Cambridge and Its Story

[1] Cf. Baker MS. in the University Library.

[2] See the very excellent map given in “Fenland Past and Present,” by S. H. Miller and Sidney Skertchley (published, Longmans, 1878), a book full of information on the natural features of the Fen country, its geology, its antiquarian relics, its flora and fauna.

[3] Cf. Paper by Professor Ridgway, Proc. Cam. Antiq. Soc., vii. 200.

[4] Cf. Professor M‘Kenny Hughes, Proc. Cam. Antiq. Soc., vol. viii. (1893), 173. Cf. also Freeman, “Norman Conquest,” vol. i. 323, &c.; and also English Chronicle, under year MX.

[5] The easiest way for those who are not much acquainted with phonetic laws to understand this rather difficult point is to observe the chronology of this place-name. It is thus condensed by Mr. T. D. Atkinson (“Cambridge Described and Illustrated,” p. 4) from Professor Skeat’s “Place-Names of Cambridgeshire,” 29-30:—“The name of the town was Grantebrycge in A.D. 875, and in Doomsday Book it is Grentebrige. About 1142 we first meet with the violent change Cantebrieggescir (for the county), the change from Gr to C being due to the Normans. This form lasted, with slight changes, down to the fifteenth century. Grauntbrigge (also spelt Cauntbrigge in the name of the same person) survived as a surname till 1401. After 1142 the form Cantebrigge is common; it occurs in Chaucer as a word of four syllables, and was Latinised as Cantabrigia in the thirteenth century. Then the former e dropped out; and we come to such forms as Cantbrigge and Cauntbrigge (fourteenth century); then Cānbrigge (1436) and Cawnbrege (1461) with n. Then the b turned the n into m, giving Cambrigge (after 1400) and Caumbrege (1458). The long a, formerly aa in baa, but now ei in vein, was never shortened. The old name of the river, Granta, still survives. Cant occurs in 1372, and le Ee and le Ree in the fifteenth century. In the sixteenth century the river is spoken of as the Canta, now called the Rhee; and later we find both Granta and the Latinised form of Camus. Cam, which appears in Speed’s map of 1610, was suggested by the written form Cam-bridge, and is a product of the sixteenth century, having no connection with the Welsh Cam, or the British Cambos, “crooked.”

[6] “The old spelling is Bernewell, in the time of Henry III. and later. Somewhat earlier is Beornewelle, in a late copy of a charter dated 1060 (Thorpe, Diplom., p. 383). So also in the Ramsey Cartulary. The prefix has nothing to do with the Anglo-Saxon bearn, ‘a child,’ as has often, I believe, been suggested; but represents Beornan, gen. of Beorna, a pet name for a name beginning with Beorn-.... The difference between the words, which are quite distinct, is admirably illustrated in the New Eng. Dict. under the words berne and bairn.”—Skeat’s Place-Names of Cambridgeshire, p. 35.

[7] “The Borough Boys” is a nickname still remembered as being applied to the men of the castle end by the dwellers in the east side of the river. A public-house, with the sign of “The Borough Boy,” still stands in Northampton Street.

[8] “Cambridge, Described and Illustrated,” by T. D. Atkinson, p. 133.

[9] Cf. “Customs of Augustinian Canons,” by J. Willis Clark, p. xi.

[10] Lib. Mem., Book i. chap. 9.—The principal authority for the history of Barnwell Priory is a manuscript volume in the British Museum (MSS. Harl. 3601) usually referred to as the “Barnwell Cartulary” or the “Barnwell Register.” The author’s own title, however, “Liber Memorandorum Ecclesiæ de Bernewelle,” is far more appropriate, for the contents are by no means confined to documents relating to the property of the house, but consist of many chapters of miscellanea dealing with the history of the foundation from its commencement down to the forty-fourth year of Edward III. (1370-71).

[11] At the time of the Dissolution, Dugdale states the gross yearly value of the estates to have been £351, 15s. 4d., that of Ely to have been £1084, 6s. 9d.

[12] Such a small matter, for example, in the domestic economy of a modern college as the separate rendering of a “buttery bill” and a “kitchen bill,” containing items of expenditure which the puzzled undergraduate might naturally have expected to find rendered in the same weekly account, finds its explanation when we learn that in the economy of the monastery also the roll of “the celererarius” and the roll of the “camerarius” were always kept rigidly distinct. So also more serious and important customs may probably be traced to monastic origin.

[13] The others are: S. Sepulchre at Northampton, c. 1100-1127; Little Maplestead in Essex, c. 1300; The Temple Church in London, finished 1185. To these may be added the chapel in Ludlow Castle, c. 1120.

[14] “Cambridge Described,” by T. D. Atkinson, p. 164.

[15] Cf. Neubauer’s Collectanea, ii. p. 277 sq.

[16] Cf. Rashdall’s “Universities of Europe,” vol. i. p. 347.

[17] The earliest notice of this practice occurs in the University Accounts for 1507-8, when carpenters are employed to carry the materials used for the stages from the schools to the Church of the Franciscans, to set them up there, and to carry them back again to the schools. Similar notices are to be found in subsequent years.

[18] Cf. “The Cambridge Modern History,” vol. i. p. 584, &c.

[19] Cooper’s “Annals,” i. 42.

[20] Willis and Clark, “Architectural History of the University of Cambridge,” Introduction, vol. i. p. xiv.

[21] Cf. List of names given in “Willis and Clark,” vol. i. pp. xxv.-xxvii.

[22] Jubinal’s “Rutebeuf,” quoted by Wright in his Biographia Britannica Litteraria, p. 40.

[23] Stubbs, “Lectures on Mediæval and Modern History,” p. 166.

[24] Anstey, Munimenta Academica, i. pp. 204-5.

[25] “Commiss. Docts.,” ii. 1.

[26] “Documents,” ii. 78.

[27] The actual expression is, of course, scholares, but it is best to translate the word by the later title of fellows to avoid the erroneous impression which would otherwise be given. That the scholares were occasionally called fellows even in Chaucer’s day may be inferred from his lines—

[28] Document II. 1-42, quoted from Mullinger’s “University of Cambridge,” i. 232.

[29] “Annals of the University,” i. 95.

[30] “Documents,” ii. 72.

[31] British Museum, Cole, MSS. xxxv. 112.

[32] Prynne, “Canterbury’s Doom,” quoted from Willis a. d. Clark, i. 46.

[33] Philobiblon, c. 9.

[34] Cooper’s “Memorials,” ii. p. 196.

[35] Cooper’s “Memorials,” vol. i. p. 30.

[36] Cf. Rogers’ “Six Centuries of Work and Wages,” p. 224. “The disease made havoc among the secular and regular clergy, and we are told that a notable decline of learning and morals was thenceforward observed among the clergy, many persons of mean acquirements and low character stepping into the vacant benefices. Even now the cloister of Westminster Abbey is said to contain a monument in the great flat stone, which we are told was laid over the remains of the many monks who perished in the great death.... Some years ago, being at Cambridge while the foundations of the new Divinity Schools were being laid, I saw that the ground was full of skeletons, thrown in without any attempt at order, and I divined that this must have been a Cambridge plague pit.”

[37] Cf. Clarke, “Cambridge,” pp. 85, 86.

[38] Cf. Mullinger, “Cambridge,” vol. i., footnote, p. 237.

[39] The poet Gray, it is said, occupied the rooms on the ground floor at the west end of the Hitcham building. Above them are those subsequently occupied by William Pitt.

[40] Cooper’s “Memorials,” i. p. 99.

[41] “Cambridge Described,” by T. D. Atkinson, p. 326.

[42] Willis and Clark, i. 177.

[43] Cooper’s “Annals,” 140.

[44] Fuller’s “History of the University,” p. 255.

[45] Fuller’s “History of the University,” p. 98.

[46] Cf. Introduction by Professor Maitland to the “Cambridge Borough Charters,” p. xvii.

[47] Miss Mary Bateson, “Introduction to Cambridge Gild Records,” published by Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 1903.

[48] Josselin, Historiola, § 2.

[49] Fuller’s “History of Cambridge,” p. 116.

[50] Stubbs, “Constitutional History,” vol. iii. p. 130.

[51] Robert Bridges.

[52] Second Part of King Henry VI., Act i. sc. 3.

[53] J. W. Clark, “Cambridge,” p. 145.

[54] G. Gilbert Scott, “History of English Architecture,” p. 181.

[55] J. W. Clarke, “Cambridge,” p. 171.

[56] Fuller, “University of Cambridge,” p. 161.

[57] “History of Queens’,” p. 154.

[58] Erasmus, Novum Instrumentum, leaf aaa. 3 to bbb.

[59] Anglia Sacra, i. 650.

[60] In the Ely “Obedientary Rolls” I find, for example, the following entries for the expenses of these Cambridge Scholars of the Monastery in the account of the chamberlain: “20, Ed. III. scholaribus pro obolo de libra, 6-1/2d. 31, 32, Ed. III. fratri S. de Banneham scholari pro pensione sua 1/1-1/2. 40, Ed. III. Solut’ 3 scholar’ studentibus apud Cantabrig’ 3/4-1/2. Simoni de Banham incipienti in theologia 2 3, viz. 1d. de libra. 9, Hen. IV. dat’ ffratri Galfrido Welyngton ad incepcionem suam in canone apud cantabrig’ 6/8. 4, Hen. V. ffratribus Edmundo Walsingham et Henry Madingley ad incepcionem 3/4.”

[61] Warren, Appendix cxvi.

[62] “Care of Books,” pp. 168-69.

[63] Vol. ii. 30.

[64] “Jesus College,” by A. Gray, p. 32.

[65] “History of Jesus,” A. Gray, p. 16.

[66] “History of Jesus,” A. Gray, p. 18.

[67] Willis and Clark’s “Architectural History of Cambridge,” vol. ii. p. 123.

[68] Erasmus, Roberto Piscatori, Epist. xiv.

[69] Mullinger, “History of the University of Cambridge,” vol. i. p. 439.

[70] Cooper’s “Annals,” vol. i. p. 273.

[71] Mullinger, “History of the University,” vol. i. p. 44.

[72] Fuller’s “History of Cambridge,” p. 182.

[73] Dr. Peile’s “History of Christ’s College,” p. 29.

[74] Cf. Milton’s “Apology for Smectymnus,” 1642.

[75] It might almost be supposed that the officials who drew royal charters kept a “model form” to meet the case of a suppressed religious house, altering the name and place to fit the occasion.

[76] Caxton, as he worked at his printing press in the Almonry, which she had founded, and who was under her special protection, said “the worst thing she ever did” was trying to draw Erasmus from his Greek studies at Cambridge to train her untoward stepson, James Stanley, to be Bishop of Ely.

[77] Mullinger’s “History of S. John’s College,” p. 17.

[78] Froude’s “History of England,” vol. ii. p. 266.

[79] Mullinger’s “History of the University,” vol. i. p. 628.

[80] Edition of Furnivall, p. 88.

[81] “English Universities,” vol. i. p. 307.

[82] Fuller, “History of Cambridge,” p. 196.

[83] This absurdity is traceable to that Skeletos Cantabrigiensis by Richard Parker, to which I drew attention in my first chapter.

[84] Nichol’s “Progress of Queen Elizabeth,” v. i. p. 182.

[85] Cooper’s “Memorials,” v. ii. p. 135.

[86] Fuller’s “History of Cambridge,” p. 236.

[87] “Tom Quad,” the great court of Christ Church, Oxford, has an area of 74,520 square feet.

[88] “National Dictionary of Biography,” vol. iv. p. 312.

[89] MSS. Barker, vi. 85; MSS. Harl. Mus. Brit., 7033; quoted, Willis and Clark, ii. 700.

[90] “Documents,” iii. 524, quoted by Mullinger, i. 314.

[91] Mullinger, vol. i. p. 318.

[92] Fuller’s “History of Cambridge,” p. 291.

[93] This portrait in crayons by Samuel Cooper (1609-72) was presented to the College in January 1766 by Thomas Hollis. In Hollis’s papers underneath his memorandum of his present to the College are three lines of Andrew Marvell—

Mr. Hollis also gave to Christ’s College four copies of the “Paradise Lost,” two of them first editions. In 1761 he sent to Trinity his portrait of Newton. He also presented books to the libraries of Harvard, Berne and Zurich: chiefly Republican literature of the seventeenth century.