The Cambridge, Ely, and King's Lynn Road: The Great Fenland Highway

by Charles G. Harper

The origin of Cambridge University, as of that of Oxford, is of unknown date, and the manner of its inception problematical. Who was the great teacher that first drew scholars to him at this place? We cannot tell. That he was a Churchman goes without saying, for the Church, in the dark ages when learning began to be, held letters and culture in fee-simple. Nor can we tell why Cambridge was thus honoured, for it was not the home, like Ely, Crowland, or Thorney, of a great monastic establishment, whence learning of sorts radiated. One of the untrustworthy early chroniclers of these things gives, indeed, a specific date to the beginnings of the University, and says that Joffrid, Abbot of Crowland, in 1110 sent monkish lecturers to the town; but the earliest record, beyond which we must not go into the regions of mere surmise, belongs to a hundred and twenty-one years later, when royal regulations respecting the students were issued. Already a Chancellor and a complete governing body appear to have been in existence. It is arguable that a century and more must have been necessary for these to have been evolved from the earliest days of a teaching body; but these affairs are for pundits. Such special pleaders as John Caius and Thomas Key, who fought with great bitterness and amazing pertinacity in the sixteenth century on the question as to whether Oxford or Cambridge were the older of the two, had the hardihood to trace them back to astonishing lengths. According to Caius, arguing for Cambridge, it was one Cantaber, a Spanish prince, who founded the University here in the very remote days when Gurguntius was King of Britain. To this prince he traces the name of the town itself, and I think that fact alone serves to discredit anything else he has to say.

TRUMPINGTON STREET, CAMBRIDGE.

But no matter when and how the University originated. To those early teachers came so many to listen in the one room or hall, that probably constituted the original University, that the town did not suffice, to accommodate them, and, both for the sake of convenience and discipline, the first college was founded, as primarily a lodgment or hostel for the scholars. As their numbers continually grew, and as benefactors began to look with increasing kindliness upon learning, so were more and more colleges added.

The first of all the colleges was, as already stated, this of Peterhouse, founded so far back as 1280 by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely. It was at first established in the Hospital of St. John the Evangelist, near by, but was removed, only six years later, to the present site, for convenient access to the Church of St. Peter. It is to the fact that the chancel of this church was used as its chapel that the college owes its official but rarely heard title of "St. Peter's." In 1352 St. Peter's Church was given a new consecration, and has ever since been known as St. Mary the Less. Meanwhile, in 1632, the college built a chapel of its own.

Peterhouse has points of interest other than being the first of the colleges. It has nurtured men not only of distinction, but of fame. Men so opposite in character as the worldly Cardinal Beaufort—the great Cardinal who figures in Shakespeare—and the pious Archbishop Whitgift were educated here; and in later times that great man of science, Lord Kelvin; but perhaps the most famous of all is Gray, the poet, whose "Elegy Wrote in a Country Churchyard" has done more to endear him to his country than the acts of any statesman or divine.

Peterhouse does not present a cheerful front to the street. It is heavy and gloomy, and its buildings, as a whole, do not help out the story of its age. The chapel, whose weather-vane bears the emblem of a key, an allusion to St. Peter, stands recessed behind the railings that give upon the street, and blocks the view into the first of the three quads. It is flanked on one side by the venerable brick building seen on the extreme left of the illustration representing Trumpington Street, and on the other by a great ugly three-storeyed block of stone, interesting only because the rooms overlooking the street on the topmost floor were those occupied by Gray. They are to be identified by iron railings across one of the windows. A story belongs to these rooms. Gray, it seems, lived long in them as a Fellow of his College, and might have eked out his morbid life here, dining according to habit in Hall, and then, unsociable and morose, retiring to his elevated eyrie, reading the classics over a bottle of port. Gray had a very pretty taste in port, but it did not suffice to make him more clubbable. His solitary habits, perhaps, were responsible for a morbid fear of fire that grew upon him, and increased to such a degree that he caused the transverse bars, that still remain, to be placed outside his window overlooking the churchyard of Little St. Mary's, and kept in constant readiness a coil of rope to tie to them and so let himself down in case of an alarm. His precautions were matters of common knowledge, and at last his fears were taken advantage of by a band of skylarking students, who placed a bath full of water beneath his rooms one winter night and then, placing themselves in a favourable position for seeing the fun, raised cries of "Fire!"

Their best expectations were realised. The window was hurriedly flung up, and the frenzied poet, nightcapped and lightly clad, swiftly descended into the bath, amid yells of delight. These intimate facts seem to hint that Gray had not endeared himself to the scholars of Peterhouse. This practical joke severed his connection with the college, for he immediately removed across the street, to Pembroke.

Pembroke is prominent in this view down the long, quiet, grave street; and the quaint turret of its chapel, built by Sir Christopher Wren, is very noticeable. Gravity is, we have said, the note here, and so solid a quality is quite in order, for Trumpington Street and the road beyond have ever been the favourite walks of dons and professors, walking oblivious to their surroundings in what we are bound to consider academic meditation rather than that mere mental vacuity known as absent-mindedness. There is a story told of the late Professor Seeley exquisitely illustrating this mental detachment. It is a story that probably has been told of many earlier professors, to be re-incarnated to suit every succeeding age: a common enough thing with legends. It seems, however, that the late Professor of History was walking past the Conduit one fine day, speculating on who shall say what abstruse matters, when a mischievous boy switched a copious shower of water over him from the little stream in the gutter. The Professor's physical organism felt the descending drops, some lazy, unspeculative brain-cell gave him the idea of a shower of rain, and he immediately unfurled his umbrella, and so walked home.

Next the new buildings of Pembroke, over against Peterhouse, the Master of that college has his residence, behind the high brick walls of a seventeenth century garden. On the left hand are Little St. Mary's, a Congregational Church, and the church-like pinnacled square tower of the Pitt Press, all in succession. Beyond, but hid from this view-point by a gentle curve of the street, are "Cats," otherwise St. Catherine's, and Corpus; and then we come to that continuation of Trumpington Street called "King's Parade," opposite King's College. Here we are at the centre of Cambridge, with Market Hill opening out on the right and the gigantic bulk of King's College Chapel on the left, neighboured by that fount of honour, or scene of disgraceful failure, the beautiful classic Senate House, where you take your degree or are ignominiously "plucked."