THE COLLEGE OF THE CAMBRIDGE GUILDS
"The noblest memorial of the Cambridge gilds consists of the
College which was endowed by the munificence of St. Mary's Gild and
the Corpus Christi Gild: it perpetuates their names in its own....
In other towns the gilds devoted their energies to public works of
many kinds--to maintaining the sea-banks at Lynn, to sustaining the
aged at Coventry, and to educating the children at Ludlow. In
embarking on the enterprise of founding a College, the Cambridge
men seem, however, to stand alone; we can at least be sure that the
presence of the University here afforded the conditions which
rendered it possible for their liberality to take this
form."--CUNNINGHAM.
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.
"Here at this time were two eminent guilds or fraternities of towns-folk
in Cambridge, consisting of brothers and sisters, under a _chief_
annually chosen, called an alderman.
"The Guild of Corpus Christi, keeping their prayers in St.
Benedict's Church.
"The Guild of the Blessed _Virgin_, observing their offices in St.
Mary's Church.
"Betwixt these there was a zealous emulation, which of them should
amortize and settle best maintenance for such chaplains to pray for the
souls of those of their brotherhood. Now, though generally in those days
the stars outshined the sun; I mean more honour (and consequently more
wealth) was given to saints than to Christ himself; yet here the Guild
of Corpus Christi so outstript that of the Virgin Mary in endowments,
that the latter (leaving off any further thoughts of contesting) desired
an union, which, being embraced, they both were incorporated together.
2. Thus being happily married, they were not long issueless, but a small
college was erected by their united interest, which, bearing the name of
both parents, was called the College of Corpus Christi and the Blessed
Mary. However, it hath another working-day name, commonly called (from
the adjoined church) Benet College; yet so, that on festival solemnities
(when written in Latin, in public instruments) it is termed by the
foundation name thereof."[45]
So picturesquely writes Thomas Fuller of the Foundation of Corpus
Christi College.
The colleges of Cambridge owe their foundation to many and various
sources. We have already seen two of the most ancient tracing their
origin to the liberality and foresight of wise bishops, two others to
the widowed piety of noble ladies, one to the unselfish goodness of a
parish priest. Later we shall find the stately patronage of kings and
queens given to great foundations, and on the long roll of university
benefactors we shall have to commemorate the names of great statesmen
and great churchmen, philosophers, scholars, poets, doctors, soldiers,
"honoured in their generation and the glory of their days." One college,
however, there is which has a unique foundation, for it sprang, in the
first instance, from that purest fount of true democracy, the spirit of
fraternal association for the protection of common rights and of mutual
responsibility for the religious consecration of common duties, by which
the Cambridge aldermen and burgesses in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries were striving by their guild life, to cherish those essential
qualities of the English character--personal independence and faith in
law-abidingness--which lie at the root of all that is best in our modern
civilisation, and were undoubtedly characteristic of the English people
in the earliest times of which history has anything to tell us.
The history of the guild life of Cambridge is one of unusual interest.
The story breaks off far oftener than we could wish, but in the
continuity of its religious guild history Cambridge holds a very
important place, second only perhaps to that of Exeter. All the
Cambridge guilds of which we know anything seem to have been essentially
religious guilds, so prominent throughout their history remained their
religious object. It is only indeed in connection with one of the
earliest of which we have any record, the guild of Cambridge Thegns in
the eleventh century, associated in devotion to S. Etheldreda, the
foundress saint of Ely, that we find any secular element. That Guild
does indeed offer to its members a secular protection of which the later
guilds of the thirteenth century knew nothing, for they were religious
guilds pure and simple. It is true that in the first charter of King
John, dated 8th Jan. 1201, there appears to be a confirmation to the
burgesses of Cambridge of a _guild merchant_ granting to them certain
secular rights of toll. But there does not appear to be any historical
evidence to show that the Guild Merchant of Cambridge ever took definite
shape, or stood apart in any way from the general body of burgesses.
King John's charter simply secured to the town those liberties and
franchises which all the chief boroughs of England enjoyed at the
beginning of the thirteenth century.[46]
[Illustration: The Churches of S. Edward & St. Mary--the Great from Peas
Hill]
The first religious guild of which we have any record is the Guild of
the Holy Sepulchre, known to us only by an isolated reference in the
history of Ramsey Abbey, which tells us of a fraternity existing in
1114-36, whose purpose was the building of a Minster in honour of God
and the Holy Sepulchre, and which resulted in the erection of the
Cambridge Round Church. Of Cambridge guild life we hear nothing more
until the reign of Edward I., when we find record of certain conveyances
of land being made to the Guild of S. Mary. From the first this guild is
closely associated with Great S. Mary's Church, the University Church of
to-day, the Church of S. Mary at Market, as it was called in the early
days. The members of it were called the alderman, brethren and sisters
of S. Mary's Guild belonging to the Church of the Virgin. Its
benefactors direct that should the guild cease, the benefaction shall go
to the celebration of Our Lady Mass in her Church. The underlying
spirit, however, whatever may have been the superstitious ritual
connected with the organisation, was very much the same as that of the
English Friendly Society of to-day. "Let all share the same lot," ran
one of the statutes; "if any misdo, let all bear it." "For the
nourishing of brotherly love,"--so the members of another society took
the oath of loyalty--"they would be good and true loving brothers to the
fraternity, helping and counselling with all their power if any brother
that hath done his duties well and truly come or fall to poverty, as God
them help."
"The purpose of S. Mary's Gild was primarily the provision of
prayers for the members. The 'congregation' of brethren, sometimes
brethren and sisters, met at irregular intervals, to pass
ordinances and to elect officers. In 1300 they agree to attend S.
Mary's Church on Jan. 2, to celebrate solemn mass for dead members.
The penalty for absence was half a pound of wax, consumed no doubt
in the provision of gild lights before the altar of Our Lady.
Richard Bateman and his wife, in their undated grant, made the
express condition that in return they should receive daily prayers
for the health of their souls.... In the year 1307 ... the gild
passed an ordinance directing the gild chaplains to celebrate two
trentals of masses (60 in all) for each dead brother. If the
deceased left anything in his will to the gild, then as the
alderman might appoint, the chaplains should do more or less
celebration according to the amount bequeathed to the gild. The
rule is naïve, but its spirit is unpleasing. Individualism has
thrust itself in where it seems very much out of place. The
enrolment of the souls of the dead further witnesses to the purely
religious character of the gild, and the purchase of a missal
should also be noticed."[47]
The minutes and bede roll of the guild, which have lately been published
by the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, show that the association
continued to flourish down to the time of the Great Plague. On its bede
roll we find such names as those of Richard Hokyton, vicar of the Round
Church; of "Alan Parson of Seint Beneytis Chirche"; of Warinus
Bassingborn, High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire in 1341; of Walter Reynald,
Chancellor of the University and Archbishop of Canterbury, who died in
1327; and of Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham, and author of the
_Philobiblon_, who died in 1345. In 1352, on "account of poverty," the
Guild, by Royal Charter, was allowed to coalesce with the Guild of
Corpus Christi, for the purpose of founding a college.
Of this latter guild we have no earlier record than 1349, three years
only before the date of union with S. Mary's. Its minute-book, however,
which begins in 1350, shows it to have been at that time a flourishing
institution. It had probably been founded, like that which bore the same
dedication at York, for the purpose of conducting the procession on the
Feast of Corpus Christi on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, a festival
instituted about 1264. There are no existing bede rolls of the guild,
and therefore no means of knowing the names of any members who entered
before 1350. It appears to have been attached from the first to the
ancient Church of S. Benet. The reversion of the advowson of that Church
was in 1350 held by a group of men, several of whom were leading members
of the guild. In 1353 the then Rector entered the guild, and "by the
ordinance of his friends" resigned the Church to the Bishop "gratis,"
that "_the brethren_ and those who had acquired the advowson" might
enter upon their possession. It is disappointing to find that there are
no guild records telling of the union of S. Mary's guild with that of
Corpus Christi, or of the circumstances which led to the creation of the
college bearing the joint names of the two guilds. Such foundation was,
as we have said, a remarkable event in the history of Cambridge
collegiate life. Not that these guilds were the first or the last to
take part in the endowment of education; for many of the ancient grammar
schools of the country owe their origin to, or were greatly assisted by,
the benefactions of religious guilds. For example, Mr. Leach in his
"English Schools at the Reformation" has noted, that out of thirty-three
guilds, of whose returns he treats, no less than twenty-eight were
supporting grammar schools. But the foundation of a college was a more
ambitious task. It has a peculiar interest also, as that of an effort
towards the healing of what was, even at this time, an outstanding feud
between town and gown, between city and university.
The principal authority for the history of the site and buildings of the
college is the _Historiola_ of Josselin, a fellow of Queen's College,
and Latin secretary to Archbishop Parker. According to his narrative,
the guild of Corpus Christi had begun seriously to entertain the idea of
building a college as early as 1342, for about that date, he says:--
"Those brethren who lived in the parishes of S. Benedict and S.
Botolph, and happened to have tenements and dwelling-houses close
together in the street called Leithburne Lane, pulled them down,
and with one accord set about the task of establishing a college
there: having also acquired certain other tenements in the same
street from the University. By this means they cleared a site for
their college, square in form and as broad as the space between the
present gate of entrance (_i.e._ by S. Benet's Church) and the
Master's Garden."[48]
The original mover in the scheme for a guild college may well have been
the future master, Thomas of Eltisley, chaplain to the Archbishop of
Canterbury and rector of Lambeth. Among the Cambridge burgesses William
Horwood, the mayor, was treasurer of the Guild in 1352, and used the
mayoral seal for guild purposes, because the seals of the alderman and
brethren of the Guild "are not sufficiently well known." Another mayor
of Cambridge about this time, Robert de Brigham, was a member of the
other associated Guild of S. Mary. How the support of Henry, Duke of
Lancaster--the "Good Duke," as he was called--was secured does not
appear, but he is mentioned as alderman of the Guild, in the letters
patent of Edward III. in 1352, establishing the College. His influence
perhaps may have been gained through Sir Walter Manny, the countryman
and friend of Queen Philippa, whose whole family was enrolled in the
Guild.
At any rate, with the enrolment of the "Good Duke" as alderman of the
Guild, the success of the proposed college was secure. In 1355 the
Foundation received the formal consent of the chancellor and masters of
the University, of the Bishop of Ely, and of the Prior and Chapter of
Ely. The College Statutes, dated in the following year, 1356, show that
"the chaplain and scholars were bound to appear in S. Benet's or S.
Botulph's Church at certain times, and in all Masses the chaplains were
to celebrate for the health of the King and Queen Philippa and their
children, and the Duke of Lancaster, and the brethren and sisters,
founders and benefactors of the Guild and College," and although this
perhaps, rather than the love of learning, pure and simple, was the
chief aim which influenced the early founders of Corpus Christi College,
the Society has in after ages held a worthy place in the history of the
University, and "Benet men" have occupied positions in church and state
quite equal to those of more ample foundations. Three Archbishops of
Canterbury--Parker, Tennison, and Herring--have been Corpus men, one of
whom, Matthew Parker, enriched it with priceless treasures, and gave to
its library a unique value by the bequest of what Fuller has called "the
sun of English antiquity." Indeed, if they have done nothing else, the
men of the Cambridge guilds have laid all students of English history
under a supreme debt of gratitude in the provision of a place where so
many of the MSS. so laboriously collected by Archbishop Parker are
housed and preserved. From the walls of Benet College, also, there went
out many other distinguished men: statesmen, like Nicholas Bacon, the
Lord Keeper of the Seal; bishops, like Thomas Goodrich and Peter
Gunning, of Ely; translators of the Scriptures, like Taverner, and
Huett, and Pierson; commentators on the Old Testament, like the learned
and ingenious Dean Spencer of Ely, the Wellhausen of the seventeenth
century; soldiers, like the brave Earl of Lindsey, who fell at Edgehill,
or like General Braddock, who was killed in Ohio in the colonial war
against the French; learned antiquaries, like Richard Gough; sailors,
like Cavendish, the circumnavigator; poets, like Christopher Marlowe and
John Fletcher.
[Illustration: Corpus Christi College and S. Benedict's Church]
The College as originally built consisted of one court, which still
remains, and is known as "the Old Court." It still preserves much of its
ancient character, and is specially interesting as being probably _the
first originally planned quadrangle_. Josselin speaks of it as being
"entirely finished, chiefly in the days of Thomas Eltisle, the first
master, but partly in the days of Richard Treton, the second master." It
consisted simply of a hall range on the south and chambers on the three
other sides. The former contained at the south-east corner the master's
chambers, communicating with the common parlour below, and also with the
library and hall. As in most of the early colleges, both the gateway
tower and the chapel were absent. The entrance was by an archway of the
simplest character in the north range, opening into the southern part of
the churchyard of S. Benet, and thus communicating with Free School
Lane, running past the east end of the church, or northwards past the
old west tower, with Benet Street. At the end of the fifteenth century
two small chapels, one above the other, were built adjoining the south
side of S. Benet's chancel. They were connected with the College
buildings by a gallery carried on arches like that already described in
connection with Peterhouse. This picturesque building still exists. S.
Benet's Church was used as the College chapel down to the beginning of
the seventeenth century, when a new chapel was built, mainly due to the
liberality of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. This
chapel occupied nearly the same site as the western part of the present
building, which took its place in 1823, as part of the scheme of
buildings which gave to Corpus the large new court with frontage to
Trumpington Street. The principal feature of these buildings is the new
library occupying the whole of the upper floor of the range of building
on the south side of the quadrangle. It is here that the celebrated
collection of ancient MSS. collected by Archbishop Parker are housed.
They contain, among many other treasures, the Winchester text of the
"Old English Chronicle," that great national record, which at the
bidding of King Alfred, in part quite probably under his own eye, was
written in the scriptorium of Winchester Cathedral; ancient copies of
the "Penitentiale" of Archbishop Theodore; King Alfred's translation of
Pope Gregory's "Pastorale"; Matthew Paris' own copy of his "History"; a
copy of "John of Salisbury" which once belonged to Thomas à Becket; the
Peterborough "Psalter"; Chaucer's "Troilus," with a splendid
frontispiece of 1450; a magnificent folio of Homer's "Iliad" and
"Odyssey"--a note by Josselin tells how "a baker at Canterbury rescued
it from among some waste paper, remaining from S. Augustine's monastery
after the dissolution," and how the Archbishop welcomed it as "a
monstrous treasure"; and Jerome's Latin version of the "Four Gospels,"
sent by Pope Gregory to Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury,
"the most interesting manuscript in England."
No wonder that in handing over such a priceless gift to the charge of
the College, Archbishop Parker should have striven to secure its future
safety by this stringent regulation set out in his Deed of Gift.
" ...That nothing be wanting for their more careful preservation,
the Masters of Gonville and Caius College and of Trinity Hall, or
their substitutes, are appointed annual supervisors on the 6th of
August; on which occasion they are to be invited to dinner with two
scholars of his foundation in those colleges; when each of the
former is to have 3s. 4d. and the scholars 1s. a piece for their
trouble in overlooking them; at which time they may inflict a
penalty of 4d. for every leaf of MS. that may be found wanting; for
every sheet, 2s.; and for every printed book or MS. missing, and
not restored within six months after admonition, what sum they
think proper. But if 6 MSS. in folio, 8 in quarto, and 12 in lesser
size, should at any time be lost through supine negligence, and not
restored within 6 months, then with the consent of the
Vice-Chancellor and one senior doctor, not only all the books but
likewise all the plate he gave shall be forfeited and surrendered
up to Gonville and Caius College within a month following. And if
they should afterwards be guilty of the like neglect they are then
to be delivered over to Trinity Hall, and in case of their default
to revert back in the former order. Three catalogues of these books
were directed to be made, whereof one was to be delivered to each
College, which was to be sealed with their common seal and
exhibited at every visitation."
[Illustration: The Pitt Press, S. Botolph's Church, and Corpus Christie
College]
We have spoken of the early foundation of the Guild College as in some
sense an effort on the part of the Cambridge burgesses of the fourteenth
century to take some worthy share in the development of university life.
Unfortunately the good feeling between town and gown was not of long
duration. As the older burgesses who had been brethren of the gilds of
Corpus Christi and S. Mary died off, an estrangement sprang up between
the members of the college they had founded and the new generation of
townsmen. The initial cause of trouble arose from the character of some
of the early endowments of the College. It would seem that in addition
to the many houses and tenements in the town which had been bequeathed
to the College, a particularly objectional rate in the form of "candle
rent" was exacted by the College authorities. It is said that so
numerous were the Cambridge tenements subjected to this rate, that
one-half of the houses in the town had become tributary to the College.
The townsmen did not long confine themselves to mere murmuring or
"passive resistance." In 1381 the populace, taking advantage of the
excitement caused by the Wat Tyler rebellion, vented their animosity and
unreasoning hatred of learning by the destruction of all the College
books, charters, and writings, and everything that bespoke a lettered
community on the Saturday next after the feast of Corpus Christi,
prompted perhaps by their hatred of the pomp and display of wealth in
connection with the great annual procession of the Host through the
streets. The bailiffs and commonalty of Cambridge, so we read in the old
record, assembled in the town hall and elected James of Grantchester
their captain. "Then going to Corpus Christi College, breaking open the
house and doors, they traitorously carried away the charters, writings,
and muniments." On the following Sunday they caused the great bell of S.
Mary's Church to be rung, and there broke open the university chest. The
masters and scholars under intimidation surrendered all their charters,
muniments, ordinances, and a grand conflagration ensued in the
market-place. One old woman, Margaret Steere, gathered the ashes in her
hands and flung them into the air with the cry, "Thus perish the skill
of the clerks! away with it! away with it!" Having finished their work
of destruction in the market-place, the crowd of rioters marched out to
Barnwell, "doing," so Fuller tells the story, "many sacrilegious
outrages to the Priory there. Nor did their fury fall on men alone, even
trees were made to taste of their cruelty. In their return they cut down
a curious grove called Green's Croft by the river side (the ground now
belonging to Jesus College), as if they bare such a hatred to all wood
they would not leave any to make gallows thereof for thieves and
murderers. All these insolencies were acted just at that juncture of
time when Jack Straw and Wat Tyler played Rex in and about London. More
mischief had they done to the scholars had not Henry Spencer, the
warlike Bishop of Norwich, casually come to Cambridge with some forces
and seasonably suppressed their madness."[49]
And so the story of the seven earliest of the Cambridge colleges closes
in a time of social misery and of national peril. The collapse of the
French war after Crecy, and the ruinous taxation of the country which
was consequent upon it, the terrible plague of the Black Death sweeping
away half the population of England, and the iniquitous labour laws,
which in face of that depopulation strove to keep down the rate of wages
in the interests of the landlords, had brought the country to the verge
of a wide, universal, social, political revolution. It was no time,
perhaps, in which to look for any great national advance in scholarship
or learning, much less for new theories of education or of academic
progress. It is not certainly in the subtle realist philosophy and the
dry syllogistic Latin of the _De Dominio Divino_ of John Wycliffe, the
greatest Oxford schoolman of his age, but in the virile, homely English
tracts, terse and vehement, which John Wycliffe, the Reformer, wrote for
the guidance of his "poore priestes" (and in which, incidentally, he
made once more the English tongue a weapon of literature), that we find
the new forces of thought and feeling which were destined to tell on
every age of our later history. It is not in the good-humoured, gracious
worldliness of the poet Chaucer--most true to the English life of his
own day as is the varied picture of his "Canterbury Tales"--but in the
rustic shrewdness and surly honesty of "Peterkin the Plowman" in William
Langland's great satire, that we find the true "note" of English
religion, that godliness, grim, earnest, and Puritan, which was from
henceforth to exercise so deep an influence on the national character.
But while what was good in the Lollard spirit survived, the Lollards
themselves, with the death of Wycliffe and of John of Gaunt, his great
friend and protector, fell upon evil times. Their revolution by force
had almost succeeded. For a short time they were masters of the field.
But with the passing of the immediate terror of the Peasant Revolt, the
conservative forces of the state rallied to the protection of that
social order, whose very existence the Lollards had, by their ferocious
extravagance and frantic communism, seemed to threaten. The wiser
contemporaries of this movement agreed to abandon its provocations and
to consign it to oblivion or misconception. At Oxford, the Government
threatened to suppress the University itself unless the Lollards were
displaced. And Oxford, to outward appearance, submitted. Its Lollard
chancellor was dismissed. The "poore priestes" and preachers were
silenced, or departed to spread the new Gospel of the "Bible-men" across
the sea. Some recanted and became bishops, cardinals, persecutors. But
many remained obscure or silent and cautious. Thomas Arundel, Archbishop
of Canterbury, speaking of Oxford, said that there were wild vines in
the University, and therefore little grapes; that tares were constantly
sown among the pure wheat, and that the whole University was leavened
with heresy. "You cannot meet," said a monkish historian, "five people
talking together but three of them are Lollards." At Cambridge, on the
16th September 1401, holding a visitation in the Congregation House, the
Archbishop had privately put to the Chancellor and the Doctors ten
questions with regard to the discipline of the University. One question
was significant: "_Were there any_," the Archbishop asked, "_suspected
of Lollardism?_" The terrible and infamous statute, "De Heretico
Comburendo," had been passed in the previous year, and but a few months
before the first victim of that enactment had been burnt at the stake.
It is an historic saying, that "Cambridge bred the Founders of the
English Reformation and that Oxford burnt them." The statement is not
without its grain of truth. The Puritan Reformation of the sixteenth
century found, no doubt, its strongest adherents in the eastern counties
of England; but it was not so much because the scholars of Cambridge
welcomed more heartily than their brothers in the western university the
teaching of the scholars of Geneva, but because the people of East
Anglia, two centuries before, had been saturated with the Bible teaching
of the "poore priestes" of Wycliffe's school, and throughout the whole
of the intervening period had secretly cherished it. For the present,
however, the curtain drops on the age of the schoolmen with the death of
Wycliffe. When it rises again, we shall find ourselves in the age of the
New Learning. What the transition was from one time to the other, how
deeply the Revival of Learning influenced the reformation of religion,
we shall hear in the succeeding chapters.