Building opposite some fifty years later by funds bequeathed by Mrs Mary Ramsden. The original idea of a closed court was apparently abandoned at this time, the frontage being completed by Essex with the present railings and gateway. The ap- pearance of the court has been much altered by the addition in 1868 of an oriel window to the hall, and by the introduction of other windows filled with Gothic tracery. College Portraits In the Hall Edwin Sandys, D.D. ; Archbishop of York, d. 1588. Portrait of clergyman, eighteenth century. John Lightfoot, D.D.; Master, 1650-167 5. Mrs Ramsden of Norton, Yorkshire, Benefactress. Robert Woodlarke, Founder and Master, 147 3- 147 5, by Kneller. Benjamin Hoadly, D.D. ; Fellow; Bishop of Win- chester, 1 676- 1 76 1. Thomas Sherlock, D.D. ; Master ; 1714-19 ; Bishop of London, d. 1761. Portrait of. a man. Thomas Turton, D.D., as Dean of Westminster, afterwards (1845-1864) Bishop of Ely. 201 The Story of Cambridge Portrait of a man. „ of a woman. ,, of a man. Mrs Robinson ( ? mother of Mrs Ramsden.) George Elwes Corrie, D.D. ; Fellow ; Master of College, 1849-1885. In the Combination Room John Goslin, M.D. ; Master of Caius Coll., 1618-25 > Professor of Physic ; Benefactor. John, Lord Cutts. Portrait of a man. Joseph Proctor, D.D. ; Master. 1799-1845. Portrait of a man. ,, of a man. ,, of a woman. „ of a man. ,, of a man. Prince Charles, Duke of York, afterwards Charles II. A cleric, eighteenth century. Francis Blackburne, Archdeacon of Cleveland. A cleric, eighteenth century. In the Master s Lodge Hall: — Mrs Ramsden. Stairs : — Mr Skyrne. Bust — Thomas Turton, Bishop of Ely. Drawing-Room : — Lady Ayscough. A man, one of the Ayscough family. Lady Ayscough. Dining-room : — John W. Ray, inscribed Ex dono R. Ray, 1752. Lady Ayscough. Portrait of a man. A group of Dutch painters, time of Terburg. Mrs Brearey : by Kneller. 202 CHAPTER IX Bishop Alcock and the Nuns of S, Rhadegund " Yea, since his dayes a cocke was in the fen, I knowe his voyce among a thousand men : He taught, he preached, he mended every wrong : But, Coridon, alas I no good thing abideth long. He All was a Cocke, he wakened us from sleepe And while we slumbered he did our foldes keep: No cur, no foxes, nor butchers' dogges would Coulde hurte our folds, his watching was so good ; The hungry wolves which did that time abounde, What time he crowed abashed at the sounde. This Cocke was no more abashed at the Foxe Than is a Lion abashed at the Oxe." — Alexander Barclay, Monk of Ely, 15 13. The New Learning in Italy and Germany — The English "Pilgrim Scholars": Grey, Tiptoft, Linacre, Grocyn — The practical Genius of England — Bishops Rother- ham, Alcock, and Fisher — Alcock, diplomatist, financier, architect — The Founder of Jesus College — He takes as his model Jesus College, Rotherham — His Object the Training of a Preaching Clergy — The Story of the Nunnery of S. Rhadegund — Its Dissolution — Conversion of the Conventual Church into a College Chapel — The Monastic Buildings, Gateway, Cloister, Chapter House — The Founder a Better Architect than an Educational Reformer — The Jesus Roll of eminent Men from Cranmer to Coleridge. T^HE historical importance of the New Learning depends ultimately on the fact that its influence on the Western world broadened out into a new 203 The Stoj-y of Cambridge capacity for culture in general, which took various forms according to the dirferent local or national conditions with which it came into contact. In Italy, its land of origin, the Classical Revival was felt mainly as an aesthetic ideal, an instrument for the self-culture of the individual, expressing itself in delight for beauty of form and elegance of literary style, bringing to the life of the cultured classes a social charm and distinction of tone, which, however, it is difficult sometimes to distinguish from a merely refined paganism. In France and Spain too, where the basis of character was also Latin, the aesthetic spirit of classical antiquity was readily assimilated. To a French or a Spanish scholar sympathy with the pagan spirit was instinctive and innate. The Teutonic genius, however, both on the side of Literature and of Art, remained sturdily impervious to the more aesthetic side of the Italian Renaissance. In Germany the aesthetic influence was evident enough — we can trace it plainly in the writings of Erasmus and Melancthon, though with them Italian humanism was always a secondary aim subservient to a greater end — but it had a strongly marked character of its own, wholly different from the Italian. The Renaissance in Germany indeed we rightly know by the name of the Reformation, and the paramount task of the German scholars of the New Learning we recognise to have been the elucidation of the true meaning of the Bible. Similarly in England the scholarly mind was at first little affected by the .jbSthetic considerations which meant so much to a Frenchman or an Italian. A few chosen Englishmen, it Is true, "pilgrim scholars" they were called — William Grey, Bishoj) of Ely, John 'i'iptoft. Earl if Worcester, Thomas Linacre, William Grocyn stand out perhaps most conspicuously — were drawn to Italy by the rumours of the marvellous treasures rescued 204 Bishop Alcock from monastic lumber rooms, or conveyed over seas by fugitive Greeks, but they returned to England to iind that there was little they could do except to bequeath the books and manuscripts they had collected to an Oxford or a Cambridge College, and hope for happier times when scholars would be found to read them. It was not indeed until the little group of Hellenists — Erasmus and Linacre and Grocyn and Colet — had shown the value of Greek thought as an interpreter of the New Testament, that any enthusiasm for the New Learning could be awakened in England. An increase of a knowledge of the Bible was worth working for, not the elegancies of an accurate Latin style. English- men in the fifteenth century were busy in the task of developing trade and commerce, and their intellectual tone took colour from their daily work. It became eminently utilitarian and practical. An English scholar was willing to accept the New Learning if you wou'd prove to him that it was useful or was true, that it was only beautiful did not at first much affect him. It was only therefore with an eye to strictly practical results that at the universities the New Learning was welcomed, and even there tardily. Nowhere perhaps is this practical tendency of English scholarship at this period more characteristically shown than in the Cambridge work of Thomas Alcock and John Fisher, the founders respectively of Jesus College and of the twin colleges of Christ's and John's. Alcock and Fisher were both of them Yorkshiremen, born and educated at Beverley in the Grammar School connected with the Minster there, and both proceed- ing from thence to Cambridge : Alcock in all likeli- hood, though there is some doubt about this, to Pembroke, where he took his LL.D. degree in or before 1461 ; Fisher to Michaelhouse, of which he became a Fellow in 1491. 205 The Story of Cambridge Of Alcock, the historian Bale has said that " no one in England had a greater reputation for sanctity." He was equally remarkable for his practical qualities, as a diplomatist, as a financier, as an architect. He had twice been a Royal Commissioner, under Richard HI. and under Henry VII., to arrange treaties with Scotland. By an arrangement, of which no similar instance is known, he had conjointly held the office of Lord Chancellor with Bishop Rotherham of Lincoln, he himself at that time ruling the diocese of Rochester. As early as 1462 he had been made Master of the Rolls. In 1 476 he was translated to Worcester, and at the same time became Lord President of Wales. On the accession of Henry VII., he was made Comptroller of the Royal Works and Buildings, an office for which he was especially fitted, it is said, by his skill as an architect. In i486 he was translated to the See of Ely and again made Lord Chancellor. JESUS COLLEGE Founded 1497 by John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, on the sup- pression of the Nunnery of S. Rhadegund. [Bishop Alcock's College of "Jesus, Mary, and John Evan- gelist" displays in the base of its first seal, which dates from the foundation in 1496, a shield bearing the five wounds of Christ. 'I'hese arnr* were probably set aside at the Reformation as savouring of '= superstition ^ and in their stead the Cululogus of 1572 gives the later arms of the founder: argent, on a fas hetivecii thre: cocks' heads erased sable, hcakfd, combed and ivaiilfd o^nhs a mitre or. The present arms, which are the founder's within a bordure of the See of Ely, were granted with a crest by Cooke in 1575. They are blazoned as: silver, a fess betiueen three cocks' heads, erased sable combed and ivattled, a border gules 206 Bishop Alcock semy croivns golden. In the Jesus grant the crowns are ten in number. The crest g^ranted at the same time is a cock, sable, membered gules, issuing from a gold coronet ."^ It was as Bishop of Ely that he undertook the foundation of Jesus College. There can, I think, be little doubt that for the idea of his projected college he was indebted to his old Cambridge friend and co- chancellor, Thomas Rotherham, at this time Arch- bishop of York. At any rate, it is noteworthy that each of the friends founded in his Diocese — the Arch- bishop at his native place of Rotherham, the Bishop of Ely at Cambridge — a college dedicated to the name of Jesus. Jesus College, Rotherham, was founded in 1481 : Jesus College, Cambridge, followed fifteen years later. The main object of the two prelates was probably the same. In the license for the foundation of Rotherham's college its objects are stated to be twofold : " To preach the Word of God in the Parish of Rotherham and in other places in the Diocese of York ; and to instruct gratuitously, in the rules of grammar and song, scholars from all parts of England, and especially from the Diocese of York." There is no reason to suppose that the needs of the Diocese of Ely, even fifteen years later, were any different. For the fact that Jesus College, Rotherham, should consist of ten persons — a provost, six choristers, and three masters — who can teach respectively grammar, music, and writing, the Archbishop gave the fanciful reason, that as he, its founder, had offended God in His ten commandments, so he desired the benefit of the prayers of ten persons on his behalf. Alcock's motive for fixing the number of his new Society of Jesus at Cambridge at thirteen seems to have been no less characteristic. Thirteen, the number of the original Christian Society of Our Lord and His Apostles, was the common complement of the professed members 207 The Story of Cambridge of a monastic society, and may in all likelihood have been the original number of the nuns of S. Rhadegund, whose house the Bishop was about to suppress to found his new college. " Rotherham's College, according to its measure, was in- tended to meet two pressing needs of his time, and especially of northern England — a preaching clergy, and boys trained for the service of the Church. At the end of the fifteenth century ' both theology and the art of preaching seemed in danger of general neglect. At the English universities, and consequently throughout the whole country, the sermon was falling into almost complete disuse.' The disfavour with which it was regarded by the heads of the Church was largely due to fear of the activity of the Lollards, which had brought all popular harangues and discourses under suspicion. When the embers of heresy had been extinguished, here and there a reforming churchman sought to restore among the parish clergy the old preaching activity. In the wide unmanageable dioceses of the north the lack of an educated, preaching priesthood was most aj^parent. Bishop Stanley is probably only echoing tlie language of Alcock when he begins and closes his statutes with an exhortation to the society, whom he addresses as ' scholars of Jesus,' so to conduct themselves ' that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be honoured, the clergy multiplied, and the people called to the praise of God.' He enacts that of the five Foundation Fellows (one of Alcock's having been sup- pressed) four shall be devoted to the study of theology, and he requires that tliey shall be chosen from natives of five counties, which, owing to the imperfections of the single existing copy of his statutes, are unspecified. If, as is likely, this county restriction was re-introduced by Stanley from the provisions made by Alcock, it is natural to surmise that the founder's native county was one of those preferred. Certain it is that his small society had a Yorkshireman, Chubbes of Whitby, for its master. He had been a Fellow of Pembroke, and probably from the same society and county came one of the original Fellows of Jesus, William Atkynson. "The same fear of Lollardism which had stiHed preaching had caused the teaching profession to be regarded with jealousy by the authorities of the Church. In a limited part of north-eastern England, William Byngham, about the year 1439, found seventy schools void for • grete scarstie 208 Bishop Alcock of Maistres of Gramar' which fifty years previously had been in active use. His foundation of God's House at Cambridge was designed to supply trained masters to these derelict schools. The boys' schools attached to Rotherham's and Alcock's Foundations were intended to meet the same deficiency. Presumably Alcock meant that one or other of his Fellows should supply the teaching, for his foundation did not include a school-master. The linking of a grammar school with a house of university students was of course no novelty ; the connection of Winchester with New College had been copied by Henry VI. in the association of Eton and King's. But Alcock's plan of including boys and ' dons ' within the same walls, and making them mix in the common life and discipline of hall and chapel, if not absolutely a new thing, had no nearer prototype in an English university than Walter de Merton's provisions in the statutes of his College for a Grammatkus and Pueri. Though the school was meant to supply a practical need, the pattern of it seems to have been suggested by Alcock's mediaeval sentiment. There is indeed no evidence or likelihood that S. Rhadegund's Nunnery maintained a school, but the same monastic pre- cedent which Alcock apparently followed in fixing the number of his society prescribed the type of his school. It stood in the quarter where monastic schools were always placed, next the gate, in the old building which had served the nuns as their almonry." ^ The story of the nunnery of S. Rhadegund, which, under the auspices of Bishop Alcock, became Jesus College, is an interesting one. Luckily, the material for that history is fairly complete. The nuns be- queathed a large mass of miscellaneous documents — charters, wills, account rolls — to the College, and the scrupulous care with which they were originally housed, and not less, perhaps, the wholesome neglect which has since respected their repose in the College muni- ment room, have fortunately preserved them intact to the present time, and have enabled the present tutor of the College, Mr Arthur Gray, to reconstruct a fairly complete picture of this isolated woman's com- 1 "Jesus College," by A. Gray, p. 32. o 209 The Story of Cambridge munity in an alien world of men in pre- Academic Cambridge, and of the depravation and decay which came of that isolation, and which ended in the first suppression in England of an independent House of Religion. I am indebted for the following particulars to Mr Gray*s monograph on the priory of S. Rhade- gund, published a year or two ago by the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, and to the first chapter of his lately published College History. Who the nuns were that first settled on the Green- Croft by the river bank below Cambridge, and whence they came thither, and by what title they became possessed of their original site, the documents they have handed down to us across the centuries apparently do not record. It is true that in the letters patent of Henry VH. for the dissolution of the nunnery and the erection of a college in its room it is asserted — evidently on the representation of Bishop Alcock — that S. Rhadegund's Priory was "of the foundation and patronage of the Bishop, as in right of his Cathedral Church of Ely." The nun's " original cell " was no doubt of the Benedictine Order, and the great Priory of Ely, fifteen miles away dov/n the river, was also Benedictine, and the good Bishop may have been right in his assertion of the connection between the two. but it is a little doubtful whether he could have given chapter and verse for his assertion. What is certain is this, that Nigel, the second Bishop of Ely, in the opening years of Stephen's reign, gave to the nuns their earliest charter. It is addressed with Norman magnificence "to all barons and men of S. Ethcldrytha, cleric or lay, French or English," and it grants for a rent of twelve pence, "to the nuns of the cell lately established without the vill of Cantebruge," certain land lying near to other land belonging to the same cell. To the friendly interest of the same 2IO Bishop Alcock Bishop it seerrts probable that the nuns owed their first considerable benefaction. This was a parcel of ground, consisting of two virgates and six acres of meadow and four cottars with their tenure in the neigh- bouring village of Shelford, granted to them by a certain William the Monk. The fact that after seven centuries and a half the successors of the nuns of S. Rhadegund, the Master and Fellow of Jesus College, still hold possession of the same property is not only a remarkable instance of continuity of title, but also, let us hope, is sufficient proof that the original donor had come by his title honestly — a fact about which there might otherwise have been some suspicion, when we read such a record as this of this same William the Monk in the Historia Eliensis of Thomas of Ely : '* With axes and hammers, and every implement of masonry he profanely assailed the shrine (of S. Ethel- dreda, the Foundress Saint in the Church of Ely), and with his own hand robbed it of its metal.'' How- ever, it is something that further on in the same record we may read : " He lived to repent it bitterly. He, who had once been extraordinarily rich and had lacked for nothing, was reduced to such extreme poverty as not even to have the necessaries of life. At last when he had lost all and knew not whither to turn himself, by urgent entreaty he prevailed on the Ely brethren to receive him into their order, and there with unceasing lamentation, tears, vigils, and prayers deploring his guilt, he ended his days in sincere penitence." Oiher benefactions followed that of William the Monk, lands, customs, tithes, fishing rights, advowsons of churches. At some time in the reign of Henry II. the nuns acquired the advowson of All Saints Church — All Saints in the Jewry — a living which still belongs to the Masters and Fellows of Jesus, although the old church standing in the open space opposite the gate of 21 I The Story of Cambridge John's was removed in the middle of the last century, and is now represented by the memorial cross placed on the vacant spot and by the fine new church of All f^-^^-^fy S. J (Jut's iind Diviiiiti/ Schools, and Memorial Cross. Saints facing Jesus College. The advowson of S. Clements followed in the year 1215, given to the nuns by an Alderman of the Cambridge Guild Merchants. Altogether the nunnery, though never a large house, seems to have acquired a comfortable patrimony. 212 Bishop Alcock ''The Account Rolls which the departing sisters left behind them in 1496 reveal pretty fully the routine of their lives. Books — save for the casual mention of the binding of the lives of the saints — were none of their business, and works of charity, excepting the customary dole to the poor on Maundy Thursday, and occasional relief to " poor soldiers disabled in the wars of Our Lord the King,' scarcely con- cerned them more. The duties of hospitality in the Guest House make the Cellaress a busy woman. They cost a good deal, but are not unprofitable ; the nuns take in ' paying guests,' daughters of tradesmen and others. Being ladies, the sisters neither toil nor spin ; but the Prioress and the Grangeress have an army of servants, whose daily duties have to be assigned to them ; carters and ploughmen have to be sent out to the scattered plots owned by the Nunnery in the open fields about Cambridge ; the neatherd has to drive the cattle to distant Willingham fen ; the brewer has instructions for malting and brewing the ' peny-ale ' which serves the nuns for ' bevers ' ; and the women servants are despatched to work in the dairy, to weed the garden, or to weave and to make candles in the hospice. Once in a while a party of the nuns, accompanied by their maid-servants, takes boat as far as to Lynn, there to buy stock-fish and Norway timber, and to fetch a letter for the Prioress." ^ There is not much sign, alas ! in all the record of any great devotion to religion, such as we might have expected to find in regard to such a House. Indeed, it would seem that there was seldom a time in the history of the Nunnery when a visit from the Bishop of the Diocese or from one of his commissioners on a round of inspection was other than a much-resented occurrence. Discipline, indeed, appears to have been generally lax in the Nunnery, and the sisters or some of them easily got permission to gad outside the cloister. Scandal is a key which generally unlocks the cloister gate and permits a glance into the interior shadows. Bene vixif qua bene latuit. " Not such was Margaret Cailly, whose sad story was the gossip of the nuns' parlour in 1389. She came of an old and 1 " History of Jesus," A. Gray, p. 16. 213 The Story of Cambridge reputable family which had furnished mayors and bailiffs to Cambridge and had endowed the nuns with land at Trump- ington. For reasons sufficiently moving her, which we may only surmise, she escaped from the cloister, discarded her re- ligious garb, and sought hiding in the alien diocese of Lincoln. But it so happened that Archbishop Courtenay that year was making metropolitical visitation of that diocese, and it was the ill-fortune of Margaret, ' a sheep wandering from the fold among thorns,' to come under his notice. The Archbishop, solicitous that ' her blood be not required at our hands,' handed her over to the keeping of our brother of Ely. The Bishop in turn passed her on to the custody of her own Prioress, with injunctions that she should be kept in close confinement, under exercise of salutary penance, until she showed signs of contrition for her 'excesses'; and further that when the said Margaret first entered the chapter-hou-e she should humbly implore pardon of the Prioress and her sisters for her offences. The story ends for us at Margaret's prison-door." ^ Such a story, more or less typical, I fear, of much and long continued lax discipline, prepares us for the end. When Bishop Alcock visited the House in 1497, we are not surprised perhaps at the evidence which is set forth in the Letters Patent authorising the foundation of his College in the place of the Nunnery. The buildings and properties of the house are said to be dilapidated and wasted " owing to the improvidence, extravagance, and incontinence of the nuns resulting from their proximity to the University." Two nuns only remain ; one of them is professed elsewhere, the other is mfam'is. They are in abject want, utterly unable to maintain Divine service or the works of mercy and piety required of them, and are ready to depart, leaving the home desolate. From the nuns of S. Rhadegund then Jesus College received no heritage of noble ideal. Two things only they have left behind them for whicii they merit 1 *' History of Jesus," A. Gra) , p. 1 8, 214 Bishop Alcock gratitude. Firstly, a bundle of deeds and manuscripts, inconsiderable to them, very valuable to the scholars and historians of the future ; and secondly, their fine old church and monastic buildings. In writing in a previous chapter of the buildings of Queens' we drew attention to the fact that the general plan of the College followed in the main the lines of a large country house such as Haddon Hall. And in degree this is true of the other college buildings in Cambridge. A mere glance at a ground-plan of Jesus will show at once that the arrangement of the buildings is entirely different from that of any other college at Cambridge, and it is clearly derived from that of a monastery. This accords with what we know of its history. However dilapidated the old Nunnery may have become through the poverty and neglect of the nuns, the outward walls of solid clunch, which under a facing of later brick, still testify to the durability of the Nunnery builders, were still practically intact, and Bishop Alcock had too much practical skill as an architect to destroy buildings which he could so easily adapt to the needs of his college, and harmonise to fifteenth century fashions in architecture. In his conversion of the Nunnery buildings to the purposes of his college. Bishop Alcock grouped the buildings he required round the original cloister of the nuns, increasing the size of that cloister by the breadth of the north aisle of the Conventual Church which he pulled down. The hall was placed on the north side, the library on the west. The kitchens and offices were in the angle of the cloister between the hall and library. The master's lodge at the south-west corner was partly constructed out of the altered nave of the church, and partly out of new buildings connecting this south-western corner of the cloister with the gate of entrance. This gateway, approached by a long 21^ The Story of dunb ridge gravelled path between nigh walls, known popularly as "the chimney," is one of the most picturesque features of the College. It is usually ascribed to Bishop Alcock, but on architectural evidence only. It is thus described by Professor Willis : — "The picturesque red-brick gateway tower of Jesus College (1497), although destitute of angle-turrets, is yet distinguished from the ground upwards by a slight relief, by stone quoins, and by having its string courses designedly placed at different levels from those of the chambers on each side of it. The general disposition of the ornamentation of its arch and of the wall above it furnished the model for the more elaborate gate-houses at Christ's College and St John's College. Tlie ogee hood-mould rises upwards, and the stem of its finial terminates under the base of a handsome taber- nacle which occupies the centre of the upper stage, with a window on each side of it. Each of the spandrel spaces contains a shield, and a larger shield is to be found in the triangular field between the hood-mould and the arch." Professor Willis thus describes also the Conventual Church and the changes which were made by the Bishop in his conversion of it into a college chapel. ''The church . . . presented an arrangement totally different from that of the chapel of Jesus College at the present day. It was planned in the form of a cross, with a tower in the centre, and had in addition to a north and south transept, aisles on the north and south sides of the eastern limb, flanking it along half the extent of its walls, and forming chapels which opened to the chancel by two pier arches in each wall. The structure was completed by a nave of seven piers with side aisles . (The church) was an admirable specimen of the architecture of its period, and two of the best preserved remaining portions, the series of lancet windows on the north and south sides of the eastern limb, and the arcade that ornaments the inner surface of the tower walls, will always attract attention and admiration for the beauty of their composition. " Under the direction of Bishop /Ucock the side aisles, both of the chancel and of the nave, were entirely removed, the pier arches by which they had communicated with the 216 9 fi^,- VI'- r •*> it ; '■m •>■'■< ^-•■^ •r ^4 ■■ ■■"■jv • 'V , V~»» r ( 'K«.>< - ^ ^^ l^:- ^ JrV-^i'^* '' : --^r.c ''2' / - Jr ^ I •'* "-'^'^S ^' * > -J ' 7^ B » ^ (^ « ^\'-.v Bishop Alcock remaining centre portion of the building were walled up, and the place of each arch was occupied by a perpendicular window of the plainest description. The walls were raised, a flat roof was substituted for the high pitched roof of the original structure, large perpendicular windows were in- serted in the gables of the chancel and south transept, and lastly, two thirds of the nave were cut off from the church by a wall, and fitted up partly as a lodge for the master, partly as chambers for students. " As for the portion set apart for the chapel of the college, the changes were so skilfully effected and so completely concealed by plaster within and without, that all trace and even knowledge of the old aisles was lost ; but in the course of preparations for repairs in 1846 the removal of some of the plaster made known the fact that the present two south windows of the chancel were inserted in walls which were themselves merely the fiUing-up of a pair of pier-arches and that these arches, together with the piers upon which they rested, and the responds whence they sprang still existed in the walls. When this key to the secret of the church had been supplied, it was resolved to push the inquiry to the uttermost ; all the plaster was stripped off the inner face of the walls ; piers and arches were brought to light again in all directions : old foundations were sought for on the outside of the building, and a complete and systematic examination of the plan and structure of the original Church was set on foot, which led to very satis- factory results."! To-day the completely restored church, the work at varying intervals from 1849 to 1869 of Salvin and Pugin and Bodley, forms one of the most beautiful and interesting college chapels in Cambridge. An import- ant series of stained glass windows were executed by Mr William Morris from the designs of Burne-Jones between 1873-77. The subjects are the following, beginning with the north-east window in the south transept and counting from left to right in each case : — ! Willis and Clark's "Architectural History of Cam- bridge," vol. ii. p. 123. 217 The Story of Cambridge I. NORTH WINDOW, FAST WALL. The Incarnation Sibylla Perslca. The Nativity. The Annunciation. Sibylla Cumana. S. MatthjEus. The Adoration of the Magi. II. SOUTH WINDOW, EAST WALL The Passion Sibylla Delphica. The Flagellationof Christ. The Agony in the Garden. Sibylla Cimmeria. S. Lucas. Christ bearing the Cross. III. WINDOW IN THE SOUTH WALL In the tracery : — The Heavenly Choir. Seraphim, Cherubim, Throni, Potestates, Domina- tiones, Principatus, Virtutes, Archangeli, Angeli, Imago Dei, S. Ursula, S. Dorothea, S. Rhadegunda, S. Cecilia, S. Catherina, S. Heironymus, S. Gregorius, John Alcock, S. Ambrosius, S. Augustinus. IV. SOUTH WINDOW, WEST WALL The Resurrection Sibylla Phrygia The Incredulity of Thomas. Christ recognised by Sibylla Tibyssa. Mary Magdalene. S. Marcus. The Supper at Emmaus. V. NORTH WINDOW, WEST WALL 7 he Jlscension Sibylla Erythraea. The Adoration of the Lamb. The Vision of S. Stephen. Sibylla Tiburtina. S. Johannes. The Descent of the Holy Spirit, 2jS Bishop Alcock NAVE VJ. EAST WINDOW, SOUTH WALL Adam. Noe Patriarcha. The Fall. The Lord shows to Noah the pattern of the ark. Enoch. Abram heres Mundi. An Angel leading Enoch. VII. WEST WINDOW, SOUTH WALL Moses. David. The Burning Bush. David and Goliath. Samuel. Solomon. Eli and Samuel. Building of Temple, VIII. WEST WINDOW, NORTH WALL Isaiah. Ezekiel. Destruction of Senna- The Resurrection of Dry cherib. Bones. Jeremiah. Daniel in the Lion's den. Punishment of Nebuchad- nezzar. IX. EAST WINDOW, NORTH WALL Temperance. Fortitude. Anger. Cowardice. Justice. Prudence. Injustice. Folly. NORTH TRANSEPT, West Wall X. SOUTH WINDOW XI. NORTH WINDOW Hope, Faith, Charity. Patience, Obedience, Do- cility. ■^^■^ The legends are principally from the Bible. The others are from S. Augustine's chapter on the Sibyls ( De Civitate De'i^ Bk. xviii.. Chap. 23.). 219 The Story of Cambridge In 1893 the Rev. Osmund Fisher, a former Dean of the College, at this time elected an Honorary Fellow, remembering to have seen in his undergraduate days of fifty years before indications of old Gothic work in the wall of the cloister, during some re- pair of the plaster work, obtained leave of the Master to investigate the wall. This led to the dis- covery of the beautiful triple group of early English arches and doorway which formed the original entrance to the chapter-house of the Nunnery, one of the most charming bits of thirteenth century architectural grouping in all Cambridge. Bishop Alcock was probably a better architect than he was an educational reformer. He was successful enough in converting the fabric of the dissolved Nunnery into college buildings. It may be doubted whether he was equally successful in translating his friend Archbishop Rotherham's ideal of a grammar school college into a working institution. In the con- stitution which he gave to his college there were to be places found for both Fellows and boys — Scholares et Pueri — but the Scholares were obviously to be men, and the Pueri simply schoolboys, for they were to be under fourteen years of age on admission ; and Juveries, undergraduate scholars, did not enter into his plan. The amended statutes of his successors, Bishops Stanley and West, gave some definition to the founder's scheme, but they did not materially modify it. Within fifty years, in fact, from its foundation, Jesus College, as Alcock had conceived it, had become an ana- chronism, and the claustral community of student priests with their schoolboy acolytes, not seriously concerned with true education, and unvivified by con- tact with the real student scholar, came near to perish- ing, as a thing born out of due season. The dawn of what might seem to be a better state of things only 220 Bishop Alcock began with the endowment of scholarships — scholar- ships, that is to say, in the modern sense — in the reign of Edward VI. It was only, however, with the university reforms of the nineteenth century that the proportion of college revenue allotted to such endow- ment fund was reasonably assessed. And yet with this somewhat meagre scholarship equipment the roll of eminent men belonging to Jesus College is a worthy one. On the very first page of that roll we are confronted with the name of Cranmer. We do not know the name of any student whose admission to the College preceded his. Wary and sagacious then, as in later life, he had resisted the tempting offer of a Fellowship at Wolsey's new college of Christ Church at Oxford to come to Cambridge, there, it is true at first, *' to be nursed in the grossest kind of sophistry, logic, philosophy, moral and natural (not in the text of the old philo- sophers, but chiefly in the dark riddles of Duns and other subtle questionists), to his age of 22 years," but shortly, having taken his B.A. degree in 151 1, to 221 T^he Story of Cambridge receive from Erasmus, who in that year began to lecture at Cambridge as Lady Margaret Reader, his first bent towards those studit-s which led eventually to the publication of his *' Short Instruction into Christian Religion," which it had been better had he himself more closely followed, and possibly towards that opportunist policy, which in the event ended so sadly for himself, and meant so much, both of evil and of good, to the future of both Church and State in England. Closely associated with Cranmer were other Jesus men, noted theologians of the reforming party ; — John Bale, afterwards Bishop of Os-ory, called " bilious Bale " by Fuller because of the rancour of his attacks on his papal opponents, Geoffry Downs, Thomas Goodrich, afterwards Bishop of Ely, John Edmunds, Robert Okyng, and others. In the list of succeeding archbishops claimed by the College as Jesus men occur the names of Herring, Huttun, Siernc. The Sterne family indeed con- tribute not a few members through several generations to the College, not the least eminent being the author of "Tristram Shandy" and <' The Sentimental Journey." The portraits of both Laurence Sterne and his great grandfather the Archbishop hang on the walls of the dining-hall, the severe eyes of the Caroline divine looking across as if with much disfavour at the trim and smiling figure of his descendant, the young cleric so unlike his idea of what a priest and scholar should be. Other than " Shandean " influence in the College is, however, suggesteil by the name of Henry Venn among the admissions of 1742, when he migrated to Jesus after three months' residence at S. John's, and exercised an inHuencc prophetic of the great movement of Cambridge evangelicalism, pro- longed far into the next century by Venn's pupil and friend, Charles Simeon. It is probable, however, 222 Bishop Alcock that there is no more brilliant page in the history of Jesus College than that which tells the story of the last decade of the seventeenth century, and which contains the names of William Otter, E. D. Clarke, Robert Malthus, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge was elected a Rustat Scholar in 1791 and a Foundation Scholar in 1793, ^^^ ^^ gained no academic distinction. There was no classical tripos in those days, and to obtain a Chancellor's medal it was necessary that a candidate should have obtained honours in mathematics, for which Coleridge had all a poet's abhorrence. Among the poems of his college days may be remembered, " A Wish written in Jesus Wood, Feb. 10, 1792," and the well-known "Monologue to a young Jackass in Jesus Piece." Another poem more worthy of record perhaps, though he scribbled it in one of the College chapel prayer- books, is one of regretful pathos on the neglected "hours of youth," which finds a later echo in his " Lines on an Autumnal Evening," where he alludes to his undergraduate days at Jesus : — " When from the Muses' calm abode I came, with learning's meed not iinbestowed ; Whereas she twined a laurel round my brow, And met my kiss, and half returned my vow." And with that quotation from the Jesus poet we may perhaps close this chapter, only adding one word of hearty agreement with that encomium which was passed upon the College by King James, who, because of the picturesqueness of its old buildings and the beauty and charm of its surroundings, spoke of Jesus College as Musarum Cantabrigiensium Museum^ and also with that decision which on a second visit to Cambridge His Majesty wisely gave, that " Were he to choose, he would pray at King's, dine at Trinity, and study and sleep at Jesus." 223 The Story of Cambridge College Portraits In the Hall T. E. Wilkinson, D.D. ; Bishop of North Europe. Rev. Osmund Fisher, Hon. Fellow. Laurence Sterne: by Alan Ramsay, 174O. Francis Willoughby, Lord Middieton, M.P. for the University. S. T. Coleridge (copy of portrait in National Portrait Gallery : by Washington Allston.) Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1489- 1556. Tobias Rustat, Benefactor: by Lely. Richard Sterne, D.D. ; Archbishop of York, 1664-83 : presented by Laurence Sterne. H.A.Morgan, D.D. ; Master, 1885: by Hon. J. Collier. E. D. Clarke, M.D. ; Professor of Mineralogy, 1808- 22 : by Opie. Richard Beadon, Bishop of Bath and Wells (copy of the portrait in the Master's Lodge). Benjamin Leigh Smith, Hon. Fellow; Arctic Explorer (repHcaofportraitin the National Portrait Gallery). In the Combination Room The Hon. Thomas Willoughby, Adm., 1745. Rev. Frederick Keller, Fellow. Benjamin Leigh Smith. King Henry VHL John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, 1476- 1501 ; painted in 1596 (apparently a copy of a portrait on glass). Mary Queen of Scots (a replica of the picture at Hampton Court). Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, dated 1548 (similar to the portrait dated 1543 by Fliccius in National Portrait Gallery) presented by Lord Middieton. 224 Bishop Alcock George Stovin Venables, Q.C. ; late Fellow : chalk- drawing. George Elwes Corrie, D.D. ; Master, 1849-85. Portrait of a man sitting, inscribed on frame as William Harvey : it is a replica of a picture by Nicholas Maas, now in the gallery at the Hague, the sub- ject of which is said to be Grand Pensionary Cats : presented by Frederick Keller, Fellow. Charles Ashton, D.D. ; Master, 1701-52 (replica of portrait in Lodge). In the Library Dr Jortin, Fellow. Dr Brunsell, Fellow : pencil miniature. In the Master s Lodge Dining-room : — Charles Ashton, D.D. ; Master, 1701-52. Humphry Gower, D.D. ; Master, 1679. Richard Bancroft, D.D. ; Archbishop of Can- terbury, 1 544-1610: presented by Rev. R. Masters. William French, D.D. ; Master, 1820-49. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury : said to be copied from an original by Holbein, by D. Mytens the elder, but evidently a copy of the portrait in Combination Room : presented by R. Masters. Philip Yonge, D.D.; Master, 1752-58; Bishop of Bristol, 1758-61 ; of Norwich, 1761-83; ? by Reynolds. Richard Beadon, D.D. ; Master, 1780-89; Bishop of Gloucester, 1789- 1802; Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1802-24. William Pearce, D.D. ; Master, 1 789-1 820 ; p 225 The Story of Cambridge Master of the Temple and Dean of Ely : by Sir W. Beechey. Lynford Caryl, D.D. ; Master, 1758-80 : a copy from the original by Wright of Derby. Richard Sterne, D.D. ; Master, 1633; ejected 1644; restored 1 660; Bishop of Carlisle; 1660-64. Archbishop of York, 1664-83. 226 CHAPTER X Colleges of the New Learning " No more as once in sunny Avignon, The poet-scholar spreads the Homeric page, And gazes sadly, like the deaf at song : For now the old epic voices ring again And vibrate with the beat and melody Stirred by the warmth of old Ionian days." — Mrs Browning. The Lady Margaret Foundations — Bishop Fisher of Rochester — The Foundation of Christ's — God's House — The Buildings of the new College — College Worthies — John Milton — Henry More — Charles Darwin — The Hospital of the Brethren of S. John — Death of the Lady Margaret — Foundation of S. John's College — Its Buildings — The Great Gateway — The New Library — The Bridge of Sighs — The Wilderness — Wordsworth's " Prelude " — The Aims of Bishop Fisher — His Death. WE may well in this chapter take together the twin foundations of Christ's College and S. John's, which both had the Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby, and mother of Henry VH., for their foundress. The father of this lady was John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and her mother was Margaret, daughter and heiress of Sir John Beauchamp, of Bletso. " So that," says Fuller, punning on her parents' names, ^^fairfort and f airfield met in this lady, who was fair body and fair soul, being the exactest pattern of the best devotion those days afforded, taxed for no personal faults but the errors of 227 The Story of Cambridge the age she lived in. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, preached her funeral sermon, wherein he resembled her to Martha in four respects : firstly, nobility of person ; secondly, discipline of her body ; thirdly, in ordering her soul to God ; fourthly, in hospitality and charity." In that assemblage of noble lives, who from the earliest days of Cambridge history have laboured for the benefit of the University, and left it so rich a store of intellectual good, there are no more honoured names than these \.vjo : — the Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond, and her friend and confessor, Bishop Fisher, under whose wise and cautious supervision Cambridge first tasted of the fruits of the Renais- sance, and welcomed Erasmus, I fear with but a very tempered enthusiasm, to the newly-founded Lady Margaret chair, and yet, nevertheless, in that en- couragement of the New Learning laid the foundation of that sound method and apparatus of criticism which has enabled the University in an after age to take all knowledge for its province, and to represent its con- quest by the foundation of twenty-five professorial chairs. John Fisher, who came, as we have seen in the last chapter, from the Abbey School at Beverley, where, some twenty years or so before, he had been preceded by Bishop Alcock, was Proctor of the University in 1494, and three years later, in 1497, was made Master of his College, Michaelhouse. The duties of the proctorial office necessitated at that time occasional attendance at Court, and it was on the occasion of his appearance in this capacity at Greenwich that Fisher first attracted the notice of the Lady Margaret, who in 1497 appointed him her confessor. It was an auspicious conjunction for the University. Under his inspiration the generosity of his powerful 228 Colleges of the Neiz) Learnt fig patron was readily extended to enrich academic re- sources. It was the laudable design of Fisher to raise Cambridge to the academic level which Oxford had already reached. Already students of the sister university had been to Italy, and had returned full of the New Learning. The fame of Colet, Grocyn, and Linacre made Oxford renowned, and drew to its lecture-rooms eager scholars from all the learned world. It hardly needed that such a man as Erasmus should sing the praises of the Oxford teachers. " When I listen to my friend Colet," he wrote, " I seem to be listening to Plato himself. Who does not admire in Grocyn the perfection of training ? What can be more acute, more profound, or more refined than the judgment of Linacre ? What has nature ever fashioned gentler, sweeter, or pleasanter than the disposition of Thomas More ? " ^ It was natural therefore that Fisher should be ambitious in the same direction for his own university. He began wisely on a small scale, with an object of immediate practical usefulness, the foundation of a Divinity professorship, which should aim at teaching pulpit eloquence. On this point he rightly thought that the adherents of the Old and the New Learning might agree. And there was desperate need for the adventure. For with the close of the fifteenth century both theology and the art of preaching had sunk into general neglect. Times, for example, had greatly changed since the day when Bishop Grosseteste had declared that if a priest could not preach there was one remedy, let him resign his benefice. But now the sermon itself had ceased to be considered necessary. "Latimer tells us that in his own recollection, sermons might be omitted for twenty Sundays in succession without ^ Erasmus, Roberto Piscatori, Epist. xiv. 229 The Story of Cambridge fear of complaint. Even the devout More, in that ingenious romance which he designed as a covert satire on many of the abuses of his age, while giving an admirably conceived descrip- tion of a religious service, has left the sermon altogether un- recognised. In the universities, for one master of arts or doctor of divinity who could make a text of Scripture the basis of an earnest, simple, and effective homily, there were fifty who could discuss its moral, analogical, and figurative meaning, who could twist it into all kinds of unimagined significance, and give it a distorted, unnatural application. Rare as was the sermon, the theologian in the form of a modest, reverent expounder of Scripture was yet rarer. Bewildered audiences were called upon to admire the performances of intellectual acrobats. Skelton, who well knew the Cambridge of these days, not inaptly described its young scholars as men who when they had 'once superciliously caught A lytell ragge of rhetoricke, A lesse lumpe of logicke, A pece or patch of philosophy, Then forthwith by and by They tumble so in theology, Drowned in dregges of divinite That they juge themselfe alle to be Doctours of the Chayre in the Vintre, At the Three Cranes To magnifye their names.' "^ It was to remedy this state of things that, in the first instance, Fisher set himself to work. The Divinity professorship was soon supplemented by the Lady Margaret preachership, the holder of which was to go from place to place and give a cogent example in pulpit oratory : one sermon in the course of every two years at each of the following twelve places : — "On some Sunday at S. Paul's Cross, if able to obtain permission, otherwise at S. Margartt's, Westminster, or if unable to preach there, then in one of the more notable churches of the City of London ; and once on some feast day in each of the churches of Ware and Cheshunt in Hertford- 1 MuUinger, " History of the University of Cambridge," vol. i. p. 439. 230 Colleges of the New Learning shire; Bassingbourne, Orwell and Babraham in Cambridge- shire; Maney, S. James Deeping, Bourn, Boston, and Swineshead in Lincolnshire."^ We have already spoken in the chapter on Queens' College of the work of Erasmus at Cambridge. He was summoned to Cambridge in 15 n to teach Greek and to lecture on the foundation of Lady Margaret. He himself tells us that within a space of thirty years the studies of the University had progressed from the old grammar, logic, and scholastic questions to some knowledge of the New Learning, of the renewed study at any rate of Aristotle, and the study of Greek. The literary revival had no doubt been quicker and more brilliant at Oxford, but Cambridge, owing to Fisher's cautious and careful supervision, and his founda- tion of the Lady Margaret Colleges of Christ's and S. John's, was the first to give to the New Learning a permanent home. The religious bias of the Countess of Richmond had inclined her to devote the bulk of her fortune to an extension of the great monastery of Westminster. But Bishop Fisher knew that active learning rather than lazy seclusion was essential to preserve the Church against the dangerous Italian type of the Renaissance, and he persuaded her to direct her gift to educational purposes. He pointed out that the Abbey Church was already the wealthiest in England, "that the schools of learning were meanly endowed, the provisions of scholars very few and small, and colleges yet want- ing to their maintenance — that by such foundations she might have two ends and designs at once, might double her charity and double her reward, by afford- ing as well supports to learning as encouragement to virtue." 1 Cooper's "Annals," vol. i. p. 273. The Story of Cambridge CHRIST'S COLLEGE Founded by the Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Rich- mond, mother of King Henry VII., 1505. God's House, founded by William Bingham, 1436, on part of site of King's College, near Clue Hall, and removed hither in 1446, was absorbed in this foundation. [The two colleges founded by the Lady Margaret Beaufort, Christ's and S. John's, have always borne the same arms, namely, those of their foundress. France modem and England quarterly ivith'm a hordure company argent and azure. Splendid representations of these arms, surrounded by various badges, are carved on the gateways of the two Colleges, as at S. John's, the rising stem of the hood-mould of the gateway arch at Christ's has a shield affixed to it, bearing the arms of France and England quarterly, crowned, and supported by the antelopes of Beaufort. In addition to these arms an eagle collared, the crest of Beaufort, rises out of the crown, and the string course which crosses the gate and the flanking turrets at the same level is carried up square above it thus forming a sort of panel. On each side of it are three ostrich feathers, rising out of a band or coronet, and below them three others not fastened together : these were badges of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, father of the foundress. The rest of the spandrel space contains other badges peculiar to the foundress and her son : the portcullis, the rose en soleil, crowned, and the Mar^rueriie daisy. Daisies are also represented as growing out of the ground on which these badges are set in relief.] The foundation of Christ's College in i 505 is an enduring memorial of the wisdom of the Bishop and the charity of the Lady Margaret. The. following passage from the Dean of West- minster's (Dr Armytage Robertson) sermon on the occasion of the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the foundation of the College sets out impressively the great debt which England owed to the Ladv Margaret. 232 Colleges of the Neiv Learning ■'Perhaps no woman not actually on the throne has ever played so great and so beneficent a part in the life of Eng- land. Her era was almost as remarkable as the correspond- ing period of the nineteenth century, for it covered the fall of Constantinople, the discoveiy of America, the invention of gunpowder, and the introduction of printing. It was the era of Renaissance ; and though the Lady Margaret was a true child of the Middle Age, and told Bishop Fisher that, if a new Crusade should be started, " she wolde be glad yet to go folowe the Hoost and help to washe theyr clothes for the love of Jhesu," yet she welcomed the new learning, founded a Greek lecture in this place, and herself translated books from French into English to be printed by Pynson and Wynkyn de Worde. In politics she was a great reconciler; and guided by the statesmanship of Bishop Morton she pro- moted the marriage of Henry wirh Elizabeth, uniting the red rose with the white, and so closing the desolating period of civil strife. A poet of the time describes her as " Mother, author, plotter, counsellor of union." The key to her whole career is given by the title of '•' The King's Mother," which for the last twenty-five years of her life was a household name in England. A widowed mother at fifteen she spent her life for her son. Here is the explanation of her self-suppression and long retirement from the public gaze, the careful husbandry of her unusual wealth, the second and third maf-riages by which she sought protective alliances from great cousins, the courage which parted with the son of her hope and love in the long interval of waiting. And when at last the reward was given, she was still "the King's Mother" in the truest sense, the most loved and honoured of the realm, influencing by her wisdom and her goodness, but never interfering in affairs of State, loyal as a subject to a King who was ever dutiful as a son. Through her there passed' to the Tudor dynasty a peculiar strength : an instinct of wise choice, a genius for being well served ; a natural power of governing which, had her lot been cast half a century later, would have made her one of our greatest Queens ; which, in fact, made her a trusted arbitrator in a host of petty causes, as well as a wise administrator of vast and scattered estates." There is a tradition that Fisher, who undoubtedly had joined Michaelhouse before taking his B. A. degree in 1487, had, upon his first entering Cambridge, been 233 The Story of Cambridge a student of God's House. However that may be, it was to this small foundation he turned as the basis of his projected new college. God's House, an adjunct of Clare Hall, founded by William Byngham, Rector of S. John Zachary, in London, in 1441, stood originally on a plot of land at the west end of King's Chapel, adjoining the Church of S. John Zachary. In the changes which were necessary to secure a site for King's College, the Church of S. John and God's House were removed. In return for his surrender, Byngham had received licence from Henry VI. to build elsewhere a college. Land was accordingly secured on what is now the site of the first and second courts of Christ's College, and in the charter of the new God's House, dated 1 6th April 1448, it is stated that Byngham had deferred the foundation owing to his ardent desire that "the King's glory and his reward in heaven might be increased " by his personal foundation of God's House. Henry could not resist such an argument, and thus God's House became, and Christ's College, as its successor, claims to be, of Royal Foundation. The little foundation, however, was always cramped by lack of means. Within fifty years of its first foundation the time had evidently come for a reconstitution of God's House. "In the year 1505 appeared the royal charter for the foundation of Christ's College, wherein after a recital of the facts already mentioned, together with other details, it was notified that King Henry VIL, at the representation of his mother and other noble and trustworthy persons — pncarissima matrix nostra necnon aliorum uobil'tum at Jide digtiorum — and having regard to her great desire to exalt and increase the Cliristian faith, her anxiety for her own sjnritual welfare, and the sincere love which she had ever borne 'our uncle' (Henry VI.) wliile he lived — had conceded to her permission to carry into full effect the designs of her illustrious relative ; that is to say, to enlarge and endow the aforesaid God's House 234 J,. c "-3 v» ** l^/^ ^^s. ' * "51 • - — .:.,jiKi*s» ,%> J. Colleges of the New Learning sufficiently for the reception and support of any number of scholars not exceeding sixty, who should be instructed in grammar or in the other liberal sciences and faculties or in sacred theology." ^ The arrival of the charter was soon followed by the news of the Lady Margaret's noble benefactions — consisting of many manors in the four counties of Cambridge, Norfolk, Leicester, and Essex — which thus exalted the humble and struggling Society of God's House, under its new designation of Christ's College, into the fourth place, in respect of revenue, among all the Cambridge colleges. The building of the College seems to have gone on uninterruptedly between 1 505 and 1 5 1 1 . The amount spent by the Foundress during her lifetime is not ascertainable : but the cost, as given in the household books of the Lady Margaret after her death, was more than £1000. " Though the College," says the present Master, Dr Peile, '