The thirty-six years of Doket’s presidency were interrupted by the Wars of the Roses, which prevented the building from going on. Doket, however, like so many heads of houses in subsequent years, had an affection for his college which hindered him from displaying any political prejudice. In 1465, when Edward IV. was firmly established on the English throne, he applied for help to Queen Elizabeth Wydvil. This lady owed her position at court to a situation in Queen Margaret’s retinue, and she readily accepted his offer. Just as her husband helped on the building of the chapel of King’s, she extended her aid to this other Lancastrian foundation, and, under her protection, the work of building proceeded. The only alterations due to Yorkist patronage were a new coat-of-arms for the college, and the change of the title from Queen’s College in the singular to Queens’ College in the plural. The invocation of St Margaret and St Bernard was retained without alteration. The floriated cross of St Margaret and St Bernard’s crosier are to be seen upon the groined roof of the gateway, and, later on, when Richard III. gave a new coat-of-arms to the college in place of that granted by Edward IV., these emblems appear surmounted by the well-known boar’s head.
Doket died in 1484, and was succeeded by Thomas Wilkinson, whose rule lasted till 1505. Then followed the three years during which John Fisher, the celebrated Bishop of Rochester, was president. This great man was one of that band of scholars and divines who reformed the state of learning in England. Queens’ College probably owes to him the chief episode in its history, the residence of Erasmus* within its walls. It is improbable that Erasmus was at Queens’ during Fisher’s presidency, as has been so generally supposed. He was invited to England by Henry VIII. soon after 1509, and Fisher had given up the presidency in 1508. No doubt, Fisher advised Erasmus, who, as Fuller says, “might have pickt and chose what house he pleased,” to the cloistral seclusion of Queens’; and this is more likely than the somewhat far-fetched alternative that he was “allured with the situation of this Colledge so near the River, as Rotterdam his native place to the Sea.” In fact, Erasmus was simply allured to Cambridge by the prospect of work, and does not seem to have enjoyed life there at all. Three of his letters are dated from Queens’ by name, and they, as well as the rest written from no particular address in Cambridge, prove that he regarded his work there as a pis aller. He complained of his situation, his food and drink. Cambridge beer encouraged the most painful ailments. He wrote to a friend for a cask of Greek wine. This rare beverage was finished all too soon; when it was done, he kept the empty cask by him, that he might at least refresh himself with the smell. He was ill most of his time; he was also continually in want of money. His professorships were merely lectureships, and his pay was probably small. Had it not been for the patronage of Archbishop Warham and other lovers of learning, he might have fallen into serious straits. At no time did he realise the value of money. Doubtless, he represented himself as more unpleasantly situated than he actually was. Like most delicate men, he was very self-conscious, and expected an inordinate amount of praise and flattery, which it is hardly probable that he obtained at Cambridge. On a previous visit to Oxford, he had been the centre of a group of scholars; at Cambridge, he was isolated from his old friends. We can therefore hardly trust to his vivacious narrative for an accurate account of his Cambridge life. But, everything taken into consideration, he was seriously discontented, and was glad to leave in 1514. His memory has been more than ordinarily cherished in an University which perhaps caressed him very little in his lifetime, and his prestige has had a salutary influence on Cambridge scholarship. When he came to Cambridge, he found the old scholastic learning, which he detested, still in vogue; when he left, it was with the consciousness that he had inaugurated a new era.
The next point in the history of Queens’ is its acquisition under Dr William Mey of the Carmelite house which lay between the college and the present site of King’s. This house was surrendered to the society in 1538, just before the dissolution; but the interference of the Crown delayed the completion of this transaction till 1544. The ground which thus came into the possession of the president and fellows was the foundation of all their future building. Dr Mey was deprived at the accession of Queen Mary, but was restored in 1559. He lived for only a year afterwards. His next successor but one was Dr William Chaderton, of whom Fuller has preserved some curious anecdotes. He is reported to have said one day in a wedding sermon “That the choice of a wife is full of hazard, not unlike as if one in a barrel full of serpents should grope for one fish; if (saith he) he ’scape harm of the snakes, and light on a fish, he may be thought fortunate, for perhaps it may be but an eel.” The ingenuity of the comparison is very characteristic of our Elizabethan universities, and is not a little in the manner of Fuller himself. Fuller, indeed, received most of what he would have called his “breeding” at Queens’, and, here and at Sidney, he picked up that curiously miscellaneous knowledge which has made him one of our most entertaining prose writers. He was essentially a Cambridge man, and in all his books, however distant they are from the purpose, we trace a certain appeal to his university. He was not less positive as to its antiquity than Dr Caius, although he went less far back for its origin. His Church History records the foundation of Cambridge as an University by Sigebert, King of the East Anglians, and in the sequel punctiliously refers to the foundation of every college as an important event in the history of the Church. He did for Cambridge, in a more limited area, what Anthony Wood did for Oxford. His politics were of an undecided kind, and he fell into disfavour with both Parliamentarians and Royalists, but he was, in fact, a moderate partisan of the King. There is a story that he was to have been made a bishop at the Restoration, but he died before the offer was made.
John Davenant,* president from 1614 to 1622, was, as Bishop of Salisbury, one of that galaxy of prelates which relieves the darkness of the Civil Wars. He was the friend of George Herbert, whose parsonage of Bemerton was within three miles of Salisbury. He died in 1641, before affairs had come to their final climax. It is probable that he was guilty of some of those numerous idolatries which Dowsing the iconoclast destroyed on his visit to Cambridge. Dowsing visited the college on St Stephen’s Day, 1643, when he “beat down 110 superstitious pictures besides Cherubim and Ingravings,” and “digged up the steps for three hours.” What Dowsing would say to the internal fittings of the new chapel we have no idea! After the storm had passed over and the Restoration had given back quiet to the college, its history languished: and, although it has done well in the schools, it cannot be said to have produced many men of great distinction. In Isaac Milner (* Harlow), Dean of Carlisle and President from 1788 to 1820, it had a Church historian of some reputation. Simon Patrick,* Bishop of Ely during the reigns of William III. and Queen Anne, was a fellow here, and was one of the latest survivors of the Laudian school. His account of the opening of Edward the Confessor’s tomb is preserved in the University Library in its original manuscript. He was a great theologian and something of a controversialist. Quite recently the familiar figure of Dr Campion,* Vicar of St Botolph’s and Honorary Canon of Ely, and President of Queens’ for the last five years of his life, has been removed from Cambridge. His successor is Dr Herbert Ryle of King’s, who holds with the office the Hulsean Professorship of Divinity.
XI
ST CATHARINE’S COLLEGE
It has been said that the decorous quadrangle of St Catharine’s gives the stranger the impression of an old manor house rather than of a college; and the trees which guard it on the side of Trumpington Street are certainly a party to the illusion. The western front of the college, which occupies one side of King’s Lane, has a more definitely scholastic air. For the most part the buildings are uninteresting. The tiny court at the north-west angle dates from 1626; the rest of the college is the fruit of a rebuilding which went on slowly from 1680 to 1755. Loggan, who published his illustrations soon after the work was begun, figures, with some optimism, an eastern façade with a central cupola. This, however, was never attempted. The chapel is an interesting piece of Queen Anne architecture, dating from 1704; and lately a fine organ by Norman & Beard of Norwich has been placed in it. In the present century, the Hall has been restored in the Gothic style, but otherwise no radical alteration has been made.