history has been made too often a dry and repulsive study by those who
have undertaken to teach it and write it; need it remain so? It must
remain so as long as we keep to the old lines and content ourselves
with the old methods. What is wanted to make any science _interesting_
is that it should push its inquiries into new fields of research. The
means and appliances, and opportunities for pursuing historical
researches open to those whose youth is not all behind them, are such
as we, their seniors, never dreamt of when we were in our early
manhood. There are whole worlds as yet unexplored and waiting to be
won. Do men whimperingly complain that there is no longer a career for
genius? Tush! It is enthusiasm that is wanted. Give us that, and the
career will follow. But the enthusiasm must be of the real sort--not
self-asserting, self-conscious, self-seeking; but earnest, patient,
resolute, and reticent: for science, too, needs heroism no less than
war.
In the domain of Physical Science there has been in our own time no
lack of intelligent co-operation, and volunteers have been many and
earnest, nor have they spared themselves or shrunk from sacrifices. In
the domain of Historical Science the labourers are few and far between;
there research proceeds with lagging steps. No one sneers at a
philosopher who travels to Iceland to investigate the habits of a gnat,
or who counts it the pride of his life to have discovered a new fungus,
but simpletons are pleased to make themselves merry with caricaturing
any student of his country's institutions who is "always poring over
musty old parchments." And yet these minute researches will have to be
made sooner of later, and till we can bring ourselves to study the
structure and the tissues and the comparative anatomy of Institutions,
and to go through all the drudgery which sluggards loathe and fools
deride, the light of truth will be dim for us all; our Ethical, equally
with our political Philosophy must remain in a condition of hopeless
sterility. Nevertheless History too has her mission, though her time
has not yet come. It will not always be that the past will be to us "as
the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is
learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith I cannot, for it
is sealed; and the book is delivered to him that is not learned,
saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned."
No! It will not be always so.
VI.
THE BUILDING UP OF A UNIVERSITY.
. . . . "so famous,
So excellent in art, and still so rising."
Some years ago I found myself in a Northern capital, and committed
myself to the guidance of a native coachman, whose business and pride
it was to drive me from place to place, and indicate to me the
important buildings of his majestic city. He was a patriotic showman,
and I am bound to say he showed us a great deal; but the most memorable
moment of that instructive day was when he stopped before, what seemed
to us, a respectable mansion in a respectable street, and announced to
us that "you" was "the Free Kirk _Univairsity_." It was the first time
in my life that I had heard four stone walls with a roof over them
called a University. It was not long, however, before I discovered that
I myself had been living with my head in a sack and, in more senses
than one, had been of those
Who sweep the crossings, wet or dry,
And all the world go by them.
Only so could it have come to pass that this new meaning for an old
word had struck me as strange, not to say ludicrous.
Licuit semperque licebit
Signatum praesente nota producere nomen.
_Allowable?_ Yes! and much more than merely allowable; it is inevitable
that as the ages roll we should attach new meanings to old words. And
if this is inevitable, not the less inevitable is it that, when we
desire to trace the history of the thing signified, we should be
compelled to recur to the original meaning of the name by which the
thing is designated.
A word at starting upon the remarkable book [Footnote: "The
Architectural History of the University of Cambridge, and of the
Colleges of Cambridge and Eton." By the late Robert Willis, M.A.,
F.R.S. Edited, with large additions, and brought up to the present
time, by John Willis Clark, M.A., late Fellow of Trin. Coll., Camb. 4
vols. super-royal 8vo Cambridge: The University Press.] which has
suggested the following article. To say of it that it is quite the most
sumptuous work that has ever proceeded from the Cambridge Press, is to
say little. It is hardly too much to say that it is one of the most
important contributions to the social and intellectual history of
England which has ever been made by a Cambridge man. The title of the
work conveys but a very inadequate notion of its wide scope, of the
encyclopaedic learning and originality of treatment which it displays,
and, least of all, of the abundance of _human interest_ which
characterizes it so markedly. It is because of this wealth of human
interest that the book must needs exercise a powerful fascination upon
those who have a craving to get some insight into the life of their
forefathers; and it is because I believe the number of such students of
history is in our times rapidly on the increase, that I am anxious to
draw attention to some few of the many matters treated of so ably in
these magnificent volumes.
* * * * * * *
The term _University_, in its original acceptation, was used to
designate any aggregate of _persons_ associated in a political,
religious, or trading corporation, having common interests, common
privileges, and common property. The inhabitants of a town, the members
of a fraternity, the brethren of a guild, the monks or canons of a
religious house, when addressed in formal instruments, were addressed
as a _University_. Nay! when the whole body of the faithful is appealed
to as Christian men, the ordinary phrase made use of by lay or
ecclesiastical potentate, when signifying his wishes or intentions, is
"Noverit _Universitas_ vestra." A University in this sense, regarded as
an aggregate of persons, might be localized or it might not; its
members might be scattered over the whole Christian world, or they
might constitute an inner circle of some larger community, of which
they--though a _Universitas_--formed but a part. A University in its
original signification meant no more than our modern term an
Association. When men associated together for purposes of trade, they
were a trading _Universitas_; when they associated for religious
objects, they were a religious _Universitas_; when they associated for
the promotion of learning, they were a learned _Universitas_. But the
men came first, the bricks and mortar followed long after. The
architectural history, in its merely technical and professional
details, could only start at a point where the University, as an
association of scholars and students, had already acquired power and
influence, had been at work for long, and had got to make itself felt
as a living force in the body politic and in the national life. It was
because the antiquaries of a former age lost sight of this truth that
they indulged in the extravagances they did. Starting from the
assumption that stonewalls make an institution, they professed to tell
when the Universities came into existence and who were their earliest
founders. The authors of this modern _Magnum Opus_ have set themselves
to deal with a far more instructive problem. Their object has been to
trace the growth of the University of to-day in its concrete form, down
from the early times when it existed only in the germ; and to show us
how "the glorious fellowship of living men," which constituted the
_personal_ University of the eleventh or the twelfth century, developed
by slow degrees into the brick-and-mortar Universities of the
nineteenth--such Universities as are springing up all over the world;
their teachers advertised for in _The Times_, and their students
tempted to come and be taught in them by the bait of money rewards.
* * * * * * *
As to the exact time when a band of scholars and teachers first made
their home in Cambridge or Oxford, and began to attract to themselves
from the four winds classes of eager youths hungry for intellectual
food and anxious to listen and learn, that we must be content to leave
undetermined. They who like the flavour of the old antiquarianism may
enjoy it in its spiciest form, if they choose to hunt up among certain
forgotten volumes now grown scarce. They may read what John Caius
(pronounced Keys) wrote as the champion of Cambridge, and Thomas Caius
wrote as champion of Oxford; they may rejoice their hearts over the
Battle of the Keys, and come to what conclusion they prefer to arrive
at. For most of us, however, this sort of old-world lore has lost its
charm. A man lives through his taste for some questions. The student of
history nowadays is inclined to say with St. Paul, "So fight I not as
one that beateth the air," and to reject with some impatience the
frivolous questions which help not a jot towards bringing us into
closer relation with the life and personality of our ancestors.
"I am halt sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott;
and we, too, have grown weary of weaving our webs with our backs to the
light. There is no making any way in Cloudland. We ask for firm ground
on which to plant our footsteps, if we would move onwards.
* * * * * * *
It would have been very galling to the Oxford antiquaries of Queen
Elizabeth's days to have to acknowledge that there was a Cambridge
before there was an Oxford. Nevertheless the fact is so. Hide your
diminished heads, ye rash ones who would fain have us believe that a
thousand years before our era, King Mempric, the wicked king whom the
wolves ate--as was right and fitting they should--built a noble city,
which as time went on "was called _Oxonia_, or by the Saxons
_Oxenfordia_." Alack! it turns out that we must make an enormous step
along the course of time before we can find trace of any such city or
anything like it. It turns out that "the year 912 saw Oxford made a
fortified town, with a definite duty to perform and a definite district
assigned to it." What! Seven years after the great Alfred had closed
his eyes in death, and left to others the work which he had showed them
how to do? Yes! Even so. It may be very hard to have to confess the
odious crime of youth; but it seems almost capable of demonstration
that Cambridge, as a fortress and a a town existed a thousand years
before Oxford was anything but a desolate swamp, or at most a trumpery
village, where a handful of Britons speared eels, hunted for deer, and
laboriously manufactured earthenware pots. What have we to do with
thee, thou daughter of yesterday? Stand aside while thine elder
sister--ay, old enough to be thy mother--takes her place of honour. She
has waited long for her historian; he has come at last, and he was
worth waiting for.
In times before the Roman legionaries planted their firm feet in
Britain, there was a very formidable fortress at Cambridge. It
contained about sixty acres; it was surmounted by one of those mighty
earthworks which the hand of man in the old days raised by sheer brute
force, or rather by enormous triumph of organized labour. The Romans
drove out the Britons, and settled a garrison in the place. Two of the
great Roman roads intersected at this point, and the conquerors called
it by a new name, as was their wont, retaining some portion of the old
one. In their language it was known as _Caniboritum_. The primeval
fortress stood on the left bank of the river, which some called the
Granta and some called the Cam; and for reasons best known to
themselves, the Romans did not think fit to span that river by a
bridge, but they made their great Via Devana pass sheer through the
river-as some Dutch or German Irrationalist has pretended that the
children of Israel did when they found the Jordan barring their
progress--that is, those Roman creatures constructed a solid pavement
in the bed of the sluggish stream, over which less audacious engineers
would have thrown an arch. Through the water they carried a kind of
causeway, and the name of the place for centuries indicated that it was
situated on the _ford_ of the Cam. But what the Roman did not choose to
do, that the people that came after him found it needful to do. In the
Saxon Chronicle we find that the old fortress which the Romans had held
and strengthened, and then perforce abandoned, had got to be called
Granta-brygge; and this name, or something very like it, it retained
when the great survey was made as the Norman Conqueror's reign was
drawing to its close. By this time the town had moved across to the
right bank of the river, and had become a town surrounded by a ditch
and defended by walls and gates. Already it contained at least four
hundred houses, and on the site of the old mound the Norman raised a
new castle, and in doing that he laid some twenty-nine houses low.
The early history of Oxford is more or less connected with that of the
obscure and insignificant monastery of St. Frideswide, though even at
Oxford it is observable that the town and the University grew up in
almost entire independence of any influence exercised by any of the
older religious houses. At Cambridge this was much more the case. There
were no _monks_ at Cambridge at any time; there never were any nearer
than at the Abbey of Ely, in the old times a long day's journey off,
and accessible in the winter, if accessible at all, only by water. King
Knut, we are told, greatly favoured the Abbey of Ely, visited it, was
entertained there, in fact restored it. But at Cambridge there were no
monks. No _real_ monks; a fact which ought to be a significant hint to
"all educated men," but which, unhappily, is likely to be significant
only to the few who have taken the trouble to learn what a real monk
professed to be. If there were no monks at Cambridge, there was
something else. Outside the walls of the town there rose up, in the
twelfth century, the priory of Barnwell-a priory of Augustinian
_canons_; and, moreover, a nunnery-the Benedictine nunnery of St.
Rhadegunda. Within the walls there was another house of Augustinians,
which was known as St. John's Hospital; that is, a house where the
canons made it part of their duty to provide a spurious kind of
_hospitality_ to travellers, much in the same way that the Hospice of
St. Bernard offers food and shelter now to the wayfarer, and with such
food and shelter something more--to wit, the opportunity of worshipping
the Most High in peace, up there among the eternal snows. At St. John's
Hospital, as at St. Bernard's, the grateful wanderer who had found a
refuge would leave behind him his thankoffering in recognition of the
kindly treatment he had met with, and it might happen that these free
gifts constituted no small portion of the income on which the
canons--for the most part a humble and unpretentious set of men-kept up
their houses.
With the dawn of the thirteenth century came the great revivalists--the
friars. Wherever the friars established themselves they began not only
to preach, but to teach. They were the awakeners of a new intellectual
life; not only the stimulators of an emotional pietism always prone to
run into religious intoxication and extravagance. With the coming of
the friars what may be called the modern history of Cambridge begins.
Not that it can be allowed that there were no schools of repute on the
banks of the Cam till the coming of the friars; it is certain that
learning had her home at Cambridge long before this time.
As early as 1187 Giraldus Cambrensis came to Oxford and read his
_Expugnatio Hiberniae_ in public lectures, and entertained the doctors
of the diverse faculties and the most distinguished scholars.
[Footnote: Bishop Stubbs's "Lectures on Mediaeval and Modern History,"
p. 141, 8vo, 1886.] Oxford was doubtless at that time more renowned,
but Cambridge followed not far behind. If the friars settled at
Cambridge early in their career, it was because there was a suitable
home for them there--an opening as we say--which the flourishing
condition of the University afforded. There were scholars to teach,
there were masters to dispute with, there were doctors to criticize,
oppose, or befriend. Doubtless, too, there were already strained
relations between the townsmen and the gownsmen at Cambridge as at
Oxford. The first great "town and gown row" which we hear of took place
at Oxford in 1209, but when we do hear of it we find the other
University mentioned by the historian in close connection with the
event recorded. The townsmen under great provocation had seized three
of the gownsmen _in hospitio suo_ and threw them into the gaol. King
John came down to make inquiry, and he hung those three, guiltless
though they were, as Matthew Paris assures us. Hereupon there was
intense indignation, and the University dispersed. Three thousand of
the gownsmen migrated elsewhere, some to Cambridge we learn. Oxford for
a while was deserted. This was fifteen years before the Franciscans
settled among us. It was the year in which King John was
excommunicated. There were only three bishops left in England; the king
had worried all the rest away. There was misery and anarchy everywhere.
Yet, strange to say, in the midst of all the bitterness men _would_
have their sons educated, and the Universities did not despair of the
republic. Shadowy and fragmentary as all the evidence is on which we
have to rely for the history of the Universities during the twelfth
century, it is enough to make us certain that the friars settled at
Cambridge because there they found scope for their labours. There was
undoubtedly a University there long before they arrived. Nevertheless,
it is not till the middle of the reign of Henry the Third (A.D.
1216-1272) that we come upon any direct mention of a corporation which
could be regarded as a chartered society of scholars at Cambridge, and
it is difficult to resist the conviction that, whatever may have been
its previous history, and however far back its infancy may date, the
friars were to some extent nursing fathers of the University of
Cambridge.
And this brings us again to the point from which we started a page or
two back, and gives me the opportunity of quoting a passage from
Professor Willis's introduction, which will serve at once as a
continuation of and comment upon what has been said, while leading us
on to what still lies before us.
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 dominion unless he
had received their sanction, which could only be granted after trial of
his ability. The test applied consisted of examinations and 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 instruction 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.
* * * * * * *
We have arrived at this point--we find ourselves at the beginning of
the thirteenth century face to face with a _University_ at Cambridge, a
University which, existing originally in its inchoate condition of an
association vaguely aiming at the improvement of the methods of
education and the encouragement of scholars, had gradually grown into a
recognized and powerful body, with direct influence and control over
its members; a body, too, which had become so identified with the
interests of culture and research that a change had already begun in
the generally received acceptation of its name, and already the word
"university" had begun to be restricted to such a _Universitas_ as was
identified with the life and pursuits of learning and learned men. This
means that, _pari passu_ with its increase in power, the University had
grown too, in the number of its members--the teachers and the taught.
The time had arrived when the demands of professors and students for
adequate accommodation would become pressing. Lecturers with popular
gifts would expect a hall capable of holding their audiences. Public
disputations could not be held in a corner. Receptions of eminent
scholars from a distance, and all those ceremonials which were so dear
to gentle and simple in the middle ages, required space, and were the
more effective the grander the buildings in which they were displayed,
Yet how little the Cantabs of the thirteenth century could have dreamt
of what was coming! What a day of small things it was! Six hundred
years ago the giant was in his cradle.
Meanwhile, another need than that of mere schools and lecture-halls had
begun to be felt. The scholars who came for what they could get from
the teachers--the regents and the doctors--flocked from various
quarters; they were young, they were not all fired with the student's
love of learning; they were sometimes noisy, sometimes frolicsome,
sometimes vicious. As now is the case at Edinburgh and Heidelberg, so
it was then at Cambridge, the bonds of discipline were very slight; the
scholars had to take their chance; they lodged where they could, they
lived anyhow, each according to his means; they were homeless. It was
inevitable that all sorts of grave evils should arise.