Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

by John William Edward Conybeare

The river is here spanned by the latest of the College bridges, a single arch of stone high in air, carrying a pathway vaulted over with stone and lighted on either side by grated windows, after the fashion of the "Bridge of Sighs" at Venice. It was built about 1830 to form a communication between the older part of the College on the eastern side of the river and the recently erected New Court on the western, while giving no opportunity for illicit leaving of the College. As has been already stated, students, while bound to be inside the College gates all night, are not bound to keep to their rooms, but may wander about the Courts at any hour.

St. John's Bridge.

With St. John's the Collegiate buildings cease and are succeeded by the last remaining "Hithes," or quays, used for commercial traffic, which of old lined the banks for the whole length of Cambridge. We read of Corn Hithe, Pease Hithe, Flax Hithe, Garlic Hithe and others. For the river was to old Cambridge all and more than all that the railways are now, the great artery of traffic, by which goods were far more easily and cheaply conveyed than along the roads of the period, which were always rough and often mere "Sloughs of Despond." Most especially was this the case with fuel, so that in the seventeenth century it was a familiar local saying that "here water kindleth fire." These ancient hithes, like the street-ways leading to them, have been almost all absorbed by the various College precincts. The last, as we have said, are to be seen yet, still in use, with barges (still laden chiefly with firewood) lying at them, below St. John's, by the side of the "Great Bridge," that famous passage of the river to which Cambridge owes both its name and its very existence. Opposite the lowest of them there is one more riverside College, Magdalene, an old monastic educational establishment turned to its present purpose at the time of the Reformation by Lord Thomas Audley of Saffron Walden, a courtier of King Henry the Eighth, who had obtained a grant of it from that rapacious monarch.

Our Cam byway here ends; for the river here passes out of the populated area of Cambridge. It is noteworthy that this area abuts on its banks to the same extent and no more than it did seven hundred years ago. The King's Ditch, which then bounded it, left the stream at the King's Mill, where our voyage started, and rejoined it just opposite Magdalene, where that voyage closes. It is well worth while, however, to retrace our course, for we shall find fresh loveliness in the reverse views of the exquisite scenery through which we have passed; and may note the many disused archways in the College walls, which tell how, scarcely a generation ago, this unique gem of English landscape was actually defiled by being used as a shamelessly open sewer.

CHAPTER III

Queens' College, Erasmus, Cloisters, Carmelites, Chapel.—Old Mill Street.—King's College, Henry the Sixth, King's and Eton, Henry's "Will."—King's College Chapel, Wordsworth, Milton, Windows, Rosa Solis, Screen, Stalls, Vaulting, Side-Chapels, View from Roof.

When we disembark once more at Silver Street Bridge, we find ourselves standing beneath the sombre old red-brick walls of Queens', indented just above us by a small projecting turret which we should not leave without notice, for it bears the name and, by tradition, was assigned to the use of the famous Erasmus during the months he spent in Cambridge. This great light of the Reformation, or, more properly speaking, of the intellectual revival which led up to it, was brought here by the influence of the saintly chancellor, Sir Thomas More, whose great wish was to broaden the University outlook by the introduction of the Classical spirit. Hitherto its curriculum had been almost exclusively confined to Aristotelian philosophy, adapted to dogmatic Christianity by the great mediæval Schoolmen, especially St. Thomas Aquinas. Erasmus brought in the knowledge of Greek, which he had acquired from the learned exiles whom the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 had driven to the west. Unhappily he, in no small degree, depreciated this great gift, by clogging it with his own self-opinionated pronunciation of the language, instead of taking it as actually spoken. Strange to say, this "Erasmian" barbarism shortly became a badge of Protestantism (though Erasmus himself lived and died a Catholic). It was thus enforced during the reign of Edward the Sixth, forbidden in that of Mary, and enforced again under Elizabeth. To this day it remains with us, and cuts us off from the living tongue of Hellas.

To enter Queens' it is advisable to cross the iron bridge, and recross the river by Sir Isaac Newton's wooden structure. Passing through the low doorway into which it leads we find ourselves in the most picturesque of all College Courts, bounded by the Hall in face of us, and on the other three sides by a low range of ancient red-brick cloisters. These once belonged to the Carmelite nuns, who removed to this site when flooded out of their original quarters at Newnham. In 1538 they sold their House to the College, just in time to escape its confiscation, at the suppression of the monasteries, by Henry the Eighth, who, as it was, required the purchase-money to be paid over to him. Having obtained the property Queens' at once built over the northern cloisters the beautiful gallery which serves as the drawing-room of the President's Lodge—(it has been stated that the Head of a College is, in Cambridge, always called the "Master," except here, where he is "President," and at King's where he is "Provost"). The gallery, which is a wooden construction overhanging the Cloister, is eighty feet long by twelve in width, with three large oriels looking into the Court. Those on the other side open into the President's garden, a charming enclosure abutting upon the river. Both gallery and garden are, of course, strictly private. Opposite the gallery, at the south-east corner of the cloisters, is a small Court of Elizabethan date, known as "Pump Court," and now-a-days as "Erasmus Court"; while from the north-east corner a tortuous little passage brings us into a more modern Court, shaded by a fine walnut-tree (whence its name of "Walnut Tree Court"). Here stands the New Chapel, the best bit of modern work in all Cambridge, erected in 1895 from the designs of Messrs. Bodley and Garner. The beautiful proportions and effective decoration of the interior are specially noteworthy.