COLLEGES OF THE NEW LEARNING
"No more as once in sunny Avignon,
The poet-scholar spreads the Homeric page,
And gazes sadly, like the deaf at song:
For now the old epic voices ring again
And vibrate with the beat and melody
Stirred by the warmth of old Ionian days."
--MRS. BROWNING.
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.
We may well in this chapter take together the twin foundations of
Christ's College and S. John's which both had the Lady Margaret,
Countess of Richmond and Derby, and mother of Henry VII. for their
foundress. The father of this lady was John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset,
and her mother was Margaret, daughter and heiress of Sir John Beauchamp,
of Bletso. "So that," says Fuller, punning on her parents' names,
"_fairfort_ and _fairfield_ met in this lady, who was fair body and fair
soul, being the exactest pattern of the best devotion those days
afforded, taxed for no personal faults but the errors of the age she
lived in. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, preached her funeral sermon,
wherein he resembled her to Martha in four respects: firstly, nobility
of person; secondly, discipline of her body; thirdly, in ordering her
soul to God; fourthly, in hospitality and charity."
In that assemblage of noble lives, who from the earliest days of
Cambridge history have laboured for the benefit of the University, and
left it so rich a store of intellectual good, there are no more honoured
names than these two:--the Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond, and her
friend and confessor, Bishop Fisher, under whose wise and cautious
supervision Cambridge first tasted of the fruits of the Renaissance, and
welcomed Erasmus, I fear with but a very tempered enthusiasm, to the
newly-founded Lady Margaret chair, and yet, nevertheless, in that
encouragement of the New Learning laid the foundation of that sound
method and apparatus of criticism which has enabled the University in an
after age to take all knowledge for its province, and to represent its
conquest by the foundation of twenty-five professorial chairs.
John Fisher, who came, as we have seen in the last chapter, from the
Abbey School at Beverley, where, some twenty years or so before, he had
been preceded by Bishop Alcock, was Proctor of the University in 1494,
and three years later, in 1497, was made Master of his College,
Michaelhouse. The duties of the proctorial office necessitated at that
time occasional attendance at Court, and it was on the occasion of his
appearance in this capacity at Greenwich that Fisher first attracted the
notice of the Lady Margaret, who in 1497 appointed him her confessor.
It was an auspicious conjunction for the University. Under his
inspiration the generosity of his powerful patron was readily extended
to enrich academic resources. It was the laudable design of Fisher to
raise Cambridge to the academic level which Oxford had already reached.
Already students of the sister university had been to Italy, and had
returned full of the New Learning. The fame of Colet, Grocyn, and
Linacre made Oxford renowned, and drew to its lecture-rooms eager
scholars from all the learned world. It hardly needed that such a man as
Erasmus should sing the praises of the Oxford teachers. "When I listen
to my friend Colet," he wrote, "I seem to be listening to Plato himself.
Who does not admire in Grocyn the perfection of training? What can be
more acute, more profound, or more refined than the judgment of Linacre?
What has nature ever fashioned gentler, sweeter, or pleasanter than the
disposition of Thomas More?"[68]
It was natural therefore that Fisher should be ambitious in the same
direction for his own university. He began wisely on a small scale, with
an object of immediate practical usefulness, the foundation of a
Divinity professorship, which should aim at teaching pulpit eloquence.
On this point he rightly thought that the adherents of the Old and the
New Learning might agree. And there was desperate need for the
adventure. For with the close of the fifteenth century both theology and
the art of preaching had sunk into general neglect. Times, for example,
had greatly changed since the day when Bishop Grosseteste had declared
that if a priest could not preach, there was one remedy, let him resign
his benefice. But now the sermon itself had ceased to be considered
necessary.
"Latimer tells us that in his own recollection, sermons might be
omitted for twenty Sundays in succession without fear of complaint.
Even the devout More, in that ingenious romance which he designed
as a covert satire on many of the abuses of his age, while giving
an admirably conceived description of a religious service, has left
the sermon altogether unrecognised. In the universities, for one
master of arts or doctor of divinity who could make a text of
Scripture the basis of an earnest, simple, and effective homily,
there were fifty who could discuss its moral, analogical, and
figurative meaning, who could twist it into all kinds of unimagined
significance, and give it a distorted, unnatural application. Rare
as was the sermon, the theologian in the form of a modest, reverent
expounder of Scripture was yet rarer. Bewildered audiences were
called upon to admire the performances of intellectual acrobats.
Skelton, who well knew the Cambridge of these days, not inaptly
described its young scholars as men who when they had "once
superciliously caught
A lytell ragge of rhetoricke,
A lesse lumpe of logicke,
A pece or patch of philosophy,
Then forthwith by and by
They tumble so in theology,
Drowned in dregges of divinite
That they juge themselfe alle to be
Doctours of the chayre in the Vintre,
At the Three Cranes
To magnifye their names."[69]
It was to remedy this state of things that, in the first instance,
Fisher set himself to work. The Divinity professorship was soon
supplemented by the Lady Margaret preachership, the holder of which was
to go from place to place and give a cogent example in pulpit oratory:
one sermon in the course of every two years at each of the following
twelve places:--
"On some Sunday at S. Paul's Cross, if able to obtain permission,
otherwise at S. Margaret's, Westminster, or if unable to preach
there, then in one of the more notable churches of the City of
London; and once on some feast day in each of the churches of Ware
and Cheshunt in Hertfordshire; Bassingbourne, Orwell and Babraham
in Cambridgeshire; Maney, St. James Deeping, Bourn, Boston, and
Swineshead in Lincolnshire."[70]
We have already spoken in the chapter on Queens' College of the work of
Erasmus at Cambridge. He was summoned to Cambridge in 1511 to teach
Greek and to lecture on the foundation of Lady Margaret. He himself
tells us that within a space of thirty years the studies of the
University had progressed from the old grammar, logic, and scholastic
questions to some knowledge of the New Learning, of the renewed study at
any rate of Aristotle, and the study of Greek.
The literary revival had no doubt been quicker and more brilliant at
Oxford, but Cambridge, owing to Fisher's cautious and careful
supervision, and his foundation of the Lady Margaret Colleges of
Christ's and S. John's, was the first to give to the New Learning a
permanent home.
[Illustration: The Chapel, Christ's College]
The religious bias of the Countess of Richmond had inclined her to
devote the bulk of her fortune to an extension of the great monastery of
Westminster. But Bishop Fisher knew that active learning rather than
lazy seclusion was essential to preserve the Church against the
dangerous Italian type of the Renaissance, and he persuaded her to
direct her gift to educational purposes. He pointed out that the Abbey
Church was already the wealthiest in England, "that the schools of
learning were meanly endowed, the provisions of scholars very few and
small, and colleges yet wanting to their maintenance--that by such
foundations she might have two ends and designs at once, might double
her charity and double her reward, by affording as well supports to
learning as encouragement to virtue."
The foundation of Christ's College in 1505 is an enduring memorial of
the wisdom of the Bishop and the charity of the Lady Margaret.
There is a tradition that Fisher, who undoubtedly had joined
Michaelhouse before taking his B.A. degree in 1487, had, upon his first
entering Cambridge, been a student of God's House. However that may be,
it was to this small foundation he turned as the basis of his projected
new college.
God's House, an adjunct of Clare-Hall, founded by William Byngham,
Rector of S. John Zachary, in London, in 1441, stood originally on a
plot of land at the west end of King's Chapel, adjoining the Church of
S. John Zachary. In the changes which were necessary to secure a site
for King's College, the Church of S. John and God's House were removed.
In return for his surrender, Byngham had received license from Henry
VI. to build elsewhere a college. Land was accordingly secured on what
is now the site of the first and second courts of Christ's College, and
in the charter of the new God's House, dated 16th April 1448, it is
stated that Byngham had deferred the foundation owing to his ardent
desire that "the King's glory and his reward in heaven might be
increased" by his personal foundation of God's House. Henry could not
resist such an argument, and thus God's House became, and Christ's
College, as its successor, claims to be, of Royal Foundation. The little
foundation, however, was always cramped by lack of means. Within fifty
years of its first foundation the time had evidently come for a
reconstitution of God's House.
"In the year 1505 appeared the royal charter for the foundation of
Christ's College, wherein after a recital of the facts already
mentioned, together with other details, it was notified that King
Henry VII., at the representation of his mother and other noble and
trustworthy persons--_percarissimæ matris nostræ necnon aliorum
nobilium et fide dignorum_--and having regard to her great desire
to exalt and increase the Christian faith, her anxiety for her own
spiritual welfare, and the sincere love which she had ever borne
'our uncle' (Henry VI.) while he lived--had conceded to her
permission to carry into full effect the designs of her illustrious
relative; that is to say, to enlarge and endow the aforesaid God's
House sufficiently for the reception and support of any number of
scholars not exceeding sixty, who should be instructed in grammar
or in the other liberal sciences and faculties or in sacred
theology."[71]
The arrival of the charter was soon followed by the news of the Lady
Margaret's noble benefactions--consisting of many manors in the four
counties of Cambridge, Norfolk, Leicester, and Essex--which thus exalted
the humble and struggling Society of God's House, under its new
designation of Christ's College, into the fourth place in respect of
revenue, among all the Cambridge colleges.
The building of the College seems to have gone on uninterruptedly
between 1505 and 1511. The amount spent by the Foundress during her
lifetime is not ascertainable; but the cost, as given in the household
books of the Lady Margaret after her death, was more than £1000.
"Though the College," says the present Master, Dr. Peile, "had no
very striking architectural features, the general effect, as seen
in Loggan's view, is good. We see the old mullioned windows
supplanted by sash windows in the last century: and the battlements
inside the court as well as without, which were displaced by Essex
to make way for the solid parapet, which still remains, and indeed
suits the new windows better. The original windows have recently
been restored with very good effect. We see a path, called the
Regent's Walk, running from the great gate directly across the
court to a door which gave entrance to the great parlour in the
Lodge, then the reception-room of the College, and now the Masters'
dining-room. That room has been reduced in size by a passage made
between it and the Hall. The passage leads to the winding stone
staircase which gave the only access to this suite of three rooms
on the first floor, corresponding exactly with those below, and
reserved by the Foundress for her own use during life, while the
Master contented himself with the three rooms on the ground floor.
The Foundress's suite consisted of a large ante-room (commonly but
wrongly called the Foundress's Bed-Chamber) with a little lobby in
one corner at the entrance from the old staircase. The second room
(now the drawing-room) was the Foundress's own living room; it has
an oriel window looking into the court, not much injured by the
removal of the mullions."
We may interrupt the Master's record here to tell the characteristic
story of the Lady Margaret which most probably has this oriel window for
its scene: "Once the Lady Margaret came to Christ's College to behold it
when partly built; and looking out of a window, saw the Dean call a
faulty scholar to correction, to whom she said, '_Lente! Lente!_'
(Gently! gently!) as accounting it better to mitigate his punishment
than to procure his pardon: mercy and justice making the best medley to
offenders."[72]
"The Foundress's sitting-room has a very interesting stone
chimney-piece adorned with fourteen badges (originally sixteen),
including a rose (repeated twice), a portcullis--the Beaufort badge
(repeated once), three ostrich feathers (a badge assumed by Edward
III. in right of his wife), a crown, a fleur-de-lis (repeated
once), the letters H.R., doubtless Henricus Rex (repeated once),
and lastly (twice repeated though the form differs) the special
badge of the Lady Margaret--groups of Marguerites, in one case
represented as growing in a basket. This very beautiful work was
brought to light in 1887; it had been covered up by the insertion
of a modern fireplace, whereby two of the badges were destroyed.
The whole had been coloured: there were traces of a deep blue
pigment on the stone between the badges, and on the jambs was
scroll-work in black and yellow. The remaining space between the
drawing-room and the chapel contained at its eastern end a private
oratory with its window opening into the chapel, closed up in 1702,
but reopened in 1899; it was connected with the drawing-room by a
door, which was revealed when the walls of the oratory were
stripped. At the western end was a small room looking into the
court, probably the bedroom of the Foundress, connected by a door,
now visible, with the oratory; this room was swept away when the
present staircase was introduced, probably in the seventeenth
century; further access had become necessary, because at that time
several of the masters let the best rooms of the Lodge, and lived
themselves in what was called the Little Lodge, a building of
considerable size to the north of the Chapel, intended originally
for offices to the Lodge."[73]
[Illustration: Jack in Wolsey's Kitchen
Christ's College]
The hall, between the Lodge and the buttery, has no exceptional
features. Early in the eighteenth century it was entirely Italianised,
as also were many of the other buildings. It was entirely rebuilt by Sir
Gilbert Scott in 1876, the old roof, with its ancient chestnut
principals, being reconstructed and replaced. The walls were raised six
feet and an oriel window was built on the east side in addition to the
original one on the west. In 1882 and following years portraits of the
Founders, of benefactors, and of worthies of the College were placed in
the twenty-one lights of the west oriel. The persons chosen as
"glass-worthy" were William Bingham, Henry VI., John Fisher, Lady
Margaret, Edward VI., Sir John Finch, Sir Thomas Baines, John Leland,
Edmund Grindall, Sir Walter Mildmay, John Still, William Perkins,
William Lee, Sir John Harrington (this because of a mistaken claim on
the part of Christ's, for Harrington was a King's man, and possibly also
of Trinity at a later date), Francis Quarles, John Milton, John
Cleveland, Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, William Paley, Charles Darwin.
The glass-work was executed by Burlison & Grylls.
At an early period "a very considerable part of y^{e} schollars of
Christ College lodged in y^{e} Brazen George; and y^{e} gates there were
shut and opened Morning and Evening constantly as y^{e} College gates
were." The Brazen George Inn stood on the other side of S. Andrew's
Street, opposite to the south-east corner of the College. Alexandra
Street no doubt represents the Inn yard. In 1613 the accommodation in
the College was further increased by the erection of a range of
buildings in the Second Court. This was a timber building of two stories
with attics. In 1665 it is described as "the little old building called
Rat's Hall." It was pulled down in 1730; the large range of buildings
known as the Fellows' buildings, parallel to Rat's Hall and further
east, having been erected, according to tradition, by Inigo Jones about
1640. A large range of building, similar in style to the Fellows'
building, was erected in 1889, and in 1895-97 Messrs. Bodley & Garner
enlarged the old library, and altered and refaced the street front,
extending the building to Christ's Lane, and thus added much to the
dignity of the College buildings, as seen from S. Andrew's Street. The
"re-beautifying the chappell," as the then Master, Dr. Covel, called
it, took place in 1702-3, when it was panelled by John Austin, who did
similar work about the same time in King's College chapel. The chapel
has no remarkable or beautiful features. It is unnecessary to contradict
the verdict of the present Master: "It must have been much more
beautiful during the first fifty years of the College than at any later
time."
[Illustration: The Courtyard of the Wrestlers Inn.
_To face p._ 220]
In the list of twenty-one names which we give above as being
"glass-worthy," we have also, no doubt, the list of the most eminent
members of Christ's College. Of these the two greatest are undoubtedly
John Milton and Charles Darwin.
Milton was admitted a pensioner of Christ's College on 12th February
1624-25, and was matriculated on 9th April following. He resided at
Cambridge in all some seven years, from February 1625 to July 1632. His
rooms were on the left side of the great court as it is entered from the
street, the first floor rooms on the first staircase on that side. They
consist at present of a small study with two windows looking into the
court, and a very small bedroom adjoining, and they have not probably
been altered since his time. In the gardens behind the Fellows'
buildings, perhaps the most delightful of all the college gardens in
Cambridge, is the celebrated mulberry tree, which an unvarying tradition
asserts to have been planted by Milton. "Unvarying," I have ventured to
write, for I dare not repeat the heresy of which Mr. J. W. Clark was
guilty when he suggested that Milton's mulberry tree was in reality one
of three hundred which the College bought to please James I., and which
was "set" by Troilus Atkinson, the College factotum, in the very year
that Milton was born. Concerning such heresy I can only repeat the
rebuke of the present Master: "The suggestion that the object of wider
interest than anything else in Christ's--'Milton's mulberry tree'--is
probably the last of that purchase, is the one crime among a thousand
virtues of the present Registrary of the University." Milton took his
B.A. degree 26th March 1629, the year in which he wrote that noble "Ode
on the Nativity," in which the characteristic majesty of his style is
already well marked. Three years earlier at least he had already written
poems--the epitaph "On the Death of an Infant":--
"O fairest flow'r no sooner blown than blasted,
Soft, silken primrose fading timelessly,
Summer's chief honour" ...
hardly less beautiful than the slightly later dirge "On the Marchioness
of Winchester":--
"Here besides the sorrowing
That thy noble house doth bring,
Here be tears of perfect moan
Wept for thee in Helicon,"
which in their exquisite grace and tenderness of wording scarcely fall
below the mastery of the mightier measure and deeper thought of
"Lycidas," written in 1637. Of his Latin poems, written also during his
undergraduate years, Dr. Peile has said--and on such a point there could
be no higher authority:--"Even then he thought in Latin: his exercises
are original poems, not mere clever imitations. There is remarkable
power in them--power which could only be gained by one who had filled
himself with the spirit of classical literature." After this testimony
we can assuredly afford to smile at those rumours of some disgrace in
his university career spread about in later years by his detractors.
That he had met perhaps, according to Aubrey's account, with "some
unkindnesse" from his tutor Chapell, even though that phrase by an
amended reading is interpreted "whipt him," need not distress us. It is
a doubtful piece of gossip, and even if it were true--for flogging of
students was by no means obsolete--it was a story to the tutor's
disgrace, not to Milton's; and certainly the poet himself bore no grudge
against the College authorities, as these magnanimous words plainly
testify:--
"I acknowledge publicly with all grateful mind, that more than
ordinary respect which I found, above any of my equals, at the
hands of those courteous and learned men, the Fellows of that
College, wherein I spent some years; who, at my parting, after I
had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how
much better it would content them that I would stay; as by many
letters full of kindness and loving respect, both before that time
and long after, I was assured of their singular good affection
towards me."[74]
Between the matriculation of John Milton at Christ's and that of Charles
Darwin at the same college is a period exactly of two centuries. The
Christ's Roll of Honour for that period contains many worthy names, but
none certainly which shed a brighter lustre on the College history than
that of Henry More, a leader in that remarkable school of thinkers in
the seventeenth century--Benjamin Whichcote, Ralph Cudworth, John
Smith, John Worthington, Samuel Cradock--known as "the Cambridge
Platonists," for whom Burnet claims the high credit of "having saved the
Church from losing the esteem of the kingdom," and whose distinctive
teaching is perhaps best brought out in More's writings. Henry More had
been admitted to Christ's College about the time when John Milton was
leaving it. He was elected a Fellow of the College in 1639, and
thenceforth lived almost entirely within its walls. Like many others, he
began as a poet and ended as a prose writer. He had, in fact, the
Platonic temperament in far greater measure probably than any other of
the Cambridge school. How the soul should escape from its animal
prison--when it should get the wings that of right should belong to
it--into what regions those wings could carry it--were the questions
which occupied him from youth upwards. "I would sing," he had said in
one of his Platonical poems,
"The pre-existency
Of human souls, and live once more again,
By recollection and quick memory,
All what is past since first we all began."
But the neo-platonic extravagances which lay hidden in his writings from
the first grew at last into a new species of fanaticism, which makes his
later books quite unreadable. And yet he remains perhaps the most
typical, certainly the most interesting, of all the Cambridge
Platonists, and at least he held true to the two great springs of the
movement--an unshrinking appeal to Reason, coupled with profound faith
in the essential harmony of natural and spiritual Truth--doctrines
which are of the very pith of the seventeenth century Cambridge evangel,
and which one is glad to think remain of the very essence of the
Cambridge theology of to-day. That Henry More and the Cambridge
Platonists failed in much that they attempted cannot be denied. They
failed partly because of their own weakness, but partly also because the
time was not yet ripe for an adequate spiritual philosophy. Such a
philosophy of religion can indeed only rise gradually on a comprehensive
basis of historic criticism, and of a criticism which has realised not
only that religious thought can no more transcend history than science
can transcend nature, but has also learnt the lesson--which no man has
more clearly taught to the students of history and of science alike, in
the century which has just closed, than that latest and greatest of the
sons of Christ's College, Charles Darwin--that knowledge is to be found
not only in sudden illumination, but in the slow processes of evolution,
and progress not in pet theories of this or that ancient or modern
thinker, but only in patient study and faithful generalisation.
Let us turn now to the second and perhaps greater Lady Margaret
Foundation of S. John's College.
Three years after Henry VI.'s incompleted foundation of God's House had
been enriched by a fair portion of the Lady Margaret's lands and opened
as Christ's College, the Oxford friends of the Countess petitioned her
for help in the endowment of a college in that University. For a time it
seemed as if Christ's Church was to have the Lady Margaret and not
Cardinal Wolsey as its founder. But Bishop Fisher again successfully
pleaded the cause of his own University, and the royal licence to
refound the corrupt monastic Hospital of S. John as a great and wealthy
college was obtained in 1508.
Of the Hospital of the Brethren of S. John the Evangelist, which was
founded in the year 1135, we have already spoken in the chapter on
Peterhouse. It owed its origin to an opulent Cambridge burgess, Henry
Frost, and was placed under the direction of a small community of
Augustinian Canons, an Order whose rule very closely resembled that of a
monastery, their duties consisting mainly in the performance of
religious services, and in caring for the poor and infirm. The patronage
which the little community received would seem to show that, during its
earlier history at least, the Brethren of S. John had faithfully
discharged their duties. Several of the early Bishops of Ely took the
Hospital under their direct patronage. Bishop Eustace, a prelate who
played a foremost part in Stephen's reign, appropriated to it the
livings of Homingsea and of S. Peter's Church in Cambridge, now known as
Little S. Mary's. Bishop Hugh de Balsham, as we have seen in our account
of his foundation of Peterhouse, endeavoured to utilise the Hospital for
the accommodation of the many students who in his time were flocking to
the University in quest of knowledge, and to that end endowed the
Hospital with additional revenues. After the failure of that scheme and
the successful foundation of Peterhouse, Bishop Simon Montagu came to
the help of the little house, and decreed, that in compensation for the
loss of S. Peter's Church, the Master and Fellows of Peterhouse should
pay to the Brethren of S. John a sum of twenty shillings annually, a
payment which has regularly been made down to the present day. The
Hospital continued to grow in wealth and importance down to the time of
its "decay and fall" in Henry VII.'s reign. The last twelve years of the
fifteenth century, under the misrule of its then Master, William Tomlyn,
saw its estates mortgaged or let on long leases, its discipline lax and
scandalous, its furniture, and even sacred vessels, sold. At the
beginning of the sixteenth century it had fallen into poverty and decay,
and the number of its brethren had dwindled to two. Its condition is
described in words identical with those applied to the Priory of S.
Rhadegund.[75] The words, as given in the charter of S. John's College,
are these:--
"The House or Priory of the Brethren of S. John the Evangelist, its
lands, tenements, rents, possessions, buildings, as well as its
effects, furniture, jewels and other ornaments in the Church,
conferred upon the said house or priory in former times, have now
been so grievously dilapidated, destroyed, wasted, alienated,
diminished and made away with, by the carelessness, prodigality,
improvidence and dissolute conduct of the Prior, Master and
brethren of the aforesaid House or Priory; and the brethren
themselves have been reduced to such want and poverty that they are
unable to perform Divine Service, or their accustomed duties
whether of religion, mercy or hospitality, according to the
original ordinance of their founders, or even to maintain
themselves by reason of their poverty and want of means of
support; inasmuch as for a long while two brethren only have been
maintained in the aforesaid House, and these are in the habit of
straying abroad in all directions beyond the precincts of the said
religious House, to the grave displeasure of Almighty God, the
discredit of their order, and the scandal of their Church."
The legal formalities necessary for the suppression of the Hospital were
so tedious, that it was not "utterly extinguished," as Baker, the
historian of S. John's, called its dissolution, until January 1510, when
it fell, "a lasting monument to all future ages and to all charitable
and religious foundations not to neglect the rules or abuse the
institutions of their founders, lest they fall under the same fate."
Meanwhile, before these difficulties could be entirely overcome, King
Henry VII. died, and within little more than two months after, the Lady
Margaret herself was laid to rest by the side of her royal son in
Westminster Abbey. Erasmus composed her epitaph. Skelton sang her elegy.
Torregiano, the Florentine sculptor, immortalised her features in that
monumental effigy which Dean Stanley has characterised as "the most
beautiful and venerable figure that the abbey contains." Bishop Fisher,
who two months before had preached the funeral sermon for her son Henry
VII., preached again, and with a far deeper earnestness, on the loss
which, to him at least, could never be replaced.
[Illustration: Entrance
S. John's College]
"Every one that knew her," he said, "loved her, and everything that
she said or did became her ... of marvellous gentleness she was
unto all folks, but especially unto her own, whom she trusted and
loved right tenderly.... All England for her death hath cause of
weeping. The poor creatures who were wont to receive her alms, to
whom she was always piteous and merciful; the students of both the
universities, to whom she was as a mother; all the learned men of
England, to whom she was a very patroness; all the virtuous and
devout persons, to whom she was as a loving sister; all the good
religious men and women whom she so often was wont to visit and
comfort; all good priests and clerks, to whom she was a true
defendress; all the noblemen and women, to whom she was a mirror
and example of honour; all the common people of this realm, to whom
she was in their causes a woman mediatrix and took right great
displeasure for them; and generally the whole realm, hath cause to
complain and to mourn her death."
The executors of the Lady Margaret were Richard Fox, Bishop of
Winchester; John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester; Charles Somerset; Lord
Herbert, afterwards Earl of Worcester; Sir Thomas Lovell, Knight; Sir
Henry Marney, Knight, afterwards Lord Marney; Sir John St. John, Knight;
Henry Hornby, clerk; and Hugh Ashton, clerk. Unforeseen difficulties,
however, soon arose. The young king looked coldly on a project which
involved a substantial diminution of the inheritance which he had
anticipated from his grandmother, while the young Bishop of Ely--"the
Dunce Bishop of Ely"--James Stanley,[76] although stepson to the
Countess, and solely indebted to her for promotion to his see, a dignity
which he little merited, did his best after her death to avert the
dissolution of the Hospital. As a result of this opposition of the Court
party, to which no less a person than Cardinal Wolsey, out of jealousy
it would seem for his own university, lent his powerful support, Lady
Margaret's executors found themselves compelled to forego their claims,
and the munificent bequest intended by the foundress was lost to the
College for ever. As some compensation for the loss sustained the
untiring exertions of Bishop Fisher succeeded in obtaining for the
College the revenues of another God's House, a decayed society at
Ospringe, in Kent, and certain other small estates, producing altogether
an income of £80. "This," says Baker, "with the lands of the old house,
together with the foundress's estate at Fordham, which was charged with
debts by her will, and came so charged to the College, with some other
little things purchased with her moneys at Steukley, Bradley, Isleham,
and Foxton (the two last alienated or lost), was the original foundation
upon which the College was first opened; and whoever dreams of vast
revenues or larger endowments will be mightily mistaken."
[Illustration: Gateway S. John's College]
Such were the conditions under which the new society of the College of
S. John the Evangelist was at last formed in 1511, and Robert Shorten
appointed Master with thirty-one Fellows. During Shorton's brief tenure
of the Mastership (1511-16) it devolved upon him to watch the progress
of the new building, which now rose on the site of the Hospital, and
included a certain portion of the ancient structure.
"Some three centuries and a half later, in 1869, when the old
chapel gave place to the present splendid erection, the process of
demolition laid bare to view some interesting features in the
ancient pre-collegiate buildings. Members of the College, prior to
the year 1863, can still remember 'The Labyrinth'--the name given
to a series of students' rooms approached by a tortuous passage
which wound its way from the first court, north of the gateway
opening upon Saint John's Street. These rooms were now ascertained
to have been formed out of the ancient infirmary--a fine single
room, some 78 feet in length and 22 in breadth, which during the
mastership of William Whitaker (1586-95) had been converted into
three floors of students' chambers. Removal of the plaster which
covered the south wall of the original building further brought to
light a series of Early English lancet windows, erected probably
with the rest of the structure, sometime between the years 1180 and
1200. Between the first and second of these windows stood a very
beautiful double piscina which Sir Gilbert Scott repaired and
transferred to the New Chapel. The chapel of the Hospital had been
altered to suit the needs of the College, and in Babington's
opinion was very much 'changed for the worse.' The Early English
windows gave place to smaller perpendicular windows, inserted in
the original openings, while the pitch of the roof was considerably
lowered. The contract is still extant made between Shorton and the
glazier, covenanting for the insertion of 'good and noble Normandy
glasse,' in certain specified portions of which were to appear
'roses and portcullis,' the arms of 'the excellent pryncesse
Margaret, late Countesse of Rychemond and Derby,' while the
colouring and designs were to be the same 'as be in the glasse
wyndowes within the collegge called Christes Collegge in Cambrigge
or better in euery poynte.'"[77]
The buildings of S. John's College consist of four quadrangles disposed
in succession from east to west, and extending to a length of some
nearly 300 yards. The westernmost court is across the river, approached
by the well-known "Bridge of Sighs," built in 1831. The easternmost
court, facing on the High Street, is the primitive quadrangle, and for
nearly a century after the foundation comprised the whole college.
The plan closely follows what we have now come to regard as the normal
arrangement, and is almost identical with that of Queens'.
[Illustration: S. John's College from the Backs]
The Great Gateway, which is in the centre of the eastern range of
buildings, is by far the most striking and beautiful gate in all
Cambridge. It is of red brick with stone quoins. The sculpture in the
space over the arch commemorates the founders, the Lady Margaret and her
son King Henry VII. In the centre is a shield bearing the arms of
England and France quarterly, supported by the Beaufort antelopes. Above
it is a crown beneath a rose. To the right and left are the portcullis
and rose of the Tudors, both crowned. The whole ground is sprinkled with
daisies, the peculiar emblem of the foundress. They appear in the crown
above the portcullis. They cluster beneath the string course. Mixed with
other flowers they form a groundwork to the heraldic devices. Above all,
in a niche, is the statue of S. John. The present figure was set up in
1662. The original figure was removed during the Civil War. There is
evidence that at one time the arms were emblazoned in gold and colours,
and that the horns of the antelopes were gilt.
Over the gateway is the treasury. The first floor of the range of
buildings to the south of the treasury contained at first the library.
The position of this old library is the only feature in the arrangement
of the buildings in which S. John's differs from Queens'.
[Illustration: Oriel in Library, S. John's College]
The second court, a spacious quadrangle, considerably larger than the
first, was commenced in 1598, and finished in 1602, the greater part
of the cost being defrayed by the Countess of Salisbury. In the west
range there is a large gateway tower. The first floor of the north range
contains the master's long gallery--a beautiful room with panelled walls
and a rich plaster ceiling. In this fine chamber for successive
centuries the head of the College was accustomed to entertain his
guests, among whom royalty was on several occasions included. According
to the historian Carter, down even to the middle of the last century it
still remained the longest room in the University, and when the door of
the library was thrown open, the entire vista presented what he
describes as a "most charming view." It was originally 148 feet long,
but owing to various rearrangements its dimensions have been reduced to
93 feet. It is now used as a Combination Room by the Fellows.
The new library building, which forms the north side of the third court,
was built in 1624. It is reached by a staircase built in the north-west
corner of the second court. The windows of the library are pointed and
filled with fairly good geometrical tracery, while the level of the
floor and the top of the wall are marked by classical entablatures. The
wall is finished by a good parapet, which originally had on each
battlement three little pinnacles like those still remaining on the
parapet of the oriel window in the west gable. This gable stands above
the river, and forms with the adjoining buildings a most picturesque
group. The name of Bishop Williams of Lincoln, Lord Keeper of the Great
Seal, who had contributed as "an unknown person" two-thirds of the
entire cost of £3000, is commemorated by the letters I.L.C.S. (_i.e._
_Johannes Lincolniensis Custos Sigilli_), together with the date 1624,
which appear conspicuously over the central gable. His arms, richly
emblazoned, were suspended over the library door, and his portrait,
painted by Gilbert Jackson, adorns the wall. The original library
bookcases remain, though their forms have been considerably altered.
The west range of the second court and the new library formed two sides
of the third court. The remaining river range and the buildings on the
south adjoining the back lane were added about fifty years later. They
were probably designed by Nicholas Hawkes, then a pupil of Sir
Christopher Wren. The central composition of the western range was
designed as an approach to a footbridge leading to the College walks
across the river. This footbridge gave way to the covered new bridge,
commonly spoken of as the Bridge of Sighs from its superficial
resemblance to the so-called structure at Venice, leading to the fourth
court, which was completed in 1831 from the plans of Rickman and
Hutchinson. The old bridge, leading from the back lane, was built in
1696. Beyond the new court are the extensive gardens, on the western
side of which is "the wilderness," commemorated by Wordsworth, who was
an undergraduate of John's from 1787 to 1791, in the well-known lines of
his Prelude:--
"All winter long whenever free to choose,
Did I by night Frequent the College grove
And tributary walks; the last and oft
The only one who had been lingering there
Through hours of silence, till the porter's bell,
A punctual follower on the stroke of nine,
Rang with its blunt unceremonious voice
Inexorable summons. Lofty elms,
Inviting shades of opportune recess,
Bestowed composure on a neighbourhood
Unpeaceful in itself. A single tree
With sinuous trunk, boughs exquisitely wreathed,
Grew there; an ash, which Winter for himself
Decked out with pride, and with outlandish grace;
Up from the ground and almost to the top
The trunk and every mother-branch were green
With clustering ivy, and the lightsome twigs
The outer spray profusely tipped with seeds
That hung in yellow tassels, while the air
Stirred them, not voiceless. Often have I stood
Foot-bound, uplooking at this lovely tree
Beneath a frosty moon. The hemisphere
Of magic fiction verse of mine perchance
May never tread; but scarcely Spenser's self
Could have more tranquil visions in his youth,
Or could more bright appearances create
Of human forms with superhuman powers
Than I beheld, loitering on calm clear nights
Alone, beneath the fairy-work of Earth."
[Illustration: Bridge of Sighs
S. John's College]
The new chapel of S. John's, designed by Sir Gilbert Scott in a style of
pointed architecture, repeating, with some added degree of richness, the
same architect's design of Exeter College chapel at Oxford, was begun in
1863 and finished in 1869. The scheme involved the destruction of the
old chapel and the still earlier building to the north of it. The hall
was enlarged by adding to it the space formerly occupied by the Master's
lodge, a new lodge being built to the north of the third court, and the
Master's gallery being converted into the Fellows' combination room.
The stalls from the old chapel were refixed in the new building, and
some new stalls were added. The beautiful Early English piscina, three
arches and some monuments were also removed from the old chapel.
* * * * *
Considerations of space compel me to bring this chapter to a conclusion.
I have spoken of the two Lady Margaret foundations as colleges of the
New Learning. How far they have succeeded in fulfilling the aims of
their founder only a careful study of their subsequent history can tell,
and for that we have not space. But this, at least, we may say, that a
college in which, generation after generation, there were enrolled men
of such varying parts and powers as Sir Thomas Wyatt and William
Grindall; as Sir John Cheke and Roger Ascham, the former the tutor of
Edward VI., the latter of Queen Elizabeth, and both famous as among the
most sagacious and original thinkers on the subject of education; as
Robert Greene and Thomas Nash, the dramatists; as Robert Cecil, Earl of
Salisbury, and Thomas Cartwright, "the most learned of that sect of
dissenters called Puritans"; of John Dee, mathematician and astrologer,
the editor of Euclid's "Elements," and William Lee, the inventor of the
stocking-frame; of Roger Dodsworth, the antiquary, and Thomas Sutton,
the founder of Charterhouse; as Thomas Baker, the historian of the
College, and Richard Bentley, the great scholar and critic; as Henry
Constable, and Robert Herrick and Mark Akenside and Robert Otway and
Henry Kirke White and William Wordsworth--a galaxy of names which seems
to prove that not Cambridge only, but S. John's College, is "the mother
of poets"--as William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, can hardly be
said not to have contributed much to the history of English culture and
English learning, to the extension of the older Classical studies, and
to the advance of the newer Science, to that wider and freer outlook
upon the world and upon life to which so much that is best in our modern
civilisation may be traced, and all of which took its origin from that
movement of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which we know by the
name of the Renaissance. Of the genuine attachment of Bishop Fisher, the
true founder of S. John's, to the New Learning there can be no doubt. He
showed it clearly enough by the sympathy which he evinced with the new
spirit of Biblical Criticism, and by the friendship with Erasmus, which
induced that great scholar to accept the Lady Margaret professorship at
Cambridge. That the study of Greek was allowed to go on in the
University without that active antagonism which it encountered at Oxford
was mainly owing--it is the testimony of Erasmus himself--to the
powerful protection which it received from Bishop Fisher. On the other
hand, it cannot be denied that his attachment to the papal cause, and
his hostility to Luther, whom he rightly enough regarded as a Reformer
of a very different type to that of his friends Erasmus, Colet, and
More, remained unshaken.
[Illustration: Tower & Turrets of Trinity from S. John's College]
On the occasion of the burning of Luther's writings in S. Paul's
Churchyard in 1521, he had preached against the great reformer at Paul's
Cross before Wolsey and Warham, a sermon which was subsequently handled
with severity by William Tyndall. It is, in fact, not difficult to
recognise in the various codes of statutes, which from time to time he
gave to his college foundations, evidence of both the strength and
weakness of his character. In 1516 he had given to S. John's statutes
which were identical with those of Christ's College. But in 1524 he
substituted for these another code, and in 1530 a third. In this final
code, accordingly, among many provisions, characterised by much prudent
forethought, and amid statutes which really point to something like a
revolution in academic study, we see plainly enough signs of timorous
distrust, not to say a pusillanimous anxiety against all innovations
whatever in the future. But in one cause, at any rate, he bore a noble
part, and for it he died a noble death. His opposition to the divorce of
King Henry and Queen Catharine was not less honourable than it was
consistent, and he stood alone among the Bishops of the realm in his
refusal to recognise the validity of the measure. It was, in fact, his
unflinching firmness in regard to the Act of Supremacy which finally
sealed his fate. The story of his trial and death are matters that
belong to English history. The pathos of it we can all feel as we read
the pages in which Froude has told the story in his "History," and its
moral, we may perhaps also feel, has not been unfitly pointed by Mr.
Mullinger in his "History of the University." Here are Froude's words:--
"Mercy was not to be hoped for. It does not seem to have been
sought. He was past eighty. The earth on the edge of the grave was
already crumbling under his feet; and death had little to make it
fearful. When the last morning dawned, he dressed himself
carefully--as he said, for his marriage day. The distance to Tower
Hill was short. He was able to walk; and he tottered out of the
prison gates, holding in his hand a closed volume of the New
Testament. The crowd flocked about him, and he was heard to pray
that, as this book had been his best comfort and companion, so in
that hour it might give him some special strength, and speak to him
as from his Lord. Then opening it at a venture, he read: 'This is
life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ,
whom Thou hast sent.' It was the answer to his prayer; and he
continued to repeat the words as he was led forward. On the
scaffold he chanted the _Te Deum_, and then, after a few prayers,
knelt down, and meekly laid his head upon a pillow where neither
care nor fear nor sickness would ever vex it more. Many a spectacle
of sorrow had been witnessed on that tragic spot, but never one
more sad than this; never one more painful to think or speak of.
When a nation is in the throes of revolution, wild spirits are
abroad in the storm: and poor human nature presses blindly forward
with the burden which is laid upon it, tossing aside the obstacles
in its path with a recklessness which, in calmer hours, it would
fear to contemplate."[78]
And here are Mr. Mullinger's:--
"When it was known at Cambridge that the Chancellor (Fisher) was
under arrest, it seemed as though a dark cloud had gathered over
the University; and at those colleges which had been his peculiar
care the sorrow was deeper than could find vent in language. The
men, who ever since their academic life began, had been conscious
of his watchful oversight and protection, who as they had grown up
to manhood had been honoured by his friendship, aided by his
bounty, stimulated by his example to all that was commendable and
of good report, could not see his approaching fate without bitter
and deep emotion; and rarely in the correspondence of colleges is
there to be found such an expression of pathetic grief as the
letter in which the Society of S. John's addressed their beloved
patron in his hour of trial. In the hall of that ancient foundation
his portrait still looks down upon those who, generation after
generation, enter to reap where he sowed. Delineated with all the
severe fidelity of the art of that period, we may discern the
asceticism of the ecclesiastic blending with the natural kindliness
of the man, the wide sympathies with the stern convictions. Within
those walls have since been wont to assemble not a few who have
risen to eminence and renown. But the College of St. John the
Evangelist can point to none in the long array to whom her debt of
gratitude is greater, who have laboured more untiredly or more
disinterestedly in the cause of learning, or who by a holy life and
heroic death are more worthy to survive in the memories of her
sons."[79]