those two hundred years. During the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries academical dress settled itself into the form in which for
the most we now see it. But something has come down to us of even
earlier days. Cambridge is not unjustly proud of the fact that,
unlike Oxford, the shape of its hood has remained practically
unaltered since the fourteenth century. A notable mediæval garment
still worn at Cambridge, and not elsewhere to be found, is the _Cappa
Clausa_ or "closed cope", used by the Vice-Chancellor and by certain
Doctors of Divinity, Law, and Physic on special occasions. It is of
scarlet cloth with an ermine hood and trimmings. It must not be
confused with the scarlet gowns worn by all doctors in the several
Faculties on gala days. Over the gate of Queens' College the curious
may see a rude representation of a doctor so robed; but a really fine
example of this dress as worn in the sixteenth century may be seen on
the brass to the memory of John Argentein, D.D., M.D. (1507), in
King's College Chapel. It was during the sixteenth century that the
present style of M.A. gown and that of the Law gowns worn at
Cambridge by Doctors of Laws and in the Courts by King's Counsel came
into use. The style is fundamentally that of the ordinary walking
dress of a notable of the end of the fifteenth century. A robe of
this kind, as an over-garment, obtained all over Europe during the
succeeding hundred years, and it would appear to have been Italian in
origin. An example of the academical form of this garment may be
seen on a brass at Croxton in Cambridgeshire, where is represented
the figure of one Edward Leeds, LL.D., a Master of Clare Hall, who
died in 1589. The strings now worn on all Cambridge gowns would seem
to have come into general use about this time. In early times gowns
were "closed" garments, and were put on over the head; and after it
became lawful to wear them open in front, strings were used to tie
the gown across the breast, and they were so worn until quite
recently. Three other survivals of the costume of this later period
may be noted. They are all peculiar to Cambridge. For example, the
Proctor assumes on certain occasions an upper garment called a
"ruff". Over this he wears his hood in the ordinary way. On certain
other occasions, however, he must wear his hood "squared", that is,
so folded that it presents the appearance of a large square cape.
The method of arranging this dress has been handed down, as has a
pattern "ruff", from Proctor to Proctor; but nowadays the
repositories of such traditions are more often the Proctors' men,
who, in these matters, perform the offices which judges expect of
their clerks. The full dress of a Proctor's man--or "bull dog", as
he is vulgarly called--is picturesque enough, for it is of a
seventeenth-century pattern and consists in a long blue cloak studded
with brass buttons. With this he carries a halberd. The Chancellor
or Vice-Chancellor in procession is always preceded by two graduates,
of M.A. standing at least, who are styled Esquire Bedells. The maces
which these gentlemen carry on such occasions were given by George
Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the favourite of James I. The Duke was
elected Chancellor of the University by the narrow majority of five
votes. Another old custom, full of associations for Cambridge men,
is the ringing of Curfew at Great St. Mary's Church. The University
bell rings the Curfew nightly from nine of the clock till ten minutes
past the hour. The date of the month is also struck by one of the
same peal of bells. More curious, however, is the fact that the
service, or, more properly speaking, the "office" of Compline, is
commemorated at Trinity Hall by the ringing of a bell there nightly
at ten o'clock.
Many echoes of those "Disputations" which in mediæval times took the
place of examinations may be followed in the Cambridge of to-day.
The office of "Moderator" is with us still; Junior and Senior
"Sophisters" are those who are on the road to becoming
"Questionists"; and "Wranglers" are those who issue with honours from
the supposed contest. A person qualifying for a medical degree when
reading or submitting his finished "Thesis" is said to "Keep an Act"
(i.e. a Disputation) for that degree. The origin of the word Tripos
is not yet settled. Perhaps it derived itself from some sort of
stool. Anyhow, by the middle of the eighteenth century, the Tripos
had come to mean a sheet of paper upon one side of which were printed
the names of those who had attained Honours in the Mathematical
School, whilst upon the other was a copy of Latin Verses. Sheets of
this Tripos paper were thrown by the Moderators from the gallery of
the Senate House into the crowd assembled below. But until this same
century was some way advanced another set of verses, usually very
scurrilous in character, were recited by a sort of University
Buffoon, who came also to be called "The Tripos". Licensed revellers
were well-known institutions in both Universities throughout the
Middle Age; but it was not until this Tripos fellow had been the
subject of many scandals, protests, and warnings, that he was finally
abolished.
The history of the English Universities in the eighteenth century has
yet to be written; and though much material for such a history is
accessible to the humblest enquirer, it is not possible in so short
an essay as the present to do more than touch--and that very
lightly--upon the salient features of Cambridge life during this,
perhaps the most diverting period of the University's existence.
It is still fashionable to believe the Church and both the
Universities to have passed the whole of these hundred years in a
species of post-prandial slumber. Colleges are said to have become
mere port-drinking societies; and the daily life of the Cathedral
Chapters has been described quite as tersely and as disobligingly by
numerous writers. Truly, the manners of the time were not over nice;
but the impartial student of morals can well trace throughout the
century a steady, if slow, revival from that dire sort of profligacy
which marked the social life of the Stuart period. For the first
time since the age of the Tudors, English architecture and the other
arts not only revived, but attained the dignity of a conscious and
coherent style. Gainsborough, Romney, Reynolds took the place once
filled by such as Lely. Wren, Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh, Adam gave to many
an English building a fame which has not been confined to these
islands. An intelligent taste in furniture, plate, porcelain, and
fabrics became almost general in decent society. Music was widely
cultivated, and literary effusions which did not conform, however
dully, to the accepted models of the day found neither publisher nor
reader.
Every merit and, it must be admitted, every demerit of the age is
observable in the life of the University during these hundred years.
Certainly there was a prodigious decay in University ceremonial, and
the antiquaries shook their heads not perhaps without reason. Poor
Hearne, noting the first Shrove-Tuesday morning on which the ancient
"Pancake bell" did not ring in Oxford, ventured upon the aphorism:
"When laudable old customs alter, 'tis a sign learning dwindles".
Baker, Cole, and Gunning at Cambridge were doomed to see many
cherished quaintnesses pass from the daily life of the academy. The
ceremonies attending the Creation of Doctors in the several Faculties
were gradually shorn of their symbolic splendour. These had involved
in each case the use of a Ring and a Book. A candidate for a
Doctorate in Law might be seen at such times to engage in a whispered
colloquy with the Professor of his Faculty. This, perhaps the most
picturesque and most formal part of the ceremony of Creation, was
known as "solving a question in the ear of the Professor". Good
Master Gunning could not have failed to take pleasure in the
circumstances which attended the University Sermon on Tuesday in
Holy-week. On this day the sermon was preached, not in Great St.
Mary's, but in the Anglo-Saxon Church of St. Benet. Before the
sermon the preacher was directed to say: "John Meer, Esquire Bedell,
long since of this University, gave a tenement situate in this
parish; in consideration whereof the sermon is here this day. He
left a small remembrance to the officers of this University provided
they were present at the Commemoration; and was also not unmindful of
the poor in the Tolbooth and Spittal-house." At the conclusion of
the sermon a distribution was made of this "small remembrance". It
worked out at three shillings and fourpence for the preacher,
sixpence for the Vice-Chancellor, and fourpence each for the other
dignitaries. A disbursement of three shillings covered the other
part of this amiable bequest!
[Illustration: THE MARKET PLACE]
During the whole of this period the University exercised its ancient
right of supervising all weights and measures. Officers known as
Taxors performed the necessary testing, and at such times were
authorized to destroy any faulty measures which came under their
observation. There existed, too, for the punishment of disorderly
women, a University prison or bridewell called "the Spinning House",
and one of the duties of the Proctors consisted in the visitation and
inspection of any quarter of the town or its immediate environs in
which vice was reputed to lurk. The Spinning House existed, as a
building, within the recollection of the writer. It stood on ground
now occupied by the Fire Station in Regent Street. These particular
jurisdictions and the fact that the Vice-Chancellor took precedence
of the Mayor at all public functions constituted the chief ground for
that ill feeling between Town and Gown which was a notorious feature
of Cambridge life even as late as 1850. The eighteenth century in
Cambridge actually opened with a singularly unseemly fracas between
the Municipal and University authorities. The Mayor himself and two
of the Aldermen were implicated. The circumstances may be gathered
from the "humble submission" of the former, dated October 2, 1705, in
which he pleads guilty to having "denied unto Sir John Ellys, the
Vice-Chancellor, the precedence in the joynt seat at the upper end of
the guildhall ... which refusal was the occasion of a great deal of
contempt and indignity offered by some rude persons to the said
Vice-Chancellor and his attendants". The "submission" of Mr. Francis
Perry and his colleague followed in due course. These gentlemen
owned to having opposed the Vice-Chancellor, "whereby divers unworthy
affronts and indignities were occasioned the said Vice-Chancellor".
Their submission did not come for the asking. Till they were made,
however, the University authorities had "discommuned" half the
townsfolk: which meant that an undergraduate who dared to deal with
the burgesses might be sent down, whilst a graduate, for the same
conduct, might be deprived of his degrees. This jurisdiction is
still retained.
During this century sport became a prominent and important feature of
University life. No longer confined, as were the students of an
earlier day, to the precincts of the University, nor fenced about
with clerical rules aiming at an almost monkish propriety, graduates
and undergraduates began to ride, hunt, and shoot over the
countryside. Towards the close of the century the crowd of "persons
of quality" who attached themselves to the University as Noblemen or
Fellow Commoners necessarily included a number of "raffish" spirits,
who cared little for the convenience of others. A satirical
advertisement touching this question appeared in the _Cambridge
Chronicle_ for 30 August, 1787, in which the neighbouring farmers,
after announcing that their corn is in many places still standing,
"beg the favour of the Cambridge gunners, coursers, and poachers,
whether gentlemen, barbers, or gyps of Colleges", to let them get
home their crops; and they continue: "If we might breed on our own
premises a bird or a hare for ourselves, and have a day's shooting
for our landlords, or our own friends, we should acknowledge it a
great indulgence and politeness!" But a good deal of miscellaneous
sport could be had within actual hail of the Colleges. "In going
over land now occupied by Downing Terrace," says Gunning, "you
generally got five or six shot at snipe. Crossing the Leys you
entered on Cow Fen. This abounded with snipes. Walking through the
osier bed on the Trumpington side of the brook you frequently met
with a partridge and now and then a pheasant." But, for the
undergraduates and the juniors generally, there were amusements
enough. Though expressly forbidden, cockfighting was popular; and
there were more gaming, taverning, and the like diversions than
sober-minded persons could be expected to approve of. Not only the
students, but the seniors fell into cliques or sets each with its
favourite coffee-house, where one might peruse the news sheets, make
a bet, or pick a quarrel. Clubs, for the most part of an avowedly
convivial nature, sprang into being, some of which, like The True
Blue, remain to this day.
With the seniors, horse-exercise and bowls were popular pastimes.
The Cambridge bowling greens were, and are, justly celebrated; and
agreeable riding was to be had in most directions out of Cambridge.
Along "The Backs" the mounting stones put up at this time may still
be seen. Those Fellows of Colleges who held livings or curacies just
outside the town rode to and from their cures in the performance of
their duties. Other folk, like Dr. Samuel Peck, rode daily to the
town on matters of private business. It is recorded of this worthy
member of Trinity College that he gave advice on legal subjects for
nothing. "Sam Peck never takes a fee," he would say. But he was
wont to add that he saw no objection to a "present" in return for his
services. Thus presents--mostly in kind--invariably followed upon
any disbursement of his legal knowledge. The figure of Sam Peck,
mounted on his horse and loaded with gifts, is preserved for us in a
print now somewhat scarce, but of which a copy hangs in the smaller
Combination Room at Trinity. This charming picture is also
interesting as showing that for a celibate Fellow of a College in
those days the present of a pair of lady's stays was not thought
wholly unsuitable. Fellows of Colleges, it should be borne in mind,
were by statute debarred from matrimony; and, saving the case of some
few Civilians, i.e. graduates in Civil Law, they were bound to take
Holy Orders. Thus were the Universities filled with numbers of
gentlemen who in order to teach pagan literature on a comfortable
stipend, had been forced to assume the garb and too often the duties
of the Christian priesthood. To give them their due, however, they
met the statutable requirements of the place with a fortitude which
never sought to escape the gibes of those professed cynics in which
the age abounded; and there is surely a healthy candour in the answer
which a young Cambridge clergyman returned to Mr. Gunning's
congratulations on his appointment to a convenient living. "My
predecessor," said he, "was a man of my own age, but was
providentially attacked with gout in the stomach, and died before he
could receive medical attention."
[Illustration: LIBRARY STAIRCASE, ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE]
The eighteenth century was pre-eminently an age of oddities. Just as
people collected books, china, and rare prints, so in a sense they
collected men, and delighted to record whatever was whimsical in
their fellow creatures. The reminiscences of Henry Gunning, sometime
Esquire Bedell, teem with delightful anecdotes. To students of men
and manners, it is one of the best books in the language. Its
comparative rarity must excuse the present writer for drawing so
largely upon it. Of Gunning's recollections of the seniors of his
young days none are better than his stories of Dr. Samuel Ogden. Dr.
Ogden took his first degree as early as 1737, his D.D. in 1753, and
was appointed Professor of Geology in 1764. Visitors to the Round
Church may like to hear of him, for there was he wont to preach. He
was extremely fond of the pleasures of the table; and, while it is
not expressly stated of him, there seems good cause to believe that
like that fine old exciseman immortalized by Hawthorne in his preface
to _The Scarlet Letter_, "there were flavours on his palate which had
lingered there not less than sixty years". His was the saying: "A
goose is a silly bird--too much for one and too little for two". At
a dinner party, on a dish of ruffs and reeves coming up very much
underdone, he answered his hostess's enquiry as to their merit by
observing, "They are admirable, madam, _raw_! What must they have
been had they been _roasted_?" When dining at Wimpole with Lord
Hardwick, High Steward of the University, the butler, in mistake for
champagne--then a great rarity--handed round glasses of pale brandy.
Lord Hardwick himself instantly detected the error, but was too late
to prevent Dr. Ogden emptying his glass. Lord Hardwick could not
suppress an exclamation of surprise. "I did not mention it to you,
my lord," said Ogden, "because I felt it my duty to take whatever you
thought fit to offer me, if not with pleasure, at least in silence."
It is a true saying that "where there be strange folk there will be
stranger doings", and the history of Cambridge in the eighteenth
century is charged with accounts of the oddest happenings. Could
anything be more extraordinary, for example, than the circumstances
which attended the election of Provost George at King's College in
January, 1743? Twenty-two of the Fellows were for George, sixteen
for Thackeray, and ten for Chapman, who was the Tory candidate. A
regular faction fight ensued. The election was bound by statute to
take place in the Chapel, and there the Fellows remained in conclave
for thirty-one hours. Neither side would give way, and until they
had agreed on their man none were permitted to stir out of the
Chapel, "nor none permitted to enter", says a historian in 1753. An
unsigned letter from Cambridge, quoted by Sir Henry Maxwell Lyte in
his history of Eton College, gives a graphic account of these
incidents: "The Fellows went into Chapel on Monday before noon in the
morning as the statute directs. After prayer and sacraments they
began to vote.... A friend of mine, a curious man, tells me he took
a survey of his brothers at the hour of two in the morning, and that
never was a curious or more diverting spectacle. Some, wrapped in
blankets, erect in their stalls like mummies; others asleep on
cushions like so many gothic tombs; here a red cap over a wig; there
a face lost in the cape of a rug. One blowing a chafing-dish with a
surpliced sleeve; another warming a little negus or sipping 'Coke
upon Littleton' i.e. tent and brandy. Thus did they combat the cold
of that frosty night, which has not killed many of them to my
infinite surprise." It is worth noting this determination of the
Fellows of King's to act statutably, for the air was pretty full of
unstatutable proceedings afterwards. It was apparently as a protest
against some irregularity of this kind that one of the Scrutators
(Mr. Tyrwhitt of Jesus) refused his key to the Vice-Chancellor when
that dignitary desired to fix the University seal to a loyal address
to the Crown on the subject of the American Rebellion. Dr. Farmer,
however, was not a man to be baulked by trifles. He obtained the
services of a blacksmith, and the seal was put to its appointed
purpose without further delay.
[Illustration: FELLOWS' GARDEN AND POND, CHRIST'S COLLEGE]
Dr. Farmer was Master of Emmanuel, and one of the best known men of
his time. With Malone, Reed, and Steevens he formed a coterie which
was known in Cambridge as "the Shakespeare gang". Farmer knew the
Elizabethans by heart, and he made Emmanuel Parlour, as the
Combination Room of the College was then called, a centre of literary
table-talk. His was an amiable personality. Though a strong Tory,
he never allowed political bias to impair his friendships. "This is
a Whig pipe, Master Gunning," he would say, with a sly twinkle. "It
has a twist the wrong way." It was in Emmanuel Parlour that Dr.
Johnson made one of his best sallies. The story is told by Isaac
Reed, who was present. Someone asked why county squires should be
addicted to rural sport above everything else. "Sir," said Dr.
Johnson, "I have found out the reason of it, and the reason is that
they feel the vacuity which is in them less when they are in motion
than when they are at rest." It was during Dr. Farmer's mastership
that Emmanuel celebrated the two hundredth anniversary of its
foundation. For some days before the actual feast which was to take
place in honour of the occasion, the inhabitants of the College were
delighted with the spectacle of several "lively turtles" disporting
themselves in tubs of water. William Pitt and the Earl of Euston,
then the Members of Parliament for the University, were present at
the banquet. The convivialities were kept up in the Parlour till a
very late hour. Here Dr. Randall, the Professor of Music, "was
called upon for his celebrated song in the character of a drunken
man. The representation was so faithfully given that Mr. Pitt was
completely deceived, and expressed some anxiety lest the worthy
professor should meet with an accident when leaving the College."
But good Dr. Farmer was never more in his element than when sitting
in what was called "the Critics' Row" at the Playhouse specially set
up during the weeks in which Stourbridge Fair held the attention of
the three counties. Mention has already been made of this celebrated
Fair. During the eighteenth century it was by far the largest Fair
in the country. Every trade was represented, and here many of the
good folk of Cambridgeshire, Huntingdon, and the Isle of Ely made the
principal part of their household purchases for the year. People
came from London and elsewhere to be present at the opening
festivities. The declaration of the Fair was a matter of University
as well as civic ceremonial. The Vice-Chancellor and the other
University officers, attended by the noblemen and other notables,
drove to the Fair, which was duly proclaimed by the Registrary of the
University. The Senior Proctor provided cakes and wine at the Senate
House before starting. To the University dignitaries and their
guests was set apart a certain Tiled Booth, where they dined. The
menu at the Vice-Chancellor's table never varied. It consisted of a
large dish of herrings, a neck of pork roasted, a plum pudding, a leg
of pork boiled, a pease pudding, a goose, and a huge apple pie, while
a round of beef graced the centre of the board. Before the end of
the century this dinner had degenerated into a sort of oyster
luncheon. During this and the Midsummer or "Pot" Fair there was a
deal of drunken and riotous behaviour not confined, alas! to the
townsfolk or the peasant classes. It is reported that tipsy Masters
of Arts, many Fellows of Colleges, and clergymen were to be seen with
linked arms jostling the passers-by.
To read but this side of University history one might suppose an
academy in which such things were possible would hardly be able to
claim to have done much for learning during this period. But
Cambridge was no worse as a school for manners than was any other
place of education at this time; while the period is one to which we
look back to-day as the age of Newton, Bentley, and Person,--names
which alone are sufficient to raise the University into the first
place as a seat of learning. The poets, Prior, Gray, Coleridge, and
Wordsworth had their education in Cambridge before the century
closed. So also did Laurence Sterne. Halifax, the two Walpoles,
Lord Camden, Lord Chesterfield, Lord Ellenborough, Lord Bathurst,
Lord Thurloe, Pitt the younger, Castlereagh, Wilberforce, Denman were
some of the illustrious Cambridge men who found places in the great
world of that day; while Paley and Charles Simeon were prominent in
the religious life of the time.
Many buildings of importance, all designed in good taste, grew up in
Cambridge during this century. The library of Samuel Pepys,
including the manuscript of his celebrated _Diary_, was left to his
old College of Magdalene in 1703, and reached Cambridge in 1725, when
it was placed in what are now called the Fellows' buildings, a range
built to do honour to the bequest. To the University Library,
enriched by King George I's present of Bishop Moore's collection, was
added a new wing designed in the Classical style. The Senate House
as we now see it is an eighteenth-century building, and a fine
example of its period. At King's College the Fellows' building by
Gibbs is another notable addition to the architecture of the place,
and the alterations at Clare, Trinity Hall, and Emmanuel are all good
of their kind.