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CAMBRIDGE
AND ITS STORY
_All rights reserved_
[Illustration: Oriel Windows Queen's College]
CAMBRIDGE
AND ITS STORY
BY
CHARLES WILLIAM STUBBS, D.D.
DEAN OF ELY
[Illustration]
WITH TWENTY-FOUR LITHOGRAPHS
AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS BY
HERBERT RAILTON
THE LITHOGRAPHS BEING
TINTED BY
FANNY RAILTON
1903
LONDON
J. M. DENT & CO.
ALDINE HOUSE, W.C.
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
At the Ballantyne Press
PREFACE
I should wish to write one word by way of explanation of the character
of the descriptive historical sketch which forms the text of the present
book.
Some time ago I undertook to prepare, for "the Mediæval Towns Series" of
my Publisher, a work on the Story of the Town and University of
Cambridge. Arrangements were made with Mr. Herbert Railton for its
pictorial illustration. It had been intended in the first instance, that
the artist's pen and ink sketches should have been reproduced by the
ordinary processes used in modern book illustration. But the poetic
glamour of such a place as Cambridge and its _genius loci_ did not allow
the enthusiasm of the artist to remain satisfied with such drawings only
as might be readily reproduced by the ordinary processes. In addition to
many sketches in black and white, suitable for reproduction in the body
of the text in illustration of interesting bits of architectural detail,
or of quaint grouping, Mr. Railton has also drawn a series of
large-sized pencil-pictures of the principal College buildings. These
drawings are so beautiful, so full of delicacy and tenderness and yet so
firm and effective in their treatment of light and shade, and show so
much sympathy for the old buildings and all their picturesque charm,
that the Publisher at once felt that they must not be treated as
ordinary book illustrations. The artist had produced pictures worthy to
be classed with the best work of Samuel Prout. It became the duty of the
Publisher to treat them with corresponding respect. The method of
auto-lithography has accordingly been adopted, by which the plates are
an absolute reproduction in size and tint of the pencil drawings, and
the artist's work goes straight to the reader without any mechanical
intervention. A new feature has been added by which the colour stones
have been made by Mrs. Railton acting in collaboration with her husband.
This process of reproduction necessarily involved a change in the
proposed format of the book. It was determined, therefore, to issue in
the first instance an _edition de luxe_ of "The Story of Cambridge," on
specially prepared paper and in large quarto size. I have readily
consented to such a course, for although I may seem, by the more
imposing form of a large Library Edition, to be guilty of some
presumption in placing my Historical Sketch in competition with such
histories as those of Mr. Mullinger in the "Epochs of History Series,"
or of my friend, Mr. T. D. Atkinson, in "Cambridge Described"--the
larger books of Mr. J. W. Clark on the architectural history of
Cambridge, and of Mr. Mullinger on the general history of the University
are already classics to which humbler writers on Cambridge can only look
as to final authorities--I can only hope that my readers will recognise
that my presumption is only apparent, and meanwhile I rest confident
that even the historical critic will have little care for the inadequacy
of my prose rendering of "The Story of Cambridge," absorbed as he must
be by his delight in the beauty of Mr. Railton's drawings. In any case,
I shall be entirely satisfied if only my descriptive sketch is found
adequate for the help of the general reader in appreciating the story of
which the artist has been able to give so poetic an interpretation.
C. W. S.
THE DEANERY, ELY,
_Michaelmas_, 1903.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii
CHAPTER I
LEGENDARY ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY 1
Geographical and commercial importance of the city site--Map of the
county a palimpsest--Glamour of the Fenland--Cambridge the gateway of
East Anglia--The Roman roads--The Roman station--The Castle
Hill--Stourbridge Fair--Cambridge a chief centre of English commerce.
CHAPTER II
CAMBRIDGE IN THE NORMAN TIME 22
William I. at Cambridge Castle--Cambridge at the Domesday Survey--Roger
Picot the Sheriff--Pythagoras School--Castle and Borough--S. Benet's
Church and its Parish--The King's Ditch--The Great and the Small
Bridges--The King's and the Bishop's Mills--The River Hythes--S. Peter
by the Castle and S. Giles Church--The early Streets of the City--The
Augustinian Priory of Barnwell--The Round Church of the Holy
Sepulchre--The Cambridge Jewry--Debt of early Scholars to the
Philosophers of the Synagogue--Benjamin's House--Municipal Freedom of
the Borough.
CHAPTER III
THE BEGINNINGS OF UNIVERSITY LIFE 49
Monastic Origins--Continuity of Learning in Early England--The School of
York--The Venerable Bede--Alcuin and the Schools of Charles the
Great--The Danish Invasions--The Benedictine Revival--The Monkish
Chroniclers--The Coming of the Friars--The Franciscan and Dominican
Houses at Cambridge--The Franciscan Scholars--Roger Bacon--Bishop
Grosseteste--The New Aristotle and the Scientific Spirit--The Scholastic
Philosophy--Aquinas--Migration of Scholars from Paris to Cambridge--The
term "University"--The Colleges and the Hostels--The Course of
Study--Trivium and Quadrivium--The Four Faculties--England a Paradise of
Clerks--Parable of the Monk's Pen.
CHAPTER IV
THE EARLIEST COLLEGE FOUNDATION: PETERHOUSE 71
The Early Monastic Houses in Cambridge--Student Proselytising by the
Friars--The Oxford College of Merton a Protest against this
Tendency--The Rule of Merton taken as a Model by Hugh de Balsham,
Founder of Peterhouse--The Hospital of S. John--The Scholars of
Ely--Domestic Economy of the College--The Dress of the Mediæval
Student--Peterhouse Buildings--Little S. Mary's Church--The Perne
Library--The College Chapel.
CHAPTER V
THE COLLEGES OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 93
The Fourteenth Century an Age of Great Men and Great Events but not of
Great Scholars--Petrarch and Richard of Bury--Michael House--The King's
Scholars--King's Hall--Clare Hall--Pembroke College--Gonville Hall--Dr.
John Caius--His Three Gates of Humility, Virtue, and Honour.
CHAPTER VI
THE COLLEGE OF THE CAMBRIDGE GUILDS 120
Unique Foundation of Corpus Christi College--The Cambridge Guilds--The
influence of "the Good Duke"--The Peasant Revolt--Destruction of
Charters--"Perish the skill of the Clerks!"--The Black Death--Lollardism
at the Universities--The Poore Priestes of Wycliffe.
CHAPTER VII
TWO ROYAL FOUNDATIONS 137
Henry VI--The most pitiful Character in all English History--His
devotion to Learning and his Saintly Spirit--His foundation of Eton and
King's College--The Building of King's College Chapel--Its architect,
Reginald of Ely, the Cathedral Master-Mason--Its relation to the Ely
Lady Chapel--Its stained glass Windows--Its close Foundation--Queens'
College--Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Wydville--The buildings of
Queens'--Similarity to Haddon Hall--Its most famous Resident,
Erasmus--His _Novum Instrumentum_ edited within its Walls.
CHAPTER VIII
TWO OF THE SMALLER HALLS 173
The Foundation of Trinity Hall by Bishop Bateman of Norwich--On the Site
of the Hostel of Student-Monks of Ely--Prior Crauden--Evidence of the
Ely Obedientary Rolls--The College Buildings--The Old Hall--S. Edward's
Church used as College Chapel--Hugh Latimer's Sermon on a Pack of
Cards--Harvey Goodwin--Frederick Maurice--The Hall Library--Its ancient
Bookcases--The Foundation of S. Catherine's Hall.
CHAPTER IX
BISHOP ALCOCK AND THE NUNS OF S. RHADEGUND 183
The New Learning in Italy and Germany--The English "Pilgrim Scholars":
Grey, Tiptoft, Linacre, Grocyn--The practical Genius of England--Bishops
Rotherham, Alcock, and Fisher--Alcock, diplomatist, financier,
architect--The Founder of Jesus College--He takes as his model Jesus
College, Rotherham--His Object the Training of a Preaching Clergy--The
Story of the Nunnery of S. Rhadegund--Its Dissolution--Conversion of the
Conventual Church into a College Chapel--The Monastic Buildings,
Gateway, Cloister, Chapter House--The Founder a Better Architect than an
Educational Reformer--The Jesus Roll of eminent Men from Cranmer to
Coleridge.
CHAPTER X
COLLEGES OF THE NEW LEARNING 210
The Lady Margaret Foundations--Bishop Fisher of Rochester--The
Foundation of Christ's--God's House--The buildings of the new
College--College Worthies--John Milton--Henry More--Charles Darwin--The
Hospital of the Brethren of S. John--Death of the Lady
Margaret--Foundation of S. John's College--Its buildings--The Great
Gateway--The new Library--The Bridge of Sighs--The
Wilderness--Wordsworth's "Prelude"--The aims of Bishop Fisher--His
death.
CHAPTER XI
A SMALL AND A GREAT COLLEGE 246
Dissolution of the Monasteries--Schemes for Collegiate Spoliation
checked by Henry VIII.--Monks' or Buckingham College--Refounded by Sir
Thomas Audley as Magdalene College--Conversion of the old buildings--The
Pepysian Library--Foundation of Trinity College--Michaelhouse and the
King's Hall--King Edward's Gate--The Queen's Gate--The Great Gate--Dr.
Thomas Neville--The Great Court--The Hall--Neville's Court--New
Court--Dr. Bentley--"A House of all Kinds of Good Letters."
CHAPTER XII
ANCIENT AND PROTESTANT FOUNDATIONS 265
Queen Elizabeth and the Founder of Emmanuel--The Puritan Age--Sir Walter
Mildmay--The Building of Emmanuel--The Tenure of Fellowships--Puritan
Worthies--The Founder of Harvard--Lady Frances Sidney--The Sidney
College Charter--The Buildings--The Chapel and the old Franciscan
Refectory--Royalists and Puritans--Oliver Cromwell--Thomas Fuller---A
Child's Prayer for his Mother.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_TINTED LITHOGRAPHS_
ORIEL WINDOWS, QUEENS' COLLEGE _Frontispiece_
THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS _facing page_ 28
PETERHOUSE " 82
CLARE COLLEGE AND BRIDGE " 96
PEMBROKE COLLEGE " 106
GATE OF HONOUR AND GATE OF VIRTUE, CAIUS COLLEGE " 112
THE CHURCHES OF S. EDWARD AND S. MARY THE GREAT
FROM PEAS HILL " 123
CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE AND S. BENEDICT'S CHURCH " 128
THE PITT PRESS, S. BOTOLPH'S CHURCH, AND CORPUS
CHRISTI COLLEGE " 132
THE WEST DOORWAY, KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL " 144
GATEWAY TO OLD COURT OF KING'S COLLEGE " 153
THE CHAPEL, TRINITY HALL " 174
ORIEL WINDOW, JESUS COLLEGE " 178
GATEWAY IN GREAT COURT, S. CATHERINE'S COLLEGE " 180
THE CHAPEL, CHRIST'S COLLEGE " 214
GATEWAY, S. JOHN'S COLLEGE " 230
ORIEL IN LIBRARY, S. JOHN'S COLLEGE " 236
TOWER AND TURRETS OF TRINITY FROM S. JOHN'S COLLEGE " 243
THE LIBRARY, CHAPEL, AND HALL, MAGDALENE COLLEGE " 248
GATEWAY AND DIAL, TRINITY COLLEGE " 254
NEVILLE'S COURT, TRINITY COLLEGE " 260
HALL AND CHAPEL, EMMANUEL COLLEGE " 266
DOWNING COLLEGE " 274
THE GARDEN FRONT, SIDNEY SUSSEX COLLEGE " 278
_BLACK AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS_
PAGE
COURTYARD OF THE FALCON INN 25
SAXON TOWER, S. BENEDICT'S CHURCH 29
THE ABBEY HOUSE 35
CHAPEL, BARNWELL PRIORY 39
THE ROUND CHURCH 41
ORIEL WINDOWS FROM HOUSE IN PETTY-CURY _facing page_ 46
CLARE COLLEGE AND BRIDGE 101
PEMBROKE COLLEGE 107
PEMBROKE COLLEGE, ORIELS AND ENTRANCE 109
CAIUS COLLEGE, THE GATE OF HONOUR 117
KING'S PARADE 139
KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL 145
KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL _facing page_ 150
KING'S COLLEGE QUADRANGLE 155
CLOISTER COURT, QUEENS' COLLEGE 163
ORIEL WINDOW, QUEENS' COLLEGE 166
THE BRIDGE AND GABLES, QUEENS' COLLEGE 169
A BIT FROM SIDNEY STREET 172
DIVINITY SCHOOLS AND S. JOHN'S 193
NORMAN WORK IN CHURCH OF JESUS COLLEGE 197
NORMAN WORK IN N. TRANSEPT, JESUS COLLEGE CHAPEL 201
ENTRANCE TO CHAPTER-HOUSE, PRIORY OF S. RHADEGUND 203
JACK IN WOLSEY'S KITCHEN, CHRIST'S COLLEGE 219
THE COURTYARD OF THE WRESTLERS' INN _facing page_ 220
ENTRANCE TO S. JOHN'S COLLEGE 229
S. JOHN'S COLLEGE FROM THE BACKS 233
BRIDGE OF SIGHS, S. JOHN'S COLLEGE 239
TOWER AND GATEWAY, TRINITY COLLEGE _facing page_ 252
THE FOUNTAIN, TRINITY COLLEGE " 258
[Illustration: CAMBRIDGE AND ITS STORY]
CHAPTER I
LEGENDARY ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY
"Next then the plenteous Ouse came far from land,
By many a city and by many a town,
And many rivers taking under-hand
Into his waters as he passeth down,
The Cle, the Were, the Grant, the Sture, the Bowne,
Thence doth by Huntingdon and Cambridge flit,
My Mother Cambridge, whom as with a crowne
He doth adorne, and is adorn'd by it
With many a gentle Muse and many a learned wit."
--SPENSER'S _Faerie Queene_, iv. xi. 34.
Geographical and commercial importance of the city site--Map of the
county a palimpsest--Glamour of the Fenland--Cambridge the gateway
of East Anglia--The Roman roads--The Roman station--The Castle
Hill--Stourbridge Fair--Cambridge a chief centre of English
commerce.
One could wish perhaps that the story of Cambridge should begin, as so
many good stories of men and cities have begun, in the antique realm of
poetry and romance. That it did so begin our forefathers indeed had
little doubt. John Lydgate, the poet, a Benedictine monk of Bury, "the
disciple"--as he is proud to call himself--"of Geoffrey Chaucer," but
best remembered perhaps by later times as the writer of "London
Lackpenny" and "Troy Book," has left certain verses on the foundation of
the Town and University of Cambridge, which are still preserved to
us.[1] Some stanzas of that fourteenth-century poem will serve to show
in what a cloudland of empty legend it was at one time thought that the
story of the beginnings of Cambridge might be found:--
"By trew recorde of the Doctor Bede
That some tyme wrotte so mikle with his hande,
And specially remembringe as I reede
In his chronicles made of England
Amounge other thynges as ye shall understand,
Whom for myne aucthour I dare alleage,
Seith the translacion and buylding of Cambridge.
* * * * *
"Touching the date, as I rehearse can
Fro thilke tyme that the world began
Four thowsand complete by accomptès clere
And three hundred by computacion
Joyned thereto eight and fortie yeare,
When Cantebro gave the foundacion
Of thys citie and this famous towne
And of this noble universitie
Sette on this river which is called Cante.
* * * * *
"This Cantebro, as it well knoweth
At Athenes scholed in his yougt,
All his wyttes greatlye did applie
To have acquaintance by great affection
With folke-experte in philosophie.
From Athens he brought with hym downe
Philosophers most sovereigne of renowne
Unto Cambridge, playnlye this is the case,
Anaxamander and Anaxagoras
With many other myne Aucthors dothe fare,
To Cambridge fast can hym spede
With philosophers and let for no cost spare
In the Schooles to studdie and to reede;
Of whose teachinges great profit that gan spreade
And great increase rose of his doctrine;
Thus of Cambridge the name gan first shyne
As chief schoole and universitie
Unto this tyme fro the daye it began
By cleare reporte in manye a far countre
Unto the reign of Cassibellan.
* * * * *
"And as it is put eke in memorie,
Howe Julius Cesar entring this region
On Cassybellan after his victorye
Tooke with hym clarkes of famous renowne
Fro Cambridg and ledd theim to Rome towne,
Thus by processe remembred here to forne
Cambridg was founded long or Chryst was borne."
But it is not only in verse that this fabric of fable is to be found.
Down even to the middle of the last century the ears of Cambridge
graduates were still beguiled by strange stories of the early renown of
their University--how it was founded by a Spanish Prince, Cantaber (the
"Cantebro" of Lydgate's verses), "in the 4321st year of the creation of
the world," and in the sixth year of Gurgant, King of Britain; how
Athenian astronomers and philosophers, "because of the pleasantness of
the place," came to Cambridge as its earliest professors, "the king
having appointed them stipends"; how King Arthur, "on the 7th of April,
in the year of the Incarnacion of our Lord, 531," granted a charter of
academic privileges "to Kenet, the first Rector of the schools"; and how
the University subsequently found another royal patron in the East
Anglian King Sigebert, and had among its earliest Doctors of Divinity
the great Saxon scholars Bede and Alcuin.
I have before me as I write a small octavo volume, a guide-book to
Cambridge and its Colleges, much worn and thumbed, probably by its
eighteenth-century owner, possibly by his nineteenth-century successor,
in which all these fables and legends are set out in order. The book has
lost its title-page, but it is easily identifiable as an English
translation of Richard Parker's _Skeletos Cantabrigiensis_, written
about 1622, but not apparently published until a century later, when the
antiquary, Thomas Hearne, printed it in his edition of Leland's
_Collectanea_. My English edition of the _Skeletos_ is presumably either
that which was "printed for Thomas Warner at the Black Boy, Pater Noster
Row," and without a date, or that published by "J. Bateman at the Hat
and Star in S. Paul's Churchyard," and dated 1721. As an illustration of
the kind of record which passed for history even in the last
century,--for the early editions of Hallam's "History of the Middle
Ages" bear evidence that that careful historian still gave some credence
to these Cambridge fables,--it may be interesting to quote one or two
passages from the legendary history of Nicholas Cantelupe, which is
prefixed to this English version of Parker's book:--
"Anaximander, one of the disciples of Thales, came to this city on
account of his Philosophy and great Skill in Astrology, where he
left much Improvement in Learning to Posterity. After his Example,
Anaxagoras, quitting his Possessions, after a long Peregrination,
came to Cambridge, where he writ Books, and instructed the
unlearned, for which reason that City was by the People of the
Country call'd the City of SCHOLARS.
"King Cassibelan, when he had taken upon him the Government of the
Kingdom, bestowed such Preheminence on this City, that any Fugitive
or Criminal, desirous to acquire Learning, flying to it, was
defended in the sight of His Enemy, with Pardon, and without
Molestation, Upbraiding or Affront offer'd him. For which Reason,
as also on account of the Richness of the Soil, the Serenity of the
Air, the great Source of Learning, and the King's Favour, young and
old, from many Parts of the Earth, resorted thither, some of whom
JULIUS CÆSAR, having vanquished Cassibelan, carry'd away to Rome,
where they afterwards flourish'd."
There then follows a letter, given without any doubt of authenticity,
from Alcuin of York, purporting to be written to the scholars of
Cambridge from the Court of Charles the Great:--
"To the discreet Heirs of CHRIST, the Scholars of the unspotted
Mother Cambridge, _Ælqninus_, by Life a Sinner, Greeting and Glory
in the Virtues of Learning. Forasmuch as Ignorance is the Mother of
Error, I earnestly intreat that Youths among you be us'd to be
present at the Praises of the Supreme King, not to unearth Foxes,
not to hunt Hares, let them now learn the Holy Scriptures, having
obtain'd Knowledge of the Science of Truth, to the end that in
their perfect Age they may teach others. Call to mind, I beseech
you dearly beloved the most noble Master of our Time, _Bede_ the
Priest, Doctor of your University, under whom by permission of the
Divine Grace, I took the Doctor's Degree in the Year from the
Incarnation of our Lord 692, what an Inclination he had to study in
His Youth, what Praise he has now among Men, and much more what
Glory of Reward with God. Farewell always in _Christ Jesu_, by
whose Grace you are assisted in Learning. Amen."
We may omit the mythical charter of King Arthur and come to the passage
concerning King Alfred, obviously intended to turn the flank of the
Oxford patriots, who too circumstantially relate how their University
was founded by that great scholar king.
"In process of time, when Alfred, or Alred, supported by divine
Comfort, after many Tribulations, had obtained the Monarchy of all
England, he translated to Oxford the scholars, which Penda, King of
the Mercians, had with the leave of King Ceadwald carried from
Cambridge to Kirneflad (rather Cricklade, as above), to which
scholars he was wont to distribute Alms in three several Places. He
much honour'd the Cantabrigians and Oxonians, and granted them many
Privileges.
"Afterwards he erected and establish'd Grammar Schools throughout
the whole Island, and caus'd the Youth to be instructed in their
Mother Tongue. Then perceiving that the Scholars, whom he had
conveyed to Oxford, continually applied themselves to the Study of
the Laws and expounded the Holy Scriptures: he appointed Grimwald
their Rector, who had been Rector and Chancellor of the City of
Cambridge."
The severer canons of modern historical criticism have naturally made
short work of all these absurd fables; nor do they even allow us to
accept as authentic the otherwise not unpleasing story quoted from the
Chronicle, or rather historical novel, of Ingulph, in the quaint pages
of Thomas Fuller, written a generation later than Richard Parker's book,
which tells how, early in the twelfth century, certain monks were sent
to Cambridge by Joffrey, Abbot of Crowland, to expound in a certain
public barn (by later writers fondly thought to be that which is now
known by the name of Pythagoras' School) the pages of Priscian,
Quintillian, and Aristotle.
There is little doubt, I fear, that we may find the inciting motive of
all this exuberant fancy and invention in the desire to glorify the one
University at the expense of the other, which is palpably present in
that last quotation from Parker's book, and which is perhaps not
altogether absent from the writings and the conversation of some
academic patriots of our own day. We may, however, more wisely dismiss
all these foolish legends and myths as to origins in the kindlier spirit
of quaint old Fuller in the Introduction to his "History of the
University of Cambridge":--
"Sure I am," he says, "there needeth no such pains to be took, or
provision to be made, about the pre-eminence of our English
Universities, to regulate their places, they having better learned
humility from the precept of the Apostle, In honour preferring one
another. Wherefore I presume my aunt Oxford will not be justly
offended if in this book I give my own mother the upper hand, and
first begin with her history. Thus desiring God to pour his
blessing upon both, that neither may want milk for their children,
or children for their milk, we proceed to the business."
Descending then from the misty cloudland of Fable to the hard ground of
historic Fact, we are shortly met by a question which, I hope, Fuller
would have recognised as businesslike. How did it come about that our
forefathers founded a University on the site which we now call
Cambridge--"that distant marsh town," as a modern Oxford historian
somewhat contemptuously calls it? The question is a natural one, and has
not seldom been asked. We shall find, I think, the most reasonable
answer to it by asking a prior question. How did the town of Cambridge
itself come to be a place of any importance in the early days? The
answer is, in the first place, geographical; in the second, commercial.
We may fitly occupy the remaining space of this chapter in seeking to
formulate that answer.
And first, as to the physical features of the district which has
Cambridge for its most important centre. "The map of England," it has
been strikingly said by Professor Maitland, "is the most wonderful of
all palimpsests." Certainly that portion of the map of England which
depicts the country surrounding the Fenlands of East Anglia is not the
least interesting part of that palimpsest. Let us take such a map and
try roughly to decipher it.[2]
If we begin with the seaboard line we shall perhaps at first sight be
inclined to think that it cannot have changed much in the course of the
centuries. And most probably the coast-line of Lincolnshire, from a
point northwards near Great Grimsby or Cleethorpes at the mouth of the
Humber to a point southwards near Waynefleet at the mouth of the
Steeping River, twenty miles or less north of Boston, and again the
coast-line of Norfolk and Suffolk from Hunstanton Point at the
north-east corner of the Wash round past Brancaster and Wells and Cromer
to Yarmouth and then southwards past Southwold and Aldborough to Harwich
at the mouth of the Orwell and Stour estuary, has not altered much in
ten or even twenty centuries. But that can hardly be said with regard to
the coast-line of the Wash itself. For on its western side our
palimpsest warns us that there is a considerable district called
_Holland_; that on its south side, a dozen miles or more from the
present coast-line, is a town called _Wisbech_ (or Ouse-beach); that
still farther inland, within a mile or two of Cambridge itself, are to
be found the villages of Waterbeach and Landbeach; and that scattered
throughout the whole district of the low-lying lands are villages and
towns whose place-names have the termination "ey" or "ea," meaning
"island"--such, as Thorney, Spinny, Sawtrey, Ramsey, Whittlesea,
Horningsea; and that one considerable tract of slightly higher ground,
though now undoubtedly surrounded by dry land, is still called the Isle
of Ely. These place-names are significant, and tell their own story. And
that story, as we try to interpret it, will gradually lead us to the
conclusion that the ancient seaboard line of the Wash, instead of being
marked on the map of England as we have it now, by a line roughly
joining Boston and King's Lynn, would on the earliest text of the
palimpsest require an extended sea boundary on which Lincoln, and
Stamford and Peterborough, and Huntingdon and Cambridge, and Brandon and
Downham Market would become almost seaboard towns, and Ely an island
fifteen miles or so off the coast at Cambridge.
Such a conclusion, of course, would be somewhat of an exaggeration, for
the wide waste of waters which thus formed an extension of the Wash
southwards was not all or always sea water. So utterly transformed,
however, has the whole Fen country become in modern times--the vast
plain of the Bedford level contains some 2000 square miles of the
richest corn-land in England--that it is very difficult to restore in
the imagination the original scenery of the days before the drainage,
when the rivers which take the rainfall of the central counties of
England--the Nene, the Welland, the Witham, the Glen, and the
Bedfordshire Ouse--spread out into one vast delta or wilderness of
shallow waters.
The poetic glamour of the land, now on the side of its fertility and
strange beauty, now on the side of its monotony and weird loneliness,
has always had a strange fascination for the chroniclers and writers of
every age. In the first Book of the _Liber Eliensis_ (ii. 105), written
by Thomas, a monk of Ely, in the twelfth century, there is a description
of the fenlands, given by a soldier to William the Conqueror, which
reads like the report of the land of plenty and promise brought by the
spies to Joshua. In the _Historia Major_ of Matthew Paris, however, it
is described as a place "neither accessible for man or beast, affording
only deep mud, with sedge and reeds, and possest of birds, yea, much
more by devils, as appeareth in the Life of S. Guthlac, who, finding it
a place of horror and great solitude, began to inhabit there." At a
later time Drayton in his _Polyolbion_ gives a picture of the Fenland
life as one of manifold industry:--
"The toiling fisher here is towing of his net;
The fowler is employed his limèd twigs to set;
One underneath his horse to get a shoot doth stalk;
Another over dykes upon his stilts doth walk;
There other with their spades the peats are squaring out,
And others from their cars are busily about
To draw out sedge and reed to thatch and stover fit:
That whosoever would a landskip rightly hit,
Beholding but my Fens shall with more shapes be stored
Than Germany or France or Thuscan can afford."
This eulogy of the Fenland, however, Drayton is careful to put into the
mouth of a Fenland nymph, who is not allowed to pass without criticism
by her sister who rules the uplands:--
"O how I hate
Thus of her foggy fens to hear rude Holland prate
That with her fish and fowl here keepeth such a coil,
As her unwholesome air, and more unwholesome soil,
For these of which she boasts the more might suffered be."
But probably the most picturesque and truthful imaginative sketch of the
old fenlands is that which was given in our own time by the graphic pen
of Charles Kingsley in his fine novel of "Hereward the Wake," somewhat
amplified afterwards in the chapters of "The Hermits," which he devoted
to the history of St. Guthlac:--
"The fens in the seventh century," he says, "were probably very
like the forests at the mouth of the Mississippi or the swampy
shores of the Carolinas. Their vast plain is now in summer one sea
of golden corn; in winter, a black dreary fallow, cut into squares
by stagnant dykes, and broken only by unsightly pumping mills and
doleful lines of poplar trees. Of old it was a labyrinth of black
wandering streams, broad lagoons, morasses submerged every
spring-tide, vast beds of reed and sedge and fern, vast copses of
willow and alder and grey poplar, rooted in the floating peat,
which was swallowing up slowly, all devouring, yet preserving the
forests of fir and oak, ash and poplar, hazel and yew, which had
once grown on that low, rank soil, sinking slowly (so geologists
assure us) beneath the sea from age to age. Trees torn down by
flood and storm floated and lodged in rafts, damming the waters
back on the land. Streams bewildered in the flats, changed their
channels, mingling silt and sand with the peat moss. Nature left to
herself ran into wild riot and chaos more and more, till the whole
fen became one 'dismal swamp,' in which at the time of the Norman
Conquest, 'the last of the English,' like Dred in Mrs. Stowe's
tale, took refuge from their tyrants and lived like him a free and
joyous life awhile."
Such was one aspect, then, in the early days of English history, of the
great plain that stretches from Cambridge to the sea. But our
map-palimpsest has further physical facts to reveal which had an
important influence on the civic and economic development of Cambridge.
To the south-east of this great plain of low-lying fenlands rises the
upland country of boulder clay, stretching in a line almost directly
west and east from the downs at Royston, thirteen miles below Cambridge,
to Sudbury-on-the-Stour. The whole of this ridge of high ground, which
roughly corresponds with the present boundaries between Cambridgeshire
and Suffolk and Essex, was in the early days covered with dense forest.
Thus the Forest and the Fen between them formed a material barrier
separating the kingdom of East Anglia from the rest of Britain. At one
point only could an entrance be gained. Between the forest and the fen
there runs a long belt of land, at its narrowest point not more than
five miles wide, consisting partly of open pasture, partly of chalk
down. In the neck, so to say, of this natural pass into East Anglia lies
the town of Cambridge. A careful scrutiny of our map will show, on the
under-text of our palimpsest, a remarkable series of British earthworks,
all crossing in parallel lines this narrow belt of open land between the
fen and the forest, marked on the map as Black Ditches, Devil's Dyke,
the Fleam or Balsham Dyke, the Brent or Pampisford Ditch, and the Brand
or Heydon Way. Of these the longest and most important is the well-known
Devil's Dyke, near Newmarket. It is some eight miles long in all, and
consists of a lofty bank twelve feet wide at the top, eighteen feet
above the level of the country, and thirty feet above the bottom of the
Ditch, which is itself some twenty feet wide. The ditch is on the
western side of the bank, thus showing that it was used as a defence by
the people on the east against those on the west. It was near this ditch
that the defeat of the ancient British tribe of the Iceni by the Romans,
as described by Tacitus ("Annals," xii. 31), took place in A.D. 50.[3]
At Cambridge itself the ancient earthwork known as Castle Hill may
belong to this British period, and have formed a valuable auxiliary to
the line of dykes in defending the ford of the river and the pass
behind; but upon this point authorities are divided.[4] Indeed, there is
good ground for the opinion that the Castle Hill is a construction of
the later Saxon period, and may, in fact, be referred to the time of
the Danish incursions in the ninth century, during which time Cambridge
is known to have been sacked more than once.
However that may be, there is ample proof that the site of the Castle at
any rate was occupied by the Romans, for the remains of a fosse and
vallum, forming part of an oblong enclosure within which the Castle
Hill, whether early British or later Saxon, is included, seem to
indicate the position of a Roman station here. Moreover, to this place
converge the two great Roman roads, of which the remains may still be
traced: _Akeman Street_, leading from Cirencester (Corinium) in the
south through Hertfordshire to Cambridge, and thence across the fen (by
the Aldreth Causeway, the scene of William the Conqueror's two years'
campaign with Hereward) to Ely, and so onwards to Brancaster in Norfolk;
and the _Via Devana_, which, starting from Colchester (Colonia or
Camelodunum), skirted the forest lands of Essex through Cambridge and
Huntingdon (Durolifons) northwards to Chester (Deva). Whether the Roman
station, however, at the junction of these two roads can be identified
as the ancient Camboritum is still a little doubtful. Certainly the
common identification of Cambridge with Camboritum, because of the
resemblance between the two names, cannot be justified. That resemblance
is a mere coincidence. The name Cambridge, in fact, is comparatively
modern, being corrupted, by regular gradations, from the original
Anglo-Saxon form which had the sense of Granta-bridge. The name of the
town is thus not, as is generally supposed, derived from the name of the
river (Cam being modern and artificial), but, conversely, the name of
the river has, in the course of centuries, been evolved out of the name
of the town.[5]
To return, however, to the Castle Hill. It may be doubtful, as we have
said, whether the Roman station there was Camboritum or not, but there
can be no doubt that the station, whatever it may have been called by
the Romans, must have been a fairly important one, not only as
commanding the open pass-way between the forest and the fen leading into
East Anglia, but also as standing at the head of a waterway leading to
the sea. It is difficult, of course, to estimate the extent of the
commerce in these early days, or even perhaps to name the staple article
of export that must have found its way by means of the fenland rivers to
the Continent, but that it must have been at times considerable we may
at least conjecture from the fact that in the records of the sacking of
the Fenland abbeys--Ely, Peterborough, Ramsey, and Crowland--by the
Danes in the seventh century there is evidence of a great store of
wealth, costly embroideries, rich jewels, gold and silver, which can
hardly have been the product of native industry alone, but seem to
indicate a fair import trade from the Continent.
The geographical position, in fact, of Cambridge at the head of a
waterway directly communicating with the sea is a factor in the history
of the town the importance of which cannot be exaggerated. In direct
communication with the Continent by means of the river, and on the only,
or almost the only, line of traffic between East Anglia and the rest of
England, it naturally became the chief distributing centre of the
commerce and trade of eastern England, and the seat of a Fair which in a
later age boasted itself the largest in Europe.
In his "History of the University," Thomas Fuller gives an account of
the origin of this Fair, which is perhaps more picturesque than
accurate:--
"About this time," he says--that is, about A.D. 1103, in the reign
of the first Henry--"Barnwell,[6] that is, Children's Well, a
village within the precincts of Cambridge, got both the name
thereof and a Fair therein on this occasion. Many little children
on Midsummer (or St. John Baptist's) Eve met there in mirth to play
and sport together; their company caused the confluence of more and
bigger boys to the place: then bigger than they: even their parents
themselves came thither to be delighted with the activity of their
children. Meat and drink must be had for their refection, which
brought some victualling booths to be set up. Pedlers with toys and
trifles cannot be supposed long absent, whose packs in short time
swelled into tradesmen's stalls of all commodities. Now it is
become a great fair, and (as I may term it) one of the townsmen's
commencements, wherein they take their degrees of wealth, fraught
with all store of wares and nothing (except buyers) wanting
therein."
This description of Fuller is obviously a rough translation of a passage
from the _Liber Memorandorum Ecclesia de Bernewelle_, commonly called
the "Barnewell Cartulary," given at page xii. of Mr. J. W. Clark's
"Customs of Augustinian Canons," and dated about 1296.
It is possible, of course, that the celebrated Stourbridge Fair, which
in later centuries was held every autumn in the river Meadow, a mile or
so below the town, adjoining Barnwell Priory, did date back to these
early times, but its two earliest charters undoubtedly belong to the
thirteenth century, one belonging to the reign of King John, granting
the tolls of the Fair to the Friars of the Leper Chapel of St. Mary
Magdalene, the other to Henry III.'s time fixing the date of the Fair
for the four days commencing October 17, being the Festival of St.
Etheldreda, Virgin, Queen and Abbess of Ely. From this time onward at
any rate the annual occurrence of this Fair furnishes incidents, not
always commendable, in the annals of both town and University. It is
said with probability that John Bunyan, who in his Bedfordshire youth
may well have been drawn to its attractions, made the Fair at
Stourbridge Common the prototype of his "Vanity Fair." And certainly any
one who will take the trouble to compare the description of the Fair
given by the Cambridgeshire historian Carter with the well-known passage
in the "Pilgrim's Progress," cannot but feel that the details of
Bunyan's picture are touches painted from life:--
"Then I saw in my dream, that when they were got out of the
Wilderness, they presently saw a Town before them, and the name of
that Town is _Vanity_; and at the Town there is a Fair kept, called
_Vanity Fair_ ... therefore at this Fair are all such Merchandise
sold, as Houses, Lands, Trades, Places, Honours, Preferments,
Titles, Countries, Kingdoms, Lusts, Pleasures, and Delights of all
sorts, as Whores, Bawds, Wives, Husbands, Children, Masters,
Servants, Lives, Blood, Bodies, Souls, Silver, Gold, Pearls,
Precious Stones and what not.
"And moreover at this Fair there is at all times to be seen
Jugglings, Cheats, Games, Plays, Fools, Apes, Knaves, and Rogues,
and that of all sorts.
"And as in other Fairs of less moment, there are the several Rows
and Streets under their proper names, where such and such wares
are vended; so here likewise you have the proper places, Rows,
Streets ... where the wares of this Fair are soonest to be found.
Here is the Britain Row, the French Row, the Italian Row, the
German Row, where several sorts of vanities are to be sold."
The historian, it is true, speaks of "the Sturbridge Fair as like to a
well-governed city, with less disorder and confusion than in any other
place where there is so great a concourse of people," yet when one reads
in Bunyan's "Progress" of the Peremptory Court of Trial, "under the
Great One of the Fair," ever ready to take immediate cognisance of any
"hubbub," one cannot but remember that the judicial rights of the
University in the regulation of the ale-tents and show-booths on
Midsummer Common were at least a fertile theme for satire with the
licensed wits of both Universities, whether of "Mr. Tripos" at
Cambridge, or of the "Terræ Filius" at Oxford, and wonder what amount of
truth there may have been in the rude statement of the latter that "the
Cambridge proctors at Fair time were so strict in forbidding
undergraduates to enter public-houses in the town because it would spoil
their own trade in the Fair."
But as Fuller would say, "Enough hereof. It tends to slanting and
suppositive traducing of the records." Let us proceed with our history.
And that we may do so let us end this introductory chapter of Fable and
Fact by enforcing the point, of which the incident of Stourbridge Fair
was but an illustration, that Cambridge became the seat of an English
University, because it had already become a chief centre of English
trade and commerce, and had so become because in the early centuries it
had stood as guardian of the only pass-way which crossed the frontier
line of the kingdoms of Mercia and the West Saxons and the kingdom of
the East Anglians, and at a later time had been the busy porter of the
river gate, by which the merchandise of northern Europe, borne to the
Norfolk Wash and the Port of Lynn by the ships of Flanders and the Hanse
towns of the Baltic, found its way, by the sluggish waters of the Cam
and the Ouse, to a place which was thus well fitted to become the great
distributing centre of trade for southern England and the Midlands.
Stourbridge Fair is a thing of the past. Cambridge as a distributing
centre for the trade of northern Europe has ceased to be. The long line
of river barges no longer float down the stream. The waters of the Wash
are silting up. The fame of the town has been eclipsed by the fame of
the University. But town and University alike may still gaze with
emotion at the old timbered wharfs and clay hithes of the river, the
green earthwork of the Castle Hill, the far-stretching roads once known
as Akeman Street and the Icknield Way, the grass-grown slopes of the
Devil's Dyke, as the symbols of mighty forces which in their day brought
men from all parts of Europe to this place, and have been potent to make
it through many centuries a centre of light and learning to England and
the world.