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CAMBRIDGE
AGENTS
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[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS, ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE
This Bridge joins the Third Court with the Fourth or New Court. The
building on the right, seen through the bridge, is the Library, and
dates back to 1624.]
CAMBRIDGE
BY
M. A. R. TUKER
AUTHOR OF PARTS II. AND III. AND JOINT-AUTHOR OF PARTS I. AND IV. OF THE
HANDBOOK TO CHRISTIAN AND ECCLESIASTICAL ROME, AND
JOINT-AUTHOR OF ‘ROME’ IN THIS SERIES
PAINTED BY
WILLIAM MATTHISON
[Illustration]
LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1907
_Published May 1907_
Preface
“Of making many books there is no end.” When I set about writing this
book I was ready to believe that the University had not its fair share
of the literary output. Cambridge indeed does not appear to suggest,
does not lend itself to, the numberless little brochures or hymns of
praise which accompany the honoured years of the sister university; in
weighty tomes and valuable _collectanea_ of MSS., however, it possesses
works (such as Cooper’s Annals, the Cole and Baker MSS., and Willis and
Clark’s Architectural History) not possessed by Oxford and unrivalled,
perhaps, by any English town.
In the middle of last century the invaluable Fuller was the most readily
accessible authority, but the last thirty years have seen the
publication of the monumental work of Messieurs Willis and Clark, and of
the History of the University by Mr. J. Bass Mullinger, while at the
same time the slighter literature of the subject has not been
neglected.
Nevertheless there is room, I hope, for a short book on the present
lines.
It is, I believe, the first time that a chapter on the women’s colleges
has anywhere appeared, and certainly the first time that such a chapter
forms part of an account of the University. I have taken pains to
authenticate the description here given, for events which occurred
thirty--even twenty--years back are now fading out of remembrance and
some of those who took part in them are no longer with us.
A first and last chapter on the origin of universities and on the sister
universities have been omitted for the purposes of this volume.
The pleasantest part of my task still remains to be performed--to thank
all those, both in and out of Cambridge, who have kindly afforded me
facilities, have obtained information on innumerable points, or
lightened my labours by lending books. In addition to this welcome
assistance my thanks are specially due to Mr. J. Willis Clark, late
fellow of Trinity, and Registrary of the University, for sparing time to
read the proof sheets of Chapters I. and II.--for sparing time and not
sparing trouble; to the Master of Peterhouse and to Dr. A. W. Verrall
(fellow and late tutor of Trinity) for reading the proof sheets of
portions of Chapter II. and portions of Chapter III.; to Mr. C. W. Moule
fellow and librarian of Corpus Christi, Mr. Ellis H. Minns
assistant-librarian, and late fellow, of Pembroke, to Miss M. G.
Kennedy, and to the Mistress of Girton; to the Assistant Keeper of MSS.
at the British Museum, and the Librarian at Lambeth; to Lord Francis
Hervey and Sir Ernest Clarke who kindly supplied some annotated
references to the school at Bury from the Curteys Register, and last but
not least to the Rev. H. F. Stewart (chaplain of Trinity) and Mrs.
Stewart, the former of whom has been good enough to read portions of the
proof sheets of Chapter IV.
For any opinions expressed I am, of course, alone responsible.
M. A. R. T.
_February 1907._
Contents
CHAPTER I
THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
The northern schools--legends--the town--the river--the fen
monasteries--the school of glomery--the religious orders--the
jurisdiction of Ely--the clerk and the religious.
School and university--Stourbridge fair--the university in the xiii
century--foundation of endowed scholars--hostels.....1-51
CHAPTER II
THE COLLEGES
The university and the colleges--the collegiate system--eras
of college building--Peterhouse--Michaelhouse--_collegium_
and _aula_--Clare--college statutes--architectural scheme of
a college--Pembroke--founders of colleges--Gonville--Trinity
Hall--Corpus Christi--Cambridge in 1353--Chaucer at Cambridge--the
schools, library, the university printers and the Pitt Press,
the senate house--King’s--King’s College chapel--Cambridge
college chapels--Queens’--English sovereigns at Cambridge--S.
Catherine’s--Jesus--Christ’s--Lady Margaret and Bishop Fisher--S.
John’s--Magdalene--King’s Hall and Trinity College--college
libraries--gateways--Caius--monks in Cambridge--Emmanuel--Sidney
Sussex--Downing--public hostels--nationality of founders and general
scope of their foundations--university and college revenues.....52-156
CHAPTER III
THE UNIVERSITY AS A DEGREE-GIVING BODY
Meaning of a degree--the kinds of degrees--the bachelor--the
ancient exercises of the schools called acts, opponencies, and
responsions--the sophister--questionist--determiner--master--regent
master--the degree of _M.A._--introduction of written
examinations--the tripos.
The subjects of study and examination: the _trivium_ and
_quadrivium_--grammar--Aristotle’s logic--rhetoric--the three
learned faculties--the doctorate--development in university
studies--the development of the mathematical tripos--the senior
wrangler--the classical tripos--Greek at Cambridge--the moral sciences
tripos--philosophy at Cambridge--the natural sciences tripos--science
at Cambridge--the language triposes--lists of the triposes--changing
value of the examination tests--the double tripos--present conditions
for the _B.A._ degree--modern changes in the examinations--standard of
the ordinary and honour degree, examples.
Method of tuition at Cambridge--the lecture--the class--the weekly
paper--the professorial chairs--readerships--lectureships--Lambeth
degrees--degrees by royal mandate--honorary degrees--the “modern
subjects”--and the idea of a university.....157-201
CHAPTER IV
COLLEGIATE AND SOCIAL LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY
University and college officers:--chancellor and
vice-chancellor--the senate--graces--proctors--bedells--the
master of a college--the vice-master or president--the
fellows--unmarried and married fellows--the combination room--dons’
clubs--‘Hobson’s choice’--the dons of last century--classes
of students:--scholar--pensioner--fellow-commoner--sizar--age
of scholars--privileges of peers--position of the
sizar--college quarters and expenses--‘non-colls’--early
discipline--jurisdiction of the university in the town--present
discipline:--the proctors--fines--‘halls’--‘chapels’--town
lodgings--expulsion--rustication--‘gates’--the tutor--academical
dress--cap and gown--the undergraduates’ day--the
gyp--the college kitchen--‘hall’--‘wines’--teas--the
May term--idleness--rioting--modern studies and tripos
entries--athletics--the Union Society--Sunday at Cambridge--scarlet
days--academic terms and the long vacation--multiplication of
scholarships--class from which the academic population has been
drawn and careers of university men:--the Church--the rise of an
opulent middle class--the aristocratic era--English conception of
the benefits of a university--examples of the classes from which the
men have come--recruiting grounds of the university--popularity of
colleges--numbers in the colleges--religion at Cambridge--Cambridge
politics--university settlement at Camberwell--married dons and future
changes.....202-249
CHAPTER V
UNIVERSITY MEN AND NATIONAL MOVEMENTS
Men who owe nothing to a university--40 great Englishmen--Cambridge
men: the scientists, the poets, the dramatists, other literary
men, the philosophers, the churchmen, lawyers, and physicians, the
statesmen.
National movements: King John and the barons--the peasants’
revolt--York and Lancaster--the new world--Charles and the
Parliament--James II. and the University--the Declaration of
Indulgence--the Nonjurors--William and Mary and Cambridge
whiggery--Jacobitism and Toryism at Cambridge in the reign of
Anne--George I. and Cambridge--modern political movements.
Religious movements: Lollards, the early reformers, the question
of the divorce, Lutheranism at Cambridge, later reformers and the
Reformation, the English bible, and service books, the Cambridge
martyrs, the Puritans, the Presbyterians, the Independents, the
Latitudinarians, the Deists, the evangelical movement, the Tractarian
movement, anti-calvinism.
Intellectual movements: the New Learning and the age of Elizabeth--the
Royal Society--the Cambridge Platonists--modern science.
Connexion of Cambridge founders and eminent men with the
university--early Cambridge names--a group of great names in the
xiii and xiv centuries--Cambridge men in the historical plays of
Shakespeare--genealogical tables of founders--Cantabrigians from
the xv century to the present day--Cambridge men who have taken no
degree.....250-309
CHAPTER VI
GIRTON AND NEWNHAM
Etheldreda of Ely and Hild of Whitby connect the school of York
with the monastery of Ely--English women and education--the four
“noble and devoute countesses” and two queens at Cambridge--the
rise of the movement for university education--two separate
movements--Girton--Newnham--rise of the university lecture
movement--Anne Clough--the Newnham Halls and Newnham College--the
first triposes--the “Graces” of 1881--social life at the
women’s colleges--character and choice of work among women--the
degree--status of women’s colleges at Cambridge and Oxford--and status
elsewhere.....310-360
List of Illustrations
1. The Bridge of Sighs, S. John’s College _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
2. Norman Church of the Holy Sepulchre 4
3. Market Square 10
4. The Old Gateway of King’s College 16
5. S. John’s College Gateway and Tower from Trinity
Street 24
6. Oriel Window of the Hall, Trinity Great Court 34
7. The Old Castle Inn 50
8. Peterhouse from the Street 56
9. Peterhouse--The First Court 58
10. Peterhouse from the Fellows’ Garden 62
11. Clare College and Bridge from the Cam--Autumn
Evening 64
12. Clare College and Bridge from the Avenue 66
13. The Hall of Clare College 68
14. The Old Court, Pembroke College 72
15. A Court and Cloisters in Pembroke College 74
16. Trinity Hall 78
17. S. Botolph’s Church and Corpus College from the
Steps of the Pitt Press, Trumpington Street 80
18. The Old Court, Corpus Christi College 82
19. S. Benedict’s Church from Free School Lane 84
20. King’s College Gateway and Chapel--Twilight Effect 90
21. Gateway of King’s College, King’s Parade 98
22. King’s College Chapel and the Entrance Court, from
the Fellows’ Buildings 100
23. King’s College Chapel and the Fellows’ Buildings 102
24. King’s College Chapel Interior from the Choir 104
25. The Hall of King’s College 106
26. Entrance Gateway, Queens’ College 108
27. An Old Court in Queens’ College 110
28. Queens’ College from the River Front 112
29. Gateway of S. Catherine’s College 114
30. Gateway of Jesus College 116
31. The Gateway of Christ’s College from S. Andrew’s
Street 118
32. The Fellows’ Building in Christ’s College 120
33. Milton’s Mulberry Tree in the Fellows’ Garden, Christ’s
College 122
34. The Gateway and Tower of S. John’s College 124
35. Entrance to S. John’s College Chapel from the First
Court 126
36. The Second Court of S. John’s College 128
37. The Combination Room, S. John’s College 130
38. The Library Window, S. John’s College, from the
Bridge of Sighs 132
39. Old Gateway and Bridge 134
40. Pepys’ Library, Magdalene College 136
41. The Gateway of Trinity College 138
42. The Great Court, Trinity College 140
43. The Hall of Trinity College from Nevile’s Court 142
44. Nevile’s Gate, Trinity College 144
45. Trinity College Bridge and Avenue, with Gate leading
into the New Court 146
46. Caius College and the Senate House from S. Mary’s
Passage 148
47. The Gate of Virtue, Gonville and Caius College 150
48. The Gate of Honour, Caius College 152
49. The First Court of Emmanuel College 154
50. The Old Court in Emmanuel College 156
51. The Lake and New Buildings, Emmanuel College 158
52. The Cloister Court, Sidney Sussex College 160
53. Downing College from the Entrance in Regent Street 162
54. Trumpington Street from Peterhouse 172
55. Peashill 180
56. Old Houses near S. Edward’s Church and S. Edward’s
Passage 184
57. Market Street and Holy Trinity Church 192
58. Great S. Mary’s, from Trinity Street 196
59. The Lake in Botanic Gardens 210
60. Parker’s Piece 216
61. Trinity Bridge, King’s College Chapel in the Distance 224
62. The Tower of S. John’s College Chapel from the
River 238
63. University Boat-houses on the Cam--Sunset 244
64. Ditton Corner, on the Cam 248
65. The Fitzwilliam Museum--Evening 256
66. University Church of Great S. Mary 270
67. Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Trumpington Street 290
68. The Great Bridge--Bridge Street 312
69. View of Cambridge from the Castle Hill 316
70. Girton College--Evening 320
71. The Boathouse on Robinson Crusoe’s Island 324
72. Queens’ Lane--the Site of the old Mill Street 326
73. Merton Hall 328
74. Newnham College, Gateway 338
75. The Granary on the Cam 342
76. Grantchester Mill 346
77. Madingley Windmill 352
_Map at end of Volume._
A Bibliography
ACKERMANN.---- History of the University of Cambridge. 2 vols.
1815.
ANSTEY, H.---- Munimenta Academica. Rolls Series.
London 1868.
ATKINSON, THOMAS DINHAM.---- Cambridge Described & Illustrated, with an
introduction by John Willis Clark, _M.A._
1897.
BAKER MSS.
42 vols. collected & compiled by Thomas Baker fellow of S. John’s
College, 19 of which are preserved at the University, the others at
the Brit. Mus.
BAKER--MAYOR.---- History of the College of S. John the Evangelist.
Cambridge 1869.
The Baker MSS. (Harl. MS. 1039) relating to S. John’s edited by J.
E. B. Mayor.
BALL, W. W. ROUSE.---- Trinity College, Cambridge.
London 1906.
In the College Monograph series.
BARNWELL CHARTULARY.---- Brit. Mus. Harl. MSS. No. 3601.
BENTHAM, JAMES.---- History & Antiquities of Ely.
Norwich 1812.
BENTHAM, JAMES.---- STEVENSON.---- A supplement to the 2nd ed. of Mr.
Bentham’s History & Antiquities of Ely.
Norwich 1817.
CAIUS, JOHN.---- De Antiquitate Cantebrigiensis Academiae.
Londini, in aedibus Johannis Day 1574.
CAMBRIDGE ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY’S PUBLICATIONS.
CAMBRIDGE PORTFOLIO.---- Edited by Rev. J. J. Smith, fellow & tutor of
Gonville & Caius.
1840.
CARTER, EDMUND.---- History of the University of Cambridge to 1753. 2
vols.
London 1753.
With MS. notes by Cole, in the Bodleian Library. (Containing the
list of the chancellors.)
CLARK, JOHN WILLIS.---- Cambridge. Brief historical & descriptive Notes.
Illustrated.
1890.
CLARK, JOHN WILLIS.---- The Observances in use at the Augustinian Priory
of S. Giles & S. Andrew at Barnwell, Cambridgeshire. Edited with a
translation & glossary.
Cambridge 1897.
COLE MSS.---- (Harleian MSS.)
60 vols., bequeathed by William Cole of King’s College to the
British Museum.
COOPER, CHARLES HENRY.---- Annals of Cambridge. 4 vols.
Cambridge 1843.
An additional pamphlet gives the Statutes of Victoria.
COOPER, CHARLES HENRY.---- Memorials of Cambridge. 3 vols.
Cambridge 1860-66.
The edition of 1880 is enlarged from the work of Le Keux.
COOPER, CHARLES HENRY.---- Memoir of Margaret Countess of Richmond &
Derby.
Cambridge 1874.
COOPER, CHARLES HENRY. & THOMPSON COOPER.---- Athenae Cantabrigienses.
Cambridge 1858-1861.
Vol. i. 1500-1585. Vol. ii. 1586-1609.
DYER, GEORGE.---- The Privileges of the University of Cambridge. 2 vols.
London 1824.
The Statutes of Elizabeth are printed in vol. i. 1559.
DYER, GEORGE.---- History of the University & Colleges of Cambridge. 2
vols.
1814.
EVERETT, WILLIAM.---- On the Cam.
London, S. O. Beeton, 1866.
FULLER, THOMAS, _D.D._---- The History of the University of Cambridge
(to the year 1634). Edited by Marmaduke Prickett, chaplain of Trinity, &
Thomas Wright, of Trinity.
Cambridge 1840.
HARE, ROBERT, of Gonville & Caius.---- Register of Charters, Liberties,
& Privileges of the University & the Town.
The nucleus of Dyer’s _Privileges_. The original is in the public
chest of the University, & there is a copy, made by Hare, in the
Registry.
HOBHOUSE, EDMUND, Bishop of Nelson, N.Z.---- Sketch of the Life of
Walter de Merton.
Oxford 1859.
HUMPHRY, G. M., _M.D._, _F.R.S._ (late Professor of Anatomy).---- Guide
to Cambridge, the Town, University, & Colleges.
Cambridge 1883.
HUNDRED ROLLS (for Cambridge).---- _Rotuli Hundredorum, temp. Hen. III.
et Edw. I. in Turr. Lond. &c. asservati._
Record Commission. 1812-1818.
LOGGAN, DAVID, _S.P.D._---- Cantabrigia Illustrata.
1690.
Containing the University costumes of the xvii century.
MASTERS--LAMB.---- History of the College of Corpus Christi in the
University of Cambridge. (With additional matter & a continuation to the
present time, by John Lamb.)
Cambridge 1831.
“MIND,” a quarterly review of Psychology & Philosophy. Vol. i.
Williams & Norgate 1876.
MULLINGER, J. BASS.---- History of the University of Cambridge from the
earliest times to the Royal Injunctions of 1535.
University Press 1874.
MULLINGER, J. BASS.---- History of the University of Cambridge from the
Royal Injunctions of 1535 to the Accession of Charles I.
University Press 1884.
PARKER, MATTHEW.---- Academiae Historia Cantabrigiensis.
PARKER, RICHARD, _B.D._, fellow of Caius (1622).---- History &
Antiquities of the University of Cambridge.
London, printed at the Hat & Star, 1721.
PEACOCK, GEORGE, _D.D._, Dean of Ely, _V.P.R.S._---- Observations on the
Statutes of the University of Cambridge.
London & Cambridge 1841.
PEACOCK, GEORGE, _D.D._, Dean of Ely, _V.P.R.S._---- Appendix to
Observations on the University Statutes.
1841.
SEARLE, W. G.---- Ingulf & the Historia Croylandensis--an investigation
attempted. Camb. Ant. Soc. Pub. xxvii.
Cambridge 1894.
STOKYS, MATTHEW, & JOHN BUCK.---- The Bedells’ Books.
In Cole MSS. & in Peacock.
TAYLOR, RICHARD.---- Index Monasticus. The Abbeys & other Monasteries
formerly established in the diocese of Norwich & kingdom of East Anglia.
London 1821.
THOMPSON, ALEXANDER HAMILTON.---- Cambridge & its Colleges. Illustrated
by E. H. New. (Little Library.)
1898.
TULLOCH, PRINCIPAL.---- Rational Theology in England in the xvii
Century. 2 vols.
1872.
VENN, JOHN, _Sc.D._, _F.R.S._---- Biographical History of Gonville &
Caius College (1349-1897). 3 vols.
Cambridge 1897-1902.
WILLIS, ROBERT, and CLARK, J. W.---- The Architectural History of the
University of Cambridge & of the Colleges of Cambridge & Eton. 4 vols.
University Press 1886.
WORDSWORTH, CHRISTOPHER, fellow of Peterhouse.---- Scholae Academicae.
University Press 1877.
WORDSWORTH, CHRISTOPHER---- Social Life at the English Universities in
the xviii Century.
Cambridge 1874.
To the above must be added the College Histories, published by F.
E. Robinson London.
Peterhouse (Walker) 1906.
Clare (Wardale) 1899.
Gonville and Caius (Venn) 1901.
Trinity Hall (Malden) 1902.
Corpus Christi (Stokes) 1898.
King’s (Austen Leigh) 1899.
Queens’ (J. H. Gray) 1899.
S. Catherine’s (Bp. of Bristol) 1902.
Jesus (A. Gray) 1902.
Christ’s (Peile) 1900.
S. John’s (Mullinger) 1901.
Magdalene (Preston) 1904.
Emmanuel (Shuckburgh) 1904.
Sidney (Edwards) 1899.
Downing (Pettit Stevens) 1899.
No complete bibliography of the subject--of the MSS. or printed
matter--has been attempted. The above is a list of some Cambridge
documents and books most of which have been consulted personally by
the writer of the present volume.
CAMBRIDGE
CHAPTER I
THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
I. _pp._ 1-30.
The northern schools--legends--the town--the river--the fen
monasteries--the school of glomery--the religious orders--the
jurisdiction of Ely--the clerk and the religious.
In Saxon times our schools of learning were grouped round York the Roman
centre of Britain, which represented not only the Roman tradition but
the vigorous Christianity of the north. It is this auspicious
combination which nourished for over a hundred years the university
spirit before universities, carried through Alcuin this spirit to the
Continent, and eventually brought learning hand in hand with
Christianity to Germany. Whatever may be true as to the distribution of
talent in England later in its history, in the vii and viii centuries
our great school was to be found at York, and England’s learned men
hailed from the kingdom of Northumbria.
[Sidenote: The School of York.
York and Rome.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 657.]
The School of York originated in the school established by Hild for the
Celtic clan community over which she presided; and Caedmon the first
English poet, John of Beverley, Wilfrid of York, Bede the father of
English learning, and the scholar Alcuin who has been called “minister
of Public Instruction to Charlemagne” were the noble fruit it put forth.
[Sidenote: A.D. 664.]
Its history was determined at the Synod of Whitby where Hild appears as
the link between the Celtic Aidan and the Roman Wilfrid, a
representative figure of the genius of English religion. She had been
baptized by Paulinus but her sympathies were with the Scottish Church.
The victory of Wilfrid did not destroy that dual character of English
Christianity which accompanied its mind and its liturgy to the last days
of the religious domination of Rome in the realm; but through this
victory York again entered the hegemony of Latin civilisation, was bound
afresh to the overshadowing tradition of Rome, and thenceforth sealed
with an European character its schools of learning.
[Sidenote: York and Canterbury.]
And through York Rome again takes possession of England. In the vii
century Christianity in Kent had ceased to be the Christianity of
Augustine; with the fall of Edwin Northumbria forgot the Christianity of
Paulinus; but the immediate result of the Roman victory at York was the
mission of Theodore to Canterbury, where the episcopal school he
inaugurated shared the honours though it never rivalled the learning of
the School of York.
[Sidenote: York and Cambridge.]
The legends which relate that Bede came to study at Cambridge in 682,
that Alcuin was one of its first doctors in theology, and that Alfred of
Beverley, “the Treasurer,” studied there, legends already known in the
time of Chaucer, symbolise the spiritual relationship between the School
of York and Cambridge. Those large elements which had operated at
York--that combination of the shaping power of Rome with the insular
force of Angle, Celt, and Saxon--had in them the promise of the English
genius and the English character; and one seems to trace the same wide
tradition, the operation of similarly large elements, in the future seat
of learning at Cambridge. The university of Chaucer, Spenser, and
Milton, of Fox, Fisher, and Langton, of Ascham, Bacon, Newton, Whewell,
and Lightfoot, may well be regarded as the spiritual descendant of the
School which first held the torch of English learning never again to be
entirely extinguished in this country.[1]
[Sidenote: Early legends of the origin of Cambridge.]
Further down, in the east of England, there in fact existed a still
earlier school than the schools at York, established in 635 by Siegebert
king of East Anglia. The site of this school was very probably Seaham or
Dunwich; but legend connects it with Cambridge, and the memory of King
Siegebert is kept green in the annual commemorations of the
university.[2] A legend referring to the same period connects Cambridge
with Canterbury. According to this, Ethelbert of Kent by the command of
Gregory the Great assigned a residence at Cambridge for some learned men
from “the village of Canterbury” (598-604).
Legend also relates that Edward the Elder founded the Cambridge schools
[Sidenote: A.D. 910.]
when he was repairing the ravages of the Danes in East Anglia, and gave
to them a charter of incorporation.
The fact not only that the neighbourhood of Cambridge, like Canterbury
and York, was the site of an early Anglo-Saxon school, but that
Cambridge was itself a Roman station, gave rise in its turn to another
legend of the origin of the university. According to this it was founded
by Cantaber the son-in-law of King Gurgentius and brother of Partholin
the Spanish king of Ireland, who gave his name to it, a name, no doubt,
formed from the _Cantabri_, the Spanish auxiliaries mentioned by Caesar.
Lydgate’s panegyric of the university shows us that a tradition of its
antiquity made up of both Roman and School of York elements received
credence in the xiv century; nay, remembering that Cambridge had been a
Roman town, men found no difficulty in supposing that Caesar had carried
off a supply of Cambridge dons to the capital of the world.
[Illustration: NORMAN CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE
Believed to be the oldest of the four round Churches in England, built
about 1120-40.]
[Sidenote: The town of Cambridge.]
The Roman fortress lay on the left bank of the river, at the hamlet of
Grantchester (_Granta_, _castrum_); the town of Cambridge proper, on the
same bank, being called _Grantabrigge_. Here it was that William the
Conqueror’s castle was built on the site of a British earthwork still
known as Castle Mound, and here British as well as Roman coins and other
Roman remains have been discovered. The British town of Cair-Graunth has
been identified with both sites; while the Roman station marked in Saxon
maps as _Camboritum_ or _Camboricum_ has hitherto been confounded with
the site of the Norman fortress. We do not know where Camboricum was,
but we no longer identify it with Cambridge.[3]
In the time of Bede, and earlier, Grantchester was a desolate ruin,[4]
but Grantabridge was a place of some importance at the time of the
Domesday survey, and we find that nearly thirty of its four hundred
houses were destroyed to make room for William’s castle.[5] The town
which is still called Grantabridge in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in
Domesday, and in Henry I.’s charter, becomes Cantebruge before the
middle of the xii century, and Cantebrigge in Chaucer.[6]
[Sidenote: Roman roads.]
Two great Roman roads met near the Castle Mound, the one being the only
way across the pathless fens, running from the coast of Norfolk through
Ely to Cambridge and thence on to Cirencester and Bath; the other--_via
Devana_--was the great highway (along the site of the present Huntingdon
road) which led from Cambridge out of the fen country, stretching from
Chester[7] on the north-west to Colchester on the south-east. This road
crossed the only high ground in the flat country round Cambridge--the
low range of hills called the Gogmagogs and Castle Mound itself.
[Sidenote: The river.]
The river Granta gave its name to the British and Roman towns
(Cair-Graunth, Grantchester), to the university city, and to the whole
shire. The Granta or Cam, for it is now called by both names, is made by
the confluence of two small streams which meet beyond Grantchester; the
eastern branch, the Granta, rising in Cambridgeshire, the western, the
Rhee, in Hertfordshire. What other river in England can boast that it
has been celebrated by our poets in every age? For Milton it is _Camus_,
for Byron _Granta_, both names serve the muse of Gray; it is
Wordsworth’s _Cam_, but Spenser calls it _Guant_, and also _Ouse_, the
name it takes before reaching Ely, although the waters of the “plenteous
Ouse” join the Granta much lower down.[8]
[Sidenote: The ford.]
The important thing about the river, which determined the history of the
town on its banks, was that between Grantabridge and Grantchester it was
fordable, and here only could it be traversed by those going to and from
the east of England and the Midlands. Near Trumpington, indeed, a part
of the Via Devana had been carried by the Romans right through the
water.[9]
In the ix century the province of Cambridge--the _Flavia Caesariensis_
of the Romans--formed part of the Danelagh.[10] Throughout the middle
ages, writes Mr. J. W. Clark, the town “was a frontier fortress on the
edge of the great wild ... which stretched as far as the Wash”: and no
place suffered more from invasion and fire. The Danes completely
destroyed it in 870, after the capture of York; and the fortunes of the
two cities were again linked two hundred years later when William, fresh
from the reduction of the northern capital, turned
[Sidenote: A.D. 1068-1070.]
his steps to Cambridge and made it the centre of his operations against
the outstanding isle of Ely. A second destruction at the hands of the
Danes occurred in 1010, and in 1088 Cambridge was again devastated with
the rest of Cambridgeshire by Robert Curthose. This, however, led to a
vigorous re-instatement of the city by Henry I. who showed it many marks
of favour.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1102.]
In the second year of his reign he ordered the townsmen to pay their
dues to the bedells, and about this time the ferry which had hitherto
been “a vagrant ... even anywhere where passengers could get waftage
over,”[11] was established at Cambridge, bringing traffic in its train.
In 1106 the first signs of returning prosperity were seen in the
settlement of the Jews. The Cambridge Jewry was near the market-place,
and the Cambridge Jews were noted for their “civil carriage,” none of
the customary outrageous charges
[Sidenote: A.D. 1118.]
being brought against them there.[12] Twelve years later, the king gave
a charter to the burgesses.
Cambridge was at no period of its history a great or even a prosperous
commercial centre. East Anglia has always been a corner of England to
itself, not on the direct line to anywhere, and offering very few points
of vantage to the statesman or the merchant. The course of a river
determines the history of a town, as it first determines its site. This
is well exemplified in the histories of the Granta and the “Isis.” The
“Isis” is a reach of the Thames,[13] and this fact with its moral
political and commercial implications has coloured the whole history of
the town on its banks--everything came to Oxford by the river from
London, and dignified alderman or humble bargeman shared with the lesser
centre the life of the greater. The Granta and Ouse have a history in
every sense the opposite of this. Through the centuries, long before
Oxford was a town at all,[14] the sounds we hear are the thud of the
Ely barge as it strikes the bank of deserted Grantchester, and
Sexberga’s messengers borrow from the neighbourhood of the future
university the sepulture for the founder of Ely--the gift of a
civilisation still older than hers.[15] Or, three hundred and fifty
years later, the chant of the Ely monks is wafted out upon the water as
Canute bids his men rest a moment on their oars to listen
Merrily sang the monks of Ely when Canute the king rowed by.
The convent messenger, the Danish king, the Norman conqueror, may come
up the water, but they make the stir they find, and the river leaves no
trace behind them.
So the university town owes nothing to adventitious causes; makes no bid
for public favour, and has no tentacles to put forth to obtain it. But
the river has, nevertheless, determined its activities as well as its
reticences. It will give rise to a fair, and Stourbridge fair will
become one of the greatest fairs in the kingdom. The fish market was
another source of traffic. Ely and Cambridge fish were celebrated--Bede,
indeed, derives “Ely” from the abundance of its eels, although _helyg_
(the willow) seems the more
[Illustration: MARKET SQUARE
This picture represents what is called Half Market, which takes place on
Wednesday. Market day, properly speaking, is on Saturday, when the
square is filled with stalls. The church is Great St. Mary’s, and King’s
College Chapel is seen in the distance on the left.]
probable original.[16] The kings of England patronised this market,
Henry III. sending for his fish to Cambridge even when he was staying at
Oxford; and Chaucer is careful to note that the Cambridge miller was an
angler, skilled in mending his nets.[17] The isle of Ely, so-called
because cut off by river and mere from the rest of Cambridgeshire, was
proverbial for the turbulence of its population, and the men of Ely drew
the men of Cambridge into their quarrels, or harried them on their own
account. Cambridge Castle was built as an outpost against the English
earls who with Hereward resisted the Conqueror at Ely; it was at Ely
that another determined stand was made by Simon de Montfort’s followers
after Cambridge had been regained for John; and Henry III. had to bring
relief to the university town when its neighbours burnt and plundered it
during the years 1266-1270. The two centres were inseparable for weal or
woe, and the intellectual as well as the political life of Cambridge was
coloured for centuries by the activities of its neighbour.
[Sidenote: The fen monasteries.]
The proximity of the great fen monasteries must be reckoned as the chief
factor in the earlier scholastic--the pre-university--history of
Cambridge. Ely, Crowland, Bury-St.-Edmund’s and Peterborough were among
the most important and the most ancient religious houses in the country.
Crowland and Bury both had abbey schools influenced, as we shall see, in
the early xii century by the famous school at Orléans; Ely had besides
an episcopal school, and as monastery, school, and cathedral, was in
constant domestic relations with her neighbour of Cambridge.[18]
[Sidenote: Crowland.]
Among these famous houses, surrounded by undrained marshes, like
islands, forbidding and yet inviting access, none was more isolated than
Crowland which, reared as Venice upon piles and stakes driven into the
marshy ground, shone like a beacon out of the mysterious silence and
solitude.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1109.]
The story that abbot Joffred of Crowland sent four Orléans monks full of
new learning to his Cambridge manor of Cottenham[19] early in the xii
century, who held disputations in a large barn, has been shown to be
entirely legendary. Yet the moment chosen by the self-styled continuator
of Ingulph is singularly felicitous.[20] We know nothing of any sources
of information which may have been open to a xiv century forger; but it
is certain that some such scholastic movements were fermenting in
Cambridge in the xii century. Joffred had been prior at Orléans which
was a flourishing school, and we have evidence that this school actually
influenced the university of Cambridge. The abbey house of Crowland was
burnt in 1091 and the rebuilding was not undertaken till 1113. It was
likely enough that the abbot should look out for something for his
learned monks to do, and should make use of an outlying manor near to
such a centre as Cambridge as a promising field for activities
restricted through the disaster to his house. Moreover the energies of
the lecturers, we are told, were directed against Jewish doctrines, and
the Jews, as we have seen, had come to Cambridge three years before. The
town was rising in prosperity, and the charter of 1118 points to the
conclusion that people and trade had been attracted to it since Henry’s
first rescript sixteen years earlier.[21]
Whether among those attracted to Cambridge we are to count the large
influx of scholars who are said to have listened to the Crowland monks,
or not, it is certain that Cambridge became once more in 1174 the
[Sidenote: A.D. 1174.]
theatre of great disaster, and a destructive fire was only stayed when
it could find no more fuel to feed it.[22]
[Sidenote: The school of glomery.]
_Soi-disant_ Peter of Blois declares that the monks when they set about
teaching “took the university of Orléans for their pattern.”[23] The
earliest school we come across at Cambridge is a “school of glomery”
under the patronage of the bishops of Ely. The archdeacon of Ely
nominated the “master of the glomerels” and one of the chief acts of
Hugh de Balsham was to limit the authority which the archdeaconry had
thus come indirectly to exercise in university matters. From
thenceforward the master of glomery is to have the same authority to
compose disputes between glomerels as other regent masters had towards
their scholars; but in disputes with scholars or with townsmen as to
lodgings or in grave matters affecting the jurisdiction of the
university, the glomerels were to plead before the chancellor. There
were thus two classes of students in the early days at Cambridge,
‘glomerels’ and ‘scholars.’ The former were subject to the _magister
glomeriae_ who in his turn was subject to the archdeacon of Ely; the
latter had grown up under the aegis of the regent masters and
chancellor.
Now the school of glomery was nothing else than the time-honoured
Cambridge school of grammar.[24] The word has been for centuries a
local term known only here, and it is therefore the more interesting to
find that the students of Orléans were called ‘glomerel clerks’ (_clers
glomeriaus_) and that they resisted the invasion of their grammar
schools by Aristotle’s logic in the xiii century.
Paris et Orliens ce sont ij:
C’est granz domages et granz deuls
Que li uns à l’autre n’acorde.
Savez por qui est la descorde?
Qu’il ne sont pas d’une science:
Car Logique, qui toz jors tence,
Claime les auctors autoriaus
Et les clers d’Orliens glomeriaus.[25]
There were also ‘glomerels’ at Bury-St.-Edmund’s and Abbot Sampson’s
doings as regards the grammar school there in the xii century bear a
strong resemblance to Balsham’s doings at Cambridge in the xiiith.[26]
The persistence of the glomery school at Cambridge and the equally
remarkable persistence of this school at Orléans goes far to justify the
conjecture that it was Orléans which influenced Cambridge, not Paris:
for Crowland had certainly been influenced by the same school, and
Cambridge and Bury were both familiar with ‘glomerels’; the former under
the jurisdiction of the diocesan the latter under that of the abbot.[27]
[Sidenote: The religious orders. The canons.]
Cambridge presents us with an excellent example of the relations which
secular and religious learning bore to one another in the foundation of
universities. Ecclesiastically it was of no importance whatever; it was
not the seat of a bishop nor the fief of abbot or prior--the one
monastic house was the nunnery of S. Rhadegund, founded before the
middle of the xii century--and at no time in
[Illustration: THE OLD GATEWAY OF KING’S COLLEGE
This gateway now forms the entrance to the Library from Trinity Lane.
The North door of King’s Chapel is seen in the distance.]
its history was the fate of the university determined by the learning of
the cloister or its fortune raised by a doctrine of the schools. Ely,
the outside influence which played the largest rôle, introduced no
monastic elements, and within Cambridge itself the communities which had
most part in its development were the canons, and canons always
represented a half-way house between clerk and monk. If their
contribution to European learning be altogether inferior to that of the
Benedictine, they at no time showed any desire to impose a tradition or
to stamp with their own hall mark the scholars who willingly attached
themselves to canonical houses. The earliest community of canons in
Cambridge was founded by a Norman, Hugolina wife to Picot Sheriff of the
county, in 1092, in gratitude for her recovery from sickness.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1092]
It was a foundation for six secular canons serving her church of S.
Giles by the Castle, and the little community was transformed, twenty
years later, by
[Sidenote: A.D. 1112.]
another Norman, Pain Peverel standard-bearer to the Duke of Normandy,
into the Canons Regular of Barnwell under the rule of S. Augustine.[28]
The six canons became thirty, and Barnwell Priory, on the other side of
the river, became a house of considerable importance, and gave
hospitality to Richard II. during the Cambridge parliament of 1388. It
continued to exist till the Suppression. About 1135 a second canons’
house was established on the present site of S. John’s College. This was
a hospital, or travellers’ hospice, designed by a Cambridge burgess,
Henry Frost, who gave the plot of land and endowed “a master and poor
brethren of the rule of S. Austin” to dispense the charity of the
house.[29] If the Barnwell canons of S. Giles were among the earliest
friends of the scholars, the canons of the hospice of S. John were to
play the most important part in their history.[30] S. John’s and the
other xii century foundation of S. Rhadegund were dissolved under
similar circumstances within thirteen years of one another, the latter
in 1497 the former in 1510.[31]
[Sidenote: The Gilbertine canons of Sempringham.]
There was a third community of Canons Regular at Cambridge. The
Lincolnshire community founded by S. Gilbert of Sempringham in the xii
century settled near Peterhouse in 1291. Their hostel “S. Edmund’s” took
its name from the old chapel dedicated to the martyr-king enshrined at
Bury-St.-Edmund’s, and a licence of Edward III.’s permitting the canons
to acquire houses and lands in the town styles them “the Prior and
Canons of the chapel of S. Edmund.” We hear of these possessions early
in the xiv century when (in 1417) the Prior of S. Edmund’s leases land;
and again in 1474 when the community sell land to William Bassett. Of
the 26 houses of this Order--the only Order of English origin--there
were two in the isle of Ely,[32] while a fourth was established near
Hitchin. The Barnwell Memoranda announcing their arrival in Cambridge
[Sidenote: A.D. 1291.]
say: “The canons of Sempringham first came to dwell at the chapel of S.
Edmund, and earnestly set about hearing lectures and attending
disputations.”
[Sidenote: Friars. Carmelites.]
The four orders of friars were all represented in Cambridge, and all
settled there in the course of the xiii century. The Carmelites or
Whitefriars were the first to arrive, settling in 1200 at
[Sidenote: A.D. 1249.]
Chesterton near the town, then at Newnham, and finally in Mill Street
(1291). For nearly a hundred years the Carmelites took no part in the
academic life of Cambridge. They refused to graduate, and showed no
desire to display the insignia of a secular doctorate over the
peculiarly sacred habit of their Order. It was, indeed, at Cambridge
that S. Simon Stock had had, in 1251, his vision of the Blessed Virgin,
and had received from her hands the celebrated “scapular of Our Lady of
Mount Carmel”; and it was not till forty years after this that the
Carmelite Humphrey Necton, at the urgent instance of the then chancellor
of the university, consented to take the degree of Doctor in
Theology.[33] In the reign of Richard II. this was the richest religious
house in Cambridge, and Edmund Langley Earl of Cambridge and Courtney
Archbishop of Canterbury lodged there during the parliament of 1388. The
Cambridge Carmelites put forth several eminent men: Bale, the historian,
had been a Carmelite at Norwich before proceeding to the university;
Walter Diss, a zealous opponent of the Lollards, was confessor to that
friend of Cambridge John of Gaunt; Nicholas Cantilupe (1441) wrote the
_Historiola Cantabrigiae_,[34] and friar Nicholas Kenton was chancellor
of the university as late as the middle of the xv century.
[Sidenote: Franciscans.]
The Franciscans, or Greyfriars, came to Cambridge soon after their
arrival in England, and during the lifetime of S. Francis. Among the
nine friars who landed in 1224 there were three Englishmen, Richard
Ingworth (the only friar in priest’s orders), who was accompanied
probably by another East Anglian, and by Richard of Devon. This East
Anglian element among the first Franciscans is noteworthy, for the first
Franciscan readers in divinity at both universities hailed from our
Eastern counties. The Cambridge burgesses established the friars at the
Jewish synagogue next to the prison.[35] These uncomfortable quarters
were exchanged later for a site in the present Sidney Street, where
Edward I. built them a friary. Here they took part and share in the life
of the university: the novices and younger brethren studied and
graduated, the elder taught; while the church of the Franciscans, which
was one of the finest buildings in the town, served the purposes of a
university church before the rebuilding of Great S. Mary’s.
[Sidenote: Dominicans.]
The Dominicans, or Blackfriars, did not reach Cambridge till about the
last quarter of the xiii century,[36] fifty years after the Franciscans.
A strange destiny decreed that a house which had once been under the
patronage of the seraphic Francis should nurture Oliver Cromwell and
become the first Protestant college; and that the house of “the Lord’s
Watchdogs” (_Dominicanes_) should become the front and centre of
Puritanism in the university.[37]
[Sidenote: Austinfriars.]
The last to arrive were the Austinfriars, who entered Cambridge in 1290,
at the same time as the Sempringham canons, just as the first Carmelite
took his university degree, and as the Jews were expelled from the town.
The priory was behind the present college of Corpus Christi, occupying
part of the site of the Botanical Gardens, where the new museums now
stand. Here was nurtured Miles Coverdale whose reforming principles were
imbibed from its prior Barnes afterwards burned as a heretic.[38] Like
the other Cambridge friars, the Austinfriars were dissolved at the
Reformation.[39]
[Sidenote: Other friars at Cambridge.]
There were other friars in Cambridge. The friars of the Sack[40] or _De
poenitentia Jesu_, were established in S. Mary’s parish in 1291, then
in the parish of S. Peter. This was one of the spurious orders of
Franciscans suppressed, as a result of the Council of Lyons, in 1307.
The Barnwell Chartulary, however, has recorded for us that “these
brethren of the Sack gathered together many scholars and good, and
multiplied exceedingly until the time of the Council of Lyons.”
[Sidenote: Other religious houses at Cambridge.]
The Bethlemite friars came over here in 1257, and appear to have had
only one house in England, that in Trumpington Street.[41]
Our-Lady-friars (_Fratres de Domina_) are first heard of about thirty
years later (1288). They were settled near the castle (and are hence
called in the Barnwell Chartulary: _Fratres beatae Mariae ad Castrum_)
and are only heard of at Cambridge and at Norwich where they arrived
before 1290 and were there established at the time of the plague.[42]
The Cambridge burgesses had an ancient leper hospital at Stourbridge,
under the dedication of “S. Mary Magdalene for lepers.” In the closing
years of the xiv century Henry Tangmer, alderman of the Guild of Corpus
Christi, founded the Hermitage of S. Anne and Hospital of Lazars. About
the same time (1395) the Benedictine nuns of S. Leonard of
Stratford-le-Bowe granted a curtilage in Scholars’ Lane to the
university.[43] The Priories of Anglesey S. John of Jerusalem and Tyltey
and the abbeys of Crowland (p. 12) and Denney all held land in
Cambridge.
The prior and convent of Anglesey, a Cambridgeshire house of Regular
Canons, owned land here as early as 1278-9, and were of some importance
in the town in the xiv century.[44] The land held by the knights of S.
John was not part of the confiscated Templar property, all of which
escheated to the Order, but was purchased by them early in the reign of
Edward I.[45] It lay in the university centre between Mill Street and
School Street (“Milnestrete alias Seynt Johnstrete”) and was a parcel of
open land on which was their patronal church of S. John Baptist, and
Crouched or S. Crosse’s Hostel.[46] In 1432 William Hulle, preceptor of
Swenefeld, Templecombe, and Quenyngton, and prior of the English Langue,
sold this ground to the university for the schools quadrangle, and the
New Schools of Canon Law were built upon it.[47] The
[Illustration: ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE GATEWAY AND TOWER FROM TRINITY STREET
Trinity Chapel is seen on the left behind the trees.]
knights’ property was on the west of the schools quadrangle, the
property of the nuns of Stratford-le-Bowe on the east. Denney and Tyltey
both owned land on the site of Christ’s Pieces and elsewhere in the xv
century. The former was a Franciscan nunnery founded by Marie de
Chatillon Countess of Pembroke (p. 69) on land which was claimed from
her by the knights of S. John as part of the sequestrated Templar
property. It lay on the borders of the fen between Cambridge and Ely.
The latter was a Cistercian house in Essex.[48]
The rôle reserved for these houses and congregations in the earlier
history of the university was subordinate. By the time that every
Benedictine house was required by the Constitution of Honorius III.
(1216-1227) to send some of its students to the universities, learning
had already passed from the monastery to the university, and the monks’
hostel at Cambridge[49] signalised the change. The part taken by the
friars is not less instructive. The refusal of the Carmelites
(throughout the xiii century) to pursue the academic course is valuable
evidence of the conflict between secular and religious studies at the
rise of the university. The Franciscans were the most important of the
mendicants in England, and as such took a paramount place at both
Cambridge and Oxford; but at the former their action was inconspicuous,
and there is nothing to indicate that they were at any time or in any
sense “nursing fathers” to Cambridge university whatever they may have
been elsewhere.
The moment when they made their appearance was at least as propitious
historically as it had been at Oxford, and the independent growth of
Cambridge, its escape from the intellectual thraldom of that
scholasticism of which the Franciscans were the chief exponents, are
hence doubly significant. The quarrels which arose in the early xiv
century between the officials of the university and the friars prove
that the religious societies which shared its academic life did by no
means act in permanent harmony with it. Thus in 1303 the chancellor
quarrelled with the Franciscans and Dominicans and excommunicated two of
the friars, and later in the century the university had to prohibit
novices in the Cambridge friaries from proceeding to their degrees under
eighteen years of age. Then, as now, the Franciscans were accustomed to
recruit very little lads for the noviciate, all of whom probably
received their education at the public Cambridge schools of grammar and
theology, and might be seen strutting about as full-fledged “masters of
arts before they were masters of themselves.”[50]
Before the xiii century closed--from the date of Hugh de Balsham’s
death--the university ceased to receive any help from monastic learning,
for the monks avoided Cambridge, and even Norwich priory sent its
students to Oxford.[51] Less than a hundred years elapsed, and we find
Gaunt, Pembroke, and Scrope--the court party--opposing the pretensions
and the temporalities of the clergy in the company of Cambridge men.
Pembroke--the representative of the house of Valence[52]--is their
spokesman, and it is Scrope
[Sidenote: A.D. 1371.]
and Sir Robert Thorpe, Master of a Cambridge college, who take the Purse
and the Seals from the hands of their episcopal holders Brantingham and
William of Wykeham. This movement, as Stubbs points out, was independent
of Wyclif’s; and it is remarkable that while William of Wykeham was
influencing Oxford the theories for which he stood were being repulsed
at Cambridge.
[Sidenote: Cambridge and the jurisdiction of Ely.]
There remains the relation of the university to the see of Ely. The
episcopal jurisdiction of Ely in the university did not long survive the
building of colleges. The scholars refused to plead in the archdeacon’s
court, and Balsham upheld them--their statutes already provided as
much.[53] Bishop Montacute also set limits to diocesan authority.[54] In
1317 John XXII. withdrew the university from the spiritual jurisdiction
not only of the diocesan but of the provincial archbishop; but it was
the friction arising from the failure of some of the bishops of Ely to
recognise the spiritual independence of the chancellor which resulted in
the celebrated court held at Barnwell priory at the instance of Martin
V., in 1430, under the presidency of its prior. Two forged bulls of
Honorius and Sergius[55] were cited as vii century evidence of the
spiritual liberties of Cambridge, and the Pope in a third bull set the
question for ever at rest in favour of the university. The solemn
visitation of the colleges which had taken place under the auspices of
Archbishop Arundel in 1401 was probably the result of the temporary
victory obtained by the Primate when the chancellor refused to take an
oath of obedience to him.
The early college statutes were as eager to repel the religious as the
rule of Benedict, the father of western monasticism, was to repel the
clergyman.[56] The statutes of Michaelhouse (1334), the earliest which
have reached us intact, provide that neither monk nor friar should
obtain admittance to the college. The statutes of Peterhouse enact that
no one deciding to enter a religious order can remain on the foundation.
It must at the same time be clearly realised that some of the earliest
colleges were little more than clerical seminaries.[57] What is peculiar
to Cambridge is that there a monk made the earliest attempt to endow
learning for the secular clergy--a monk who was also a bishop, the
ever-memorable Hugh Balsham. The non-monastic direction taken was by no
means as yet an anti-monastic one; but at the rise of both universities,
as soon as scholars were endowed and endowed houses began to be built
for them, the monastic and the academic careers were regarded as
incompatible vocations. It was the separation of the _clerk_ from the
_religious_, the recognition by Balsham of the secular scholar and of an
endowed foundation for such scholars which was neither a religious house
nor an _episcopia_, that transformed a more or less fortuitous concourse
of students and teachers--a mere amplification, as at Oxford, of the
school system of other great centres--into a chartered corporation of
scholars--a university.[58]
II
School and university--Stourbridge fair--the university in the xiii
century--Foundation of endowed scholars--hostels.
Both our universities doubtless count a school life of eight centuries
at least: but a school life, the activity of teachers and scholars, is
not the same thing as a university life. We have already said that
Oxford owed its history to the constant communication between it and
London, to its accessibility from the capital which made it the frequent
resort not only of our kings but, what is more to our purpose, of
scholars European and English.[59] The ferment created by their lectures
no doubt kept alive the desire for knowledge and the spirit of enquiry
among the motley population of the town; a moral atmosphere which in
its turn attracted students. At Cambridge everything was the opposite of
this. S. Frideswide’s at Oxford was a poor religious house, but it was
in the heart of the town; the monastery at Ely was a great religious
house, but its school was many miles from the university. Cambridge, as
we have seen, was accessible to no great centre, there was nothing to
attract the traveller who if he visited it almost certainly went out of
his way to do so. Nevertheless some influences were at work in the xii
century which determined the transformation of Cambridge into a _studium
generale_, a university. The river near the town, as I have already
said, gave rise to one of the greatest fairs in England, and Mr. J. W.
Clark is disposed to see in the concourse of people brought together by
Stourbridge fair the determining factor in our university history. The
fair was called after the Stour a stream lower down the river, and was
held in a large cornfield near Barnwell. It began on the feast of S.
Bartholomew, August 24, and lasted till the fourteenth day after the
feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (September 14). These five weeks of
revelry proved more disturbing to Cambridge studies than the May term of
to-day; xiii century scholars spent their money at Stourbridge fair as
Isaac Newton spent his in the xviith; there he acquired his prism in
August 1661 and a book on “Judicial Astrology” the geometry and
trigonometry of which were then as ‘Greek’ to him. Sea-borne goods which
had probably always been brought inland up the river to this point,
formed the nucleus of the fair at Stourbridge. It is generally agreed
that three other English fairs exceeded the Cambridge fair in
importance, those at Bristol, Bartholomew’s in London, and Lynton. Defoe
however describes it as the largest in Europe, greater than that at
Nuremberg or than the Frankfort mart. It
[Sidenote: A.D. 1211.]
was already highly prosperous when King John made over its dues to the
leper hospice of S. Mary Magdalene; and it has been suggested that this
was the ancient fair to which Irish merchants brought their cloth in the
time of Athelstan.
Why so uncommercial a district became the site of one of the greatest
fairs in Europe, and why a _studium generale_ became established there,
are problems both of which we cannot resolve. There always remains at
the bottom some virtue in the apparently unpropitious city on the banks
of the Granta which as an Italian would say _fece da sè_. But Mr. J. W.
Clark’s suggestion has at least placed the two problems in
juxtaposition: the growing importance of the schools and the growing
importance of the fair both meet us in the opening lustres of the xiii
century; the fair, that is, has its roots in the preceding century when
the fate of the embryo seat of learning lay in the balance. How should a
fair, how should an extraordinary concourse of people, help to
consolidate a university? Simply because this was the age of peripatetic
teaching, because it was the custom all through the middle ages for
wandering scholars to find themselves where men gathered together, and
to claim for a theorem of Roscellinus or a doctrine from Araby brought
by the crusaders the ear of a crowd which had just been entertained by
the Norman jongleur.
[Sidenote: Earliest references to Cambridge university.]
Our first glimpse of the Cambridge schools shows us an immigration of
the scholars of one university to the other. In 1209,
[Sidenote: A.D. 1209 10th of John.]
in consequence of an unjust retaliation upon the students, Oxford was
depleted and its scholars found their way to Cambridge.[60] Nine years
later we have a rescript of Henry III.’s (1218) ordering all those
clerks
[Sidenote: A.D. 1218 2nd of Henry III.]
who had adhered to Louis to depart the realm. In the eleven years which
elapsed between this and 1229 the Franciscans had established themselves
at Cambridge, and in that year as a result of Henry’s invitation to
[Sidenote: A.D. 1229 13th of Henry III.]
Paris students to settle in England there was a considerable influx or
foreigners to the university, the echo of which may be traced in two
interesting rescripts of the year 1231. In one of these the king charges
the mayor
[Sidenote: A.D. 1231 15th of Henry III.]
and bailiffs of the town to deal fairly with members of the university
in the matter or lodgings, and enjoins them to establish according to
“university custom” two masters and two liegemen of the town to act as
“taxors.”[61] Dating the rescript from Oxford on the third day of May
the king writes: “It is already sufficiently known to you that a
multitude of scholars has gathered to our town of Cambridge, for the
sake of study, both from the regions near home and from beyond the seas;
the which is most grateful and acceptable to us, because it gives an
example of no small convenience to our whole realm, and our honour is
thereby increased; and you especially, among whom these students are
loyally dwelling should feel it matter of no little gratulation and
rejoicing.”[62] In the second rescript, dated from Oxford on the same
day, the king enjoins that no clerk shall live in the town (_quod nullus
clericus moretur in villa_) who is not under a _magister scholarum_.[63]
[Sidenote: Charters and Bulls. Charter of Hen. III. A.D. 1231. Bull of
John XXII. A.D. 1317.]
These letters patent addressed to the mayor and burgesses of the town by
Henry III. in 1231 are the earliest existing document which can be
regarded in the light of a university charter.[64] At the same time it
appears by no means certain that royal letters had not been addressed
earlier to Cambridge in which the
[Illustration: ORIEL WINDOW OF THE HALL, TRINITY GREAT COURT
In the nearer part of the picture is the Master’s Lodge, and in the far
distance two turrets of King’s Chapel stand up against the evening
sky.]
academic society there was treated as a moral entity. In the following
reign the jury of Cambridge made oath to the effect that “the Chancellor
and Masters of the university had appropriated to themselves more ample
liberties than were warranted in the charters granted them by the king’s
predecessors”;[65] and in the same way when, at the request of Edward
II., John XXII. erects Cambridge into a _studium generale_ in the second
year of his pontificate, he reaffirms and confirms the privileges with
which his predecessors in the apostolic chair and the English kings had
adorned the university: _omnia privilegia et indulta praedicto studio
... a pontificibus et regibus praedictis concessa_.[66] In this
instrument he refers to Cambridge university as _studium ab olim ibi
ordinatum_, “the university from old time there established.” Cambridge
and Oxford, however, like the earliest centres of learning in Italy and
France--Bologna and Paris--_grew into universities_; papal
authorisations follow instead of preceding their institution. In other
cases universities were definite creations which make their first
appearance with a bull of institution and inauguration attached to
them.[67]
Henry III.’s writs in behalf of Cambridge begin in the second and cover
the fifty years of his reign. In the 45th and again in the 50th year he
repeats and confirms his previous rescripts. The scholastic prosperity
of Cambridge dates from this reign as its civil prosperity dates from
that of Henry I.; and the traditions that Cambridge was Beauclerk’s
_alma mater_ and that Henry V. was a student at Oxford probably both
derive from the signal favours shown to the two by these monarchs
respectively.[68] Cambridge however was greatly reduced in the reign of
John, especially about the year 1214 in spite of the recent immigration
from Oxford.
[Sidenote: The Henrys and the Edwards.]
But from the accession of Henry III. onwards the university city became
the special care of the Henrys and the Edwards. Edward I., while still
Prince of Wales, visited the town in 1254 and undertook the
pacification of the quarrels in which scholars and townsmen were
engaged.[69] A document sealed with his own seal and those of the
university and the borough ordained that henceforth 13 scholars and 10
burgesses should be chosen to represent the interests of both parties.
Five of the former were to be Englishmen, 3 Scotchmen, 3 Irishmen, and 2
from Wales. The proportions are interesting.[70] It was soon after
Edward’s accession that the refusal of Cambridge
[Sidenote: 4th Edw. I. A.D. 1276.]
students to obey summonses to the archidiaconal courts led to Balsham’s
judicious settlement of the point.[71]
Edward II. continued the interest shown in Cambridge by his father and
grandfather; not only obtaining for it the status of a _studium
generale_ but maintaining a group of scholars there at his own
[Sidenote: A.D. 1317.]
charges--“king’s scholars” who were to rank with Ely and Merton scholars
in historical importance. The favour shown to the university by the
magnificent king his son was perhaps the one instance in which he took
pains to fulfil the intentions of his murdered father.[72]
[Sidenote: Foundation of endowed scholars. Hugh de Balsham]
In the long reign of Henry III., in the year 1257, Hugh de Balsham,[73]
subprior of Ely, was made tenth bishop of the diocese; and it was then
that he placed and endowed at S. John’s hospital a group of secular
students known as “Ely scholars,” who were the object of his anxious
care until his death in 1286. His scheme and its results are described
in the next chapter.[74] At this time there were no endowed houses at
Cambridge, no school buildings, no endowed scholars.[75] It was some
thirty years after the arrival of the Franciscans, the Carmelites had as
yet taken no part in the academic life, and many years were to elapse
before the Dominicans made their appearance. It was fifty years since
the Oxford immigration, and thirty since the king had invited over the
students from Paris. The distinction that was now made between the
clerk-canon, or the clerk-friar, and the scholar in arts or theology who
would remain a secular, converted, as we have said, the university
corporation into something more--a _studium generale_, and led, as we
shall see, to the building of the first endowed colleges.
[Sidenote: Walter de Merton.]
Contemporaneously with Balsham there lived and toiled another college
legislator, Walter de Merton, Chancellor of England and afterwards
Bishop of Rochester. His prime importance in developing the collegiate
conception will be seen in the next chapter; here we are concerned with
him as a founder of endowed scholars. Merton had eight nephews to
educate, and he set about designing an academic scheme the far-reaching
effects of which endure to this day, although the steps of the scheme
are involved in an obscurity which responds to his own hesitations. He
first assigned his manor of Malden,
[Sidenote: A.D. 1264.]
adjoining Merton in Surrey, as a chef-lieu and endowment for “poor
scholars in the schools” who are living under a code of rules prescribed
by himself. During the next five years he acquired lands both in
Cambridge and Oxford; his chief acquisition at the former being in 1269,
when he purchased an estate lying under the shadow of the Conqueror’s
castle which included the Norman manor house known as the School of
Pythagoras. This property had been in the possession of the Dunnings
since the Conquest, and was afterwards known as the Merton estate. In
the same year William de Manfield, who held a mortgage on this property,
states that he had given his lands in Cambridge to the house, scholars,
and brethren of Merton--_domui et scholaribus et fratribus de
Merton_.[76] Meanwhile Walter de Merton had been buying land at
Oxford,[77] and in 1274 he definitely moved the hall at Malden and
refounded it as Merton College in the sister university; the formula
hitherto maintained in his charters and statutes (see ii. p. 68) being
now changed, and “poor scholars who are studying at Oxford or elsewhere
where a _studium generale_ exists” (_Oxoniae, aut alibi, ubi studium
viget generale_) becomes “who are studying at Oxford where there is a
university” (_Oxoniae ubi universitas viget studentium_).
The scheme thus crowned in 1274 had had its birth twelve years before
when in 1262 Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester allowed the manor of
Malden to be assigned to the Austin priory of Merton or to some other
religious house for the sustenance of _clerici in scholis degentes_
(poor clerks in the schools) who were living according to Merton’s
prescriptions.[78] This vesting of endowments in a religious house was
already familiar at both universities. The Bishop of Ely (Kilkenny) had
vested his exhibitions for divinity students in the prior of Barnwell in
1256, and it appears that this was Merton’s first intention. Two years
later, however, we find him assigning Malden and other manors to his
nephews, the beneficiaries being still described as “poor scholars in
the schools.”
Any scholars maintained at either university by these endowments were
“Merton scholars.” This is again made perfectly clear when the charter
(and statutes) of 1270 were issued, in which Walter de Merton settles
the Cambridge estates as part of the Malden endowments for “scholars
studying in Oxford or elsewhere.” It was part of his plan to acquire
local endowments at both universities, and also that vast clerical
patronage in the different shires which was obviously destined to ensure
the future of his scholars. This was the scheme eventually concentrated
in the foundation of Merton, Oxford: and when Bishop Hobhouse is
inclined to anticipate the date at which Merton scholars were
established there, we may entirely agree with him, only adding that if
there were certainly Merton scholars at Oxford before 1274, there were
no less certainly Merton scholars at Cambridge also before that date.
Merton’s scholars had their chef-lieu at Malden, but were studying at
these two universities, and possessed endowments at both during the
decade 1264-1274.
The Hundred Rolls furnish us with ample references to the Cambridge
scholars. In the Rolls for the borough and town of Cambridge, the 2nd
year of Edward I., they are accused of poaching on the
[Sidenote: A.D. 1274.]
fishing rights of the townsmen. “A servant of the House of the Merton
scholars[79] had appropriated to his masters’ use a certain foss common
to the whole town.” In the later inquisitions of the 7th of Edward I.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1278-9.]
we find them figuring among the most considerable Cambridge landlords,
one entry showing them to us as purchasers of land from Manfield: _Item
scolares de Merton tenent unum mesuagium cum quadraginta et quinque
acris terre ... quas emerunt de Willelmo de Manefeld_.[80]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1278-9.]
Three of these entries point to tenure of no very recent date. Thus
Eustace Dunning sold to Walter Howe a messuage with a croft which
Eustace had inherited from his father Hervey Dunning, and for which the
Howes, in accordance with an assignment made by Eustace Dunning, gave
twelve pence a year to the clerks of Merton (_per assignationem
praedicti Eustachi clericis de Merton xii^{d}_).[81] The declaration is
made by John son and heir of Walter Howe, so that Eustace Dunning’s
appointment in favour of the
[Sidenote: A.D. 1278-9.]
Merton clerks refers to some time back. Again, Agnes daughter of the
tailor Philip inherited a messuage in the parish of S. Peter which her
father “had held of the Merton scholars.” In the last place the
Cambridge jurymen affirm that two annual attendances should have been
made at the court of Chesterton for a holding of Eustace Dunning’s, but
that the scholars of Merton had failed to put in an appearance _for the
past six years_.[82]
These transactions cannot be held to relate to an estate managed for
the Oxford college founded in 1274, and to a period covering not more
than four or five years. From 1274, which is also the date of the
earliest Hundred Rolls, the Merton scholars were definitely and finally
established at Oxford; and when John Howe and Agnes Taylor gave their
evidence it is probable that there were no longer Merton scholars in
Cambridge: what their depositions seem to indicate is a concurrent
antiquity for Merton scholars at both universities. If these scholars
had not been settled among them when these land transactions occurred
the references would certainly have been to scholares de Merton
_Oxoniae_,[83] and it is well worthy of notice that the only two
instances in the Cambridge Hundred Rolls where “the Merton scholars at
Oxford” are referred to are two instances where Walter de Merton is said
to have “alienated” land in Cambridge for the use of the scholars in
Oxford.[84]
No doubt it had always been part of Merton’s design to found a
residential college for his scholars at one of the universities; and he
had perhaps strong reasons for establishing this at Cambridge. His great
patron was Chief-Justice Bassett, and the Bassetts were Cambridge
landowners. His patron in the original assignment of Malden manor was
Gilbert de Clare whose family gave its name in the next century to the
eponymous college at the same university. Was the _domus de Merton_ of
“the scholars and brethren” (p. 39) in fact at one time such a
residence? where poor scholars, some of them perchance from Merton
priory school itself, lived under the auspices of the Merton brethren?
Certain it is that a prior of Merton intrudes himself and his affairs
into the Cambridge Hundred Rolls.[85] It is also certain that the House
of Scholars of Merton is first heard of not at Oxford but at Cambridge.
Mr. J. W. Clark has pointed out in another connexion that the words
_domus_ and _aula_ were employed when a building was “appropriated by
endowment as a fixed residence for a body of scholars.” Our _domus
scholarium de Merton_ on which Cambridge lands were bestowed--to which
Cambridge lands were confirmed--in 1269, could not have been either in
Surrey or at Oxford.
Whether there was a house of Merton scholars at Cambridge before there
was a house of Merton scholars at Oxford, or not, it would appear that a
like antiquity must be claimed for the scholars themselves at both
universities.[86]
[Sidenote: Universities in other towns. The licence to found a
university at Northampton.]
One of the odd things about Merton’s movements is that though he began
buying land in Oxford the year after the Malden foundation (1265), he
made his chief acquisition in Cambridge as late as 1269, and that a year
later when he issued a revised set of statutes (1270) he still makes no
allusion to any change of locality. It is possible that in 1265 when he
wrote “at Oxford or at any other university” he had in mind the
tentatives then being made to found an English university in some other
town. It was in fact in 1262, the 45th year of the reign of Henry III.,
that Cambridge students had migrated to Northampton with the king’s
licence to found a university. The traditional bickerings between
southerners and northerners three years previously had been the cause of
the exodus, and the Cambridge scholars found many Oxonians already
there who had migrated from Oxford after their quarrel with the papal
legate in 1238 but had obtained no licence to institute a university.
The licence accorded to the masters and scholars of Cambridge university
was withdrawn four years later on a representation being made to Henry
III. that a university at Northampton must prove prejudicial to
Oxford.[87] Migrations of students to other towns took place throughout
the xiii century. They begin in 1209 when there was a general exodus
from Oxford not only to Cambridge but to the town of Reading. Thirty
years later the Oxonians migrated to Northampton and Salisbury, being
followed to the former in 1262 as we have just seen by many Cambridge
“masters and scholars.” These migrations certainly indicate that Oxford
and Cambridge were not yet regarded as such permanent homes of English
scholarship that other sites could not be substituted. The event which
most impressed the popular imagination occurred when both universities
had attained to European fame--the exodus in the reign of Edward III.
from Oxford to Stamford which caused the king in 1333 to issue his royal
letters forbidding any one to teach there. It had been prophesied that
the studies pursued at Oxford would be transferred to Stamford, and the
Cambridge floods gave rise to another prophecy, recorded by Spenser,
which showed that the Stamford incident still occupied men’s minds. The
flat Lincolnshire country would, it was said, become completely flooded,
and Stamford then would
---- shine in learning more than ever did
Cambridge or Oxford England’s goodly beames.
No migration took place from Cambridge after the foundation of its first
college. But before we enter upon this period of its history, and find
ourselves in the brilliant epoch which was so soon to overtake the
university in the xiv century, let us see what arrangements were made
for the accommodation of the scholar population previous to the
existence of colleges.
At first--in the xii and the early part of the xiii centuries--scholars
lived each at his own charges; perhaps groups of three and four would
club together, but every scholar was then, as Fuller expressively has
it, “his own founder and his own benefactor.”[88] The rescript of the
early years of Henry III., already cited,
[Sidenote: A.D. 1231 15th of Henry III.]
introduces us to the town hostels--_hospitia locanda_; and establishes
the taxing of lodging house charges by the _taxatores_, a usage probably
rendered the more necessary owing to the great influx of students two
years before, when the demand for lodgings must have been very much in
excess of the supply.[89] These town hostels, the result of town
enterprise, were subject to the four “taxors” only, and were under no
other academic supervision.[90] It seems highly probable, however, that
the king’s rescript gave rise to the university hostels, some thirty of
which were in existence fifty years later. In any case the rescript
leads us to conclude that the town hostels were in existence in the
previous century, and supplies us with a date before which we cannot
suppose that any university hostel existed.
[Sidenote: The university hostel.]
The university hostelries or inns for the accommodation of scholars who
lived there at their own charges were intermediate between the town
lodging house and the college, which they both anticipate and
supplement. A number of scholars joined together, elected their own
principal, and paid him at a fixed rate for board and lodging. At first,
therefore, the university like the town hostel was a private enterprise,
scholars undertook the charge of them in their private capacity. The
head of the hostel was called the Principal. Later on these institutions
changed their democratic character. The government passed entirely into
the hands of the principal, certain oaths were exacted of him, and he
kept a list of the scholars in his house.[91] The principal collected a
rent from the inmates, though in some hostels the accommodation appears
to have been free. All these changes, we may imagine, belong to the time
when some of the hostels were affiliated to colleges, becoming
thenceforward subject in all respects to the customs and discipline of
the endowed foundation. Thus S. Mary’s hostel, where Matthew Parker
studied, was affiliated to Corpus, Borden’s belonged to S. John’s
hospital, then to Ely, and in 1448 was affiliated to Clare; S. Bernard’s
belonged first to Queens’ then to Corpus; S. Austin’s to King’s. The
hostels took their name sometimes from the neighbouring church or
chapel, or other saintly patron, and sometimes from their proprietor.
“Newmarket” and “Harleston” hostels must have served for students from
these neighbouring towns. The monks who first came to study in Cambridge
lived in lodgings; but these were soon exchanged for the monastic
hostel, hence “Ely hostel” and “Monks’ hostel.”[92] Those zealous
learners the friars of the Sack had Jesu hostel, dismantled in 1307, the
Sempringham canons had S. Edmund’s hostel, the Barnwell canons had a
hostel in the town called S. Augustine’s, and the hospitaller knights of
S. John owned Crouched and S. John’s hostels in School Lane and Mill
Street.[93] Rud’s offers a good example of a xiii century Cambridge
hostel, and Physwick of one of the xivth. The former is mentioned in
1283 and was part of the compensation allowed in that year to S. John’s
for the alienated hostels at Peterhouse,[94] it still exists, almost
unaltered, and forms part of the Castle inn in S. Andrew’s Street.
Physwick was the private residence of an esquire bedell of that name who
bequeathed it for the purposes of a hostel in 1393. It was affiliated to
Gonville and was in use until absorbed in the buildings of Trinity
College in the xvi century.
Cambridge hostels were highly important foundations. The 8 jurists’
hostels housed eighty and a hundred students apiece, and the large
hostels of S. Bernard, S. Thomas, S. Mary, and S. Augustine sometimes
housed twenty and thirty regents without counting the non-regents and
students.[95] A large proportion of men whose names are not to be found
on the books of any college received their education in these houses.
The Inns, of which there were three at Cambridge--Oving’s, S. Zachary’s,
and S. Paul’s--were smaller and less important hostels and appear to
have been frequented by the richer students. Hostel and hall or college
existed side by side through the xiii, xiv, and xv centuries. Indeed
until the college system was well established the hostels greatly
exceeded the endowed halls in number, and they continued to supplement
the latter until the completion of the large colleges at the renascence.
Some twenty were erected as late as the xv and the opening years of the
xvi centuries. During the xiv and xv centuries many hostels were
destroyed to make room for the colleges; and in the xvith those which
remained were abandoned, Trinity
[Illustration: THE OLD CASTLE INN
Now styled “Ye Olde Castel Hotel.” The Baptist Church and the Police
Courts are seen just beyond, and the Roman Catholic Church in the
distance. The near trees are in the grounds of Emmanuel College.]
hostel, as Fuller testifies, being the only one remaining in use till
1540.[96]