of Edw. I. (Hundred Rolls i. p. 49).
[28] The transformation of houses of canons serving a church or
cathedral into Regular Canons in the xii and xiii centuries was the
effect of the rule indited by Yvo of Chartres which gave its final
form and name to the “Canons Regular of S. Augustine” at the end of
the xi c. The canons of S. Giles and Lanfranc’s hospital of S. Gregory
at Canterbury were among the earliest of these communities to be
converted, in the reign of Henry I., into Regulars.
[29] In the xi and xii centuries a large number of hospitals of the
order of S. Augustine were founded for the relief of poor and impotent
persons, the type being that of the Whittington hospital in London.
Sometimes their object was to succour the wayfarer, sometimes they
were virtually almshouses where leprous and indigent “brethren” formed
the larger part of the community with a few “healthful brethren”
and the master to look after them. Such was the origin, in the xi
c., of the Knights of Malta, or Order of the Hospital of S. John of
Jerusalem. At Canterbury Lanfranc erected a hospital of S. Gregory; at
Oxford the hospital of S. Bartholomew, founded in the reign of Hen.
I., was bestowed by Edw. III. on Oriel College; and Magdalen, Oxford,
was erected on the site of another S. John’s hospital, which numbered
brethren and sisters among its members. Amalfi merchants trading to
the Holy Land endowed the first “master and brethren” of the Order
of S. John of Jerusalem; a well-to-do burgess endowed the Cambridge
hospice, and the nobles, the bishops, and the sovereign himself are
to be numbered among the founders and benefactors of these first
almshouses and hospitals. Cf. ii. p. 117 _n._
[30] See chap. ii. Peterhouse and S. John’s.
[31] See chap. ii. S. John’s and Jesus Colleges.
[32] Fordham and Mirmaud-at-Welle. The Gilbertines of Chiksand in
Bedfordshire had a house and garden in King’s Childers’ Lane by King’s
Hall, which they leased to the university for the schools quadrangle
in 1433. The Gilbertines were a double Order of nuns and canons;
the former followed the Cistercian rule but were never affiliated
to that Order. The canons followed the rule of S. Augustine, but
the sympathies, like the dress, of the Gilbertines were Cistercian:
“_militat sub instituto Cisterciensi_.” Only in this indirect way did
Citeaux enter Cambridge: but see i. p. 25 and ii. p. 143.
[33] The Carmelite Bale says: _ex omni factione sua primus tandem fuit
qui theologicus doctor sit effectus_. Pits says the same in the _De
illust. Angl. Script._ For Carmelite property in Cambridge see also
vi. pp. 325-6.
[34] This was the treatise known in Cambridge as ‘the black book,’ in
which Prior Cantilupe tells of Cantaber and his son Grantanus, and
their foundation of Cambridge on the site of Caergrant.
[35] The prison or tolbooth had been the house of Benjamin the Jew,
which became university property in the reign of Elizabeth, but after
a famous trial in the next reign reverted to the citizens. Like the
Jewish houses elsewhere it was amongst the most solid structures in
the town.
[36] Dugdale says “before 1275.” Their priory was enlarged and perhaps
refounded by Alice, wife of de Vere second Earl of Oxford.
[37] Chap. ii., Sidney Sussex and Emmanuel Colleges.
[38] v. p. 275.
[39] All branches of the Augustinians were represented at Cambridge:
the Augustinian canon at Barnwell, the hospitaller at S. John’s, and
the hermit-friar at the Austin friary. ‘_The friars heremites of the
order of S. Austin_’ were settled in Suffolk from the middle of the
xiii c., probably by Richard de Clare Earl of Gloucester and Lord of
the honour of Clare. One of their chief benefactors was Elizabeth de
Burgh. See Clare College chap. ii. p. 64.
[40] Confraternities and friars “of the Sack,” known as Sacconi in
their birthplace, Italy, and so called because of the loose gown or
‘sack’ common to begging friars and confraternities, and also because
of the large sacks which they sometimes carried when begging for
the poor, were associations due to the preaching of S. Francis and
especially of S. Antony of Padua in the first quarter of the xiii c.
So that the Cambridge friars, dispersed after the Council of Lyons
in 1307, were one of the earliest of these communities; and it is
interesting to find them addicted to scholarship.
[41] Matthew Paris, anno 1257. _Concessa est mansio fratribus
Bethleemitis in Cantabrigia, silicet in vico qui ducit versus
Trumpintonam._
[42] They were begging friars following the rule of S. Austin.
[43] They had held land in Cambridge for over 100 years “of the gift
of the earl of Mandeville.” At the Suppression they were seized of
land in Haslyngfeld, co. Cambridge. Cf. ii. p. 96.
[44] The property was situated “in Henney,” a well-known part of Mill
Street in the parish of S. John Baptist, and included the stone house
on the high street by S. Michael’s rectory house which passed to the
family of Sir John Cambridge in 1311 was by him bequeathed to Corpus
Christi College, and became the nucleus of Gonville Hall. The prior of
Anglesey is found leasing this land in the reign of Edward III., and
selling it to Henry VI. in 1447. The priory lay between Cambridge and
Newmarket.
[45] _Rot. Hund._ ii. 360. Cf. also _ibid._ p. 370.
[46] pp. 25 _n._, 49 and ii. p. 90.
[47] Another piece of this ground was conveyed by Henry VI. (who
bought it of the university in the same year) to Trinity Hall in 1440
(and became the college garden). It is there described as “a void
ground” _pertinent priori et confratribus sancti Johannis in Anglia_.
Crouched hostel had already been pulled down for the schools. Like
other hostels in Mill Street--God’s house, S. Nicholas, and Austin’s
(see King’s and Christ’s Colleges) it stood, as we see, on open
ground: “a certain garden of the hostel of the Holy Cross” we hear of
in 1421.
[48] It is supposed that monks from Denney and Tyltey came here to
study. The former was in fact a cell to Ely abbey before Marie de
Chatillon transferred the Franciscans of Waterbeach thither. The
two ‘nuns of the Order of S. Clare’ who were friends of Erasmus at
Cambridge were probably inmates of Denney. In _Rot. Hund._ two other
communities are recorded: the _moniales de Pato_, of whom we know
nothing--there is a _Paston_ in Norfolk and another in Northants.;
and ‘the monks of the Holy Trinity at Cambridge’ who are mentioned in
the Oxford Hundred Rolls of the 7th year of Edw. I.: the name affords
another instance of the antiquity and popularity of this dedication
to the Trinity, which we find at Michaelhouse, Trinity Hall, Trinity
church, and in the guild of the Trinity at Cambridge.
[49] p. 127.
[50] Fuller.
[51] For later monastic influences in Cambridge, see ii. pp. 127-9,
Magdalene College.
[52] Pembroke College p. 69. For Scrope see ii. 94, v. 295; for Thorpe
ii. 75, 96, v. 295.
[53] _ ...in statutis universitatis ejusdem ... familia scholarium
... immunitate et libertate gaudeant qua et scholares, ut
coram archidiacono non respondeant...._ (Balsham’s Judgment
A.D. 1275/6). The _Statuta Antiqua_, the old body of
statutes of the university, have for the most part no chronological
arrangement, and the date cannot in some cases be determined to within
a century. The earliest ‘grace’ to which a date is attached belongs
to the year 1359, but there is another referable to the year 1275/6.
The latest, reduced to chronological order, is of the year 1506. The
_Statuta Antiqua_ were replaced in the 12th year of Elizabeth by a
fresh body of statutes, and these again by the statutes of Victoria,
1882. The former are printed in Dyer’s _Privileges of the University_.
[54] Simon Montacute (1337-1345) ceded the right of the bishops of Ely
to the presentation of fellowships in their own college of Peterhouse.
Cf. also iv. pp. 203-4.
[55] Dated February 20, 624; and 689. Martin’s bull recognises their
authority. Copies exist in the Cambridge Registry, Nos. 107 and 114 in
the catalogue.
[56] “_Si quis de ordine sacerdotium in monasterio suscipi rogaverit,
non quidem citius ei assentiatur._“--_Regula S. P. Benedicti, caput
lx._
[57] See, chap, ii., Michaelhouse, Corpus, Gonville, and Trinity Hall.
[58] A chartered corporation and a university in the sense of a
_studium generale_ possessing European privileges. Cambridge was a
_universitas_ many years before this, and was so familiarly styled by
Henry III. in 1231.
[59] It has been pointed out that our knowledge of Oxford’s
intellectual activity during the xii c. is confined to the visits
of three or four celebrated teachers who lectured to its changing
population and in its schools, among which the priory school of S.
Frideswide was the most important. We must not of course confuse
the activities of monastic and episcopal schools with those of a
university.
[60] Matthew Paris, _in anno 1209: Ita quod nec unus ex omni
universitate remansit_.
[61] p. 47.
[62] _Satis constat vobis quod apud villam nostrum Cantebr’ studendi
causa e diversis partibus tam cismarinis quam transmarinis confluit
multitudo, quod valde gratum habemus et acceptamus, cum exemplum
toti regno nostro commodum non modicum, et honor nobis accrescat,
et vos specialiter inter quos fideliter conversantur studentes non
mediocriter gaudere debetis et laetari._
[63] _Clerk_ and _scholar_ were used interchangeably in the xiii c.
as they are in these two rescripts, _clericus_ being employed in the
rescript of 1218 and in that addressed to the sheriff (_vicecomes_)
of the county cited above: _Quoniam ut audivimus plures nominantur_
clerici _apud Cantabr. qui sub nullius magistri scholarum sunt
disciplina et tuitione, sed potius mentiuntur se esse_ scholares
_cum non sint_.... In a further rescript of the king’s the meaning
is no less clear: _Ita tamen quod ad suspensionem vel mutilationem
clericorum non procedatis, sed eos alio modo per consilium
universitatis Cantabr. castigetis_. (Referring to “insults recently
offered to certain northern scholars of the university of Cambridge,”
1261.) In the Hundred Rolls, at the same period, we have _clerici de
Merton_ and _scholares de Merton_; and _clerici in scholis degentes_
is W. de Merton’s own description of his scholars.
[64] The charter of Oxford university belongs to the same reign.
[65] _Rot. Hund._ 7th Edw. I.
[66] The Pope no doubt refers to the forged bulls (p. 28) but his
reference to previous royal rescripts is likely to be more correct,
and to have been supplied by Edward himself.
[67] See _studium generale_ pp. 30 _n._, 31.
[68] The importance of Cambridge was steadily growing in the reigns
of Henry I. and Stephen. The isle of Ely supported Matilda; and the
earldom of Cambridge was conferred both by her and by Stephen for the
first time. The former by her letters, issued before the year 1146,
bestowed it on her favourite Aubrey de Vere, “if the King of Scotland
hath it not,” as prior in dignity to the counties of “Oxfordshire,
Berkshire, Wiltshire, or Dorsetshire” one of which he was to take if
Stephen’s gift of the earldom of Cambridge to Saint David of Scotland
held good. De Vere had to accept the county of Oxford which has since
remained in that family--the earldom of Cambridge passing to royal
hands and becoming in time a royal dukedom. David of Scotland held
Cambridge in his own and Huntingdon in right of his wife. Malcolm of
Scotland held both earldoms together in exchange for the northern
counties of Northumberland and Cumberland. The union of these earldoms
is still represented by the union of Huntingdon and Cambridge under
one _vicecomes_ or sheriff. Edward III. created his wife’s brother
(the Count of Hainault) and after him his son Edmund Langley, earls of
Cambridge. Edmund’s son Richard held the earldom until his attainder,
and his son Richard Duke of York was again created Earl of Cambridge
by Henry V. (p. 295). This was Edward IV.’s father in whom the earldom
became merged in the crown. The arms of Edmund Langley, Duke of York
and Earl of Cambridge, are on the first of the 6 shields of arms of
Edward’s sons over the entrance gate of Trinity; beneath is inscribed:
EDMONDUS D. EBOR. C. CANTABRUGIE.
[69] See “Town and Gown” chap. iv. p. 233 _n._
[70] Cf. “the students from regions near home” (_e partibus diversis
tam cismarinis_ ...) of his father’s rescript p. 33.
[71] For other references to this important document see _ante_ pp.
14, 28; chap. iii. p. 165 _n_, iv. p. 203.
[72] Henry VI., VII., VIII., and Edward VI. continued the favour shown
by the Henrys and Edwards to Cambridge; the exceptions were Henry V.
and Edward IV. See ii. p. 101, v. p. 262. For the relation of the
English queens to the university see Queens’ College pp. 109, 112, and
p. 114.
Edward III. allowed the university to appropriate any church of the
yearly value of £40; to receive (through its chancellor) the oaths
of the mayor and aldermen and the bailiffs; to take cognizance of
all causes in which the scholars were concerned, “maim and felony”
excepted; and required that the chancellor should not be disquieted if
he imprisoned offenders; that masters of arts should not be cited out
of the university; and that the mayor should make assay of the weight
of bread as often as the chancellor demanded it.
[73] pp. 29, 54.
[74] Peterhouse p. 55, S. John’s pp. 122-3.
[75] Except Kilkenny’s exhibitioners, _infra_ p. 40.
[76] “I have given to God, the Blessed Virgin, blessed John Baptist,
and to the House of the Scholars of Merton“: these words occur in the
same deed with those in the text. _Harl. Add. MSS. 5832. ff. 74, 75._
The gift includes a stone house in the town: _Dedi etiam et concessi
prefatae domui ... domum illam lapideam in Cauntebrigg. cum gardino et
curia adjacente_.... Three deeds relating to the same transaction are
dated _mense Martii_ 54th of Hen. III. In _Rot. Hund._ 7th Edw. I. p.
366, a certain John gives a quit rent to the scholars of Merton for 18
acres of this property.
[77] The priory of S. Frideswide granted him land in 1265, and he
obtained much more two years later.
[78] The wording provides for the existing or any other _ordinatio_
Merton may formulate.
[79] “_Domus scolarium de Merton._” _Burg. Cantebr. Rot. Hund._ i. 55.
[80] _Rot. Hund._ ii. 360.
[81] The “Merton clerks,” _clerici de Merton_, are mentioned again in
the next paragraph. At the same date a certain Johanna declares that
she had as a marriage portion from her father a messuage given him by
Cecil at the Castle, for which is paid a quit rent of twelve pence a
year to “the scholars of Merton.” _Rot. Hund._ ii. 379. In the Hundred
of Chesterton (p. 402) we find that “the scholars of Merton hold of
the fee of Hervey Dunning” such and such properties. They also paid a
quit rent to Edmund Crouchback for lands he held (on the death of de
Montfort) as earl of Leicester.
[82] _Rot. Hund._ ii. 364, 407.
[83] The general rule in these Rolls is to add no qualification of
origin in cases where the owner, or religious house, has another
habitation in the locality to which the transaction refers. Hence we
find “the prior of Anglesey,” “the prioress of Stratford,” side by
side with “the scholars of Merton” in the Cambridge Hundred Rolls (cf.
_Rot. Hund._ ii. 364).
[84] Grantchester (7th Edw. I. p. 565): _et tota dicta pars alienata
est scolaribus Oxon’ per dominum Walter’ de Merton’, nescit quo
warranto_. Gamlingay: “William of Leicester sold the whole of that
holding to _dominus_ Walter de Merton and the said Walter _gave it all
to the scholars_ of the _domus de Merton Oxonie_.”
[85] “Villani ejusd’ Gunnor’ dicunt quod _prior de Mertone_” held the
advowson of the church of Barton. (_Rot. Hund._ ii. 564.)
The Bishop of Nelson points out that the scholars were called not
after Walter de Merton, but after the place--Merton priory. Merton
himself had no surname; he was born at Basingstoke, and was perhaps
educated at the priory from which he also took his name. Beket was
certainly educated at this well-known Merton, which gave its name
to the “Statute of Merton” devised there in 1236, and was also the
theatre of a council held by the archbishop 22 years later. At the
evaluation of 1291, the priory held property in Norfolk (_Index
Monasticus_). The Cambridge estates settled on the scholars of the
_domus apud Meandon_ (Malden) in 1270 were in Gamlingay, _Merton_,
_Over-Merton_, Chesterton, etc. It is worth notice that among a number
of scholars who received the king’s pardon in 1261 for the part they
had taken in a riot, there is a _William de Merton_, servant to two of
the East Anglian scholars implicated.
[86] For the “Ely scholars” see ii. pp. 122-3. The first _to leave an
endowment_ for scholars was William of Durham in 1249; but several
years elapsed before the fund was utilised, scholars maintained, or
University College Oxford founded. University College was thus the
outcome of an earlier _intention_ to endow, and Balliol College was an
earlier foundation in embryo, than either Peterhouse or Merton.
[87] The preamble of these letters addressed to the civic
authorities at Northampton is as follows: _Occasione cuiusdam
magnae contentionis in villa Cantabrigiensi triennio jam elapso
subortae nonnulli clericorum tunc ibidem studentium unanimiter ab
ipsa villa recessissent, se usque ad villam nostram praedictam
Northam. transferentes et ibidem (studiis inherendo) novam construere
universitatem cupientes_. The letters are dated from Westminster 1
Feb. in the 49th year of his reign (1265). _Rot. Claus._ 49, _Hen.
III. membr._ 10. _d._ [1 Feb. 1264-5].
[88] Chaucer shows us that the system of private lodgings continued in
vogue at Oxford even in the late xiv c. His “pore scholer” lodges in
the house of a well-to-do carpenter.
[89] p. 33.
[90] Cf. the regulations for lodgings at the present day, iv. pp. 224,
225.
[91] Caius speaks of “two principals” overseeing respectively the
studies and the economics of Physwick hostel.
[92] Cf. ii. Trinity Hall p. 79, Magdalene pp. 127, 128.
[93] Crouched, Crutched, for _Crossed_. So the Trinitarians who also
wore a conspicuous cross on their habit were known in England as
Crutched friars.
[94] p. 56.
[95] S. Austin’s or Augustine’s hostel had a length of 220 feet with
80 of breadth.
[96] See _pensioners_, iv. p. 217 _n_.
Mr. J. Bass Mullinger has published (_Hist. Univ. Camb._ pp. 218-220)
a highly interesting statute relating to hostels which dates in
all probability from the end of the xiii c., and shows how rapidly
university rights in these _hospitia locanda_ were extended as a
consequence of Henry’s rescript (p. 47). Any scholar who “desired to
be principal of a hostel” offered his “caution“--with sureties or
pledges--to the landlord and became _ipso facto_ its head, and could
be instituted by the chancellor against the will of the landlord. The
scholar, who has become principal, may not abdicate in favour of a
fellow scholar but only give up possession to the said landlord. The
next candidate could also appeal to the chancellor should the landlord
refuse his request to succeed when a vacancy in the principalship
occurred. An interesting clause provides that though the landlord
should agree with the scholar-principal that “mine hostel” should not
be taxed, the scholars who come to live there may, in spite of both
of them, have the house taxed by the taxors, “inasmuch as agreements
between private persons cannot have effect to the prejudice of public
rights.”
[97] For university and collegiate officials, see iv. pp. 203-10.
[98] i. 29, 38, ii. 55-6.
[99] See iv. 217 _n._, and early college discipline pp. 221-2.
[100] Balsham (a village 9-1/2 miles S.E. of Cambridge) was one of the
10 manorhouses, palaces, and castles of the bishops of Ely in the xiv
c. Montacute resided here in 1341. In 1401 a controversy regarding
archidiaconal jurisdiction in the university was held here: a similar
dispute occurred in Balsham’s time (p. 28). On the alienation of this
manor from the see of Ely it was purchased by the founder of the
Charterhouse, and now forms part of the endowment of that college.
There is a mention of Hugh de Balsham (Hugo de Belesale) in Matthew
Paris.
[101] S. John’s College, pp. 122-3.
[102] iv. p. 214.
[103] Gray, _Installation Ode_. There has been little water in Coe fen
for the last hundred years. The wall and water gate were made during
the mastership of Warkworth and the episcopacy of Alcock (1486-1500)
and ornamented with the arms of the latter, who was probably a
Peterhouse man.
[104] i. p. 22. Their house was on a messuage purchased by them
“opposite the chapel of S. Edmund“: it lay on the south of the two
hostels, and reached “as far as the marsh“--_i.e._ Coe fen.
[105] The rebuilding of the hall and combination room took place in
1866-70. Gilbert Scott, William Morris, Burne-Jones and Ford Madox
Brown were called in, and an excellent piece of work accomplished, the
fellows’ old “Stone parlour” and “inner parlour” being thrown into one
to make the present picturesque combination room.
[106] College libraries, p. 138 _n._ The two Beauforts, the Cardinal
and the Duke of Exeter, and two of Henry VI.’s physicians Roger
Marshall and John Somerset (p. 106), all enriched this library.
[107] _Beata Maria de Gratia._ For S. Peter’s church and Peterhouse
chapel, see _Willis and Clark, i. p. 40_.
[108] v. p. 280.
[109] v. pp. 263-4. Isaac Barrow uncle of his great namesake was
one of the fellows ejected by the Puritan commissioners, before his
nephew who had been entered for the college could come into residence.
Crashaw was another; and Whitgift was a third fellow whose name stands
for anti-Puritanism.
[110] Both sent by Edward VI. to inculcate Protestant doctrine in
Cambridge.
[111] See v. p. 278.
[112] In the reign of Richard II. the merits of the Peterhouse
scholars were as celebrated as their “indigence” was “notorious”;
they continued in unceasing exercise of discipline and study, and the
tithes of Cherry Hinton appear to have been bestowed in the hope of
providing through them a bulwark against lollardry.
[113] The Bible-clerks (_bibliotistae_) were so called because it was
their duty to read the Scriptures in hall at meal time: they were a
sort of poorer scholar or ‘sizar,’ see iv. p. 219.
[114] He was Chancellor of the Exchequer to Edward II.; Canon of York
and Wells, and Rector of East Dereham and of North Creake in Norfolk.
For Michaelhouse, see also Statutes p. 67 and Trinity College p. 133.
[115] Elizabeth de Burgh speaks of “the college” of her “aforesaid
house.” Cf. the words used by the founder of Trinity Hall as regards
his own foundation: University Calendar _sub rubrica_ Trinity Hall.
[116] See royal visits, p. 113.
[117] See Mill Street, pp. 96-7 _n._
[118] She was daughter of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and
Hertford by Joan daughter of Edward I. Her brother and co-heir fell
at Bannockburn 1314. Like Lady Margaret she was three times married,
first to John de Burgh son and heir of Richard Earl of Ulster, her
third husband also being an Irishman.
Chancellor Badew was a member of the Chelmsford knightly family of
that name.
[119] April 5 1340. Grant by the university of the _domus
universitatis_ to Elizabeth de Burgh Lady de Clare, in consideration
of her gift of the advowson of Litlyngton. See Caius p. 144 _n._
[120] Peterhouse, Michaelhouse, Clare House--the earliest name for
a Cambridge college; Corpus also was incorporated as the _Domus
Scholarium Corporis Christi_, etc. King’s Hall is the first to be
so styled and is followed by Pembroke Hall. In 1440 we have King’s
College. Peterhouse and Trinity Hall are now the only colleges which
retain the older style, although Clare itself was called Clare Hall
until 1856.
[121] Cf. p. 109 _n._
[122] “Soler,” apparently used for a loggia or balcony. East Anglian
belfries were called bell-solers. Cf. _solarium_ for an upper chamber,
and _nei solai_ (Ital.) for “in the garrets.” In early Cambridge
college nomenclature _solar_ was an upstairs, _celar_ (cellar) a
downstairs room.
[123] Simon Montacute, 17th Bishop of Ely, re-wrote the statutes of
Peterhouse, 1338-44.
[124] Cf. Merton’s “Oxoniae, vel alibi ubi _studium vigere_
contigerit” (1264), and the words in Alan Bassett’s bequest for
monastic scholars at Oxford or elsewhere _ubi studium fuerit
universitatis_ (1233).
[125] See also p. 86 footnote.
[126] The proportion of priests among the fellows (_i.e._ scholars on
the foundation) was to be 6 in 30, 4 in 20, 2 in 12. See also pp. 152
and 153.
[127] Cf. King’s Hall, p. 132.
[128] The xv c. library at Pembroke was over the hall; the older
library of the same date at Peterhouse was next the hall.
[129] The earliest of these features appears at Pembroke, which had a
treasury. For the combination room see p. 135 and iv. p. 214. For the
gateway, p. 140. For students’ studies, iv. p. 232 _n._
[130] Cf. Peterhouse p. 56. The Christian church evolved in Rome no
doubt originated in the domestic _aula_, the basilica, of a great
private house, and was surrounded by those dwelling-rooms which
constituted the first _titulus_ or _domus ecclesiae_. So at Cambridge
we have a _domus collegii_, and _domus vel aula scholarium_ sancti
Michaelis or Clarae.
[131] After the founder’s death two rectors were to exercise complete
jurisdiction, one of these was to be a secular graduate but the other
is to be a Franciscan. Moreover the fellows of the college were “to
give their best counsel and aid” to the abbess and sisters of Denney
abbey who had from the founder “a common origin with them.” For
Denney, see i. p. 25, 25 _n._
[132] _Notabile et insigne et quam pretiosum collegium quod inter
omnia loca universitatis ... mirabiliter splendet et semper
resplenduit._
[133] Spenser entered as a sizar.
[134] Gray left Peterhouse on account of some horseplay on the part of
its students who raised a cry of fire which brought him out of bed and
down from his window overlooking Little S. Mary’s church in an escape
which his dread of fire had induced him to contrive. Of his treatment
at Pembroke he writes that it was such as might have been extended to
“Mary de Valence in person.”
[135] Pitt in introducing his son to the college writes: “Such as he
is, I am happy to place him at Pembroke; and I need not say how much
of his parents’ hearts goes along with him.” (Letter to the Senior
tutor of the college, 1767.)
[136] He was afterwards fellow of Trinity Hall, and Spenser dedicates
one of the Eclogues to him there.
[137] See Trinity Hall, p. 80.
[138] The asterisks denote Masters of the College. Whitgift migrated
from Queens’ to Pembroke, and was subsequently fellow of Peterhouse
and Master of Pembroke. Langton of Winchester was a fellow.
[139] pp. 27 and 96.
[140] v. p. 275.
[141] Reyner D’Aubeney and Robert Stanton.
[142] p. 68 _n._
[143] Alcock himself, by a unique arrangement made with Rotherham,
held the Seals conjointly with that prelate, then Bishop of Lincoln,
from April to September 1474; and he had acted in parliament in
the same capacity for Stillington in 1472. Merton whose Cambridge
operations were described in the last chapter was Lord Chancellor;
so was Sir Robert Thorpe who began the Schools, and so were Booth
and Rotherham who completed the Schools quadrangle and built the old
library. John Somerset, who was chiefly instrumental in the founding
of King’s College, was Chancellor of the Exchequer to Henry VI.
[144] Cf. nationality of founders of colleges p. 150.
[145] The stone house (p. 24 _n._) and John Goldcorn’s property--all
opposite Michaelhouse--were then fashioned by Bateman, after the
founder’s demise, as Gonville Hall.
[146] See Gonville and Caius, pp. 143-4.
[147] Twelve preachers from each university were annually licensed for
any diocese in England. Gonville was now allowed two such licences on
its own account.
[148] p. 141.
[149] He landed at Yarmouth in June, and the charter of foundation is
dated November 20.
[150] Magdalene, p. 127.
[151] The style “the keeper and scholars of the college of the Holy
Trinity of Norwich,” reminds us that the original dedication of this
and Gonville corresponds to that of two of the ancient Cambridge
guilds--the Holy Trinity and the Annunciation.
[152] The N.E. corner was obtained four years after the foundation by
the purchase of a house at the corner of Henney Lane.
[153] See also King’s.
[154] See also Caius.
[155] Account given of the building of Corpus by Archbishop Parker’s
Latin secretary, John Jocelyn, fellow of Queens’. It is supposed that
the hall of the guild of Corpus Christi was near the old court; S.
Mary’s guild met at the hostel of that name near the present Senate
House. See also p. 83.
[156] _Ibid._
[157] The brethren and sisters of the two guilds presumably thus taxed
all house property bequeathed by them to their college, to defray
the expenses of the wax lights so freely used in funeral and other
liturgical rites. It has been pointed out that the riots occurred two
days after the feast of Corpus Christi, with its recent procession in
England, the contribution of wax tapers for which may have greatly
aggravated the grievance. The feast is of xiii c. origin, the outdoor
procession dates from the late xivth.
[158] She was heiress to her sister Eleanor who had been betrothed to
Edward IV. They were the daughters of John Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury,
and Elizabeth’s only child Ann was wife to Richard of York murdered in
the Tower.
[159] The dearth of clerks or clergy and the failure of learning: the
former engaged the attention of the founders of Gonville, Trinity
Hall, and Corpus, the latter of the founder of Clare who writes: “to
promote ... the extension of these sciences, which by reason of the
pestilence having swept away a multitude of men, are now beginning to
fail rapidly.”
[160] The fact that we have a guild college built in Cambridge is
especially interesting, for, as Dr. Stubbs has shown, Cambridge
ranks highest among English towns for its guild history. Even the
Exeter statutes do not rival those of one of its ancient guilds
which united the craft or religious guild with the frith-guild--the
guild instituted for the religious interests of its members or
to protect craftsmen and their craft, and the guild which was an
attempt “on the part of the public authorities to supplement the
defective execution of the law by measures for mutual defence.” The
Cambridge statutes, in fact, show us the guild as an element in
the development of the township or burgh, one of those communities
within a community which was the earliest expedient of civilisation,
the earliest essay in organisation, everywhere. The guild which
combined these two institutions was a thanes guild. It made and
enforced legal enactments; it paid the blood-money if a member slew
a man with righteous cause, and exacted eight pounds from any one
who robbed a member. “It is improbable” writes Dr. Stubbs “that
any institution on so large a scale existed in any other town than
London.” In Athelstan’s reign we have a complete code of such a London
frith-guild. (_Constitutional History of England_, vol. i. p. 414.)
It is against this historic background that we find the guilds
of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin uniting to add a common
scholastic interest to interests civil and religious, by founding a
college. The guilds were lay institutions; in two of the best known
Cambridge guilds priests were either excluded, or, if admitted, denied
a share in the government; and a chaplain for the guild of the Blessed
Virgin was only to be maintained if the necessary assistance to the
poorer members permitted of it.
[161]
“Thus of Cambridge the name gan first shyne
As chieffe schoole and vniuersitie
Vnto this tyme fro the daye it began”
[162] The “good duke of Lancaster” was Alderman of the Guild of Corpus
Christi. John of Gaunt greatly befriended the college. It was _anno
1356_ that the “translation of the college of Corpus Christi out of
lay hand to the patronage of the duke of Lancaster,” took place; a
document so entitled once formed part of the Registry MSS.
[163] Augustinians never enjoyed their habit in comfort; in the xiii
c. they were obliged to make their leather girdle long and their tunic
short because they were suspected of a desire to pass as corded and
sandalled Franciscans, and to cover over their white tunic with black
in the streets lest they should be taken for friars preachers.
[164] pp. 127, 128 _n._, and p. 143, 143 _n._
[165] _Recorda et placita coram cancellario Ric. le Scrope in le
Tollebouth. 2 Ric. II. 1378-9._ MS. No. 49 in the Cambridge Registry.
[166] Stephen le Scrope was chancellor in 1400 and 1414, Richard
Scroop (who had been Master of King’s Hall) in 1461, and Lady Anne
Scroope was one of the early benefactors of Gonville’s hall; see vi.
p. 325, 325 _n._
[167] Edward himself speaks of it as “so important a college” in 1342.
See p. 132. Since going to press I see that Mr. Rouse Ball identifies
King’s Hall as ‘Solar Hall’ in his monograph on Trinity College,
published in March 1906. Prof. Willis conjectured that ‘Solar Hall’ =
Garrett Hostel.
[168] King’s Hall statutes name 14 as the age.
It will be remembered that Pembroke, Clare, Corpus, and King’s Hall
were all directly or indirectly connected with the reigning house. For
the group of great names connected with Edward’s household and with
Cambridge at this time cf. v. pp. 291-295.
[169] The main artery of the xiv and xv century university was not, as
now, the High street, but the Mill street (Milne street). It lay in a
direct line between Clare Hall and Queens’ Lane, and 7 colleges had
their entrances on it: Michaelhouse, Trinity Hall, Clare, old King’s
College, S. Catherine’s, and Queens’. Gonville was approached from
the north end, and King’s Hall lay on the same side. The church and
property of the Knights of S. John and Garret’s and Ovyng’s hostels
were in the same street. Mill street began at Queens’ Lane, and led
northwards from the King’s and the Bishop’s Mills, which gave it its
name. The larger part was alienated in 1445 to build the second King’s
College.
Another characteristic feature of old Cambridge was the _King’s
Ditch_ made by Henry III. in 1267, which starting from Castle Mound,
with a walk beside it, formed the western boundary of King’s Hall,
Michaelhouse, and Trinity Hall, and polluted the water supply of
Peterhouse even in Andrew Perne’s time.
[170] Temp. Laurence Booth, chancellor.
[171] See Loggan’s print, 1688. The great schools in the School street
are first mentioned 1346-7. The divinity schools were the first to
be completed, by Sir _William_ Thorpe’s executors, in 1398. The
quadrangle was completed _c._ 1475. The eastern front was rebuilt in
1755. The buildings lie under the present library and are now used
for the keeping of “acts” and for discussions, but not for lectures
in the various faculties. The new Divinity schools are in S. John’s
street, and were erected by friends as a memorial of Bishop Selwyn.
The Science schools, school of Human Anatomy, chemical laboratories,
etc. are on the site of the university botanical garden which was once
Austinfriars’ property.
[172] The room where these were treasured was the _libraria communis_
or _magna_ (in the time of Caius the “old” or “public” library), which
still exists on the south side, with Chancellor Rotherham’s library on
the east. The ancient two-storeyed building on the west which existed
as early as 1438 still contains the old Canon Law (now the Arts)
school, with the original library and the university chapel (disused
for centuries) above (p. 97).
[173] Fuller and Caius both record this fact.
[174] It consists of 700 MSS. and 30,000 volumes. Other and earlier
benefactors to the library were Perne (1574), Fulke Greville, Stephen
Perse of Caius, and George Villiers Duke of Buckingham.
There is a library “Chest” and endowments, amounting to about £2000,
plus the income of £4500 from the common university Fund.
[175] A copy of every book and pamphlet published in England is sent
here, to the British Museum, and to the Bodleian.
[176] The printing of bibles and of the Book of Common Prayer is still
confined to the king’s printer and the 2 universities. Until 1779 the
printing of almanacks was also restricted to the universities and the
Stationers’ Company.
[177] See iii. p. 183, and iv. p. 205.
[178] Cf. the laying of the foundation stone of the Norman church of
S. Giles in 1092, when Anselm of Canterbury and the Bishop of Lincoln
(then the diocesan) were present.
[179] In 1439. Its site was the present ante-chapel, see Christ’s
College p. 117.
[180] The king’s design did not at first include the connexion of Eton
and King’s. The foundations of a college and chapel for a rector and
12 scholars were first laid opposite Clare, between Mill Street and
the Schools, on April 2, 1441. Within three years this foundation was
changed into a society which, like Eton, is under a Provost and which
was bound to provide the free education of poor Etonians. Here Henry
imitated William of Wykeham, and the statutes which he drew up follow
the lines laid down by the founder of Winchester and New College. The
original “mean quadrant” was used till 1828 when it was sold to the
university for the library extension on that side. The chapel fell
down in 1536. A wall and gateway on the west, remain. The new design
had the original court and Clare on the north, Austin’s hostel and
Whitefriars on the south: the chapel was to form the north side of a
quadrangle measuring 230 × 238 feet (cf. the measurements of Corpus);
and, as in previous colleges, the west side was to contain the hall
and provost’s lodging, a library and lecture rooms. The south and
east sides were to be for the chambers and the latter was to have a
gateway and tower. The present Queens’ College is on the site of the
Whitefriars’ house; and the old gate of King’s which led from the
chapel yard to Queens’ Lane used to be known as “Friars’ gate.” (For a
full account of this most interesting design the reader is referred to
Messrs. Willis and Clark’s book.)
For the modern buildings four _separate_ ranges were designed, the
first to be erected being the Gibbs’ building on the west: the
southern side and the screen have been built since 1824, Wilkins
being the architect; on this side are the hall, combination room,
and library, and the Provost’s lodge. Sir Gilbert Scott erected the
building on the south east, which was projected after 1870.
[181] The Norfolk name of Boleyn is found at the university in the
xv c. Henry Boleyn was proctor in 1454-5, and Anne’s uncle was
churchwarden of S. Clement’s.
[182] It has been suggested that Tudor architecture might be styled
Heraldic architecture, so freely does heraldry and blazonry enter into
its plan and the scheme of decoration. England’s two great specimens
of the Perpendicular--King’s College chapel and Henry VII.’s chapel
at Westminster--are pervaded by a “gorgeous display of heraldry.” The
west and south entrances of King’s are decorated with bold carvings of
the badges of Henry VII.--the crowned rose and portcullis. “No person
ever glanced his eye over the wonders around and above him, without
being awestruck at the daring of the architect that could plan, and
the builders that could erect such a structure. The whole of the
lower part of the Chapel beneath the windows is divided into panels,
and every panel is filled with the arms of the king who erected the
building.” “The immense pendants hanging from the gorgeous roof are
ornamented with the rose, the royal badge of both the king and queen
at this period.” (Clark’s _Introduction to Heraldry_, edited by J. R.
Planché, Rouge Croix.) The arms and supporters of Eton, Henry VI. and
VIII., Richard II., Edward IV. and VIth, Mary and Elizabeth, appear
also. The gateway towers of Christ’s and John’s afford other examples
of heraldic display as the exclusive scheme of decoration--they bear
the arms, supporters, and badges of their founder, the mother of Henry
VII. Finally the Entrance Gateway tower of Trinity exhibits the arms
of Edward III. and his six sons (William of Hatfield being represented
by a blank shield); above is a statue of Henry VIII. No street--no
town--in England presents anything like this “boast of heraldry” which
Gray had always under his eyes in Cambridge. It is a permanent record
of the two royal groups in England who preferred this university; the
gateway at Trinity being the _trait d’union_ between them.
[183] “The scholars of King’s enjoyed the questionable privilege of
drifting into their degrees without examination. Lectures and rare
compositions in Latin were the only demands upon their time,” writes
Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. The same arrangements obtained at New
College Oxford until 50 years ago.
[184] The “13 poor men” who are to form part of the foundation at
Eton are an addition of Henry’s own; they do not appear on Wykeham’s
foundation.
[185] For the Days, see v. p. 273 _n._ Wickham was vice-provost of
Eton.
[186] Somerset returned to Cambridge in later life, after he had
fallen into disgrace and poverty, and met, like Metcalfe of John’s,
with small gratitude. Dr. Philip Baker, though a Catholic, retained
the provostship under Elizabeth till 1570. For King’s men see also pp.
174-5, 272-3-4 _n._, 283.
[187] Eton is the only public school joined from its foundation with
a Cambridge college. Merchant Taylors’ used however to be related to
Pembroke (which owes Spenser’s presence there to this circumstance)
and the ancient school of Bury used, it is said, to send its _alumni_
to Gonville. S. Paul’s school has tied scholarships and exhibitions at
Corpus Christi and Trinity: Corpus was connected with Norwich school
and Norfolk by Bacon, Parker, and other Norfolk benefactors, and has
tied scholarships with King’s School, Canterbury, and Westminster;
the last being also closely connected with Trinity College. Harrow
has two tied scholarships at Caius; Magdalene holds the Latimer
Neville scholarships for Shrewsbury, Marlborough, Uppingham, and
Fettes schools, and tied exhibitions from Wisbech school. Uppingham
is similarly connected with Emmanuel; Peterhouse with Huntingdon Free
Grammar School, and S. John’s with 18 schools all over England and
with several towns as well.
[188] A chapel of S. Lucy (erected 1245) came into the possession of
Peterhouse with the property of the friars of the Sack (1309) and was
used by the fellows towards the end of that century. The licences
obtained by Bateman (1352 and 1353) for chapels in Trinity Hall and
Gonville were never acted upon. Gonville however had a house chapel
in 1393. At this date Clare also had a chapel, which was used at the
primate’s visitation in 1401. The Clare Statutes (1359) direct that S.
John Baptist’s church be used. For ritual in the college chapels, see
pp. 59, 145. Organs were placed in most of the chapels in the reign of
Charles I., at a time when the courts, gates, and frontage of colleges
underwent repair and decoration.
[189] Cf. with the dimensions of Corpus old court which was
considerably larger (220 by 140), of the proposed quadrangle at King’s
p. 102 _n._, and with the frontage of some of the hostels p. 50.
[190] Haddon Hall in Derbyshire; the first owners of which were those
Peverels (”of the Peak”) who figure in Cambridge history at the time
of the Conquest (i. p. 17). The house passed to the Bassetts, a name
which was also well known in the university; and from there--so the
old story runs--Dorothy Vernon, a daughter of the last owners of the
manor, ran away with Sir John the first Lord Manners.
[191] For the marriage of a xvi c. President of Queens’, see iv. pp.
209, 212.
[192] Pearson was educated here, then at King’s of which he became
fellow, and was Master of Jesus and, in 1662, of Trinity.
[193] See Bernard’s hostel p. 109.
[194] Margaret had however called it “the quenes collage of sainte
Margarete and S. Bernard.” In her petition for a charter she tells the
king: “in the whiche vniuersitie is no college founded by eny quene of
Englond hidertoward.” The statutes were drawn up by Millington first
Provost of King’s, and others.
[195] Accounts of King’s Hall. Here, too, the king was to have been
lodged for the parliament of 1447.
[196] Henry VII. was on his way to the same celebrated shrine when he
came to Cambridge in 1506.
[197] He was at S. John’s Oxford, which he left without his degree.
[198] “Hall of S. Katerine,” the only foundation since King’s College
founded as a _hall_ not a _college_.
[199] Willis and Clark.
[200] It was the gift of Malcolm “the Maiden” of Scotland. The
monastery was much enlarged and enriched by him _circa_ 1160. Dugdale
dates the house to the middle of Stephen’s reign or perhaps as early
as 1130. In the xiii c. Constantia wife to Earl Eustace granted to the
nuns all the fisheries and water belonging to the town of Cambridge,
and the convent at that time shared with the canons of S. John’s and
the Merton scholars the fame of being the greatest landlords in the
town. See i. pp. 16, 18 and 36 _n._, vi. p. 311 and ii. p. 109. On a
stone by the south-eastern corner of the south transept in the church
there is this inscription (A.D. 1261):
_Moribus ornata
Facet hic bona Berta Rosata._
[201] Fuller.
[202] See iii. p. 165 _n._ Dyer points out that William Byngham is
called “proctor and Master of God’s House,” but not founder: he
considers that Hen. VI. was the founder, Byngham being its procurator
as Doket was procurator of Queens’ and Somerset of King’s colleges.
The facts recorded here and in chap. iii. appear to support this
conclusion. At the same time Byngham in his letter to the king in
1439 distinctly claims to have built the house: “Goddeshous the which
he hath made and edified in your towne of Cambridge.” In the case
of every Cambridge college the founder is the man who endows it. A
college may owe its existence (as certainly in Byngham’s case) to the
energies of some one else, but its founder remains the man by whom
it was built and endowed. A God’s House at Ewelme in Oxfordshire was
founded about the same time by William de la Pole and Alice his wife,
Earl and Countess of Suffolk. “It is still in being,” writes Tanner,
“but the Mastership is annexed to the King’s professor of Physic in
the university of Oxford.” A God’s house was an almshouse for some
object of mercy. Thirteen poor men were maintained at Ewelme.
[203] Founder of Emmanuel College. Fuller says he was “a serious
student in” and benefactor of this college.
[204] Refer to iv. p. 217 _n._
[205] p. 153, iii. p. 165 _n._
[206] She diverted some of her gifts to Henry VII.’s chapel at
Westminster, with the king’s consent, in favour of S. John’s College
Cambridge.
[207] “Fryvelous things, that were lytell to be regarded, she wold let
pass by, but the other that were of weyght and substance, wherein she
might proufyte, she wolde not let for any payne or labour, to take
upon hande. All Englonde for her dethe had cause of wepynge ... the
students of both the unyversytees, to whom she was as a moder; all the
learned men of Englonde, to whom she was a veray patroness ... all the
noblemen and women to whom she was a myrroure and exampler of honoure;
all the comyn people of this realme, for whom she was in their cause a
comyn medyatryce, and toke right grete displeasure for them.”
Fisher was created cardinal priest of S. Vitalis, in the modern Via
Nazionale (the ancient _titulus Vestinae_) by Paul III. When Henry
VIII. heard that the Hat had been conferred, he exclaimed that he
would not leave the bishop a head to wear it on. The following prayer
appears in the Roman breviary for the feast day of Blessed John
Fisher (June 22):--_Deus, qui beato pontifici tuo Joanni pro veritate
et justitia magno animo vitam profundere tribuisti; da nobis ejus
intercessione et exemplo; vitam nostram pro Christo in hoc mundo
perdere, ut eam in coelo invenire valeamus._
“The most inflexibly honest churchman who held a high station in that
age.“--Hallam. Fisher was confessor to Catherine of Aragon and to Lady
Margaret.
[208] See i. 38; ii. 55-6. An old Ely Chartulary says: “Henry Frost
ought never to be forgot, who gave birth to so noted a seat of
religion, and afterwards to one of the most renowned seats of learning
in Europe.”
[209] _History of the College of S. John the Evangelist_, Baker-Mayor,
pp. 22-3.
[210] _Lit. Pat. 9 Edw. I. membr. 28_ (23 Dec. 1280). Printed in
Commission Documents vol. ii. p. 1.
[211] Willis and Clark.
[212] See p. 103 _n._
[213] v. p. 278.
[214] Overall had been a scholar at Trinity, and was Master of S.
Catherine’s.
[215] Metcalfe was the Catholic Master who made the great reputation
of S. John’s, but whom “the young fry of fellows” combined to oust in
1534. “Did not all the bricks of the college that day double their dye
of redness to blush at the ingratitude of those that dwelt therein?”
(Fuller.)
[216] He was buried by the side of Sir Thomas More in the chapel of S.
Peter ad Vincula in the Tower.
[217] Constitutions for the reform of the Black Benedictine,
Cistercian, and Augustinian Orders, issued in 1335, 1337, 1339.
[218] i. p. 27. The university for English and Irish monks provided by
papal authority and by the Cistercian Constitutions was Oxford. The
licence for Monks’ hostel Cambridge stipulates that all monks of the
order of S. Benedict in England or in other the king’s dominions shall
henceforth dwell there together during the university course. There
was a small recrudescence of monastic studies in Cambridge in the xiv
c. when Ely hostel was built, and from this time forward 3 or 4 Ely
monks were regularly to be found pursuing the university course there
(Testimony of John of Sudbury, prior of students, at the Northampton
chapter in 1426). But there was no prior of students at Cambridge till
towards the end of that century; Ely hostel itself was dismantled
before the middle of the century; the black monks of Norwich however
came to Cambridge under Bateman’s influence with what the bull of
Sixtus IV. 150 years later shows to have been considerable constancy.
See Caius pp. 143-4, 144 _n._
[219] Chambers for Crowland were built by its abbot John of Wisbeach
in 1476. John de Bardenay had preceded John of Sudbury as prior of
Benedictines in 1423, and both were probably Crowland monks.
[220] Dugdale. When Charles V. heard that Stafford Duke of Buckingham
had been beheaded through the machinations of the butcher’s son
Wolsey, he exclaimed: “A butcher’s dog has killed the fairest buck in
England!”
[221] It is clear from the masonry of the chapel that this was
anterior to the college of 1519. See Willis and Clark ii. 362, 364.
[222] Corpus hall is the only one in Cambridge not provided with a
musicians’ gallery.
[223] The retired position of the earlier college had been, he held,
a salutary assistance to study: it “stood on the transcantine side,
an anchoret in itself, severed by the river from the rest of the
university.”
[224] Fuller and Carter say the college site was purchased by the
convents of Ely, Ramsey, and Walden. Cf. p. 128.
[225] Grindal is a good instance of a migrating student: he entered at
Magdalene, and subsequently migrated to Christ’s and Pembroke, where
he became fellow and Master.
[226] The university statute providing for the commemoration of
benefactors and others, directs that mass be said every 5th of May for
Edward II. as founder of King’s Hall.
[227] Which is on the site of the hall, pulled down in 1557 to make
room for the chapel.
[228] For changes made in the Mill Street district in the xv c. when
the School’s Quadrangle and King’s College were built, cf. pp. 24, 24
_n._, 25 _n._, 97 _n._, 101.
[229] There was a fellows’ “parloure” in King’s Hall as early as
1423-4.
[230] There is a fine series of most valuable portraits in the Lodge;
among them one of Mary, and the standing portrait of the young Henry
VIII. which Wordsworth made the subject of a poem. A careful list of
university portraits appears at the end of Atkinson’s volume, but
such a list--useful and valuable as it is--tucked away somewhere in a
book on Cambridge is not an adequate homage to so important a source
of university history as these portraits. The loan exhibition at the
Fitzwilliam Museum in 1884-5 was the first attempt to collect the
Cambridge pictures: the example was followed by Oxford in 1904-6, and
the Catalogue of portraits then published is a model of what can and
should be done.
No complete list of the portraits of either university, however, at
present exists. Many canvasses remain unidentified or misidentified;
some are doubtless perishing for want of care, and the artist’s name
has long disappeared from many more. The work therefore that remains
to be done is a big one, but is eminently worth the doing.
[231] A sedan coach is preserved in the entrance hall of Trinity
Lodge, and is used to transport visitors from the Gateway to the Lodge
when the Master entertains. It is the college tradition that the coach
was presented by Mrs. Worsley, wife of the then Master of Downing,
to Christopher Wordsworth Master of Trinity, and brother of the poet
(1820-41).
[232] This is the largest college library but it is not the most
ancient. Peterhouse led the way in the xiii century with divinity and
medicine books of Balsham’s. In 1418, 380 volumes were catalogued,
containing “from six to seven hundred distinct treatises.” Here were
to be found books on law, medicine, astrology, and natural philosophy,
as well as the preponderating theological tomes. Trinity Hall was
another famous xiv century library, and Pembroke has a catalogue of
books in that and the next century amounting to 140 volumes. In the xv
century Queens’ had 224, and S. Catherine’s 137 (in 1472 and 1475).
In 1571 the French ambassador to this country deemed the library at
Peterhouse “the worthiest in all England” Cf. the university library,
p. 98.
[233] His name appears in the House List of King’s Hall.
[234] The tithes of Great S. Mary’s and Chesterton both belonged to
King’s Hall, on which the advowson of S. Peter’s Northampton was
bestowed, as Cherry Hinton had been bestowed on Peterhouse. The
rectory of Chesterton, which had pertained till then to the monastery
of Vercelli, was given by Eugenius IV.
[235] Removed to its present position by Nevile in 1600; see p. 132.
[236] p. 102 _n._
[237] See p. 133.
[238] Willis and Clark.
[239] iii. p. 179.
[240] iii. p. 174.
[241] iii. p. 180.
[242] Closed courts, however, continued to be built at Oxford; a late
instance being the second court of S. John’s built by Laud so that his
college should not be outshone by its Cambridge namesake.
[243] Bull of Sixtus IV. 1481. The bull recites that in the time
of William Bishop of Norwich the Norwich Benedictines had been
accustomed to lodge at Gonville and Trinity Hall where Bateman had
made convenient arrangements for them. When the pope proceeds to say
that Benedict XI. had required all Benedictines who wished to study
in Cambridge to live _in certo alio collegio dictae universitatis_,
“deputed ad hoc,” he is mistaking the authorisation of Monks’ hostel
50 years before for the papal Constitution of 150 years before, as
he mistakes Benedict XI. for Benedict XII. The suggestion that he
refers to University Hall (the _hospicium universitatis_) is certainly
erroneous: the words above quoted simply mean “in the said university”
and not “the college called university college“: there was no such
house for monks in Cambridge between 1347 and 1428, when “the college
deputed in the said university ad hoc“--Monks’ College--was founded.
Benedict’s Constitution does not specify whether the religious are to
dwell in common, or not.
[244] Cf. Magdalene, p. 127.
[245] v. p. 286. Cudworth was afterwards Master of Clare, then of
Christ’s; Whichcote became Provost of King’s.
[246] p. 126.
[247] The spot is marked by the black tombstone in the present
farmyard, half way between Cambridge and Ely.
[248] At her own request made to Louis XI. The tomb was destroyed
during the Revolution.
[249] The seat of the Bedfordshire Beauchamps, her mother’s family.
[250] A headless skeleton found, before the middle of last century,
near the spot where tradition says that Henry Duke of Buckingham
suffered, is presumed to be that of the duke, of whose burial there is
no other record. Hatcher’s _History of Salisbury_, 1843.
[251] Elizabeth Clare was heir to her brother who fell at Bannockburn:
Marie Chatillon was widow of Valence Earl of Pembroke who fell in the
wars against Bruce. The only Scotch benefactor was Malcolm the Maiden
who endowed the nunnery of S. Rhadegund; but this was before colleges
were built.
[252] “_Ex omni dioecesi et qualibet parte hujus regni nostri Angliae,
tam ex Wallia quam ex Hibernia._” There were, however, Scotchmen at
Cambridge in the xiv c., i. p. 37.
[253] To this day Pembroke fellowships are open to men “of any
nation and any county,” whereas at other colleges (as e.g. Corpus)
the restriction is to “any subjects of the king, wherever born.” Cf.
Jebb’s “_Bentley_,” p. 92.
[254] See divinity, canon and civil law, medicine, arts, and grammar
in the next chapter, pp. 164-7.
[255] To these must be added: insurance, rates, and taxes, repairs,
legal expenses, printing, and stationery, gifts made by the
university, and the _honorarium_ paid to the university preacher.
[256] Fuller.
[257] Magdalene, S. Catherine’s, Downing, Queens’, Peterhouse, Corpus,
and Trinity Hall are the small and least wealthy colleges, and in this
order. All the others have a gross income of over £10,000 a year. The
income of all the colleges is published annually in Whitaker.
[258] University College contributed £50.
[259] See p. 167.
[260] A man’s university and the faculty in which he has graduated are
shown by the hood: the Cambridge master’s hood is black silk lined
with white silk; the bachelor’s black stuff hood is trimmed with white
rabbit fur. The doctors in the three faculties wear scarlet silk hoods
lined with pink and violet shot silk (_D.D._), cherry silk (_LL.D._)
and magenta silk (_M.D._).
_B.D.’s_ wear a hood of black silk inside and out; _LL.M.’s_ wear an
_M.A.’s_ hood; _LL.B.’s_, a _B.A.’s_ hood; _M.B.’s_ a black hood lined
with scarlet.
The _Mus.Doc._ wears a brocaded hood lined with cherry satin;
_Mus.Bac._ black silk lined with cherry silk and trimmed with rabbit
fur; _Litt.D._ scarlet silk inside and out; _D.Sc._ scarlet, lined
with shot pink and light blue silk.
[261] Thus the _knight bachelor_ is one enjoying the titular degree
and rank of knighthood, without membership of any knightly order, to
the companionship of which he is supposed to be an aspirant.
[262] The study of sophistry or dialectic, which preceded Aristotle’s
analytical logic.
[263] Junior and senior sophister and bachelor: Fuller writing of
Northampton says: “But this university never lived to commence
Bachelor of Art, Senior Sophister was all the standing it attained
unto. For, four years after,” etc.
On tutors’ bills a century ago the style of _dominus_ was always
given to bachelors, that of “Mr.” to masters; the undergraduate had
to be content with “freshman” or “sophister.” The bachelors are still
designated _dominus_ in the degree lists; a style which reminds us of
the clerical “dan” of Chaucer’s time, and the Scotch “dominie” for a
schoolmaster. For the degree ceremonies and processions see _Peacock_,
_Appendix A_.
[264] Regent: _regere_ like _legere_, to teach; cf. the _doctores
legentes_ and _non-legentes_ of Bologna: _regere scholas_, and
_officium regendi_ occur in Bury school records, xii c. (Brit. Mus.
Add. MSS. 14,848, fol. 136). A congregation of the Cambridge masters,
regents and non-regents, met in S. Mary’s church as early as 1275.
[265] It must be realised that the degree in arts always differed
from degrees in theology law and medicine inasmuch as these latter
implied competence to exercise the corresponding professions. There
was no such corresponding profession in the case of arts, except
that of the schoolmaster. The clergyman, lawyer, or doctor at least
exercised himself in these subjects, but the “artist” unless he was a
regent-master, or a _magister scholarum_ elsewhere, left his studies
when he left his university.
[266] “The Tripos is a paper containing the names of the principal
graduates for the year. It also contains 2 copies of verses written by
two of the undergraduates, who are appointed to that employment by the
proctors.“--Dyer. An extract from one of these sets of tripos verses
is given in Dyer, _Hist. Camb._ ii. 89.
[267] It was at this time that the moderators were substituted for the
proctors, see p. 183.
[268] pp. 168, 169.
[269] Cf. p. 189, the lecture.
[270] The derivation is Prof. Skeat’s.
[271] The school of glomery was nourishing in 1452 (Ely Register
_anno_ 1452); but a few years previously, when the statutes of King’s
College were written, it was understood that grammar would be studied
at Eton not at Cambridge. A century later (1549) the parliamentary
commissioners introduced mathematics into the _trivium_ where it
replaced grammar. A school of grammar existed at the university side
by side with the school of glomery [see the provision for the teaching
of grammar at God’s House (below) and Peterhouse and Clare p. 153 of
the last chapter]. As late as 1500 there was a _magister grammaticae_
and a _magister glomeriae_, who, _in ejus defectu_, is represented
by proctors (_Stat. Cant._). “The Master of Grammar shall be browght
by the Bedyll to the Place where the Master of Glomerye dwellyth, at
iij of the Clocke, and the Master of Glomerye shall go before, and
his eldest son nexte him.” A.D. 1591 (_Stokys in G.
Peacock_). By Fuller’s time the master of glomery had ceased to exist.
His work seems to have resembled the preparatory work of the Previous
Examinations at the university to-day.
In the Curteys Register of Bury-St.-Edmund’s (in the time
of Abbot Sampson xii c.) we have the students of dialectic
distinguished from the students of grammar and the latter from
other scholars--“_dialecticos glomerellos seu discipulos_,” and
“_glomerellos seu discipulos indistincte_”; surely a clear reference
to two branches of the _trivium_. The use of the word _glomerel_ in
O.E. law to signify an officer who adjusts disputes between scholars
and townsmen, is obviously the result of a misinterpretation of
Balsham’s rescript of 1276 “_Inprimis volumus et ordinamus quod
magister glomeriae Cant. qui pro tempore fuerit, audiat et dicedat
universas glomerellorum ex parte rea existentium.... Ita quod sive
sint scholares sive laici qui glomerellos velint convenire ... per
viam judicialis indaginis, hoc faciat coram magistro glomeriae...._”
The form of the latter’s oath to the Archdeacon of Ely and the
functions which fell to the master of glomery when the school became
decadent, may also have led to the mistake (which was made by Spelman
as regards the Cambridge glomerels). Cf. i. p. 14, iv. p. 207 _n._,
and Fuller, Prickett-Wright Ed. pp. 52-4. The second of these editors,
indeed, was the first to call attention (in 1840) to the irrefutable
evidence in the Cole and Baker MSS. as to the meaning of master
and school of glomery, and to light on the confirmation from the
university of Orléans in the verses of the troubadour Rutebeuf. For
glomery, see also _Peacock, Appendix A, xxxii-xxxvi_.
The foundation of God’s House in 1439 was due to Parson Byngham’s
zealous desire to remedy “the default and lack of scolemaisters of
gramer,” following on the Black Death. In a touching letter to the
king (Henry VI.) Byngham points out “how greatly the clergy of your
realm is like to be empeired and febled” by the default, and relates
that “over the est parte of the wey ledyng from Hampton” to Coventry
alone, “and no ferther north yan Rypon,” _70 schools_ were empty
for lack of teachers. “For all liberall sciences used in your seid
universitees certein lyflode is ordeyned, savyng only for gramer.”
[272] See chapter i. p. 33.
[273] _Royal Injunctions_ to the university of 1535, requiring the
denial of papal supremacy. “King Henry stung with the dilatory pleas
of the canonists at Rome in point of his marriage, did in revenge
destroy their whole hive throughout his own universities,” _Fuller_.
The last Cambridge doctor in canon law “commenced” in this reign.
[274] The usual course is to take the special medical examinations
with the First Part of the natural sciences tripos. Sometimes however
these are taken in addition to the ordinary _B.A._ degree. The last of
the three _M.B._ examinations is divided into two parts, of which Part
I. is taken at the end of the fourth year of medical study, and Part
II. after six years, three of which must have been spent in medical
and surgical practice and hospital work. The keeping of the “act” is
not intended to be a mere form, and students are advised to prepare
for it during the years of their hospital practice.
[275] The degrees of bachelor of surgery (a registrable qualification)
and master of surgery require no separate examination; the candidate
must have done all that is required of a bachelor of medicine; but
bachelors of surgery who are not also masters of arts cannot incept
until three years have passed since they took the _B.C._, and masters
of arts must have become legally qualified surgeons.
[276] Whitgift’s thesis for the _D.D._ degree (1570) was “_Papa est
ille anti-Christus_“--‘the pope is himself anti-Christ.’
[277] _Erasm. Epist._ (London 1642), _Liber secundus, Epist. 10_.
Letter to Bullock dated from the Palace at Rochester, August 31, 1516.
[278] Or were relegated to the previous examinations.
[279] Till then it had meant Aristotle: the statutes of Queens’ and
Christ’s, framed within 50 years of one another, provide for its
teaching--“the natural, moral, and _metaphysical_ philosophy of
Aristotle”; and even in Fuller’s time these metaphysics were the study
of the bachelor of arts: “Let a _sophister_ begin with his axioms, a
_batchelor of art_ proceed to his _metaphysicks_, a _master_ to his
_mathematicks_, and a _divine_ conclude with his _controversies_ and
_comments_ on scripture....”
Philosophy, meaning Aristotle, had come in to disturb the peace and
the sufficiency of the old ‘seven arts.’
[280] William Everett, _M.A._, 1865.
[281] It has been said that senior wranglers are hidden in country
rectories and are never heard of again. In a hundred and sixty years
(1747-1906) there have been eight senior wranglers who could be placed
in the first rank as mathematicians and physicists:
Herschell 1813
Airy 1823
Stokes 1841
Cayley 1842
Adams 1843
Todhunter 1848
Routh 1854
Rayleigh 1865
Paley, in 1763, was the first distinguished senior wrangler. On the
other hand Colenso Whewell and Lord Kelvin were second wranglers, so
was the geometrician Sylvester; de Morgan and Pritchard were fourth
wranglers; the learned Porteous was tenth wrangler, Lord Manners (Lord
Chancellor of Ireland) was 5th, Lord Ellenborough (Lord Chief Justice)
3rd, Lord Lyndhurst (Lord Chancellor) second.
[282] Another distinguished Oxonian, and East Anglian, Grosseteste,
attempted in the xiii c. the re-introduction of Greek into England;
but the foreign linguists whom he invited to St. Albans left no
successors.
[283] The west countryman Grocyn (b. 1442) who learnt his Greek in
Italy and returned to teach it in Oxford was, chronologically, the
first English classical scholar since the revival of learning.
[284] “All students equally contributed to his” (Croke’s) “lectures,
whether they heard or heard them not.” _Fuller_.
[285] REVIVERS OF GREEK IN CAMBRIDGE.
[Sidenote: First period: Early patrons of Greek learning, and the
group round Erasmus.]
1. John Fisher, b. Beverley, Yorks, 1459. Chancellor of the
university, Master of Michaelhouse, President of Queens’, a
co-founder of S. John’s. Though not himself a Greek classic, one
of the chief instruments of its introduction into Cambridge. See
also ii. pp. 120-21.
2. John Tonnys, _D.D._ prior at Cambridge and provincial of the
Augustinians. Ob. 1510. One of the first men in the university to
desire to learn Greek.
3. John Caius, ii. pp. 141-2 (lectured in Greek at Padua after
leaving Cambridge).
4. Erasmus, _D.D._ Queens’, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at
Cambridge, and lecturer in Greek. Befriended by Fisher, Warham,
Tunstall, and Fox, but opposed by the Oxonian Lee, Abp. of York.
Left Cambridge 1513.
5. Richard Fox (Bishop of Winchester) Master of Pembroke College.
Introduces Greek learning into his college of Corpus Christi,
Oxford, and founds the first Greek lectureship at the sister
university.
6. Cuthbert Tunstall (Balliol Oxford, King’s Hall Cambridge, and
university of Padua) b. 1474. Ob. 1559. Bishop of Durham.
7. Henry Bullock, fellow of Queens’ and vice-chancellor.
8. John Bryan, fellow of King’s, ob. 1545. Lectured on Greek
before the appointment of Croke.
9. Robert Aldrich, fellow of King’s, senior proctor 1523-4, Bp. of
Carlisle.
10. Richard Croke or Crooke, scholar of King’s 1506; later a pupil
of Grocyn’s; studied Greek in Italy at the charges of Abp. Warham.
Greek tutor to Henry VIII. Appointed first Reader in Greek at
Cambridge 1519; and was first Public Orator. Afterwards professor
of Greek at Oxford.
11. Tyndale, b. circa 1486, ob. 1536 (resided at Cambridge between
1514-1521, and owed his Greek to that university). Left Oxford for
Cambridge, as Erasmus had done, probably on account of the sworn
hostility at Oxford to classical learning. See his “Answer” to
Sir Thomas More, written in 1530 (Mullinger, _The University of
Cambridge_ p. 590).
[Sidenote: Greek Classics, Second period.]
Roger Ascham, b. 1515, fellow of S. John’s. Reader in Greek and
Public Orator in the university. Tutor to Mary, Elizabeth, and
Lady Jane Grey.
Sir Thomas Smith, b. 1514, _LL.D._ Queens’. Regius Professor of
Law and Reader in Greek at Cambridge, and Public Orator.
Sir John Cheke, b. 1514 at Cambridge, fellow of S. John’s. First
Regius Professor of Greek. [”Thy age, like ours, O soul of Sir
John Cheek | Hated not learning worse than toad or asp, | When
thou taught’st Cambridge, and King Edward, Greek” (Milton).]
Nicholas Carr, fellow of Pembroke, who replaced Cheke. Ob. Cambs.
1568-9. (As with other Cambridge men he joined science and
classics, and afterwards became a doctor of physic.)
Richard Cox, scholar of King’s (v. pp. 272-4). One of the
introducers of Greek and the new learning into Oxford.
Francis Dillingham, fellow of Christ’s. One of the translators of
the English bible.
Dr. Thomas Watts, of Caius, who endowed 7 “Greek scholars” at
Pembroke College in the xvi century.
[Sidenote: A few later names.]
Augustine Bryan, ob. 1726, Trinity College,
Jeremiah Markland, b. 1693, fellow and tutor of Peterhouse.
Richard Bentley, 1662-1742, of S. John’s, Master of Trinity.
Richard Porson, 1759-1808, scholar and fellow of Trinity, Regius
Professor of Greek.
Thirlwall, b. 1797, fellow of Trinity, Bishop of S. David’s.
W. H. Thompson, ob. 1886, Trinity. Regius Professor of Greek,
Master of Trinity.
Sir R. C. Jebb, ob. 1906, Trinity, Regius Professor of Greek.
REVIVERS OF GREEK IN OXFORD.
1. William Selling. Got his love of Greek from Italy. Taught at
Canterbury. Afterwards of All Souls’ Oxford.
2. Linacre, b. _circa_ 1460 and studied at Canterbury with
Selling, and at Oxford under Vitelli, but learnt his Greek in
Italy. Lectured in Oxford on physic. Tutor to Prince Arthur. Ob.
1524.
{ 3. Grocyn b. Bristol 1442. New and Exeter Colleges,
Inspired by { Oxford. The first to lecture on Greek.
Linacre to start { 4. William Latymer, educated at Padua, but afterwards
for Italy to { a fellow at Oxford.
learn Greek. { 5. William Lily, b. Hants. 1468, learnt Greek at Rhodes
{ and Rome.
6. Colet, b. 1466. At Oxford and Paris; learnt Greek in Italy.
7. Thomas More, b. 1480. Learnt Greek with Linacre and Grocyn.
8. Richard Pace.
[286] Namely “in King’s Hall, King’s, S. John’s and Christ’s
Colleges, Michaelhouse, Peterhouse, Gonville, Trinity Hall, Pembroke
Hall, Queens’, Jesus, and Buckingham Colleges, Clare Hall and Benet
College.” Royal Injunctions of 1535.
[287] The ancient pronunciation of Latin (so far as it can be
recovered) has been taught, as an alternative, at Cambridge for
the last 25 years, and has of late been widely adopted there, as
elsewhere. Perhaps at the bottom of the preference for English Latin
there lies the notion that without it Latin would no longer be the
English scholar’s second tongue. The simple retort is that with it
Latin is no longer (has not been for centuries) a common medium, the
second tongue, of European scholars. Anglicised Greek is due to Sir
John Cheke and Sir Thomas Smith, though it was promptly abolished at
the time by Stephen Gardiner then chancellor of the university, and
opposed also by Caius. “Nor mattereth it if foreigners should dissent,
seeing hereby we Englishmen shall understand one another,” so Fuller
explains the position.
[288] Paley continued to keep his traditional hold on Cambridge
through the divinity paper in the “Little Go” which is based upon
the “Evidences for Christianity.” On the other hand logic has
recaptured the place which Aristotle held in the general curriculum
by being admitted, since 1884, as the alternative subject for Paley’s
“Evidences.”
[289] Lord Maynard of Wicklow (S. John’s College) endowed a professor
of logic at Cambridge in the reign of James I., with £40-50 a year.
For university activity in philosophy in the xvii c. see chapter v.
pp. 284-90.
[290] One must not forget, however, that both the remarkable men who
planted the study of the experimental sciences in Cambridge were
distinguished ‘classics’ as well as scientists.
[291] Letter of Vice-Chancellor Byng to Burleigh then chancellor of
the university, 14 Dec. 1572, in which he advises him of a “greate
oversighte of Dr. Caius” who had long kept “superstitious monuments
in his college.” “I could hardly have been perswadid,” he continues,
“that suche things by him had been reservid.”
“Some since have sought to blast his memory by reporting him a papist;
no great crime to such who consider the time when he was born, and
foreign places wherein he was bred: however this I dare say in his
just defence, he never mentioneth protestants, but with due respect,
and sometimes, occasionally, doth condemn the superstitious credulity
of popish miracles.... We leave the heat of his faith to God’s sole
judgment, and the light of his good works to men’s imitation,” writes
old Fuller.
[292] Chairs of anatomy, botany, geology, and astronomy had been
created in the first quarter of that century. See also Peterhouse p.
153.
[293] For the natural sciences professorships, see pp. 190-92, and
_n._ p. 192.
[294] “In barb’rous Latin doom’d to wrangle” writes Byron of the
Cambridge of his time.
[295] The year is counted from the beginning of the academic year,
_i.e._ Oct. 1747--the first degrees were taken in 1748.
[296] A classified list of civil law graduates exists from the year
1815. There used to be a university _title S.C.L._ (Student of Civil
Law) in relation to the civil law classes. The Act of 20-21 Vict.,
disestablishing civil law in the courts, led to a revolution of law
studies at Cambridge. From then dates the abolition of the old quaint
ceremonies and disputations connected with this faculty.
[297] From 1870, before the creation of the history tripos,
examinations were conducted in a mixed law and history tripos.
[298] Among educational reformers in the second half of the xviii
c. Dr. John Jebb must not be omitted. To him is due the annual test
examinations of tripos students called ‘the Mays,’ and perhaps also
the “Little-Go.” He was a distinguished scientist, and member of
Peterhouse.
[299] Cf. chap. ii. p. 61 and chap. iv. p. 241.
[300] “Poll,” οἱ πολλοἱ.
[301] In 1835 Goulburn (afterwards Bishop of Trinidad) was second
wrangler and senior classic; in 1828 Selwyn, another bishop, was
senior classic and sixth wrangler. For the 2 triposes cf. iv. p. 238
_n._
[302] “Within 2-1/2 miles in a direct line” from Great S. Mary’s. For
the academic year see iv. p. 241, and _n._ p. 182.
[303] Part I. of most of the divided triposes entitles to the degree.
Advanced and research students (p. 241) are entitled to the _B.A._
and higher degrees after receiving a “certificate of research” and
residing for 6 terms at the university.
[304] The Previous Examination or “Little-Go,” as it is popularly
called, consists of two parts, the first containing 5 papers on (_a_)
one of the four Gospels in Greek (set book) (_b_) a Latin classic
(set book) (_c_) a Greek classic (set book) (_d_) simple unprepared
passages in Latin (_e_) simple Latin and Greek syntax. Since 1884
a Greek or Latin classic may be substituted for the Greek Gospel.
Part II., since June 1903, consists of 5 papers on (1) Paley’s
Evidences, for which since 1884, elementary logic may be substituted
(2) geometry (3) arithmetic (4) elementary algebra (5) subjects for
an English essay from some standard English work or works. Until 1903
the geometry paper was exclusively on Euclid’s lines, and required
knowledge of the first three books and of parts of the vth and vith
books. To qualify for admission to an ‘Honours’ examination a student
must pass in certain subjects ‘additional’ to the ordinary Previous
Examination. He is now allowed to choose between (1) additional
Mathematics (Mechanics and Trigonometry) (2) French (3) German.
A student must satisfy the examiners both as to grammar and
orthography in answering the questions--a last relic of the grammar
studies of the university!
The General Examination, taken by those who read for the ordinary
degree, includes (in Pt. I.) (1) a Greek classic (2) Latin classic
(3) mechanics (4) simple trigonometry [(5) English passages for
translation into Latin prose]. (Pt. II.) (1) The Acts of the Apostles
in Greek (2) English history, selected period (3) subjects for an
English essay, from the selected period (4) elementary hydrostatics
and heat [(5) a paper on a Shakespeare play or on Milton’s works]. The
5th paper in each part is not obligatory.
The Cambridge General Examination for the ordinary degree leaves much
to be desired.
The Special Examination for the ordinary degree may be in one of the
following subjects: (_a_) _Theology_ (_b_) _Political Economy_ (_c_)
_Law_ (_d_) _History_ (_e_) _Chemistry_ (_f_) _Physics_ (_g_) _Modern
Languages_ (_h_) _Mathematics_ (_i_) _Classics_ (_k_) _Logic_ (_l_)
_Geology_ (_m_) _Botany_ (_n_) _Zoology_ (_o_) _Physiology_ (_p_)
_Mechanism and Applied Science_ (_q_) _Agricultural Science_ (_r_)
_Music_. The standard for the subjects _k_, _l_, _m_, _n_, _o_, is
that of the papers on those subjects in the first part of the moral
and natural sciences triposes. The standard in the Theological Special
examination may be judged from the following: Pt. I. (1) Outlines of
O. T. history (2) a gospel in Greek [(3) history of the Jews from the
close of O. T. history to the fall of Jerusalem]. Pt. II. (1) Selected
portions of historical and prophetical books (2) one or more of the
epistles in Greek (3) outlines of English Church history to 1830 [(4)
selected portion of historical books of O. T. in Hebrew. (5) outlines
of Early Church history to the death of Leo the Great. (6) paper on
a selected period of English Church history]. (7) Essay subjects
on the subject matter of papers (1) (2) and (3). But paper (3) in
Pt. I. and 4, 5, and 6 in Pt. II. are not obligatory. Law Special
examination:--Pt. I. (_a_) some branch of English constitutional
law (_b_) English criminal law [(_c_) select cases in illustration
(voluntary)]. Pt. II. (1) elementary English law relating to real
property (2) English law of contract or tort, or similar. [(3) select
cases in illustration (voluntary)]. (4) Essay on the subject matter of
(1) and (2).
The first part of the Historical Special examination consists of 3
papers on English history before 1485, the third on a special period
being optional. Pt. II. contains 5 papers (1) outline of general
English history from 1485-1832. (2) outlines of English constitutional
history for the same period (3) a period or a subject in foreign
history (4) a special period of English history. [(5) an essay,
optional]. The Mathematical Special is all elementary. The Classical
Special is on the lines of the Previous Examination--set papers on
portions of two Greek and Latin prose and two Greek and Latin poetic
authors; to which is added an unprepared Greek and an unprepared
Latin translation and a Latin prose composition. The papers on Greek
and Roman history belonging to Pt. I. (Greek) or Pt. II. (Latin) are
optional. Candidates for all these examinations may present themselves
again in case of failure.
The standard of the tripos examination may be gauged by the following
examination schedules for (A) Classics (B) Moral Sciences. (A) Pt.
I. 15 papers--4 composition papers; 5 translation; (10) History of
words and forms, and syntax, in both classical languages. (11) Short
Greek and Latin passages relating to history and antiquities of
Greece and Rome for translation and comment. (12) A paper on history
and antiquities. (13) Same as 11, with reference to Greek and Roman
philosophy, literature, sculpture and architecture. (14) Same as 12
(the questions on Greek philosophy being on portion of a set book).
(15) Essay.
Pt. II. Examination in 1 or 2 of the 5 following sections: (1)
Literature and criticism (2) ancient philosophy. (3) history. (4)
archaeology. (5) language. The following are examples of Sections
(1) and (5): I. (_a_) Questions on the history of Greek literature
and passages illustrating Greek literary history or criticism for
translation and comment. (_b_) The same, Latin. (_c_) Passages
from Greek and Latin authors for interpretation, grammatical
comment, or emendation; on the paleography and history of Greek and
Latin MSS., and the principles of textual criticism; questions on
textual criticism of a Greek _or_ Latin author (set book). (_d_)
A special author (set book) or a special department of Greek or
Latin literature. (_e_) paper of essays. V. (_a_) Greek etymology
and history of Greek dialects. Greek syntax. (_b_) Latin, collated
with cognate Italic dialects, and syntax. (_c_) Easy passages from
Sanskrit authors (set books) for translation and comment, and simple
Sanskrit grammar. (_d_) and last, general questions on the comparative
grammar and syntax of the Indo-European languages. Early Indo-European
civilisation. Indo-European accent. Greek and Italic alphabets.
The Italic dialects. The whole of these two examinations, with the
exception of one portion of paper 14 in Pt. I. and one portion of
papers _c_ and _d_ in Pt. II. Section I., deal with unseen Greek and
Latin authors.
(B) Moral Sciences:--Pt. I. _Psychology_ (2 papers). Standpoint, data,
and methods of psychology. Its fundamental conceptions and hypotheses.
Relations of psychology to physics, physiology, and metaphysics.
(_a_) analysis of consciousness. (_b_) sensation and physiology of
the senses--perception. (_c_) Images and ideas. (_d_) Thought and
formation of concepts. Judgment. (_e_) Emotions, and theories of
emotional expression. (_f_) Volition--pleasure and pain--conflict of
emotions. [In the 2nd part, advanced knowledge on these subjects is
required, plus a knowledge of the physiology of the senses and nervous
system, etc., and of mental pathology in its relation to psychology.]
_Logic_ (2 papers). Province of logic, formal and material. Relation
of logic to psychology, and to the theory of knowledge. (_a_)
names and concepts, definition and division, predicables. (_b_)
classification of judgments and propositions. Theory of the import of
propositions. (_c_) laws of thought, syllogisms, symbolic logic. (_d_)
induction and deduction. (_e_) observation and experiment, hypotheses,
classification, theory of probabilities. (_f_) inference and proof.
Fallacies. [In the 2nd part, advanced knowledge of these subjects and
of the controversies connected with them is required.]
_Ethics_ (1 paper), (_a_) moral judgment, intuition, and
reasoning, motives, pleasure and pain, free will and
determinism, (_b_) ends of moral action--right and wrong--moral
sanctions--obligation--duty--pleasures and pains. (_c_) types of moral
character. Principles of social and political justice. (_d_) The moral
faculty, its origin and development. (_e_) relation of ethics to
psychology, sociology, and politics.
Two papers on political economy and an essay paper exhaust Pt. I.
For those who proceed to Pt. II., two papers on metaphysical and moral
philosophy (as below) must be answered, one on the general history of
modern philosophy, and _one_ or _two_ of the 3 following papers (A)
Psychology II.; (B) Logic II.; (Special) history of modern philosophy
(subject announced each year); _or_ (C) papers in politics and in
advanced political economy:
Metaphysical and moral philosophy:--(_a_) analysis of knowledge,
material and formal elements of knowledge, self-consciousness,
uniformity and continuity of experience. (_b_) identity and
difference, relation, space and time, unity and number, substance,
cause. (_c_) certainty, and necessities of thought. (_d_) fundamental
assumptions of physical science--causality, continuity etc. (_e_)
sources and limits of knowledge, relativity of knowledge, phenomena,
and things in themselves. (_f_) fundamental assumptions of ethics,
absolute and relative ethics, intuitionism, utilitarianism,
evolutionism, transcendentalism. (_g_) mechanical and dynamical
theories of matter, relations of mind and matter, problem of the
external world, idealism, dualism, freedom of intelligence, and of
will, good and evil in the universe, teleology.
[305] Even if the candidate answer most of the tripos papers the
conditions of the _aegrotat_ degree preclude his being placed in any
one of the classes. Edmund Spenser the poet and Lancelot Andrewes
the scholar-bishop were both on the _aegrotat_ list of Pembroke
College--in 1571--before, however, this necessarily implied absence
from any of the university “acts.”
[306] Since going to press, this change has been effected.
[307] See chap. iv. p. 225.
[308] This professorship was an expansion of the natural science
lectureships founded by the great Linacre.
[309] A chair of history was endowed by Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke,
with £100 a year, in the reign of Charles I. It no longer exists.
[310] A list of the professorships, with date of creation and
emoluments, and of the readers and lecturers, appears in the
University Calendar every year.
There were no less than 7 chairs of medicine and natural science
before 1851 when the tripos was created. The chairs existed, but with
no scientific school to support them.
[311] In 1524 the executors of Sir Robert Rede, Lord Chief Justice,
endowed _tres liberae lecturae_ in humane letters, logic, and
philosophy; and many distinguished men have been invited to deliver
this annual lecture. The Hulsean lecture was founded in the xviii c.
The first _exhibitions_ were founded in the xiii c. by Kilkenny, 9th
Bishop of Ely, Balsham’s predecessor, for “2 priests studying divinity
in Cambridge.”
[312] Towards the end of the xv c. we have several instances of papal
degrees conferred on members of religious orders which were followed
by incorporation and full membership of Cambridge university. Thus
_frater Steele_ “of Rome” was incorporated in 1492, and _frater
Raddyng_ as a doctor five years later.
[313] 1539 Eligius Ferrers, _D.D._; 1544 a Venetian _B.A. ad eundem_;
1559, _circa_, a _B.D._; 1615 an _M.A._ created _B.D._; 1617 the same;
1619 an _M.A._; 1635 the archdeacon of Essex _M.A._, is created _B.D._
[314] Archbishop Sumner (1848-62) 120 degrees; Langley (1862-68) 46;
Tait (1868-82) 101; Benson (1882-96) 55; Temple (1896-1903) 12.
[315] Degrees in the 3 faculties are conferred without examination.
Since Aug. 1858 degrees in medicine have carried with them no
qualification to practise.
All candidates for the _M.A._ must pass an examination in preliminary
arithmetic, Greek gospels, and English language and literature: the
two classical languages, modern languages, mathematics, mental and
moral sciences, and the natural sciences, forming 6 subjects from
which the candidate must choose two, and the standard enforced being
“that of candidates for honours at the universities.” The Stamp Duty
and other expenses reach at least £55.
[316] An _ad eundem_ was given in 1501 to a Roman graduate by grace of
the Senate.
[317] See iv. p. 218.
[318] Cf. ii. pp. 52-3.
[319] The _cancellarius scholasticus_ of a cathedral chapter.
[320] The earliest chancellor of whom we have a mention belongs to the
year 1246 (_Baker MSS._). A list of chancellors exists from the year
1283, and is reprinted in Carter, _History of the University_. Among
xiv c. chancellors belonging to great families, we have--
Stephen Segrave 1303-6
Richard le Scrope 1378
Guy de Zouche 1379
John de Cavendish 1380
John de Burgh 1385.
See v. p. 307 _n._ The name recorded in 1246 is Hugo de Hottun
(Hatton?).
[321] By acts of the university 1504 and 1514.
[322] Fuller places the first vice-chancellor in the year 1417, after
Stephen le Scrope and Repingale Bishop of Chichester had held the
chancellorship--1414 and 1415. Men “of great employment” began then to
fill the position, and hence, he says, the necessity. 1454 is however
the date of the earliest vice-chancellor usually given, and there
were only intermittent appointments between then and 1500. In that
year Richard Fox was chancellor, and Henry Babington vice-chancellor,
and was succeeded in 1501 by John Fisher _who filled both offices_.
In 1413 a friar was chosen as “president” of the university in the
absence of Chancellor Billingford sent by Henry V. with the Bishop of
Ely and the chancellor of the sister university to Rome.
[323] In this body, which was created by act of 19th-20th Vict., are
concentrated the powers of the houses of regents and non-regents, the
ancient governing body of the university. Its 10 members are chosen
from the roll.
[324] The high steward is elected in the same way as the chancellor.
He appoints a deputy who must be approved by the senate. The Cambridge
high stewardship has been frequently held by favourites of the
sovereign; Elizabeth gave it to Leicester, and Henry VII. to Empson.
The present holder, Lord Walsingham, bears a name intimately connected
with the history of the university.
[325] At the last parliamentary election, January 1906, the university
electorate numbered 6972.
[326] The proctors are appointed according to a statutory cycle--they
are nominated by the colleges in turn, two colleges nominating
each year. The proctors at Oxford originally represented the north
countrymen and the south countrymen. Entries of Cambridge proctors
exist from 1350. The office, of course, is kin to that of the
procurator of monastic orders; and the Cambridge proctors supervised
Stourbridge fair, the markets, weights and measures, and all those
matters which affected the supply of provisions for the university or
its finances: to which were added their scholastic functions.
[327] The first public orator was Richard Croke; Sir T. Smith, Sir J.
Cheke, Roger Ascham, and George Herbert the poet, all held the office.
Caius supposes that the master of glomery was university orator, whose
duty it was to entertain princes and peers and to indite the epistles
of the university on great occasions. He supposes also that as “senior
regent” he collected and counted the suffrages in all congregations:
the _Statutes_ however show us this officer in company with two
_junior regents_ sorting the votes cast for the proctors. See also
iii. p. 164 _n._
[328] Thus a guild order in 1389 runs: the alderman “ssal sende forthe
the bedel to alle the bretheren and the systeren.”
[329] We find Archbishop Laud writing of Oxford: “If the university
would bring in some bachelors of art to be yeomen-bedels ... they
which thrived well and did good service might after be preferred to be
esquire-bedels.”
[330] The first esquire or armiger bedell on the Cambridge register is
Physwick in the xiv c.; no one else is entered for this office till
1498 when Philip Morgan held it. After him there is another esquire
bedell in 1500. The yeoman bedell probably stood in the same relation
to the esquire bedell as the trumpeter to the herald. The herald did
not blow his own trumpet and the esquire bedell of the university was
doubtless not a macebearer. The original two bedells, nevertheless,
used to go before the chancellor and masters _virgam deferentes_; and
Balsham in 1275 arranges that _the bedell of the master of glomery_
shall not carry his stave on these occasions, but only when on his
superior’s own business. A bedell is mentioned in the xiii c. hostel
statute referred to on p. 51.
[331] Letter of Rennell to Stratford Canning, Nov. 16, 1807.
[332] Until 1534 only those who had graduated doctor were elected to
the office.
[333] Principal (see vi. p. 339 _n._), warden, keeper, proctor, and
rector are all titles which at one time or another were familiar in
Cambridge.
[334] In the xviii c. the colleges had already 4 lecturers in
rhetoric, logic, ethics, and Greek. Cf. the provisions in the statutes
of Christ’s College xvi c. The college _bursar_, the purse-bearer
of his college, is its treasurer and oeconomus: a senior and junior
bursar are appointed.
[335] The decreasing value of the statutable stipends in the xvii c.
led to the adoption (in 1630) of the new scale of payments.
[336] He signed the university instrument which was presented to Henry
renouncing the pope’s supremacy; Ridley, who was proctor at the time,
signed after him.
[337] From 1741 two chaplains were appointed in each college, to
replace the fellows who before this used to take the chapel services
in rotation. The Trinity College rule which provided that a fellow
engaged in instruction in his college for ten years kept his
fellowship for life or until he married, made the first rift in the
obligation to take orders within a certain period after election, or
forfeit the fellowship.
[338] An American student, 20 years before the abolition of the
Religious Test Act, was scandalised at the manner in which the
reception of the sacrament was used as a mere condition for
obtaining the certificate of fitness for orders. Men who had not
made 3 communions in their college chapel during their stay, came
up afterwards for the purpose, and received thereupon a document
certifying that they had entirely satisfied “the vice-chancellor and
the 8 senior fellows” of their fitness for their vocation.
[339] In the same century Hobson, who died in 1630 at a great age,
was the famous Cambridge carrier and kept the first livery stable in
England. His numerous clients would find a large stable full of steeds
from which “to choose” (with bridle whip and even boots provided); but
everyone was expected to take the horse next the door: hence ‘Hobson’s
choice,’ which has become an English household phrase, as has another
Cantab expression, ‘constitutionalize’ for walking. Yet another phrase
is ‘tawdry,’ the name given to the flimsy gaily coloured chains which
were sold at Barnwell (now Midsummer) fair on the eve of S. Awdrey’s
day. Hobson was immortalised by verses of Milton’s.
[340] Colleges were not at first built for the ‘undergraduate.’ The
scholar of the xiii, xiv, and xv centuries was the _socius_ (fellow)
of to-day. His clerical position was that of a young man in minor
orders, his scholastic that of a bachelor in art. He attended the
schools of the doctors and masters, and was assisted by his fellowship
and by exhibitions in the learned faculties to study for the degrees
(master of art, and doctor in the faculties). The pensioner, who
might or might not be an undergraduate in standing and who lived at
his own charges, was provided for in the hostel. It was not till the
visitation of 1401 that we find _socii_ and _scholares_ distinguished;
and when King’s College was founded in the same half century its
scholars were young students and nothing else. Nevertheless,
although such was the original conception of the endowed college--at
Peterhouse, Michaelhouse, Pembroke, Corpus--the later developments
were outlined from the first. The bible clerks at Peterhouse were
poor students not of the standing of bachelors, and a proviso in the
statutes enabled the college to maintain “2 or 3 indigent scholars
well grounded in grammar” when its funds shall permit. At Clare (1359)
the sizar was regularly recognised. At Pembroke (1347) there were in
addition to the “major scholars” 6 “minor scholars” who might fit
themselves to be major scholars. At King’s Hall (Statutes Ric. II.)
boys from 14 years old were admitted. At Christ’s (1505) the standing
of the scholar was defined by requiring him to give instruction in
sophistry; but the pensioner was contemplated for the first time as
a regular inmate of the college. In fact the _perendinant_ who ate
at the college tables became, before the middle of the xv c., the
_commensalis_; the class being fully recognised 50 years later in the
_convivae_ of Christ’s. There were no fewer than 778 _convivae_ or
pensioners in the colleges in the time of Caius 1574.
As to the age at which youths went up, it was not until the xix c.
that the university was finally regarded as the complement to a full
‘college’ (public school) course elsewhere. The grammar boys at Clare
and Peterhouse, the richer youths at King’s Hall, and the glomery
students, must always have kept Cambridge peopled with little lads:
but when grammar disappeared altogether (in the xvi c.) from the
university curriculum, scholars continued to go up very young. In the
xvi c. Wyatt went to S. John’s at 12, Bacon and his elder brother to
Trinity at 12 and 14; Spenser was in his 16th year. In the xvii c.
George Herbert was 15, so was Andrew Marvell, Milton had not attained
his 15th year; Newton went to Trinity at 17, and Herschell to S.
John’s at the same age. Pitt was a precocious exception in the xviii
c. at 14.
All the scholars of the early colleges were to be indigent; the one
exception was King’s Hall, but the proviso appears again in the
statutes for King’s College.
We may note that All Souls’ Oxford retains the characteristic of the
ancient college foundations, in being a college of fellows only. The
title “students” for the fellows of Christchurch recalls the same
intention.
[341] When Gresham went to Gonville in Hen. VIII.’s time the
fellow-commoner had just made his appearance. Cambridge was full of
them in the reign of Elizabeth.
[342] Jeremy Taylor was a sizar, Newton and Bentley sub-sizars.
[343] Statutes of Christ’s College.
[344] The scholars of Eton were directed to recite the Matins of our
Lady while making their beds.
[345] This right was given up in 1856. The legal powers and privileges
of the university date from the xiii c. and the reign of Henry III.:
_Ita tamen quod ad suspensionem vel mutilationem clericorum non
procedatis, sed eos alio modo per consilium universitatis Cantabr.
castigetis_ is the clause inserted in 1261 in the matter of a quarrel
between students from the north and south parts of the realm. The
privileges granted to the university by Edward III. include the
power of imprisoning offenders; and even the king’s writ could not
be invoked to free them. In the 10th year of Edward’s reign the
university chancellor maintained this right both over scholar and
townsman. The oath taken by the mayor of Cambridge to maintain the
“privileges liberties and customs of the university” dates from the
same reign (when the mayor bailiffs and aldermen were obliged to swear
to respect the chancellor’s rights). When the riots of 1381 led to a
suspension of the town charter its privileges were transferred to the
university, till the restoration of the charter in 1832.
[346] The vice-chancellor’s court for persons _in statu pupillari_ is
composed of the vice-chancellor and six heads of colleges elected by
grace.
[347] It will be observed that the academic dean possesses
disciplinary functions like his predecessor and prototype the monastic
dean. The academic dean is also the presiding official at the chapel
services.
[348] Undergraduates may not give entertainments in taverns or public
halls without permission of their tutor: even then more than 5 men
_in statu pupillari_ cannot meet together in a public place without a
further permit from the proctor.
It was agreed in 1856 that the licence of any ale house was liable to
be revoked if a complaint in writing was made by the vice-chancellor
to the Justices of the Peace.
[349] Lodging house keepers sign a hard and fast undertaking with the
Lodging-house Syndicate. They cannot let to other than members of the
university without permission.
[350] The tutor probably made his first appearance at King’s Hall;
his office was firmly established by the middle of the xvi c. (later
Statutes of Clare College, 1551), and marks the epoch when students
other than those on the foundation were also firmly established as
college inmates. Before the xviii c., however, the official tutor of
to-day was not known; any fellow whom the master designated filled the
post. In some colleges the tutor is appointed for life; at Trinity for
a term of 10 years.
[351] Like all other items of headgear the derivatives of the hood
acquired ceremonial significance. The removable hood of the xiv c.,
which was slung over the shoulder or attached to the arm, became the
_capuce_ of the dignified clergy, of the doctors in the 3 faculties,
rectors of colleges, and others in authority. It is preserved to-day
in the _pellegrino_ of the Roman Church. The hood itself appears to
have gained this ceremonial importance in the xv c.; and it is in the
middle of that century that the hood as head-gear disappears, and is
replaced by the various caps and bonnets which were formed from it.
[352] The amess was a capuce of fur.
[353] Statutes of Peterhouse 1338-1342. The same is prescribed for the
junior students of King’s Hall (temp. Richard II.). Precisely the same
regulations--for the tonsure and _vestis talaris_--were made for the
scholar at the university of Paris.
[354] This accorded with the custom at Bologna and at Salamanca
(xiv c.)--_una capa scolastica_ ... _foderata sufficienter pellibus
pecudis_. At Salamanca each scholar received annually one cappa lined
with sheepskin, and one unlined, and a lined hood.
[355] The object of most of the rules regarding scholars’ dress seems
to have been to enforce sumptuary restrictions, and impose something
clerical and sober in appearance--_decenter et honeste_ are the words
used in the statutes of King’s Hall. The same is true of similar
regulations in Italian universities.
[356] The cappa (with a hood?) probably constituted the _speciem
scholasticam_ which pseudo-scholars in the town were forbidden to
imitate. (_Statuta Antiqua_, statute 42.)
[357] An order of the time of Henry V. (documents Nos. 90, 91 in the
Registry) requires the Cambridge bachelors to dress like those at
Oxford; which probably referred to the black _capuce_ or hood of the
Oxford bachelor?
[358] This feat was celebrated by verses inscribed: _Mutantque
Quadrata Rotundit_. A square cap (called both ‘scholastic’ and
‘ecclesiastical’) was recognised as the proper head-gear for Cambridge
fellows graduates and foundation-scholars in the later xvi. c.
Pensioners were to wear a round cap.
[359] For the coloured gown see _infra_.
[360] The _pileum_ placed on the head of the new master of arts in
the xv? and xvi centuries, probably symbolised the termination of
the _status pupillaris_. Cf. _Haec mera libertas, hoc nobis pilea
donant_; and _servos ad pileum vocare_ (Livy). The tall silk hat
signified the same thing. It was worn by young _M.A.’s_, and by the
‘Hat-fellow-commoners,’ and is still worn by _M.A.’s_ on a visit to
their _alma mater_ though not by resident ‘dons.’
[361] This was not worn at Trinity, King’s, and one or two other
colleges.
[362] It is interesting to note that the Scotch universities retain
the violet gown. The Scots’ College in Rome (founded in 1600) dresses
its collegians in a violet cassock, over which is a black _soprana_.
[363] Bachelors of arts whether they be scholars reading for a
fellowship or young graduates preparing for the ‘Second Part’ of
a tripos, are still _in statu pupillari_. Perhaps, then, the more
important gown, the bachelor’s, retained this vestige of the older
dress which has been lost in the modification undergone by the
undergraduates’. That the strings indicate a state of dependence
is confirmed by their being found on the dress of the pope’s lay
chamberlains called _camerieri di cappa e spada_; the papal palfrey
men and other domestics being also provided with them.
[364] A custom now dying out.
[365] Christopher Wordsworth became Master of his college.
[366] Studies were much later additions in the colleges, and at first
a room would be fitted with 8 or 10 ‘studies,’ alcoves or cabinets
5 ft. 6 in. by 6 ft., which would be eagerly hired by students.
Sometimes the studies were furnished by the pensioners with the
necessary desk and shelves. No attempt at decoration of college rooms
appears to have been made till the poet Gray placed scented flowers
in his window and bought Japanese vases of the blue and white china
afterwards to become so fashionable--which caused much remark. When
young peers came up to Cambridge attended by their tutor and an
ample _suite_ the colleges were much put about to lodge them, and we
find Lady Rutland as early as 1590 sending hangings for her son’s
with-drawing-room at Corpus.
[367] The enmity of ‘town and gown,’ a consequence, no doubt, of
the thronging of our university towns with an alien population, is
traditional, and we first hear of it in 1249 before any colleges were
built. Fifty years later (in 1305) the townsmen attacked the gownsmen,
wounding and beating both masters and scholars “to the manifest
delaying of their study” says the King’s letter on the subject
(33rd of Edw. I.). Bad relations between ‘town and gown’ prevailed
throughout the reign of Elizabeth. Cf. v. p. 261.
[368] The allowance per head per week for food or “commons” was at
Michaelhouse 12d. in 1324, and no more was allowed in the xvi c. at
Christ’s and S. John’s. The allowance at Jesus College was 4d. a week
in excess of this, and this was the sum which Archbishop Arundel
had sanctioned for fellows’ commons earlier in the century (1405).
Peterhouse statutes made no provision, but the Bishop of Ely as
visitor restricted commons to 14d. a week in 1516. Mullinger, _Hist.
Univ. Camb._ p. 461.
[369] Undergraduates have perhaps shown a tendency to get out of
hand since the day a few years back when some of the dons invited
an expression of their opinion, apparently expecting that a serious
question affecting the university would receive illustration from a
little hooliganism.
[370] In June 1905 there were 647 tripos candidates, 146 for
the Natural Sciences, 127 for History, 111 Classics, 95 Law, 63
Mathematics, 28 Mechanical Science, 25 Theology, 13 Modern Languages,
5 Moral Sciences, 5 Economics, 1 Oriental Languages. The year before
Natural Sciences was also at the top of the poll with 131 graduates;
the Classical came next with 112, the Mathematical 67, History 63.
Some 30% therefore take Natural or Mechanical Sciences, and some of
the mathematical students stay on for scientific work. The far larger
number of men now take the First Part of the Mathematical, Classical,
or Natural Sciences tripos in their third year, which gives them the
_B.A._, and do not proceed to the Second Part. For the proportion of
First and Second classes obtained cf. vi. p. 356 _n._
It was, however, only very gradually that the classical and other
triposes worked their way to an equality in popularity with the
mathematical. It was not till 1884, after the division of the tripos,
that the classical men were slightly in excess of the mathematical
(see chap. iii.).
[371] On the other hand Oxford has had 9 wins in succession.
[372] The wearing of the surplice in chapel on Sundays and holidays
by all undergraduates, scholars, and bachelors, is a very interesting
historical survival at Cambridge, which has successfully resisted
the attacks of Puritanism. It is worn by all members of a college on
‘white nights’ (vigils and feasts), and is the ancient dress of the
canon and of clerks of all grades at divine service.
[373] “Scarlet days” are Easter, Christmas, Ascension, Whitsunday,
Trinity Sunday, All Saints, the first Sunday in November (when
benefactors are commemorated) and Commencement Tuesday (the next
before June 24). The vice-chancellor may appoint other days.
[374] Everett, _On the Cam_. Everett’s father was United States
ambassador at the Court of S. James’, and he himself was a graduate of
Trinity College.
[375] Wolsey, son of a well-to-do Suffolk butcher, was sent to Oxford,
but Thomas Cromwell, who was the son of a blacksmith, probably was not
educated at a university.
[376] _The New Sect of Latitude-men_, 1662.
[377] Eton--Cambridge and Oxford--3 each; Oxford had 3 from
Winchester, all the rest coming from the lesser public schools,
Haileybury (3), and church schools such as Radley.
[378] A very interesting symptom is the recent election of an American
fellow at Trinity and Christ’s Colleges.
[379] In the time of Caius the number of students was 1783 (see p. 217
_n._). Trinity held 359 of these, John’s 271, Christ’s 157, King’s
140, Clare 129,
[Sidenote: A.D. 1573.]
Queens’ 122. Magdalene and S. Catherine’s were the smallest with 49
and 32 respectively. The remaining 6 colleges held between 62 and 96
students each, except Jesus which had a population of 118. A hundred
[Sidenote: A.D. 1672.]
years after Caius the numbers were 2522. 3000 is about the maximum at
either university since the xiii c. At Cambridge the undergraduate
population at the present date (October 1906) exceeds 3200, with over
350 resident bachelors, and about 650 _M.A.’s_ and doctors, 400 of
whom are fellows.
Cf. with the figures given on p. 206. A man may keep his name on the
boards of his college by a payment varying from £2 to £4 a year. The
number of men “on the boards” of the university includes all those on
the boards of their colleges and has grown in 150 years from 1500 (in
1748) to 13,819 in 1906-7.
[380] Those marked with an asterisk are included principally for their
influence on education.
[381] _Or_ Walter de Merton.
[382] Raleigh was entered as a boy for Oriel College but never resided
there.
[383] Gladstone was by race a pure Scotsman, but was English by birth
and breeding.
[384] Miss Nightingale is taken as a representative of the work of
Howard, Clarkson, Shaftesbury, Hannah More, Mrs. Fry, and others of
the same noble army among whom she is perhaps typical for the English
adventuresome and pioneer spirit.
It would not be possible to choose 40 great Englishmen whom every
one should agree to be among the 40 greatest, or the best types in
the lines indicated. Some great English names--as e.g. Simon de
Montfort--do not appear for the same reason which excludes William the
Conqueror, viz. that they were not Englishmen.
The following is a short analysis:--
(1) _Men representing English Learning and education_:
Hild.
Bede.
Alcuin.
Alfred.
Grosseteste.
William of Wykeham.
Lady Margaret.
Dean Colet, Ox.
Bishop Fisher, C.
Thomas More, Ox.
Roger Ascham, C.
(2) _English Churchmen_:
Stephen Langton.
Robert Grosseteste, Ox.
William of Wykeham.
Fisher, C.
Wolsey, Ox.
Cranmer, C.
Jeremy Taylor, C.
(3) _English Religion_:
Wyclif, Ox.
Lady Margaret.
More, Ox.
Jeremy Taylor, C.
Bunyan.
Wesley, Ox.
(4) _English politics_:
Alfred.
Stephen Langton.
Grosseteste, Ox.
Edward I.
Elizabeth.
Cromwell, C.
Milton, C.
John Locke, Ox.
Pitt, C.
Gladstone, Ox.
(5) _Literature and makers of English language_:
Bede.
Chaucer, C.
Ascham, C.
Philip Sidney, Ox.
Shakespeare.
Francis Bacon, C.
Milton, C.
Bunyan.
Locke, Ox.
(6) _Philosophers_:
Locke.
Mill.
(7) _English Science_:
Roger Bacon, Ox.
Francis Bacon, C.
Harvey, C.
Newton, C.
Darwin, C.
(8) _English Adventure_:
Drake.
Raleigh.
Clive.
Nelson.
Nightingale.
[385] See the list of dramatists below.[387]
[386] Sonneteers: Wyatt, Cambridge. Surrey, Cambridge? Thomas Watson,
Oxford? Philip Sidney, Oxford. Samuel Daniel, Oxford. Lodge, Oxford to
Cambridge. Drayton, none.
[387]
_The Dramatists._
Greene (Cambridge).
Lyly (Oxford to Cambridge).
Peele (Oxford).
Lodge (Oxford to Cambridge).
(_disciple of Greene_)
Christopher Marlowe (Cambridge).
Kyd (none).
Shakespeare (none).
Ben Jonson (Cambridge).
Nash (Cambridge).
Chapman (?)
Marston (Oxford).
Dekker (nothing known).
Thomas Heywood (Cambridge).
Middleton (nothing known).
Munday (“The pope’s
scholar in the
seminary at
Rome”).
Fletcher (Cambridge).
(_12 years at Benet College_)
Beaumont (Oxford).
Webster (nothing known).
Massinger (Oxford).
Rowley (nothing known).
Ford (Oxford ?).
James Shirley (Oxford to Cambridge).
_The Novelists._
Richardson (none).
Fielding (University of Leyden).
Defoe (none).
Steele (Oxford).
Smollett (none).
Sterne (Cambridge).
Goldsmith (none).
_And the 7 great names of our century_:
Jane Austen.
Scott (none).[388]
The two Brontës.
Thackeray (Cambridge).
Dickens (none).
George Eliot.
Meredith (none).
[388] Scott attended the law classes at Edinburgh university.
[389] “The first of the great English writers in whom letters asserted
an almost public importance.” In the new ‘republic of letters’ Dryden
was “chosen chief”; “He had done more than any man to create a
literary class”; “he was the first to impress the idea of literature
on the English mind.” Master “alike of poetry and prose, covering the
fields both of imagination and criticism.... Dryden realized in his
own personality the existence of a new power which was thenceforth to
tell steadily on the world ... our literature obeyed the impulse he
had given it from the beginning of the eighteenth century till near
its close.”--J. R. Green.
[390] The first number appeared in November 1665 and was called “The
Oxford Gazette,” the court being at that time at Oxford on account of
the plague which was then raging in town.
[391] The succession of archbishops of Canterbury from 1486 is:
Cardinal Morton, Oxford; Warham (1500), neither university; Cranmer,
Cambridge; Pole, Oxford; Parker, Cambridge; Grindal, Cambridge;
Whitgift, Cambridge; Bancroft (1604), Cambridge.
Among the names given above, those with an asterisk were further
connected with their university as founders, Masters and fellows of
colleges, or as chancellors.
[392] Sydenham took a medical degree at Cambridge.
[393] Cf. the Duke of Exeter, ii. pp. 58 _n._, 156.
[394] The plate of Queens’ College is preserved at Oxford to this day.
[395] Chief of whom was the Earl of Manchester, like Cromwell himself
a Cambridge man. Cromwell and Lord Grey of Wark had “dealt very
earnestly” with the Heads of colleges to extract a loan of £6000 for
the public use. The earnest dealing included shutting most of them up
till midnight. Cromwell on their refusal declared he would have taken
£1000; not that that sum would have been of any service, but because
it would have shown that they had one of the universities on their
side. All that Cambridge had, however, was sent to Charles.
[396] Compton and Trelawney.
[397] There had been a previous meeting at Lambeth Palace in which
Turner, White, Tenison (then rector of S. Martin’s) and Compton, the
suspended Bishop of London, took part. All were Cambridge men except
Compton. At a consultation of London clergy Tillotson, then Dean of
Canterbury, Sherlock, Master of the Temple, Stillingfleet, Archdeacon
of London and Dean of S. Paul’s, and Patrick, Dean of Peterborough,
supported Edward Fowler (an Oxonian) in a declaration that they were
unable to publish the Indulgence. Every one of these men was from
Cambridge.
[398] He had not received his call in time to sign the protest of the
seven bishops. Lloyd was at Cambridge, Frampton at Oxford.
[399] See ii. p. 57, the dissolution of the friars of the Sack.
[400] Scory, Bishop of Hereford, had been given preferment by Cranmer
on the dissolution of the Dominicans; he was put into the see of the
deprived Catholic bishop Day of Chichester, a King’s man, and was
one of Parker’s consecrators. In 1554 he renounced his wife and did
penance before Bonner. The other, Day of King’s, Bishop of Winchester
and brother of the Catholic prelate, was an ardent reformer.
[401] Heath of Clare College was successively Bishop of Rochester and
Worcester, and Primate of York.
[402] Cuthbert Tunstall, who had come to King’s Hall from Oxford, and
afterwards studied at Padua, was himself one of the translators of the
1540 bible.
[403] See ii. p. 84. Corpus Christi College.
[404] Tillotson and Stillingfleet, the most prominent churchmen in the
reign of James II.
[405] They were Matthew Parker of Corpus, Cox of King’s, Grindal of
Pembroke, Bill and Pilkington of S. John’s, May and Sir Thomas Smith
of Queens’, and David Whitehead.
[406] Rowland Taylor of Christ’s College, a Suffolk rector, suffered
in 1535. Latimer who had argued on the Catholic side at the
university, was persuaded to Protestantism by Bilney. With Bilney
Thomas M’Arthur, a fellow of S. John’s and then Principal of S. Mary’s
Hostel, recanted.
[407] Rogers b. 1509 at Birmingham. Burned at Smithfield Feb. 1555.
[408] It was Cromwell who, as chancellor, began to wean the university
from the pope; and he removed its papal script--bulls, briefs, and
dispensations--which was not returned till such time as he judged the
substitution of the king for the pope to be complete.
[409] Falkland, _b._ 1610. Chillingworth born and educated in Oxford.
Taylor born and educated in Cambridge. Stillingfleet, _b._ 1635,
fellow of S. John’s, bishop of Worcester.
[410] _ob._ 1648.
[411] Cf. Peterhouse pp. 58-9, and Emmanuel p. 145. For religion in
Cambridge at the present day, see iv. pp. 246-7.
[412] Burnet, the historian of the movement, writes: “They loved the
constitution of the church, and the liturgy, and could well live
under them; but they did not think it unlawful to live under another
form.... They continued to keep a good correspondence with those
who differed from them in opinion, and allowed a great freedom both
in philosophy and in divinity; from whence they were called men of
latitude. And upon this, men of narrower thoughts and fiercer tempers
fastened upon them the name of Latitudinarians.”
[413] “Within the bosom of Protestantism they kindled for the first
time the love of this nobler speculation.” (_Tulloch, vol. 2. p. 24._)
[414] Cf. Tulloch, _Rational Theology in England in the xvii century_
(1872) vol. 2. p. 13, to whose able and interesting account of the
movement I am very much indebted. “They sought,” writes Tulloch, “to
confirm the union of philosophy and religion on the indestructible
basis of reason and the essential elements of our higher humanity”:
and again: “It is the glory of the Cambridge divines that they
welcomed this new spirit of speculation” and “gave it frank
entertainment in their halls of learning.” “Their liberalism takes a
higher flight” than that of Hales and Chillingworth.
[415] His _True Intellectual System of the Universe_ was published in
1678.
[416] Afterwards fellow of Queens’, Hebrew lecturer and Greek
praelector.
[417] Whichcote’s moral and philosophical style of preaching now
replaced “that doctrinal style which Puritans have curiously always
considered to be more identical with the simplicity of Scriptural
truth.” Tulloch.
[418] The Conqueror gave him the barony of Bourne in the fen.
[419] The de Vere of Matilda’s time had been her faithful adherent;
Cambridgeshire was one of the ten English counties in which the Veres
held lands, and they were the benefactors of the Cambridge Dominicans.
[420] See also i. pp. 19, 44, ii. p. 110 _n._ and p. 296.
[421] Manfield was nephew to Castle-Bernard another Cambridge
landowner.
[422] Dugdale, _Monasticon_ p. 1600. Stoke in the deanery of Clare was
within the liberty of S. Edmund. The Augustinian hermits, as we have
seen, came to Cambridge about the same time.
[423] Stanton is a Cambridge place-name; other names derived from
places in the district (besides of course ‘Cambridge’ and ‘Croyland’)
being Walsingham, Walpole, Gaunt, Balsham, Bourne, Chatteris, Haddon,
Milton, Newton, Caxton, Drayton, Brandon, Connington, Shelford;
and Chancellor Haselfield (1300, 1307) probably took his name from
Haslyngfield. Long Stanton was the seat of the Hattons.
[424] The name appears early in the fen country as that of an abbot of
Thorney--xiv c.
[425] Cf. iv. p. 204.
[426] 2nd son of Edmund Langley. His wife was Anne Mortimer
great-granddaughter of Elizabeth de Burgh, Duchess of Clarence; the
son of Hastings, who figures in the earlier conspiracy, married her
granddaughter.
Richard’s son was earl of Ulster and lord of Clare in right of his
mother. The sons of Edw. III.--Clarence, Gaunt, Edmund Langley, and
Thomas of Woodstock--were all allied to founders of Cambridge colleges
(see Tables I, II, III). Scrope’s brother Stephen was chancellor of
the university; see p. 94, 94 _n._
[427] “In all which time, you, and your husband Grey, were factious
for the house of Lancaster.” _Richard III._ Act i. scene 3.
[428] Pembroke held by the Clares, Mareschalls, Valence, Hastings.
Huntingdon by David of Scotland and Malcolm the Maiden, by Hastings,
and Grey. Buckingham by Stafford and Villiers. Suffolk by Pole,
Brandon, Grey, and Howard. Leicester passed from the Beaumonts to
the de Montforts, from the earls of Lancaster to John of Gaunt, the
Dudleys and the Sidneys (p. 42 _n._).
Henry of Lancaster Earl of Lancaster and Leicester, ob. 1345.
|
|
William de Burgh, last = Matilda = 2ndly Ralph Stafford.
Earl of Ulster. |
|
Elizabeth de Burgh = Lionel Duke of Clarence.
[429] From her, her grandson Mortimer Earl of March derived the title
of Earl of Ulster.
[430] Cowper was not himself at Cambridge, but he lived near by and
frequently visited his brother a fellow of Benet College.
[431] Langley and Langham were both names known at Cambridge in early
days.
[432] He married Anne daughter of the first Lord St. John of Bletsoe,
a descendant of Margaret Beauchamp the mother of Lady Margaret.
[433] See Trinity College pp. 135, 7, 9.
[434] His ancestor Dr. Richard Sterne was one of the Masters ejected
for refusing the Covenant.
[435] In the Mildmay-Ratcliffe alliance, the two Protestant
foundations of the xvi c. meet. The Ratcliffes, in addition to the
alliance with Sidney, intermarried with the Staffords and Stanleys.
Beside the xv c. Bynghams and Bassetts and Percies, and the xiv c.
names so often recorded, it should not be forgotten that few early
figures in the university are more interesting than that of Chancellor
Stephen Segrave mentioned on pp. 203 and 259. Segrave was Bishop of
Armagh and titular bishop of Ostia. He had been a clerk in the royal
household, and was the champion of the university against the friars.
It will be remembered that Nicholas Segrave--a baron of de Montfort’s
parliament in 1265--had been one of those defenders of Kenilworth who
held out in the isle of Ely till July 1267.
[436] Cf. pp. 203 _n._, 294 _n._
[437] One of the Pastons married Anna Beaufort a great-granddaughter
of John of Gaunt.
[438] Gray took the _LL.B._ on returning to the university.
[439] Morland improved the fire engine and invented the speaking
trumpet--one of his trumpets is preserved in the library at Trinity.
He was 10 years at Cambridge, and was assistant to Cromwell’s
secretary, Thurloe.
[440] Woodward went to Cambridge when he was 30 years old.
[441] The original double monastery of Ely did not become Benedictine
till 970. See i. p. 12. Etheldreda (‘S. Audrey’) was the daughter
of Anna king of the East Angles, and of Hereswitha sister of Hild,
and wife to Oswy king of Northumbria. She thus united in her person
the destinies of the northern provinces and East Anglia (where she
was born) a union which has been perpetuated in the university of
Cambridge. She was born _circa_ 630, and died in 679. As “the Lady of
Ely” her will, living or dead, was held to decide the fortunes of the
city.
[442] i. p. 16. Her name was given to the only monastic house in
Cambridge. Rhadegund was abbess of Ste. Croix A.D.
519-587.
[443] It is sufficiently remarkable that a conspicuous rôle pertained
almost exclusively to Englishwomen who were of the blood royal. This
is true in the case of the great abbesses, and from the time of Hild
and Etheldreda to that of Lady Margaret.
[444] For the circumstances in which Clare and Pembroke were founded,
see chap. ii. pp. 67-8 and 69, 71-2.
[445] The countesses of Clare, Pembroke, Richmond, and Sussex.
[446] Erasmus’ “three colleges” which represented for him the
university and its new learning were Queens’, Christ’s, and S. John’s,
all founded by women.
[447] Lady Mildred Cecil gave money to the Master of S. John’s “to
procure to have fyres in the hall of that colledg uppon all sondays
and hollydays betwixt the fest of all Sayntes and Candlemas, whan
there war no ordinary fyres of the charge of the colledg.” And pp. 72,
86, 120, 155.
[448] A pioneer committee had been formed in October 1862 to obtain
the admission of women to university examinations; Miss Emily Davies
was Hon. Secretary. The first step taken was to secure the examination
of girls in the university Local Examinations which had been started
in 1858, and a private examination for girls simultaneously with
that for boys was held on the 14 Dec. 1863. These examinations were
formally opened to girls in February 1865 (_infra_ p. 358). Meanwhile
the Schools Enquiry commission of the previous year had brought into
relief the absence of any education for girls after the school age.
The commissioners were memorialised, and the immediate outcome was the
scheme for a college, and the formation of a committee to carry it
into effect. Cf. pp. 317-18 _n._
[449] There were present Mrs. Manning, *Miss Emily Davies, *Sedley
Taylor, and *H. R. Tomkinson. *Madame Bodichon, who was ill, was not
present, but George Eliot wrote to her four days before the meeting, à
propos of an appointment to see one of the members of the committee:
“I am much occupied just now, but the better education of women is one
of the objects about which I have _no doubt_, and I shall rejoice if
this idea of a college can be carried out.”
On the General Committee of Hitchin College the bishops of Peter
borough and S. David’s, the Dean of Ely, Lady Hobart, Lord Lyttelton,
Prof. F. D. Maurice, Sir James Paget, Rt. Hon. Russell Gurney, M.P.,
Miss Anna Swanwick, and Miss Twining, sat with several others. On the
Executive Committee were Mme. Bodichon, *Lady Goldsmid wife of Sir
Francis Goldsmid elected liberal member for Reading in 1866, *Mrs.
Russell Gurney, Prof. Seeley, Dean Stanley, and the members of the
1867 committee: while a Cambridge Committee included Professors Adams,
Humphry, Lightfoot, Liveing, Drs. J. Venn, T. G. Bonney, the Revv. J.
Porter, R. Burn, T. Markby, W. G. Clark; Henry Sidgwick, and Sedley
Taylor. The asterisked names denote those who also constituted with 11
others the first members of Girton College (p. 321).
[450] Incorporated from 1872 as Girton College.
[451] Two or three of the Cambridge colleges were built at a
distance from the schools and the centre of the town: thus Alcock
described Jesus College as “the college of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
S. John Evangelist, and S. Rhadegund, _near Cambridge_.” Hitchin in
Hertfordshire, the first site of Girton, was one of the homes of the
English Gilbertines, a double order for men and women which was also
established in Cambridge. i. p. 19 and _n._
[452] This was followed by a bequest of £10,000.
[453] It is interesting to find the names of Dillon and Davies
continuing in the case of the first college for women at Cambridge the
Irish and Welsh traditions of college founders. It is perhaps still
more interesting to find that on her mother’s side Lady Stanley was
descended from the companion-in-arms of de Burgh the “red earl” of
Ulster, and that a Dillon intermarried with the heiress of the 2nd
earl of Clare, names honoured as those of the woman founder of one of
the first Cambridge colleges.
[454] See the original committee _supra_ pp. 317-18 _n._ The existing
members elect the majority of new members. The first official
recognition of the existence of the college was made in 1880 when the
Council of the Senate elected three members of the college from among
its number, and so exercised a power conferred on it in the original
articles of association.
[455] The college still prepares for this examination; at Newnham it
must be prepared for at the student’s own expense. It is however now
usually taken by all students before coming up.
[456] Classics: R. S. Cook (Mrs. C. P. Scott) and L. I. Lumsden.
Mathematics: S. Woodhead (Mrs. Corbett) senior optime.
[457] This was in 1882. First class honours in this tripos did not
become usual until women came up better prepared from schools. A
Cambridge man, however, writing in 1873 declares that a man may be a
wrangler when his mathematical knowledge was contemporary with his
admission to the university, but that “no one was ever placed in
_any_ class of the (classical) tripos who came up to the university
knowing only the elements of Greek grammar.... The classical man, if
plucked,” (_i.e._ in mathematics) “loses 10 years’ labour”--the time
spent in classics from early school days. Women, nevertheless, belied
this dictum from the first; many have not known even “the elements of
Greek grammar” when they came up, and few indeed have 10 years’ Greek
studies on their shoulders when they take the tripos.
[458] The Claude Montefiore prize was founded in memory of the
donor’s wife, who was at Girton. The Agnata Butler prize is awarded
to classical students by the Master of Trinity and his wife. One of
the early scholarships, offered by Mr. Justice Wright, was described
as “a year’s proceeds of an Oxford fellowship.” Dr. W. Cunningham,
fellow of Trinity College, assigned, in 1898, the entire profits of
his book _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_ towards a fund for
publishing dissertations of conspicuous merit written by certificated
Girton students. The above-named city companies have always been
generous donors to the women’s colleges.
[459] The committee of 1862 had had (as we see) for its avowed object
the “obtaining the admission of women to university examinations”:
the subsequent committee (of December 1867) was formed “for the
establishment of a college holding to girls’ schools and home teaching
a position analogous to that occupied by the universities towards the
public schools for boys.” The following was the reply given by the
first named committee when approached in March 1868 with a view to a
joint memorial asking for “advanced examinations for women”:--“That
this committee, believing that the distinctive advantage of the
Cambridge University Local Examinations consists in their offering
a common standard to boys and girls, and that the institution of
independent schemes of examination for women exclusively tends to keep
down the level of female education, cannot take part in the proposed
memorial to the university of Cambridge for advanced examinations for
women above the age of eighteen.”
[460] “The brethren of Mount Carmel had a site at Newnham where
they dwelt and where they founded their church, which site they had
of Michael Malherbe” (Hundred Rolls ii. 360). “Here they made many
cells, a church, a cloister, and dormitory, and the necessary offices,
sufficiently well constructed, and here they dwelt for 40 years”
(Barnwell Chartulary). See i. p. 20.
[461] Scroope Terrace occupies part of the ground of Newnham Manor.
Like the other great benefactors of colleges, Lady Elizabeth Clare and
Lady Margaret Beaufort, Lady Anne was three times married. Her mother
was a Gonville. Corpus Christi College benefited by tithes and houses
in the manors both of Girton and Newnham (p. 318).
[462] Those who held that Grantchester and Cambridge were but one
and the same town, told us that the principal part lay on the north,
towards Girton, while Newnham Lane, beyond the mill, extended as far
as Grantchester “the old Cambridge”: _Ad Neunhamiae vicum, ultra
molendinam, que se longius promovebat versus Grantacestriam_....
(Caius).
[463] It may be recorded here that Madame Bodichon’s scheme was for
a college (_a_) _in_ Cambridge (_b_) with the same intellectual
conditions and tests as applied to men and (_c_) free of
denominationalism. A chapel was not erected at Girton till after
1895. Of Mme. Bodichon as a pioneer it has been said that she had
the singular faculty for realising in her imagination exactly what
she wanted, down to the last detail--the creative power. Her failing
health for the last fourteen years of her life made impossible the
active share in the work which had been so ungrudgingly undertaken by
her between 1867 and 1877; but her interest extended to every student
who went up to Girton, and she was at pains to know them and to find
out from their conversation how the college might be improved.
[464] This house, 74 Regent Street, had been hired by (Professor)
Henry Sidgwick in the spring of the year at his own financial risk,
and here Miss Clough came in September.
[465] The names of the 16 men (one being a Frenchman) who first
lectured to women at the university are treasured at Newnham. Six were
S. John’s men, 4 Trinity, and the other colleges represented were
Christ’s, Queens’, and Caius. They were:
†F. D. Maurice.
†W. W. Skeat.
†J. E. B. Mayor.
J. Peile.
W. C. Green.
M. Boquel.
†Prof. Cayley.
J. F. Moulton.
†W. K. Clifford.
J. Venn.
†A. Marshall.
Prof. C. C. Babington.
T. G. Bonney.
P. T. Main.
G. M. Garrett, Mus.D.
S. Taylor.
Dr. (afterwards Sir) Michael Foster, Adam Sedgwick, Frank Balfour (all
of the Physiological laboratory) H. Sidgwick, Mr. Archer-Hind, Dr. E.
S. Shuckburgh, and Mr. Keynes were also among the earliest lecturers.
The general committee then formed included the first 3 of these names,
and Nos. 7, 8, and 10; with Prof. Adams, Mr. Henry Jackson, and Mr.
(afterwards Sir) R. C. Jebb. The Executive were: Prof. Maurice, Mr. T.
G. Bonney, Mr. Ferrers (afterwards Master of Gonville and Caius) Mr.
Peile (now Master of Christ’s) Mrs. Adams (the wife of the Lowndean
professor) Mrs. Fawcett (the wife of the professor of Political
Economy) Miss M. G. Kennedy, and Mrs. Venn (the wife of Dr. Venn of
Caius) H. Sidgwick and T. Markby, Hon. secretaries, and Mrs. Bateson
(the wife of the Master of S. John’s) Hon. treasurer.
Certain courses of lectures in the public and inter-collegiate lecture
rooms were open to women from 1873--22 out of the 34. A few years
later 29 were open, and now all are open.
[466] _Memoir_ of her aunt, by Blanche Athena Clough, Arnold, 1897--to
which I am indebted for many of these details.
[467] In her diary written the year she came of age she writes that
honour and praise were not what she cared for. “If I were a man I
would not work for riches or to leave a wealthy family behind me; I
would work for my country, and make its people my heirs.”
[468] This she lived to see accomplished. A training college for
women was proposed by Miss Buss in 1885 and Miss E. P. Hughes was its
first principal and guiding spirit at Cambridge. Out of this grew the
latter’s Association of Assistant Mistresses.
[469] The Association formed to promote the interests of students
working for the university Higher Local examinations; see p. 326. The
Newnham Hall Company was constituted in 1874 to build the first Hall.
[470] The cost of which was mainly defrayed by a bequest for the
benefit of women left by Mrs. Pfeiffer and her husband.
[471] Mrs. Sidgwick is the daughter of the late James Balfour and of
Lady Blanche Cecil, who was the sister of one Prime Minister as Mrs.
Sidgwick is of another. Miss M. G. Kennedy is the daughter of the late
Benjamin Hall Kennedy, one of the revisers of the New Testament with
Lightfoot, Westcott, and Hort; fellow of S. John’s, Canon of Ely, and
Regius Professor of Greek, in whose honour the Latin professorship was
founded.
[472] The style of Principal was, as we have already seen, used for
the chief of a hostel in the university; it was also the tide of the
head of the _domus universitatis_, University Hall (1326).
[473] See page 355. 1874 was the year in which Prof. James Ward was
alone among the men in the first class when two of the examiners
thought Mary Paley (Mrs. Marshall) should be there also, and two
placed her in the second: no one doubts that Miss Paley attained the
first class standard of any other year.
[474] Professor of Anatomy.
[475] Afterwards Mrs. Koppel.
[476] October 1906. There are at Newnham 6 scholarships worth £50 a
year, 1 of £70, 1 of £40, and 2 of £35. There is also a studentship of
£75 and another of £80 a year, tenable for one year or more. Of these,
two are for natural science students, one for a classic.
Through the munificence of private donors Newnham has been enabled to
appoint 4 fellows of the college, and a fund is being formed which it
is hoped will place these fellowships on a permanent basis.
[477] These include many who read for a tripos, and a large number who
in early days passed in the various Higher Local “Groups,” besides all
who have taken special courses of study.
[478] Professor Seeley’s rendering of her views for use at the public
meeting at Birmingham. In a leaflet appealing for funds, Miss Clough
said that the Cambridge lectures had been “a free-will offering”
made to women by members of the university; here at Cambridge women
of “different occupations, different stations in life, and different
religious persuasion” were brought together to receive in common “at
least some share of academic education.” “If we are right,” she says,
“in thinking our object one of national importance” the expense should
not be thrown on Cambridge residents, “much less should members of the
university, who are already giving their time ungrudgingly, be called
upon to give money also.” The journey to Birmingham was made with Miss
M. G. Kennedy, and Mrs. Fawcett addressed the meeting.
[479] It is interesting to note that there have been several students
at both colleges bearing old Cambridge names, some known there in the
xii, xiii, xiv and xv centuries: Bassett, Mortimer, Frost, Gaunt,
Bingham, Booth, Parker, Alcock, Skelton, Crook, Bullock, Bentley,
Parr, Creighton, Cartwright, Ridley, Day, May, Wallis, Sanderson,
Morland, Herschell, Jebb, Sedgwick, Paley, and several others.
[480] Some forty members of Parliament voted in favour of the “Graces”
on this occasion.
[481] See p. 338 _n._
[482] Another clergyman also--the Rev. E. W. Bowling, afterwards
rector of Houghton Conquest, and a light blue champion in the boat
race.
_Battle of the Pons Trium Trojanorum_, Thursday Feb. 24. 1881.
Aemilia Girtonensis
By the Nine Muses swore
That the great house of Girton
Should suffer wrong no more.
By the Mutes Nine she swore it
And named a voting day
* * * * *
But by the yellow Camus
Was tumult and affright
* * * * *
‘O Varius, Father Varius,
To whom the Trojans pray,
The ladies are upon us!
We look to thee this day!’
* * * * *
The Three stood calm and silent
And frowned upon their foes,
As a great shout of laughter
From the four hundred rose.
[483] The first man to maintain that girls had a right to as good
an education as boys, was a _Cantab_ (Eton and King’s College) a
master at the new Merchant-Taylors’ school, and afterwards headmaster
of Colet’s school. Lancelot Andrewes was one of his pupils. This
famous Cantab and famous schoolmaster--Richard Mulcaster--also
advised that teachers should be trained to teach. In the xviii c.
Defoe’s appreciation of the woman with ‘knowledge’--“well-bred and
well-taught”--led to his suggestion that there should be a college for
her higher education.
[484] For the subjects of this tripos, see iii. pp. 187-189.
[485] _For the 20 years from 1886 to 1906_:--
Mathematics 345 candidates,
31 wranglers First and 2nd classes 56 per cent.
Classics 296 candidates,
54 first classes “ “ 61 “
Moral Sciences 83 candidates, 21
first classes (this excludes
the triumphs of the first
12 years) “ “ 76 “
Natural Sciences 246 candidates,
64 first classes “ “ 70 “
History 290 candidates,
49 first classes “ “ 64 “
Medieval and Modern Languages
(tripos created in 1886) 246
candidates, 73 first classes “ “ 74 “
Hence in these 6 triposes the highest percentage of Firsts has been
obtained in the Moral Sciences, Languages, and Natural Sciences,
Classics coming fourth; while in the percentage of First and Second
classes the order is again: Moral Sciences, Languages, Natural
Sciences, followed by History, Classics, and Mathematics.
In the first 10 years 250 students took a tripos, of whom one in five
(51) was placed in the first class.
Among the men the percentage of _First Classes_ for _the years
1900-1905_ is: mathematics 39 per cent, classics 28 per cent. For the
subjects chosen by men cf. iv. p. 238 _n._
[486] There are, roughly, 3000 men and 300 women at the university.
Since 1881, 94 women and 168 men have taken this tripos--the
proportion should have been 940 men.
[487] The founders of Girton have been steadfast in demanding the
degree. In 1887, 842 members of the senate signed a petition in
favour of it. Miss Clough had signed a similar petition earlier. The
objections to opening the degrees to women have been adequately met
in the pamphlet “Women in the Universities of England and Scotland,”
Cambridge, Macmillan and Bowes, 1896.
[488] The entries for 1863, when girls were first informally examined,
were 639, the next year they rose to 844.
[489] Statutes regulating the examination of women, and opening to
them the Mathematical, Natural Sciences, and Modern History schools,
were voted in 1886 by a majority of 464 votes to 321. Responsions and
the other schools were opened to women in 1888, 1890, and 1893 (the
Theological school, Oriental studies, and the _D.Mus._) and in 1894
the remaining examinations were opened. Pass and honour examinations
are both open to women at Oxford, and the names of successful
candidates appear in the official lists. The certificate, however,
is given by the Oxford Association for the Education of Women, who
restrict it to those students who have qualified like the men on all
points.
[Sidenote: The position of women in other universities.]
In 1856 the first application was made--by Jessie White to London
university--for admission as a candidate for the medical degree. A
similar request was made seven years later. A supplementary charter
establishing special examinations for women was procured by this
university in 1869. In 1878 it made “every degree, honour, and prize
awarded by the university accessible to students of both sexes on
perfectly equal terms.” Since 1889 all disqualification for women
in Scotch universities has ceased. The Victoria university, by its
original charter 20 April 1880, admitted both sexes equally to
its degrees and distinctions; and in 1895 Durham became a “mixed”
university. All the more recent universities treat men and women
equally.