The legends which relate that Bede came to study at Cambridge in 682, that Alcuin was one of its first doctors in theology, and that Alfred of Beverley, “the Treasurer,” studied there, legends already known in the time of Chaucer, symbolise the spiritual relationship between the School of York and Cambridge. Those large elements which had operated at York—that combination of the shaping power of Rome with the insular force of Angle, Celt, and Saxon—had in them the promise of the English genius and the English character; and one seems to trace the same wide tradition, the operation of similarly large elements, in the future seat of learning at Cambridge. The university of Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton, of Fox, Fisher, and Langton, of Ascham, Bacon, Newton, Whewell, and Lightfoot, may well be regarded as the spiritual descendant of the School which first held the torch of English learning never again to be entirely extinguished in this country.[1]
Early legends of the origin of Cambridge.
Further down, in the east of England, there in fact existed a still earlier school than the schools at York, established in 635 by Siegebert king of East Anglia. The site of this school was very probably Seaham or Dunwich; but legend connects it with Cambridge, and the memory of King Siegebert is kept green in the annual commemorations of the university.[2] A legend referring to the same period connects Cambridge with Canterbury. According to this, Ethelbert of Kent by the command of Gregory the Great assigned a residence at Cambridge for some learned men from “the village of Canterbury” (598-604).
Legend also relates that Edward the Elder founded the Cambridge schools
A.D. 910.
when he was repairing the ravages of the Danes in East Anglia, and gave to them a charter of incorporation.
The fact not only that the neighbourhood of Cambridge, like Canterbury and York, was the site of an early Anglo-Saxon school, but that Cambridge was itself a Roman station, gave rise in its turn to another legend of the origin of the university. According to this it was founded by Cantaber the son-in-law of King Gurgentius and brother of Partholin the Spanish king of Ireland, who gave his name to it, a name, no doubt, formed from the Cantabri, the Spanish auxiliaries mentioned by Caesar. Lydgate’s panegyric of the university shows us that a tradition of its antiquity made up of both Roman and School of York elements received credence in the xiv century; nay, remembering that Cambridge had been a Roman town, men found no difficulty in supposing that Caesar had carried off a supply of Cambridge dons to the capital of the world.
