Chapter XIII

.]

[Footnote 98: There are also races in the Lent Term for the less exalted boats. But only the first division in the May races has any general interest. Each division contains sixteen boats, and the last boat of each division is also the first of the division below, being thus known as a "sandwich boat."]

[Footnote 99: The races end at Chesterton, about a mile below the boathouses.]

Leaving the distant prospect of the boathouses behind us, we resume our way to Jesus College, the grounds of which are separated from Midsummer Common by a broad ditch. Skirting this, we come to "Jesus Lane," and, turning to the right, reach the main entrance to the College, opposite the red brick facade of "Westcott House" (like Ridley Hall, an Anglican Clergy Training School), and the tall spire of the new Church of All Saints.[100] Iron gates admit us into a long passage, between red brick walls, known as "the Chimney," which conducts us to the College gate. Jesus is a large college, with several courts, but all that is much worth seeing is the chapel with its cloisters, to reach which we must seek a low-browed doorway to the east of the entrance gate. Both are relics of the nunnery. The latter, indeed, were rebuilt in the eighteenth century; but the nineteenth has rediscovered, in their eastern range, the beautiful Early English entrance into the Nuns' Chapter House. At the north-east corner of the cloisters we find the door into the chapel.

[Footnote 100: This church, as has been already said, formerly stood at the other end of its Parish, in the old Jewry, hard by Trinity and St. John's.]

This bears little resemblance to the conventional College Chapel, being a cruciform church of the ordinary Norman shape, with a central tower. Very little of the work, however, is Norman, for the nuns did not get far on with their design till the twelfth century had come in and the Early English period had commenced. A beautiful gem of this style the chapel is, and, for once in a way, the drastic "restoration" to which it was subjected in early Victorian days is matter of real thankfulness.[101] The building had been sadly mauled about in the course of ages; the high-pitched roof lowered, the eastern lancets destroyed. All is now brought back, in excellent taste, to what it was at first. The old chancel has become the chapel proper, the transepts and the short nave serving as the ante-chapel.

[Footnote 101: This restoration had the advantage of being carried out under the auspices of a man of real architectural taste (though better known by his geological distinction), the Rev. Osmund Fisher, then Dean of the College. The discovery of the Chapter House entrance in the cloisters was also due to him.]

[Illustration: _Oriel of Hall, Jesus College._]

In this the windows are filled with fine Morris glass, the rich hues of which are, unfortunately, much faded from their pristine brilliance. That at the end of the south transept, which first meets the eye, is occupied, above, by a magnificent group of the Celestial Hierarchy, in all its nine Orders--Angels, Archangels, Virtues, Principalities, Dominions, Powers, Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim, with the addition, in the tenth place, of Man, as the image of God; and, below, by nine Saints, including St. Radegund, with the addition of Bishop Alcock. The four other windows of the transept show the four Evangelists, each attending a pair of Sibyls,[102] and, in the tower lights, Gospel scenes illustrating the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ respectively. The nave windows, on the south, have Patriarchs and Prophets, with scenes beneath from the life or writings of each; and, on the north, emblematic figures representing the Cardinal and Theological Virtues, each trampling under her feet the contrary Vice.

[Footnote 102: Some words put by Virgil into the mouth of the Sibyl (or prophetess) of Cumae were supposed by the early Christians of Rome (to whom the idea of Sibylline books being prophetic was familiar from Roman History) to foretell the Incarnation. Hence she, and her sister Sibyls of other fictions as well, came to be considered inspired, and before long a whole literature of imaginary Sibylline predictions was in circulation.]

The most notable of the alumni of Jesus College was also one of the earliest--Archbishop Cranmer. It is from his having been here that he is so often and so ridiculously said to have been brought up in a _Jesuit_ seminary![103] Another notability was the poet Coleridge, who was here from 1790 to 1792. He was not an academic success, for, like his contemporaries, Wordsworth at St. John's, and Southey at Christ Church, he was carried away by the revolutionary spirit then rampant, and, being more audacious than they, got into more scrapes. One of his freaks was to trace out in gunpowder on the college lawns the words LIBERTY AND EQUALITY, which not only produced a sensation when the train was fired, but left the obnoxious sentiment permanently branded on the sacred grass. Finally he ran away. But he was taken back, and did not lose his love for his old college; for, long afterwards, we find him writing of "the friendly Cloisters and happy Grove of quiet, ever-honoured Jesus College, Cambridge." The Grove is the name given to the grassy field, begirt with trees, which is bordered by the ditch separating the College grounds from Midsummer Common.

[Footnote 103: The Jesuits, of course, did not come into being for years after Cranmer's academic day.]

The western portion of that common is often called "Jesus Green." It witnessed the execution of the only Marian martyr burnt at Cambridge. His pile was largely formed of Protestant books of devotion, one of which, "a Communion Book," he picked up and read diligently till the flames overpowered him, "praising God, who had sent him this consolation in his death."

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