The library contains 20,000 volumes, and some very rare and valuable manuscripts. The building itself was for nearly a century the college chapel; but so much of the Puritan element was here, that the chapel proper was never consecrated. Little however, did this trouble the worshippers, but the contrary was the case. By-and-by the church was in the ascendant, and then, in 1677, a new chapel had been built from designs by the celebrated Wren, "built due east and west," and all the appliances came of a non-dissenting church, consecrated by Bishop, and from then till now in good established use.
Here were educated William Sancroft, the renowned Bishop of London at the time of building St. Paul's Cathedral, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1693; Sir William Temple, statesman and essayist, 1700; and Dr. Parr, 1825. This, with the next college to be described, was considered by Archbishop Laud, as a very dangerous institution, and he designated the two as nurseries of Puritanism.
That sister college—the sixteenth, Sidney Sussex—was built on the site of a monastery of Gray Friars. On the subjugation of their institution it was granted by Henry VIII. to Trinity College, of whom it was purchased by the executors of Frances, daughter of Sir William Sidney, and widow of Thomas Radcliffe, third Earl of Sussex; who, by will dated Dec. 6, 1588, bequeathed £5,000 and some other property to found this college, and the corner-stone was laid May 20, 1590. The building was completed in three years, and the college at once took a high rank and good standing. It will always be celebrated for its connection with Oliver Cromwell, who entered here as a student April 26, 1616, at the age of seventeen, and on the college books is the following record:—
Oliverus Cromwell Huntingdoniensis admissus ad commeatum siciorum Aprilis vicesimo sexto, tutore mag Ricardo Howlet.
An amusing interpolation in a different and later handwriting appears, and speaks of him as:—
Grandis impostor; carnifax perditissimus, etc.
His father dying the next year, and leaving no property, the son was obliged to leave college; but, as Bishop Burnett was pleased to say, "some Latin stuck to him." His room was one in which is an Oriel window, on Bridge Street. There is in the master's lodge a fine portrait of the great Protector, made near the close of his life, and it is said to be remarkably faithful to the original. The long coarse gray hair is parted in the middle and reaches venerably to the shoulders. The forehead is high, majestic, and bold, and has a deeply marked line between the eyes, which are gray, and suggesting the repose of a vast power. The complexion is high-colored, mottled, and the features are large and rugged like the nature of the man himself; but it has—now that the feverish dream of his eventful life has declined—come to appear to have, by new interpretations and as seen through new mediums, a calm, dignified, and, some would say, a benevolent look. It is enough for one college that for a year Cromwell was her foster-child.
And now, for centuries, founding at Cambridge ends. Puritanism has set the world astir. The church, reformed as she prided herself to be, had her hands full to look after the already educated ones, and so no more founding of colleges for a long time was to be done; and we bridge over the chasm of 121 years, till, in 1717, Sir George Downing qualifiedly devised several valuable estates for the founding of a college within the precincts of the University; and so this is the seventeenth, and the last in order.
He died in 1749. The sole inheritor of the property died in 1764, and left the estates to his lady; but the terms of Sir George's will being that if his heirs died without issue the property was to go to the founding of a college as named, the estate was claimed by the University; and after years of litigation the validity of the will was established, and the seal was affixed to the charter of the new college, Sept. 22, 1800.