Chapter II: The Colleges (2)

Besides the Carmelites and Austinfriars there were the Bethlemite friars in Trumpington street and Our-Lady friars by the Castle; the former could be distinguished at a distance by the red star of five rays on their cloaks with a sky blue circle in its centre--the star of Bethlehem; but both these communities wore the habit--black over white--of the Dominicans. Scholars poor and rich jostled each other in the schools and in the public ways, wearing the long and short gowns of the day, the _cote_ which had just come into fashion, or the habit of their order. There were doctors in the three faculties wearing scarlet gowns and the doctor’s bonnet or _camaurum_, and there was a sprinkling of doctors and of students from Orléans, Padua, Pavia, and Paris.

A large number of the inmates of the colleges round, and of the scholars walking the streets, wear the clerical tonsure, many scores have the coronal tonsure of the friar--yet the feeling in the air is secular. Cambridge has always suggested a certain detachment; neither zeal--perfervid or sour--nor the pressure of tradition upon living thought has had its proper home there. It has not represented monastic seclusion nor hieratic exclusion, and it did so at this moment of its history less than ever. The dawn of the coming renascence shone upon the walls at which we have been looking. The modern world has been born of the birth-pangs which have since convulsed Europe, and the walls which were then big with the future are now big with the past. But it is the greatness of Cambridge that amidst the multiple suggestiveness of its ancient halls of learning, tyranny of the past has no place. About it the dawn of the renascence still lingers; and the early morning light which presided at its birth still defines the shadows and seems to temper the noon-day heat, as light and shade alternate in its history.

[Sidenote: Chaucer at Cambridge.]

We have taken it for granted that Chaucer was walking the streets of Cambridge with us. We have no direct evidence as to where Chaucer studied; but our indirect evidence is sufficient. In the “Canterbury Tales” Chaucer introduces us to two Cambridge scholars and to a clerk of Oxenforde; and if one considers what would nowadays be called the internal evidence of the _Reeve’s Tale_ it is difficult to resist the conclusion that Chaucer was at Cambridge. How else should he know Trumpington so well? Its brook, its bridge, its mill, its fen? He knows about the “gret colledge” which had risen a few years previously; he knows that its Master is called “the warden,” that its scholars are also its “fellaws.” He has learnt there the dialect of Yorkshiremen, and reproduces not only their turns of speech but characteristic terms--as _bete_, _kime_, _jossa_--in the East Anglian dialect. If we turn to the _Miller’s Tale_ all this local colouring is to seek. A “clerke of Oxenforde,” indeed, was no unfamiliar figure in the xiv century, especially to a Londoner. Familiarity with the aspect of Cambridge and its neighbourhood was a very different matter.

Chaucer was probably himself of East Anglian origin. His grandfather Robert and John his father were both of Ipswich and London, and when he was kidnapped by his mother’s family “Thomas Stace of Ipswich” is the kidnapper. There are two events of his young life known to us, and both suggest that he was at Cambridge. One of these we hear about from his evidence in the famous Scrope and Grosvenor suit in 1386. An upstart knight--Sir Robert Grosvenor--whose name Chaucer had never heard before, had displayed the arms of the Scropes, and Chaucer testifies in the Court of Chivalry action which ensues that he had often seen Henry le Scrope use the proud armorials “azure, a bend or” in the French wars where they had been companions in arms twenty-seven years before (1359). Now this great Yorkshire family were connected with Cambridge from Chaucer’s time: Richard le Scrope, the son of his old comrade, was chancellor of the university in 1378.[165] Two members of the same family were chancellors in the next century, and the intermarriage of the Scropes with the Gonvilles is recorded there to this day in Scrope or “Scroope Terrace.”[166] Is it not probable that Geoffrey Chaucer knew Henry Scrope at Cambridge and formed there the friendship which moved him to testify in his behalf thirty years later?

This conjecture does not become less probable when we turn to the other incident in his early life, which came to light in 1866 with a fragment of the household accounts of the wife of Lionel Duke of Clarence. Here the name of Geoffrey Chaucer is mentioned (in 1357) as that of a junior member of her household. His early connexion with the house of Edward is therefore an historical fact like his later friendship with John of Gaunt. Now in 1352 Lionel Plantagenet had married Elizabeth de Burgh the grand-daughter and namesake of the founder of Clare Hall Cambridge. The “gret colledge” about which Chaucer tells us in the _Reeves Tale_ is called “Soler Hall” and “Soler Hall,” so Caius records, was the ancient name for Clare. Remembering, however, the incomplete condition of Clare and of other foundations at this date the present writer supposes the “gret colledge” to have been King’s Hall, the first imposing architectural undertaking in the university and the building which must _par excellence_ have attracted attention in the middle of the xiv century.[167] It may also have been Chaucer’s own college, and in this connexion it is worthy of notice that with the exception of the half-dozen “minor scholars” at Pembroke, King’s Hall was at this time the only college which educated lads in their teens.

Assuming the year of the poet’s birth to have been 1340 he would have been going to the university, according to the custom of those days, about the year 1353, and his place in Elizabeth de Burgh’s household was probably already assured him when he went to Cambridge.[168] He was back in her service in his seventeenth year and therefore could not have had time to study at both universities: and we may add to this that although his general knowledge, which he had no time to acquire in later life, suggests that he received a university education, there is not a tittle of evidence to support the idea that Chaucer went to Oxford.

One more conjecture: had he got his information about prioress’s French from the religious of the convent of S. Leonard of Stratford-atte-Bowe whom we find owning land in Cambridge from the days of Edward I.?

[Sidenote: The Schools.

The High Street and School Street.]

It is to this period of the history of Cambridge that the first university buildings as distinguished from collegiate buildings belong. During the chancellorship of Robert Thorpe, Knight, Master of Pembroke (1347-64) and Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, afterwards Chancellor of England, the “schools quadrangle” was projected in that street of colleges, unrivalled in Europe, which prolonging the Trumpington Road as King’s Parade or Trinity Street or S. John’s Street was anciently known as the “School street” of the university. It was also the high street of the Saxon town of which S. Benet’s tower was the nucleus, but whether the original Saxon town lay on this side of the river, or whether, as frequently happened in the xi century, the Saxon population retreated here leaving the Castle district to their Norman conquerors, we have no means of determining.[169]

There were, then, no public buildings up to the xiv century. The Greyfriars or the Austinfriars gave hospitality to the university on public occasions, and the only brick and mortar evidence of a university lay in the hostels and colleges. The “Schools” now erected were halls for lecturing and scholastic disputations; the north, west, and east sides were completed by the middle of the next century, the south side being added in accordance with a decision taken in 1457 to build “a _new_ school of philosophy and civil law, or a library.”[170] This was erected on university ground (on the south) next to the school of canon law (west). Over this last was the original library room (the “west room” 1457) and “a chapel of exceeding great beauty.” The quadrangle contained the Divinity school (north) with the Regent and non-regent houses; opposite was the Sophisters’ school with the _libraria communis_ or _magna_; on the entrance side were the Chancellor’s (Rotherham’s) Library, Consistory court and Court of the Proctors and Taxors; and facing this the Bachelors’ school and the school of Medicine and Law; the old “west room” having been converted into a school, by grace of the Senate, in 1547.[171]

[Sidenote: The university library.]

The schools remained untouched till the opening years of the xviii century when the Regent House was pulled down to build the present university library. This is the oldest of the three great English libraries, and stands on ground which has always been university property. The early xv century library which was lodged in the Schools quadrangle originated in gifts of single volumes by private donors until 52 had been collected; and books which were bequeathed in 1424 are still preserved. Fifty years later (1473) the proctors Ralph Sanger and Richard Tokerham made a catalogue of 330 books.[172] Rotherham Archbishop of York next presented 200 tomes, and Tunstall Bishop of Durham was another donor: many of these last gifts

This is one of the most picturesque views in Cambridge. On the right are the Gateway and Screen and other portions of King’s College; on the left are some ancient houses.]

were “embezzled” by “pilferers” before the middle of the xvi century,[173] and the libraries of three successive Cambridge archbishops of Canterbury, Parker, Grindal, and Bancroft, formed the chief treasure of the university until 1715 when George I. purchased and presented the library of Moore Bishop of Ely which is the nucleus of the modern collection.[174]

There are 400,000 volumes on open shelves among which the student can wander at will and get his own books without applying to the library officials; a convenience which Lord Acton, the late Professor of Modern History, used to say made this the only serviceable library in Europe. Another privilege, which is possessed by all masters of arts, is that books may be taken home. Undergraduates, if in academic dress, have also free access. The university library is one of the three copyright libraries in England.[175]

[Sidenote: The Pitt Press.]

A printing press was set up at Cambridge, early in the xvi century, by Siberch who said of himself that he was the first in England to print Greek--7 small volumes in the Greek character were printed by him at the university. Carter, however, tells us that an Italian Franciscan, William of Savona, printed a book at Cambridge in 1478, four years after Caxton had printed the first book in England. Lord Coke pointed out that this university enjoyed before Oxford the privilege of printing _omnes et omnigenas libros_, “all and every kind of book” (1534). This included the right to appoint 3 stationers or printers.

Siberch’s printing place was on the present site of Caius. In 1655 the university obtained from Queens’ College a lease of the ground at the corner of Silver street and Queens’ lane--the historic Mill street district--now the site of the lodge and garden of S. Catherine’s. In 1804 the present site was obtained for the university press, with a further “messuage fronting upon Trumpington street and Mill lane”; the remaining properties in Trumpington street, between Silver street and Mill street, being bought in 1831-3. The Pitt Press, a church-like structure, stands opposite to Pembroke (Pitt’s) College, and owes its name to the fact that the surplus funds of the Pitt monument in Westminster abbey were a donation to the university towards defraying the cost. The building also contains the offices of the university Registrary.[176]

The Senate House was not founded till 1722, and lies on the north of the library.[177]

[Sidenote: King’s College. A. D. 1441.]

Ninety years passed after the building of Corpus before Henry VI. founded King’s College, and Margaret of Anjou, his consort, founded

KING’S COLLEGE CHAPEL AND THE ENTRANCE COURT, FROM THE FELLOWS’
BUILDINGS

A portion of the Chapel is seen on the left of the picture with Great St. Mary’s tower in the distance. The Screen and Gate are on the right.]

Queens’. It was in 1443 that the charter of the double foundation of Eton at Windsor and King’s College at Cambridge was signed--the one “our royal college of S. Mary of Eton,” the other “our royal college of S. Mary and S. Nicholas”; for Henry dedicated his college to his patron saint Nicholas “of Bari” the patron of scholars. The king laid the foundation stone himself (p. 112) in the presence of John Langton chancellor of the university, the keeper of the Privy Seal, the chancellor of the Exchequer, and the bishops of Lincoln and Salisbury.[178] The king’s father had intended to build a college at Oxford; Henry VI. carried out his intention in endowing a college but decided that the university should be Cambridge. A small college called God’s House which had just been founded,[179] together with Mill Street (acquired in 1445) and Augustine’s hostel (in 1449) and the church of S. John Zachary, were pulled down to clear a space: but the original plan for the college was never carried out, and the buildings we now see were erected in the first quarter of the xviiith and in the xixth centuries.[180]

[Sidenote: The chapel.]

The only portion of the original plan executed was the chapel. The importance of King’s College chapel is not only architectural; is due not only to the fact that it was begun before the Italian classical revival as a monument of English Gothic, and completed in the full blaze of the renascence, but that it marks a chapter in the history of English religion. The church built for the old worship was consecrated for the new; the first stone was laid by Henry VI. in the presence of great catholic prelates, the oaken screen--perhaps the finest woodwork in the country--bears the monogram of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn[181] twined with true lovers’ knots. In the third place “this immense and

The South door of the Chapel is seen to the right in the picture, and the Fellows’ Buildings, constructed in 1723, are on the left. The Fountain with a statue of the founder, Henry the Sixth, was designed by H. A. Armstead, R. A.]

glorious work of fine intelligence,” as Wordsworth calls it, remains one of the very finest monuments of Perpendicular architecture; and that beautiful English feature the fan-vaulting, which is to be seen in the Tudor chapel at the Guildhall, in Henry VII.’s chapel at Westminster, and at S. David’s (now ruinous), is here carried out over a larger area than anywhere else.[182]

That branching roof
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering, and wandering on as loth to die--
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.

So writes Wordsworth; and the stained glass windows, the most ‘complete and magnificent series’ in the country says Carter, probably inspired Milton’s

--storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full voic’d quire below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all Heav’n before mine eyes.

On the death of the Lancastrian monarch, Edward IV. sequestrated the building funds, but returned a thousand pounds later, and Richard III. contributed £700; but it is Henry VII. who brought the work to completion.

King’s is the only college in the university which receives only those students who intend to read for honours, and until 1857 its members could claim the _B.A._ degree without presenting themselves for examination.[183] The college was, almost immediately upon its foundation, exempted not only from archiepiscopal and episcopal control but also from the general jurisdiction

of the university. It was endowed for the accommodation of a Provost, 70 poor scholars, 10 secular priests, 16 choristers, and 6 clerks--a total of 103. Eton was designed for 132 inmates.[184] 24 of the 48 scholarships of King’s are now open. Each of these scholarships is of the annual value of £80. There are also 46 fellowships. The most celebrated Etonians have not however been educated at King’s, among whose eminent sons have been Croke, Cheke (of S. John’s) Provost, Woodlark the founder of S. Catherine’s, third Provost of the college and also its benefactor, Sir John Harrington, Robert and Horace Walpole, Sir Francis Walsingham, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, Conisby, Haddon, Giles Fletcher, Waller, Fleetwood, Oughtred an Etonian on the first foundation, Whichcote (of Emmanuel) Provost, Upton, Cole, and Charles Simeon who was a life fellow. Nicholas Close (1551) and Aldrich (1537) both bishops of Carlisle, the former one of the original six fellows, the latter the intimate of Erasmus, Rotherham of York (1467) a fellow and a donor to the chapel fund, Fox of Hereford (1535), William and George Day bishops of Winchester and Chichester, one provost of Eton the other of King’s, Wickham of Lincoln and Winchester,[185] Nicholas West (Bishop of Ely 1515) the friend of Fisher and More and Richard Cox (1559) both scholars of the college, Oliver King of Exeter, then of Bath and Wells (1492), Alley of Exeter, Guest of Rochester and Salisbury (1559), Goodrich of Ely (1534), Pearson, and Sumner, are among its prelates. Henry and Charles Brandon, heirs of their father the Duke of Suffolk, and nephews of Henry VIII. and both proficient scholars, died of the sweating sickness while in residence here in the reign of Edward VI. Cardinal Beaufort was a princely benefactor to the college, and John Somerset, physician to Henry VI., who came to Cambridge as an Oxford sophister and here graduated, was one of the chief instruments in its foundation, and drew up its statutes.[186]

The college has produced several great schoolmasters, and is now gradually acquiring a reputation for historical studies, about one third of the students being history men. The dedication to S. Nicholas is only retained in formal descriptions: _King’s College_ has been by common consent regarded as the fitting title for this truly royal foundation, and it recalls that still older King’s Hall which is now merged in Trinity.[187]

This was built by Wilkins 1824-28. On the walls are several portraits by Sir Hubert Herkomer, R.A.]

[Sidenote: The Cambridge College chapels.]

The importance of King’s College chapel in university history since the xv century leads us to consider the rôle played in Cambridge by collegiate chapels. Every college chapel, and every church which has an historical connexion with the university, has served--as all early Christian edifices have served--other purposes than those of religious worship. What we have to remark in Cambridge is that this ancient custom continued there longer than elsewhere. The “Commencements” which took place later in the Senate House used to be held, as we have seen, in the famous church of the Greyfriars or in that of the Austinfriars. The University church--Great S. Mary’s--was used by the university for its assemblies in the xiii century and was the scene of all great civic functions; disputations were held in it on Elizabeth’s visit in 1564. The college chapels were everywhere used for the transaction of important business; the Provost of King’s and other Masters are still elected in the chapel, documents are still sealed in the chapel of King’s and Trinity, and the Thurston speech is still pronounced in the chapel of Caius. The choir of King’s was used for degree examinations as late as 1851, and declamations are even now held in the chapel at Trinity. Indeed the “exercises of learning” “used” in the chapels was the reason given by the Corpus men to Lord Bacon’s father when asking for a church to themselves; and Queen Elizabeth witnessed the _Aulularia_ of Plautus in King’s chapel on Sunday August 6th 1564, as the abbess and her nuns had assembled for Hrostwitha’s play in the abbey church of Gandersheim six hundred years earlier. The building of colleges adjoining a parish church is a feature peculiar to Cambridge. Merton is the one exception at Oxford, and Pembroke is, as we have seen, the only early exception to this rule at Cambridge.[188]

List of pre-reformation colleges built with chapels:--

1. Pembroke 1355-63 (the existing chapel is xvii c.)

2. King’s 1446-1536 (the existing chapel).

3. Queens’ 1448 (defaced at the reformation and restored. But a xix
c. chapel is now used).

4. Jesus 1495 (The then existing xii c. monastic chapel was rebuilt
by the founder.)

5. S. Catherine’s 1475 (the existing chapel is xvii c.)

6. Magdalene 1483 (completely restored in the middle of the xix c.)

Existing pre-reformation chapels:--

King’s xv c.
Queens’ xv c. (restored).
Jesus xv c.
Trinity Hall xv c.
Magdalene (restored) xv c.

Colleges built without chapels and with (generally) post-reformation chapels:--

1. Peterhouse (xvii c.){188a}

2. Michaelhouse (none).

3. King’s Hall (chapel built temp. Edw. IV., and Ric. III. The site
of the present chapel of Trinity College).

4. Clare (1535. The existing chapel is 1764).{188b}

5. Gonville.{188c}

6. Trinity Hall 1474.

7. Corpus 1500, and 1579 (the existing chapel is on the site of the
latter, and was erected 1823).

Existing xvi c. chapels:--

Christ’s 1505 (the original chapel, but defaced); Trinity,
completed 1564-7.

At Caius, the present chapel is on the site of the xvi c. chapel;
and at S. John’s a xix c. structure replaces the xvi c. one, near
the same site.

This old gateway forms the principal entrance to the College from Queens’ Lane.]

The oldest ecclesiastical site and building incorporated with a Cambridge college is therefore the chapel of Jesus (but cf. S. John’s p. 126); the site of the earliest college chapel is at Pembroke--but it is a site merely; the oldest existing college chapel is King’s.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Queens’ College. A.D. 1448.]

The charter for the foundation of Queens’ College is dated 15 April 1448, but by this date its north and east ranges were already built. Queen Margaret of Anjou had been so impressed with the beauty and majesty of the plans for King’s College that she could find no rest till she had projected her own foundation--Queens’; to endow and perfect which she set to work with holy emulation; dedicating it in her turn to her patron saint, Margaret the legendary Virgin and Martyr whose body is shown at Montefiascone, and to Bernard of Citeaux. Two years previously the principal of S. Bernard’s hostel had founded a college of S. Bernard, the site of which he changed in 1447 to the present site of Queens’. This formed the moral nucleus of the queens’ college; but she obtained the larger part of the ground, near King’s, from the Carmelites. This is one of the three colleges in Cambridge built of red brick, S. John’s and S. Catherine’s being the others. The Queens’ quadrangle is, as Messieurs Willis and Clark tell us, the earliest now remaining which claims attention for its architectural beauty. It is 99 feet east and west by 84 north and south.[189] The plan is not only a very perfect example of college architecture, but is a model of the xv century English manor-house, of the type of Haddon Hall;[190] so that Queens’ College is as homogeneous a structure as King’s is heterogeneous. The hall is on the west, adjoining it is the combination room, above, the President’s lodging with a bedchamber over it. The north side is kept for the chapel and for the library which is on the first floor. The chambers are on the east and south sides, the gateway being in the former. As in other colleges the passage to the grounds (or, as in this case, to the second court) is between the hall and the butteries. The west side of the quadrangle which was gradually cloistered forms the east side of the second court, and is washed by the Cam. The beautiful gallery on the north has formed part of the lodge since the xvi century,[191] and connects the old

This is the Cloister Court. In the quaint sixteenth century buildings on the left is the Gallery, and facing the spectator is the doorway into the First Court. The Hall is seen on the right of this doorway.]

president’s lodging with a set of rooms on the west side, among which is the audit room now used as a dining room.

Queens’, like King’s, was originally built with a chapel, and in both instances the foundation stone of the chapel was that of the college. A new chapel and buildings now lie beyond the President’s garden on the north. There is a small court on the south of the cloister court which contains the rooms occupied by Erasmus, overhanging the college kitchen. Besides Erasmus, who lived here for at least four years, Fisher was there as President of the college until 1508, and Old Fuller was another of its worthies. Henry Bullock, the opposer of Protestantism and friend of Erasmus, was a fellow, so was Sir T. Smith; Bishop Pearson[192] and Ockley _alumni_. Henry Hastings Earl of Huntingdon, whose portrait hangs in the audit room, Manners Earl of Rutland, George Duke of Clarence, Cecilia Duchess of York, and Maud Countess of Oxford, were among its benefactors. But its chief benefactor was Andrew Doket, a friar (of what order is not known) and its first President, who saved the fortunes of the college after the fall of the House of Lancaster.[193] The picture of principal interest is also to be found in the lodge--Holbein’s portrait of Erasmus which was painted during a visit made at the scholar’s request to England.

The college was originally endowed for a president and 4 fellows, and their principal study was to be theology. There are now 11 fellowships, and about 18 scholarships which vary in value from £30 to £60.

Queens’ College is a monument of peace. The Yorkist queen Elizabeth Woodville continued Margaret of Anjou’s work, and the two queens are the co-founders of the college. It is Elizabeth Woodville whose portrait looks down upon us in the hall, and it was she who changed Queen Margaret’s dedication and called their joint work Queens’ College.[194] It is also a monument to the unambitious but well-defined revival of learning that marked the reign of Edward IV., of which Woodville Earl Rivers, the queen’s brother, Tiptoft Earl of Worcester, and Caxton himself are the representatives.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Kingly visitors to the university.]

Both King’s and Queens’ Colleges have offered hospitality on several occasions to English sovereigns. Henry VI. came to lay the foundation stone of King’s in 1441 and was at King’s Hall in 1445-6 (when he laid the foundation stone of his second college?), in 1448-9 and in 1452-3.[195] Edward IV. visited the university in 1463 and 1476.

On the left is seen the garden front of the President’s Lodge. The wooden bridge designed by Etheridge (1749) is known as the Mathematical Bridge. In the distance are the two old mills--the King’s Mill and the Bishop’s Mill.]

Henry VII. paid five visits to Cambridge and stayed at Queens’ in 1498 and again in 1506 when he occupied a chamber near the audit room. It was on this occasion that he attended the service for the eve of S. George’s day in King’s College chapel clad in the robes of the Garter. Henry VIII. was by his father’s side during this visit, and came again in 1522. Mary came as far as Sir Robert Huddleston’s when Jane Grey was proclaimed. Elizabeth was entertained in the Provost’s lodge of King’s, and it was when repairing to her rooms there after the solemn service in the chapel that she thanked God “that had sent her to this university where she was so received as she thought she could not be better.” James I. visited Cambridge twice in 1615 and was again at Trinity College in 1623 and 1624; Charles I. (who had been Nevile’s guest in 1613) was entertained there in 1632 and 1642; and Charles II. in the long gallery at S. John’s in 1681. Anne was there in 1705, George I. in 1717, and George II. in 1728. Queen Victoria came in 1843 and again in 1847 when the Prince Consort was installed as Chancellor; and Edward VII. visited the university in February 1904.

John had been in Cambridge the month before his death, September 1216; Henry III. was there in the second year of his reign (1218); Edward I. was there as Prince of Wales in 1270, and lodged again in the castle in 1294. Edward II. was the guest of Barnwell priory in 1326. Edward III. was there in September 1328. Richard II. was also lodged at Barnwell in 1388.

The Conqueror had been at Cambridge in 1070.

Matilda is the first queen-consort whom we can picture visiting the university town; Eleanor of Castile was frequently at Walsingham with Edward,[196] and she gave as we shall see a “chest” to the university. Margaret of Anjou was never there, but Elizabeth Woodville came in 1468. The mother of Henry VII. also came to see her college in 1505 and again with the king in 1506. Elizabeth of York accompanied Henry VII. in 1498; Catherine of Aragon slept at Queens’ in 1519; and Henrietta Maria was with the king in 1631-2.

* * * * *

The erection of King’s and Queens’ Colleges opened a period of college building which lasted sixty years, and closed with the foundation of S. John’s (in 1509).

[Sidenote: S. Catherine’s College, 1473.]

In 1473 Robert Woodlark chancellor of the university and third provost of King’s, and one of the original scholars of that foundation, built a small college dedicated to the Glorious Virgin Martyr S. Catherine of Alexandria, with the object of extending “the usefulness of Church preaching, and the study of theology, philosophy, and other arts within the Church of England.” The present red brick structure was erected two hundred years later, this being the only college except Clare which has been entirely rebuilt since its foundation. S. Catherine’s, or “Cat’s” as the

This is a view of the old Renaissance Gateway (1679), being the entrance to the College from Queens’ Lane.] undergraduate familiarly calls it, is remarkable for the number of bishops it has educated, among whom were Archbishop Sandys, May of Carlisle, Brownrigg of Exeter, all of whom were Masters of the college, as was Overall of Norwich who migrated from S. John’s: John Lightfoot, the orientalist, was its 16th Master, and Strype (who came here from Jesus), James Shirley the last of the dramatists,[197] Ray the naturalist, and Addenbrooke the founder of the well known hospital of that name at Cambridge, were also educated here.

The hall[198] was founded for a master and 3 fellows, and now maintains 6 fellows and 26 scholars.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Jesus College 1495.]

The next college is a solitary instance of the adaptation of monastic architecture to collegiate purposes in Cambridge. Alcock Bishop of Ely and joint lord chancellor with Rotherham obtained from Alexander VI. (1496/7) the dissolution of the ancient Benedictine nunnery of S. Rhadegund, and founded there a college which he dedicated to the _Blessed Virgin Mary, S. John Evangelist, and the glorious Virgin S. Rhadegund_. Its name of Jesus College records the growing cult of the name of Jesus, and the substitution was approved by the founder himself.[199]

If at Queens’ we are in a xv century manor-house, at Jesus we are in a monastery; and might well imagine ourselves for a moment back in one of the busiest centres of old Cambridge if we pace the cloisters just before hall time when the stir is suggestive of the life of a great monastery. Even the legend “Song Room” over a doorway falls in with the illusion. James I. said that if he lived in the university he would pray at King’s, eat at Trinity, and study and sleep at Jesus.

The chapel is the original conventual church[200] as rebuilt by Alcock. It contains xii century work, and represents the transition from Norman to Early English. The character of the college has been consistently evangelical in spite of the fact that Bancroft the Laudian archbishop before Laud, was here, and that he migrated here from Christ’s on account of the latter’s reputation for Puritanism. Cranmer was scholar, and fellow until his marriage, and was readmitted fellow when his wife died a year later. Archbishops Bancroft and Sterne, Laurence Sterne, Bale Bishop of Ossory, Strype, Fulke Greville, Fenton, Fawkes (the poet), Hartley, and S. T. Coleridge were members. The college which was founded for 6 fellows and 6 scholars, now maintains 16 fellows and some 20 scholars. The statutes

were indited by James Stanley Bishop of Ely, stepson of Lady Margaret, and modified by his successor Nicholas West. Jesus College scholars were commended by the founder to the perpetual tutelage of the bishops of Ely, who when they lie there are said to lie in their own house.[201]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Christ’s College A.D. 1505.]

Ten years later a most interesting foundation was made. A college called God’s House had, as we have seen, been founded in the reign of Henry VI. and was appropriated by that monarch as part of the site of King’s College. The foundation was a far-off echo of the plague in the previous century, and when the king took possession of the site he appears to have intended to endow a considerable college in its place in the parish of S. Andrew where he erected another God’s House.[202] It was this design, left unfulfilled (for the house only supported four of the sixty scholars whom Henry VI. had himself proposed to maintain there) that John Fisher, chancellor of the university and Bishop of Rochester, brought to the notice of Lady Margaret Beaufort, daughter of the first Duke of Somerset, Countess of Richmond and Derby, the wife of Edmund Tudor and mother of Henry VII.; and on the site of God’s House she erected her own Christ’s College, and made John Sickling its Proctor first Master. The quadrangle was encased in stone in the xviii century, but the gateway with its statue and armorials of the founder, and the oriel over the entrance to the Master’s lodge recall the founder’s time. Facing the gateway are the hall, the old combination room, and the lodge, and above were a set of rooms reserved for the founder’s own use; a turret staircase led therefrom to both hall and garden, as was the custom in a master’s lodge. On the east of this “Tree court” is a building in the renascence style, thought to be one of the finest examples in England, and to have been the work of Inigo Jones (1642). The gold plate of the college was a bequest of Lady Margaret’s and there is none finer in the university. Christ’s is also noted for its gardens.

No college has been richer in great men. Milton was here for seven years, Henry More the Platonist, Latimer the scholar-bishop and martyr, Leland the antiquary, Nicholas Saunderson, Paley of the “Evidences,” Archbishops Grindal and Bancroft, Bishop Porteous,

The Gateway is coeval with the founding of the College, and dates from the first decade of the sixteenth century.]

Sir Walter Mildmay,[203] Charles Darwin, and Sir John Seeley. Lightfoot the great Hebraist of his century, and Cudworth, were both Masters in the xvii century; and in the previous century Exmew the Carthusian martyr (1535) and Richard Hall (afterwards Canon of Cambray), Fisher’s biographer, were inmates. Here Milton wrote his hymn on the Nativity, and here he formed his friendship with Edward King--fellow of the college--in whose memory _Lycidas_ was written.

The college was endowed for 12 fellows at least, half of whom were to hail from those northern counties in which both Lady Margaret and Fisher were interested; the total endowment was for 60 persons. There are now 15 fellowships, 30 scholarships (£30 to £70) and some 4 sizarships of the value of £50 a year.[204]

Grammar, the original study of God’s House,[205] and arts were to be studied in addition to theology, but excluding law and medicine; and for the first time in college statutes lectures on the classical orators and poets are provided for, an attention to polite letters for their own sake which is supposed to have been due to the influence of Erasmus.

[Sidenote: The Lady Margaret.]

The Lady Margaret, for with this title alone her memory is preserved at both universities, has, perhaps, no rival in Cambridge as both an interesting and an important figure in its history. She appears to have been one of the first in that age to understand that the university was to replace the monastery as the channel of English learning, and to endow colleges rather than religious houses. The two splendid foundations which owe their existence to her bear upon them a stronger personal impress than others. Alone of non-resident founders she retained for her own use a lodge in the college she founded. An anecdote when she was staying at Christ’s, preserved for us by Fuller, comes across the centuries vivid with her personality. There is no episode in any university to compare with the scholastic partnership of Lady Margaret and Bishop Fisher, her chaplain, perpetual chancellor of the university, and Master of Michaelhouse. Both were in their measure “reformers before the reformation,” both joined to the spirit of piety an abounding appreciation of the spirit of knowledge. At Cambridge and Oxford she founded those readerships in theology known as the Lady Margaret Professorships, and at Cambridge she instituted the Lady Margaret preachership. She died on 29 June 1509, and Erasmus wrote her epitaph in Westminster Abbey.[206]

[Sidenote: Cardinal Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and perpetual chancellor of the university.]

Fisher lived many years after her, and completed the foundation of S. John’s. He pronounced that discourse at her obsequies which is our chief source of information about her.[207] Fisher was imprisoned, like Thomas More, for refusing to admit the

This building is in the Second Court. The design is attributed to Inigo Jones. Through it we pass into the Fellows’ Garden, where we shall find the famous mulberry tree sacred to Milton.]

royal supremacy in things ecclesiastical; covered with rags, and worn with neglect and ill-treatment, but consoled by a filial and courageous letter from his sons at S. John’s, he was led out to die on June 22, 1534, the New Testament in his hand open at the words: “This is eternal life, to know Thee the only true God.” He stands alone among the bishops of England to give his life for the principle for which the layman Thomas More laid down his. Pole in a letter to Charles V. narrates that Henry VIII. had said he supposed “that I” (Pole) “had never in all my travels met one who in letters and virtue could be compared to the Bishop of Rochester.”

* * * * *

[Sidenote: S. John’s College, A.D. 1509.]

We next come to the most splendid foundation hitherto realised at Cambridge. The site chosen for a college which held its place through the xvi century as the first and most brilliant society in the university, could not have been more appropriate. It was that of S. John’s Hospital, the first home of Cambridge students, the nucleus of the university, erected soon after the Conquest in the heart of the Norman town, and whence the first endowed scholars in christendom set forth to found a college.[208]

The whole history of the university is epitomised in the street which has S. John’s at one end of it and Peterhouse at the other: the bishops of Ely have firm hold of either end, and lying against S. John’s is that Pythagoras House which Merton bought from the Dunnings when he was planning his famous foundation in the xiii century. We have seen that it was at S. John’s Hospital that Balsham introduced secular scholars in the same century, who should become _unum corpus et unum collegium_ with the canons. The experiment did not succeed, and the canons saw the scholars depart with great relief to the other end of what was to prove the great street of colleges, whose limits were determined by this early conflict between seculars and religious.

In what year the Ely scholars were settled at S. John’s remains uncertain, although there is no more important date in Cambridge history. Simon Montacute, Bishop of Ely, “who knew very well” as the historian of S. John’s observes, says that the scholars had continued there _per longa tempora_, and Baker

King James I. is said to have introduced the culture of the mulberry tree, and it is probable that the one in this garden is the last survivor of a number bought in 1609. Milton was admitted to this College in 1625.]

considers that in no construction of words can this be understood otherwise than as referring to the beginning of Hugh Balsham’s prelacy at Ely.[209] The licence permitting the seculars to be engrafted on the old stock with their own endowment, is dated the ninth year of Edward I. (1280)[210] and the transference to Peterhouse took place three years after; but the date of the royal licence is no proof that the work to which it refers was initiated rather than completed and crowned in that year; Margaret of Anjou, for example, obtained her licence when three sides of the quadrangle at Queens’ were nearing completion.[211] In any case the few months intervening between December 23, 1280 and the decision to remove to Peterhouse could not be described as a “long time,” and as Balsham had become bishop of the diocese in 1257 it is most probable that he at once set about what it must certainly be supposed he had at heart while still subprior of Ely.

With S. John’s we have the first of the large colleges. Henceforth Trinity and John’s are “the big colleges” the others are “the 14 small colleges.” It now consists of four large courts, three of which are of brickwork. The first court was erected between 1509-1616 on the pattern of the quadrangle at Christ’s. The founder’s grandson Henry VIII., whose coronation she lived to witness, not only sequestrated a large part of the funds she had destined for the building, but fifteen years later beheaded Fisher her executor. The latter himself subscribed to the fund and was able before he died to erect a college for a Master and 21 fellows--the original design being for 50 fellows. But what thus fell short of the spirit of the earlier design has since been amply repaired, and a series of benefactors have made the college one of the most useful in England, with that large influence on the nation and large power of helping poorer students which its founders had so greatly at heart.

The Second Court was built chiefly at the expense of Mary Countess of Shrewsbury in 1595-1620. The Third Court was begun in 1623, with funds provided by Williams then Bishop of Lincoln, and finished by benefactors some of whom remained anonymous. The last Court was built in 1826 and is joined to the college by the “Bridge of Sighs.” Beyond this is the beautiful “wilderness” commemorated by Wordsworth.

---- Scarcely Spenser’s self
Could have more tranquil visions in his youth

he tells us, than he had had loitering in Cambridge nights under a “fairy work of earth,” a certain lovely ash, wreathed in ivy. This is the site of the infirmary of the canons, the only portion of whose Hospital to be preserved was adapted as a college infirmary and was at the north side of the First Court: it was destroyed in 1863 when the present large chapel was built, which is the work of Gilbert Scott, and is 193 feet long. The large hall

The Kirke White memorial is seen in the foreground, and behind it are the Divinity Schools; to the left is the Gateway of St. John’s, with the Tower behind it. The enclosed space in the foreground was formerly the site of All Saints’ Church, pulled down in 1865.]

measures 108 feet, and the portrait of Lady Margaret presides over the high table. The new combination room, which is now entered from the second court, was built in 1864, and is 93 feet long. The west side of the Third Court is cloistered, and from here leads the covered bridge, called from its resemblance to the bridge at Venice “the Bridge of Sighs.” The stone bridge near it supplanted the old timber bridge in 1696. As at Queens’, there is a long gallery on the first floor of the Second Court. Nowhere has the original modest “master’s lodging” undergone more change than here. The lodging--two rooms over the old combination room, with an oriel, on the first court--was gradually extended, again as at Queens’, along the gallery, and ran along part of the next court. Finally Scott built the present lodge, outside the courts altogether.

Christ’s and S. John’s are both profusely ornamented with the Tudor and Beaufort badges of the founder, and with her name-device the _marguerite_.[212] The ancient gateway has a canopied statue of the Evangelist. To the north and south of the new chapel porch are statues of Lady Margaret and of Fisher, and 16 statues of the benefactors and great members of the college: Mary Cavendish Countess of Shrewsbury, Sarah Alston Duchess of Somerset, Williams Archbishop of York, and Linacre who founded the Physics lecture here and at Merton Oxford, appear among the former. Among the latter are Roger Ascham (fellow) (those asterisked are effigied); Sir John Cheke (fellow); *Bentley; *Cecil Lord Burleigh; *Lucius Lord Falkland[213]; Fairfax, the parliamentary general; *Wentworth Lord Strafford; *Stillingfleet, *Overall,[214] *Gunning, and Selwyn, prelates; *William Gilbert; *Brook Taylor the naturalist; *Clarkson the opponent of the slave trade; Cave the ecclesiastical historian; Metcalfe the most brilliant of its masters[215]; Matthew Prior, Grindal the classic, Cecil Lord Salisbury, Ben Jonson, Wordsworth, Kirke White, Rowland Hill, Henry Martyn the missionary, Horne Tooke, Castlereagh, Palmerston, Wilberforce, Erasmus Darwin, Colenso, Herschell, Liveing, Adams the discoverer of Neptune, Benjamin Hall Kennedy, and *Baker the historian of the college. Fisher arranged a small chapel leading from the college chapel for his own resting place.[216] The site of S. John’s chapel is as old an ecclesiastical site as Jesus chapel: the xvi century edifice was constructed close to the xii century canons’ church, and the fine modern chapel is on the same site.

The licence for the college dates from 1511; the building was opened in 1516; and the statutes were drawn up by Fisher.

In the corner on the right is seen the Doorway of the Chapel, with the tower rising above it. On the left is part of the Hall with a fine oriel window.]

There are now 56 fellowships, 60 foundation scholars each receiving £50 annually, and 9 sizars £35 annually.

* * * * *

The next college which claims our attention must rank among the more interesting foundations on account of its origin rather than of its subsequent history.

[Sidenote: Magdalene College, A.D. 1542.]

Near S. John’s Hospital there was a site traditionally connected with the lectures of Abbot Joffred’s monks in 1109, and which in fact was afterwards Crowland Abbey property. When a monastic order possessed no convent in a university town, the monks were obliged to reside in lodgings, and this led, as we have already seen (i. p. 49) to the foundation of monastic hostels for their reception. There were two such hostels at Cambridge--Ely hostel and Monks’ hostel. Ely hostel was the direct outcome of Benedict XII.’s Constitution in 1337[217] which reconfirmed an earlier injunction of Honorius III. 1216-27 requiring the Benedictines and Augustinians to send students in rotation from the monastery to the university, and provided that monks should live at the universities under a prior of Benedictines. It was purchased in 1340 (or earlier) by John de Crawden prior of Ely for the Ely monks and was made over to Bateman Bishop of Norwich seven years later for his foundation of Trinity Hall.

Ely then had been the pioneer in providing this accommodation, which served for Ely monks alone, and which, as we see, was speedily abolished. Those few Houses which still elected to send their monks to Cambridge[218] maintained them there thenceforth under the care of “the prior of students”; and it was owing to the energy of one of these Cambridge priors that Monks’ hostel was projected in 1428, at a time when, as is then stated, no house existed for Crowland or other Benedictine monks, and the religious either shared the hostels with seculars or lived in lodgings in the town. The site for Monks’ hostel consisted of two messuages granted in that year to the abbot of Crowland by the Cambridge burgesses. Crowland, Ely, Ramsey, and Walden each built portions for their own students.[219] Nearly a hundred years later, on the eve of the Reformation, Edward Stafford Duke of Buckingham refounded this hostel as Buckingham College. It was not

The doorway on the right leads into the First Court. The Dining Hall is in the building on the right and the Combination Room on the left of the picture. In the background is the Chapel Tower with the sunset light upon it]

completed at the time of his attainder two years afterwards (1521) and the property escheated in due course as a cell of Crowland Abbey to the crown.[220]

How soon Monks’ hostel became “the monks’ hostel of Buckingham” is by no means clear. That the Dukes of Buckingham were early patrons must be admitted on the evidence; for even if the house was not known as Buckingham College in 1465, it was known as “the hostel called Bokyngham college” in 1483 while it was still Crowland property, and both hall and chapel were probably the gift of “deep revolving, witty Buckingham” the second Duke Henry.

“I have in this world sustained great damage and injury in serving the king’s highness, which this grant shall recompense.” So wrote Lord Chancellor Audley in a letter begging for a share of the plunder when Henry had determined on the suppression of the monasteries. The share he wanted and got was Walden Abbey in Essex on the borders of Cambridgeshire, and here he established himself on the site which his son was to transform into the mansion of Audley-End. He did more; he proposed to himself, apparently, some sort of expiation to balance the “recompense,” and in 1542 changed Buckingham into Magdalene College which he re-endowed. We have seen that Walden Abbey was itself one of the builders of Monks’ hostel.

The mastership of the college is in the gift of the owner of Audley-End (now Lord Braybrooke). Nothing of the xv century building remains. A window of Pugin’s adorns the chapel[221] replacing the old altar-piece which is now in the library. The combination room leads from the musicians’ gallery of the pleasant hall, the only instance of this arrangement in Cambridge.[222] In the time of Fuller, Magdalene was a college of reading men: “The scholars of this college, though farthest from the schools, were in my time the first to be observed there, and to as good purpose as any.”[223] Twenty years ago it was the fashionable college, and its members lived in private lodgings, attending neither hall nor chapel. Magdalene is in the parish of S. Giles, and it has been conjectured that it occupies the site of the house of the canons of S. Giles before they removed to Barnwell. There is however no evidence for this, and there are no documents at Magdalene earlier than Stafford’s time.[224]

Archbishop Grindal,[225] Robert Rede chief justice in 1509, Cumberland Bishop of Peterborough, and Kingsley were educated here. So was Pepys, the diarist, who bequeathed to the college his extraordinary collection

This Gallery is used by the Fellows and is 93 feet long. It contains portraits of many College worthies. The approach to it is by a Turret Staircase in the Second Court. Its panelled walls and rich plaster-work ceiling make it one of the finest specimens of its kind left in England.]

of books, engravings, maps, and plans. The Pepysian library is now preserved in a separate hall, in the donor’s own bookshelves constructed after a plan of his own. It is by far the most interesting thing in the college, and would be unique anywhere. It is to be hoped we may soon have an official catalogue of its contents.

Magdalene is a small college, it has about 40 inmates, of whom 5 are fellows. In Fuller’s time it held 140 persons, 11 being fellows and 22 scholars, the rest being as usual the college officers, domestics, and students.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Trinity College A.D. 1546.]

With Trinity College are joined together in indissoluble matrimony the two great periods of college building, and the culminating point of the renascence is reached: so that Trinity, alone, represents Cambridge architecturally and morally in its historical character of a university of the rebirth from its dawn to its meridian.

[Sidenote: King’s Hall A.D. 1337.]