Peterhouse, from St. Mary's Churchyard.
From the Restoration onwards the Colleges of Cambridge were for two hundred years, till the middle of the nineteenth century, divisible in numerical strength between two strongly marked classes. At the top came the two great Societies of Trinity and St. John's; of which the former gradually drew ahead, and came to have some four hundred students to St. John's two hundred. The remaining fifteen Foundations were classed together as the "Small Colleges"; the largest of them being well under a hundred strong, and the smallest (amongst them Pembroke) small indeed. But with the great extension of the University curriculum, by the addition of a host of literary and scientific subjects to the Mathematics which had previously been the sole avenue to a Degree, there has come as marked an increase in the number of students, and the old College classification has broken down. Trinity, indeed, remains at the top, even more than ever, having almost doubled its overwhelming numbers; but St. John's has been caught up and overpassed by several of the once "small" Colleges, amongst them by Pembroke. And yet, in the year 1858, Pembroke had only one solitary freshman; and he migrated to Caius, in dread, as the tale then ran, of being divided into sections by the authorities, to satisfy the demands of the Mathematical, Classical, and Philosophical lecturers provided by the College.
The result is that Pembroke, even beyond most Colleges, is a medley of architectural additions. When Gray migrated to it, and for a century thereafter, the modest range of low white stone which still contains the main entrance, formed the whole frontage; the College buildings being a small quadrangle about half the size of the present First Court. It was, in fact (except for a new Chapel, built by Wren in 1663, and still in use), no larger than it was at its first foundation, in 1346, by Mary, widow of Amory de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, and daughter of Guy, Count of Chatillon and St. Paul. Her widowhood was brought about, according to tradition, by her husband being accidentally slain, before her eyes, on their very wedding day, at the tournament held to celebrate the nuptials. Modern criticism disputes this tragic tale, but it was believed in Gray's day, and he has referred, in his well-known list of the Founders of Cambridge Colleges, to
"sad Chatillon, on her bridal morn
Who wept her bleeding love."
On her widowhood, however occasioned, she retired from the world, and took the veil at Denny Abbey, between Cambridge and Ely. The College was founded by her in her husband's memory, and has ever since displayed her armorial bearings, the coats of Valence and St. Paul dimidiated.
At the time of the Civil War, the "Querela Cantabrigiensis" (a contemporary publication, written in the Royalist interest), in denouncing the misdeeds of the Parliamentary forces, complains bitterly that "fourscore ragged soldiers, who had been lowzing before Crowland nigh a fortnight, were turned loose into Pembroke Hall, being one of the least Halls of the University, to kennel there, and charged by their officers to shift for themselves, who, without more ado, broke open the Fellows' and Scholars' chambers, and took their beds from under them."
A century before this we find Bishop Ridley, the famous Protestant martyr, dwelling on this College (of which he had been Master) in his touching farewell to Cambridge, composed shortly before his execution:
"Farewell, Pembroke Hall, of late my own College, my care and my charge ... mine own dear College! In thy orchard—(the walls, butts,[8] and trees, if they could speak, would bear me witness)—I learnt without book almost all Paul's Epistles; yea, and I ween all the Canonical Epistles also, save only the Apocalypse—of which study, although in time a great part did depart from me, yet the sweet smell thereof I trust I shall carry with me into Heaven; for the profit thereof I think I have felt in all my lifetime ever after. And, I ween, of late there was that did the like. The Lord grant that this zeal and love toward that part of God's Word, which is a key and true commentary to all the Holy Scripture, may ever abide in that College so long as the world shall endure."