Cambridge and Its Colleges

by A. Hamilton Thompson

E·H·N

Beyond the Hall, Nevile built the court, which bears his name, and, for a certain beauty of its own, is not far behind the Great Court. Ralph Symons was again his architect. This building consisted of two wings, shorter than at present, at right angles to the Hall, and built above a cloister. These splendid arcades are the very crown of Renaissance work in Cambridge; their cloistered ground-floor recalls Bologna or Padua rather than the court of an English university; but their upper stories are thoroughly English work. Nevile’s Court did not assume its present secluded, aristocratic appearance until considerably more than a hundred years later. Isaac Barrow, one of the many great Masters of Trinity, began the library in 1675, with Sir Christopher Wren as his architect. The court was completed by the generous addition of two compartments to the original arcades, which was paid for by some of the fellows. Wren’s Library is so prominent that its incongruity with the rest of the court is not at once obvious, but there can be no doubt that it is seen at its best on the river side. Its front towards the court is adorned with a bas-relief which represents the dedication of the Septuagint to Ptolemy Philadelphus. On the roof are four statues of learned nymphs by Gabriel Cibber, which are chiefly remarkable for the part they played in one of Byron’s most senseless freaks. The interior of the Library is matchless for its magnificent simplicity. It is a pity that the arbiters of taste in the last century should have allowed Cipriani to design the window at the south end, but this is the sole fault. The numerous busts (some by Roubiliac), the carvings on the bookcases (Grinling Gibbons) and Thorwaldsen’s statue of Byron are remarkable.

Wren is also supposed to have harmonised the side of the Hall which stands opposite, with his Library. The present meaningless alcoves and the balustrade which have superseded Nevile’s work on this side, are probably by Essex, who was brought in to prop up the Hall and build the Combination Room and Kitchen Offices in 1771. A little while before Wren began working at Trinity, John Hacket, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, founded Bishop’s Hostel, the small building south of the Great Court, and close to the Trinity Lane entrance. These buildings (1670) are now somewhat overlapped by the modern buildings of Garret Hostel, which are also of red brick. Garret Hostel is, however, a much older component of Trinity, and the modern buildings are simply a revival.

During the eighteenth century Bentley effected his famous alterations in the Lodge and Chapel, and Essex made the additional changes to which I have referred. No actual addition was made to the college until, in 1823, William Wilkins began his court in the revived Gothic taste, adjoining Nevile’s Court on the south. George IV. proved a benefactor to the extent of £1000, and the official name of the new building is for this reason King’s Court. It was finished about six years later. Cambridge, as we have seen, has a long tale to tell of Georgian Gothic, and the New Court of Trinity is a very typical example of that period. It nevertheless is a far more pleasant building than Wilkins’ court at Corpus or Rickman’s at St John’s, although there is not much to praise in it. To a much better period of modern Gothic belong Mr Beresford Hope’s improvements in the Lodge and the Master’s Courts, usually known as Whewell’s Court (and by more familiar names), which are opposite the great gate of Trinity, and are one of the thoroughfares between Trinity Street and Sidney Street. Dr Whewell built this court at his own expense, with Salvin as his architect. Outside, it is gloomy but imposing. The darkness of its interior was till quite recently almost to be felt; but now (1898) they are being refaced, and the depressing rooms are being made into comfortable and picturesque habitations.

The grounds of Trinity are spacious and pleasant, and the famous lime-walk is one of the wonders of Cambridge. When Dr Nevile built his court, he filled up a branch of the Cam which ran northwards from Garret Hostel Bridge and rejoined the main stream at the north-west corner of the present Library. The bridge which connects the lime-walk with the new court was built by Essex, and is his best work in Cambridge, if that is any praise.

The royal foundation of Trinity College is, as a matter of fact, one of the youngest colleges in Cambridge. At the same time, it is to Cambridge what Christ Church is to Oxford, and, more than that, its name, to a great number of people, is almost synonymous with Cambridge. Henry VIII., the most learned of our English sovereigns, was naturally a great patron of learning. In 1546, the year in which, with his characteristic want of scruple, he took upon himself the credit of founding Wolsey’s great college at Oxford, he also founded Trinity at Cambridge. His material was ready to hand, for the small colleges and hostels which filled up the space between the present Trinity Street and the river provided scanty room for their members, and needed amalgamation. Trinity, in fact, as it now exists, is composed of a number of separate foundations, the principal of which were Michael House, founded in 1324, and King’s Hall, founded by Edward III. in 1337. These two colleges had gradually absorbed many of the smaller hostels. The founder of Michael House was Hervé de Staunton, treasurer to King Edward II. In spite of its limited situation, it had a certain amount of prestige, and one of its last masters was John Fisher, afterwards President of Queens’ and Bishop of Rochester. It used the church of St Michael as its chapel. King’s Hall, on the other hand, had, by the time of Henry VIII., extended its boundaries and built its own chapel. It had grown out of a corporation of scholars, which had found a patron in Edward II., and had been presented by Edward III., in 1336, with a piece of ground belonging to one Robert of Crowland—which may point to a connection between the foundation and Crowland Abbey, the great centre of English learning. A regular charter was granted in 1337. The accounts of the institution remain, and point to a style of living which would not be very highly accounted of now, but was positively luxurious for medieval Cambridge. The scholars attended chapel at St Mary’s by the Market and All Saints’ in the Jewry, until, in Edward IV.’s reign, they obtained leave to found a chapel for themselves. King’s Hall naturally became the nucleus of Henry’s college, and the lesser buildings found their centre in its court, enlarged and beautified. John Redman, the last master of King’s Hall, became the first master of Trinity College.

Under the charter of 1546, Henry VIII. founded Trinity College for a master and sixty fellows and scholars. The full title was “Trinity College within the Town and University of Cambridge of King Henry the Eighth’s foundation.” Michael House, dedicated primarily to St Michael the Archangel, had been founded under the secondary invocations of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, St Mary, and All Saints; and it is probable that the first of these suggested the name under which the college has become so famous. Trinity College is the most distinguished fruit of that revived learning which paved the way for and accompanied the Reformation: from the very beginning its tendencies were liberal and progressive; every genius which it nourished was eminently constructive. The names of its three greatest alumni, Newton, Bacon, and Barrow, form, so to speak, the three fountain-heads of organized philosophical thought in England; and there are a hundred less monumental names which are sufficient guarantee of the intellectual supremacy of Trinity over her sisters. The history of the college divides itself naturally into periods. The first is a period of consolidation, extending from 1546 to 1593. During this time, the college suffered the ordinary vicissitudes of the Reformation. Its chapel, which had been projected by Henry VIII., was begun by Mary and finished, probably out of a sense of duty, by Elizabeth. In 1553, William Bill, the second master, who had been appointed under Edward VI., had to retire in favour of a Catholic master, John Christopherson, but was of course restored at the accession of Elizabeth. He was succeeded in 1561 by Robert Beaumont, who presented to the Master’s Lodge a portrait of the founder by Lucas van Heere, one of the most excellent portrait-painters of the sixteenth century. Beaumont, in his turn, was succeeded by John Whitgift, who was already well known in Cambridge as Master of Peterhouse and Pembroke, and Fellow of Queens’. Whitgift, with Matthew Parker and Matthew Hutton, is one of the three divines who may be taken as typical of Elizabethan Cambridge—strongly anti-papal in their sentiments, but keeping nevertheless a cautious eye on the political balance. It is hardly necessary to add that Whitgift’s long list of Cambridge preferments eventually led to the Archbishoprick of Canterbury. And it was during his mastership that the greatest intellect of the age was trained at his college. Under the yoke of the Aristotelian system of philosophy, Francis Bacon, while still at Cambridge, perceived the fallacies of the stereotyped methods of thought, and laid the foundation of inductive science. Bacon’s life is connected more intimately with affairs of state than with his University; but Trinity regards him as one of the principal saints in her kalendar, and his memory greets the visitor at every turn. His portrait is one of the three at the end of the Hall; there is another in the Master’s Lodge; his bust, by Roubiliac, is in the Library; and, in 1845, his statue was placed, side by side with that of Newton, in the antechapel.

Bacon is the great figure of this early period. Nine years older than he, the Lord Chief Justice Coke (* Whood: bust by Roubiliac) is the first of the great lawyers connected with Trinity. Another celebrated name is that of Dr Donne, Dean of St Paul’s, divine and poet. Sir Henry Spelman (* Whood), the antiquary and translator of Xenophon, was a contemporary of Bacon, and, some years after, Sir Robert Cotton (* bust by Roubiliac) furnished Trinity with another archæologist. Whitgift, after his translation to Canterbury, was succeeded by John Still, who became Bishop of Bath and Wells. With Still’s successor, Dr Thomas Nevile,* master from 1593 to 1615, the second period opens. Nevile held the Deanery of Canterbury with his mastership, but his life was spent in Cambridge, and his architectural work in Trinity, while it is the most important in the University, stamps him as the chief benefactor of the college. In that great age of building, Nevile’s work has an honourable pre-eminence: it is the sign of a monumental perseverance and an artistic taste which, even in that fine era of Renaissance culture, was never surpassed. We may with justice echo the words of Fuller, who says that Dr Nevile performed this work “answering his anagram most heavenly, and practising his own allusive motto ne vile velis.” Higher praise could not be given. Nevile’s buildings, if architecture may be considered to reflect contemporary history, may be regarded as a turning-point in Cambridge thought. When we look at the reactionary tendency to the Gothic taste in Jacobean Oxford, and compare it with the distinct preference shown in Cambridge for classical and Renaissance models, the radical divergence of the two Universities is clear. Nevile’s courts at Trinity were the beginning of a long series of collegiate buildings which, often very defective, took the place of Gothic work and held it for the next two centuries. The sole exception to this rule is Matthew Wren’s chapel at Peterhouse. Besides his building energy, Nevile acquired land for the college, so that, when the Society enlarged its buildings in after years, it found itself in possession of the requisite site. The King’s Court occupies part of this property. One can only say that Nevile’s memory might be honoured with a better building.

One of the first scholars of Trinity who saw Nevile’s work in its complete state was George Herbert. He was born in 1593, the first year of Nevile’s mastership, and entered Trinity at a very early age. Although it is more natural to think of him as a parish priest and the writer of the most beautiful devotional poetry in English, his career at Cambridge was not without distinction. His early Latinity was as perfect as Milton’s, and he filled the office of Public Orator of the University. He is unique among Trinity men as the only important member of the college who belonged to the most illustrious school of English churchmen—the school which, under Andrewes, Laud and Cosin, placed the Church of England on a logical and independent footing. The honours of this school are shared rather unequally between the two Universities, but Cambridge contributed a substantial quota to the whole sum. There is no portrait of Herbert in the college, but he is commemorated in one of the chapel windows. He died at the early age of forty, before the troubles of the Great Rebellion. John Hacket,* the Royalist Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, was probably at Trinity with Herbert. He is remembered, not so much for his divinity as for his gallant defence of his cathedral against the Puritan destroyers. He was born in 1592 and did not die till 1670, ten years after the Restoration. In his seventieth year, having been mercifully preserved throughout the troubles, he desired to bestow some mark of his affection upon Trinity, “that Society,” as he said with a noble pathos characteristic of the party to which he had attached himself, “which is more precious to me, next to the Church of Jesus Christ, than any place upon earth.” The result of his bequest was the present Bishop’s Hostel, which occupied part of the site of the old Garret’s or Gerrard’s Hostel.