Otherwise the College has little to show us; and, instead of seeking it, we shall do better if we turn westwards through the specially beautiful iron gate which leads us into Clare College. The coat of arms beneath which we pass as we enter has its tale to tell concerning the foundation of the College. They are those of the noble lady who, in 1338, thus commemorated her widowhood, an example followed, as we have seen, in the next decade, by Marie de Valence at Pembroke. But Lady Elizabeth, daughter of Gilbert de Clare (the "Red Earl" mentioned in Marmion), had gone through no fewer than three of these lamentable experiences. She therefore not only charged her College Shield with the golden chevronels of Clare impaled with the golden cross of De Burgh (her latest husband), but surrounded the whole with a sable bordure besprinkled with golden heraldic tears, bearing perennial witness to her repeated sorrows. Hence it comes that the Clare "colours" are to this day black and gold.
Few College edifices convey such a sense of unity as these of Clare. "Their uniform and harmonious character gives them, at first sight, the appearance of having been built from one design, and carried out at one time."[23] As a matter of fact, however, the existing buildings are of no fewer than five separate dates, each separated by decades, and extending altogether over nearly a century and a half (1638-1768); while of the original fourteenth century structure no trace whatever is left. The eastern and northern sides of the Court are the earliest, built between 1638 and 1643, when the work was stopped, five years after its commencement, by the outbreak of the Civil War; while the stones and beams made ready for its continuance were commandeered by the Roundheads for the new works which they were then throwing up to strengthen the defences of Cambridge Castle. Not till 1669 did the College finances so far recover from this blow as to permit the resumption of the building. The western side was then built, followed by the northern (1683-93), while the Chapel was not added till 1768. But the result of all this patchwork is an exquisite little gem of a Court, its balustraded walls overshadowed by the towering pinnacles of King's College, and giving, as we have said, a wonderful sense of unity, which is partly owing to older work having been altered to harmonise with the newer.
The College treasury contains some most interesting and beautiful specimens of sixteenth-century plate. One tankard is known as the "Poison Cup," because, mounted in the cover, it has a conical fragment of crystal, such as was supposed, in the pharmacy of the day, to change colour if poison were poured into the vessel. This cup is of glass enclosed in exquisitely wrought filigree work. The thumb-piece is an angel with outspread wings. Another tankard is the "Serpentine Cup," the bowl being of that stone. This too is enclosed in most beautiful silver-gilt work, adorned with flowers and fruit and birds and arabesques. Yet another is the "Falcon Cup," a receptacle in the shape of that bird, originally intended, it would seem, for holding sweetmeats. All these were presented to the College by Dr. Butler, Court Physician to King James the First, of whom Fuller says that "he was better pleased with presents than money, and ever preferred rarities before riches."[24]
Passing through the court, we come to the beautiful bridge, already familiar to us from the river. Its balustraded parapet is surmounted by fourteen large balls of stone, thirteen of them whole, and one out of which a cantle of nearly a quarter of its bulk has, for some unknown reason and at some unknown date, been cut. A cheap laugh may thus be obtained by challenging a stranger to count these balls accurately; for the missing cantle, being turned towards the river, is quite invisible from the bridge itself. Another feature in connection with these balls is that one of them is visibly much newer than the rest (which, like the bridge, date from the middle of the seventeenth century). This is due to a not very far off feud between Clare and St. John's, when a piratical Johnian crew came up the river after dark and stormed the bridge. Before the enraged Clare men could open the iron gate under the College archway and pour out to the rescue, the enemy had begun throwing the balls into the water, where one sank so deep into the muddy bottom that it could never be recovered.
From the bridge we get a lovely view of the College "Backs." To the south the single slender arch of King's Bridge flings itself over the river in the graceful curve which is all its own; to the north we see the iron span of Garret Hostel Bridge, hiding from us the beauties of Trinity Bridge beyond. But, if there be no ripple upon the water, the three graceful arches of this invisible bridge are seen reflected upon the glassy surface with a specially charming effect. The whole view is amongst the world's loveliest, especially in the May term, when the Master's little garden to our right glows with bright colour, answered across the stream by that of the Fellows; when the water is alive with gay little craft, gigs, punts, and canoes; and when the "ambrosial dark" of the Avenue before us beckons us on to explore the delights of its umbrageous depths. It was planted in 1691, and is carried for 150 yards on a wide embankment, dense with shrubs and closed with jealously-spiked gates at either end, across what was once an island in the river (known as Butts Close), till it debouches on to the elm-shaded length of greensward described in our opening page, and named, in old maps of Cambridge, "King's College Back-sides." The whole does, in fact, belong to King's, but the many rights of way which traverse it make it practically an open park.
Not so long ago oaken railings (still to be seen in places) ran between it and the road, till a visit from Lord Kitchener (then Sirdar of Egypt, fresh from his Ethiopian victories) was made the occasion of a gigantic bonfire in the Market Place, to feed which the whole were torn up and carried away by gangs of enthusiastic undergraduates. A like fate befell the wooden palings and gates of the College gardens across the road, now replaced by iron, and altogether the damage done ran into hundreds of pounds; while the town police and the University proctors waited for each other to act until too late. There are three of these College gardens on end—King's, Clare, and Trinity; and rarely lovely they are, with their wide "smooth-shaven" lawns, broken into glades by clumps of ornamental trees. But each can only be entered under the ægis of a Fellow of its own respective College, and they are so carefully planted out from the road that scarcely even a glimpse can be gained of the delights within, "where no profaner eye may look."
Leaving these on our left we proceed along the northward-leading path till we reach the fine iron gate which bears the escutcheon of Cambridge's mightiest College, Trinity, a College more than twice as large as any other, numbering something like 700 residents, students and teachers together. Like London, which an Indian visitor once described as "not a city, but a herd of cities," Trinity may be described as a conjoined herd of colleges, for it was created by the amalgamation of no fewer than nine earlier institutions. Two of these, Michaelhouse[25] and King's Hall, were amongst the most noteworthy colleges in Cambridge. The former was founded by Henry de Stanton, Chancellor to King Edward the Second, in 1323, and was thus, next to Peterhouse, the oldest college in Cambridge. And King's Hall was but a few years younger, being founded by King Edward the Third in 1336. Indeed, it may claim to be actually the elder in embryonic existence, for Edward the Second, in 1317, was already maintaining scholars—"children of our Chapel" as his writ calls them—in Cambridge. And that these "children" (who were required to be at least fourteen years of age on coming into residence) were quartered hereabouts is evident from King's Hall having been built across the line of an ancient street running down to the river and known as "King's Childer Lane." The town agreed to the expropriation of this lane in consideration of one red rose annually to be paid by the College to the Corporation on Midsummer Day. The remaining seven foundations incorporated in Trinity College were hostels (institutions for lodging students, more or less organised in college fashion, but not recognised by the University as colleges). These were St. Catharine's Hostel, Physwick Hostel, Crutched Hostel, Gregory's Hostel, Tyled Hostel, Oving's Inn, and St. Gerard's or "Garret" Hostel; which last, as we have seen, is still kept in memory by the name of the public bridge crossing the river between Trinity and Clare.
