SOCIAL LIFE
H
itherto we have confined ourselves to an outline of the College history on what may be called its official side. In what follows we deal briefly with some features of the life of the place.
The New Court
The original, and perhaps the chief, purpose of the College in the eyes of those who founded it was practically that it should form a training ground for the clergy. The statutes of King Henry VIII. distinctly lay down that theology is the goal to which philosophy and all other studies lead, and that none were to be elected Fellows who did not propose to study theology. The statutes of Elizabeth provided a certain elasticity by prescribing that those Fellows who did not enter priests' orders within six years should vacate their fellowships; but that two Fellows might be allowed, by the Master and a majority of the Senior Fellows, to devote themselves to the study of medicine. King Charles I. in 1635 allowed a like privilege to be granted from thenceforth to two Fellows who were to study law. These privileges were not always popular, and we occasionally find the clerical Fellows complaining that while the duties of teaching and catechising were laid on them, a man who had held one of the law or medical fellowships sometimes took orders late in life and then claimed presentation to a College benefice in virtue of his seniority as a Fellow, having in the meantime escaped the drudgery to which the Fellow in orders had been subject.
The emoluments of members of the Society in early times were very modest, and as prices rose became quite inadequate; the amounts being named in the College statutes were incapable of alteration, and indirect means were taken to provide relief. In Bishop Fisher's time it was considered that an endowment of £6 a year sufficed to found a fellowship, and £3 a year to found a scholarship. The statutable stipend of the Master was only £12 a year, though he had some other allowances, the total amount of which was equally trivial. James Pilkington, Master from 1559 to 1561, when he became Bishop of Durham, wrote to Lord Burghley on the subject of his successor, stating that whoever became Master must have some benefice besides to enable him to live. Richard Longworth, Master from 1564 to 1569, made a similar complaint, putting the weekly expenses of his office at £3. We accordingly find that many of the Masters held country benefices, prebends, or deaneries with their College office. Lord Keeper Williams, who gave to the College the advowsons of Soulderne in Oxfordshire, Freshwater in the Isle of Wight, and the sinecure rectories of St. Florence and Aberdaron in Wales, made it part of the conditions of his gift that the Master should always be entitled to take one of these livings if a vacancy occurred. Many of the Fellows also held benefices or curacies near Cambridge. In the eighteenth century the business of holding ecclesiastical preferment in plurality became almost a fine art; thus Sir Isaac Pennington, who was President of the College and Regius Professor of Physic, left to the College by his will a fund to provide the sum of £200 a year for the Master "if he be rector of Freshwater and not otherwise," a direct and curious incentive to holding in plurality. A Fellow was entitled to his commons, and, in addition, to allowances of 13s. 4d. under each of the three heads of "corn," "livery," and "stipend," or, as we may say, food, clothes, and pocket-money. The College officers received but small salaries, the most highly paid being the President and Senior Bursar, who each received £2.
An effort was made by the Statutes of the Realm to improve the condition of members of colleges. It seems to have been assumed that the rent of a college farm, like its statutes, could not be altered; but by an Act of Parliament passed in the eighteenth year of Elizabeth, known as Sir Thomas Smith's Act, it was enacted that from thenceforth one-third of the rents were to be paid in wheat and malt; the price of wheat for the purposes of the Act being assumed to be 6s. 8d. a quarter, and of malt 5s. a quarter. Thus if before the Act the rent of a farm was £6 a year, after it became law the tenant had to pay £4 in money, three-quarters of wheat, and four quarters of malt, these two latter items coming to £1 each. But the tenant now paid a rent varying according to the prices of the day—namely, the money rent plus the cash value of the wheat and malt according to the best prices of these commodities in Cambridge on the market-day preceding quarter-day. Thus as the prices of wheat and malt rose the College benefited. By the Act this variable one-third, or "corn-money," went to increase the allowance for commons. As time went on the amount of the corn-money was more than sufficient to pay for the commons, and a further modest allowance out of the surplus was made to all who participated in the College revenues, whether as Master, Fellow, scholar, or sizar, under the name of præter.