A SMALL AND A GREAT COLLEGE
"Quæ ponti vicina vides, Audelius olim
Coepit et adversi posuit fundamina muri:
Et coeptum perfecit opus Staffordius heros
Quem genuit maribus regio celeberrima damis.
* * * * *
Quattuor inde novis quæ turribus alta minantur
Et nivea immenso diffundunt atria circo,
Ordine postremus, sed non virtutibus, auxit
Henricus tecta, et triplices cum jungeret sedes,
Imposuit nomen facto."
--GILES FLETCHER, 1633.
Dissolution of the Monasteries--Schemes for Collegiate Spoliation
checked by Henry VIII.--Monks' or Buckingham College--Refounded by
Sir Thomas Audley as Magdalene College--Conversion of the Old
Buildings--The Pepysian Library--Foundation of Trinity
College--Michaelhouse and the King's Hall--King Edward's Gate--The
Queen's Gate--The Great Gate--Dr. Thomas Neville--The Great
Court--The Hall--Neville's Court--New Court--Dr. Bentley--"A House
of all Kinds of Good Letters."
The dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. and the confiscation
of their great estates naturally created a sense of foreboding in the
universities that it would not be long before the College estates shared
the same fate. There were not wanting, we may be sure, greedy courtiers
prepared with schemes of collegiate spoliation. If we may trust,
however, the testimony of Harrison in his "Description of England,"[80]
the hopes of the despoiler were effectually checked by the King
himself. "Ah, sirha," he is reported to have said to some who had
ventured to make proposals for such despoilment, "I perceive the abbey
lands have fleshed you, and set your teeth on edge to ask also those
colleges. And whereas we had a regard only to pull down sin by defacing
the monasteries, you have a desire also to overthrow all goodness by a
dispersion of colleges. I tell you, sirs, that I judge no land in
England better bestowed than that which is given to our universities;
for by their maintenance our realm shall be well governed when we be
dead and rotten." These are brave words, and we may hope that they were
sincere. They may seem, perhaps, to receive some confirmation of
sincerity from the fact that that munificent donor of other people's
property did himself erect upon the ruins of more than one earlier
foundation that great college, whose predominance in the University has
from that time onwards been so marked a feature of Cambridge life. It is
the opinion of Huber,[81] that the uncertainty and depression caused in
the universities by these fears of confiscation did not subside until
well on in the reign of Elizabeth.
* * * * *
In the year 1542, however, four years before the foundation of Trinity
College by Henry VIII., the spoliation of the monasteries was turned to
the advantage of the University in a somewhat remarkable manner. On the
further side of the river Cam, "cut off," as Fuller describes it, "from
the continent of Cambridge," there stood an ancient religious house
known at this time as Buckingham College.
"Formerly it was a place where many monks lived, on the charge of
their respective convent, being very fit for solitary persons by
the situation thereof. For it stood on the transcantine side, an
anchoret in itself, severed by the river from the rest of the
University. Here the monks some seven years since had once and
again lodged and feasted Edward Stafford, the last Duke of
Buckingham of that family. Great men best may, good men always
will, be grateful guests to such as entertain them. Both
qualifications met in this Duke and then no wonder if he largely
requited his welcome. He changed the name of the house into
Buckingham College, began to build, and purposed to endow the same,
no doubt in some proportion to his own high and rich estate."[82]
The foundation of this Monks' College had dated as far back as the year
1428, when the Benedictines of Croyland erected a building for the
accommodation of those monks belonging to their house who wished to
repair to Cambridge, "to study the Canon Law and the Holy Scriptures,"
and yet to reside under their own monastic rule. From time to time other
Benedictines of the neighbourhood--Ely, Ramsey, Walden--added additional
chambers to the hostel--Croyland Abbey, however, remaining the superior
house.
[Illustration: The Library, Chapel and Hall, Magdalene College]
A hall was built in connection with the College in 1519 by Edward, Duke
of Buckingham, son of the former benefactor, and it is probably to this
date that we may refer the secular or semi-secular foundation of the
College. Certainly at this period the secular element of the College
must have been considerable, for we find Cranmer, on his resignation of
his Fellowship at Jesus on account of his marriage, supporting himself
by giving lectures at Buckingham College. Sir Robert Rede, the founder
of the Rede Lectureship in the University, and Thomas Audley, the future
Lord Chancellor, are also said to have received their education in this
College. At any rate there can be little doubt that it was this
semi-secular character of the College at this period which saved it from
the operations of the successive acts for the dissolution of the
monastic bodies. In the year 1542 Buckingham College was converted by
Sir Thomas Audley into Magdalene College. "Thomas, Lord Audley of
Walden," says Fuller, "Chancellor of England, by licence obtained from
King Henry VIII., changed Buckingham into Magdalene (vulgarly Maudlin)
College, because, as some[83] will have it, his surname is therein
contained betwixt the initial and final letters thereof--_M'audley'n_.
This may well be indulged to his fancy, whilst more solid considerations
moved him to the work itself." What those "more solid considerations"
may have been it is difficult, in relation to such a founder, to divine.
He was a man who had gradually amassed considerable wealth by a singular
combination of talent, audacity, and craft, one who, in the language of
Lloyd in his "State Worthies," was "well seen in the flexures and
windings of affairs at the depths whereof other heads not so steady
turned giddy." He was Speaker of the House of Commons in that
Parliament by whose aid Henry VIII. had finally separated himself and
his kingdom from all allegiance to the See of Rome, and of whose further
measures for ecclesiastical reform at home Bishop Fisher had exclaimed
in the House of Lords: "My lords, you see daily what bills come hither
from the Common House, and all is to the destruction of the Church. For
God's sake, see what a realm the kingdom of Bohemia was, and when the
Church went down, then fell the glory of the kingdom. Now with the
Commons is nothing but 'Down with the Church!' and all this meseemeth is
for lack of faith only." Sir Thomas Audley had been one of the first to
profit by the plunder of the monasteries. "He had had," as Fuller terms
it, "the first cut in the feast of abbey lands." He was also one of
those who shared in its final distribution. As a reward for his services
as Lord Chancellor--and what those services must have been as "the
keeper of the conscience" of such a king as Henry VIII. we need not
trouble to inquire--a few more of the suppressed monasteries were
granted to him at the general dissolution, among which, at his own
earnest suit, was the Abbey of Walden in Essex. Walden was one of the
Benedictine houses that had been associated in the early days with
Monks', now Buckingham College. Whether the newly-created Lord of Walden
regarded himself as inheriting also the Monks' rights and
responsibilities in connection with the Cambridge college or not, or
whether, being an old man now and infirm and with no male heir, he
thought to find some solace for his conscience in the thought of himself
as the benefactor and founder of a permanent college, I cannot say.
Certain, however, it is that the original statutes of Magdalene College,
unlike those of Christ's and John's, exhibit no regard for the New
Learning, and are indeed mainly noteworthy for the large powers and
discretion which they assign to the Master, and the almost entire
freedom of that official from any responsibility to the governing body
of Fellows. It was evidently the founder's design to place the College
practically under the control of the successive owners of Audley End.
In 1564 the young Duke of Norfolk, who had married Lord Audley's
daughter and sole heir, and who was, moreover, descended from the early
benefactor of the College, the Duke of Buckingham, contributed liberally
towards both the revenues of Magdalene and its buildings. On the
occasion of Queen Elizabeth's visit to Cambridge, it is recorded that
"the Duke of Norfolk accompanied Her Majesty out of the town, and, then
returning, entered Magdalene College, and gave much money to the same;
promising £40 by year till they had builded the quadrant of the
College."[84] From this statement it is plain that the quadrangle of
Magdalene was not complete so late as 1654. The chapel and old library
which form the west side of this court, and also the frontage to the
street, had been built in 1475. The roof of the present chapel,
uncovered in 1847, shows that Buckingham College had a chapel on the
same site. The doorway in the north-west corner of the court retained a
carving of the three keys, the arms of the prior and convent of Ely, so
late as 1777, and thus probably indicated the chambers which were added
to Monks' College for the accommodation of the Ely Convent scholars. The
similar rooms assigned to the scholar-monks of Walden and Ramsey appear
to have been in the range of buildings forming the south side of the
College, parallel with the river, originally built in 1465, but
reconstructed in 1585. The new gateway in the street-front belongs also
to this late date. The chapel was thoroughly "Italianised" in 1733, and
again restored and enlarged in 1851.
The extremely beautiful building now known as the Pepysian Library,
beyond the old quadrangle to the east, which belongs to Restoration
times, although its exact date and the name of its architect are not
known, is the chief glory of Magdalene. It was probably approaching
completion in 1703, when Samuel Pepys, the diarist, who had been a sizar
of the College in 1650, and had lately contributed towards the cost of
the building, bequeathed his library to the College, and directed that
it should be housed in the new building. There, accordingly, it is now
deposited, and the inscription, "BIBLIOTHECA PEPYSIANA, 1724," with his
arms and motto, "_Mens cujusque is est quisque_," is carved in the
pediment of the central window. The collection of books is a specially
interesting one, invaluable to the historian or antiquary. Most of the
books are in the bindings of the time, and are still in the
mahogany-glazed bookcases in which they were placed by Pepys himself in
1666, and of which he speaks in his Diary under date August 24 of
that year:--
[Illustration: Tower & Gateway to Trinity College.
_To face p. 252_]
"Up and dispatched several businesses at home in the morning, and
then comes Simpson to set up my other new presses for my books; and
so he and I fell to the furnishing of my new closett, and taking
out the things out of my old; and I kept him with me all day, and
he dined with me, and so all the afternoone, till it was quite
darke hanging things--that is my maps and pictures and
draughts--and setting up my books, and as much as we could do, to
my most extraordinary satisfaction; so that I think it will be as
noble a closett as any man hath, and light enough--though, indeed,
it would be better to have had a little more light."
Of the many Magdalene men of eminence, from the days of Sir Robert Rede
and Archbishop Cranmer down to those of Charles Parnell and Charles
Kingsley, there is no need to speak in any other words than those of
Fuller: "Every year this house produced some eminent scholars, as living
cheaper and privater, freer from town temptations by their remote
situation."
* * * * *
No Cambridge foundation, probably no academic institution in Europe,
furnishes so striking an example as does Trinity College of the change
from the mediæval to the modern conception of education and of learning.
If, indeed, we may take the words of the Preamble to his Charter of
Foundation, dated the thirty-eighth year of his reign (1546) as a
statement of his own personal aims, King Henry had conceived a very
noble ideal of liberal education. After referring to his special reasons
for thankfulness to Almighty God for peace at home and successful wars
abroad--peace had just been declared with France after the brief
campaign conducted by Henry himself, which had been signalised by the
capture of Boulogne--and above all for the introduction of the pure
truth of Christianity into his kingdom, he sets forth his intention of
founding a college "to the glory and honour of Almighty God, and the
Holy and undivided Trinity, for the amplification and establishment of
the Christian and true religion, the extirpation of heresy and false
opinion, the increase and continuance of divine learning and all kinds
of good letters, the knowledge of the tongues, the education of the
youth in piety, virtue, learning, and science, the relief of the poor
and destitute, the prosperity of the Church of Christ, and the common
good and happiness of his kingdom and subjects."[85]
[Illustration: Gateway & Dial, Trinity College]
The site upon which King Henry VIII. had decided to place his college is
also mentioned in this preamble to the Charter of Foundation. It was to
be "on the soil, ground, sites, and precincts of the late hall and
college, commonly called the King's Hall, and of a certain late college
of S. Michael, commonly called Michaelhouse, and also of a certain house
and hostel called Fyswicke or Fysecke hostel and of another house and
hostel, commonly called Hovinge Inn." In addition to the hostels here
named there were, however, several others which occupied, or had
occupied, the site previous to 1548--for one or two previous to this
time had been absorbed by their neighbours--whose names have been
preserved, and whose position has been put beyond doubt by recent
researches. These other hostels were S. Catharine's, S. Margaret's,
Crouched Hostel, Tyler or Tyler's, S. Gregory's, Garet or Saint Gerard's
Hostel, and Oving's Inn.
* * * * *
We may indicate roughly, perhaps, the position of these various halls
and hostels in relation to the present college buildings, if we imagine
ourselves to have entered the great gate of Trinity from the High
Street, from Trinity Street, and to be standing on the steps leading
into the Great Court, and facing across towards the Master's lodge.
Immediately in front of us, on what is now the vacant green sward
between the gateway steps and the sun-dial, there stood in the fifteenth
century King's Hall, or that block of it which a century earlier had
been built to take the place of the thatched and timbered house which
Edward III. had bought from Robert de Croyland, and had made into his
"King's Hall of Scholars." The entrance to this house, however, was not
on the side which would have been immediately facing the point where we
stand on the steps. It was entered by a doorway on its south side,
opening into a lane--King's Childers' Lane it was called--which,
starting from the High Street, from a point slightly to the south of the
Great Gate, crossed the Great Court directly east and west, and then
bending slightly to the north, reached the river at Dame Nichol's Hythe,
at a point just beyond the bend in the river by the end of the present
library. Returning to our point of view we should find on our right,
occupying the easternmost part of the existing chapel, the old chapel of
King's Hall, built in 1465, and beyond it, westwards, other
buildings,--the buttery, the kitchen, the hall,--forming four sides of a
little cloistered court, partly occupying the site of the present
ante-chapel, and partly on its northern side facing across the Cornhithe
Lane to the gardens of the old Hospital of S. John.
Turning to our left to the southern half of the great court, to that
part which in the old days was south of King's Childers' Lane, south,
that is, of the present fountain, we should find the site intersected by
a lane running directly north and south, from a point at the south-west
corner of the King's Hall about where the sun-dial now stands, to a
point in Trinity Lane, or S. Michael's Lane as it was then called, where
now stands the Queen's Gate. This was Le Foule Lane, and was practically
a continuation of that Milne Street of which we have spoken in an
earlier chapter as running parallel with the river past the front of
Trinity Hall, Clare, and Queens' to the King's Mills. To the east of
Foule Lane, occupying the site of the present range of buildings on the
east and south-east of the great court, stood the Hostel of S.
Catharine, with Fyswicke Hostel on its western side. Michaelhouse
occupied practically the whole of the south-western quarter of the great
court, with its gardens stretching down to the river. S. Catharine's,
Fyswicke Hostel, and Michaelhouse all had entrances into S. Michael's or
Flaxhithe, now Trinity Lane. Beyond and across Flaxhithe Lane was
Oving's Inn, on the site of the present Bishop's Hostel, with Garett
Hostel still further south, on land adjoining Trinity Hall. S. Gregory's
and the Crouched Hostel stood north of Michaelhouse, side by side, on a
space now occupied for the most part by the great dining-hall. The Tyled
or Tyler's Hostel was on the High Street adjoining the north-east corner
of S. Catharine's. S. Margaret's Hall, which had adjoined the house of
William Fyswicke, had been at an early date absorbed in the Fyswicke
Hostel.
It is plain that these various halls and hostels would sufficiently
supply all the early needs of King Henry's new college. There was the
chapel of King's Hall, the halls of King's Hall, Michaelhouse and
Fyswicke's Hostel, and the chambers in each of these and the smaller
hostels. During the first three years or so, from 1546 to 1549, the
existing buildings seem to have been occupied without alteration. In
1550 and 1551 parts of Michaelhouse and Fyswicke's Hostel were pulled
down, and their gates walled up. The Foule Lane, which separated them,
was closed, and the new Queen's gate built at the point where that lane
had joined Michael's Lane. The south ranges of both Fyswicke's Hostel
and Michaelhouse on each side of this gate were retained. The hall,
butteries, and kitchen of Michael House on the west were also retained,
and continued northwards to form a lodge for the Master, and this range
was returned easterwards at right angles to join the King Edward's
gateway at the south-west corner of King's Hall. A little later the
hall, butteries, and chapel of King's Hall were removed to make way for
the new chapel, which was begun in 1555 and completed about ten years
later.
An early map of Cambridge, made by order of Archbishop Parker in 1574,
and preserved in one of the early copies of Caius' "History of the
University" in the British Museum, shows the College in the state which
we have thus described, the outline of the Great Court, that is to say,
practically defined as it is to-day, but broken at two points, one by
the projection from its western side joining the Master's lodge with the
old gateway of King Edward, still standing in its ancient position, more
or less on the site of the present sun-dial; the other by a set of
chambers, built in 1490, projecting from the eastern range of buildings,
and ending at a point somewhat east of the site of the present fountain.
The transformation of the Great Court into the shape in which we now
know it is due entirely to the energy and skill of Dr. Thomas Neville,
at that time Dean of Peterborough, who was appointed Master of Trinity
in 1573. "Dr. Thomas Neville," says Fuller, "the eighth master of this
College, answering his anagram '_most heavenly_,' and practising his own
allusive motto, '_ne vile velis_,' being by the rules of the philosopher
himself to be accounted [Greek: megaloprepês], as of great performances,
for the general good, expended £3000 of his own in altering and
enlarging the old and adding a new court thereunto, being at this day
the stateliest and most uniform college in Christendom, out of which may
be carved three Dutch universities."[86]
[Illustration: The Fountain Trinity College.]
Neville's first work was the completion of the ranges of chambers on the
east and south sides of the great court, including the Queen's gateway
tower. On the completion of these in 1599 the projecting range of
buildings on the east side were pulled down. In 1601 he pulled down the
corresponding projection on the western side, removing the venerable
pile known as King Edward the Third's Gate. This was rebuilt at the west
end of the chapel as we now see it. The Master's lodge was prolonged
northwards, and a library with chambers below it was built eastwards to
meet the old gate. The great quadrangle was thus complete, the largest
in either university,[87] having an area of over 90,000 square feet. To
Dr. Neville also in the Great Court is owing the additional storey to
the Great Gate, with the statue of Henry VIII. in a niche on its eastern
front, and the statue of King James, his Queen, and Prince Charles on
its western side, the beautiful fountain erected in 1602, and the hall
in 1604. The building of this hall, which with certain variations is
copied from the hall of the Middle Temple, is thus described in the
"Memoriale" of the College.
"When he had completed the great quadrangle and brought it to a
tasteful and decorous aspect, for fear that the deformity of the
Hall, which through extreme old age had become almost ruinous,
should cast, as it were, a shadow over its splendour, he advanced
£3000 for seven years out of his own purse, in order that a great
hall might be erected answerable to the beauty of the new
buildings. Lastly, as in the erection of these buildings he had
been promoter rather than author, and had brought these results to
pass more by labour and assiduity than by expenditure of his own
money, he erected at a vast cost, the whole of which was defrayed
by himself, a building in the second court adorned with beautiful
columns, and elaborated with the most exquisite workmanship, so
that he might connect his own name for ever with the extension of
the College."
Unfortunately, much of the original beauty of Neville's Court was spoilt
by the alterations of Mr. Essex in 1755, "a local architect whose life,"
as Mr. J. G. Clark has truly said, "was spent in destroying that which
ought to have been preserved."
The building of the library which forms the western side of Neville's
Court was due mainly to the energy of Dr. Isaac Barrow, who was master
from 1673 to 1677. The architect was Sir Christopher Wren, who himself
thus describes his scheme:--
"I haue given the appearance of arches as the order required, fair
and lofty; but I haue layd the floor of the Library upon the
impostes, which answer to the pillars in the cloister and levells
of the old floores, and haue filled the arches with relieus stone,
of which I haue seen the effect abroad in good building, and I
assure you where porches are low with flat ceelings is infinitely
more gracefull than lowe arches would be, and is much more open and
pleasant, nor need the mason feare the performance because the arch
discharges the weight, and I shall direct him in a firme manner of
executing the designe. By this contrivance the windowes of the
Library rise high and give place for the deskes against the
walls.... The disposition of the shelves both along the walls and
breaking out from the walls must needes proue very convenient and
gracefull, and the best way for the students will be to haue a
little square table in each celle with 2 chaires."
[Illustration: Neville's Court Trinity College]
The table and the chairs, as well as the book-shelves, were designed by
Wren, who was also at pains to give full-sized sections of all the
mouldings, because "we are scrupulous in small matters, and you must
pardon us. Architects are as great pedants as criticks or heralds."
In 1669 Bishop's Hostel--so called after Bishop Hacket of Lichfield, who
gave £1200 towards the cost--took the place of the two minor halls,
Oving's Inn and Garett Hostel. No further addition to the College
buildings was made until the nineteenth century, when the new court was
built from the designs of Wilkins in the mastership of Dr. Christopher
Wordsworth, and at a later time the two courts opposite the Great Gate
across Trinity Street, by the benefaction of a sum approaching £100,000,
by Dr. Whewell. To Dr. Whewell also belongs the merit of the restoration
of the front of the Master's lodge, by the removal of the classical
façade which had been so foolishly and tastelessly imposed upon the old
work built by Dr. Bentley during his memorable tenure of the mastership
from 1700 to 1742.
The mention of the name of that most masterful of Yorkshiremen and most
brilliant of Cambridge scholars and critics inevitably suggests the
picture of that long feud between the Fellows of Trinity and their
Master which lasted for nearly half a century, for a year at any rate
longer than the Peloponnesian war, and was almost as full of exciting
incidents. Those who care to read the miserable and yet amusing story
can do so for themselves in the pages of Bishop Monk's "Life of Richard
Bentley." It is more to the purpose here, I think, to recall the kindly
and judicious verdict of the great scholar's life at Trinity by the
greatest Cambridge scholar of to-day.
"It must never be forgotten," writes Sir Richard Jebb, "that Bentley's
mastership of Trinity is memorable for other things than its troubles.
He was the first Master who established a proper competition for the
great prizes of that illustrious college. The scholarships and
fellowships had previously been given by a purely oral examination.
Bentley introduced written papers; he also made the award of
scholarships to be annual instead of biennial, and admitted students of
the first year to compete for them. He made Trinity College the earliest
home for a Newtonian school, by providing in it an observatory, under
the direction of Newton's disciple and friend--destined to an early
death--Roger Cotes. He fitted up a chemical laboratory in Trinity for
Vigani of Verona, the professor of chemistry. He brought to Trinity the
eminent orientalist, Sike of Bremen, afterwards professor of Hebrew.
True to the spirit of the royal founder, Bentley wished Trinity College
to be indeed a house 'of all kinds of good letters,' and at a time when
England's academic ideals were far from high he did much to render it
not only a great college, but also a miniature university."[88]
And "a house of all kinds of good letters" Trinity has remained, and
will surely always remain. As we walk lingeringly through its halls and
courts what thronging historic memories crowd upon us! We may not forget
the failures as well as the successes; the defeats as well as the
triumphs; "the lost causes and impossible loyalties" as well as the
persistent faith and the grand achievement; but what an inspiration we
feel must such a place be to the young souls who, year by year, enter
its gates. How can the flame of ideal sympathy with the great
personalities of their country's history fail to be kindled or kept
alive in such a place? Here by the Great Gate, on the first floor to the
north, are the rooms where Isaac Newton lived. It was to these rooms
that in 1666 he brought back the glass prism which he had bought in the
Stourbridge Fair, and commenced the studies which eventually made it
possible for Pope to write the epitaph:--
"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said 'Let Newton be!' and all was light."
It was in these rooms that he had entertained his friends, John Locke,
Richard Bentley, Isaac Barrow, Edmund Halley, Gilbert Burnett, who
afterwards wrote of him, "the whitest soul I ever knew." It was here
that he wrote his "Principia." It is in the ante-chapel close by that
there stands that beautiful statue of him by Roubiliac, which Chantrey
called "the noblest of our English statues," and of which Wordsworth has
recorded how he used to lie awake at night to think of that "silent
face" shining in the moonlight:--
"The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone."
And in the chapel beyond, with its double range of "windows richly
dight" with the figures of saints and worthies and benefactors of the
College--Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Edward Coke, Sir Harry Spelman, Lord
Craven, Roger Cotes, Archbishop Whitgift, Bishop Pearson, Bishop Barrow,
Bishop Hacket, the poets Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Cowley
and Dryden--is it possible for the youthful worshipper not sometimes to
be aroused and uplifted above the thoughts of sordid vulgarity, of moral
isolation, of mean ambition, to "see visions and dream dreams," visions
of coming greatness for city, or country, or empire, visions of great
principles struggling in mean days of competitive scrambling, dreams of
opportunity of some future service for the common good, which shall not
be unworthy of his present heritage in these saints and heroes of the
past, who may--
"Live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues."