“The task was beset with difficulties that would have daunted a mind less firmly resolved on carrying out the end in view than the king’s; difficulties indeed that would have been insuperable except by royal influence, backed by a royal purse. The ground on which King’s College now stands was then densely populated. It occupied nearly the whole of the parish of S. John Baptist, whose church is believed to have stood near the west end of the chapel. Milne Street crossed the site from north to south, in a direction that may be easily identified from the two ends of the street that still remain, under the name of Trinity Hall Lane and Queen’s Lane. The space between Milne Street and Trumpington Street, then called High Street, was occupied by the houses and gardens of different proprietors, and was traversed by a narrow thoroughfare called Piron Lane, leading from High Street to S. John’s Church. At the corner of Milne Street and this lane, occupying the ground on which about half the ante-chapel now stands, was the small college called God’s House, founded in 1439 by William Byngham for the study of grammar, which, as he observes in his petition to Henry VI. for leave to found it, is “the rote and ground of all other sciences.” On the west side of Milne Street, between it and the river, were the hostels of S. Austin, S. Nicholas, and S. Edmund, besides many dwelling-houses. This district was traversed by several lanes, affording to the townspeople ready access to the river, and to a wharf on its bank called Salthithe. No detailed account has been preserved of the negotiations necessary for the acquisition of this ground, between six and seven acres in extent, and in the very heart of Cambridge.... The greatest offence appears to have been given by the closing of the lanes leading down to the river, which was of primary importance to mediæval Cambridge as a highway. In five years’ time, however, the difficulties were all got over; the town yielded up, though not with the best grace, the portion of Milne Street required and all the other thoroughfares; the hostels were suppressed, or transferred to other sites; the Church of S. John was pulled down, and the parish united to that of S. Edward, whose church bears evidence, by the spacious aisles attached to its choir, of the extension rendered necessary at that time by the addition of the members of Clare Hall and Trinity Hall to the number of its parishioners.”[53]
On this splendid site of many acres, where now the silent green expanse of sunlit lawn has taken the place of the busy lanes and crowded tenements, which in Henry’s time hummed with the life of a mediæval river-side city, there rises the wondrous building, the crown of fifteenth century architecture, beautiful, unique—a cathedral church in size, a college chapel in plan—seeming in its lofty majesty so solitary and so aloof, and yet so instantaneously impressive.
Who was the architect of this masterpiece? The credit has commonly been given to one of two men—Nicholas Close or John Langton. Close was a man of Flemish family, and one of the original six Fellows of the College. He had for a few years been the vicar of the demolished Church of S. John Zachary. He afterwards became Bishop of Carlisle. Langton was Master of Pembroke and Chancellor of the University, and was one of the commissioners appointed by the King to superintend the scheme of the works at their commencement. But both of these men were theologians and divines. We have no evidence that they were architects. Mr. G. Gilbert Scott, in his essay on “English Church Architecture,” has, however, given reasons, which seem to be almost conclusive, that the man who should really have the credit of conceiving this great work was the master-mason Reginald of Ely, who as early as 1443 was appointed by a patent of Henry VI. “to press masons, carpenters, and other workmen” for the new building. According to Mr. Scott’s view, Nicholas Close and his fellow surveyors merely did the work which in modern days would be done by a building committee. It was the master-mason who planned the building, and who continued to act as architect until the works came to a standstill with the deposition of the King and the enthronement of his successor Edward IV. in 1462. Moreover, the character of the general design of King’s Chapel and even its architectural details, such as the setting out of its great windows, the plan of its vaulting shafts, and the groining of the roofs of the small chapels between its buttresses, lend force to Mr. Scott’s contention. It is evident from the accuracy and minuteness of the directions given in “the Will of King Henry VI.” (a document which was not in reality a testament, but an expression of his deliberate purpose and design with regard to his proposed foundation), that complete working plans had been prepared by an architect. Whoever that architect may have been, he had evidently been commissioned to design a chapel of magnificence worthy of a royal foundation. And where more naturally could he look for his model for such a building as the King desired than to that chapel, the largest and the most splendid hitherto erected in England, that finest specimen of decorated architecture in the kingdom, Alan de Walsingham’s Lady Chapel at Ely. The relationship between the two buildings is obvious to even an uninstructed eye, but Mr. Scott has shown how closely the original design of King’s follows the Ely Lady Chapel lines.
“Any one,” he truly says, “who will carry up his eye from the bases of the vaulting shafts to the springing of the great vault will perceive at once that the section of the shaft does not correspond with the plan of the vault springers. There is a sort of cripple here. The shaft is, in fact, set out with seven members, while the design of the vault plan requires but five. Thus two members of the pier have nothing to do, and disappear somewhat clumsily in the capital. The section of these shafts was imposed by the first architect, and does not agree with the requirement of a fan-groin (designed by the architect of a later date).... The original sections, and the peculiar distribution of their bases, unmistakably indicate a ribbed vault, with transverse, diagonal, and intermediate ribs. Now, if we apply to the plan of these shaftings at Cambridge the plan of the vaulting at Ely, we find the two to tally precisely. Each member of the pier has its corresponding rib, in the direction of the sweep of which each member of the base is laid down. This might serve as proof sufficient, but it is not all. There exist in the church two lierne-groins of the work of the first period, those namely of the two easternmost chapels of the north range, and these are identical in principle with the great vault at Ely, and with the plan that is indicated by the distribution of the ante-chapel bases. We know then that the first designer of the church did employ lierne and not fan-vaulting, even in the small areas of the chapels, and that these liernes resemble not the later form—such as we may observe in the nave of Winchester Cathedral—but the earlier manner which is exhibited at Ely. There can, therefore, as I conceive, be no doubt that this great chapel was designed to be “chare-roofed” with such a lierne-vault—it is practically a Welsh-groin—as adorns the next grandest chapel in England only sixteen miles distant.”[54]
There seems little doubt then that the architect of King’s Chapel was its first master-builder, Reginald of Ely, who, trained under the shadow of the great Minster buildings in that city, probably in its mason’s yard, naturally took as his model for the King’s new chapel at Cambridge one of the most exquisite of the works of the great cathedral builder of the previous century, Alan de Walsingham.
Had the original design of Reginald been completed, several of the defects of the building, as we see it to-day, would have been avoided. The chapel vault would have been arched, and the great space which is now left between the top of the windows and the spring of the vaulting would have been avoided. Much of the heaviness of effect also, which is felt by any one studying the exterior of the chapel, and which is due to the low pitch of the window arches, rendered necessary by the alteration in the design of the great vault, would have been avoided.
KING’S COLLEGE CHAPEL, To face p. 150
Reginald of Ely’s work, however, indeed all work on the new chapel, ceased in 1461, when the battle of Towton gave the crown to the young Duke of York, and the Lancastrian colleges of his rival fell upon barren days. On the accession of Richard III. in 1483, the new king not only showed his goodwill to the College by the gift of lands, but ordered the building to go on with all despatch. In 1485, however, there commenced another period of twenty years’ stagnation. Then in 1506, Henry VII., paying a visit with his mother to Cambridge, attended service in the unfinished chapel, and determined to become its patron. In the summer of 1508 more than a hundred masons and carpenters were again at work, and henceforth the building suffered no interruption. By July 1515 the fabric of the church was finished, and had cost in all, according to the present value of money, some £160,000.
In November of the same year a payment of £100 is made to Barnard Flower, the King’s glazier, and a similar sum in February 1517. It would seem that the same artist completed four windows, that over the north door of the ante-chapel being the earliest. Upon his death agreements were made in 1526 for the erection of the whole of the remaining twenty-two windows. They were to represent “the story of the old lawe and of the new lawe.” Above and below the transome in each window are two separate pictures, each pair being divided by a “messenger,” who bears a scroll with a legend giving the subject represented. In the lower tier the windows from north-west to south-west represent the Life of the Blessed Virgin, the Life of Christ, and the History of the Church as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. The upper tier has scenes from the Old Testament or from apocryphal sources which prefigure the events recorded below. The whole of the east window is devoted to the Passion and Crucifixion of our Lord. The west window, containing a representation of the Last Judgment, is entirely modern. It was executed by Messrs. Clayton and Bell, and was erected in 1879.
“A bare enumeration of the subjects, however, can give but a poor idea of these glorious paintings. What first arrests the attention is the singularly happy blending of colours, produced by a most ingenious juxta-position of pure tints. The half-tones so dear to the present generation were fortunately unknown when they were set up. Thus though there is a profusion of brilliant scarlet, and light blue, and golden yellow, there is no gaudiness. Again, all the glass admits light without let or hindrance, the shading being laid on with sparing hand, so that the greatest amount of brilliancy is insured. This is further enhanced by a very copious use of white or slightly yellow glass. It must not, however, be supposed that a grand effect of colour is all that has been aimed at. The pictures bear a close study as works of art. The figures are rather larger than life, and boldly drawn, so as to be well seen from a great distance; but the faces are full of expression and individuality, and each scene is beautiful as a composition. They would well bear reduction within the narrow limits of an easel picture.... There is no doubt that a German or Flemish influence is discernible in some of the subjects; but that is no more than might have been expected, when we consider the number of sets of pictures illustrating the life and passion of Christ that had appeared in Germany and Flanders during the half century preceding their execution.... That these windows should (at the time of the Puritan destruction of such things) have been saved is a marvel; and how it came to pass is not exactly known. The story that they were taken out and hidden, or, as one version of it says, buried, may be dismissed as an idle fabrication. More likely the Puritan sentiments of the then provost, Dr. Whichcote, were regarded with such favour by the Earl of Manchester during his occupation of Cambridge, that he interfered to save the chapel and the college from molestation.”[55]
Gateway to Old Court of King’s College
The magnificent screen and rood-loft are carved with the arms, badge, and initials (H. A.) of Henry and Anne Boleyn, and with the rose, fleur-de-lis, and portcullis. Doubtless, therefore, they were erected between 1532 and 1535. The doors to the screen were renewed in 1636, and bear the arms of Charles I. The stalls were set up by Henry VIII., but they were without canopies, the wall above them being probably covered with hangings, the hooks for which may still be seen under the string-course below the windows. The stalls are in the Renaissance manner, and are the first example of that style at Cambridge. They appear to differ somewhat in character from Torregiano’s works at Westminster, and to be rather French than Italian in feeling, although some portions of the figure-carving recalls in its vigour the style of Michael Angelo. The stall canopies and the panelling to the east of the stalls were the work of Cornelius Austin, and were put up about 1675. The north and south entrance doors leading to the quire and the side chapel are probably of the same date as the screen. The lectern dates from the first quarter of the sixteenth century, having been given by Robert Hacombleyn, provost, whose name it bears.
As to the remaining buildings of King’s College it is sufficient to say that the great quadrangle projected by the founder was never built. The old buildings at the back of the schools, hastily finished in a slight and temporary manner, continued in use until the last century. In 1723 a plan was furnished by James Gibbs for a new quadrangle, of which the chapel was to form the north side. The western range—the Gibbs building—was the only part actually built. The hall, library, provost’s lodge, and several sets of rooms at each end of the hall, as well as the stone screen and the porter’s lodge, were erected in 1824-28, at a cost of rather more than £100,000, from the designs of William Wilkins. A range of rooms facing Trumpington Street were added by Sir Gilbert Scott in 1870. The new court, which when completed will form a court with buildings on three sides and the river on the fourth, was commenced by Mr. Bodley in 1891. At present this third side of the court is still left open.
To return, however, to the history of the foundation. It is an illustration of the way in which at this time ultramontanist theories were contending for supremacy in England, in the universities as elsewhere, that the King should have applied to the pope for a bull granting him power to make his new college not only independent of the bishop of the diocese, but also of the University authorities. Such a bull was granted, and in 1448 the University itself consented, by an instrument given under its common seal, that the College, in the matter of discipline as distinguished from instruction, should be entirely independent of the University. By the limitation also of the benefits of this foundation to scholars only of Eton, the founder, perhaps unconsciously, certainly disastrously, created an exclusive class of students endowed with exclusive privileges, an anomaly which for more than four centuries marred the full efficiency of Henry’s splendid foundation. This imperium in imperio was happily abolished by a new code of statutes which became law in 1861.
It may certainly be hoped that there is truth in the present provost’s gentle prophecy, that “it is hardly possible that the College should relapse into what was sometimes its old condition, that of a family party, comfortable, indeed, but inclined to be sleepy and self-indulgent, and not wholly free from family quarrels.”
And yet at the same time it should not be forgotten, as good master Fuller reminds us, that “the honour of Athens lieth not in her walls, but in the worth of her citizens,” and that during the lengthened period in which the society was a close foundation only open to scholars of Eton, with a yearly entry therefore of new members seldom exceeding half-a-dozen, it could still point to a long list of distinguished scholars and of men otherwise eminent—mathematicians like Oughtred, moralists like Whichcote, theologians like Pearson, antiquarians like Cole, poets like Waller—who had been educated within its walls. In Cooper’s “Memorials of Cambridge,” the list of eminent King’s men down to 1860 occupies twenty pages, a similar list of Trinity men, the largest college in the university, only ten pages more. This hardly seems to justify Dean Peacock’s well-known epigram on the unreformed King’s as “a splendid Cenotaph of learning.”
Let us now turn from King Henry’s College to the other royal foundation of his reign which claims his consort, the Lady Margaret of Anjou, as its foundress. The poet Gray in his “Installation Ode,” speaking of Queen Margaret in relation to Queens’ College, calls her “Anjou’s heroine.” But those Shakespearean readers who have been accustomed to think of his representation of the Queen, in The Second Part of King Henry VI., as a dramatic portrait of considerable truth and historic consistency, will hardly recognise the “heroic” qualities of Margaret’s character. Certainly she is not one of Shakespeare’s “heroines.” She has none of the womanly grace or lovableness of his ideal women. A woman of hard indomitable will, mistaking too often cruelty for firmness, using the pliancy and simplicity of her husband for mere party ends, outraging the national conscience by stirring up the Irish, the French, the Scots, against the peace of England, finally pitting the north against the south in a cruel and futile civil war, with nothing left of womanhood but the almost tigress heart of a baffled mother, this is the Queen Margaret as we know her in Shakespeare and in history. But “Our Lady the Queen Margaret,” who was a “nursing mother” to Queens’ College, seems a quite different figure. She has but just come to England, a wife and queen when little more than a child, “good-looking and well-grown” (specie et forma præstans), precocious, romantic, a “devout pilgrim to the shrine of Boccaccio,” delighting in the ballads of the troubadour, a lover of the chase, inheriting all the literary tastes of her father, King René of Anjou. The motives which led her to become the patroness of a college are thus given by Thomas Fuller:—
“As Miltiades’ trophy in Athens would not suffer Themistocles to sleep, so this queen, beholding her husband’s bounty in building King’s College, was restless in herself with holy emulation until she had produced something of the like nature, a strife wherein wives without breach of duty may contend with their husbands which should exceed in pious performances.”[56]
Accordingly we read that in 1447 Queen Margaret, being then but fifteen years old, sent to the King the following petition:—
“Margaret,—To the king my souverain lord. Besechith mekely Margaret, quene of England, youre humble wif. Forasmuche as youre moost noble grace hath newely ordeined and stablisshed a Collage of Seint Bernard, in the Universite of Cambrigge, with multitude of grete and faire privilages perpetuelly apparteynyng unto the same, as in your lettres patentes therupon made more plainly hit appereth. In the whiche Universite is no Collage founded by eny quene of England hidertoward. Plese hit therfore unto your highnesse to geve and graunte unto your seide humble wif the fondacon and determinacon of the seid collage to be called and named the Quene’s Collage of Sainte Margarete and Saint Bernard, or ellis of Sainte Margarete, vergine and martir, and Saint Bernard Confessour, and thereupon for ful evidence therof to hav licence and pouoir to ley the furst stone in her own persone or ellis by other depute of her assignement, so that beside the mooste noble and glorieus collage roial of our Lady and Saint Nicholas, founded by your highnesse may be founded and stablisshed the seid so called Quenes Collage to conservacon of oure feithe and augmentacon of pure clergie, namly of the imparesse of alle sciences and facultees theologie ... to the ende there accustumed of plain lecture and exposicon botraced with docteurs sentence autentiq performed daily twyse by two docteurs notable and well avised upon the bible aforenone and maistre of the sentences afternone to the publique audience of alle men frely, bothe seculiers and religieus to the magnificence of denominacon of suche a Queen’s Collage, and to laud and honneure of sexe feminine, like as two noble and devoute contesses of Pembroke and of Clare, founded two collages in the same Universite called Pembroke hall and Clare hall, the wiche are of grete reputacon for good and worshipful clerkis that by grete multitude have be bredde and brought forth in theym. And of your more ample grace to graunte that alle privileges immunitees, profites and comoditees conteyned in the lettres patentes above reherced may stonde in their strength and pouoir after forme and effect of the conteine in theym.
“And she shal ever preye God for you.”
The College of S. Bernard, mentioned in the first paragraph of the Queen’s petition, was a hostel, established by Andrew Dokett, the rector of S. Botolph’s Church, situated on the north side of the churchyard in Trumpington Street, adjoining Benet College. For this hostel, Dokett had obtained from the King in 1446 a charter of incorporation as a college, but a year later procured another charter, refounding the College of S. Bernard on a new site, between Milne Street and the river, adjoining the house of the Carmelite Friars. The true founder, therefore, of Queens’ College was Andrew Dokett, but he was foresighted enough to seek the Queen’s patronage for his foundation, and no doubt welcomed the absorption of S. Bernard’s hostel in the royal foundation of Queens’ College. Anyhow, the foundation stone of the new building was laid on the 15th April 1448. The outbreak of the Civil War stopped the works when the first court of the College was almost finished. Andrew Dokett, the first master, was still alive when Edward IV. came to the throne, and about the year 1465, he was fortunate to secure for his College the patronage of the new queen, Elizabeth Wydville. Elizabeth had been in earlier days a lady-in-waiting to Margaret of Anjou, and had herself strongly sympathised with the Lancastrian party. It is probable, therefore, that in accepting the patronage of the College she did so, not in her character as Yorkist queen, but rather as desirous of completing the work of the old mistress whom she had faithfully served before the strange chances of destiny had brought her as a rival to the throne. At any rate, from this period onwards the position of the apostrophe after and not before the “s” in “Queens’” adequately corresponds to the fact that the College commemorates not one, but two queens in its title.
The earliest extant statutes appear to be those of the second foundress, the Queen Consort of Edward IV., revised at a later time under the authority of Henry VIII. It seems indeed likely that the absence of canon law from the subjects required by statute from all fellows after regency in arts, and the provision of Bible lectures in College, and divers English sermons to be preached in chapel by the fellows, indicates a somewhat remarkable reforming spirit for the end of the fifteenth century, and rather points to the conclusion that these provisions belong to the later revised code of Henry VIII. At the time of the foundation of Queen’s College the plan of a collegiate building had been completely developed. It followed the lines not so much of a monastery, though it had, of course, some features in common with the monastic houses, but of the normal type of the large country houses or mansions of the fifteenth century. The late Professor Willis, in his archæological lectures on Cambridge, was accustomed, we are told, to exhibit in support of this view a ground plan of Haddon Hall and Queens’ College side by side. And certainly it is surprising to notice how striking is the similarity of the two plans. The east and west position of the chapel at Haddon Hall happens to be the reverse of that of Queens’ College, but with that exception, and the position of the entrance gateway to the first quadrangle, the arrangement of the buildings in the two mansions is practically identical. The hall, buttery, and kitchen occupy in both the range of buildings between the two courts; the private dining-room beyond the hall at Haddon is represented at Queens’ College by the fellows’ combination room; the long gallery in the upper court of Haddon has more or less its counterpart at Queens’ in the masters’ gallery in the cloister court; the upper entrance at Haddon is similarly placed to the passage to the old wooden bridge at Queens’.
Cloister Court, Queen’s College
The principal court of Queens’ was almost completed before the Wars of the Roses broke out. “It is,” says Mr. J. W. Clark, “the earliest remaining quadrangle in Cambridge that can claim attention for real architectural beauty and fitness of design.” It is built in red brick, and has a noble gateway flanked by octagonal turrets, and there are square towers at each external angle of the court. The employment of these towers is a peculiarity which perhaps offers presumptive evidence that the architect of the other two royal colleges of Eton and King’s may also have been employed at Queens’. This court probably retains more of the aspect of ancient Cambridge than any other collegiate building in the town. The turret at the south-west angle of the great court, overlooking Silver Street and the town bridge and mill pond, adjoins the rooms which, according to tradition, were occupied by Erasmus, and whose top storey was used by him as a study. It is commonly known as The Tower of Erasmus. “Queens’ College,” says Fuller, “accounteth it no small credit thereunto that Erasmus (who no doubt might have pickt and chose what house he pleased) preferred this for the place of his study for some years in Cambridge. Either invited thither with the fame of the learning and love of his friend Bishop Fisher, then master thereof, or allured with the situation of this colledge so near the river (as Rotterdam, his native place, to the sea) with pleasant walks thereabouts.” An interesting account of Erasmus’ residence in Queens’ is quoted by Mr. Searle[57] from a letter written by a fellow of the College, Andrew Paschal, Rector of Chedsey, in the year 1680, which pleasantly describes at least the traditional belief.
“The staires which rise up to his studie at Queens’ College in Cambr. doe bring into two of the fairest chambers in the ancient building; in one of them which lookes into the hall and chief court, the Vice-President kept in my time; in that adjoyning it was my fortune to be, when fellow. The chambers over are good lodgeing roomes; and to one of them is a square turret adjoyning, in the upper part of which is the study of Erasmus and over it leads. To that belongs the best prospect about the Colledge, viz. upon the river, into the corne fields, and country adjoyning. So yt it might very well consist with the civility of the house to that great man (who was no fellow, and I think stayed not long there) to let him have that study. His sleeping roome might be either the President’s, or to be neer to him the next. The roome for his servitor that above it, and through it he might goe to that studie, which for the height and neatnesse and prospect might easily take his phancy.”
It was in this study no doubt that much of the work was done for his edition of the New Testament in the original Greek, that epoch-making book which he published at Basle in 1516; and from hence also he must have written those amusing letters to his friends, Ammonius, Dean Colet, Sir Thomas More, in which comments on the progress of his work alternate with humorous grumblings about the Cambridge climate, the plague, the wine, the food: “Here I live like a cockle shut up in his shell, stowing myself away in college, and perfectly mum over my books.... I cannot go out of doors because of the plague.... I am beset with thieves, and the wine is no better than vinegar.... I do not like the ale of this place at all ... if you could manage to send me a cask of Greek wine, the very best that can be bought, you would be doing your friend a great kindness, but mind that it is not too sweet.... I am sending you back your cask, which I have kept by me longer than I otherwise should have done, that I might enjoy the perfume at least of Greek wine.... My expenses here are enormous; the profits not a brass farthing. Believe me as though I were on my oath, I have been here not quite five months, and yet have spent sixty nobles: while certain members of my (Greek) class have presented me with just a single one, which they had much difficulty in persuading me to accept. I have decided not to leave a stone unturned this winter, and in fact to throw out my sheet anchor. If this succeeds I will build my nest here; if otherwise, I shall wing my flight—whither I know not.” Perhaps there is some playful exaggeration in all this. Anyhow Erasmus stayed at Cambridge seven years in all. He may have been justly disappointed in his Greek class-room: “I shall have perhaps a larger gathering when I begin the grammar of Theodorus,” he writes plaintively; but disappointed there, he took refuge in his college study, and there, high up in the south-west tower of Queens’, we may picture him, “outwatching the Bear” over the pages of S. Jerome, as Jerome himself in his time had outwatched it writing those same pages, eleven hundred years before, in his cell at Bethlehem; or pouring over the text of his Greek Testament and its translation, the boldest work of criticism and interpretation that had been conceived by any scholar for many a century, a Novum Instrumentum indeed, by which the scholars of the new learning were to restore to the centuries which followed, the old true theology which had been so long obscured by the subtleties of the schoolmen, the new and truer theology which while based on a foundation of sound method and historical apparatus rests also in the joyous and refreshing story of the Son of God, in that unique figure of a Divine Personality, round whom centre the love, the hopes, the fears, the joys of the coming ages.
The Bridge & Gables. Queen’s College
Queens’ College has many claims upon the gratitude of English scholars and English churchmen—it would have been sufficient that she had been the “nursing mother” of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester—“vere Episcopus, vere Theologus”—under whose cautious supervision Cambridge first tasted of the fruits of the Renascence, who “sat here governor of the schools not only for his learning’s sake, but for his divine life”—but she can lay no claim to greater honour than this, that within her walls three hundred years ago, these words were written—they form part of the noble “Paraclesis” of the Novum Testamentum of Erasmus:—
“If the footprints of Christ are anywhere shown to us, we kneel down and adore. Why do we not rather venerate the living and breathing picture of him in these books? If the vesture of Christ be exhibited, where will we not go to kiss it? Yet were his whole wardrobe exhibited, nothing could exhibit Christ more vividly and truly than these Evangelical writings. Statues of wood and stone we decorate with gold and gems for the love of Christ. They only profess to give us the form of his body; these books present us with a living image of his most holy mind. Were we to have seen him with our own eyes, we should not have so intimate a knowledge as they give of Christ, speaking, healing, dying, rising again, as it were, in our actual presence.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“The sun itself is not more common and open to all than the teaching of Christ. For I utterly dissent from those who are unwilling that the Sacred Scriptures should be read by the unlearned translated into their vulgar tongue, as though Christ had taught such subtleties that they can scarcely be understood even by a few theologians, or as though the strength of the Christian Religion consisted in men’s ignorance of it. The mysteries of kings it may be safer to conceal, but Christ wished his mysteries to be published as openly as possible. I wish that even the weakest woman should read the Gospel—should read the Epistles of Paul. And I wish these were translated into all languages, so that they might be read and understood, not only by Scots and Irishmen, but also by Turks and Saracens. To make them understood is surely the first step. It may be that they might be ridiculed by many, but some would take them to heart. I long that the husbandman should sing portions of them to himself as he follows the plough, that the weaver should hum them to the tune of his shuttle, that the traveller should beguile with their stories the tedium of his journey.”[58]
The Foundation of Trinity Hall by Bishop Bateman of Norwich—On the Site of the Hostel of Student-Monks of Ely—Prior Crauden—Evidence of the Ely Obedientary Rolls—The College Buildings—The Old Hall—S. Edward’s Church used as College Chapel—Hugh Latimer’s Sermon on a Pack of Cards—Harvey Goodwin—Frederick Maurice—The Hall—The Library—Its ancient Bookcases—The Foundation of S. Catherine’s Hall.
THUS sang Thomas Tusser—the author of “Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry united to as many of Good Housewifery”—of Trinity Hall and his residence there about the year 1542. And the words of the homely old rhymer—the most fluent versifier, I suppose, among farmers since Virgil, wise in his advice to others, most unlucky in the application of his own maxims—have been echoed in spirit by many generations of “Hall” men from his time onwards. And indeed there is hardly perhaps another College in Cambridge which stirs the hearts of its members with a more passionate enthusiasm of loyalty than this, which yet never speaks of itself as a “College,” but always proudly as “The Hall.” It was founded by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, in 1350, but it had an earlier origin than this. On the southern part of the present site there stood an old house, which had been provided some thirty years earlier for the use of the student-monks of Ely attending the University by the then Prior. This was John of Crauden, Prior of Ely from 1321 to 1341, a man of noble personal character, a model administrator of the great possessions of his abbey, a patron of art and learning, the friend on the one hand of Queen Philippa, and on the other of the greatest cathedral builder of the fourteenth century, Alan de Walsingham. The portrait bust of him, which may still be seen carved at the end of one of the hood moulds of the great octagon arches in the Minster, shows a strong, handsome face, dignified, benignant, pleasant; a full, frank, eloquent eye; a mouth intelligent and firm, and yet with a merry smile lurking unmistakably in its corner; altogether such a man as we may well feel might not only rightly be Queen Philippa’s friend, as the chronicler says, “propter amabilem et graciosam ipsius affabilitatem et eloquentiam,”[59] but one also who one might expect to find anxious to maintain among his convent brothers the Benedictine ideal of knowledge and learning. It was no doubt to that end that somewhere about the year 1325 he had purchased the house at Cambridge as a hostel for the use of the Ely monks. In the Obedientary Rolls of the monastery, still treasured in the muniment room of the cathedral, there is evidence that from his time onwards three or four of the Ely monks were constantly residing at Cambridge at the convent expense, taking their degrees there, and then returning to Ely.[60]
It is probable, however, that the residence of the Ely monks was, shortly after Crauden’s time, transferred from this hostel to the rooms provided in Monk’s College on the present site of Magdalene, for a register among the Ely muniments shows that in the twenty-fourth year of Edward III. John of Crauden’s hostel was conveyed by the Prior and Convent to the Bishop of Norwich for the purpose of his proposed college. The old Monk’s Hall was still standing in 1731, for it is contained in a plan of the College of that date preserved in the College library. A note in Warren’s “History of Trinity Hall” informs us that a part of it was destroyed in 1823. Warren himself speaks of it as “Ye Old Building for ye Monks, where ye Pigeon House is.” Now all has vanished unless perhaps some underground foundations in the garden of the Master’s Lodge.
The buildings of the College, in their general arrangement, have probably been little altered since their completion in the fourteenth century. They had the peculiarity of an entrance court between the principal court and the street, like the outer court of a monastery. The original gateway, however, of this entrance—the Porter’s Court, as it was called at a later date—has been removed, and the College is now entered directly from the street.
It is probable that the Hall, forming one half of the western side of the principal court, was built during the lifetime of the founder, as also was the original eastern range, rebuilt in the last century. This would give a date, 1355, for these two ranges. The buttery and the northern block of buildings belong to 1374. In early days Trinity Hall shared with Clare Hall the Church of S. John Zachary as a joint College chapel. When in connection with the building of King’s College the Church of S. John was removed, two aisles were added to the chancel of S. Edward’s Church for the accommodation of “The Hall” students. The present chapel appears to date from the end of the fourteenth, or probably the early part of the fifteenth century. The only architectural features, however, at present visible of mediæval character are the piscina and the buttresses on the south side.
The advowson of the Church of S. Edward, the north aisle of the chancel of which was for a time used as the College chapel, was acquired by the College in the middle of the fifteenth century, and has thus remained to our own day.
“The complete control,” says Mr. Walden in his lately published “History of Trinity Hall,” “of the Church by a College whose Fellows, in course of time, were more and more a lay body, while other Colleges continued to be exclusively clerical, might be expected to give opportunity for the ministrations of men whose opinions might not be those preferred by the dominant clerical party at the moment. In 1529, for instance, during the mastership of Stephen Gardiner be it observed, Hugh Latimer, who is said to have become a reformer from the persuasions of Bilney, Fellow of Trinity Hall, preached in S. Edward’s on the Sunday before Christmas. He preached there often, but on this occasion he surpassed himself in originality, taking apparently a pack of cards as his text, and illustrating from the Christmas game of Triumph, with hearts as ‘triumph,’ or trumps as we say, the superiority of heart-religion over the vain outward show of the superstitious ornaments of the other court cards. Buckenham, Prior of the Dominicans, answered him from the same pulpit, and preached on dice. Latimer answered him again. The whole must have been more entertaining than edifying.”
This tradition of independence, at any rate in pulpit teaching, though in less eccentric ways, has been retained by S. Edward’s down to our own time. Here in 1832, Henry John Rose, the brother of Hugh James Rose, the Cambridge Tractarian, represented the moderate wing of the new Anglican party. Here, during the years preceding his promotion to the Deanery of Ely in 1858, Harvey Goodwin preached that series of sermons, simple, pithy, robust, which Sunday by Sunday crowded with undergraduates the Church of S. Edward for nearly eight years, as a church in a university city has seldom been crowded. Here, also, in 1871 Frederick Denison Maurice—the most representative churchman probably of the nineteenth century, for it was he rather than Pusey or Newman, who, by his interpretation of the Doctrine of the Incarnation, has most profoundly moulded, inspired, and transfigured the Church ideals of the present—found an opportunity of preaching when too many of the parochial pulpits of England were closed to him.
The grave and the trivial mingle in college as in other human affairs. And so it came about that the possession of the spiritualities of S. Edward’s parish compelled the Fellows of the Hall to keep an eye on its temporalities, and from time to time to beat its bounds. Here is one record of such “beating.” It was May 23rd, viz., Ascension Day in 1734, when the Fellows deputed for the purpose started from the Three Tuns and went by the Mitre, the White Horse, and the Black Bull before reaching S. Catherine’s Hall. They penetrated King’s, but regretted to find that here the Brewhouse was shut up. They encircled Clare and Trinity Hall, therefore, and came back to the Three Tuns whence they had started two hours before. They had not, quite evidently—for the full circuit is not great—been walking all the time. The account ends:—
“N.B.—One bottle of white wine given us at ye Tuns, and one bottle of white wine given us at the Mitre. Ale and bread and cheese given by the Minister of St. Edward’s at ye Bench in our College Backside. Mem.—To be given by ye Minister twelve halfpenny loaves, sixpenny worth of Cheshire cheeses, seven quarts and a half of ale in ye great stone bottle for ye people in general, and a tankard of ale for each church warden.”[61]
It will be remembered that in the last chapter, in speaking of the books left to Corpus Christi College by Archbishop Parker, we mentioned that provision of his deed of gift by which under certain contingencies the books were to be transferred from Corpus to Trinity Hall. It is quite probable that this provision drew the attention of the authorities of the latter college to the possible need of a library. It is unknown, however, when exactly the present library was built. The style proclaims Elizabeth’s reign or thereabouts. Professor Willis conjectured about 1600. But whatever the date may be it is very fortunate that the hand of the restorer which fell so heavily upon so many other of the College buildings should have mercifully spared the library, which to this day retains its early simplicity of character, leaving it one of the most interesting of the old book rooms in the University. Mr. J. G. Clark in his valuable essay on the Development of Libraries and their fittings, published two years ago under the title “The Care of Books,” has thus spoken of the library of Trinity Hall:—