Part 2

Pembroke College possessed till quite recently a really beautiful example of a fourteenth-century Dining-hall. The late Mr. Waterhouse alarmed the society by reporting it to be in danger of falling about their ears. He was commissioned, therefore, to take it down and to build them another. In executing the first part of these instructions he was observed to have recourse to dynamite. Less drastic methods might avail to remove the building which now occupies the place of that fine old Hall. In speaking of it the present writer is tempted to borrow the words of the learned Provost of King's in noticing the Library building by the same hand: "It could only suffer", says Dr. James, "by any description of it that I might write". Gonville Hall was another college destined to undergo a complete remodelling. Fortunately the rebuilding took place in the sixteenth century, and much of the work then undertaken remains to this day. It marked the munificence of its re-founder, and devoted master, the celebrated Dr. Caius. This extraordinary man was born in Norwich in 1510. He was of Gonville Hall, and, after taking the usual degrees, proceeded Doctor at Padua, where he lectured in Greek. His learning was prodigious and his reputation European. He lived to translate some Erasmus into English, to write numerous treatises of his own, to preside over the College of Physicians, to carry out various antiquarian researches, and to serve with distinction as Physician to Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth. He ended his days Master of his beloved College in Cambridge, where he lies buried. In his last illness he endeavoured to sustain life by a return to the natural nourishment of infancy; and divers dames of the town were privileged to minister to his wants in this respect. Being observed to be now "froward, peevish, and full of frets", and now tractable, docile, and of an amiable countenance, his moods and tempers were considered to vary with the individual source of his curious refreshment. Gonville and Caius College, as it is now called, possessed till recently three gateways of the time of Caius. That leading on to the street was inscribed the Gate of Humility; that between the first and second court, the Gate of Virtue; and the last, as leading to the hall where degrees were conferred, the Gate of Honour. Of these gates the two last mentioned have fortunately survived; but the first has given place to a large block of buildings designed by the late Mr. Waterhouse in his best Provincial Assurance manner. The visitor will be startled to read the words _Porta Humilitatis_ above the doorway of this amazing pile.

The fifteenth century saw four more Colleges added to the list of Cambridge Houses: King's, 1441; Queens', 1448; St. Catharine's, 1473; Jesus, 1495. The first of these was designed to eclipse every other collegiate foundation in England. As finally settled by the will of Henry VI, its founder, the society consisted of seventy souls under the headship of a Provost. It is bound by sisterly ties to King Henry's other foundation, the College of St. Mary at Eton. Eton, indeed, was and is to King's College what Winchester has been to New College in Oxford. Till 1857 the scholars of Eton proceeded by right to scholarships and fellowships at King's. None but Etonians could come upon the foundation, and Kingsmen enjoyed the further privilege of proceeding to their degrees without any University examination. The Society ceded these privileges in the year named, and by its present statutes consists of a Provost, forty-six Fellows, forty-eight Scholars, of whom twenty-four hold "close" scholarships attached to Eton, two Chaplains, an Organist, and a Master of the Boys. The choristers on the foundation are required to be of gentle birth, and they have their education in an admirably equipped school under the special government of the College. Of the buildings which the founder not only contemplated but specified in a document drawn up by himself, nothing but the Chapel was so much as set out. The Gatehouse, the great Quadrangle, the Hall and Butteries, the Library, the Provost's Lodging, the Cloister with its garth, the Bell Tower, and the bridge across the river were planned and specified, but never undertaken on the lines which the founder so carefully laid down. The King died before he could sufficiently endow his college. His immediate successors in the Crown of England, to whom in language unforgetably solemn he commended the care of his foundation, did something for it; but egotism being stronger than piety in princes, those royalties of a later age who cared to patronize learning preferred to initiate rather than complete. The Chapel of King's College, however, owes a great deal to the munificence of the Sovereigns of England. It took more than a century in building, and cost for the stonework alone about £160,000, according to the present value of money. To the completion of this magnificent structure Edward IV, Richard III, Henry VII, Henry VIII, and Queen Elizabeth subscribed on a liberal scale. The window glass and the woodwork belong wholly to the sixteenth century, with here and there additions of a later date. The roof, had it been carried out by the first set of masons employed, would certainly have been "lierne" vaulted; but by the time the walls were ready to bear a roof at all, "fan" vaulting had come into vogue. The Chapel as it stands to-day presents without doubt one of the most beautiful interiors to be seen in England. The choir-screen and stalls are of Renaissance design, executed with a subtlety not to be matched on this side of the Alps. The Lectern is of the first quarter of the sixteenth century and is therefore nearly contemporaneous with the greater number of the stained-glass windows. In one of the side chapels is preserved an interesting specimen of a fifteenth-century pulpit, which on March 25 of every year, being the Annunciation of the Virgin, is brought forth into the church. From this pulpit a Fellow of the College preaches before the University on the day named: a departure from the usual custom of meeting in Great St. Mary's which serves to mark the founder's wish that his college should occupy a pre-eminent place in Cambridge.

The sixteenth century saw the foundation and endowment of the two great colleges of Trinity and St. John's, the sister college to the latter, Christ's, and the rise of Magdalene, Emmanuel, and Sidney Sussex. Of these, St. John's was the first to attain eminence. Bishop Fisher, Cecil the great Lord Burleigh, and Archbishop Williams successively lent her their aid. She became _par excellence_ an aristocratic college, and by the first decade of the nineteenth century could boast that she included among her alumni more men of note in the social and intellectual life of the country than any other college in either University could lay claim to. The first Court of this College has been much disturbed. The gateway is one of the finest examples of its period to be found anywhere; but, on entering the College, the eye is at once offended by a poor eighteenth-century range of buildings on the left, and a vast effort by the late Sir Gilbert Scott, by way of Chapel, on the right. The second Court, however, is well-nigh faultless. Here is late Tudor at its best; and in this small rosy-red brick of the period it finds the happiest material for the expression of its aims. The further or third Court is Carolian. It is quaint and charming in its own rather odd fashion, and as seen from the river, whose waters here touch the very walls of its western range, contrives to bear a strangely impressive appearance. The Cam is here spanned by two bridges: one, a very beautiful example of Sir Christopher Wren's style--it was built by his pupil Hawksmoor--the other a Cockney Gothic affair commonly called "The Bridge of Sighs". This last connects the old Carolian building with a huge range built during the years 1827-31, which cost the college £78,000. Of the bridge itself, which is part of this dreadful building, it will be noticed that a certain decency of proportion--its one merit--renders it some degrees less detestable than the main structure to which it belongs.

Christ's College, the other "Lady Margaret" foundation, has undergone a great deal of rebuilding and not a few additions. The gateway from the street and most of the chambers to right and left of it are of the sixteenth century. The finest architectural possession of the college is its block of Fellows' buildings towards the garden. It would seem to be by a pupil of Inigo Jones, if not actually by the Master himself.

Magdalene is the only college in Cambridge which, in a sense, is of monkish origin. It was originally a cell of Croyland; and being endowed by Henry, second Duke of Buckingham, it soon came to be known as Buckingham College. In 1483 it is styled "Bokyngham College" and its inmates are described as "monachi". Lord Chancellor Audley, who changed the foundation into Magdalene College, refounded it for an ordinary academical society, after the house, as a cell of Croyland Abbey, had escheated to the Crown. This college does not elect its Master: the headship of the House being in the gift of the "owner of Audley End". At present, therefore, the Lords Braybrooke present to the Mastership. Magdalene is a picturesque and commodiously arranged college, and, though small, has many attractive features. The most interesting building is that erected in the seventeenth century, primarily with the idea of providing suitable accommodation for the library of Samuel Pepys the diarist. The latest addition, a range brought close to the riverside, is perhaps the most successful in design and colour of any of the more recent buildings in the University.

The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, though inheriting much from the earlier college--King's Hall--which was set up by Edward II and his son Edward III, owes almost everything to King Henry VIII. It was typical of this monarch that, after somewhat maltreating Wolsey's foundation at Oxford and paying not too much attention to Henry VI's or King's College at Cambridge, he should have set about founding Trinity with the plain intent of eclipsing both. The College as we see it to-day, is the largest and wealthiest in either University. It is founded for a Master, sixty Fellows at the least, and eighty Scholars. In full term the resident members number nearly eight hundred souls. From the first, the buildings were set out to accommodate an unusually large society. The Great Court, with its Chapel, Gatehouse, Hall, Master's Lodge, and rows of chambers, broken here by a tower, there by a turret, occupies over two acres of ground. The character of its architecture is for the most part Tudor; for the restorations and alterations which have from time to time taken place have not been permitted to stray far from the traditional style of the Court. A further court--the Cloister or Neville's Court--consists of two ranges of Jacobean design, modified by later hands so as to fare better than they otherwise would beside Sir Christopher Wren's great Library building, which here occupies the entire western side of the quadrangle, even projecting above and beyond it on either side. In addition to these two spacious courts there are three other quadrangles, all of recent date. These are fortunately so situated that the sightseer can easily avoid looking at them.

[Illustration: GATEWAY, ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE]

Emmanuel College possesses one court of the founder's time, and beautiful it is. It is rarely shown to the ordinary visitor, but those who care for simple unpretending work of this period (1584) have only to ask for the dovecot garden. The main Court of the College is of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Wren made the design for the Chapel, which was built between 1668-78. The Court is finely proportioned and has always been admired.

Sidney Sussex College, the last college to belong to the sixteenth century, has been harshly dealt with. A charming Elizabethan college has been ruthlessly turned into a thoroughly bad stucco dwelling gothicized in the Wyatt manner. It has its treasures: a fine garden, good pictures, and some handsome plate.

We have now traced the main periods of Cambridge building. We have said very little of the life of the University or the growth of the town during these four hundred years. It is, indeed, hard to contemplate the visible memorials of those days without imagining a social life grander and happier for the individual man than could ever have been the case. Almost everything which makes for the amenities of college life as we see it to-day is comparatively speaking modern. To picture the life of scholars young and old even so late as the sixteenth century, we must be prepared to learn strange things. Fireplaces were few and far between. Folk gathered as much as possible in the Common Hall of the College. Here was set a brazier of charcoal, its fumes poisonous and disagreeable finding their way through a lantern or louvre in the roof. Rushes were upon the floor, if it were not tiled or paved. Windows having glass in them were not common before the fifteenth century. The sanitary arrangements were primitive, ill-managed, and consequently wretched. Street lighting was unknown. Scholars slept two and often more in a bed; and went, as did everyone else, naked to their beds. The advantages of a bedfellow in those bitter winters were obvious. It was equally obvious that those who shared a chamber, and so often a bed, should be well suited to one another; and parents expressed a not unnatural anxiety on this head. Letters exist in which the Tutor, who usually occupied a bed apart in a chamber for five persons, of whom four would be his pupils, is asked to choose carefully a bedfellow "gentle and virtuous" for the youthful freshman. The average age of entering was about fourteen during the earlier periods, but rose to sixteen during the latter centuries of which we have been writing. Most college offences were punishable by whipping, graver imprudences meeting with public chastisement executed by a menial in the Common Hall of the College. Fellows of M.A. standing could be put in the college "stocks", and often were so handled. The pedagogic notion that intellectual advancement is furthered by the application of physical pain was not confined to the grammar schools, and parents were often eager to place their sons under the care of a strong-armed college tutor. "Prey Grenefield", wrote a certain lady to a Cambridge Tutor in the time of Henry VI, "to send me faithfully worde ho Clemit Paston hathe do his dever i' lernyng, and if he hathe nought do well nor wyll nought amende, prey him that he wyll trewly belash him tyll he wyll amend, and so did ye last maystr and ye best en he had att Caumbreg." As time went on, however, the life of the ordinary pensioner became comfortable enough; but, unhappily, the scholar on the Foundation and the Sizar, or poorest of the juniors, one who paid for his education by the performance of menial offices, remained objects of contempt with the more wealthy undergraduates. Before the end of the fifteenth century, pensioners "in Fellows' Commons" had made their appearance in Cambridge. They were allowed to dine with the Fellows at the High Table, wore richly embroidered gowns and enjoyed many other privileges and distinctions. A higher order still was that of persons who entered as "Noblemen". Many of the latter class lived in College and "kept" there in some state. For example, in 1624 Lord Maltravers and his brother William Howard, sons of the then Earl of Arundel and Surrey, came up to St. John's College with a retinue of servants. It was requested that the brothers might occupy one room "with a pallett for the groome of their chamber"; while "the rest of his lordship's company, being two gentlemen, a groome of the stable, and a footman, might be lodged in the town near the College".

[Illustration: WREN'S BRIDGE, ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE]

But the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for all the patronage of learning affected by prince and peer alike, were troublous times for the scholar. Much wit was needed to guide him through those political and religious conflicts which at times threatened to bring the University to dissolution. Doctors and Masters were for ever being ousted, driven overseas, or thrown into prison. No man knew when he might not be called upon to exchange a deanery for a dungeon. Let one example suffice. On the death of Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey was at once proclaimed Queen by order of Northumberland. On 16 July the Lady Mary was but five miles from Cambridge, at the house of Sir Robert Huddlestone. There she heard Mass and pushed on into Suffolk, where she met her supporters. The Duke of Northumberland with his army arrived in Cambridge five days later. He was Chancellor of the University and a man zealous in promoting its prosperity. How far the residents believed in his cause we know not; but there seemed little apprehension of the fate which in reality awaited him. The Vice-Chancellor and many of the Heads supped with him that night, and on the morrow he set off for Bury. His return was speedy. And here in the Market-place, bereft of his former supporters, he was obliged, in the presence of the Mayor, Vice-Chancellor, and the rest of the Cambridge notables, to proclaim Mary Queen. He then repaired in some state to King's College, where, at a late hour that night, he was arrested by one Roger Slegge, the sergeant-at-arms, who was permitted to enter the gates unmolested, though, as Fuller says, "that College was fenced with more privileges than any other foundation in the University".

The Popish reaction burst out at Cambridge with almost incredible swiftness. On a certain day "Doctor Sandys, the Vice-Chancellor, on the ringing of the Schools' bell, went according to his custom and office, attended with the Bedells into the Regent House and sat down in the chair according to his place. In cometh one Master Mitch with a rabble of some twenty Papists, some endeavouring to pluck him from the chair, others the chair from him, all using railling words and violent actions. The Doctor, being a man of mettle, groped for his dagger and probably had despatched some of them had not Dr. Bill and Dr. Blyth by their prayers and entreaties persuaded him to patience." He was, in due course, despoiled, deprived, and cast into prison. But there were other losses which the University was called upon to suffer during these two hundred years: direct loss of treasure, and damage to those fair fabrics which the piety of benefactors had bestowed upon the community. Association of ideas is strong, and the Reformers were probably justified by circumstances in most of their destructive operations. Yet the finer spirits must have felt keenly the demolition of many objects irreplaceable by the hand of man. Good Dr. Caius kept what he dared of Mass books, vestments, and antique church ornaments, and seems to have hidden them away; but they were discovered and destroyed; and probably nothing but the degree of eminence to which he had then attained as a physician saved him from sharing the fate of his treasures. As for the Puritans under Cromwell, they did less damage than they might have done. King's College Chapel, the glory of the University, they wholly spared; and the various Colleges were called upon for less tribute than the experiences of other corporations and the rough usage of those times might have prepared their inhabitants to expect.

During the early part of the reign of Charles I "the University", says Fuller, "began to be much beautified in buildings, every College either shedding its skin with the snake, or renewing its bill with the eagle, having their courts or at leastwise their fronts and gatehouses repaired and adorned. But the greatest alterations were in their chapels, most of them being graced with the accession of organs." Many of the chapel ornaments were subsequently defaced by Cromwell; but, as has already been stated, King's was left untouched in the matter of its fabric, its glass, and its brasses. The elaborate tombs in Caius Chapel were not injured; and the much earlier tomb--that of Hugh Ashton--in St. John's was also left undisturbed. The Fellows of Peterhouse took the precaution to bury the glass which filled the east window of their chapel. It lay undiscovered, and all of it has now been replaced. Certainly Cromwell got some plate out of the University, but this tribute was as nothing when compared to that which went to Charles. Trinity sent practically its all. King's, as the earlier Royal Foundation, could not afford to be behindhand. St. John's was Tory almost to a man, and away went most of her finest silver. "Her contribution", says the present Master, "was £150 in money and 2065 ounces, grocer's weight, of silver plate." Among the pieces so lost were some bearing the names of Thomas Wentworth, Lord Strafford, and of Thomas Fairfax. For this the College later suffered much indignity. Cromwell surrounded the place, took the Master a prisoner, and "confiscated the communion plate and other valuables". Nearly every College had paid tribute; but the fact that Cambridge was providentially spared the duty of nursing, either then or afterwards, any part of a Stuart Court, enabled her to save for posterity as much in gold and silver works of handicraft as Oxford lost. Thus the Cambridge plate as it stands to-day is the finest collection of its kind in existence.

[Illustration: FISHER LANE AND GREAT BRIDGE]