[Frontispiece: THE GREAT COURT, TRINITY COLLEGE]
CAMBRIDGE
Described by NOEL BARWELL
Pictured by E. W. HASLEHUST
BLACKIE & SON LIMITED
LONDON AND GLASGOW
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17 Stanhope Street, Glasgow
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BEAUTIFUL ENGLAND
The Heart of London.
Dartmoor.
Canterbury.
Oxford.
Bath and Wells.
In London's By-ways.
The Peak District.
Winchester.
The Thames.
The Cornish Riviera.
Shakespeare-land.
Cambridge.
York.
The English Lakes.
BEAUTIFUL SCOTLAND
Loch Lomond and the Trossachs.
Edinburgh.
The Scott Country.
The Shores of Fife.
_Printed in Great Britain by Blackie & Son, Ltd., Glasgow_
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Great Court, Trinity College ... Frontispiece
Byron's Pool
The Kitchen Wall, Peterhouse
The Old Hall, Corpus Christi College
Erasmus' Tower, Queens' College
Gateway, St. John's College
Wren's Bridge, St. John's College
Fisher Lane and Great Bridge
The Market Place
Library Staircase, St. John's College
Fellows' Garden and Pond, Christ's College
Clare College from the Backs
[Illustration: BYRON'S POOL]
[Illustration: CAMBRIDGE]
CAMBRIDGE
To the sympathetic beholder one of the most potent charms of England
lies in the singular diversity of its landscape. To him each
district makes its special, its peculiar appeal. He is sensible
everywhere of a real, if intangible, _genius loci_; and he is prone
to seek the effect of some such spirit as well in the history of
communities and bodies politic as in the lives of individuals. For
him, then, there must needs be something of truth in the idea that
much of the destinies of Oxford and Cambridge lay written upon the
land at their gates. From the hills above Oxford a man may see the
whole city at his feet. Generations of men have so seen it, and have
so regarded it, subjectively--as a whole. At sundown, when the
varied shape of tower and dome merge in a common outline, this
impression of unity becomes unforgetably intensified; and but few,
probably, of those who have found there the place of their education,
will have left it without a sense of having shared in some common
purpose. It has ever seemed the aim of Oxford to foster uniformity;
of Cambridge, however unconsciously, to encourage the opposite in
thought and manners. The sympathies which unite men of a Cambridge
education are not therefore less strong, but they are subtler and
less capable of expression in a phrase.
Cambridge is no city of spires. She lies belted with woods in the
midst of a wide plain. To south, to west, to east stretches a
lowland landscape, delicately moulded, rich in pasture and
corn-bearing fields. Northwards a man need ride but a few miles
across the fens to hear the bells of Ely, or at twilight to see the
lantern of that ancient church preserve its solitary vision of the
sun. Through this broad tract of country, whose every detail is
typical of all which is most beautiful in the Eastern Midlands, winds
that gentlest of English rivers, the Cam. Above Cambridge, it still
bears its ancient name of Granta; at Ely it is the Ouse. The scenery
along its upper reaches, though small in scale, is of singular merit
to eyes which are not weary of "Nature's old felicities". Near
Grantchester, a lock now marks an ancient bifurcation of the river,
and here the stream widens to form a deep sequestered pool, shaded by
a veritable arena of tall trees. Poet as well as peasant must often
have bathed here and have made it a place of meditation. It was a
favourite spot with Byron, and it is still called after him.
Passing from the countryside to within the boundaries of the
University itself, nothing, perhaps, will seem more remarkable to the
curious observer than the absence of that hard-featured grandeur with
which the architecture of the Middle Ages was so deeply impressed.
Cambridge goes back eight centuries; but there remains little to
remind us of those many vicissitudes of mediæval life from which
neither of the Universities emerged unscathed; for with the
disappearance of Feudalism, the advent of the New Learning, and the
breakdown of Monasticism, Cambridge assumed a richer dress, and the
fine apparel of those days becomes her still. From that string of
Tudor palaces whose broad lawns and well-nurtured gardens mark the
lazy passage of the Cam, to those more distant Colleges of Jesus and
Emmanuel, a grave tranquillity pervades the whole. This sense of
peace and of contentment, so precious to the individual mind, seems
largely due to that gracious domesticity which the Tudor architect so
well knew how to impart even to the meanest of his college buildings.
But to those later architects who practised here, while architecture
was still an art in England, is owing that conscious, studied
stateliness we now prize. The genius of Wren, which at Oxford in his
tower of Christ Church with inimitable propriety seized upon and
revivified for his purpose the Gothic style of architecture, as
easily and as properly adapted itself to the more reticent temper of
this University. The examples of his skill which may be seen at
Pembroke and Emmanuel; the bridge at St. John's, built by his pupil
Hawksmoor apparently from his designs; above all his great Library at
Trinity, remain to show with what appreciation he met the
contemplative character of the Cambridge mind, with what zest he lent
his art to the commemoration of her material prosperity.
The first important period of building in Cambridge was the
fourteenth century. Seven colleges were founded and provided with
decent accommodation between 1324 and 1352. In the next century four
more colleges were set up. While in the sixteenth century, from 1505
to 1595, another seven colleges were added to the University. Two
other colleges have since arisen in Cambridge--Downing, built in
1805; and Selwyn, set up originally as a hostel in 1882, but now
recognized as a "House" in all but the official sense of that
expression. There are also two large and important colleges which
are devoted to the higher education of women. Girton College,
founded in 1867, is the oldest institution of its kind. Newnham
College dates from 1871. That Cambridge should have been the first
university in England to admit women to her studies and to her
examinations is no more than fitting, when it is remembered that some
six of her principal colleges were founded or endowed by great
ladies. Members of Clare, Pembroke, Queens', Christ's, St. John's,
and Sidney Sussex Colleges may, for this reason, very properly feel a
certain debt to the sex.
Still more remarkable is the extent of royal benefaction in
Cambridge. In Oxford only one College, Queen's, owes its existence
directly to the patronage of royalty. At Cambridge there are five
houses which can lay claim to the style of a royal foundation:
King's, Trinity, Queens', Christ's, St. John's; and of these the
first two were founded and endowed by reigning sovereigns. King's
Hall--afterwards merged in Trinity--was planned by Edward II and
endowed by Edward III; King's College was founded by Henry VI; and
Trinity by Henry VIII, who further endowed several professorships in
the University; Queen Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Woodville,
Queen to Edward IV, are co-founders of Queens'; Lady Margaret Tudor
was the foundress of Christ's and St. John's Colleges. But the
patronage of England's monarchs did not end with the sixteenth
century. Mary was a benefactor to Trinity. Queen Elizabeth attached
Westminster School to that college by certain scholarships, and sent
timber to and completed the chapel there. She also sent building
material to Corpus Christi College. James I was always coming to
Cambridge; but, like most of the Stuarts, did little for the
University, unless a copy of his literary "works" be considered a
benefaction. George I purchased the library of Bishop Moore of Ely
and gave it to the University. He also founded the regius
professorship of Modern History there; while George IV contributed to
the building of what is now called the New Court at Trinity College.
His brother, the Duke of Gloucester, was the first member of an
English Royal family to be educated within the precincts of a
university. He was of Trinity, where two portraits of him now hang.
The House of Hanover has ever shown favour to Cambridge. Prince
Albert, Consort to Queen Victoria, was its Chancellor, and his late
Majesty King Edward VII, having himself spent a year at each of the
Universities, sent his elder son, the late lamented Duke of Clarence,
to Cambridge, where he was entered at Trinity and by his father's
special command "kept" in college, attended the usual lectures, and
lived the ordinary life of an undergraduate nobleman. The latest
member of the Royal family to enter the University is Prince Leopold
of Battenberg, whose period of residence at Magdalene College has
only recently terminated.
It seems never easy to explain to people unacquainted with English
University life, the precise difference between the University and
the College. The University, as a corporation teaching and granting
degrees, is older than any college, and has its own endowments. Now,
however, that the colleges have come and have established a social
and domestic tone which could not exist without them, the University
shows itself conscious of their value in a great many ways. The
Vice-chancellor is elected from the number of Heads of Houses; the
Proctors are nominated by each college in rotation, and the
University expects and has now the power to exact contributions from
each college towards the necessary expenses of the whole academy.
Within the colleges themselves there are three grades of inmate: the
Fellow, the Scholar, and the Pensioner. The first must be of
Bachelor standing at the time of his election, and must shortly
afterwards proceed to a higher degree. He draws his stipend from the
endowments of the college. From this class are drawn the college
Tutors, Lecturers, and Deans, while as many more "dons" devote their
time to private study. The scholars on the foundation draw their
stipends from the endowments of the college in accordance with the
statutes or the terms of some special benefaction; while the term
Pensioner comprises all those undergraduates who pay for everything
they receive at college.
But the history of the English Universities must be considered as
that of communities into whose lives colleges were introduced for a
social rather than a scholastic purpose. Cambridge grew into a seat
of learning during the latter half of the twelfth century, but the
first College, Peterhouse, was not founded till 1284. Till then, the
scholars who resorted to the place lodged where they could in the
town. This was the practice at every university in Europe; and, even
to-day, the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin afford the
only exceptions to it.
[Illustration: THE KITCHEN WALL, PETERHOUSE]
Housed in dwellings mean enough to the eye and as certainly
ungracious to the nose, the young scholars of those early days lived
a life of what we should now call intolerable discomfort. Coarse
vesture, scanty food, long hours in the "common schools", such were
the dominant features in the student life of every youth who sought
to acquire the book learning of his day. Nor did the foundation of
the first few colleges sensibly alter these unhappy conditions. The
aim of their founders was the removal by benefaction of some of the
worst hardships to which the young scholar was then subjected. Thus
provision was made for the bare necessaries of life--lodging, food,
and raiment. Poverty was, of course, the first statutory
qualification for membership. That the prosecution of certain
studies was enjoined upon the beneficiaries, testifies less to a
desire to further this or that branch of knowledge than to a not
unnatural anxiety lest these young men should fall into idleness or
other evil habits.
What was the town and what the university into which this new element
of scholastic life now entered? Cambridge had a navigable river
pouring its waters into the North Sea at the natural port of Lynn.
Moreover, the town marked the junction of two Roman roads. It was a
fertile spot; and its situation had struck the Conqueror as one of
strategic importance. Here, therefore, he built a castle, the mound
of which remains to this day. The structure itself was dismantled
gradually during the fifteenth century. Some of the stone was used
for the building of King's Hall, and some for King's College.
"Hereby", writes Fuller in 1655, "that stately structure, anciently
the ornament of Cambridge, is at this day reduced next to nothing."
But during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries men might still look
at that Norman keep and take heart of grace. Under its shadow had
grown up a prosperous market town. On the one hand it was the
greatest Fish Mart, on the other a town noted for one of the most
important Fairs in the country. This Fair was held in a field hard
by the village of Barnwell, that is to say, within two miles of the
University town itself; it began on the feast of St. Bartholomew and
lasted until the fourteenth day after the feast of the Exaltation of
the Cross (Aug. 24--Sept. 14). It still survives as the principal
pleasure show and Horse Fair of the shire.
With these advantages Cambridge, as a town, rose rapidly in
importance. The Jews appeared in 1106; and during that and the
succeeding century most of the religious orders had established
themselves in the place. The Templars were the first to appear.
They built their church sometime between 1120 and 1140. It is the
earliest of the four round churches which have come down to us.
Our universities, like most other English institutions, were not
made--they grew; and all we can say of the origin of Cambridge is,
that before the thirteenth century was far advanced references to it
as a "stadium generate" or University creep into the state documents
of the time. A migration from Oxford took place in 1209, and in 1231
a letter from King Henry III to the Mayor and bailiffs makes mention
of a great influx of scholars "both from the regions near home and
from beyond the seas". This document is also interesting as showing
that the finding of lodgings was a matter of no little difficulty to
the scholars. The King has to request the townspeople to deal
properly with the students in all such transactions. When,
therefore, Walter de Merton, the founder of the College in Oxford
which bears his name, bought land at both Universities and endowed
students in those schools, his benefaction came none too soon. His
house and scholars at Cambridge are mentioned in a document as early
as 1259; and it was not till 1274 that he removed these scholars to
the other University. Ten years later was founded the first
exclusively Cambridge College. It was to consist of a Master and
fourteen Fellows, together with a number of "bible clerks"--young men
whose duty it was to read to the Society at meal times. This College
was dedicated to St. Peter, and was known as "the House of the
scholars of St. Peter", or Peterhouse. The founder was Hugh de
Balsham, Bishop of Ely.
The reasons which dictated Merton's change of policy can only be
conjectured. To attempt to set up a stable society in an obviously
unstable community must have seemed to many a risky project. A
university was a body of students who possessed in actual property
little more than the gowns upon their backs. At a word of plague or
rapine they could, and indeed did, migrate elsewhere. A college with
buildings and land could not as easily or as profitably take flight.
From the point of view of a would-be benefactor, Cambridge, standing
as it did "on the edge of the great wild"--to use Mr. J. W. Clark's
words--might well seem to possess a less favourable situation than
Oxford. It had, in the past, suffered a great deal from attack; and
if the educationists of those days thought twice before running the
risk of seeing their good works brought to nought in Cambridge, the
subsequent history of the University very nearly bore out their worst
fears; for the revolting peasants who followed the celebrated Wat
Tyler entered Cambridge in considerable numbers, and, being joined by
the great mass of the townsfolk, broke into Corpus Christi College.
They burnt its archives, together with every other book and paper
they could lay their hands on; and not content with this damage "done
and committed", they repaired to St. Mary's and the Common Schools,
where, seizing the University chests, they destroyed the muniments
and made away with the funds.
[Illustration: THE OLD HALL, CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE]
Thus it is neither surprising if Merton should have felt doubtful of
the continued prosperity of Cambridge, nor remarkable that
twenty-eight years should have elapsed before Hugh de Balsham's
venture in founding a college there should have met with the flattery
of imitation. But the next college, that of Michaelhouse (merged
afterwards, as was King's Hall, in Henry VIII's great College of the
Holy Trinity), was followed in quick succession by five other
foundations:--Clare Hall, 1326; King's Hall, 1337; Pembroke Hall,
1347; Gunvil Hall (now Gonville and Caius College), 1348; Trinity
Hall, 1350; and Corpus Christi College, 1352.
Perhaps a word concerning the nomenclature of Cambridge Colleges may
fittingly find a place here. "College" is a late expression, as
things go in Cambridge. The earliest words are _domus_ and _aula_,
respectively "house" and "hall": thus Peterhouse, Michaelhouse, and
God's House (now Christ's College); and Clare Hall, Pembroke Hall,
and Catharine Hall. This use of the word "hall" is ancient and
honourable in Cambridge, and the fact that it has a different
signification in Oxford, where it is used to denote a licensed
lodging-house under a Master of Arts, should never have operated to
prevent its retention in our University to-day. "The Hall of the
Holy Trinity of Norwich" is perhaps forced by circumstance to
preserve its ancient name; but when it calls itself "_The_ Hall", it
does so, one must hope, rather as a protest than in pride of
singularity. Some popular errors or misapprehensions may here be
noted under this head. The college styled in the Cambridge Calendar
"Gonville and Caius" was originally founded by one Edmund Gonville,
who pronounced his name "Gunvil". It was later re-endowed and much
enlarged by the celebrated Dr. Keys, who, conformable to the fashion
of his day, latinized his name for literary purposes into "Caius".
The latinized form of the one and the more correct spelling of the
other founder are now used in writing down the name of the College;
but, colloquially, traditional usage still preserves the English
names in the pronunciation of their time. The members of Queens'
College, in virtue of two royal foundresses, write the apostrophe
after the final "s"; while Magdalene men insist on preserving the
final "e" in the name of their patron saint. Perhaps, however, the
most curious example of a wrong name clinging to a House is presented
by Jesus College. This, the popular appellation, is no better than a
nickname. The college is not dedicated to Our Saviour, but to "The
Blessed Virgin Mary, St. John the Evangelist, and the Glorious Virgin
St. Rhadigund". It happens to stand in the now obliterated and
forgotten parish of Jesus; but this nickname from a past age
continues to serve its old and useful purpose. Another example is
that of Pembroke College, founded by Marie, widow of Aylmer de
Valence, Earl of Pembroke. The foundress wished her college to be
styled "The Hall of Valence Marie", and such is its proper name.
Lastly, King's College was dedicated to St. Mary and St. Nicholas.
Before turning to the more modern aspect of Cambridge, the subject
demands that something should be said of those notable periods of
prosperity, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The evidence of
the growth and power of the University during those years lies, for
the visitor, in the number and magnificence of the buildings then
undertaken which have survived till our own day the dual tests of
time and taste. Of the original buildings of those early colleges to
which reference has already been made next to nothing remains. The
shell of the old court at Corpus is still standing; but this part of
the college has been re-roofed, most of the windows in it are of a
late period, and it is almost wholly covered with ivy. Some of the
masonry forming the south wall of the Peterhouse kitchen is perhaps
as old as anything in Cambridge; and this quaint corner of the oldest
college is the subject of an illustration to the present volume. The
Chapel of this college is of the seventeenth century. The Library is
late Tudor. The Hall and Combination Room are part restorations and
part a matter of fresh designing. The work was undertaken between
1866-70. Gilbert Scott, William Morris, Burne-Jones, and Ford Madox
Brown had each a hand in it. Trinity Hall has been almost entirely
rebuilt. All save the Library, which is late Tudor and which lies
beyond the main quadrangle, is of late eighteenth-century design.
The lodge and certain newer buildings are said to be commodious.
They are none the less ugly. The rebuilding of Clare Hall began
during the reign of Charles I and was continued during the
interregnum; but it was not finished until the eighteenth century had
entered upon the last quarter of its course. As it stands to-day, it
is perhaps the most perfect example of the Carolian style in England.
The little bow window over the gateway is remembered as the favourite
seat of a certain fellow of the College, who lived and died more than
a hundred years ago, and of whom it is recorded that, being at feud
with the Master of his College, he chose this particular set of
chambers, because of the chance it afforded him of successfully
spitting at that unlucky dignitary as he entered or left the college
precincts.
[Illustration: ERASMUS' TOWER, QUEENS' COLLEGE]
Pembroke College possessed till quite recently a really beautiful
example of a fourteenth-century Dining-hall. The late Mr. Waterhouse
alarmed the society by reporting it to be in danger of falling about
their ears. He was commissioned, therefore, to take it down and to
build them another. In executing the first part of these
instructions he was observed to have recourse to dynamite. Less
drastic methods might avail to remove the building which now occupies
the place of that fine old Hall. In speaking of it the present
writer is tempted to borrow the words of the learned Provost of
King's in noticing the Library building by the same hand: "It could
only suffer", says Dr. James, "by any description of it that I might
write". Gonville Hall was another college destined to undergo a
complete remodelling. Fortunately the rebuilding took place in the
sixteenth century, and much of the work then undertaken remains to
this day. It marked the munificence of its re-founder, and devoted
master, the celebrated Dr. Caius. This extraordinary man was born in
Norwich in 1510. He was of Gonville Hall, and, after taking the
usual degrees, proceeded Doctor at Padua, where he lectured in Greek.
His learning was prodigious and his reputation European. He lived to
translate some Erasmus into English, to write numerous treatises of
his own, to preside over the College of Physicians, to carry out
various antiquarian researches, and to serve with distinction as
Physician to Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth. He ended his days
Master of his beloved College in Cambridge, where he lies buried. In
his last illness he endeavoured to sustain life by a return to the
natural nourishment of infancy; and divers dames of the town were
privileged to minister to his wants in this respect. Being observed
to be now "froward, peevish, and full of frets", and now tractable,
docile, and of an amiable countenance, his moods and tempers were
considered to vary with the individual source of his curious
refreshment. Gonville and Caius College, as it is now called,
possessed till recently three gateways of the time of Caius. That
leading on to the street was inscribed the Gate of Humility; that
between the first and second court, the Gate of Virtue; and the last,
as leading to the hall where degrees were conferred, the Gate of
Honour. Of these gates the two last mentioned have fortunately
survived; but the first has given place to a large block of buildings
designed by the late Mr. Waterhouse in his best Provincial Assurance
manner. The visitor will be startled to read the words _Porta
Humilitatis_ above the doorway of this amazing pile.
The fifteenth century saw four more Colleges added to the list of
Cambridge Houses: King's, 1441; Queens', 1448; St. Catharine's, 1473;
Jesus, 1495. The first of these was designed to eclipse every other
collegiate foundation in England. As finally settled by the will of
Henry VI, its founder, the society consisted of seventy souls under
the headship of a Provost. It is bound by sisterly ties to King
Henry's other foundation, the College of St. Mary at Eton. Eton,
indeed, was and is to King's College what Winchester has been to New
College in Oxford. Till 1857 the scholars of Eton proceeded by right
to scholarships and fellowships at King's. None but Etonians could
come upon the foundation, and Kingsmen enjoyed the further privilege
of proceeding to their degrees without any University examination.
The Society ceded these privileges in the year named, and by its
present statutes consists of a Provost, forty-six Fellows,
forty-eight Scholars, of whom twenty-four hold "close" scholarships
attached to Eton, two Chaplains, an Organist, and a Master of the
Boys. The choristers on the foundation are required to be of gentle
birth, and they have their education in an admirably equipped school
under the special government of the College. Of the buildings which
the founder not only contemplated but specified in a document drawn
up by himself, nothing but the Chapel was so much as set out. The
Gatehouse, the great Quadrangle, the Hall and Butteries, the Library,
the Provost's Lodging, the Cloister with its garth, the Bell Tower,
and the bridge across the river were planned and specified, but never
undertaken on the lines which the founder so carefully laid down.
The King died before he could sufficiently endow his college. His
immediate successors in the Crown of England, to whom in language
unforgetably solemn he commended the care of his foundation, did
something for it; but egotism being stronger than piety in princes,
those royalties of a later age who cared to patronize learning
preferred to initiate rather than complete. The Chapel of King's
College, however, owes a great deal to the munificence of the
Sovereigns of England. It took more than a century in building, and
cost for the stonework alone about £160,000, according to the present
value of money. To the completion of this magnificent structure
Edward IV, Richard III, Henry VII, Henry VIII, and Queen Elizabeth
subscribed on a liberal scale. The window glass and the woodwork
belong wholly to the sixteenth century, with here and there additions
of a later date. The roof, had it been carried out by the first set
of masons employed, would certainly have been "lierne" vaulted; but
by the time the walls were ready to bear a roof at all, "fan"
vaulting had come into vogue. The Chapel as it stands to-day
presents without doubt one of the most beautiful interiors to be seen
in England. The choir-screen and stalls are of Renaissance design,
executed with a subtlety not to be matched on this side of the Alps.
The Lectern is of the first quarter of the sixteenth century and is
therefore nearly contemporaneous with the greater number of the
stained-glass windows. In one of the side chapels is preserved an
interesting specimen of a fifteenth-century pulpit, which on March 25
of every year, being the Annunciation of the Virgin, is brought forth
into the church. From this pulpit a Fellow of the College preaches
before the University on the day named: a departure from the usual
custom of meeting in Great St. Mary's which serves to mark the
founder's wish that his college should occupy a pre-eminent place in
Cambridge.
The sixteenth century saw the foundation and endowment of the two
great colleges of Trinity and St. John's, the sister college to the
latter, Christ's, and the rise of Magdalene, Emmanuel, and Sidney
Sussex. Of these, St. John's was the first to attain eminence.
Bishop Fisher, Cecil the great Lord Burleigh, and Archbishop Williams
successively lent her their aid. She became _par excellence_ an
aristocratic college, and by the first decade of the nineteenth
century could boast that she included among her alumni more men of
note in the social and intellectual life of the country than any
other college in either University could lay claim to. The first
Court of this College has been much disturbed. The gateway is one of
the finest examples of its period to be found anywhere; but, on
entering the College, the eye is at once offended by a poor
eighteenth-century range of buildings on the left, and a vast effort
by the late Sir Gilbert Scott, by way of Chapel, on the right. The
second Court, however, is well-nigh faultless. Here is late Tudor at
its best; and in this small rosy-red brick of the period it finds the
happiest material for the expression of its aims. The further or
third Court is Carolian. It is quaint and charming in its own rather
odd fashion, and as seen from the river, whose waters here touch the
very walls of its western range, contrives to bear a strangely
impressive appearance. The Cam is here spanned by two bridges: one,
a very beautiful example of Sir Christopher Wren's style--it was
built by his pupil Hawksmoor--the other a Cockney Gothic affair
commonly called "The Bridge of Sighs". This last connects the old
Carolian building with a huge range built during the years 1827-31,
which cost the college £78,000. Of the bridge itself, which is part
of this dreadful building, it will be noticed that a certain decency
of proportion--its one merit--renders it some degrees less detestable
than the main structure to which it belongs.
Christ's College, the other "Lady Margaret" foundation, has undergone
a great deal of rebuilding and not a few additions. The gateway from
the street and most of the chambers to right and left of it are of
the sixteenth century. The finest architectural possession of the
college is its block of Fellows' buildings towards the garden. It
would seem to be by a pupil of Inigo Jones, if not actually by the
Master himself.
Magdalene is the only college in Cambridge which, in a sense, is of
monkish origin. It was originally a cell of Croyland; and being
endowed by Henry, second Duke of Buckingham, it soon came to be known
as Buckingham College. In 1483 it is styled "Bokyngham College" and
its inmates are described as "monachi". Lord Chancellor Audley, who
changed the foundation into Magdalene College, refounded it for an
ordinary academical society, after the house, as a cell of Croyland
Abbey, had escheated to the Crown. This college does not elect its
Master: the headship of the House being in the gift of the "owner of
Audley End". At present, therefore, the Lords Braybrooke present to
the Mastership. Magdalene is a picturesque and commodiously arranged
college, and, though small, has many attractive features. The most
interesting building is that erected in the seventeenth century,
primarily with the idea of providing suitable accommodation for the
library of Samuel Pepys the diarist. The latest addition, a range
brought close to the riverside, is perhaps the most successful in
design and colour of any of the more recent buildings in the
University.
The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, though inheriting much
from the earlier college--King's Hall--which was set up by Edward II
and his son Edward III, owes almost everything to King Henry VIII.
It was typical of this monarch that, after somewhat maltreating
Wolsey's foundation at Oxford and paying not too much attention to
Henry VI's or King's College at Cambridge, he should have set about
founding Trinity with the plain intent of eclipsing both. The
College as we see it to-day, is the largest and wealthiest in either
University. It is founded for a Master, sixty Fellows at the least,
and eighty Scholars. In full term the resident members number nearly
eight hundred souls. From the first, the buildings were set out to
accommodate an unusually large society. The Great Court, with its
Chapel, Gatehouse, Hall, Master's Lodge, and rows of chambers, broken
here by a tower, there by a turret, occupies over two acres of
ground. The character of its architecture is for the most part
Tudor; for the restorations and alterations which have from time to
time taken place have not been permitted to stray far from the
traditional style of the Court. A further court--the Cloister or
Neville's Court--consists of two ranges of Jacobean design, modified
by later hands so as to fare better than they otherwise would beside
Sir Christopher Wren's great Library building, which here occupies
the entire western side of the quadrangle, even projecting above and
beyond it on either side. In addition to these two spacious courts
there are three other quadrangles, all of recent date. These are
fortunately so situated that the sightseer can easily avoid looking
at them.
[Illustration: GATEWAY, ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE]
Emmanuel College possesses one court of the founder's time, and
beautiful it is. It is rarely shown to the ordinary visitor, but
those who care for simple unpretending work of this period (1584)
have only to ask for the dovecot garden. The main Court of the
College is of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Wren made the
design for the Chapel, which was built between 1668-78. The Court is
finely proportioned and has always been admired.
Sidney Sussex College, the last college to belong to the sixteenth
century, has been harshly dealt with. A charming Elizabethan college
has been ruthlessly turned into a thoroughly bad stucco dwelling
gothicized in the Wyatt manner. It has its treasures: a fine garden,
good pictures, and some handsome plate.
We have now traced the main periods of Cambridge building. We have
said very little of the life of the University or the growth of the
town during these four hundred years. It is, indeed, hard to
contemplate the visible memorials of those days without imagining a
social life grander and happier for the individual man than could
ever have been the case. Almost everything which makes for the
amenities of college life as we see it to-day is comparatively
speaking modern. To picture the life of scholars young and old even
so late as the sixteenth century, we must be prepared to learn
strange things. Fireplaces were few and far between. Folk gathered
as much as possible in the Common Hall of the College. Here was set
a brazier of charcoal, its fumes poisonous and disagreeable finding
their way through a lantern or louvre in the roof. Rushes were upon
the floor, if it were not tiled or paved. Windows having glass in
them were not common before the fifteenth century. The sanitary
arrangements were primitive, ill-managed, and consequently wretched.
Street lighting was unknown. Scholars slept two and often more in a
bed; and went, as did everyone else, naked to their beds. The
advantages of a bedfellow in those bitter winters were obvious. It
was equally obvious that those who shared a chamber, and so often a
bed, should be well suited to one another; and parents expressed a
not unnatural anxiety on this head. Letters exist in which the
Tutor, who usually occupied a bed apart in a chamber for five
persons, of whom four would be his pupils, is asked to choose
carefully a bedfellow "gentle and virtuous" for the youthful
freshman. The average age of entering was about fourteen during the
earlier periods, but rose to sixteen during the latter centuries of
which we have been writing. Most college offences were punishable by
whipping, graver imprudences meeting with public chastisement
executed by a menial in the Common Hall of the College. Fellows of
M.A. standing could be put in the college "stocks", and often were so
handled. The pedagogic notion that intellectual advancement is
furthered by the application of physical pain was not confined to the
grammar schools, and parents were often eager to place their sons
under the care of a strong-armed college tutor. "Prey Grenefield",
wrote a certain lady to a Cambridge Tutor in the time of Henry VI,
"to send me faithfully worde ho Clemit Paston hathe do his dever i'
lernyng, and if he hathe nought do well nor wyll nought amende, prey
him that he wyll trewly belash him tyll he wyll amend, and so did ye
last maystr and ye best en he had att Caumbreg." As time went on,
however, the life of the ordinary pensioner became comfortable
enough; but, unhappily, the scholar on the Foundation and the Sizar,
or poorest of the juniors, one who paid for his education by the
performance of menial offices, remained objects of contempt with the
more wealthy undergraduates. Before the end of the fifteenth
century, pensioners "in Fellows' Commons" had made their appearance
in Cambridge. They were allowed to dine with the Fellows at the High
Table, wore richly embroidered gowns and enjoyed many other
privileges and distinctions. A higher order still was that of
persons who entered as "Noblemen". Many of the latter class lived in
College and "kept" there in some state. For example, in 1624 Lord
Maltravers and his brother William Howard, sons of the then Earl of
Arundel and Surrey, came up to St. John's College with a retinue of
servants. It was requested that the brothers might occupy one room
"with a pallett for the groome of their chamber"; while "the rest of
his lordship's company, being two gentlemen, a groome of the stable,
and a footman, might be lodged in the town near the College".
[Illustration: WREN'S BRIDGE, ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE]
But the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for all the patronage of
learning affected by prince and peer alike, were troublous times for
the scholar. Much wit was needed to guide him through those
political and religious conflicts which at times threatened to bring
the University to dissolution. Doctors and Masters were for ever
being ousted, driven overseas, or thrown into prison. No man knew
when he might not be called upon to exchange a deanery for a dungeon.
Let one example suffice. On the death of Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey
was at once proclaimed Queen by order of Northumberland. On 16 July
the Lady Mary was but five miles from Cambridge, at the house of Sir
Robert Huddlestone. There she heard Mass and pushed on into Suffolk,
where she met her supporters. The Duke of Northumberland with his
army arrived in Cambridge five days later. He was Chancellor of the
University and a man zealous in promoting its prosperity. How far
the residents believed in his cause we know not; but there seemed
little apprehension of the fate which in reality awaited him. The
Vice-Chancellor and many of the Heads supped with him that night, and
on the morrow he set off for Bury. His return was speedy. And here
in the Market-place, bereft of his former supporters, he was obliged,
in the presence of the Mayor, Vice-Chancellor, and the rest of the
Cambridge notables, to proclaim Mary Queen. He then repaired in some
state to King's College, where, at a late hour that night, he was
arrested by one Roger Slegge, the sergeant-at-arms, who was permitted
to enter the gates unmolested, though, as Fuller says, "that College
was fenced with more privileges than any other foundation in the
University".
The Popish reaction burst out at Cambridge with almost incredible
swiftness. On a certain day "Doctor Sandys, the Vice-Chancellor, on
the ringing of the Schools' bell, went according to his custom and
office, attended with the Bedells into the Regent House and sat down
in the chair according to his place. In cometh one Master Mitch with
a rabble of some twenty Papists, some endeavouring to pluck him from
the chair, others the chair from him, all using railling words and
violent actions. The Doctor, being a man of mettle, groped for his
dagger and probably had despatched some of them had not Dr. Bill and
Dr. Blyth by their prayers and entreaties persuaded him to patience."
He was, in due course, despoiled, deprived, and cast into prison.
But there were other losses which the University was called upon to
suffer during these two hundred years: direct loss of treasure, and
damage to those fair fabrics which the piety of benefactors had
bestowed upon the community. Association of ideas is strong, and the
Reformers were probably justified by circumstances in most of their
destructive operations. Yet the finer spirits must have felt keenly
the demolition of many objects irreplaceable by the hand of man.
Good Dr. Caius kept what he dared of Mass books, vestments, and
antique church ornaments, and seems to have hidden them away; but
they were discovered and destroyed; and probably nothing but the
degree of eminence to which he had then attained as a physician saved
him from sharing the fate of his treasures. As for the Puritans
under Cromwell, they did less damage than they might have done.
King's College Chapel, the glory of the University, they wholly
spared; and the various Colleges were called upon for less tribute
than the experiences of other corporations and the rough usage of
those times might have prepared their inhabitants to expect.
During the early part of the reign of Charles I "the University",
says Fuller, "began to be much beautified in buildings, every College
either shedding its skin with the snake, or renewing its bill with
the eagle, having their courts or at leastwise their fronts and
gatehouses repaired and adorned. But the greatest alterations were
in their chapels, most of them being graced with the accession of
organs." Many of the chapel ornaments were subsequently defaced by
Cromwell; but, as has already been stated, King's was left untouched
in the matter of its fabric, its glass, and its brasses. The
elaborate tombs in Caius Chapel were not injured; and the much
earlier tomb--that of Hugh Ashton--in St. John's was also left
undisturbed. The Fellows of Peterhouse took the precaution to bury
the glass which filled the east window of their chapel. It lay
undiscovered, and all of it has now been replaced. Certainly
Cromwell got some plate out of the University, but this tribute was
as nothing when compared to that which went to Charles. Trinity sent
practically its all. King's, as the earlier Royal Foundation, could
not afford to be behindhand. St. John's was Tory almost to a man,
and away went most of her finest silver. "Her contribution", says
the present Master, "was £150 in money and 2065 ounces, grocer's
weight, of silver plate." Among the pieces so lost were some bearing
the names of Thomas Wentworth, Lord Strafford, and of Thomas Fairfax.
For this the College later suffered much indignity. Cromwell
surrounded the place, took the Master a prisoner, and "confiscated
the communion plate and other valuables". Nearly every College had
paid tribute; but the fact that Cambridge was providentially spared
the duty of nursing, either then or afterwards, any part of a Stuart
Court, enabled her to save for posterity as much in gold and silver
works of handicraft as Oxford lost. Thus the Cambridge plate as it
stands to-day is the finest collection of its kind in existence.
[Illustration: FISHER LANE AND GREAT BRIDGE]
Throughout these two hundred years--years of Renaissance, of
Reformation, of Revival, of Revolution--Cambridge poured forth an
unending stream of men destined for the highest places in church, in
state, in scholarship, and in letters. Coverdale, Fox, Ridley,
Latimer, Cranmer, Gardiner, Parker, Grindal, Whitgift, Bancroft,
Andrews, Cosin, Williams, Taylor, Stillingfleet, Sancroft, Tillotson,
Tenison are her divines; and of the seven "nonjuring" bishops, five,
including the Primate, were Cambridge men. The Protector Somerset,
Cecil the great Lord Burleigh, his kinsman of Salisbury, Walsingham,
Essex, Fulke Greville, Sir John Harrington, Chief Justice Coke, Sir
Nicholas Bacon and his son Francis, Lord Verulam (commonly but
wrongly styled Lord Bacon), Sir William Temple, Oliver Cromwell are
figures which are painted large upon the canvas of history; and in a
dark corner are inscribed the names, at once famous and infamous, of
Judge Jeffreys and Titus Gates. The lists of Cambridge scholars,
poets, and prose writers of this age is no less remarkable. Roger
Ascham, Sir John Cheke, Sir Thomas Smith, Jeremy Taylor, Thomas
Fuller; the poets Spenser, Harvey, Marlowe, Greene, Fletcher, Ben
Jonson, Heywood, Andrew Marvell, Milton, Cowley, Donne, Dryden,
Herbert, Herrick, are names likely to live so long as the English
language be spoken. Among Cambridge antiquaries we find the names of
Stowe, Leland, and Strype. In medicine Cambridge was the foremost
English school, and the names of Caius, Butler, Gilbert, and Harvey
have a permanent place in the history of that Faculty. Three
celebrated men of letters--Shirley, Lodge, and Lilley--migrated from
Oxford to Cambridge. Wolsey, when he founded in Oxford his
Cardinal's College--now styled Christ Church--came to King's College
and King's Hall in Cambridge for many of his first Fellows. A
Cambridge College, Pembroke, gave no fewer than four Heads to Oxford
Houses during the latter half of the sixteenth century; and of this
same College was Bishop Fox, the founder of Corpus Christi College in
Oxford, and of two professorships there. In the New World, with the
names of "the Pilgrim Fathers", are remembered those of Hooker of
Peterhouse, of Eliot the "Indian Apostle" who took his degree in
1622, and of John Harvard of Emmanuel, the founder of America's
oldest House of Learning. Horrocks and Flamsteed, the astronomers,
founded a Cambridge School of Astronomy which has since taken the
foremost place in the development of that science.