[199] Willis and Clark.
[200] It was the gift of Malcolm “the Maiden” of Scotland. The monastery was much enlarged and enriched by him circa 1160. Dugdale dates the house to the middle of Stephen’s reign or perhaps as early as 1130. In the xiii c. Constantia wife to Earl Eustace granted to the nuns all the fisheries and water belonging to the town of Cambridge, and the convent at that time shared with the canons of S. John’s and the Merton scholars the fame of being the greatest landlords in the town. See i. pp. 16, 18 and 36 n., vi. p. 311 and ii. p. 109. On a stone by the south-eastern corner of the south transept in the church there is this inscription (A.D. 1261):
Moribus ornata
Facet hic bona Berta Rosata.
[201] Fuller.
[202] See iii. p. 165 n. Dyer points out that William Byngham is called “proctor and Master of God’s House,” but not founder: he considers that Hen. VI. was the founder, Byngham being its procurator as Doket was procurator of Queens’ and Somerset of King’s colleges. The facts recorded here and in chap. iii. appear to support this conclusion. At the same time Byngham in his letter to the king in 1439 distinctly claims to have built the house: “Goddeshous the which he hath made and edified in your towne of Cambridge.” In the case of every Cambridge college the founder is the man who endows it. A college may owe its existence (as certainly in Byngham’s case) to the energies of some one else, but its founder remains the man by whom it was built and endowed. A God’s House at Ewelme in Oxfordshire was founded about the same time by William de la Pole and Alice his wife, Earl and Countess of Suffolk. “It is still in being,” writes Tanner, “but the Mastership is annexed to the King’s professor of Physic in the university of Oxford.” A God’s house was an almshouse for some object of mercy. Thirteen poor men were maintained at Ewelme.
[203] Founder of Emmanuel College. Fuller says he was “a serious student in” and benefactor of this college.
[204] Refer to iv. p. 217 n.
[205] p. 153, iii. p. 165 n.
[206] She diverted some of her gifts to Henry VII.’s chapel at Westminster, with the king’s consent, in favour of S. John’s College Cambridge.
[207] “Fryvelous things, that were lytell to be regarded, she wold let pass by, but the other that were of weyght and substance, wherein she might proufyte, she wolde not let for any payne or labour, to take upon hande. All Englonde for her dethe had cause of wepynge ... the students of both the unyversytees, to whom she was as a moder; all the learned men of Englonde, to whom she was a veray patroness ... all the noblemen and women to whom she was a myrroure and exampler of honoure; all the comyn people of this realme, for whom she was in their cause a comyn medyatryce, and toke right grete displeasure for them.”