THE COLLEGES OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
"High potentates and dames of royal birth
And mitred fathers in long order go."--GRAY.
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.
The dates of the foundation of the two Colleges, Clare and Pembroke,
which, after an interval of some fifty and seventy years respectively,
followed that of Peterhouse, and the names of Lady Elizabeth, Countess
of Clare, and of Marie de Valence, Countess of Pembroke, who are
associated with them, remind us that we have reached that troublous and
romantic time which marked the close of the long and varied reign of the
Great Edward, and was the seed-time of those influences which ripened
during the longer and still more varied reign of Edward III. Between the
year 1326, which was the date of the first foundation of Clare College,
the date also of the deposition and murder of Edward II., and the year
1348, which is the date of the foundation of Pembroke and the
twenty-first year of Edward III., the distracted country had passed
through many vicissitudes. It had seen the great conflict of parties
under the leadership of the great houses of Lancaster, Gloucester, and
Pembroke, culminating in the king's deposition and in the rise of the
power of the English Parliament, and in its division into the two Houses
of Lords and Commons. It had seen the growth of the new class of landed
gentry, whose close social connection with the baronage on the one hand,
and of equally close political connection with the burgesses on the
other, had welded the three orders together, and had given to the
Parliament that unity of action and feeling on which its powers have
ever since mainly depended. It had seen the Common Law rise into the
dignity of a science and rapidly become a not unworthy rival of Imperial
Jurisprudence. It had seen the close of the great interest of Scottish
warfare, and the northern frontier of England carried back to the old
line of the Northumbrian kings. It had seen the strife with France
brought to what at the moment seemed to be an end, for the battle of
Crecy, at which the power of the English chivalry was to teach the world
the lesson which they had learned from Robert Bruce thirty years before
at Bannockburn, was still in the future, as also was the Hundred Years'
War of which that battle was the prelude. It had seen the scandalous
schism of the Western Church, and the vision of a Pope at Rome, and
another Pope at Avignon, awakening in the mind of the nations an
entirely new set of thoughts and feelings with regard to the position of
both the Papacy and the Church. The early fourteenth century was indeed
an age of great events and of great men; but it was not an age, at least
as far as England was concerned, of great scholars. There was no
Grosseteste in the fourteenth century. Petrarch, the typical man of
letters, the true inspirer of the classical Renaissance, and in a sense
the founder of really modern literature, was a great scholar and
humanist, but he had no contemporary in England who could be called an
equal or a rival. His one English friend, Richard of Bury, Bishop of
Durham, book lover as he was--for his _Philobiblon_ we all owe him a
debt of gratitude--was after all only an ardent amateur and no scholar.
When Petrarch had applied to Richard for some information as to the
geography of the Thule of the ancients, the Bishop had put him off with
the statement that he had not his books with him, but would write fully
on his return home. Though more than once reminded of his promise, he
left the disappointed poet without an answer. The fact was, that Richard
was not so learned that he could afford to confess his ignorance. He
corresponds, in fact, to the earlier humanists of Italy--men who
collected manuscripts and saw the possibilities of learning, though they
were unable to attain to it themselves. There is much in his
_Philobiblon_ of the greatest interest, as, for example, his description
of the means by which he had collected his library at Durham College,
and his directions to students for its careful use, but despite his own
fervid love and somewhat rhetorical praise of learning, there is still a
certain personal pathos in the expression of his own impatience with the
ignorance and superficiality of the younger students of his day.
Writing in the _Philobiblon_ of the prevalent characteristics of Oxford
at this time, he writes:--
"Forasmuch as (the students) are not grounded in their first
rudiment at the proper time, they build a tottering edifice on an
insecure foundation, and then when grown up they are ashamed to
learn that which they should have acquired when of tender years,
and thus must needs even pay the penalty of having too hastily
vaulted into the possession of authority to which they had no
claim. For these and like reasons, our young students fail to gain
by their scanty lucubrations that sound learning to which the
ancients attained, however they may occupy honourable posts, be
called by titles, be invested with the garb of office, or be
solemnly inducted into the seats of their seniors. Snatched from
their cradle and hastily weaned, they get a smattering of the rules
of Priscian and Donatus; in their teens and beardless they chatter
childishly concerning the Categories and the Perihermenias in the
composition of which Aristotle spent his whole soul."[33]
It is to be feared that the decline of learning, which at this period
was characteristic, as we thus see, of Oxford, was equally
characteristic of Cambridge. Certainly there was no scholar there of the
calibre of William of Ockham, or even of Richard of Bury, or of the
Merton Realist, Bradwardine, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. It is
not indeed until more than a century later when we have reached the age
of Wycliffe, the first of the reformers and the last of the schoolmen,
that the name of any Cambridge scholar emerges upon the page of history.
[Illustration: Clare College and Bridge]
But meanwhile the collegiate system of the University was slowly
being developed. Some forty years after the foundation of Peterhouse, in
the year 1324, Hervey de Stanton, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Canon
of Bath and Wells, obtained from Edward II. permission to found at
Cambridge the College of "the Scholars of St. Michael." The college
itself, Michaelhouse, has long been merged in the great foundation of
Trinity, but its original statutes still exist and show that they were
conceived in a somewhat less liberal spirit than that of the code of
Hugh de Balsham. The monk and the friar are excluded from the society,
but the Rule of Merton is not mentioned. Two years afterwards, in 1326,
we find thirty-two scholars known as the "King's Scholars" maintained at
the University by Edward II. It seems probable that it had been the
intention of the King in this way to encourage the study of the civil
and the canon law, for books on these subjects were presented by him,
presumably for the use of the scholars, to Simon de Bury their warden,
and were subsequently taken away at the command of Queen Isabella. The
King had also intended to provide a hall of residence for these
"children of our chapel," but the execution of this design of
establishing a "King's Hall" was left to his son Edward III. The poet
Gray, in his "Installation Ode," has represented Edward III.--
"Great Edward with the lilies on his brow,
From haughty Gallia torn,"
in virtue of his foundation of King's Hall, which was subsequently
absorbed in the greater society, as the founder of Trinity College. But
the honour evidently belongs with more justice to his father. It was,
however, by Edward III. that the Hall was built near the Hospital of S.
John, "to the honour of God, the Blessed Virgin, and all the Saints, and
for the soul of the Lord Edward his father, late King of England, of
famous memory, and the souls of Philippa, Queen of England, his most
dear consort, and of his children and progenitors."[34]
The statutes of King's Hall give an interesting contemporary picture of
collegiate life. The preamble moralises upon "the unbridled weakness of
humanity, prone by nature and from youth to evil, ignorant how to
abstain from things unlawful, easily falling into crime." It is required
that each scholar on his admission be proved to be of "good and
reputable conversation." He is not to be admitted under fourteen years
of age. His knowledge of Latin must be such as to qualify him for the
study of logic, or of whatever other branch of learning the master shall
decide, upon examination of his capacity, he is best fitted to follow.
The scholars were provided with lodging, food, and clothing. The sum
allowed for the weekly maintenance of a King's scholar was fourteen
pence, an unusually liberal allowance for weekly commons, suggesting the
idea that the foundation was probably designed for students of the
wealthier class, an indication which is further borne out by the
prohibitions with respect to the frequenting of taverns, the
introduction of dogs within the College precincts, the wearing of short
swords and peaked shoes (_contra honestatem clericalem_), the use of
bows, flutes, catapults, and the oft-repeated exhortation to orderly
conduct.
Following upon the establishment of Michaelhouse and King's Hall, in the
year 1326 the University in its corporate capacity obtained a royal
licence to settle a body of scholars in two houses in Milne Street. This
college was called University Hall, a title already adopted by a similar
foundation at Oxford. The Chancellor of the University at the time was a
certain Richard de Badew. The foundation, however, did not at first meet
with much success. In 1336 its revenues were found insufficient to
support more than ten scholars. In 1338, however, we find Elizabeth de
Burgh, Countess of Clare and granddaughter of Edward I., coming to the
help of the struggling society. By the death of her brother, the Earl of
Gloucester, at the battle of Bannockburn, leaving no issue, the whole of
a very princely estate came into the possession of the Lady Clare and
her two sisters. Having, by a deed dated 6th April 1338, received from
Richard de Badew, who therein calls himself "Founder, Patron, and
Advocate of the House called the Hall of the University of Cambridge,"
all the rights and titles of University Hall, the Lady Clare refounded
it, and supplied the endowments which hitherto it had lacked. The name
of the Hall was changed to Clare House (_Domus de Clare_). As early,
however, as 1346 we find it styled Clare Hall, a name which it bore down
to our own times, when, by resolution of the master and fellows in
1856, it was changed to Clare College. The following preamble to the
statutes of the College, which were granted in 1359, are perhaps worthy
of quotation as exhibiting, in spite of its quaint confusion of the
"Pearl of Great Price" with "the Candle set upon a Candlestick," the
pious and withal businesslike and sensible spirit of the foundress:--
"To all the sons of our Holy Mother Church, who shall look into
these pages, Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady de Clare, wishes health and
remembrance of this transaction. Experience, which is the mistress
of all things, clearly teaches that in every rank of life, as well
temporal as ecclesiastical, a knowledge of literature is of no
small advantage; which though it is searched into by many persons
in many different ways, yet in a University, a place that is
distinguished for the flourishing of general study, it is more
completely acquired; and after it has been obtained, she sends
forth her scholars who have tasted its sweets, apt and suitable men
in the Church of God and in the State, men who will rise to various
ranks according to the measure of their deserts. Desiring
therefore, since this consideration has come over us, to extend as
far as God has allowed us, for the furtherance of Divine worship,
and for the advance and good of the State, this kind of knowledge
which in consequence of a great number of men having been taken
away by the fangs of pestilence, is now beginning lamentably to
fail; we have turned the attention of our mind to the University of
Cambridge, in the Diocese of Ely; where there is a body of
students, and to a Hall therein, hitherto commonly called
University Hall, which already exists of our foundation, and which
we would have to bear the name of the House of Clare and no other,
for ever, and have caused it to be enlarged in its resources out of
the wealth given us by God and in the number of students; in order
that the Pearl of Great Price, Knowledge, found and acquired by
them by means of study and learning in the said University, may
not lie hid beneath a bushel, but be published abroad; and by being
published give light to those who walk in the dark paths of
ignorance. And in order that the Scholars residing in our aforesaid
House of Clare, under the protection of a more steadfast peace and
with the advantage of concord, may choose to engage with more free
will in study, we have carefully made certain statutes and
ordinances to last for ever."[35]
[Illustration: Clare College and Bridge.]
The distinguishing characteristic of these statutes is the great
liberality they show in the requirements with respect to the professedly
clerical element. This, as the preamble, in fact, suggests, was the
result of a desire to fill up the terrible gap caused in the ranks of
the clergy by the outbreak of the Black Death, which first made its
appearance in England in the year 1348, and caused the destruction of
two and a half millions of the population in a single year.[36]
The Scholars or Fellows are to be twenty in number, of whom six are to
be in priest's orders at the time of their admission. The remaining
fellows are to be selected from bachelors or sophisters in arts, or from
"skilful and well-conducted" civilians and canonists, but only two
fellows may be civilians, and only one a canonist. The clauses relating
to the scheme of studies are, moreover, apparently intended to
discourage both these branches of law.
Of the further progress of the College in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries we have no record, for the archives perished in the fire which
almost totally destroyed the early buildings in the year 1521. In the
seventeenth century, shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War, it
was proposed to rebuild the whole College, but owing to the troubles of
that time it was not until the beginning of the eighteenth century, in
the year 1715, that the work was finished. "The buildings are," said the
late Professor Willis, "among the most beautiful, from their situation
and general outline, that he could point out in the University."
There is extant an amusing account of the controversy between Clare Hall
and King's College, caused by the desire of the former to procure a
certain piece of land for purposes of recreation on the east side of the
Cam, called Butt Close, belonging to King's. Here are two of the letters
which passed between the rival litigants.
"_The Answer of Clare-Hall to Certaine Reasons of King's College
touching Butt-Close._
"1. To the first we answer:--Iº. That y{e} annoyance of y{e} windes
gathering betweene y^{e} Chappell and our Colledge is farre greater
and more detriment to y^{t} Chappell, then any benefitt which they
can imagine to receiue by y{e} shelter of our Colledge from wind
and sunne.
"2º. That y^{e} Colledge of Clare-hall being sett so neare as now
it is, they will not only be sheltered from wind and sunne, but
much deprived both of ayre and light.
"3º. That y^{e} remove all of Clare Hall 70 feet westward will take
away little or no considerable privacy from their gardens and
walkes; for y{t} one of their gardens is farre remote, and y^{e}
nearer fenced with a very high wall, and a vine spread upon a long
frame, under which they doe and may privately walke."
"_A Reply of King's Colledge to y^{e} Answer of Clare-Hall._
"1. The wind so gathering breeds no detriment to our Chappell, nor
did ever putt us to any reparacions there. The upper battlements at
the west end haue sometimes suffered from y^{e} wind, but y^{e}
wind could not there be straightned by Clare-hall, w^{ch} scarce
reacheth to y^{e} fourth part of y^{e} height.
"2º. No whit at all, for our lower story hath fewer windowes y^{t}
way: the other are so high y^{t} Clare-Hall darkens them not, and
hath windows so large y^{t} both for light and ayre no chambers in
any Coll. exceed them.
"3º. The farther garden is not farre remote, being scarce 25 yards
distant from their intended building; y^{e} nearer is on one side
fenced with a high wall indeed, but y^{t} wall is fraudulently
alleaged by them, and beside y^{e} purpose: for y^{t} wall y^{t}
stands between their view and y^{e} garden is not much aboue 6 feet
in height: and y^{t} we haue any vine or frame there to walke under
is manifestly untrue."[37]
However, the controversy was settled in favour of Clare-Hall by a letter
from the King.
A tradition has long prevailed that Clare-Hall was the College mentioned
by the poet Chaucer in his "Reeve's Tale," in the lines--
"And nameliche ther was a greet collegge,
Men clepen the Soler-Halle at Cantebregge."
There appears, however, to be good reason for thinking that the Soler
Hall was in reality Garrett Hostel, a _soler_ or sun-chamber being the
equivalent of a garret. For the tradition also that Chaucer himself was
a Clare man there is no authority. The College may well be satisfied
with the list of authentic names of great men which give lustre to the
roll of its scholars--Hugh Latimer, the reformer and fellow-martyr of
Ridley; Nicholas Ferrar, the founder of the religious community of
Little Gidding; Wheelock, the great Saxon and oriental scholar; Ralph
Cudworth, leader of the Cambridge Platonists; Archbishop Tillotson and
his pupil the philosopher, Thomas Burnett; Whiston, the translator of
"Josephus"; Cole, the antiquary; Maseres, the lawyer and mathematician.
The foundation of Pembroke College, like that of Clare Hall, was also
due to the private sorrow of a noble lady. The poet Gray, himself a
Pembroke man, in the lines of his "Installation Ode," where he
commemorates the founders of the University--
"All that on Granta's fruitful plain
Rich streams of royal bounty poured,"
speaks of this lady as
"...sad Chatillon on her bridal morn,
That wept her bleeding love."
[Illustration: Pembroke College.]
This is in allusion to the somewhat doubtful story thus told by Fuller--
"Mary de Saint Paul, daughter to Guido Castillion, Earl of S. Paul
in France, third wife to Audomare de Valentia, Earl of Pembroke,
maid, wife, and widow all in a day (her husband being unhappily
slain at a tilting at her nuptials), sequestered herself on that
sad accident from all worldly delights, bequeathed her soul to God,
and her estate to pious uses, amongst which this is principal, that
she founded in Cambridge the College of Mary de Valentia, commonly
called Pembroke Hall."
[Illustration: Pembroke College]
All that authentic history records is that the Earl of Pembroke died
suddenly whilst on a mission to the Court of France in June 1324. His
widow expended a large part of her very considerable fortune both in
France and England on works of piety. In 1342 she founded the Abbey of
Denny in Cambridgeshire for nuns of the Order of S. Clare. The Charter
of Foundation of Pembroke College is dated 9th June 1348. It is to be
regretted that the earliest Rule given to the College, or to the _Aula
seu Domus de Valence Marie_, the Hall of Valence Marie, as it was at
first called, is not extant. A revised rule of the conjectural date of
1366, and another of perhaps not more than ten years later, furnished,
however, the data upon which Dr. Ainslie, Master of the College from
1828 to 1870, drew up an abstract of its constitution and early
history.[38] The most interesting feature of this constitution is the
provision made in the first instance for the management of the College
by the Franciscans, and its abolition on a later revision. According to
the first code--"the head of the College was to be elected by the
fellows, and to be distinguished by the title of the Keeper of the
House." There were to be annually elected two rectors, _the one a Friar
Minor_, the other a secular. This provision of the two rectors was
abolished in the later code, and with it apparently all official
connection between the College and the Franciscan Order, and it may be
perhaps conjectured all association also with the sister foundation at
Denny, concerning which the foundress, in her final _Vale_ of the
earlier code, had given to the fellows of the House of Valence Marie the
following quaint direction, that "on all occasions they should give
their best counsel and aid to the Abbess and Sisters of Denny, who had
from her a common origin with them."
[Illustration: Pembroke College Oriels & Entrance]
The exact date at which the building of the College was begun is not
known, but it was probably not long after the purchase of the site in
1346. Many of the original buildings which remained down to 1874 were
destroyed in the reconstruction of the College at that time. It is now
only possible to imagine many of the most picturesque features of that
building, of which Queen Elizabeth, on her visit to Cambridge in 1564,
enthusiastically exclaimed in passing, "_O domus antiqua et religiosa!_"
by consulting the print of the College published by Loggan about 1688.
Of the interesting old features still left, we have the chapel at the
corner of Trumpington Street and Pembroke Street, built in 1360 and
refaced in 1663, and the line of buildings extending down Pembroke
Street to the new master's lodge and the Scott building of modern date.
The old chapel has been used as a library since 1663, when the new
chapel, whose west end abuts on Trumpington Street, was built by Sir
Christopher Wren. The cloister, called Hitcham's Cloister, which joins
the Wren Chapel to the fine old entrance gateway, and the Hitcham
building[39] on the south side of the inner court, are dated 1666 and
1659 respectively. All the rest of the College is modern.
The early foundation of Pembroke College had some connection, as we have
seen, with the Franciscan Order. The early foundation of Gonville Hall,
which followed that of Pembroke in 1348, had a somewhat similar
connection with the Dominicans. Edward Gonville, its founder, was
vicar-general of the diocese of Ely, and rector of Ferrington and
Rushworth in Norfolk. In that county he had been instrumental in causing
the foundation of a Dominican house at Thetford. Two years before his
death he settled a master and two fellows in some tenements he had
bought in Luteburgh Lane, now called Free School Lane, on a site almost
coinciding with the present master's garden of Corpus, and gave to his
college the name of "the Hall of the Annunciation of the Blessed
Virgin." But he died in 1351, and left the completion of his design to
his executor, Bishop Bateman of Norwich. Bateman removed Gonville Hall
to the north-west corner of its present site, adjoining the "Hall of the
Holy Trinity," which he was himself endowing at the same period.
However, he too died within a few years, leaving both foundations
immature. The statutes of both halls are extant, and exhibit an
interesting contrast of ideal--the one that of a country parson of the
fourteenth century, moved by the simple desire to do something for the
encouragement of learning, and especially of theology, in the men of his
own profession--the other that of a Bishop, a learned canonist and busy
man of state, long resident at the Papal court at Avignon, regarded by
the Pope as "the flower of civilians and canonists," desirous above all
things by his College foundation of recruiting the ranks of his clergy,
thinned by the Black Death, with men trained, as he himself had been, in
the canon and civil law. It was the Bishop's ideal that triumphed.
Gonville's statutes requiring an almost exclusively theological training
for his scholars were abolished, and the course of study in the two
halls assimilated, Bateman, as founder of the two societies, by a deed
dated 1353, ratifying an agreement of fraternal affection and mutual
help between the two societies, as "scions of the same stock";
assigning, however, the precedence to the members of Trinity Hall,
"_tanquam fratres primo geniti_."[40] The fellows were by this agreement
bound to live together in amity like brothers, to take counsel together
in legal and other difficulties, to wear robes or cloaks of the same
pattern, and to consort together at academic ceremonies. Thus Gonville
Hall was fairly started on its way. It ranked from the first as a small
foundation, and though it gradually added to its buildings and acquired
various endowments, it did not materially increase its area for two
centuries. The ancient walls of its early buildings--its chapel, hall,
library, and master's lodge--are all doubtless still standing, though
coated over with the ashlar placed on them in 1754. The ancient beams of
the roof of the old hall are still to be seen in the attics of the
present tutor's house. The upper room over the passage which leads from
Gonville to Caius Court is the ancient chamber of the lodge where the
early masters used to sleep, very little changed. The old main entrance
to the College was in Trinity Lane, a thoroughfare so filthy in the
reign of Richard II. that the King himself was appealed to, in order to
check the "_horror abominabilis_" through which students had to plunge
on their way to the schools. From time to time new benefactors of the
College came, though for the most part of a minor sort; some of whom,
however, have left quaint traces behind them. Of such was a certain
Cluniac monk, John Household by name, a student in 1513, who in his
will dated 1543 thus bequeaths--"To the College in Cambrydge called
Gunvyle Hall, my longer table-clothe, my two awter (altar) pillows, with
their bears of black satten bordered with velvet pirled with goulde:
also a frontelet with the salutation of Our Lady curely wroughte with
goulde; and besides two suts of vestements having everythinge belonging
to the adorning of a preste to say masse: the one is a light greene
having white ends, and the other a duned Taphada," whatever that may be.
He also leaves his books, "protesting that whatsoever be founde in my
bookes I intend to dye a veray Catholical Christen man, and the King's
letheman and trewe subjecte." This might seem to speak well, perhaps,
for the catholicity of the College in the thirty-fourth year of Henry
VIII., and yet thirteen years earlier Bishop Nix of Norwich had written
to Archbishop Warham: "I hear no clerk that hath come out lately of
Gunwel Haule but saverith of the frying panne, though he speak never so
holely." Anyhow about this time the College became notorious as a hotbed
of reformed opinions. It was, however, at this time also that a young
student was trained within its walls, who, after a distinguished career
at Cambridge--it would be an anachronism to call him senior wrangler,
but his name stands first in that list which afterwards developed into
the Mathematical Tripos--passed to the university of Padua to study
medicine under the great anatomist, Vesalius, ultimately becoming a
professor there, and returning to England, and to medical practice in
London, and having presumably amassed a fortune in the process, formed
the design of enlarging what he pathetically describes as "that pore
house now called Gonville Hall." On September 4, 1557, John Caius
obtained the charter for his new foundation, and the ancient name of
Gonville Hall was changed to that of Gonville and Caius College. In the
following year the new benefactor was elected Master, and the remaining
years of his life were spent, on the one hand, in quarrelling with
Fellows about "College copes, vestments, albes, crosses, tapers ... and
all massynge abominations;" and, on the other, in designing and carrying
out those noble architectural additions to the College which give to the
buildings of Caius College their chief interest.
[Illustration: Gate of Honour & Gate of Virtue Caius College]
"In his architectural works," says Mr. Atkinson, "Caius shews
practical common sense combined with the love of symbolism. His
court is formed by two ranges of building on the east and west, and
on the north by the old chapel and lodge. To the south the court is
purposely left open, and the erection of buildings on this side is
expressly forbidden by one of his statutes, lest the air from being
confined within a narrow space should become foul. The same care is
shewn in another statute which imposes on any one who throws dirt
or offal into the court, or who airs beds or bedlinen there, a fine
of three shillings and fourpence. In his will also he requires that
'there be mayntayned a lustie and healthie, honest, true, and
unmarried man of fortie years of age and upwardes to kepe cleane
and swete the pavementes.'"[41]
The love of Dr. Caius for symbolism is shown most conspicuously in his
design of the famous three Gates of Humility, of Virtue, and of Honour,
which were intended to typify, by the increasing richness of their
design, the path of the student from the time of his entrance to the
College, to the day when he passed to the schools to take his Degree in
Arts. The Gate of Humility was a simple archway with an entablature
supported by pilasters, forming the new entrance to the College from
Trinity Street, or as it was then called, High Street, immediately
opposite St. Michael's Church. On the inside of this gate there was a
frieze on which was carved the word HUMILITATIS. From this gate there
led a broad walk, bordered by trees, much in the fashion of the present
avenue entrance to Jesus College, to the Gate of Virtue, a simple and
admirable gateway tower in the range of the new buildings, forming the
eastern side of the court, still known as Caius Court.
"The word VIRTUTIS is inscribed on the frieze above the arch on the
eastern side, in the spandrils of which are two female figures
leaning forwards. That on the left holds a leaf in her left hand,
and a palm branch in her right; that on the right a purse in her
right hand, and a cornucopia in her left. The western side of this
gate has on its frieze, 'IO. CAIUS POSUIT SAPIENTIÆ, 1567,' an
inscription manifestly derived from that on the foundation stone
laid by Dr. Caius. Hence this gate is sometimes described as the
Gate of Wisdom, a name which has however no authority. In the
spandrils on this side are the arms of Dr. Caius."[42]
In the centre of the south wall, forming the frontage to Schools Street,
stands the Gate of Honour. It is a singularly beautiful and picturesque
composition, "built of squared hard stone wrought according to the very
form and figure which Dr. Caius in his lifetime had himself traced out
for the architect."[43] It was not built until two years after Caius'
death, that is about the year 1575. It is considered probable that the
architect was Theodore Havens of Cleves, who was undoubtedly the
designer of "the great murall diall" over the archway leading into
Gonville Court, and of the column "wrought with wondrous skill
containing 60 sun-dialls ... and the coat armour of those who were of
gentle birth at that time in the College," standing in the centre of
Caius Court, and of the "Sacred Tower," on the south side of the Chapel,
all since destroyed.
Beautiful as the Gate of Honour still remains, it must have had a very
different appearance when it left the architect's hand. Many of its most
interesting features have wholly vanished. Among the illustrations to
Willis and Clark's "History" there is an interesting attempt to restore
the gateway with all its original details. At each angle, immediately
above the lowest cornice, there was a tall pinnacle. Another group of
pinnacles surrounded the middle stage, one at each corner of the
hexagonal tower. On each face of the hexagon there was a sun-dial, and
"at its apex a weathercock in the form of a serpent and dove." In the
spandrils of the arch next the court are the arms of Dr. Caius, on an
oval shield, "two serpents erect, their tails nowed together," and
"between them a book." On the frieze is carved the word HONORIS. The
whole of the stonework was originally painted white, and some parts,
such as the sun-dials, the roses in the circular panels, and the
coats-of-arms, were brilliant with colour and gold. The last payment for
this "painting and gilding" bears date 1696 in the Bursar's book. Dr.
Caius died in 1573, and was buried in the Chapel. On his monument are
inscribed two short sentences--_Vivit post funera virtus_ and _Fui
Caius_.
[Illustration: Caius College The Gate of Honour]
And so we may leave him and his College, and also perhaps fitly end this
chapter with the kindly words with which Fuller commends to posterity
the memory of this great College benefactor:--
"Some since have sought to blast his memory by reporting him a
papist; no great crime to such who consider the time when he was
born, and foreign places wherein he was bred: however, this I dare
say in his just defence, he never mentioneth protestants but with
due respect, and sometimes occasionally doth condemn the
superstitious credulity of popish miracles. Besides, after he had
resigned his mastership to Dr. Legg, he lived fellow-commoner in
the College, and having built himself a little seat in the chapel,
was constantly present at protestant prayers. If any say all this
amounts but to a lukewarm religion, we leave the heat of his faith
to God's sole judgment, and the light of his good works to men's
imitation."[44]