The seventeenth century is fertile in great men. During the century, however, none of the masters of the college were very conspicuous men, and the mastership, between 1615 and 1683, changed hands no less than twelve times. It is also worthy of remark that three successive masters ended their lives as Bishops of Chester, thus uniting Henry VIII.’s collegiate foundation with one of his bishopricks. These were John Wilkins (* Whood), master in 1659, Henry Ferne, master in 1660, and John Pearson (* Whood), master from 1662 to 1673. This last is the only exception to the general insignificance of the masters at this time. He was a distinguished scholar who had been connected with several colleges, and had held the mastership of Jesus. His work on the Apostles’ Creed is still one of the classics of English theology. About the middle of the century, Dryden (* Hudson) came to Trinity from Westminster School. Both he and Abraham Cowley (* Slaughton) were strongly attached to the Royalist side during the Commonwealth disturbances, and Cowley, who entered the college in 1637 and proceeded to his master’s degree, was expelled in 1643 on account of his too strongly expressed loyalty. He found more congenial soil at St John’s College, Oxford, the college of Laud, Juxon, and others of the same party. If to these poets we add the names of the naturalists Ray (* Hudson: bust by Roubiliac) and Willoughby (bust by Roubiliac) we shall have enumerated the most illustrious Trinity men of their time. Ray and Willoughby, who studied natural history with special reference to its religious character, were, in fact, the founders of the modern science, just as Dryden may be said to have struck the first note of modern poetry.
Pearson became Bishop of Chester in 1672, and removed there in 1673. Under his successor, Isaac Barrow, began the golden age of Trinity. Barrow is, in many ways, the most extraordinary genius of whom Cambridge can boast. He was one of that rare class whose knowledge is practically universal. He was born in 1630, a year before his great contemporary, John Locke, who went up to Oxford from Westminster about the time when Barrow went up from Charterhouse to Cambridge. Barrow was a man of surprising energy and, at Cambridge, he appears to have read deeply in every subject which was then studied. He was classic, mathematician, scientist, theologian, and orator; and in each of these branches he excelled. He was appointed Regius Professor of Greek in 1655, and, subsequently, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics—a feat which, to the scholars of to-day, would seem next to impossible. Undoubtedly, however, his promotion to the mastership of his college and his subsequent celebrity were due to his fame as a divine. His sermons bear the same relation to his age that those of Jeremy Taylor bear to the Stewart period. He was in high favour as a preacher at court, and, on Pearson’s retirement, his appointment was obvious. He did not hold the mastership for more than four years, as in 1677 he died at the age of forty-seven. His portrait by Hudson hangs in the college Hall; his bust, by Roubiliac, is in the Library; and his statue, by Noble, was placed in the antechapel during the mastership of his worthy successor, Whewell.
At this time, the mathematical attainments of the Society must have been overpowering. Barrow’s fame in this department has perhaps been obscured by that of Sir Isaac Newton; but, if we are to believe Newton’s generous compliment, the early death of Roger Cotes robbed Trinity of an even greater prodigy. The college may nevertheless be well content with Newton, who was emphatically a Trinity man, spending very little of his life away from Cambridge. He was twelve years younger than Barrow, and entered Trinity in the year of the Restoration, when he was eighteen. Nine years later, his studies proved so fruitful that Barrow gave up the Lucasian professorship in his favour. For more than half a century, he was the chief ornament of the University. His discoveries revolutionised the whole theory of mathematics, and it was owing to his personality that the subsequent energies of Cambridge were so largely mathematical. He occupied rooms between the Great Gateway and the Chapel. Although he made Cambridge his home, he had a large share in public business, sitting as Member for the University and receiving the mastership of the Mint. This office he probably owed to another member of the college, Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax (* Kneller), whose recall of the specie is among the most famous of English financial operations. In 1703, Newton was elected President of the Royal Society, which, it is interesting to note, had been founded, forty years before, mainly through the energy of Dr Wilkins, Master of Trinity and one of the three Bishops of Chester mentioned above. Newton was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705, and died in 1727. His scientific studies were not his exclusive pursuits, for he was, to a certain extent, one of the group of literary men who are the glory of Anne’s reign, and was also much occupied with the elucidation of prophecy, which probably attracted him from its mathematical side. Trinity has very justly regarded him as her greatest son. His portrait, by Ritz, occupies the place of honour in the Hall, and every visitor to Cambridge knows—
The antechapel where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
The statue, which is by Roubiliac, and is that master’s most famous work, bears the inscription from Lucretius “Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit.” There is a bust of him in the Library, also by Roubiliac, and several portraits are to be found throughout the college.
After Barrow’s death, the mastership was filled successively by the Hon. John North* and the Hon. John Montague,* whose rule was calculated to foster a comfortable laziness rather than industry. On the death of the second of these, Dr Richard Bentley, fellow of St John’s, was elected master. There was, in those days, a strong feeling of rivalry between the two foundations—not only academical, but also in political and social matters. Bentley was a rare genius, whose scholarship was just then acknowledged as the finest in England, but he was utterly devoid of good feeling and tact, and had a peculiar faculty for exciting hatred. His fame, for the most of us, is due to his high place in the Dunciad. He arrived in Trinity with the intention of managing the college on his own lines. There was a party in the Society which thoroughly enjoyed the comfort of a position it did not adorn, and in this body Bentley found his most devoted enemies. Instead of conciliating them, he treated them with undisguised contempt and arrogance; and his conduct was so injudicious that he alienated all the better members of the college from himself. Matters came to a head when Bentley made radical alterations in the Master’s Lodge, and presented the fellows with a bill considerably larger than the original estimate. Open war broke out; the fellows refused to pay; and Bentley in consequence applied methods of coercion, withholding privileges which were in his gift. The fellows found themselves obliged to give in after some time, and Bentley followed up this victory by altering the interior of the chapel to suit the new organ. At this point, however, the Society revolted for good. Bentley required a large subscription of each fellow. The fellowship dividends had been much reduced during the previous years, and, with this additional burden, poverty stared many of the dons in the face. In this crisis, the fellows, who undoubtedly had justice on their side, called in Serjeant Milne, a London lawyer and one of their number, and, under his guidance, addressed a gravamen against the Master to the Bishop of Ely. Things would have gone hardly for Bentley, had not the Bishop died opportunely. This Bishop, by the way, was John Moore, whose books George I. gave to the University Library. However, Bentley’s tyranny was not suffered to continue, for, in 1718, the Senate passed a grace degrading him from his high positions in the University. After this, the quarrel was less prominent. Bentley occupied the Lodge till 1742, but the bad feeling which he had excited continued till the end of his life. His judgment and taste may be estimated from the reply which he is said to have given to some congratulatory address after his election. Referring to his original college of St John’s, he said, “By the help of my God, I have leaped over a wall.” His arrogance might have been excusable in a young man whose promotion was early, but Bentley, in 1700, was past middle life. His scholarship was sound, and there is no doubt that his arguments against the Epistles of Phalaris crushed the position of his adversary Boyle; but his lack of proper feeling always put him in the wrong, and his memory lives in the satire of Pope and Swift rather than in his own work. Hudson’s portrait of him is in the Hall, and his bust, by Roubiliac, is in the Library.
The quarrels of Bentley’s mastership form a period by themselves in the college history. At the same time, it must be remembered that the quarrel was confined to a section of the Society, and that the better members kept aloof from it. It had nevertheless a marked effect on the college throughout the eighteenth century, with the consequence that famous names are comparatively scanty. Of Bentley’s opponents, the most distinguished was Dr Conyers Middleton, whose life of Cicero was good enough to merit a century of abuse. Lesser scholars of the same time were Roger Gale,* the antiquary, who is often confounded with the learned Theophilus Gale of Magdalen, Oxford, author of the once famous Court of the Gentiles; and Beaupré Bell* of Outwell, Norfolk, who was an enthusiastic lover of church architecture, and left his valuable manuscripts to the college library. Bentley’s immediate successor, Dr Robert Smith,* master from 1742 to 1768, bequeathed his name to the Smith’s Prizes. He was succeeded by John Hinchliffe, Bishop of Peterborough, a typical prelate of the last century and a born pluralist. Lord Orford, in his Tour of the Fens, describes his entertainment at the Palace of Peterborough; from which we may divine that Hinchliffe was fond of a good dinner and liked the vicinity of a nobleman. On one occasion, he put a man with no voice into the Trinity choir, because he happened to have a vote for Peterborough. A fellow of the college, named Mansel, who was more remarkable for his ponderous wit than his piety, wrote the following epigram:—