CHAPTER XI
A SMALL AND A GREAT COLLEGE
"Quæ ponti vicina vides, Audelius olim Coepit et adversi posuit fundamina muri: Et coeptum perfecit opus Staffordius heros Quem genuit maribus regio celeberrima damis.
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Quattuor inde novis quæ turribus alta minantur Et nivea immenso diffundunt atria circo, Ordine postremus, sed non virtutibus, auxit Henricus tecta, et triplices cum jungeret sedes, Imposuit nomen facto." --GILES FLETCHER, 1633.
Dissolution of the Monasteries--Schemes for Collegiate Spoliation checked by Henry VIII.--Monks' or Buckingham College--Refounded by Sir Thomas Audley as Magdalene College--Conversion of the Old Buildings--The Pepysian Library--Foundation of Trinity College--Michaelhouse and the King's Hall--King Edward's Gate--The Queen's Gate--The Great Gate--Dr. Thomas Neville--The Great Court--The Hall--Neville's Court--New Court--Dr. Bentley--"A House of all Kinds of Good Letters."
The dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. and the confiscation of their great estates naturally created a sense of foreboding in the universities that it would not be long before the College estates shared the same fate. There were not wanting, we may be sure, greedy courtiers prepared with schemes of collegiate spoliation. If we may trust, however, the testimony of Harrison in his "Description of England,"[80] the hopes of the despoiler were effectually checked by the King himself. "Ah, sirha," he is reported to have said to some who had ventured to make proposals for such despoilment, "I perceive the abbey lands have fleshed you, and set your teeth on edge to ask also those colleges. And whereas we had a regard only to pull down sin by defacing the monasteries, you have a desire also to overthrow all goodness by a dispersion of colleges. I tell you, sirs, that I judge no land in England better bestowed than that which is given to our universities; for by their maintenance our realm shall be well governed when we be dead and rotten." These are brave words, and we may hope that they were sincere. They may seem, perhaps, to receive some confirmation of sincerity from the fact that that munificent donor of other people's property did himself erect upon the ruins of more than one earlier foundation that great college, whose predominance in the University has from that time onwards been so marked a feature of Cambridge life. It is the opinion of Huber,[81] that the uncertainty and depression caused in the universities by these fears of confiscation did not subside until well on in the reign of Elizabeth.
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In the year 1542, however, four years before the foundation of Trinity College by Henry VIII., the spoliation of the monasteries was turned to the advantage of the University in a somewhat remarkable manner. On the further side of the river Cam, "cut off," as Fuller describes it, "from the continent of Cambridge," there stood an ancient religious house known at this time as Buckingham College.
"Formerly it was a place where many monks lived, on the charge of their respective convent, being very fit for solitary persons by the situation thereof. For it stood on the transcantine side, an anchoret in itself, severed by the river from the rest of the University. Here the monks some seven years since had once and again lodged and feasted Edward Stafford, the last Duke of Buckingham of that family. Great men best may, good men always will, be grateful guests to such as entertain them. Both qualifications met in this Duke and then no wonder if he largely requited his welcome. He changed the name of the house into Buckingham College, began to build, and purposed to endow the same, no doubt in some proportion to his own high and rich estate."[82]
The foundation of this Monks' College had dated as far back as the year 1428, when the Benedictines of Croyland erected a building for the accommodation of those monks belonging to their house who wished to repair to Cambridge, "to study the Canon Law and the Holy Scriptures," and yet to reside under their own monastic rule. From time to time other Benedictines of the neighbourhood--Ely, Ramsey, Walden--added additional chambers to the hostel--Croyland Abbey, however, remaining the superior house.
A hall was built in connection with the College in 1519 by Edward, Duke of Buckingham, son of the former benefactor, and it is probably to this date that we may refer the secular or semi-secular foundation of the College. Certainly at this period the secular element of the College must have been considerable, for we find Cranmer, on his resignation of his Fellowship at Jesus on account of his marriage, supporting himself by giving lectures at Buckingham College. Sir Robert Rede, the founder of the Rede Lectureship in the University, and Thomas Audley, the future Lord Chancellor, are also said to have received their education in this College. At any rate there can be little doubt that it was this semi-secular character of the College at this period which saved it from the operations of the successive acts for the dissolution of the monastic bodies. In the year 1542 Buckingham College was converted by Sir Thomas Audley into Magdalene College. "Thomas, Lord Audley of Walden," says Fuller, "Chancellor of England, by licence obtained from King Henry VIII., changed Buckingham into Magdalene (vulgarly Maudlin) College, because, as some[83] will have it, his surname is therein contained betwixt the initial and final letters thereof--_M'audley'n_. This may well be indulged to his fancy, whilst more solid considerations moved him to the work itself." What those "more solid considerations" may have been it is difficult, in relation to such a founder, to divine. He was a man who had gradually amassed considerable wealth by a singular combination of talent, audacity, and craft, one who, in the language of Lloyd in his "State Worthies," was "well seen in the flexures and windings of affairs at the depths whereof other heads not so steady turned giddy." He was Speaker of the House of Commons in that Parliament by whose aid Henry VIII. had finally separated himself and his kingdom from all allegiance to the See of Rome, and of whose further measures for ecclesiastical reform at home Bishop Fisher had exclaimed in the House of Lords: "My lords, you see daily what bills come hither from the Common House, and all is to the destruction of the Church. For God's sake, see what a realm the kingdom of Bohemia was, and when the Church went down, then fell the glory of the kingdom. Now with the Commons is nothing but 'Down with the Church!' and all this meseemeth is for lack of faith only." Sir Thomas Audley had been one of the first to profit by the plunder of the monasteries. "He had had," as Fuller terms it, "the first cut in the feast of abbey lands." He was also one of those who shared in its final distribution. As a reward for his services as Lord Chancellor--and what those services must have been as "the keeper of the conscience" of such a king as Henry VIII. we need not trouble to inquire--a few more of the suppressed monasteries were granted to him at the general dissolution, among which, at his own earnest suit, was the Abbey of Walden in Essex. Walden was one of the Benedictine houses that had been associated in the early days with Monks', now Buckingham College. Whether the newly-created Lord of Walden regarded himself as inheriting also the Monks' rights and responsibilities in connection with the Cambridge college or not, or whether, being an old man now and infirm and with no male heir, he thought to find some solace for his conscience in the thought of himself as the benefactor and founder of a permanent college, I cannot say. Certain, however, it is that the original statutes of Magdalene College, unlike those of Christ's and John's, exhibit no regard for the New Learning, and are indeed mainly noteworthy for the large powers and discretion which they assign to the Master, and the almost entire freedom of that official from any responsibility to the governing body of Fellows. It was evidently the founder's design to place the College practically under the control of the successive owners of Audley End.
In 1564 the young Duke of Norfolk, who had married Lord Audley's daughter and sole heir, and who was, moreover, descended from the early benefactor of the College, the Duke of Buckingham, contributed liberally towards both the revenues of Magdalene and its buildings. On the occasion of Queen Elizabeth's visit to Cambridge, it is recorded that "the Duke of Norfolk accompanied Her Majesty out of the town, and, then returning, entered Magdalene College, and gave much money to the same; promising £40 by year till they had builded the quadrant of the College."[84] From this statement it is plain that the quadrangle of Magdalene was not complete so late as 1654. The chapel and old library which form the west side of this court, and also the frontage to the street, had been built in 1475. The roof of the present chapel, uncovered in 1847, shows that Buckingham College had a chapel on the same site. The doorway in the north-west corner of the court retained a carving of the three keys, the arms of the prior and convent of Ely, so late as 1777, and thus probably indicated the chambers which were added to Monks' College for the accommodation of the Ely Convent scholars. The similar rooms assigned to the scholar-monks of Walden and Ramsey appear to have been in the range of buildings forming the south side of the College, parallel with the river, originally built in 1465, but reconstructed in 1585. The new gateway in the street-front belongs also to this late date. The chapel was thoroughly "Italianised" in 1733, and again restored and enlarged in 1851.
The extremely beautiful building now known as the Pepysian Library, beyond the old quadrangle to the east, which belongs to Restoration times, although its exact date and the name of its architect are not known, is the chief glory of Magdalene. It was probably approaching completion in 1703, when Samuel Pepys, the diarist, who had been a sizar of the College in 1650, and had lately contributed towards the cost of the building, bequeathed his library to the College, and directed that it should be housed in the new building. There, accordingly, it is now deposited, and the inscription, "BIBLIOTHECA PEPYSIANA, 1724," with his arms and motto, "_Mens cujusque is est quisque_," is carved in the pediment of the central window. The collection of books is a specially interesting one, invaluable to the historian or antiquary. Most of the books are in the bindings of the time, and are still in the mahogany-glazed bookcases in which they were placed by Pepys himself in 1666, and of which he speaks in his Diary under date August 24 of that year:--
"Up and dispatched several businesses at home in the morning, and then comes Simpson to set up my other new presses for my books; and so he and I fell to the furnishing of my new closett, and taking out the things out of my old; and I kept him with me all day, and he dined with me, and so all the afternoone, till it was quite darke hanging things--that is my maps and pictures and draughts--and setting up my books, and as much as we could do, to my most extraordinary satisfaction; so that I think it will be as noble a closett as any man hath, and light enough--though, indeed, it would be better to have had a little more light."
Of the many Magdalene men of eminence, from the days of Sir Robert Rede and Archbishop Cranmer down to those of Charles Parnell and Charles Kingsley, there is no need to speak in any other words than those of Fuller: "Every year this house produced some eminent scholars, as living cheaper and privater, freer from town temptations by their remote situation."
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No Cambridge foundation, probably no academic institution in Europe, furnishes so striking an example as does Trinity College of the change from the mediæval to the modern conception of education and of learning. If, indeed, we may take the words of the Preamble to his Charter of Foundation, dated the thirty-eighth year of his reign (1546) as a statement of his own personal aims, King Henry had conceived a very noble ideal of liberal education. After referring to his special reasons for thankfulness to Almighty God for peace at home and successful wars abroad--peace had just been declared with France after the brief campaign conducted by Henry himself, which had been signalised by the capture of Boulogne--and above all for the introduction of the pure truth of Christianity into his kingdom, he sets forth his intention of founding a college "to the glory and honour of Almighty God, and the Holy and undivided Trinity, for the amplification and establishment of the Christian and true religion, the extirpation of heresy and false opinion, the increase and continuance of divine learning and all kinds of good letters, the knowledge of the tongues, the education of the youth in piety, virtue, learning, and science, the relief of the poor and destitute, the prosperity of the Church of Christ, and the common good and happiness of his kingdom and subjects."[85]
The site upon which King Henry VIII. had decided to place his college is also mentioned in this preamble to the Charter of Foundation. It was to be "on the soil, ground, sites, and precincts of the late hall and college, commonly called the King's Hall, and of a certain late college of S. Michael, commonly called Michaelhouse, and also of a certain house and hostel called Fyswicke or Fysecke hostel and of another house and hostel, commonly called Hovinge Inn." In addition to the hostels here named there were, however, several others which occupied, or had occupied, the site previous to 1548--for one or two previous to this time had been absorbed by their neighbours--whose names have been preserved, and whose position has been put beyond doubt by recent researches. These other hostels were S. Catharine's, S. Margaret's, Crouched Hostel, Tyler or Tyler's, S. Gregory's, Garet or Saint Gerard's Hostel, and Oving's Inn.
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We may indicate roughly, perhaps, the position of these various halls and hostels in relation to the present college buildings, if we imagine ourselves to have entered the great gate of Trinity from the High Street, from Trinity Street, and to be standing on the steps leading into the Great Court, and facing across towards the Master's lodge. Immediately in front of us, on what is now the vacant green sward between the gateway steps and the sun-dial, there stood in the fifteenth century King's Hall, or that block of it which a century earlier had been built to take the place of the thatched and timbered house which Edward III. had bought from Robert de Croyland, and had made into his "King's Hall of Scholars." The entrance to this house, however, was not on the side which would have been immediately facing the point where we stand on the steps. It was entered by a doorway on its south side, opening into a lane--King's Childers' Lane it was called--which, starting from the High Street, from a point slightly to the south of the Great Gate, crossed the Great Court directly east and west, and then bending slightly to the north, reached the river at Dame Nichol's Hythe, at a point just beyond the bend in the river by the end of the present library. Returning to our point of view we should find on our right, occupying the easternmost part of the existing chapel, the old chapel of King's Hall, built in 1465, and beyond it, westwards, other buildings,--the buttery, the kitchen, the hall,--forming four sides of a little cloistered court, partly occupying the site of the present ante-chapel, and partly on its northern side facing across the Cornhithe Lane to the gardens of the old Hospital of S. John.
Turning to our left to the southern half of the great court, to that part which in the old days was south of King's Childers' Lane, south, that is, of the present fountain, we should find the site intersected by a lane running directly north and south, from a point at the south-west corner of the King's Hall about where the sun-dial now stands, to a point in Trinity Lane, or S. Michael's Lane as it was then called, where now stands the Queen's Gate. This was Le Foule Lane, and was practically a continuation of that Milne Street of which we have spoken in an earlier chapter as running parallel with the river past the front of Trinity Hall, Clare, and Queens' to the King's Mills. To the east of Foule Lane, occupying the site of the present range of buildings on the east and south-east of the great court, stood the Hostel of S. Catharine, with Fyswicke Hostel on its western side. Michaelhouse occupied practically the whole of the south-western quarter of the great court, with its gardens stretching down to the river. S. Catharine's, Fyswicke Hostel, and Michaelhouse all had entrances into S. Michael's or Flaxhithe, now Trinity Lane. Beyond and across Flaxhithe Lane was Oving's Inn, on the site of the present Bishop's Hostel, with Garett Hostel still further south, on land adjoining Trinity Hall. S. Gregory's and the Crouched Hostel stood north of Michaelhouse, side by side, on a space now occupied for the most part by the great dining-hall. The Tyled or Tyler's Hostel was on the High Street adjoining the north-east corner of S. Catharine's. S. Margaret's Hall, which had adjoined the house of William Fyswicke, had been at an early date absorbed in the Fyswicke Hostel.
It is plain that these various halls and hostels would sufficiently supply all the early needs of King Henry's new college. There was the chapel of King's Hall, the halls of King's Hall, Michaelhouse and Fyswicke's Hostel, and the chambers in each of these and the smaller hostels. During the first three years or so, from 1546 to 1549, the existing buildings seem to have been occupied without alteration. In 1550 and 1551 parts of Michaelhouse and Fyswicke's Hostel were pulled down, and their gates walled up. The Foule Lane, which separated them, was closed, and the new Queen's gate built at the point where that lane had joined Michael's Lane. The south ranges of both Fyswicke's Hostel and Michaelhouse on each side of this gate were retained. The hall, butteries, and kitchen of Michael House on the west were also retained, and continued northwards to form a lodge for the Master, and this range was returned easterwards at right angles to join the King Edward's gateway at the south-west corner of King's Hall. A little later the hall, butteries, and chapel of King's Hall were removed to make way for the new chapel, which was begun in 1555 and completed about ten years later.
An early map of Cambridge, made by order of Archbishop Parker in 1574, and preserved in one of the early copies of Caius' "History of the University" in the British Museum, shows the College in the state which we have thus described, the outline of the Great Court, that is to say, practically defined as it is to-day, but broken at two points, one by the projection from its western side joining the Master's lodge with the old gateway of King Edward, still standing in its ancient position, more or less on the site of the present sun-dial; the other by a set of chambers, built in 1490, projecting from the eastern range of buildings, and ending at a point somewhat east of the site of the present fountain.
The transformation of the Great Court into the shape in which we now know it is due entirely to the energy and skill of Dr. Thomas Neville, at that time Dean of Peterborough, who was appointed Master of Trinity in 1573. "Dr. Thomas Neville," says Fuller, "the eighth master of this College, answering his anagram '_most heavenly_,' and practising his own allusive motto, '_ne vile velis_,' being by the rules of the philosopher himself to be accounted [Greek: megaloprepês], as of great performances, for the general good, expended £3000 of his own in altering and enlarging the old and adding a new court thereunto, being at this day the stateliest and most uniform college in Christendom, out of which may be carved three Dutch universities."[86]
Neville's first work was the completion of the ranges of chambers on the east and south sides of the great court, including the Queen's gateway tower. On the completion of these in 1599 the projecting range of buildings on the east side were pulled down. In 1601 he pulled down the corresponding projection on the western side, removing the venerable pile known as King Edward the Third's Gate. This was rebuilt at the west end of the chapel as we now see it. The Master's lodge was prolonged northwards, and a library with chambers below it was built eastwards to meet the old gate. The great quadrangle was thus complete, the largest in either university,[87] having an area of over 90,000 square feet. To Dr. Neville also in the Great Court is owing the additional storey to the Great Gate, with the statue of Henry VIII. in a niche on its eastern front, and the statue of King James, his Queen, and Prince Charles on its western side, the beautiful fountain erected in 1602, and the hall in 1604. The building of this hall, which with certain variations is copied from the hall of the Middle Temple, is thus described in the "Memoriale" of the College.
"When he had completed the great quadrangle and brought it to a tasteful and decorous aspect, for fear that the deformity of the Hall, which through extreme old age had become almost ruinous, should cast, as it were, a shadow over its splendour, he advanced £3000 for seven years out of his own purse, in order that a great hall might be erected answerable to the beauty of the new buildings. Lastly, as in the erection of these buildings he had been promoter rather than author, and had brought these results to pass more by labour and assiduity than by expenditure of his own money, he erected at a vast cost, the whole of which was defrayed by himself, a building in the second court adorned with beautiful columns, and elaborated with the most exquisite workmanship, so that he might connect his own name for ever with the extension of the College."
Unfortunately, much of the original beauty of Neville's Court was spoilt by the alterations of Mr. Essex in 1755, "a local architect whose life," as Mr. J. G. Clark has truly said, "was spent in destroying that which ought to have been preserved."
The building of the library which forms the western side of Neville's Court was due mainly to the energy of Dr. Isaac Barrow, who was master from 1673 to 1677. The architect was Sir Christopher Wren, who himself thus describes his scheme:--
"I haue given the appearance of arches as the order required, fair and lofty; but I haue layd the floor of the Library upon the impostes, which answer to the pillars in the cloister and levells of the old floores, and haue filled the arches with relieus stone, of which I haue seen the effect abroad in good building, and I assure you where porches are low with flat ceelings is infinitely more gracefull than lowe arches would be, and is much more open and pleasant, nor need the mason feare the performance because the arch discharges the weight, and I shall direct him in a firme manner of executing the designe. By this contrivance the windowes of the Library rise high and give place for the deskes against the walls.... The disposition of the shelves both along the walls and breaking out from the walls must needes proue very convenient and gracefull, and the best way for the students will be to haue a little square table in each celle with 2 chaires."
The table and the chairs, as well as the book-shelves, were designed by Wren, who was also at pains to give full-sized sections of all the mouldings, because "we are scrupulous in small matters, and you must pardon us. Architects are as great pedants as criticks or heralds."
In 1669 Bishop's Hostel--so called after Bishop Hacket of Lichfield, who gave £1200 towards the cost--took the place of the two minor halls, Oving's Inn and Garett Hostel. No further addition to the College buildings was made until the nineteenth century, when the new court was built from the designs of Wilkins in the mastership of Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, and at a later time the two courts opposite the Great Gate across Trinity Street, by the benefaction of a sum approaching £100,000, by Dr. Whewell. To Dr. Whewell also belongs the merit of the restoration of the front of the Master's lodge, by the removal of the classical façade which had been so foolishly and tastelessly imposed upon the old work built by Dr. Bentley during his memorable tenure of the mastership from 1700 to 1742.
The mention of the name of that most masterful of Yorkshiremen and most brilliant of Cambridge scholars and critics inevitably suggests the picture of that long feud between the Fellows of Trinity and their Master which lasted for nearly half a century, for a year at any rate longer than the Peloponnesian war, and was almost as full of exciting incidents. Those who care to read the miserable and yet amusing story can do so for themselves in the pages of Bishop Monk's "Life of Richard Bentley." It is more to the purpose here, I think, to recall the kindly and judicious verdict of the great scholar's life at Trinity by the greatest Cambridge scholar of to-day.
"It must never be forgotten," writes Sir Richard Jebb, "that Bentley's mastership of Trinity is memorable for other things than its troubles. He was the first Master who established a proper competition for the great prizes of that illustrious college. The scholarships and fellowships had previously been given by a purely oral examination. Bentley introduced written papers; he also made the award of scholarships to be annual instead of biennial, and admitted students of the first year to compete for them. He made Trinity College the earliest home for a Newtonian school, by providing in it an observatory, under the direction of Newton's disciple and friend--destined to an early death--Roger Cotes. He fitted up a chemical laboratory in Trinity for Vigani of Verona, the professor of chemistry. He brought to Trinity the eminent orientalist, Sike of Bremen, afterwards professor of Hebrew. True to the spirit of the royal founder, Bentley wished Trinity College to be indeed a house 'of all kinds of good letters,' and at a time when England's academic ideals were far from high he did much to render it not only a great college, but also a miniature university."[88]
And "a house of all kinds of good letters" Trinity has remained, and will surely always remain. As we walk lingeringly through its halls and courts what thronging historic memories crowd upon us! We may not forget the failures as well as the successes; the defeats as well as the triumphs; "the lost causes and impossible loyalties" as well as the persistent faith and the grand achievement; but what an inspiration we feel must such a place be to the young souls who, year by year, enter its gates. How can the flame of ideal sympathy with the great personalities of their country's history fail to be kindled or kept alive in such a place? Here by the Great Gate, on the first floor to the north, are the rooms where Isaac Newton lived. It was to these rooms that in 1666 he brought back the glass prism which he had bought in the Stourbridge Fair, and commenced the studies which eventually made it possible for Pope to write the epitaph:--
"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night, God said 'Let Newton be!' and all was light."
It was in these rooms that he had entertained his friends, John Locke, Richard Bentley, Isaac Barrow, Edmund Halley, Gilbert Burnett, who afterwards wrote of him, "the whitest soul I ever knew." It was here that he wrote his "Principia." It is in the ante-chapel close by that there stands that beautiful statue of him by Roubiliac, which Chantrey called "the noblest of our English statues," and of which Wordsworth has recorded how he used to lie awake at night to think of that "silent face" shining in the moonlight:--
"The marble index of a mind for ever Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone."
And in the chapel beyond, with its double range of "windows richly dight" with the figures of saints and worthies and benefactors of the College--Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Edward Coke, Sir Harry Spelman, Lord Craven, Roger Cotes, Archbishop Whitgift, Bishop Pearson, Bishop Barrow, Bishop Hacket, the poets Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Cowley and Dryden--is it possible for the youthful worshipper not sometimes to be aroused and uplifted above the thoughts of sordid vulgarity, of moral isolation, of mean ambition, to "see visions and dream dreams," visions of coming greatness for city, or country, or empire, visions of great principles struggling in mean days of competitive scrambling, dreams of opportunity of some future service for the common good, which shall not be unworthy of his present heritage in these saints and heroes of the past, who may--
"Live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues."