Here's Whittington's cat, and the tall dromedary,
The chaise without horses, and queen of Hungary;
Here's the merry-go-rounds, come, who rides, come, who rides, Sir?
Wine, beer, ale, and cakes, fine eating besides, Sir;
The fam'd learned dog that can tell all his letters,
And some men, as scholars, are not much his betters.
This world's a wide fair, where we ramble 'mong gay things;
Our passions, like children, are tempted by play-things;
By sound and by show, by trash and by trumpery,
The fal-lals of fashion and Frenchify'd frumpery.
What is life but a droll, rather wretched than rare-o?
And thus ends the ballad of Bartlemew fair-o.
It is on record that Edward I. in 1254 (whilst still Prince of Wales) visited the town of Cambridge, and acted as arbitrator in quarrels between the townsmen and the students. He decided that thirteen scholars and thirteen burgesses of the town should be chosen to represent both interests on a Board of Control. His son, Edward II., continued his father's interest in Cambridge, and maintained, at his own expense, a group of scholars there. In 1257 Hugh de Balsham, the tenth bishop of the diocese, placed and endowed at St. John's Hospital a group of secular students known as "Ely students." At this time also Walter de Merton, Chancellor of England, assigned his manor of Malden, Surrey, as endowment for "poor scholars in the schools of Cambridge, who were to live according to his directions." In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in this as at other universities, scholars lived each at his own charge. Sometimes three or four clubbed together, but each had his own "founder and benefactor." Some scholars elected their own principal, and paid a fixed rate for board and lodging, and this hostel system developed into the collegiate system which distinguishes English universities from all others. Now Cambridge has seventeen of these colleges.
Among the architectural features of special interest at Cambridge is a chapel built by Matthew Wren, the uncle of Sir Christopher Wren. It is a fine specimen of seventeenth-century work. The various college buildings date from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. The dates are: Michaelhouse 1324, Clare 1338, Peterhouse 1284, King's Hall 1337, Pembroke 1347, Gonville Hall 1348, Trinity Hall 1356, Corpus Christi 1382, King's College 1441, Queens' 1448, St. Catharine's 1473, Jesus 1495, Christ's 1505, St. John's 1509, Magdalene 1542, Trinity 1546, Caius 1557, Emmanuel 1584, Sidney Sussex 1595. Modern colleges are Downing College, Girton College, and Newnham College. Girton College occupies Girton Manor on the Huntingdon Road, an eleventh-century house built by Picot the Norman Sheriff of Cambridge. Earlier it had been the site of a Roman and Anglo-Saxon burial-ground. The college was founded by Madame Bodichon and Miss Emily Davies. Newnham College began in a hired house with five students in 1871. Miss Anne J. Clough was the founder. The present Newnham Hall is composed of several buildings acquired since.
For the historical student a brief roll of some of Cambridge's great men would include: Green, Lyly, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Nash, Fletcher, Sterne, Thackeray, Bacon, Milton, Dryden, Cranmer, the two great Cecils, Walsingham, Cromwell, Walpole, Chesterfield, Pitt, Wilberforce, Castlereagh, Palmerston, Herrick, Hutchinson, Marvell, Jeremy Taylor, Ascham, Erasmus, Spenser, Wren, Hook, Evelyn, More, Newton, and Darwin.
Meanwhile Oxford waits us, with no impatience, secure in her calm sense of dignity. There is a story of an Irishman with a great idea of his own dignity. But he was careless, he professed, as to the place at table assigned to him. "Wherever I am seated," he said, "that is the head of the table." Oxford is sometimes credited with having a feeling of rivalry for Cambridge. A mimic war of wits has been waged over the fancied rivalry, of which one epigram that sticks in my memory is, that "Cambridge breeds philosophers and Oxford burns them" (I have not the exact words, perhaps, but that is the sentiment). In truth, though, Oxford has no sense of rivalry. She knows herself to be peerless, incomparable, the centre of the educational aspiration, not only of England but of the world. In her atmosphere of drowsy ritual she broods serene as Buddha. And she does not burn philosophers nowadays, however heretical may seem to be their ideas. Indeed the Oxford of to-day shelters beneath its imperturbable calm, behind its moss-grown walls, all the "latest fashions" in beliefs.
As to the first beginnings of Oxford—the town not the University has just been celebrating its millenary—Anthony à Wood records this tale of its first origin: "When Fredeswyde had bin soe long absent from hence, she came to Binsey (triumphing with her virginity) into the city mounted on a milk-white ox betokening Innocency, and as she rode along the streets she would forsooth be still speaking to her ox, 'Ox, forth'—or (as it is related) 'bos perge,' that is 'Ox, goe on,' or 'Ox, go forth'—and hence they indiscreetly say that our city was from thence called Oxforth or Oxford." It is fairly certain that Didau and the daughter Fredeswide established a nunnery and built a church there in the eighth century. The town was rebuilt by Ethelred in the eleventh century.
Before the Norman Conquest Oxford was a notable city, often visited by the reigning kings, sometimes the meeting-place of Parliaments. This prominence brought with it many troubles. It was often sacked and in part burned. These incidents despite, it grew to be a prosperous medieval walled city. A Benedictine scholastic house on the site of Worcester College was the beginning of the University.
Early in the thirteenth century William of Durham, with a company of others, shook from off their English shoes the dust of Paris University after a "town and gown row" there, and settled at Oxford, and then the University began to take shape. He gave money to the University to found a "Hall" for students. Many other halls were founded (half of the Oxford Inns are, or were, perversion of old "Halls"). William of Wykeham gave a code of rubrics which became a legacy to the whole University. He built a college for the exclusive use of scholars of the foundation. He built also bell-tower, cloisters, kitchen, brewery, and bakehouse for "New" College. New College was the first home for scholars at Oxford. Lincoln College was next founded, after that All Souls, then Magdalen. Duke Humphrey of Gloucester gave the nucleus of the famous Bodleian library to the Benedictine monks. Christ Church was built with the revenues of a suppressed monastery.
So every step in English history for ten centuries can be remembered by the stones of Oxford. That fine library building of All Souls, which holds as one of its treasures Wren's original plans for St. Paul's Cathedral, was built out of sugar money from the West Indies, being the gift of a great sugar planter in the early days of the making of the Empire.