[2] Siegebert, who had been baptized in France, on returning to his own country and becoming king of East Anglia “desiring to imitate those things which he had seen well ordered in France, at once set up a school in which youths could be instructed in letters, and was helped herein by bishop Felix who came to him from Kent, and who supplied him with paedagogues and masters after the custom of the men of Kent.“—Bede, cap. xviii.
[3] Cair-Graunt means the Castle on the Granta, and is exchanged in the A-S. Chronicle for Grantacaester.
[4] “Civitatulam quandam desolatam ... quae lingua anglorum Grantacaestir vocatur.“—Bede, cap. xix.
[5] The castle, ruinous by the middle of the xv c., was quarried to supply stone for King’s College and other university buildings in that and the next century. Edw. III. had quarried it for King’s Hall, and Hen. IV. granted more of the stone for King’s Hall chapel. Finally Mary gave the stone to Sir Robert Huddleston in 1557 for his new house at Sawston: “Hereby that stately structure, anciently the ornament of Cambridge, is at this day reduced next to nothing,” writes Fuller.
[6] A-S. Chron., Grantebrycge. Domesday, Grentebrige. Henry I.’s charter (1118) Grantebrugeshire and borough of Grantebruge. In Matilda’s grant of the earldom of Cambridge (before 1146) Cantebruggescire. Temp. John, Cantebrige, Cantebrig. Temp. Hen. III., Cantebr. (1218) Cantabr. (1231, 1261) Cantabrigiense. Cauntebrigg. and Cantebrigg. in the same deed relating to the Merton scholars (1269-70) Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 5832. f. 74. Hundred Rolls (1276-9) Cantebr. In a document of Hugh de Balsham’s, 1275, Cantabr. Barnwell Chartulary, circ. 1295, Cantebrige, Cantebrigesire, burgum Cantebrigiae. In the earliest college statutes (1324) Cantebrigia. In Chaucer, Cantebrigge, Cantebregge. In the first half of the next (xvth) century we have Cambrugge in a petition sent by King’s Hall to the Franciscans. Cf. also note infra p. 7, on the name of the river.
[7] The Roman Deva.
[8] Caius, writing in 1447, says that the town is divided into two parts by the Canta and the Rhee, called earlier le Ee; and by Spenser the Cle. We have Granta, Guant, and Cante: the r dropped out, and G was replaced by C in the name of both town and river (see supra). Cante does not seem to have been the name of a river at all. The river bank by Castle Mound is spoken of in the xiv c. as “the common bank called Cante“: one arm at least of the Cambridge river was known simply as “the water” [Prof. Skeat has pointed out that Ee is the xii, xiii, and xiv c. form of the A-S. éa, cognate with aqua] and for centuries there would appear to have been no need for any other name. In Henry of Huntingdon’s Chronicle (1130) the river is called the Grenta; but Lydgate writes
And of this noble vniuersitie
Sett on this ryver which is called Cante.
In the same decade Spenser knows only the Guant (Faery Queene, Book iv, Canto xi. 1590) and Camden for the first time tells us that it was called both Granta and Cam (alii Grantam, Camum alii. 1586) the name used as we have seen by Milton. If there was no river Cante à fortiori there was no river Cam; for the m in the name of the town is only another change in the original first syllable of Cambridge. See footnote, p. 6.
[9] Trumpington is 2 miles S., Grantchester 2 miles S.S.W. of the town.