The first important period of building in Cambridge was the fourteenth century. Seven colleges were founded and provided with decent accommodation between 1324 and 1352. In the next century four more colleges were set up. While in the sixteenth century, from 1505 to 1595, another seven colleges were added to the University. Two other colleges have since arisen in Cambridge—Downing, built in 1805; and Selwyn, set up originally as a hostel in 1882, but now recognized as a "House" in all but the official sense of that expression. There are also two large and important colleges which are devoted to the higher education of women. Girton College, founded in 1867, is the oldest institution of its kind. Newnham College dates from 1871. That Cambridge should have been the first university in England to admit women to her studies and to her examinations is no more than fitting, when it is remembered that some six of her principal colleges were founded or endowed by great ladies. Members of Clare, Pembroke, Queens', Christ's, St. John's, and Sidney Sussex Colleges may, for this reason, very properly feel a certain debt to the sex.
Still more remarkable is the extent of royal benefaction in Cambridge. In Oxford only one College, Queen's, owes its existence directly to the patronage of royalty. At Cambridge there are five houses which can lay claim to the style of a royal foundation: King's, Trinity, Queens', Christ's, St. John's; and of these the first two were founded and endowed by reigning sovereigns. King's Hall—afterwards merged in Trinity—was planned by Edward II and endowed by Edward III; King's College was founded by Henry VI; and Trinity by Henry VIII, who further endowed several professorships in the University; Queen Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Woodville, Queen to Edward IV, are co-founders of Queens'; Lady Margaret Tudor was the foundress of Christ's and St. John's Colleges. But the patronage of England's monarchs did not end with the sixteenth century. Mary was a benefactor to Trinity. Queen Elizabeth attached Westminster School to that college by certain scholarships, and sent timber to and completed the chapel there. She also sent building material to Corpus Christi College. James I was always coming to Cambridge; but, like most of the Stuarts, did little for the University, unless a copy of his literary "works" be considered a benefaction. George I purchased the library of Bishop Moore of Ely and gave it to the University. He also founded the regius professorship of Modern History there; while George IV contributed to the building of what is now called the New Court at Trinity College. His brother, the Duke of Gloucester, was the first member of an English Royal family to be educated within the precincts of a university. He was of Trinity, where two portraits of him now hang. The House of Hanover has ever shown favour to Cambridge. Prince Albert, Consort to Queen Victoria, was its Chancellor, and his late Majesty King Edward VII, having himself spent a year at each of the Universities, sent his elder son, the late lamented Duke of Clarence, to Cambridge, where he was entered at Trinity and by his father's special command "kept" in college, attended the usual lectures, and lived the ordinary life of an undergraduate nobleman. The latest member of the Royal family to enter the University is Prince Leopold of Battenberg, whose period of residence at Magdalene College has only recently terminated.
It seems never easy to explain to people unacquainted with English University life, the precise difference between the University and the College. The University, as a corporation teaching and granting degrees, is older than any college, and has its own endowments. Now, however, that the colleges have come and have established a social and domestic tone which could not exist without them, the University shows itself conscious of their value in a great many ways. The Vice-chancellor is elected from the number of Heads of Houses; the Proctors are nominated by each college in rotation, and the University expects and has now the power to exact contributions from each college towards the necessary expenses of the whole academy. Within the colleges themselves there are three grades of inmate: the Fellow, the Scholar, and the Pensioner. The first must be of Bachelor standing at the time of his election, and must shortly afterwards proceed to a higher degree. He draws his stipend from the endowments of the college. From this class are drawn the college Tutors, Lecturers, and Deans, while as many more "dons" devote their time to private study. The scholars on the foundation draw their stipends from the endowments of the college in accordance with the statutes or the terms of some special benefaction; while the term Pensioner comprises all those undergraduates who pay for everything they receive at college.
But the history of the English Universities must be considered as that of communities into whose lives colleges were introduced for a social rather than a scholastic purpose. Cambridge grew into a seat of learning during the latter half of the twelfth century, but the first College, Peterhouse, was not founded till 1284. Till then, the scholars who resorted to the place lodged where they could in the town. This was the practice at every university in Europe; and, even to-day, the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin afford the only exceptions to it.
THE KITCHEN WALL, PETERHOUSE
Housed in dwellings mean enough to the eye and as certainly ungracious to the nose, the young scholars of those early days lived a life of what we should now call intolerable discomfort. Coarse vesture, scanty food, long hours in the "common schools", such were the dominant features in the student life of every youth who sought to acquire the book learning of his day. Nor did the foundation of the first few colleges sensibly alter these unhappy conditions. The aim of their founders was the removal by benefaction of some of the worst hardships to which the young scholar was then subjected. Thus provision was made for the bare necessaries of life—lodging, food, and raiment. Poverty was, of course, the first statutory qualification for membership. That the prosecution of certain studies was enjoined upon the beneficiaries, testifies less to a desire to further this or that branch of knowledge than to a not unnatural anxiety lest these young men should fall into idleness or other evil habits.
What was the town and what the university into which this new element of scholastic life now entered? Cambridge had a navigable river pouring its waters into the North Sea at the natural port of Lynn. Moreover, the town marked the junction of two Roman roads. It was a fertile spot; and its situation had struck the Conqueror as one of strategic importance. Here, therefore, he built a castle, the mound of which remains to this day. The structure itself was dismantled gradually during the fifteenth century. Some of the stone was used for the building of King's Hall, and some for King's College. "Hereby", writes Fuller in 1655, "that stately structure, anciently the ornament of Cambridge, is at this day reduced next to nothing." But during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries men might still look at that Norman keep and take heart of grace. Under its shadow had grown up a prosperous market town. On the one hand it was the greatest Fish Mart, on the other a town noted for one of the most important Fairs in the country. This Fair was held in a field hard by the village of Barnwell, that is to say, within two miles of the University town itself; it began on the feast of St. Bartholomew and lasted until the fourteenth day after the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (Aug. 24—Sept. 14). It still survives as the principal pleasure show and Horse Fair of the shire.
With these advantages Cambridge, as a town, rose rapidly in importance. The Jews appeared in 1106; and during that and the succeeding century most of the religious orders had established themselves in the place. The Templars were the first to appear. They built their church sometime between 1120 and 1140. It is the earliest of the four round churches which have come down to us.