PARKER’S PIECE This large open space in the centre of Cambridge is one of the Town’s playgrounds. In the distance is the Roman Catholic Church, and the boundary wall of the Perse Grammar School, just behind the trees on the left.PARKER’S PIECEThis large open space in the centre of Cambridge is one of the Town’s playgrounds. In the distance is the Roman Catholic Church, and the boundary wall of the Perse Grammar School, just behind the trees on the left.
Classes of students.
The learned body which congregates in the combination rooms is theecclesia docensof the university; the learning body—theecclesia discens—includes all members of the university below the degree ofM.A., and is divided into four or five classes. The most important of these from the academic point of view is the scholar, and for at least two centuries after colleges were built the only resident students were these students on the foundation.[340]To them were joined in courseof time thepensioners, youths who paid for their board and lodging, the class which now makes up the great majority of undergraduates. Two other classes were added. The peers and eldest sons of peers with otherfellow-commoners—a class which has fallen into practical desuetude but is not obsolete—and thesizars. The peers enjoyed some privileges which would not be coveted nowadays—they could make themselves conspicuous on all occasions by their clothing, and they could take a degree without working for it. The younger sons of peers and the richer undergraduates also messed at the fellows’ table, and were therefore called “fellow-commoners”: the advantages of this arrangement did not end with the better treatment in hall, for the companionship of the fellows and seniors of his college must have proved a welcome stimulus to an intelligent young man.[341]Lastly, there were and are the“sizars,” the poorer students, not on the foundation of the college, who pay smaller fees and receive their commons gratis.[342]The sizar of fifty years ago used to wait on the fellows at dinner and dine off the broken victuals, reinforced by fresh vegetables and pudding.
When Macaulay summed the advantages of a Cambridge fellowship he omitted perhaps the chief, the college residence which like “the good dinner” is to be had “for nothing.” Fellows and scholars receive their college quarters gratis; but the rest of the undergraduate population pays for its lodging. It is housed in its 17 colleges, the new hostels which are springing up on all sides, and the licensed lodgings in the town. The cost of the college bed and sitting room a term varies from £3 to three times this sum. Service adds £2 or £3 a term. Small lodgings with service can be had in the less good streets for £5-£7; good rooms from £8 to £10, while more than £12 is only charged in the best positions, or near the big colleges. The expense of college rooms is augmented by the prepayments for furniture (the average valuation of the permanent furniture is £20, but the sum may be as low as £10 or as high as £40), by the “caution money,” about £15, returned at the end of the term of residence, the admission fee (varying with the college from 6/8 to £5) and the matriculation fee £5. During residence there is also an annual payment of £9-15 towards theupkeep of the college and its servants, and the tuition fee, which covers all lectures in one’s own college, and varies from £18 to £24 a year.
It was to obviate the necessity of paying these fees that the system of non-collegiate students, familiarly called “non-colls,” was devised in 1869. While the expenses of an undergraduate who is a member of a college average about £165 a year, £60 in excess of this and £60 less representing the higher scale of expenses on the one hand and the minimum on the other, the undergraduate who lives in lodgings andis not a member of any collegecan live for £78 a year (if he does not require “coaching” or private tuition which costs about £9 a term) and it is just possible to take theB.A.degree after a three years’ residence which has cost you at the rate of £55 a year.
Fifty years ago the minimum cost of living at Cambridge for a pensioner was £150 and double this sum involved no extravagant outlay. A fellow-commoner required £800 a year and could not live on less than £500. These were the aristocratic days of English universities and they were in sharp contrast to the time when scholars were poor, begged their way to and from college, and were included among vagabonds in the statute of 1380 directed against mendicancy. But the entertainment in those days was also widely different. Two fellows shared not only a room but a bed, or a two-bedded room would be shared by a fellow and two poor scholars. It was not till the xvi century that each fellow had a bed to himself and a room to himself ifspace permitted.[343]The dining hall was a comfortless room where rude fare was served at a tresselled board to guests who sat upon wooden stools. The conditions of the xiii and xiv centuries were not greatly bettered in the xvth and xvith, and Erasmus found it hard to stomach the fare at Queens’ College at a time when the Cambridge ale appears to have been no improvement on the “wine no better than vinegar” which came from the surrounding vineyards.
Early discipline.
The little lads who thronged the streets of Cambridge in the xiii century were under little or no discipline. They ran up debts with the Jews, who had established themselves there in the opening years of the previous century, fought the townsmen, and had few duties to society beyond making their own beds, a work certainly performed by university scholars in the xiii and xiv centuries and enjoined on the boys of the famous schools founded in the xvth. It was this custom of doing your own work, at least until you became an advanced student when the little boys did it for you, which was the origin of “fagging” in our two most ancient schools connected respectively with our two universities—Eton and Winchester.[344]Even this amount of work, however, was not expected of fellow-commoners in the xvi century, who frequently got out of hand, though few of them have left us so delightful a reminder of their misdeeds as the young Earl ofRutland has done in a letter to his mother who had complained of his behaviour: “I do aseure your Ladyship that the cariage of myselfe both towardes God and my booke, my comeliness in diet and gesture, shall be such as your Ladyship shall hear and like well of.”
With the great era of college building in the succeeding century, the founders’ statutes make their appearance; and in days when monks were birched and nuns were slapped the college stocks held in durance vile the fellow who had presumed to bathe in any stream or pool of Cambridgeshire, while the college hall resounded to the strokes of the birch which visited the scholar for the same offence. College discipline was supplemented by university discipline, and the academic authorities shared legal powers with the town authorities until recently. The jurisdiction of the university extended not only to matters affecting its members, but to aconusancein actions which affected the townsmen.[345]The last attempt to exercise the right of imprisoningundesirable characters in the “Spinning House” was made by the vice-chancellor in 1893; but the incarceration of a young woman on this occasion caused so much indignation in the town that it led to the final disallowance of all the vice-chancellor’s powers, in this direction, which were waived by the university in 1894.
Present discipline—proctors, fines, “hall,” “chapels.”
University discipline is in the hands of the vice-chancellor and his court,[346]and the proctors. College discipline in those of the dean[347]and tutors. Two proctors perambulate the town every night, each accompanied by two servants known to the undergraduate as the proctor’s “bull-dogs.” They take the name of any offending student and bring him up next morning if necessary before the vice-chancellor. They can also send men back to their college or rooms, enter lodgings, and exact fines. When the youth of 19 or 20 leaves the higher forms of a public school and comes to the university, he is treated as a man, and leads a man’s life guided by himself. But he becomes also a member of a great society, existing for certain purposes. If he is a man, he is a very young one; and if he guides his own life he has only just begun to do so. He lives in his own house—for his college room, like the Englishman’s dwelling, is his castle—but he must be at home by10p.m.
This is the first point of discipline. The gates of colleges and the outer doors of lodgings are shut at10, and any one who presents himself after that hour, without his tutor’s permission, has his name taken by the college porter, or by the lodging proprietor who actsin loco janitoris. He must also dine in hall, if not every day at least five times in the week, which must include Sunday. The third restriction on his liberty is (or at least was originally) a care for his soul. The obligation to attend chapel so many times a week resolves itself now into two attendances in the week and generally two on Sunday. No means of enforcing this are however taken nowadays, and the men are generally left free to judge for themselves in this respect, though ‘moral suasion’ is exercised by the deans except in the case of nonconformists and conscientious objectors. Fifty years ago 8 “chapels” were expected; but if a pensioner kept 6 and a fellow-commoner 4, he was left untroubled by his dean. In New England at the same epoch no less than 16 attendances at chapel every week were required, seven at unseasonable hours; a burden which was tolerated with more cheerfulness by the New Englander than were the 8 “chapels” by his Cambridge contemporary.
Town licences. Expulsion “rustication”. “gating.”
The licensing of all lodgings and places of entertainment[348]to which undergraduates may go, is the hold which the university has over the town. Its sanctions for the undergraduate are fines and expulsion; breaches of
TRINITY BRIDGE, KING’S COLLEGE CHAPEL IN THE DISTANCE This is one of the many charming views on the Cam at “the Backs” of the Colleges.TRINITY BRIDGE, KING’S COLLEGE CHAPEL IN THE DISTANCEThis is one of the many charming views on the Cam at “the Backs” of the Colleges.
college rules being visited by “gating” and expulsion. A man can be expelled for any cause which in the judgment of the university or the college warrants it. If a man thus expelled from the university society refuses “to go down”—to leave Cambridge—he cannot live in any licensed lodging house in the town.[349]A man may also be sent down for a term, which is called “rustication,” an epithet which suggests to him that he has forfeited the society of men of polite learning. If a man misbehaves himself he can be “gated,”i.e.the porter receives instructions not to let him out after a certain hour—and it may be any hour the authorities choose to fix and for any length of time.
The tutor.
The college tutor is the official who supervises the undergraduate’s academic career. He advises him what subject to read for, what examinations to take, what books to master. The career of a mediocre man is often made and that of a first-rate man heightened by an able tutor, and Cambridge has boasted some very great men in this capacity. The mathematical genius of Newton was quickened by having for his tutor Isaac Barrow; Whichcote of Emmanuel, Laughton of Clare, and Shilleto of Trinity were eminent as tutors and“coaches”; and “coaching” supplements, for a very backward or a very advanced student, the lectures of college and university.[350]
The cap and gown.
The academic appearance of a university owes much to the traditional cap and gown worn by all its members. A bonnet and gown are very ancient appanages of the learned professions of divinity law and medicine—they were the dignified apparel of doctors in the three faculties. Short hose had not become fashionable when universities sprang into existence, and the clerk or scholar even if he were not destined for major was very usually in minor orders: the gown is therefore a fitting distinction for those learned societies which have never ceased their corporate existence, and have carried into modern times, as a special dress, items of attire which like clerical vestments, the cassock, the monastic habit, and the friar’s tunic were proper to the age which saw their rise.
The distinctive features of academic dress are simply survivals of this ordinary dress of the period: the ceremonial hood is the hood which was worn in everyday life in the xiith the xiiith xivth and xvth centuries.[351]If we had looked in at the priory church of Barnwell on a day when the novices made their profession we should have seen each one enter dressed in the black habit or gown, a cloak of fur, and the “amess[352]over his head”: and when he walked out he was already vested with thecapa nigraof the canon. Here, then, we have all the elements of early academic dress; the homely Gilbertine canons, so familiar in the Cambridge thoroughfares, wore it in white; for it was the dress of the more respectable, the decently clad, clergy and clerks as well as of those most respectable and regular clergy, the canons. The dress of the better looked-after scholars on the college foundations differed but little from this. No doubt the scholars of Peterhouse habitually wore the clericalvestis talaris[353]—the gown to the ankle—but the special item of academic attire adopted at Cambridge appears to have been thecapa nigra.[354]The majority of scholars in the hostelsand grammar schools observed no general rule as to costume,[355]but the scholars of any standing wore the black cappa of the canon; and the hood, lined with sheepskin or minever, was becoming—even in the xiv century—the habitual, and therefore distinctive, dress of foundation scholars when they “commenced” bachelor or master.[356]The hood indeed was probably restricted to an academic use before this century closed, for there is a statute of the year 1413 ordering hoods of kid or lambskin to be worn. The incepting Cambridge bachelor,[357]then, wore acappa, a fine hood was gradually restricted to the master of arts.
The soft bonnets or caps—of doctors, bishops, jurists, canons—are derivatives of the hood, as is the stiff cap—the biretta, as is the mitre itself. The xviii century Cambridge student still wore a soft round cap, like that worn to-day by the Italian university student and quite recently adopted in France: but the Paduan doctors had adopted the stiff square cap in the xvi century, and our own students revolted against the round cap in 1769, and thereupon accomplished thefeat which neither Archimedes “nor our Newton” had attempted:
For all her scholars square the circle now.[358]
For all her scholars square the circle now.[358]
For all her scholars square the circle now.[358]
The chancellor of the university wears a black and gold robe. Scarlet is the colour of the doctors’ gowns, as it still is of the papal doctors of divinity. The physician of Chaucer’s time wore his furred scarlet gown, and scarlet gowns and corner caps were worn by the Cambridge doctors when the Cromwells entertained James I. on his way from the north in 1603.
The master wears a full-sleeved gown of stuff or silk; the bachelor’s gown has two flowing bands hanging loose in front; the undergraduate’s gown is both scantier and shorter than these; but ‘Advanced Students’ wear the bachelor’s gown, without the loose bands. The academic gown of English universities is now black, but the earlier violet gown of Trinity is recorded in the present blue gown of its undergraduates, a blue gown being also worn by the neighbouring college of Gonville and Caius.[359]The gowns of certain colleges are distinguished by little pleats in the stuff or bars of velvet.
Peers and eldest sons of peers, in the first half of thexix century, wore the black silk gown and tall silk hat of anM.A.,[360]and on great occasions a more splendid dress adorned with gold tassels and lace. Fellow-commoners wore a gown with gold or silver lace and a black velvet cap; the younger sons of peers being known as “Hat-fellow-commoners” because they wore theM.A.’ssilk hat instead of the velvet cap.
Most of the pensioners at Cambridge in the xviii century (but not the fellow-commoners) used to wear a sleeveless gown called a “curtain.”[361]Neither the clerical cassock nor thecapa nigrain fact account for the undergraduate’s dress of later or present times; the original of which, I think, is to be found in the sleeveless gown or coat, calledsoprana, of the ecclesiastical colleges founded between the xv and xvii centuries. Two of the peculiarities of thesopranaare still traceable. The bands of the bachelor’s gown may be seen attached to the black coat of theAlmum Collegiumfounded in 1457 by Cardinal Capranica, to the violet and black dress worn by the Scotchmen,[362]to the red coat of the college founded by Ignatius Loyola, and the blue of the Greek College founded by Gregory XIII.; whileone string, adorned with the papal arms, is left on thesopranaworn by the Vatican seminarists: these are leading strings, denoting the state of pupilage.[363]The Cambridge scholar’s and bachelor’s gown is black—the descendant of the full blackcappa—but as we have just seen the coat or gown of the ecclesiastical colleges is of different colours, and the ancient gowns of Trinity and Caius still record this variation.
Every onein statu pupillarimust wear cap and gown after nightfall, on Sunday,[364]at examinations and lectures (except laboratory demonstrations), when visiting the vice-chancellor or any other official on academic business, in the library, the Senate House, and the university church: professors and others usually wear the gown while lecturing, and all dons wear it in chapel and hall.
The undergraduates’ day.
A twentieth century undergraduates’ day does not differ from those recorded in his diary by Wordsworth’s brother when he was a freshman at Trinity in 1793.[365]This is how he was employed during the Reign of Terror and within a few days of the execution of Marie Antoinette:—“Chapel. Lectures. Considered of a subject for my essay on Wednesdayse’nnight. Drank wine with Coleridge. Present theSociety. Chapel. Read ‘Morning Chronicle.’ Found in it an ode to Fortune, by Coleridge, which I had seen at Rough’s yesterday. Readratiosandvariable quantities, and Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy.” It was indeed rather in its outer than in its inner circumstance that the life even of the xiii and xiv century undergraduate differed from that of the xxth. Then as now he listened to doctors in their faculties and his own college seniors expounding the mysteries of art and science; then, as now, he supplemented these lectures with private reading, then, seated upon a wooden stool in a corner of a crowded room, or in the college library, or best of all in the college meadows; now, in a comfortable arm chair or stretched upon a sofa in his private sitting room.[366]Then, as now, he caroused or discussed “the universe” with his friends, as his nature suggested. Then, as now, he made early acquaintance with the river Granta and knew each yard of the flat roads round the university town. Even the periodical outbreak between “town and gown” belongsas much to the xiii century as to the most recent history in the xxth.[367]
Lectures take place in the morning, “coaching” and private study usually in the late afternoon and evening. Two to four is the chosen time for recreation, and the chief recreations of the Cantab used to be the road and the river. The latter runs familiarly past the windows of his college rooms, and invites him as he steps forth from the threshold of his college court. Boating, swimming, or fishing, the student of a bye-gone day found in the Granta a never-failing and an inexpensive resource. Cambridge fish as we have seen has always been famous, and the Merton scholars poached upon the townsmen’s fishing rights long before the xiii century was out.
“Your success in the Senate House” said a well-known tutor “depends much on the care you take of the three-mile stone out of Cambridge. If you go every day and see no one has taken it away, and go quite round it to watch lest any one has damaged its farthest side, you will be best able to read steadily all the time you are at Cambridge. If you neglect it, woe betide your degree. Exercise, constant, and regular, and ample, is absolutely essential to a reading man’ssuccess.” And the reading men have taken the lesson to heart. No roads until the era of bicycles were better tramped than the flat Cambridge roads which lend themselves so well to this form of recreation; pair after pair of men, tall and small, a big and a little together, used to keep themselves informed as to their state of repair, or lose the sense of space and time in discussions on the modern substitute for “quiddity” andessentia, or the social and biological problems which are newer even than these.
Once back in his college the persons on whom the undergraduate’s comfort most depends are the college cook the bedmaker and the “gyp.” The last calls him, brushes his clothes, prepares his breakfast, caters for him, serves his luncheon, waits on him and his friends, and carries back and forth the little twisted paper missives which, as an American noticed fifty years ago, Cambridge undergraduates are perpetually exchanging. All these services the gyp may have to perform for a number of other men. The only woman servant is the “bedmaker” whose name sufficiently describes her official business, but who for the great majority of modern students discharges the functions of gyp. The college kitchen is a busy centre. Here is prepared not only the hall dinner but all private breakfasts and luncheons served in college rooms; and most of the college kitchens supply luncheons and dinners to residents in the town if required. Dinner in hall costs from one shilling and tenpence to two shillings and a penny, according to the college; bread and buttercalled “commons” can be had from the buttery for 6d. a day; a breakfast dish at a cost of from 6d. to 1/; and at some college halls a luncheon is served at a small fixed charge.[368]
A hundred years ago the undergraduate dressed for “hall” with white silk stockings and pumps and white silk waistcoat. A few wore powder, the others curled their hair, and he was a bucolic youth indeed who omitted at least the curling. “Curled and powdered” the Cambridge scholar wore his hair even in the xiv century provoking the indignation of primates and founders. A hundred and fifty years ago beer was served for breakfast, and only Gray and Walpole drank tea. Even fifty years ago the food was roughly served and in an overcrowded hall. It was however abundant, and extras like soup, confectionery, and cheese could be “sized for”i.e.brought you at an extra charge. The food provided consisted of plain joints and vegetables, with plenty of beer. The fellows’ table and the side tables of the bachelors were better served.
“The wine,” the famous entertainment which followed the old four o’clock dinner fifty years ago, has yielded place to coffee and tea. In the May term teas assume new proportions; for during theterm which is fateful to the reading man as that preceding the tripos examination, the idle man turns work time into play, invites his friends and relatives up to Cambridge, and entertains his sisters at “the races.” It is not indeed to be supposed that the majority of undergraduates are to be found keeping themselves awake with black coffee, a damp towel bound about their brows, while they burn the midnight oil. Even the harmless necessary “sporting of one’s oak” is no longer “good form.” In days when you advertise for a curate and a schoolmaster who is a good athlete the very thin literary proclivities of the bulk of Englishmen cannot be held to be on the increase. What one might legitimately hope for is that athletics should prove a safety-valve to the natural “rowdyism” of the non-reading man; so that if school and university sports cannot make a scholar they might at least turn out something not unlike a gentleman. Last October (1905) proved a “record” in the number of men “going up,” and November proved “a record” in the number of men who should have been “sent down.” What took place is fresh in our memories; and it will not quickly be forgotten that while the undergraduates of one university were shouting their disgrace, a well-known bishop was signalising (and exaggerating) the disgrace of the other; and we may choose between the merits of leaguing with the town blackguard to kick policemen at Cambridge or indulging the vice which changed the name of “wines” at Oxford to “drunks.” At the rejoicings for Mafeking the iron railings andposts were torn up along the ‘backs,’ and everything combustible from drays to handcarts was “commandeered” to make a bonfire on Market hill, where many panes of glass in the surrounding houses were smashed. Proctors’ “bull-dogs” were rolled over in the mud, and the proctors treated to the dignity of a “chairing.”[369]The bonfire on Market hill is a development of a traditional ritual more amusing and less dangerous: you drag out your own and your friends’ furniture and make a bonfire in the middle of the college “court.”
Would it be impossible, among so many good rules, to make cap and gown obligatory at both universities between the hours of 9 and 12? The spectacle of youths hugging golf clubs on the Oxford station at ten o’clock in the morning cannot be extraneous to examination results which show that not 3 men in 4 who matriculate, take theB.A.At Cambridge there is good promise in the large increase of scientific students who take advantage of the facilities afforded by its laboratories: more men entered for the “doctors’ college” in October 1905 than for any other, except of course Trinity; and even “the sporting college” has been a principal contributor to the number of medical graduates. Since 1883 there has been a board of Indian Civil Service studies, and the universities between them send up far the larger number ofcandidates for this service. A board of agricultural studies was instituted in 1899, a diploma in agriculture is now awarded, also one in sanitation, and geographical studies are encouraged by prizes. Since 1899, when the tripos was divided, the Historical has become one of the larger triposes and in 1905 had the highest number of entries after the Natural Sciences.[370]
University athletics.
The traditional rivalry in sports has of course been that between the two universities. The inter-university boat race was begun in 1836, and the first 4 races were won by Cambridge, as was also the first race rowed in outriggers in ’46. Of the 64 races run, Oxford has won 6 more than Cambridge; Cambridge has won 5 out of the last 6, and has also won by the greater number of lengths (in ’49 by “many,” and in 1900 by 20).[371]The great inferiority of the ‘Cam’ to the ‘Isis’ is partly compensated by the excellent style of rowing which Eton
THE TOWER OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE CHAPEL FROM THE RIVER Trinity College Library lies on the right, through the trees.THE TOWER OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE CHAPEL FROM THE RIVERTrinity College Library lies on the right, through the trees.
traditions carry on into Cambridge. The happy connexion between Cambridge and Eton established by Henry VI. has never ceased to link the most aristocratic English school with the more democratic of the English universities, and many boys come to the “light blue” university already wearing her favours. In football and golf the two universities have shown equal prowess; Cambridge cricket is superior (the inter-university match was started in 1839 and Cambridge won the first 6 matches), and in athletics (1868-1906) Cambridge took the lead until the Rhodes scholars arrived at the sister university.
The Union Society forms another distraction well calculated to turn out the English ideal of a university man—a man,id est, ready for public affairs. It was founded in 1815 by theunionof three already existing debating societies, the present building was erected in 1866 and fitted up as a club. Stratford Canning (Lord Stratford de Redcliffe) and Blomfield, afterwards Bishop of London, belonged to one of these earlier “spouting clubs” in 1806, where Palmerston and Ellenborough both “laid the foundation” of their parliamentary fame. The college ball and the college concert are also crowded into the student’s seven weeks of residence in the May term, taking the place of the plays which formed the staple entertainment in the xvi and xvii centuries. The modern “A.D.C.” has been rendered famous by the “Greek Plays” which were inaugurated twenty-five years ago with a performance of “Ajax.”
Sunday at Cambridge.
But the round of work and play comes to an end with Sunday, and the university has preserved the festival aspect of this day, the day when continental beadles andgens d’armesdon their fine plumes and when what is bright and gay rather than what is dull and grave is mated to the idea of a day of rest. The college courts—the outdoor centre and rallying point of college life—are thronged with men gay in surplice or gown[372]as they were thronged on that Sunday 370 years ago when Stephen Gardiner Bishop of Winchester found two hundred dons assembled “as is their wont” and buttonholed the men who were likely to pleasure his grace in the matter of the divorce. That fine day in the xvi century was no doubt a repetition of many fine days in the centuries preceding it, for it is always fine in Cambridge on Sunday. And Sunday after Sunday the undergraduate has received a lesson in dignities, as he circled becapped and begowned on the cobbled paths round the greater luminaries becapped and begowned tranquilly stepping on the college grass. The modern undergraduate does not remember a time when a pathway ran across the turf from corner to corner of the college courts, as it did in Clare Hall, in the old court of Corpus, and in William of Wykeham’s foundation at Oxford. On “scarlet days” the courts arestill more gay, for the doctors then appear in their scarlet.[373]
The gowns in the court clothe the learned and the unlearned, and make a present of as brave an academic appearance to the rowdiest of non-readers as to the future senior wrangler. The academic year is divided into 3 terms of 8 or 9 weeks each: half the year only is therefore passed at Cambridge. For serious study the intervals are too long and the ‘long vacation term’ has become the reading man’s termpar excellence; all the colleges are then half full, the numbers being swelled by the medical students. The multiplication of extra-collegiate scholarships has not told all one way. Parents who used to make sacrifices to send a son to the university now count upon a scholarship, with the result that on the principle of ‘light come light go’ less use is made of opportunities. The university authorities look to the “advanced students” (of whom there are now 60 or 70 in residence) who are staying up for research work or come from other universities, for solid academic achievement.
Class from which the academic population has been drawn.
There is no more interesting enquiry connected with our subject than that concerning the classes from which the academic population has been recruited at different epochs, and the careers for which the university has fitted its members.
The Church has always remained the most constant client of academic advantages: it was the churchmen who on the decline of the monasteries and when the universities were established as learned corporations, exchanged the cloister for the college education. The dissolution of the monasteries and the breach with Rome left the universities as the only representatives of the faculty of theology; and during the last century, especially, if a man were destined for the Church he went—ipso facto—to Cambridge or Oxford even though he were the only member of his family to do so. In the xv as in the xvi centuries it was chiefly men destined for the faculties of theology and law who frequented the universities, and then, as always in their history, the poorest scholar lived side by side with the youth of family and influence.
The lawyers, perhaps, have gone in equal proportions to a university or to one of the Inns of Court; many have gone to both. The great change to be observed is as regards students of the third faculty, medicine. In the xix century the doctor and the tradesman’s son did not go to a university; but this century, as we have seen, has already been marked by the enormous accession of medical students at Cambridge. The gradual growth of a powerful middle class resulted in the later xvi century in filling the universities with the sons not only of the older yeomanry of our shires but of the new Merchant Adventurers, often themselves men of gentle blood and coat armour. It is perhaps from this century that the idea began to prevail that an academiceducation was the proper education of a gentleman. Of this century it was true as it had been true of no other that “the civil life of all English gentlemen” is begun at Oxford or Cambridge. Statesmen and ministers, the political and the diplomatic careers, were recruited at the universities, and university-trained canonists and lawyers like Cranmer and More, and churchmen like Wolsey and Gardiner were chosen to be the ambassadors and secretaries of state. Ascham complains to Cranmer that sons of rich men “who sought only superficial knowledge” and “to qualify themselves for some place in the State” overran the university, and both universities soon became, in Macaulay’s words, the training ground not only of all the eminent clergy, lawyers, physicians, poets, and orators, but of a large proportion of the “nobility and opulent gentry” of the country.
In England men belonging to what have, hitherto, been the governing classes have always sought advantages which would doubtless be less apparent in countries where nobility and gentry are synonyms and where government is not carried on by means of two such institutions as the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Anoblessewhich gives no scions to the professions or to a representative chamber has seldom sought academic distinction. The man destined for parliament for the diplomatic service and the government office—occupations which an acute American observer has said are chosen by Englishmen as the business of their lives “without studying any otherprofession”[374]—prepared himself in no other way than by three or four years spent at the university, with or without graduating there. It was not however till the nineteenth century opened that the distinctively aristocratic trend of a university was defined. Throughout that century the university waspar excellencethe seminary of the English gentleman, and the parson. A few bankers’ sons might be put into their fathers’ counting houses, a few government officials might place their sons at an early age in a government office, but the exception only proved the rule.
Examples.xvi c.xvii c.
Let us look at some examples of the class from which Cambridge was recruited through the xvi and xvii centuries. Hugh Latimer (b.1491) was the son of a yeoman farmer; Sir Thomas Wyatt (b.1503) was the son of a knight. The father of Matthew Parker (b.1504) was a Norwich merchant; Bacon (b.1561) and his brother, fellow-commoners of Trinity, were sons of the Lord Keeper and nephews of Burleigh. Fletcher (b.1579) the dramatist, was the son of the Bishop of London, and his cousins the poets were sons of Elizabeth’s Master of the Requests and ambassador to Russia.[375]In the xvii century Herrick the poet (b.1591) was the son of a goldsmith established in London; Waller (b.1605) a nephew of Hampden’s, a man of large private fortune; Cowley (b.1618) was
UNIVERSITY BOAT-HOUSES ON THE CAM—SUNSET This view is taken near Stourbridge Common and the bend of the river known as Barnwell Pool, looking towards the town.UNIVERSITY BOAT-HOUSES ON THE CAM—SUNSETThis view is taken near Stourbridge Common and the bend of the river known as Barnwell Pool, looking towards the town.
xviii c.
son to a city grocer; Marvell (b.1620) son to a Yorkshire clergyman; while Temple was the son of an Irish Master of the Rolls. In the latter half of the xvii century we still hear of “the farmer’s son newly come from the university”[376]—Bentley was one of them—and at the same time we hear that Tuckney, Whichcote’s tutor, “had many persons of rank and quality” under him at Emmanuel College. In the xviii century, Pepys’ (b.1703) father was a tailor, the Wordsworths were sons of a north country attorney, Sir William Browne (b.1692) was the son of a physician.
Recruiting schools.
Men of low origin were sent up, and have always been sent up, to the universities through the beneficence of patrons, and the poor tailor Stow was enabled to write his history owing to the patronage of Archbishop Parker who sent him to Oxford. Through the xv and early xvi centuries the monastic and other convent schools supplied university students. Bale (b.1495) had been educated by the Norwich Carmelites, Coverdale (b.1487) had been an Austinfriar at Cambridge. At the present day the big grammar schools, and in especial the Norwich grammar school which educated Nelson, send every year a contingent of students, as they have done since the reign of Edward VI. If we take the sporting representatives sent from the two universities the year before last, 23 from Oxford and 21 from Cambridge, we shall find that one third of the Cambridge men hailed from the greater public schools,Eton, Charterhouse, and Rugby.[377]Our colonies are also a recruiting ground, and with them Cambridge is favourite university.[378]
The number of undergraduates entered this academic year (1906-7) was the largest on record, totalling 1021. The reputation and the popularity of colleges of course wax and wane: for the past two years the largest number of entries (excluding Trinity) has been for Caius and Pembroke, Emmanuel coming next, and then S. John’s.[379]The number of non-collegiate students is steadily increasing.