Meanwhile to the south-east, among the marshes and fens of East Anglia, scholarship had found a fitting place to dream and study. Great monastic houses at Ely and Peterborough—some of the most important in England—were the forerunners of Cambridge University. The earliest community at Cambridge was founded by Dame Hugolina in 1092, in gratitude for her recovery from a serious sickness. Cambridge has never forgotten that feminine foundation, and whilst Oxford was cold to the higher education of women movement, the other university gave the girl graduate a welcome, and pupils of two great Cambridge colleges, the "Girton Girl" and the "Newnham Girl," carried Cambridge culture wherever the English tongue was spoken.
Dame Hugolina's little foundation of six canons soon extended, until the house held thirty. In 1135 another canons' house was established, which served not only as a retreat for scholars, but as a hospital and travellers' hospice. The third foundation came in the next century, and now Cambridge University began to take definite shape. A church of the Franciscan Friars was used first for university purposes. The older and more learned friars were the professors, the novices and younger friars the undergraduates. Later, the Franciscans were succeeded by the Dominicans, and still later by the Austin Friars in the control of the nascent University. Then there began a movement to make the University independent of any monastic order, and during the fourteenth century the contest was as bitter as one could wish for. Early in the fifteenth century the University had won ground to the extent that it could act in defiance of the Bishop of Ely, and could, moreover, secure a Papal Bull in its favour.
THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS, ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
Simultaneously with this movement of the University towards independence of the monks, there had been the inevitable contests of all university towns between "gown's-men" and "town's-men." Cambridge had never been a city of any great commercial importance. But it had its "unlearned population" engaged in connection with the fisheries, farming, and the pastoral industry. Near by, the great Stourbridge Fair—one of the most important in England—brought every year a great concourse of people with little sympathy to spare for the University students, who, in turn, despised them (or affected to) right heartily, though probably among the younger students there was a lurking sympathy for the jollity of the fairs, a good impression of which one may get from a quaint old ballad of 1762:—
While gentlefolks strut in their silver and sattins,
We poor folks are tramping in straw hats and pattens;
Yet as merrily old English ballads can sing-o,
As they at their opperores outlandish ling-o;
Calling out, bravo, ankcoro, and caro,
Tho'f I will sing nothing but Bartlemew fair-o.
Here was, first of all, crowds against other crowds driving,
Like wind and tide meeting, each contrary striving;
Shrill fiddling, sharp fighting, and shouting and shrieking,
Fifes, trumpets, drums, bagpipes, and barrow girls squeaking,
Come my rare round and sound, here's choice of fine ware-o,
Though all was not sound sold at Bartlemew fair-o.
There was drolls, hornpipe dancing, and showing of postures,
With frying black-puddings; and op'ning of oysters;
With salt-boxes solos, and gallery folks squalling;
The tap-house guests roaring, and mouth-pieces bawling,
Pimps, pawn-brokers, strollers, fat landladies, sailors,
Bawds, bailiffs, jilts, jockies, thieves, tumblers, and taylors.
Here's Punch's whole play of the gun-powder plot, Sir,
With beasts all alive, and pease-porridge all hot, Sir;
Fine sausages fry'd, and the black on the wire,
The whole court of France, and nice pig at the fire.
Here's the up-and-downs; who'll take a seat in the chair-o?
Tho' there's more ups-and-downs than at Bartlemew fair-o.