Part 2

Milton, whose life is very largely bound up with Cambridge, brings us to another critical point in University history. It is difficult to estimate the attitude of Cambridge as a whole to the Civil Wars. Oxford remained faithful to the King, but, while Cambridge possessed no college so unanimously loyal as St John’s at Oxford, there were one or two colleges, such as Sidney and Emmanuel, whose sympathies were undeniably Puritan. An University cannot help a certain amount of conservatism, and Cambridge sacrificed a great deal in the Stewart cause. A few years ago, at the exhibition of plate in the Fitzwilliam Museum, one realised the substantial cost of that sacrifice. But the Fens and the whole neighbourhood were devoted to the interest of the Parliament, and there were actually few who surrendered themselves as martyrs to the royalist cause. On the religious side of the question, however, Cambridge has a good deal to show. Some of the most eminent Caroline divines are hers. Lancelot Andrewes, John Cosin, Jeremy Taylor, Peter Gunning, to mention no other names, were all Cambridge men. George Herbert and Nicholas Ferrar were men of some academical distinction. But, if it is true that architecture is the best witness to history, no town in England shows more trace of the Puritan spirit than Cambridge. While the Oxford buildings of the seventeenth century are gravely Gothic and semi-ecclesiastical, the only building of this type in Cambridge is the picturesque chapel at Peterhouse. The library of St John’s, beautiful though it is, is a hybrid example of the order. Other seventeenth century work, the work of Ralph Symons, for example, the court of Clare, and Wren’s masterpieces at Trinity and Emmanuel, are frankly domestic. Men such as I have mentioned above, belong to a _coterie_, but do not represent the general temper of their age.

During the eighteenth century the state of the University was more or less torpid. It was the age of combination rooms and good port, of hard-and-fast social distinctions and formal gatherings. The Universities, during this period, lost their touch with English life, and were not even the forcing-houses of wit. This is especially true of Cambridge. The first half of the century is absorbed in the great quarrel between Bentley and his society. Bentley is unquestionably the most commanding figure of his time at Cambridge; for Newton by this time belonged chiefly to London. But Bentley was hated by the great company of wits, who had, for the most part, little to do with either University. Pope, Swift, Fielding and Richardson, the four writers who had the greatest influence on their century, were connected with neither Oxford nor Cambridge. And, from 1750 to 1790, there is very little to relieve the general dulness which settled over Cambridge. Mr John Willis Clark, in a delightful and only too short chapter, has revived for us the social etiquette and pleasures of the period. But the pleasures themselves are remarkable, for the most part, for their unconscious humour. And even the epigrams, in spite of their uniform cleverness, are a trifle heavy.

The French Revolution woke Cambridge from this long sleep. It was an active stimulant to the imagination. The fall of the Bastille had its effect upon Wordsworth at St John’s and Coleridge at Jesus; its immediate result, the general cry for independence, moved Byron at Trinity. The romantic enthusiasm set in, and with it that love for a liberal education apart from mechanical scholarship which is so prominent a factor in both Oxford and Cambridge to-day. In short, the modern life of the University began; Cambridge began once more to play its part in English intellectual life. Wordsworth and Tennyson, of all poets, have done most to stimulate the minds of their countrymen, and both owe no small portion of their personal influence to Cambridge. And, side by side with this intellectual revival, one cannot fail to notice the spiritual revival inaugurated by the Wesleys at Oxford, and naturalised by Charles Simeon at Cambridge. This simply means the awakening of the University to the other side of her responsibilities. In the Oxford movement, which was the logical result of this revival, Cambridge had very little share. Her traditions were somewhat different from those of Oxford, and her theological tendencies took what is usually known as a “broader” direction. Her position is indicated by the names of F. D. Maurice and Charles Kingsley. At the same time, her school of theology, under Ellicott, Lightfoot, Hort and Westcott, has preserved its scientific basis and cannot be surpassed in any University. And time would fail to tell of what triumphs she has won in other fields. Darwin in biology, Thomson in electricity, Adams in astronomy, are names which tell their own tale. With these main activities, too, others have grown. The energies of the University have been expanded in every direction. The multiplication of open scholarships and prizes, the University Extension system, the foundation of colleges for women, are only a few of the ways in which her influence has been doubled throughout Great Britain. And in all this surely her founders and benefactors have full recompense for their labours—in the love which the University excites in her sons and in the contribution of each member to the corporate action of the whole body.

II

THE UNIVERSITY CHURCH

The Church of St Mary-by-the-Market, better known as Great St Mary’s, is, as it stands at present, a fine example of the latest style of English architecture. Two churches, when it was built, had already occupied the site. The first, entirely parochial, was probably built in Norman times, but was burned down in 1290. By that time, however, the University then emerging from its embryonic state into actual life, had begun to use it for its meetings. The church formed, as it were, the earliest Senate House. After the fire, which, like so many medieval catastrophes, was put down to the Jews, the structure was renewed in the style of the period. We find that Thomas de L’Isle, Bishop of Ely, granted a license for the consecration of the High Altar in 1346; and that, in 1351, the consecration took place under his successor, Simon of Langham. The chancel still retains some features of this remodelled church. In the year after the consecration, the Gild of the Blessed Virgin Mary, parishioners of this church, joined with the Gild of Corpus Christi in the foundation of Corpus College; and, in 1342, Edward III. had granted the advowson of St Mary’s to the scholars of King’s Hall. In this way it happened that, at the subsequent rebuilding of the church, the town, the University, and the college were equally concerned in it. The present building was begun in 1478, when John Morton was Bishop of Ely, and the main structure, roughly speaking, belongs to the period between that year and 1491. It is supposed that, during this reconstruction, the services were held in the chancel, which, presumably, was merely remodelled in the perpendicular manner. The character of the nave is, for its period, strikingly excellent, and the work is not unlike that at St Nicholas, Lynn, and other fine churches in the eastern counties. The surface-ornament in the spandrils of the chancel-arch and nave arcade is exceptionally good, and the depression of the arches is very slight. Characteristically, the piers have no capitals, but a small shaft with a plain capital carries the innermost moulding. But the best feature of the interior is the high, plain clerestory, from which the church originally received its principal light. This forms, as it were, a wall of glass running along the upper storey of the church. Its lowest part is panelled, forming a kind of mock triforium. On the whole, there are few more stately churches of the date in England.

Although this nave was completed in 1491, it was not ready for service till 1519, when the nave was seated and the Great Rood suspended from the chancel-arch. Meanwhile, the tower had been begun in 1491, and progressed very slowly. In 1515 it was at a standstill and had a thatched roof. The west window, however, which, considering that it belongs to Henry VIII.’s reign, is surprisingly good Gothic, was glazed by 1536. After this time a certain amount of work went on, and the tower was carried up to the string-course. In 1576, Sir Walter Mildmay gave twenty tons of freestone towards the building, which was employed in erecting a somewhat heavy Italianised porch at the west end. This, with its great pediment and the clock above it, filled up the space between the buttresses and reached up to the sill of the west window. Sir Walter Mildmay promised other materials for the completion of the tower by a stone spire. This never took place, and, in 1593, the parish decided to add a final storey on their own account, which was completed in 1596. This storey, with its octagonal corner-turrets and debased windows, is nevertheless in no violent contrast to the work below. In 1608, the turrets were completed and stone balls were placed upon the pinnacles by Robert Grumbold, to whom we owe the balls on Clare Bridge.

The last internal addition to the church was the magnificent rood-loft, finished in 1523. It extended not only across the chancel-arch, but across the northern arch, leading to the Chapel of St Andrew, and the southern, leading to the Chapel of Our Lady. These chapels were further separated from the chancel by parclose-screens. The contract states that the rood-lofts at Thriplow, south of Cambridge, and at Gazeley, between Newmarket and Bury St Edmunds, were the models used for this structure. It must have been something like the great rood-lofts which still exist in Devonshire and parts of Norfolk. In the middle, below the rood-beam and facing the choir, was the University pulpit. But this screen, with its elaborate furniture, its “yomages,” candles and gilding did not have a long existence. It was destroyed by Archbishop Parker, that sworn enemy of rood-lofts, in 1562. However, during the Laudian revival, in 1640, another chancel-screen was erected, part of which remains across the chapel of St Andrew. Its fine composition and carving are characteristic of the Stewart era. Another and even better screen of a somewhat earlier date is to be seen in the church of Tilney All Saints, near Lynn. However, this screen perished in its turn, not at the hands of the zealot Dowsing, who destroyed as much as he could, but under the gentle influence of Georgian restorers. It appears that, after the Reformation, the University sermon became more of an institution than it had been, and was no longer preached to the chancel. Great St Mary’s was, however, put to other and more secular uses. Laud was informed that the body of the church was seated like a theatre; that the pulpit was placed in the middle and called the Cock-pit; that at sermon-time the chancel was filled with boys and townsmen “and other whiles (thereafter as the Preacher is) with _Townswomen_ also, all in a rude heap between the Doctors and the Altar”; that the “Service there (which is done by Trin. Coll.) is commonly posted over and cut short at the pleasure of him that is sent thither to read it.” Divers other informations were laid against the state of the church. It certainly seems curious to our own day that the Commencements should have been held in church, and that the feeble buffoonery of the “Prevaricator” should have been, under these circumstances, their leading feature. The feeling against these extraordinary ceremonies led to the building of the Senate House, which was large enough for disputations as well as meetings of the senate. But Sir James Burrough, to whom the Senate House is partly due, did his best to spoil the University Church. The screen of 1640, which, with its spirelets and canopies, must have been very like the Laudian screens remaining in one or two northern churches,[1] was taken down; and the church was devoted entirely to the cult of the sermon. Mr William Worts had previously left a legacy to the University, which was employed in erecting the present galleries (1735). The Cock-pit was remodelled, and the centre of the church was filled with an immense octagonal pulpit on the “three-decker” principle, the crowning glory and apex of which was approached, like a church-tower, by an internal staircase. About 1740, Burrough filled the chancel-arch and chancel with a permanent gallery, which commanded a thorough view of this object. The gallery, known as the “Throne” was an extraordinary and unique erection. The royal family of Versailles never worshipped more comfortably than did the Vice-Chancellor and heads of houses, in their beautiful arm-chairs, and the doctors, sitting on the tiers of seats behind them. In this worship of the pulpit, the altar was quite disregarded, and Cole the antiquary remarked sorrowfully on this discreditable fact. Undergraduates, whose power of expression was not equal to their sense of humour, irreverently called the Throne Golgotha, because the heads of houses sat there. The church thus became an oblong box, with the organ at one end, the Throne at the other, and the pulpit between them. The portentous array of bevelled and panelled oak plunged the church in darkness, and so, in 1766, the aisle windows were altered and the present meagre insertions made.

This domestic comfort pervaded the church until 1863. The Camden Society destroyed the picturesque top of the tower in 1842, but did not touch the interior of the church. In 1851 Sir Gilbert Scott took away Mildmay’s porch, and substituted for it the present west door. Much about the same time, the ground round St Mary’s was cleared of houses. Dr Luard, the late registrary, who was then Vicar, agitated for the removal of the “throne” for a long time, and at last the work of reconstruction began. The present nave-seats and chancel-stalls, in a somewhat florid style, were put in, and the only remains of the old preaching-house were the galleries and the organ at the west end. This organ, which dates from 1698, and is in part the work of Father Smith, was rebuilt by Messrs Hill in 1870. In 1888 the south porch was rebuilt on the lines of a porch which had been destroyed in 1783. Under the present vicar, Dr Cunningham, the work of restoration has advanced. The tower has been thoroughly repaired, and a new organ has been built for parochial services on the south side of the choir. Further, the late Mr Sandars, who did so much for the University, filled in the lower part of the aisle windows with the arms of those noblemen and prelates who subscribed to the nave between 1478 and 1519. These windows, which are by Messrs Powell, are full of interesting matter for the student of monastic heraldry. Messrs Powell are similarly engaged in filling the clerestory windows with admirable figure-glass. Altogether, during the last half-century, the church has returned some way towards its original design. There is now a side altar in St Andrew’s Chapel, which is used as the chapel of the Clergy Training-School; the Lady Chapel is occupied by the vestry. And, finally, one must not forget the “Cambridge chimes” in the tower, which were composed in 1790 by Dr Jowett of garden fame, and are the model of all such chimes throughout England.

III

PETERHOUSE

From the churchyard of Little St Mary’s Church a good idea of the medieval buildings of Peterhouse may be obtained. Unfortunately, James Essex was allowed to do as he liked with the old court somewhere about 1770, and faced it in the hideous, commonplace style of the time. It is astonishing that he allowed the back of the older building, so out of harmony with the cherished classical unities of his day, to remain in so conspicuous a position. But the obvious history of the buildings begins with Dr Andrew Perne’s library, whose later extension with its gabled end and oriel is such a picturesque object in the perspective of Trumpington Street, and contrasts so oddly with the Corinthian portico of the Fitzwilliam Museum, just beyond. Perne’s work is in that familiar, country-house style which, rather later, we associate in Cambridge with the name of Ralph Symons. The building of 1590 forms the eastern extension of the Hall and Combination Room. It was prolonged in 1632 to stand flush with the present street-pavement. Bishop Matthew Wren made a more notable and more characteristic addition. He built the chapel, which was consecrated in 1632, on a site in the eastern half of the court, just midway between the two wings. At the same time he united his building to the wings by an open cloister supporting a covered gallery. The chapel and cloisters, which divide the court into two unequal halves, have a good deal of picturesqueness, but they are built in a very stilted Italian manner, full of shallow late Gothic detail. The chapel has a considerable reputation founded on its stained glass windows, which are by Professor Aimmüller of Munich. They are astonishing specimens of their art, and reflect the taste of the middle of the century very well. An excellent Flemish east window, contemporary with the building, is usually considered to harmonise very ill with these productions, whose qualities, nevertheless, it considerably enhances.

Under the Georgian _régime_ Peterhouse suffered a great deal. Sir James Burrough of Caius, then neither Master nor a Knight, had a grand plan for taking down Perne’s library and Wren’s cloisters and putting up buildings of his own. Happily, the funds for this undertaking allowed him to finish only the imposing northern wing, next to Little St Mary’s Church. Like most of his work, this wing, completed in 1742, is in very good taste, and the influence of Gibbs’ building at King’s is to be traced throughout. Nearly half a century later came Essex with a neat taste acquired, perhaps, in the neighbourhood of St Marylebone, and made a beautiful structure exceptionally ugly. Last of all, Mr Francis Gisborne’s trustees, after his death in 1821, built a new western court in the then fashionable sort of Gothic with a part of £20,000 bequeathed to the College in his will. This court calls for little remark.

Too late to stay the hand of the spoiler, the Gothic revival has nevertheless done much for Peterhouse. Mr Gilbert G. Scott in 1870 rebuilt the Hall and Combination Room and incorporated in them the remains of the medieval Master’s Lodge, which had been long ago superseded by the comfortable brick house just across Trumpington Street. Good, unassuming and appropriate work in themselves, these buildings are further decorated with some very successful stained glass by the late Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Mr William Morris. The bright oriel of the Hall is especially beautiful, and the small figures of poets and of the good women of Chaucer’s dream in the windows of the comfortable parlour, share, with the chapel glass, the impartial admiration of the visitor. It is satisfactory to think that this historical college has received some compensation for all the damage inflicted on it.

* * * * *

In 1281 Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, founded St Peter’s College. The reign of Edward I. is the date from which our universities derive their organisation, and in many other ways it marks an epoch in English history. Walter de Merton, Bishop of Rochester, had, seventeen years before, founded Merton College at Oxford.[2] It was therefore emulation which, to a certain extent, inspired Hugh de Balsham in his new departure. He was a native of Cambridgeshire: his native place is about ten miles distant from Cambridge, on the confines of Essex; and he had probably received his education in one of the numerous religious houses which filled the Cambridge of that period. As Bishop of Ely, and therefore as titular abbot of the monastery, he had much to do with the monastic institutions of the town, and it was only natural that, with Walter de Merton’s example before his eyes, he should wish to make his name famous in the same way. He lived just long enough to see the college established and in a fair way to success, with a master and fourteen scholars in residence. His successors at Ely continued his favours to the college, and during the next century we find the names of Bishops Simon Montague, Thomas de L’Isle, Simon Langham and John de Fordham among the benefactors. It is interesting to note how purely local University education must have been at first. Although the first two masters of Peterhouse appear to have been natives of distant parts of England, the names of most of the masters during the fourteenth century recall the neighbouring fenland. Roger of Mildenhall, Ralph of Holbeach, William of Whittlesea, Richard of Wisbech, John of Bottisham, all are natives of Cambridgeshire or the counties immediately adjoining. Thomas of Barnard’s Castle, who became master in 1400, takes us further north, and he is the last of the list who derives his surname from his native place.

The early history of Peterhouse is concerned chiefly with its buildings. Under the rule of John Holbrook (1418-1431) and during the long mastership of Dr Thomas Lane (1431-73) the college assumed a definite shape. The old buildings north of it belong to Holbrook’s mastership. It took in the house of the Friars of the Sack, which existed on part of its site, and thus set a precedent which was followed almost universally—the substitution of learned foundations for monasteries and convents. The Peterhouse of that day, substantially the building of our own time, was scarcely in Cambridge. St Peter’s Church lay north of it, and was itself just outside the Trumpington or South Gate of the town. It had given its name to the college, and was used as its chapel from the earliest period. About the beginning of Edward III.’s reign, the church was pulled down, and the present beautiful church of St Mary’s the Less was built on its site, the college still continuing to use it as their place of worship. We may assume that the scholars were required to assist at mass every morning and at the parochial mass on Sundays, and that they formed, as it were, the choir, using the chancel stalls. They entered the church by the passage and staircase which still exist south of the chancel.