Part 10

In founding St John’s College, Lady Margaret Beaufort followed the precedent of Bishop Alcock. It is curious to observe how the most fervent Catholics of the Renaissance era subordinated monasticism to the revived learning and disestablished religious houses on merely nominal pretexts. The close likeness between the document which explains the dissolution of St Rhadegund’s Nunnery and that which excused the abolition of St John’s Hospital detracts from the value of the charges they contain and leads us to believe that they are merely repetitions of a recognised form. St John’s Hospital was a small religious alms-house which had been founded in 1135 by one Henry Frost, and was under the management of Black Canons. It had a certain importance as being the first site of Hugh de Balsham’s collegiate scheme. He grafted his scholars upon the monastic stock, but his plan was anything but a success, and he removed his _protégés_ to Peterhouse. The hospital was not a very flourishing affair, and, whether the charges of immorality were true or not, there was sufficient excuse for its dissolution in the fact that in 1509 it contained only two brethren. The Lady Margaret, in that same year, the year of her own and her son’s death, obtained leave to suppress it and found a college on its site. She had been prompted to this work by her confessor and faithful adviser, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, himself a man of great distinction in the University, a friend of learned men and a patron of study. And, although the college is very justly proud of its royal foundress and shares her coat-of-arms with Christ’s College, the active part of the work was carried out by Fisher as her executor. The Charter of foundation was granted by Henry VIII. in 1511, and Fisher himself consecrated the Chapel in 1516. It follows that, although Fisher was a member of Queens’ College, his name is connected almost entirely with St John’s. This close relation of one man to two colleges is clearly manifested by the likeness which those parts of St John’s built by Fisher’s instrumentality bear to parts of Queens’ College.

St John’s College was the last and greatest of the Lady Margaret’s works. When we think of the benefits which she conferred on Oxford and Cambridge, her noble provisions for the theological schools of both Universities, and her two foundations in Cambridge, we can only echo the words of the funeral sermon preached by Fisher in her honour, that the “students of both Universities, to whom she was as a mother … for her death had cause of weeping.” Very few colleges have so tender an attachment to a founder’s memory as that which St John’s has for Lady Margaret’s; there are very few colleges which are so haunted, as it were, by their founder’s spirit. And the history of St John’s is a record worthy of the Lady Margaret. Although, in after years, it was a little overshadowed by the greater glory of Trinity, it kept the second place against all competitors, and its roll of illustrious names is almost as crowded as that of Trinity itself.

The first master was Robert Shorton, who continued in the college for five years, after which time he became Master of Pembroke. His portrait is to be found among the great collection in the Master’s Lodge. The early masters of the college followed one another very rapidly; in fact, between 1511 and 1612 we find no less than seventeen names, an almost unique instance of quick succession. Under the Tudors, too, the college history is not profoundly interesting. It is evident that, during the reign of Edward VI., the fashionable Genevan doctrines became popular in the college. Thomas Leaver, master in 1551, was a supporter of the new religion, and was, of course, ejected by Mary. However, with Elizabeth’s reign the Puritan spirit returned in double force. The two Pilkingtons, who occupied the mastership in succession, introduced their Genevan and German friends to the Universities, and sought to model University life upon the system followed by the foreign Calvinists. It is worthy of remark that while, during this period, Trinity was producing Bacon, St John’s had already produced the great Burghley, the first of her illustrious sons, and perhaps the most illustrious of them all. St John’s became for many years the hereditary college of the Cecil family. The connection between the college and both branches of that great house is still kept up in the prize exercise known as the “Burghley Verses,” one copy of which is sent annually to Hatfield and another to Burghley.[7]

The accession of noble families to the college and the consequent growth of court influence probably weaned the foundation from its Puritanism. Dr Whitaker* was the last of the Genevan School. He was a married man, and kept up an establishment for his wife in the town. The college prospered exceedingly in his time. These were the days of Dr Nevile of Trinity, when Cambridge received her most beautiful buildings. Whitaker’s successor, Dr Richard Clayton, who ruled from 1595 to 1612, had the felicity of seeing the second court built under his auspices. Among the fellows at this time were Richard Neile,* and Thomas Morton,* who, as Archbishop of York and Bishop of Durham, were great benefactors to the college. And, with the reign of James I., the college began to distinguish itself, like St John the Baptist’s College at Oxford, as a Royalist institution. Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford,* the great Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland,* the blameless hero of the Cavalier party, are the celebrities of the first half of the seventeenth century. In William Beale,* master from 1633 to 1644, the King had an enthusiastic supporter. In his time the college plate was melted down, and many valuable pieces were sacrificed. The plate was sent across country to Charles, who was then at York or Nottingham, and the passage was so well contrived that the convoy escaped the ambush set by Oliver Cromwell. Dr Beale was less happy, for Cromwell, in a fury, marched upon Cambridge, and took him prisoner while he was at his prayers in chapel. In company with Dr Martin of Queens’ and Dr Sterne of Jesus, he was taken off to London and imprisoned in the Tower. He died in 1646. During the Commonwealth, the college was ruled by Dr Arrowsmith and Dr Tuckney, but at the Restoration the famous divine, Dr Peter Gunning,* became master, having been previously Master of Corpus. He was made Bishop of Ely in 1670, when he was succeeded by Francis Turner.* In course of time, Turner succeeded Gunning at Ely. With these prelates we may couple the name of Edward Stillingfleet,* the well-known Bishop of Worcester.

Thomas Baker,* the historian of St John’s College, deserves honourable mention. The treasure which Oxford possesses in Anthony Wood, St John’s finds in Baker, whose accurate history, quaintly and piously written, is a mine of information on the subject of Cambridge life during the seventeenth century. Baker was a Royalist of considerable bias and a non-juror, in consequence of which he lost his fellowship. He was careful to describe himself on his title-page as _Socius Ejectus_, and gloried in the distinction. He died in 1740 at the age of eighty-four. His devotion to his college, not only to the foundation itself, but to its remotest benefactors, is a quality unique even in those days of fidelity to a principle. He set the college an example by which it has profited. To-day no college in Cambridge is in possession of such an amount of printed historical matter. Professor Mayor’s monumental edition of Baker and of the life of Ambrose Bonwicke stand at the head of the list. Mr Torry’s extremely full and interesting notes on the roll of Founders and Benefactors are invaluable, while Mr Scott’s “Notes from the College Records,” which are published from time to time in the college magazine, form a supplement and commentary to Baker’s history. Ambrose Bonwicke, whose life is at once an exhortation to the painful student and a faithful picture of social life at Cambridge, entered St John’s in 1710, the last year of the mastership of Turner’s successor, Humphrey Gower. Bonwicke died early, so that the story of his labours and exertions, phenomenal in a mere boy and impossible in our own age, has a vivid pathos. From the light which he throws upon college life of his time, we are led to imagine that, however luxurious it may have been then, it would now be insupportable, if conducted in the same way. But then the prime object of university life was study, and athletics and dinner-parties were considered foreign to the main purpose.

Matthew Prior,* although a man of a different type from Baker, felt something of the same attachment for St John’s. He was sent to Cambridge by his patron, the Earl of Dorset, and in course of time obtained a fellowship. With considerable forethought, he refused to give up his fellowship when promoted to high offices of state, and consequently, after his imprisonment by the Whigs in 1715 and the loss of all his fortune, he managed to keep body and soul together at Cambridge. The enormous portrait of him by Rigaud, which is now in the Master’s Lodge, displays him in his robes as an ambassador, and is one of the most striking pictures in the college. He left a very beautiful collection of books to the library, among which may be mentioned a splendid folio edition of Ronsard’s poems. His poetry is essentially of the outer world and not of Cambridge, but its culture and the academic flavour which is apparent in the most frivolous pieces bear clear testimony to the influence of the University on this light-hearted scholar. A very opposite type of scholarship—the laborious and critical—is represented by Richard Bentley,* who was a member of the society at the same time with Matthew Prior, and rose to further fame as Master of Trinity. In this period, too, Divinity was well represented. To say nothing of Bishops Gunning and Turner, great names in the history of theology, three masters of the college held, with their mastership, the Lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity within a very short time of each other. These were Dr Humphrey Gower,* master in 1679, Dr Robert Jenkin,* in 1711, and Dr Newcome in 1735.

Since the arrest of Dr Beale, St John’s has enjoyed a very quiet history. In the eighteenth century, it produced the regulation number of noblemen and paid its full contribution to the cabinets of the period. Towards the end of the century, we remark the name of the eccentric Samuel Parr, whose portrait hangs in the Combination Room, and of Herbert Marsh (* Ponsford), the controversialist and Bishop of Peterborough, to whom Professor Mayor has devoted a large space in his edition of Baker’s History. At the same time, we notice with interest that William Wilberforce (* G. Richmond) and Thomas Clarkson (* Room) were at St John’s together, and, while there, doubtless cultivated the humanitarianism which is their common title to fame. Clarkson was a native of Cambridgeshire, having been born at Wisbech, where his father was master of the Grammar School, in 1760. But, in 1787, St John’s received her most distinguished poet, William Wordsworth (* Pickersgill). He himself, in lines which are at once oddly prosaic and incomparably sublime, has described his impressions during his residence at Cambridge. These, however, are the sole tie which binds him to the place; for his retiring nature led him very little into society, and his emotions and impressions were all highly subjective. He has told us where his rooms were, but, owing to constant alterations, their exact position has been somewhat disputed. They are at present turned into one of the kitchen store-rooms. Some people, by a curious misreading of the text, have imagined that he could look into Trinity antechapel from his rooms and see Newton’s statue. As a matter of fact, he merely says that he could see the antechapel, and this feat is easily performed from any back-window on the south side of the first court. Like most highly imaginative poets, and unlike the materialistic Matthew Prior, Wordsworth was a dilatory student, and he deserted Cambridge in 1791 for the wilder excitement of the French Revolution.

It is probable that no one has derived so much earthly benefit from an early death as Henry Kirke White, who entered the college in 1804, died in 1806, and has ever since been reckoned as one of its chief ornaments. He is also the only member of the University who has a public monument in Cambridge. At the age of nineteen he was a very promising mathematician, and was patronised by Southey as a rising poet. The small collection of poems and letters which constitute his “remains” show great religious fervour and some metrical skill, but their imagination is defective and morbid. His death excited great compassion, and his name still lives, in England and America, as that of a precocious genius. It is not unlikely that the greater name of Henry Martyn* is less widely known. This distinguished scholar and Orientalist became a fellow in 1802, but left Cambridge three years later to become a missionary. His life, short although it is, is a splendid record of devoted piety and self-denial. He went through dangers and privations in parts of the East which were then totally unknown to Europeans, and died in the prosecution of his labours. He may be regarded as the forerunner of a great band of Cambridge missionaries, the earliest name in a kalendar which includes Ragland, Mackenzie, Patteson and Smythies.

During the Napoleonic wars, Cambridge was possessed with a great martial ardour, and among the most active promoters of the volunteer movement of those days was Lord Temple,* who occupied rooms in the first court, looking out on the street. Later on, this nobleman was better known as Lord Palmerston. One of those who enrolled themselves under his guidance was that eccentric gentleman, Patrick Brontë, subsequently Vicar of Haworth in Yorkshire and father of a family whose tragic history is well known to every student of English literature. With the name of Palmerston, we touch modern times and come to the days of the scientific and mathematical pre-eminence of the college. An extraordinary number of great men have come from St John’s during the present reign. Among scholars, Benjamin Hall Kennedy (* Ouless) has the first place. He was, before his election to the Greek professorship, Head Master of Shrewsbury, a school which has always been closely connected with St John’s. The most distinguished historian was the late Charles Merivale, Dean of Ely, whose _History of the Romans under the Empire_ is a monument of Cambridge scholarship. The names of scientists are legion, but one must not fail to mention John Couch Adams,* who was a Johnian and a fellow of the college. The late James Joseph Sylvester (* Emslie), although his genius was devoted to Oxford, is another man of world-wide fame whom St John’s owns. The college supplied another distinguished professor to Oxford in the person of Charles Pritchard, the well-known Savilian professor. It is also necessary to mention the name of Edward Henry Palmer, Lord Almoner’s Reader in Arabic, who, with one possible exception, was the best Oriental scholar of the century. More intimately related to the college were the two Babingtons, Churchill and Charles Cardale,* who spent their lives at Cambridge and filled University professorships. It would be invidious to select names of living members of the college, but Professor Mayor, (* Herkomer) the editor of Juvenal, and the present Bishop of Gloucester, Dr Ellicott, have their position securely assured. Recently, too, the death of the Hon. Charles Pelham Villiers, the “father of the House of Commons,” robbed the college of an old member and constant friend. The modern history of St John’s is essentially progressive, and, under Dr Bateson and the present master, Dr Taylor, the college has been worked on broad and liberal lines. Its yearly position in the schools testifies that it has in no way declined from its original purpose, and is still that nursery of learning which its foundress intended it to be. And, in connection with the modern development of the college, it is impossible not to say something of the College Mission. St John’s was the first Cambridge college which thought of extending its energies for the benefit of the poor in large towns, and its mission in a crowded part of Walworth was the example which moved other colleges and schools to do something of the same kind. The result is shown in the beautiful church and group of buildings which form the nucleus of the parish. No more effectual realisation than this could be found of the ideal of the foundress and Bishop Fisher, that their work should not merely be accomplished for its own benefit, but that in time to come, what they had done for their scholars, their scholars should do for others.

XV

MAGDALENE COLLEGE

Magdalene is changed very little since the days of Samuel Pepys. Its first court has been refaced with new-looking red brick, but the interior, with its luxuriant covering of ivy, is time-worn and venerable. There is, however, not much of any importance. The Hall is, perhaps, the best which is to be found among the smaller colleges, and the spacious double staircase which leads from it to the Combination Room, is a feature of which any college might justly be proud. “Although the staircase, as it exists, is the work of restorers, the detail of the woodwork is excellent, and was doubtless suggested by the fine Renaissance carving at Audley End.” The Chapel, north of the court, was restored in 1847, and retains some of the ancient features, including the roof. There is some modern stained glass, not very good. Beyond the Hall, in the same position as the building at Christ’s (with which it may be compared), is the famous Pepysian Library, a charming building in the very latest style of Renaissance Gothic. Its general effect is quite equal to the earlier work at Christ’s, and is very superior to that of the river front at Clare, with which it is almost contemporary. The spandrils of the arches in the basement are very profusely decorated with fantastic patterns, and similar ornaments appear in the space between the library windows and the heavy cornice below them. The Ionic pilasters of the central compartment show traces of the Palladian influence which just then found its way everywhere; and it is a fortunate circumstance that the architect had enough feeling for his style not to multiply them. As it is, they add to the charm of the building, and bring its central division into a prominence which is demanded by the two very plain wings with their chimneyed gables and rusticated angles. The Master’s Lodge (1835) is north of the college, and is supposed to stand on one of the escarpments of the ancient Camboritum—that is, if the Castle-Hill is Camboritum. Otherwise, it is a simple Gothic building, rather better than most houses of the time, but with no obtrusive features.

* * * * *

We have seen that Jesus and St John’s Colleges were founded by means of the dissolution of monastic houses. Magdalene, founded thirty-one years after St John’s, was merely the final step in the secularisation of a religious house. In 1428 Henry VI. granted the site of the present college to the monks of Crowland, who wished to found a hostel at Cambridge for the use of their scholars at that University. The Abbeys of Ely, Ramsey and Walden joined with Crowland in the work, and contributed to the building. In the latter half of the century this theological college, as we should call it, received substantial aid from Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, whose favours were continued in 1519 by his son Edward. In recognition of the benefactions of Duke Henry, the hostel took its title of Buckingham College. The foundation seems to have departed gradually from its original purpose, for laymen were admitted to it before the dissolution. However, it was only natural that, when Crowland surrendered to the King, its dependent house should surrender also. The crown resumed the property in December, 1539. Henry VIII. granted the messuages of Buckingham College to Thomas, Lord Audley of Walden, who also became possessed of Walden Abbey. In all probability, the original connection between the abbey and the college induced him to refound the institution on a new plan. He reconstituted it in 1542 under the name of the College of St Mary Magdalene. Since his day, through all the vicissitudes of his family, Magdalene College has remained under the protection and patronage of the owner of Audley End, a stately and beautiful appendage to the noblest country house in England. His work was carried on by his successors. At his death he left a daughter, the lady whose magnificent portrait by Lucas van Heere hangs in the great hall at Audley End. She married the Duke of Norfolk, who, in 1564, being at Cambridge with Queen Elizabeth, generously promised the college an annuity of £40 until they had finished the “quadrant of their college,” and further endowed the society, which was become much impoverished, with landed property. Norfolk’s liberality was supplemented by the contributions of the Lord Chief Justice Sir Christopher Wray,* who had been one of the lay students of Buckingham College.