Behind the Round Church rise the sumptuous rooms of the "Union[89] Society," a University club primarily instituted as an association for the cultivation of oratory amongst undergraduates, which has now added to its central debating hall a library, dining-room, smoking-room, and the other adjuncts of a first-class club. Here, on each Tuesday evening during Term, debates are held, usually on current political or social situations, theological polemics being strictly barred. When the Society was first instituted, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, current politics were also prohibited (by the University authorities), and could only be discussed under a decent veil of reference to antiquity. But the comparative merits of the causes championed by Cæsar and Pompey, or by the Cavaliers and Roundheads, were so easily made to apply to the burning questions of the day, that the prohibition speedily become obsolete. Many a well-known Parliamentary orator has won his first fame on the benches of the Union, Lord Macaulay being a notable example. His perfervid outpourings here swept away all opposition, and his friend and contemporary, Mackworth Praed, records how the issue of any debate is irrevocably decided—
"When the Favourite comes,
With his trumpets and drums,
And his arms, and his metaphors, crossed."
Leaving the Round Church behind us, and proceeding westwards, we pass the Church of St. Clement, with its inscription Deum cole ("Worship God"), which has nothing to detain us, and shortly arrive at "the Great Bridge,"[90] that famous passage of the river to which the town owes its name and its very existence. It can never have been an imposing structure, in spite of its high-sounding title, and is now represented by an exceedingly commonplace iron span. But, as the only passage of the Cam approachable by an army, in fore-drainage days, for many a long mile, it was of old a strategic point of first-class importance, and more than once played a notable part in English history. Its possession by the anti-monarchical forces shattered the last efforts both of King John and of Charles the First, and brought about, as we shall see, the speedy ruin and death of the former.
To the North of the Bridge, and on the Eastern bank of the River, is the last of the many "Hithes" (or Quays), of which we read so much in connection with old Cambridge, remaining in actual use for traffic. Here we may to this day see exemplified the ancient local proverb, "Here water kindleth fire;" for barges loaded with fire-wood and turf from the fens still discharge their cargoes at this spot.
The old name of the Great Bridge has, for at least a century,[91] been commonly superseded by the appellation of "Magdalene Bridge," which provokes singularly humiliating comparisons with the beautiful structure bearing that name at Oxford. In both cases it is derived from the adjoining College of St. Mary Magdalene (spelt, by a mere freak, at Oxford without the final e). Our College, however, is of a sadly lower grade than that at Oxford, with its ideal tower, and its beautiful chapel, and its grey cloisters, and its green "Walks" beside the Cherwell. Here we have but little beauty, and no very great historical interest. The College was first founded, in the middle of the fifteenth century, for the benefit of Benedictine students. It belonged to the great Abbey of Crowland, in the Huntingdonshire Fenland (though Ely, and other neighbouring Benedictine Houses, took part in the building), and was called Buckingham College, from its first special benefactor, Henry Stafford, the second Duke of Buckingham. At the suppression of the Abbeys, this College, like all other monastic property, was confiscated by King Henry the Eighth, who granted it to his favourite, Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor. By him it was re-founded under its present name, and the nomination of the Master continues, even to this day, to be vested in his descendants. The existing representative of his family is Lord Braybrooke;[92] the name of whose seat, at Audley End, near Saffron Walden in Essex, records the fact that the whole property of the Benedictine Abbey of Walden was also granted to Lord Chancellor Audley. This Abbey had shared in the building of Buckingham College.
The beginnings of the re-founded College were on a very small scale, with only a single College servant (who acted as cook). Even forty years later this number, as Dr. Caius tells us, had only increased to three. To this day, indeed, Magdalene remains a small and select College. It consists of a single Court, representing Buckingham College, and the further side only of a second Court beyond. This isolated side, an admirable arcade, built at the close of the seventeenth century, contains the special treasure of the College, the collection of books bequeathed to it by the famous diarist, Samuel Pepys. This remains, as he himself arranged it, in twelve oaken "presses" with glass doors; the books on each shelf being brought to a common top level by appropriately graduated blocks of wood (shaped in imitation of their backs) inserted under each. The Library is on view on Tuesdays and Thursdays during Full Term, from 11.30 to 1 o'clock. Over the door is the Pepys motto: Mens cujusque is est quisque. ("Each man's mind is his very Self.")
Pepys had been a student here, and his portrait, by Lely, hangs in the Hall. So does that of another distinguished Magdalene man, Charles Kingsley, who was in residence 1839 to 1842. College tradition still records how he used surreptitiously to climb out of the College in the very early summer mornings, to be off on one of those piscatorial excursions which he so dearly loved. Another well-known writer connected with Magdalene is Mr. A. C. Benson, whose "College Window" was in the ground floor of the Pepysian Library range, on the North side, looking into the gardens of the Master's Lodge. In these gardens is a high terraced walk, beneath an old wall. Both terrace and wall are supposed to be connected with the ancient defences of Cambridge, but this is not proven.
St. Peter's Church.