A.D.1211.
was already highly prosperous when King John made over its dues to the leper hospice of S. Mary Magdalene; and it has been suggested that this was the ancient fair to which Irish merchants brought their cloth in the time of Athelstan.
Why so uncommercial a district became the site of one of the greatest fairs in Europe, and why astudium generalebecame established there, are problems both of which we cannot resolve. There always remains at the bottom some virtue in the apparently unpropitious city on the banks of the Granta which as an Italian would sayfece da sè. But Mr. J. W. Clark’s suggestion has at least placed the two problems in juxtaposition: the growing importance of the schools and the growing importance of the fair both meet us in the opening lustres of the xiii century; the fair, that is, has its roots in the preceding century when the fate of the embryo seat of learning lay in the balance. How should a fair, how should an extraordinary concourse of people, help to consolidate a university? Simply because this was the age of peripatetic teaching, because it was the custom all through the middle ages for wandering scholars to find themselves where men gathered together, and to claim for a theorem of Roscellinus or a doctrinefrom Araby brought by the crusaders the ear of a crowd which had just been entertained by the Norman jongleur.
Earliest references to Cambridge university.
Our first glimpse of the Cambridge schools shows us an immigration of the scholars of one university to the other. In 1209,
A.D.1209 10th of John.
in consequence of an unjust retaliation upon the students, Oxford was depleted and its scholars found their way to Cambridge.[60]Nine years later we have a rescript of Henry III.’s (1218) ordering all those clerks
A.D.1218 2nd of Henry III.
who had adhered to Louis to depart the realm. In the eleven years which elapsed between this and 1229 the Franciscans had established themselves at Cambridge, and in that year as a result of Henry’s invitation to
A.D.1229 13th of Henry III.
Paris students to settle in England there was a considerable influx or foreigners to the university, the echo of which may be traced in two interesting rescripts of the year 1231. In one of these the king charges the mayor
A.D.1231 15th of Henry III.
and bailiffs of the town to deal fairly with members of the university in the matter or lodgings, and enjoins them to establish according to “university custom” two masters and two liegemen of the town to act as “taxors.”[61]Dating the rescript from Oxford on the third day of May the king writes: “It is already sufficiently known to you that a multitude of scholars has gathered to our town of Cambridge, for the sake of study, both from the regions near home and from beyond the seas; the which is most grateful and acceptableto us, because it gives an example of no small convenience to our whole realm, and our honour is thereby increased; and you especially, among whom these students are loyally dwelling should feel it matter of no little gratulation and rejoicing.”[62]In the second rescript, dated from Oxford on the same day, the king enjoins that no clerk shall live in the town (quod nullus clericus moretur in villa) who is not under amagister scholarum.[63]
Charters and Bulls. Charter of Hen. III.A.D.1231. Bull of John XXII.A.D.1317.
These letters patent addressed to the mayor and burgesses of the town by Henry III. in 1231 are the earliest existing document which can be regarded in the light of a university charter.[64]At the same time it appears by no means certain that royal letters had not been addressed earlier to Cambridge in which the
ORIEL WINDOW OF THE HALL, TRINITY GREAT COURT In the nearer part of the picture is the Master’s Lodge, and in the far distance two turrets of King’s Chapel stand up against the evening sky.ORIEL WINDOW OF THE HALL, TRINITY GREAT COURTIn the nearer part of the picture is the Master’s Lodge, and in the far distance two turrets of King’s Chapel stand up against the evening sky.
academic society there was treated as a moral entity. In the following reign the jury of Cambridge made oath to the effect that “the Chancellor and Masters of the university had appropriated to themselves more ample liberties than were warranted in the charters granted them by the king’s predecessors”;[65]and in the same way when, at the request of Edward II., John XXII. erects Cambridge into astudium generalein the second year of his pontificate, he reaffirms and confirms the privileges with which his predecessors in the apostolic chair and the English kings had adorned the university:omnia privilegia et indulta praedicto studio ... a pontificibus et regibus praedictis concessa.[66]In this instrument he refers to Cambridge university asstudium ab olim ibi ordinatum, “the university from old time there established.” Cambridge and Oxford, however, like the earliest centres of learning in Italy and France—Bologna and Paris—grew into universities; papal authorisations follow instead of preceding their institution. In other cases universities were definite creations which make their first appearance with a bull of institution and inauguration attached to them.[67]
Henry III.’s writs in behalf of Cambridge begin in the second and cover the fifty years of his reign. In the 45th and again in the 50th year he repeats and confirms his previous rescripts. The scholasticprosperity of Cambridge dates from this reign as its civil prosperity dates from that of Henry I.; and the traditions that Cambridge was Beauclerk’salma materand that Henry V. was a student at Oxford probably both derive from the signal favours shown to the two by these monarchs respectively.[68]Cambridge however was greatly reduced in the reign of John, especially about the year 1214 in spite of the recent immigration from Oxford.
The Henrys and the Edwards.
But from the accession of Henry III. onwards the university city became the special care of the Henrys and the Edwards. Edward I., while still Prince of Wales, visited the town in 1254and undertook the pacification of the quarrels in which scholars and townsmen were engaged.[69]A document sealed with his own seal and those of the university and the borough ordained that henceforth 13 scholars and 10 burgesses should be chosen to represent the interests of both parties. Five of the former were to be Englishmen, 3 Scotchmen, 3 Irishmen, and 2 from Wales. The proportions are interesting.[70]It was soon after Edward’s accession that the refusal of Cambridge
4th Edw. I.A.D.1276.
students to obey summonses to the archidiaconal courts led to Balsham’s judicious settlement of the point.[71]
Edward II. continued the interest shown in Cambridge by his father and grandfather; not only obtaining for it the status of astudium generalebut maintaining a group of scholars there at his own
A.D.1317.
charges—“king’s scholars” who were to rank with Ely and Merton scholars in historical importance. The favour shown to the university by the magnificent king his son was perhaps the one instance in which he took pains to fulfil the intentions of his murdered father.[72]
Foundation of endowed scholars. Hugh de Balsham
In the long reign of Henry III., in the year 1257, Hugh de Balsham,[73]subprior of Ely, was made tenth bishop of the diocese; and it was then that he placed and endowed at S. John’s hospital a group of secular students known as “Ely scholars,” who were the object of his anxious care until his death in 1286. His scheme and its results are described in the next chapter.[74]At this time there were no endowed houses at Cambridge, no school buildings, no endowed scholars.[75]It was some thirty years after the arrival of the Franciscans, the Carmelites had as yet taken no part in the academic life, and many years were to elapse before the Dominicans made their appearance. It was fifty years since the Oxford immigration, and thirty since the king had invited over the students from Paris. The distinction that was now made between the clerk-canon, or the clerk-friar, and the scholar in arts or theology who would remain a secular, converted, as we have said, the university corporation into something more—astudium generale, and led, as we shall see, to the building of the first endowed colleges.
Walter de Merton.
Contemporaneously with Balsham there lived and toiled another college legislator, Walter de Merton, Chancellor of England and afterwardsBishop of Rochester. His prime importance in developing the collegiate conception will be seen in the next chapter; here we are concerned with him as a founder of endowed scholars. Merton had eight nephews to educate, and he set about designing an academic scheme the far-reaching effects of which endure to this day, although the steps of the scheme are involved in an obscurity which responds to his own hesitations. He first assigned his manor of Malden,
A.D.1264.
adjoining Merton in Surrey, as a chef-lieu and endowment for “poor scholars in the schools” who are living under a code of rules prescribed by himself. During the next five years he acquired lands both in Cambridge and Oxford; his chief acquisition at the former being in 1269, when he purchased an estate lying under the shadow of the Conqueror’s castle which included the Norman manor house known as the School of Pythagoras. This property had been in the possession of the Dunnings since the Conquest, and was afterwards known as the Merton estate. In the same year William de Manfield, who held a mortgage on this property, states that he had given his lands in Cambridge to the house, scholars, and brethren of Merton—domui et scholaribus et fratribus de Merton.[76]MeanwhileWalter de Merton had been buying land at Oxford,[77]and in 1274 he definitely moved the hall at Malden and refounded it as Merton College in the sister university; the formula hitherto maintained in his charters and statutes (see ii. p. 68) being now changed, and “poor scholars who are studying at Oxford or elsewhere where astudium generaleexists” (Oxoniae, aut alibi, ubi studium viget generale) becomes “who are studying at Oxford where there is a university” (Oxoniae ubi universitas viget studentium).
The scheme thus crowned in 1274 had had its birth twelve years before when in 1262 Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester allowed the manor of Malden to be assigned to the Austin priory of Merton or to some other religious house for the sustenance ofclerici in scholis degentes(poor clerks in the schools) who were living according to Merton’s prescriptions.[78]This vesting of endowments in a religious house was already familiar at both universities. The Bishop of Ely (Kilkenny) had vested his exhibitions for divinity students in the prior of Barnwell in 1256, and it appears that this was Merton’s first intention. Two years later, however, we find him assigning Malden and other manors to his nephews, the beneficiaries being still described as “poor scholars in the schools.”
Any scholars maintained at either university by these endowments were “Merton scholars.” This isagain made perfectly clear when the charter (and statutes) of 1270 were issued, in which Walter de Merton settles the Cambridge estates as part of the Malden endowments for “scholars studying in Oxford or elsewhere.” It was part of his plan to acquire local endowments at both universities, and also that vast clerical patronage in the different shires which was obviously destined to ensure the future of his scholars. This was the scheme eventually concentrated in the foundation of Merton, Oxford: and when Bishop Hobhouse is inclined to anticipate the date at which Merton scholars were established there, we may entirely agree with him, only adding that if there were certainly Merton scholars at Oxford before 1274, there were no less certainly Merton scholars at Cambridge also before that date. Merton’s scholars had their chef-lieu at Malden, but were studying at these two universities, and possessed endowments at both during the decade 1264-1274.
The Hundred Rolls furnish us with ample references to the Cambridge scholars. In the Rolls for the borough and town of Cambridge, the 2nd year of Edward I., they are accused of poaching on the
A.D.1274.
fishing rights of the townsmen. “A servant of the House of the Merton scholars[79]had appropriated to his masters’ use a certain foss common to the whole town.” In the later inquisitions of the 7th of Edward I.
A.D.1278-9.
we find them figuring among the most considerable Cambridge landlords, one entry showing them to usas purchasers of land from Manfield:Item scolares de Merton tenent unum mesuagium cum quadraginta et quinque acris terre ... quas emerunt de Willelmo de Manefeld.[80]
A.D.1278-9.
Three of these entries point to tenure of no very recent date. Thus Eustace Dunning sold to Walter Howe a messuage with a croft which Eustace had inherited from his father Hervey Dunning, and for which the Howes, in accordance with an assignment made by Eustace Dunning, gave twelve pence a year to the clerks of Merton (per assignationem praedicti Eustachi clericis de Merton xiid).[81]The declaration is made by John son and heir of Walter Howe, so that Eustace Dunning’s appointment in favour of the
A.D.1278-9.
Merton clerks refers to some time back. Again, Agnes daughter of the tailor Philip inherited a messuage in the parish of S. Peter which her father “had held of the Merton scholars.” In the last place the Cambridge jurymen affirm that two annual attendances should have been made at the court of Chesterton for a holding of Eustace Dunning’s, but that the scholars of Merton had failed to put in an appearancefor the past six years.[82]
These transactions cannot be held to relate to anestate managed for the Oxford college founded in 1274, and to a period covering not more than four or five years. From 1274, which is also the date of the earliest Hundred Rolls, the Merton scholars were definitely and finally established at Oxford; and when John Howe and Agnes Taylor gave their evidence it is probable that there were no longer Merton scholars in Cambridge: what their depositions seem to indicate is a concurrent antiquity for Merton scholars at both universities. If these scholars had not been settled among them when these land transactions occurred the references would certainly have been to scholares de MertonOxoniae,[83]and it is well worthy of notice that the only two instances in the Cambridge Hundred Rolls where “the Merton scholars at Oxford” are referred to are two instances where Walter de Merton is said to have “alienated” land in Cambridge for the use of the scholars in Oxford.[84]
No doubt it had always been part of Merton’s design to found a residential college for his scholars at one of the universities; and he had perhaps strong reasons for establishing this at Cambridge. His great patronwas Chief-Justice Bassett, and the Bassetts were Cambridge landowners. His patron in the original assignment of Malden manor was Gilbert de Clare whose family gave its name in the next century to the eponymous college at the same university. Was thedomus de Mertonof “the scholars and brethren” (p. 39) in fact at one time such a residence? where poor scholars, some of them perchance from Merton priory school itself, lived under the auspices of the Merton brethren? Certain it is that a prior of Merton intrudes himself and his affairs into the Cambridge Hundred Rolls.[85]It is also certain that the House of Scholars of Merton is first heard of not at Oxford but at Cambridge. Mr. J. W. Clark has pointed out in another connexion that the wordsdomusandaulawere employed when a building was “appropriated by endowment as a fixed residence for a body of scholars.” Ourdomus scholarium de Mertonon which Cambridgelands were bestowed—to which Cambridge lands were confirmed—in 1269, could not have been either in Surrey or at Oxford.
Whether there was a house of Merton scholars at Cambridge before there was a house of Merton scholars at Oxford, or not, it would appear that a like antiquity must be claimed for the scholars themselves at both universities.[86]
Universities in other towns. The licence to found a university at Northampton.
One of the odd things about Merton’s movements is that though he began buying land in Oxford the year after the Malden foundation (1265), he made his chief acquisition in Cambridge as late as 1269, and that a year later when he issued a revised set of statutes (1270) he still makes no allusion to any change of locality. It is possible that in 1265 when he wrote “at Oxford or at any other university” he had in mind the tentatives then being made to found an English university in some other town. It was in fact in 1262, the 45th year of the reign of Henry III., that Cambridge students had migrated to Northampton with the king’s licence to found a university. The traditional bickerings between southerners and northerners three years previously had been the cause of the exodus, and the Cambridge scholars found many Oxonians already therewho had migrated from Oxford after their quarrel with the papal legate in 1238 but had obtained no licence to institute a university. The licence accorded to the masters and scholars of Cambridge university was withdrawn four years later on a representation being made to Henry III. that a university at Northampton must prove prejudicial to Oxford.[87]Migrations of students to other towns took place throughout the xiii century. They begin in 1209 when there was a general exodus from Oxford not only to Cambridge but to the town of Reading. Thirty years later the Oxonians migrated to Northampton and Salisbury, being followed to the former in 1262 as we have just seen by many Cambridge “masters and scholars.” These migrations certainly indicate that Oxford and Cambridge were not yet regarded as such permanent homes of English scholarship that other sites could not be substituted. The event which most impressed the popular imagination occurred when both universities had attained to European fame—the exodus in the reign of Edward III. from Oxford to Stamford which caused the king in 1333 to issue his royal letters forbidding any one to teach there. It had been prophesied that the studies pursued at Oxford would be transferred to Stamford,and the Cambridge floods gave rise to another prophecy, recorded by Spenser, which showed that the Stamford incident still occupied men’s minds. The flat Lincolnshire country would, it was said, become completely flooded, and Stamford then would
—— shine in learning more than ever didCambridge or Oxford England’s goodly beames.
—— shine in learning more than ever didCambridge or Oxford England’s goodly beames.
—— shine in learning more than ever didCambridge or Oxford England’s goodly beames.
No migration took place from Cambridge after the foundation of its first college. But before we enter upon this period of its history, and find ourselves in the brilliant epoch which was so soon to overtake the university in the xiv century, let us see what arrangements were made for the accommodation of the scholar population previous to the existence of colleges.
At first—in the xii and the early part of the xiii centuries—scholars lived each at his own charges; perhaps groups of three and four would club together, but every scholar was then, as Fuller expressively has it, “his own founder and his own benefactor.”[88]The rescript of the early years of Henry III., already cited,
A.D.1231 15th of Henry III.
introduces us to the town hostels—hospitia locanda; and establishes the taxing of lodging house charges by thetaxatores, a usage probably rendered the more necessary owing to the great influx of students two years before, when the demand for lodgings must have been very much in excess of the supply.[89]These town hostels, the result of town enterprise, were subject tothe four “taxors” only, and were under no other academic supervision.[90]It seems highly probable, however, that the king’s rescript gave rise to the university hostels, some thirty of which were in existence fifty years later. In any case the rescript leads us to conclude that the town hostels were in existence in the previous century, and supplies us with a date before which we cannot suppose that any university hostel existed.
The university hostel.
The university hostelries or inns for the accommodation of scholars who lived there at their own charges were intermediate between the town lodging house and the college, which they both anticipate and supplement. A number of scholars joined together, elected their own principal, and paid him at a fixed rate for board and lodging. At first, therefore, the university like the town hostel was a private enterprise, scholars undertook the charge of them in their private capacity. The head of the hostel was called the Principal. Later on these institutions changed their democratic character. The government passed entirely into the hands of the principal, certain oaths were exacted of him, and he kept a list of the scholars in his house.[91]The principal collected a rent from the inmates, though in some hostels the accommodation appears to have been free. All these changes, we may imagine, belong to the time whensome of the hostels were affiliated to colleges, becoming thenceforward subject in all respects to the customs and discipline of the endowed foundation. Thus S. Mary’s hostel, where Matthew Parker studied, was affiliated to Corpus, Borden’s belonged to S. John’s hospital, then to Ely, and in 1448 was affiliated to Clare; S. Bernard’s belonged first to Queens’ then to Corpus; S. Austin’s to King’s. The hostels took their name sometimes from the neighbouring church or chapel, or other saintly patron, and sometimes from their proprietor. “Newmarket” and “Harleston” hostels must have served for students from these neighbouring towns. The monks who first came to study in Cambridge lived in lodgings; but these were soon exchanged for the monastic hostel, hence “Ely hostel” and “Monks’ hostel.”[92]Those zealous learners the friars of the Sack had Jesu hostel, dismantled in 1307, the Sempringham canons had S. Edmund’s hostel, the Barnwell canons had a hostel in the town called S. Augustine’s, and the hospitaller knights of S. John owned Crouched and S. John’s hostels in School Lane and Mill Street.[93]Rud’s offers a good example of a xiii century Cambridge hostel, and Physwick of one of the xivth. The former is mentioned in 1283 and was part of the compensation allowed in that year to S. John’s for the alienated hostels at Peterhouse,[94]it still exists, almost unaltered,and forms part of the Castle inn in S. Andrew’s Street. Physwick was the private residence of an esquire bedell of that name who bequeathed it for the purposes of a hostel in 1393. It was affiliated to Gonville and was in use until absorbed in the buildings of Trinity College in the xvi century.
Cambridge hostels were highly important foundations. The 8 jurists’ hostels housed eighty and a hundred students apiece, and the large hostels of S. Bernard, S. Thomas, S. Mary, and S. Augustine sometimes housed twenty and thirty regents without counting the non-regents and students.[95]A large proportion of men whose names are not to be found on the books of any college received their education in these houses. The Inns, of which there were three at Cambridge—Oving’s, S. Zachary’s, and S. Paul’s—were smaller and less important hostels and appear to have been frequented by the richer students. Hostel and hall or college existed side by side through the xiii, xiv, and xv centuries. Indeed until the college system was well established the hostels greatly exceeded the endowed halls in number, and they continued to supplement the latter until the completion of the large colleges at the renascence. Some twenty were erected as late as the xv and the opening years of the xvi centuries. During the xiv and xv centuries many hostels were destroyed to make room for the colleges; and in the xvith those which remained were abandoned, Trinity
THE OLD CASTLE INN Now styled “Ye Olde Castel Hotel.” The Baptist Church and the Police Courts are seen just beyond, and the Roman Catholic Church in the distance. The near trees are in the grounds of Emmanuel College.THE OLD CASTLE INNNow styled “Ye Olde Castel Hotel.” The Baptist Church and the Police Courts are seen just beyond, and the Roman Catholic Church in the distance. The near trees are in the grounds of Emmanuel College.
hostel, as Fuller testifies, being the only one remaining in use till 1540.[96]
The university and the colleges—the collegiate system—eras of college building—Peterhouse—Michaelhouse—collegiumandaula—Clare—college statutes—architectural scheme of a college—Pembroke—founders of colleges—Gonville—Trinity Hall—Corpus Christi—Cambridge in 1353—Chaucer at Cambridge—the schools, library, the university printers and the Pitt Press, the senate house—King’s—King’s College chapel—Cambridge college chapels—Queens’—English sovereigns at Cambridge—S. Catherine’s—Jesus—Christ’s—Lady Margaret and Bishop Fisher—S. John’s—Magdalene—King’s Hall and Trinity College—college libraries—gateways—Caius—monks in Cambridge—Emmanuel—Sidney Sussex—Downing—public hostels—nationality of founders and general scope of their foundations—university and college revenues.
The university and the colleges—the collegiate system—eras of college building—Peterhouse—Michaelhouse—collegiumandaula—Clare—college statutes—architectural scheme of a college—Pembroke—founders of colleges—Gonville—Trinity Hall—Corpus Christi—Cambridge in 1353—Chaucer at Cambridge—the schools, library, the university printers and the Pitt Press, the senate house—King’s—King’s College chapel—Cambridge college chapels—Queens’—English sovereigns at Cambridge—S. Catherine’s—Jesus—Christ’s—Lady Margaret and Bishop Fisher—S. John’s—Magdalene—King’s Hall and Trinity College—college libraries—gateways—Caius—monks in Cambridge—Emmanuel—Sidney Sussex—Downing—public hostels—nationality of founders and general scope of their foundations—university and college revenues.
THEcollege is an endowed foundation providing for the residence and maintenance of teachers—masters or graduates, and for the free education of a certain number of poor scholars, to whose company are added, according to the capacity of the building, other students who are able to live at their own charges.
Relation of the college to the university.
Much has been said about the relation of the college to the university. By some it is supposed that the latter is nothing but the aggregate of the former; that somewhere in thetime of the Georges “the university” arrogated to itself a separate existence, and that since that time university offices have taken precedence of collegiate offices.[97]Theuniversitas, the corporation of scholars, must and did precede any college foundation: at the same time we cannot distinguish the development of either of our universities from the rise of these foundations, whose history has, ever since, been the history of the academic society. Each college is independent and autonomous, and though the aggregate of colleges does not constitute the university, each collegiate foundation forms part and parcel of it in virtue of its union with the incorporated society of Chancellor Masters and Scholars which formed at first and still forms “the university.”
The college the distinguishing characteristic of Cambridge and Oxford
It is the collegiate system which distinguishes the English universities from all others. Everywhere else in Europe students live in their own private lodgings and have complete control of their lives, subject to no supervision whatever; the university has no rights over them and no means of ensuring their good behaviour during the period in which they choose to attend its lectures. In many parts of Europe the student passes from a school curriculum in which he has been treated as a complete dependent, on whose sense of common fairplay and honour, even, no reliance can be placed, to a curriculum in which he at once becomes his own absolute master. English instinct is against this—against abandoning a young man at a critical momentof his life to his own devices, his own unsupported endeavours, as it is against ruling him by a system of espionage in his school days. It is in favour in both cases of the moral support to be found in an external guarantee for order, orderliness—and of a tacit assistance to good instincts, a tacit resistance to bad; and the result is the university college.
The origin of the college system.
The result, as we say, is an English result, and is the development of a scheme to which shape was first given by Walter de Merton, Chancellor of England and afterwards Bishop of Rochester, and Hugh de Balsham Bishop and formerly subprior of Ely, in the reign of Henry III.[98]An endowed house and college statutes formed part of this fine academic scheme, which, in all its amplitude and completeness, sprang Athena-like from the brain of Walter de Merton, and was destined from the first to be realised in a university. It must, nevertheless, be clearly borne in mind that the original college dwellings—and the college statutes—were designed for adult scholars, they were, in fact, the earliest training colleges for teachers, and it is only later that their advantages were extended in equal measure to the taught.[99]
The era of college building.
College building began in the xiii century and ended with the xvith. The first great period of building, however, belongs to the second quarter of the xiv century, and no less than seven colleges and halls were founded between the years 1324 and 1352. Ninety years elapsed before thesecond period, which began with the foundation of King’s College in 1441 and ended with the foundation of S. John’s in 1509. The third and last period opened a hundred years after the foundation of King’s and closed with the foundation of the first Protestant colleges fifty years later (1595):
There were therefore 8 colleges in Cambridge by the middle of the xiv century; when the xvi century opened there were 14, and at its close 12 of the previous buildings remained and 4 new had been added. Downing College (built 1805) must be added to these, making at the present day a total of 17 colleges.
Peterhouse.
Peterhouse was founded by Hugh de Balsham[100]for his Ely scholars whom he had in vain attempted to unite, with a separate endowment of theirown, under the same roof as the canons of S. John’s Hospital.[101]In 1284 he removed the Ely clerks to two hostels by S. Peter’s church at the other end of the town, and at his death two years later left three hundred marks for the erection of a hall. This was built in 1290 on the south-west and formed with the scholars’ chambers the only collegiate building at Peterhouse till the close of the xiv century. Here then were the primitive elements of a college; the hostel or scholars’ lodging house to which was added a common meeting and dining room, or hall. The little parish church of S. Peter served for prayers and gave its name to the college. College chapels were not built till considerably later: the example first given by Pembroke College in the next century not being followed for another hundred years. The quadrangle was not begun till 1424. A combination room[102]opening out from the hall, and a library, were added along the south side. Over the former was the master’s room, over the latter the students’ quarters; and all looked upon the ancient lawn, the meadow with its elms beyond and, stretching to the right, with its water gate, Coe fen.
Ye brown, o’er-arching groves,That contemplation loves,Where willowy Camus lingers with delight!Oft at the blush of dawnI trod your level lawn. . . . . . . . . .With Freedom by my side, and soft-eyed Melancholy.[103]
Ye brown, o’er-arching groves,That contemplation loves,Where willowy Camus lingers with delight!Oft at the blush of dawnI trod your level lawn. . . . . . . . . .With Freedom by my side, and soft-eyed Melancholy.[103]
Ye brown, o’er-arching groves,That contemplation loves,Where willowy Camus lingers with delight!Oft at the blush of dawnI trod your level lawn. . . . . . . . . .With Freedom by my side, and soft-eyed Melancholy.[103]
PETERHOUSE FROM THE STREET The Tower of the Congregational Church in the distance.PETERHOUSE FROM THE STREETThe Tower of the Congregational Church in the distance.
Hostels and church, facing the Trumpington road, were just without Trumpington gate. In 1309 the college area was extended southwards, over the ground occupied by Jesu hostel.[104]The property of the Gilbertine canons was added in the xvi century. The college area covers the space between Trumpington Street and Coe fen, and Little S. Mary’s church and Scroope Terrace; two-thirds of the site of the Fitzwilliam Museum being ground purchased from Peterhouse. The new Gisborne building (1825) is built on the west beyond the hall. The frontage of Peterhouse on Trumpington Street is unpromising; nothing suggests the charm of the buildings on the south side or the open country beyond, stored with historical memories. From the hall, a site unrivalled in the university, opens the panelled combination room,[105]the “Good Women” of Chaucer limned in one of its bays, recalling
The chambres and parlers of a sorteWith bay windowes
The chambres and parlers of a sorteWith bay windowes
The chambres and parlers of a sorteWith bay windowes
described by the poet’s contemporary.
Above the xvi century library (of which Balsham’s own books were the nucleus, enriched by Whittlesey, Bottlesham, Arundel, Warkworth, Gray, Perne, and Cosin)[106]a charming corner room in the students’ quarters has been set apart by the present Master for evening study, a veritablesolariumwhere the readers are surrounded by the portraits of the great sons of Peterhouse.
The chapelA.D.1628.
Old S. Peter’s church was perhaps burnt down in 1338-1340 by a fire which is supposed to have also destroyed the chapel of S. Edmund. On its site rose the present church of Little S. Mary.[107]But in the early xvii century a movement was set afoot at Peterhouse which resulted in the erection of a college chapel. It now stands in the midst of the college buildings, and one of the two ancient hostels, “the little ostle,” was demolished to provide a site. Matthew Wren, uncle of Sir Christopher and then Master of the college, afterwards Bishop of Ely, was the builder. The desire of the fellows of Peterhouse for a chapel of their own coincided with the movement in the English Church for an elaborate ritual. As it stands it is a perfect specimen of a xvii century chapel, with its dark oak stalls, and its east window spared from Commonwealth marauders by the expedient of removing the glass piece by piece and hiding it till the