When we turn to consider the relation of these distinguished sons to the university which bred them, it is interesting to find how close this has always been. From the first makers of Cambridge to the last, from its earliest distinguished sons to its latest, the individual’s relation to the university has been a close one and the same names come down the centuries and create a homogeneity in Cambridge history which has certainly not received its due meed of recognition. A group of persons—of families—is already assembled in this remote eastern corner of England in the xiii and xiv centuries which contains the elements of our university history: Stantons, de Burghs, Walsinghams, Beauforts, Clares, Greys, Pembrokes are there—and Gaunt and Mortimer the roots of Lancaster and York. If we had looked in upon the town earlier still, in the xi and xii centuries, we should have found Picot—the ancestor of the Pigotts whose name is recorded in Abingdon Pigotts hard by—who succeeded to the honours of Hereward the Wake[418] and who founded the church dedicated to the Norman saint Giles; Peverel who brought the Austin canons to Cambridge, Clare, de Burgh, Fitz-Eustace (or Dunning) and, by the side of these companions of the Conqueror, the sons of the soil—the Frosts and Lightfoots. In the xiii century there were the Dunnings assisting the Merton scholars to establish themselves, Mortimer endowing the Carmelites, the Veres[419] establishing the Dominicans, de Burghs, Walsinghams, Walpoles, and Bassetts,[420] the Greys, and Manfields,[421] and “Cecil at the Castle”—all of whom appear in Edward I.’s Hundred Rolls.
The name of Clare figures on every page of the history of the Plantagenets. The first Gilbert de Clare had been employed to terrorise the East Anglians who held out against William; another Gilbert is at the head of the barons, his son is the guardian of Magna Charta, and his granddaughter founded Clare College. She also built the Greyfriars house at Walsingham in 1346, was, with her kinsmen the Monthermers a great benefactor to the first Augustinian priory founded a hundred years earlier at Stoke Clare[422] and found time
A.D. 1248.
to send timber from her estates towards the building of the king’s Hall, as Queen Elizabeth sent a similar gift just two hundred years afterwards to the king’s college of Trinity. The Clares had received 95 lordships in Suffolk, which formed “the honour of Clare,” and they gave their name to the county in Ireland. Through Ralph de Monthermer the founders of Clare and Pembroke were allied, for he was Elizabeth de Clare’s stepfather, and afterwards brother-in-law to Aymer de Valence (see Tables I, II).
A.D. 1198.
A.D. 1225.
We first hear of the de Burghs in 1198 when Thomas, brother to Hubert the king’s chamberlain, became guardian to a Bury ward. In 1225 a de Burgh was bishop of Ely, and a hundred years later John de Burgh the 4th earl of Connaught and 2nd earl of Ulster married with Elizabeth de Clare. Towards
A.D. 1385
the end of the xiv century another de Burgh, author of the “Pupilla oculi” was chancellor of the university, and it is he who purchased the land of S. Margaret’s hostel in 1368.
A.D. 1291.
The connexion of the Mortimers with Cambridge also dates from the xiii century: Guy de Mortimer figures in the Cambridge Hundred Rolls as the benefactor of the Carmelite friars, and sixty years later Thomas, son of Sir Constantine de Mortimer, ceded land for King’s Hall.