Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

Lady Margaret was of Plantagenet stock, being great-granddaughter to "old John of Gaunt, time honoured Lancaster," and one of the legitimatised family of the Beauforts. Her first husband was the Welsh Earl Edmund Tudor, the father of her only child, Henry of Richmond, who afterwards succeeded to the throne of England as Henry the Seventh. After his death she twice married again; but none of her nuptials were of long continuance, and her true life was that of her widowhood, when she became famed as the Lady Bountiful of the Kingdom: "the mother of both the Universities; the very patroness of all the learned men of England;[60] the loving sister of all virtuous and devout persons; the comforter of all good Religious; the true defendress of all good priests and clerks; the mirror and example of honour to all noble men and women; the common mediatrice for all the common people of this realm.... Everyone that knew her loved her, and everything she said or did became her." Before her death she had endowed Preacherships and Professorships of Divinity (which still remain), both at Oxford and Cambridge, and had seen her first Collegiate Foundation, that of Christ's College, rise into full life. Her second and greater Foundation, St. John's College, she only lived to plan and to endow. When she died, on the 29th of June, 1509 (in the bright dawn of her grandson's reign and marriage—both alike destined to end in so miserable a tragedy), the buildings were not yet commenced.

She left their erection, however, in the best of hands. It was to her friend and counsellor, Bishop Fisher, who knew her so well, and appreciated her so dearly, that she committed the carrying out of her great design. He was markedly qualified for this purpose, not only by his connection with herself, but by special acquaintance with the spot. For in him we find yet another link between St. John's and Trinity. As Master of Michaelhouse,[61] some years earlier, he had been a close neighbour of the ancient Hospital of St. John, and had noted how far that venerable fraternity had outlived its usefulness. Originally a semi-monastic institution, founded in 1135, as a sort of alms-house for necessitous old men, the lack of any sufficient discipline had brought it to decay. The attempt made by Bishop Hugh de Balsham, in the century after its foundation, to leaven it with the scholars whom he afterwards transported to Peterhouse had proved a failure, and by the sixteenth century the few Brethren left were far from satisfactory in their ways.[62] Fisher, therefore, suggested to Lady Margaret to turn the Hospital into a College, under the same patronage, and after her death, set promptly to work to make the requisite alterations in the existing buildings.

His first act was to enclose a Court, the Gate Tower of which should worthily commemorate the Foundress. In this his success was complete. The tower, which to this day forms the main entrance to the College, is a delightful example of what may be done in architecture by a skilful use of red brick. The quoining is of stone, and of stone also are the elaborate decorations. In the centre above the first string-course a richly-canopied niche contains the statue of St. John the Evangelist. Below this, and immediately above the gate, is to be seen Lady Margaret's shield, the three lions of England, quartered with the three lilies of France, within a bordure barred azure and argent, supported by the antelopes of the Beaufort family. On either side of both statue and shield appear the Plantagenet rose and the Tudor portcullis, each surmounted by an Imperial crown (just as we so constantly find them in King's College Chapel), and all round is sprinkled the Margaret flower, the daisy. The whole forms a beautiful piece of composition which makes us regret that more of Fisher's work is not left. All the First Court, indeed, is his, but it has been altered out of all knowledge. Now its chief feature is the soaring mid-Victorian chapel, the largest in Cambridge (except, of course, King's), the most pleasing view of which is to be gained from the Trinity Backs, where the tower, framed in foliage, exquisitely doubles itself on the surface of the river. This ambitious fabric was built by Sir Gilbert Scott in the 'sixties; and a line of cement on the lawn of the Court alone traces for us the foundations of Fisher's original Chapel.

The Hall ranks in size and beauty next to that of Trinity. The most interesting of its portraits are those of Lady Margaret, Bishop Fisher, and the poet Wordsworth, who was a resident member of the College from 1787 to 1791. His rooms, as he tells in "The Prelude," were in the south-western staircase of the "First Court," just above the kitchen:

"The Evangelist St. John my Patron was:
Three Gothic Courts are his, and in the first
Was my abiding-place, a nook obscure.
Right underneath, the College Kitchens made
A humming sound, less tuneable than bees,
But hardly less industrious, with shrill notes
Of sharp command and scolding intermixed."

Wordsworth was not a very contented student. He shared the anarchical ideas then floating in the air, and soon to explode in the French Revolution. College discipline was eminently distasteful to him, and, above all, he detested the obligation to attend the Services in the College Chapel (which, indeed, were, in those days, conducted in far from ideal fashion).[63] In "The Prelude," he breaks out against them in unmeasured terms:

"Be Folly and False-seeming free to affect
Whatever formal gait of Discipline
Shall raise them highest in their own esteem:
Let them parade amongst the Schools at will,
But spare the House of God! Was ever known
The witless shepherd who persists to drive
A flock that thirsts not to a pool disliked?
A weight must surely hang on days begun
And ended with such mockery. Be wise,
Ye Presidents[64] and Deans, and to your bells
Give seasonable rest, for 'tis a sound
Hollow as ever vexed the tranquil air;
And your officious doings bring disgrace
On the plain steeples of our English Church,
Whose worship, 'mid remotest village trees
Suffers for this."

It is interesting to note that these sentiments are echoed, a year or two later, from Oxford, by Southey, then also in his youthful paroxysm of Revolutionary fervour. He lets himself go in his "Ode to the Chapel Bell":

"O how I hate the sound! It is the knell
That still a requiem tolls to Comfort's hour;
And loth am I, at Superstition's bell,
To quit, or Morpheus', or the Muse's bower.
Better to lie and doze than gape amain,
Hearing still mumbled o'er the same eternal strain,
.........
The snuffling, snaffling Fellow's nasal tone,
And Romish rites retained, though Romish faith be flown."

The Hall of St. John's was the scene of notable Christmas feasting in the good old days of academic prosperity. Daily, from Christmas to Twelfth Night, boars' heads, turkeys, gargantuan pasties, and cups of a peculiarly enticing composition, went the round of the board. After the fatal agricultural depression of the 'seventies these hospitable doings dwindled more and more, till now they are wholly of the past.

From the Hall we can often obtain permission to ascend to the unique glory of St. John's College, the Combination Room, which is incomparably finer than any other apartment of the same kind, either at Oxford or Cambridge. It is a spacious panelled gallery, running east and west, nearly 100 feet in length, lighted by transomed windows[65] along the southern side, and with a richly decorated plaster ceiling, the work of the same Italian artists who erected the fountain in the Great Court of Trinity, just at the time when this room was in building. For here we have got beyond Lady Margaret's "First" Court. The Combination Room forms the north side of the "Second" Court, erected at the very end of the sixteenth century (simultaneously with the Great Court of Trinity) by another noble benefactress, Lady Mary Cavendish, Countess of Shrewsbury, whose coat of arms (Cavendish impaled with Talbot) stands over the western gate.

This splendid benefaction was intended to be anonymous, as was also that which, in the "Third" Court, has given to St. John's yet another unique beauty, its exquisite Library, which (like the Combination Room) stands at the head, architecturally, of all College libraries, whether at Oxford or Cambridge. The benefactor in this case was Dr. John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln and Keeper of the Great Seal. His initials, as has been already mentioned, may be seen upon the outside of the western wall, beside the beautiful oriel window, overlooking the river, with which the room terminates, and his escutcheon hangs on the eastern wall, inside, over the door. For in his case, too, as in that of Lady Mary Cavendish, the secret leaked out before the work was finished, and in 1624 the letters I. L. C. S. (denoting Iohannes Lincolnensis Custos Sigilli) disclosed to passers-by the donor's identity.

The original bookcases of dark oak still project from either wall. They have mostly been heightened to make room for more books, but the additional shelves have been added not above but at the bottom, so that the sloping desks of the old tops still remain, though too high to be used; but the pair nearest the door remain at their original height. In the panelled end of each shelf may be noticed a tiny folding door, which on being opened proves to contain the catalogue, in crabbed early seventeenth century writing, of the books which the shelf held when first filled. The Library, however, contains nothing of any very special interest, its most noteworthy exhibit being an edition de luxe of the "Great Bible" issued in 1540 by Royal authority under the auspices of Archbishop Cranmer. This was the first English Bible authorised to be read in churches, and a copy was ordered to be set up in every parish church throughout the realm; the object being that every man might have access to it, and read for his own edification. He was not, however, allowed to take it home with him, and it was usually chained to the reading-desk to prevent this. And, as yet, there was no provision for any reading of Scripture in public worship, beyond the Epistles and Gospels of the Mass, the "sense" (i.e. the English) of which each parish priest had long been bound to give his congregation every Sunday as best he might.

This first Authorised Version was founded on the work of Miles Coverdale, published five years earlier, with a specially fulsome dedication to King Henry the Eighth, who, in consideration of his recent breach with the Papacy,[66] is described as "our Moses ... who hath brought us out ... from the cruel hands of our spiritual Pharao." In this edition (of which we have here a copy printed on vellum, and perhaps destined for the King's own hands) this idea is enlarged upon in a highly elaborated frontispiece. Henry sits, smiling imperially, in the middle of the page, distributing Bibles right and left to all sorts and conditions of men—bishops, clergy, monks, nobles, commons, artisans, husbandmen, and, notably, prisoners;—while out of every mouth proceeds a label bearing the universal acclamation "Vivat Rex," the English equivalent of which, "God save the King," is first found in this Version.

The main approach to the Library is by a fine stone staircase in the north-western corner of the "Second Court;" but access is more generally obtained at present by an unpretending doorway in the middle of the northern side of the "Third Court." This door opens into the lower storey of the Library, which contains nothing of interest except a not very inspired statue of Wordsworth. Hence a circular iron stair leads up to the Library proper.

The "three Gothic courts," mentioned in Wordsworth's "Prelude" as belonging to St. John's, sufficed the College till the reign of George the Fourth. When it was then determined to expand, the bold departure was taken of erecting the new buildings on the other side of the river. Never, before or since, has any other College, either at Oxford or Cambridge, done the like; and one could wish that the experiment had been made at a period when architecture was at a less debased level. It was the period which Sir Walter Scott, in the "Antiquary," has in mind when he says "The Lord deliver me from this Gothic generation." But, of that period, the "New Court," as it is called, is a favourable specimen, most especially the grated[67] bridge connecting it with the main body of the College, which has a really graceful span. The idea of this structure was suggested by the Bridge of Sighs at Venice, and it is commonly known by that name, which provokes unkind comparisons. From it we get good views of the Library oriel to the north, and, on the other side, of the older bridge belonging to St. John's, three arches in the characteristic Johnian style of red brick with stone dressings, built at the end of the seventeenth century.

The New Court has practically but one side, the ends being very slightly returned, running east and west, with a quasi-cupola in the centre, surrounded by pinnacles and surmounted by a gilded vane. It is hard to believe, but it is quite historical, that one morning (in the 'sixties) this vane was found to be decked out in the brilliant scarlet "blazer"[68] of the College boat club, the perpetrator (who was never discovered) having actually scaled the roof by means of one of the water-pipes! And it was some time before the resources of civilisation in the hands of the College authorities availed to abate the outrage.

The New Court, on its southern side, is separated by a traceried cloister from the College Backs. On passing through the gate of this it is well to bear to the left and walk along the bank of the river, here overhung by magnificent elms, and affording a picturesque prospect of the Trinity buildings on the other side. The grounds of both Colleges to the west of the river are here divided up into a series of lawn-tennis courts, and are parted from each other by a broad ditch, which runs beneath the boughs of bowery horse-chestnut trees. In spring the Trinity bank of this ditch is bright with daffodils, the Johnian with narcissus. An iron foot-bridge, common to both Colleges, with a gate at either end, gives access from one to the other; but we had best continue by the path which skirts the Johnian bank. This finally leads out of the College grounds into the Backs proper, by a fine iron gate bearing a gilded eagle rising from a crown, the crest borne by Lady Margaret.

Before we reach this, we find water on either side of us; that to the west being not from the Cam, but a small tributary brooklet which joins the river near the Great Bridge. It is here dammed up so as to afford space for the College swans to make merry in, and on the further side is the Fellows' Garden, known as "the Wilderness." The wealth of spring flowers here cultivated—snowdrops, daffodils, crocuses, primroses, anemones, and hyacinths—is delicious in a country like Cambridgeshire, where Nature supplies their charms with very niggardly hand in comparison with the more favoured regions of England. Outside the Eagle gate we are close to the entrance of the Trinity avenue.

Let us stand once more before the great gate of Trinity. Turning to the south, instead of the north as before, we find ourselves in a few score yards with the buildings of a College again to the east and west of the street at once. This College is commonly known as Caius (pronounced Keys), and officially as "Gonville and Caius," after the original founder in the fourteenth century, and the benefactor who, two hundred years later, so largely developed it as to leave his name also attached to the site.[69] The former was a simple parish priest, rector of Terrington, on the Norfolk seaboard of the Wash. His little college, designated the "College of the Annunciation,"[70] and consisting only of a Master and three Fellows, found its original quarters hard by Pembroke, with which it was founded simultaneously in 1347. A few years later, on Gonville's death, his friend and diocesan, Bishop Bateman of Norwich, moved it to its present site, next door to his own new college, Trinity Hall.

There Gonville Hall, as it was now called, gradually developed, but remained a very puny bantling till the reign of Queen Mary, when one of its own scholars took upon himself the task of expanding it. His name was really Keys, which according to the fashion of the day, was transliterated into the Latin equivalent Caius, and he was a celebrated doctor of medicine, President of the College of Physicians, and himself physician to the Royal household. It was in the interests of his favourite study that he refounded the college, which to this day has a specially medical tinge. He was also a singularly devout man, and the spirit in which he built is exemplified by the three gates through which we successively pass in our progress through the College. From Trinity-street we enter beneath a narrow, plain, low-browed archway, known as the Gate of Humility, and inscribed Humilitatis.[71] A short avenue of lime-trees (also a part of the Founder's design) leads across the small court to a loftier, wider portal, over which we may read the word Virtutis. Through this we gain another court, and, looking back, we discover that in using the Gate of Virtue we have indeed used the Gate of Wisdom; for it bears the inscription Io. Caivs. Posvit. Sapientiae. And, finally, a small, beautifully designed turret, rich with Renaissance figures and pilasters, and inscribed Honoris, covers our exit through the Gate of Honour, to which those of Humility, Virtue, and Wisdom have successively led us on.

This Gate of Honour is really a wonderful little gem of architecture, quite unique in its design, which is due to Dr. Caius himself, though the work was not finished till after his death. The turret is an oblong mass of stone-work, some twelve feet in width by six in depth, rising to a height of about twenty feet, and topped with a singularly graceful hexagonal cupola.[72] The view of it, more especially from the further side of the Court, whence it groups with the Senate House and University library just outside, and with the soaring pinnacles of King's College Chapel beyond, is one nowhere to be surpassed. From a picturesque point of view no one can regret the absence of the somewhat gaudy coats of paint and gilding with which it originally was covered; but the result of their removal has been that the stone (which is soft, and was never intended to stand exposure to the atmosphere) is rapidly decaying.

The paved footway into which the Gate of Honour leads is known as Senate House Passage,[73] and is still the route along which the students of the College pass to receive in the Senate House such honours as their University examinations may have entitled them to. It forms the southern boundary of the College, which, alone amongst the Colleges of Cambridge, is wholly surrounded by public ways, Trinity-street being on the east, Trinity-lane on the north, and Trinity Hall-lane on the west. The tasteless mass of modern red brick (erected 1853) at the north-west angle of the block contains the hall; with the kitchens, by an unusual arrangement, beneath. These kitchens have an immemorial gastronomic renown in Cambridge, and are credited with the possession of culinary secrets enabling them to surpass all rival establishments. In some verses written about the end of the eighteenth century (concerning a well-known young lady of Cambridge) we find this referred to:

"The sons of culinary Caius,
Smoaking from the eternal Treat,
Gazed on the Fair with greedy air,
As she were something good to eat:
Even the sad Kingsman lost his gloom awhile,
And forced a melancholy smile.[74]

Dr. Caius himself became the first Master of his new College, a post which he accepted with a reluctance which proved only too well justified, for he himself was a devout and pious man of the old school, and wholly out of sympathy with the militant Protestantism which was then fast becoming the dominating spirit at Cambridge, as in England generally. He has left in writing his lamentation over the sad depletion of the University which was the first result of the Reformation.[75] The wholesale destruction of ancient works of art—beautifully illuminated service books, and elaborately embroidered vestments—by which the votaries of the new religion sought at once to express their loathing of the older faith and to make its revival the harder, did but recall to him the like policy pursued by the Pagan antagonists of Jehovah in the days of the Maccabees. And he did what in him lay to stem the tide, rescuing here a Missal and there a Chasuble from the iconoclasts, till he had accumulated in his Lodge quite a little store of these sacred objects. But the times were too hard for him. He was denounced as a reactionary, a sympathiser with Popery; a riot broke out among the College students; the Lodge was stormed; the Papistical relics thrown out of the window and burnt in the midst of the Court;[76] whilst the Master and Founder himself was expelled from his own College and (as he had spent upon it all he had) ended his days in penury and exile. He was, however, allowed a grave in the chapel, which bears the touching inscription Fui Caius ("I was Caius").

The undergraduates of Caius wear a gown of a singular and not very pleasing violet hue with velvet trimmings. The College "colours" are light blue and black; the former, which is, as all know, the University colour, having been granted them to use, in memory of a famous race, in the early days of College boating, seventy years ago, when their crew beat the University Eight. It is, of course, an axiomatic rule of sportsmanship that no Club may assume the insignia of another (or any colourable imitation thereof), without leave from the previous users. The earliest "Light Blues" were the Eton Boat Club, by whose permission the Cambridge Boat Club took the colour. The Cricket Clubs, at both Eton and Cambridge, were then permitted to use it, and now this permission has been extended to all engaged as champions of the University, at athletics, football, etc.

The Senate House, to the entrance of which the Gate of Honour has brought us, is the nerve-centre of the University. Here are held, usually on each Thursday during Term, the meetings ("Congregations" is the official word) of that august body the "Senate," to whose vote all University legislation must ultimately be submitted. This body, however, consisting as it does of all who have attained the Degree of Master of Arts, several thousands in number, is far too large to initiate that legislation. This is done by a small elected General Committee, the "Council," and by special Committees (or "Syndicates") dealing with the various special subjects to be considered. Both Council and Syndicates also act as executive authorities, and by them "Graces" embodying this or that proposal are from time to time laid before the Senate. The Grace is read aloud by one of the Proctors, in his robes of office, standing beside the Chair, which is occupied by the Vice-Chancellor.[77] The benches are tenanted by such members of the Senate as care to be present.[78] There is no discussion;[79] but, on the Grace being read, any member may utter the words "Non Placet," whereupon the Proctor cries "Ad scrutinium," and the congregation divides; the "Placets," (or "Ayes" as they would be called in Parliament), moving to the right of the Chair, and the "Non-Placets" to the left. Should this grouping not sufficiently disclose the sense of the meeting, a poll is held; each member's vote being given publicly by writing, on an official form, avouched by his signature. These papers are then counted by the Proctors, and their respective numbers read out by the Vice-Chancellor.

These numbers are usually but small; indeed most of the business is altogether unopposed. But when some subject which excites general interest is brought forward, "backwoods-men" flock (and are whipped) up from all parts of England. Macaulay has given us a humorous poem on the coach-loads of country clergy thus pitch-forked into Cambridge to vote against the admission of Roman Catholics to the University; and within the last few decades, similar scenes were witnessed in connection with the question of their being allowed a recognised Public Hostel of their own, and with those of Compulsory Greek, and of granting Degrees to women.

Such is the procedure at the Senate House; or, rather, such it has hitherto been, for the whole question of University legislation is even now in the melting-pot. The use of the building for the chief University examinations is also dying or dead, now that a vast "Examination Hall" has been built for that purpose. But Degrees still continue to be conferred there; the students found worthy by the examiners successively kneeling before the Vice-Chancellor, and being admitted by him to their degree in the name of the Trinity. They are presented by the "Fathers" of their respective Colleges, in a recognised order, beginning with the Royal Foundations, King's always coming first and Trinity second. When the Degree of Doctor ("Honoris causa") is conferred on any distinguished visitors, the place is thronged, and each in turn is introduced with a laudatory Latin speech by the "Public Orator," who has to exert his ingenuity in composing some neat and appropriate epigrammatic remark about him.[80]

The Senate House is a stately classical building, running east and west, erected in the early decades of the eighteenth century. Up to that date the functions which it now discharges were served partly by the old Schools (now the University Library), which have been already spoken of, and which adjoin it on the west, and partly by the University Church (called here, as at Oxford, "Great St. Mary's"), which stands hard by to the east. The legislative meetings of the Senate were held in the former,[81] the Degrees were conferred, and other gatherings held, in the latter.

This was all very well before the Reformation, whilst reverence for consecrated places still held its own; but, after that great convulsion, the proceedings too frequently were markedly unecclesiastical in tone. The conferring of Degrees was originally a solemn function beginning with High Mass, and continuing with a serious vivâ voce exercise of the candidates in the presence of the Vice-Chancellor. But when the Reformation had made it fashionable to show a healthy Protestant contempt for the old Catholic superstitions, the whole ceremony was deliberately turned into a farce. The questioning of the candidates was no longer done by grave University officials, but by an "old" (i.e. a senior) Bachelor, who sat upon a three-legged stool, and made his interrogations as profane and scurrilous as possible. He was known, from his stool, as "Mr. Tripos," and so essential a part of the proceedings did he become that "Tripos" got to be (as it still is) the regular name for an "Honour" examination at Cambridge. To judge by the few that have come down to us, the jokes current on these occasions were poor to the last degree. Thus, in 1657, we read that two Oxonians, got up as hobby-horses, presented themselves, giving as their qualification that they "had smith's work at their digits' ends," (Smith being a then current writer of school books). They were duly admitted, on the ground that "such equitation gave them an equitable claim!" And all this was in the church; where, indeed, far less innocent performances were constantly given, including stage-plays and recitations in which the most solemn mysteries of the Catholic Faith were often travestied and held up to ridicule.[82]

The church which was thus so long profaned is of late Perpendicular architecture. Huge galleries have been inserted for the accommodation of such undergraduates as may attend; the nave being appropriated to the Master of Arts. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the east end was filled with tier above tier of semicircular benches for the seniors of the University, from whose prevailingly bald heads this elevation became profanely known as "Golgotha." All is now arranged in decent fashion, and since the building of the Senate House the church has only been used for strictly ecclesiastical purposes. Here each Sunday afternoon is preached the "University Sermon," the preacher being some clergyman selected by the Council of the Senate. No service is held in connection with this sermon, but the preacher, before commencing, reads from the pulpit what is known as the "Bidding Prayer"—a long list of subjects for intercession, comprising the various authorities in Church and State, the Clergy, and (as the source of their supply) the Universities and Colleges. Amongst these "as in private duty bound" the preacher specifically names the College to which he himself belongs, finally concluding with the Lord's Prayer.[83] The sermon is officially attended by the Vice-Chancellor and Proctors, who gather in the Senate House and cross the street in procession to the West door of the church. One of the Proctors carries the University Bible, a ponderous tome suspended by a chain; and in front is borne the silver mace of the University, by an official designated the "Esquire Bedell."

The church has witnessed various vicissitudes of doctrine. Here, during the first outbreak of Protestantism, the Missal was solemnly torn up and burnt amid the hooting of the crowd; and when, a century later, the Puritans gained the ascendancy, a like fate befell the Book of Common Prayer, Cromwell himself presiding at the ceremony. This was on Good Friday, 1643, when the Vice-Chancellor and several other Heads of Colleges were, for refusing to abet the proceeding, shut up in the church "all the long cold night, without fire or candle." They were afterwards haled to London, and, after being pelted through the City, were subjected to a sort of Black Hole treatment, under hatches on board a hulk in the river, with all port-holes closed, and no air "save such as they could suck from each others' breaths," as the "Querela Cantabrigiensis" piteously complains.

Till lately the tower of Great St. Mary's was a historical record of the stirring scenes amid which it arose, for it was slowly built during the course of no fewer than 120 years, being begun in the last decade of the fifteenth century and finished in the first of the seventeenth. Thus the lower stages were of Perpendicular Gothic, the higher of Renaissance style. Unhappily the Victorian restorers took it in hand, and rebuilt the top as, in their view, it would have been built had it been completed without this long delay, so that all historical interest is now lost. It contains a fine peal of twelve bells, on which sound the famous chimes composed in 1790 by Dr. Jowett,[84] tutor of Trinity Hall, which, since their adoption in the Westminster clock tower, have spread so widely throughout the country and the Empire. Their cadences are:

The hour is struck on the tenor bell. These bells are of eighteenth century date: two more have been added since.

Great St. Mary's, for all its University connection, still remains what it was before the University came into being, a Parish Church; its Parish consisting of the Market Place, which opens out to the east of it, and is called locally "Market Hill." Whence this curious use of the latter word arose is not known, but it is immemorial at Cambridge for any expansion of a street into something wider. Besides Market Hill, there are the smaller spaces of Peas Hill and St. Andrew's Hill. All are utterly flat; yet, so potent is the word in the imagination of the Cambridge townsfolk, that such expressions as "I wonder the Hill don't fall down upon you" may be overheard in market disputes. Market Hill is not very large for its purpose even now; but till the nineteenth century it was much smaller, with more than one range of houses encumbering its area. On the southern side stands the Guildhall, a far from imposing structure, and in the centre rises the fountain supplied by the water of Hobson's Conduit, as described in our first chapter. The present structure was erected in 1855, the earlier one (put up in 1614) being then removed to its present position at the junction of Lensfield Road and Trumpington Road.[85]

Like the University Church, the Market Place has witnessed many stirring scenes. Here, in the fierce but short-lived Socialistic outbreak which we commonly associate with the name of Wat Tyler, when dreams were afloat of melting down all existing distinctions into one great Magna Societas, which should redress all wrongs and make all men equal in all things, a mighty bonfire was made by the insurgent peasantry of all the books and documents which could be looted from the University Chest in Great St. Mary's, and from the various Colleges and Hostels then existing. The Mayor of Cambridge was compelled to give the sanction of his presence to the deed; and finally the ashes were scattered to the winds, with the cry: "Away with the skill of the clerks! Away with it!"

Two centuries later, in 1555, the Hill saw another burning, of a more gruesome character. The Catholic reaction under Queen Mary was then in full swing; and it was determined to visit with the extreme penalty of the laws against heresy the corpses of two notable pioneers of the Reformation, Dr. Bucer and Dr. Fagius. Both were amongst the band of German Protestants who, under King Edward the Sixth, flocked over to disseminate the new Religion in England, and both had died while promulgating their tenets at Cambridge. They were now torn from their graves, and chained, in their coffins, to the stake, the pyre which incinerated them being chiefly composed of their own condemned books.

Within the last decade two other notable conflagrations have here been kindled. When Lord Kitchener, then Sirdar of Egypt, and fresh from his victories over the Mahdi, visited Cambridge to receive an Honorary Degree, his presence amongst us was greeted by the wildest orgies. A huge bonfire was kindled on the Hill, the pile ultimately stretching diagonally across almost the entire area, and fed with ever fresh supplies of wood, for which the whole town was scoured. Railings were torn up wholesale (notably, as has been said, in the Backs), shutters were wrenched from shop windows, and even doors from houses; while hoardings, gates, and tradesmen's barrows were seized and devoted to the flames. Like scenes, a few years later, on a somewhat smaller scale, celebrated the relief of Ladysmith in the Boer War.

These riotous proceedings were the work of the wilder spirits of University and Town alike. But in the earlier part of the Nineteenth Century many a fierce collision between Town and Gown took place on the Hill. The Fifth of November was the annual occasion consecrated by custom to these conflicts. Bands of undergraduates paraded the streets shouting "Gown! Gown!" while bands of the fiercer element amongst the townsfolk did the like, to the cry of "Town! Town!" Fights were thus frequent, in spite of the efforts of the authorities, both Civic and Academic. Gownsmen took to flight at the appearance of the Proctors and their "Bulldogs,"[86] but it was to re-form elsewhere, and few were actually caught. The Police, when they came into existence, in the early 'forties, were more formidable. They invariably took the side of the Town,[87] and it was due to them that the "Fifth" became less and less pugilistic, till it is now only a memory. Fisticuffs were all very well, but batons made the fun not good enough.

CHAPTER VI

Round Church.—Union Society.—The "Great Bridge," Hithe.—Magdalene College, Buckingham College, Pepys, Charles Kingsley, the "College Window," Master's Garden.—Castle Hill, Camboritum, Cromwell's Rampart, Repulse of Charles I, the "Borough," View from Castle.—St. Peter's Church.—"School of Pythagoras."—Westminster College.—Ridley Hall.—Newnham College.—Selwyn College.—Convent of St. Radegund, Bishop Alcock.—Midsummer Common.—Boat Houses, Bumping Races.—Jesus College, "Chimney," Cloisters, Chapter House, Chapel, Cranmer, Coleridge.

Starting once more from the Great Gate of Trinity and turning northwards past St. John's we soon reach the "Via Devana," the old Roman road which, as has been said, is the backbone of Cambridge, traversing the town, under various names, from end to end. At this point of its course it is called Bridge-street. Opposite to us, as we enter it, rises one of the most distinctive buildings of Cambridge, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, popularly known as "the Round Church." Its strange shape is an echo of the Crusading period, during the whole of which such reproductions of the famous church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, the deliverance of which from the Turks was the Crusaders' dream, were erected in various parts of England. Earliest in date comes the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Northampton, built at the very beginning of the twelfth century, in the opening fervour of the first Crusade, which has also given us the beautiful old chapel of Ludlow Castle (now in ruins) and this church in Cambridge. The gallant but fruitless effort of Richard Cœur de Lion to retrieve the disastrous loss of Jerusalem is commemorated by the Temple Church in London, completed at the very close of that century; while the yet more fruitless endeavours of Edward the First, a century later again, in the last expiring flash of Crusading zeal, inspired the latest of our English Round Churches, that of Maplestead in Essex. In all these churches the reproduction of their original is of a very modified character.

So it is with our Cambridge example. It consists, indeed, (or, rather originally consisted) of a circular nave surrounded by an ambulatory, like its Jerusalem prototype, and may, like it, have had a domed roof, though this is scarcely probable. But there the likeness must always have ended; and the structure has, in later days, been altered and re-altered time after time. At first there was probably a small semicircular eastern apse, which within a century gave place to an Early English chancel. This, in turn, was superseded by the present chancel with its aisles, built in the fifteenth century, when an octagonal bell-tower was also erected over the nave. Finally, in 1841, the newly-formed "Camden Society" for the restoration of ancient churches was permitted to work its will upon this one, and proceeded to reconstruct it in accordance with what they imagined ought to have been the design of its first builders.[88] And this imaginary ideal, with its pointed roof and tiny Norman windows, is all that we now see. Nevertheless, the sight, more especially inside, is impressive in no small degree.