Cambridge Papers

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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO
BY W. W. ROUSE BALL FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
This volume contains papers on some questions of local history put together, mostly for undergraduate societies and magazines, at various times during the last twenty-five years. I have included a memoir, written for a London Society, on Newton’s Principia , a work that profoundly affected the development of University studies in the eighteenth century, and a chapter on the History of the Mathematical Tripos, which at one time appeared in my Mathematical Recreations and Essays , since these are concerned with Cambridge subjects.
W. W. ROUSE BALL.
Trinity College, Cambridge. January , 1918.
The king must have been impatient to know the facts, for in less than a week, on 21 January, he ordered Parker to come to Hampton Court with the report. Immediate compliance was impossible, but the command may well have stimulated the commissioners to act as rapidly as possible. In fact they obtained the services of eleven clerks from the Court of Augmentations in London, and at once set to work to collect information.
The preparations for Henry’s proposed foundation were made with extreme speed: a wise course in view of his failing health and variable temper. It was decided to take advantage of the Act of 1544 and suppress King’s Hall and Michael-House, using their grounds and adjoining property as the site of the new college. We have no reference to the appointment of commissioners for the business, though there is an allusion, quoted later, to receivers: perhaps the matter was left in the hands of the officials of the Court of Augmentations. Redman was the chief authority at Cambridge in the arrangements that had to be made there, and it was intended that he should be the first master of the new college when it was founded.