CHAPTER VII
Sidney Sussex College, Oliver Cromwell, Fellow Commoners.—Holy Trinity, Simeon, Henry Martyn.—Christ's College, "God's House," Lady Margaret, Flogging of Students, Bathing forbidden, Milton, Lycidas, Gardens, Paley, Darwin.—Great St. Andrew's, Bishop Perry.—Emmanuel College, Harvard, Sancroft, Chapel, Ponds.—University Museums.—Downing College.—Coe Fen.—First Mile Stone.—Barnwell, Priory, Abbey Church.—Lepers Chapel, Stourbridge Fair, Vanity Fair.
Following Jesus Lane from the "Chimney" gate townwards, we once more strike into the Via Devana, here called Sidney Street, from the College filling the angle between the two roads. It is not a pretentious institution, having always been amongst the smallest colleges. But it has nurtured one man of colossal individuality, the great Protector, Oliver Cromwell. For Sidney Sussex College (as its full name runs, from its foundress, Lady Frances Sidney,[104] Countess of Sussex) was instituted (in 1596) for the very purpose of fostering such alumni. The earliest statutes of the College decree that its members shall be taught, before all else, to "detest and abhor Popery." Besides Cromwell, his right-hand man, Edward Montagu, Earl of Manchester, who distinguished himself when in authority at Cambridge during the Civil War by ejecting from their parishes so many recusant High Church parsons and filling their places with Puritan divines, was also a Sidney man. Both he and Cromwell were "Fellow Commoners," a name given to privileged undergraduates who, on payment of extra fees, were permitted to rank with the Fellows and to dine at the High Table. They also wore a more ornate gown than the ordinary undergraduate. It is only of late years that this plutocratic arrangement has been discontinued in the University. The site of Sidney was formerly that of the Franciscan Convent, with its splendid church, considered the finest in Cambridge. At the dissolution of the convent the University tried to secure this from King Henry the Eighth as the University Church. But the King's price was too high, the negotiations fell through, and the glorious building was remorselessly and utterly demolished.
Passing by Sidney, which has nothing to detain us, we shortly note a church on our right hand. This is Holy Trinity, the special home of the Evangelical movement in Cambridge. In the early days of that movement (and of the nineteenth century) the pulpit here was occupied by its great leader, Charles Simeon, Fellow of King's College, who through much persecution, through evil report and good report, championed the cause till he saw it triumphant. And a series of like-minded men has followed him.[105] The grey stone building just beside the church is the Henry Martyn Hall, built in memory of that great Evangelical pioneer and missionary. It is used for meetings connected with the movement.
Leaving Holy Trinity to our right, a turn in the street brings us face to face with the grey stone front of Christ's College, one of the most ideal in Cambridge. We owe it, like St. John's, to the bounty of the Lady Margaret Tudor, King Henry the Seventh's mother, whose beautiful character has already been dwelt upon in our last chapter. And she bestowed it upon us under the same inspiration as in the case of St. John's, that of her friend and confessor, Bishop Fisher, and, in doing so, adopted the same plan of transforming and expanding an earlier Foundation. This was a very small "School of Grammar," which never attained to the dignity of collegiate rank, founded in 1430 by John Bingham, parson of St. John Zachary, just before he and his Church were swept away to make room for King's College. It was then removed to this site, just outside the "Barnwell Gate" of Cambridge, where it maintained a microscopic existence for the rest of that century.
Christ's College Chapel.
At the beginning of the next it had the good fortune to be taken up by Lady Margaret, who increased the number of residents maintained in it from five to sixty, and changed the name from "God's House" to "Christ's College." At the same time she planned out the principal court, as it now exists. Unlike St. John's, it was at least partly completed before her death, for the historian Fuller tells a pretty story of how she here beheld from a window the dean administering to one of the scholars the corporal chastisement which was at that day the recognised means of discipline,[106] and called out to him "Lente! Lente!" ("Gently! gently!") The College is appropriately full of her memory: her portrait adorns the Hall; on the front of the Gate Tower stands her statue, between the Plantagenet Rose and the Tudor Portcullis, and beneath it are carved her armorial bearings, as at St. John's, with the addition of the crest, a demi-eagle of gold rising out of a crown.[107] On either side are the three feathers of the Prince of Wales. These same arms, emblazoned, are over the inner gateway that leads into the Gardens, with her own beautiful motto, "Souvent me souvient" ("Oft I bethink me"). And in the Library under a glass shade is a reproduction of the upper part of her person, with the hands folded in prayer, from her monument in Westminster Abbey.