HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS
IN
CAMBRIDGE AND ELY

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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Ely Cathedral. Western Tower.

Highways and Byways
IN
Cambridge and Ely

BY THE
Rev. EDWARD CONYBEARE
AUTHOR OF
"HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGESHIRE," "RIDES AROUND CAMBRIDGE," ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
FREDERICK L. GRIGGS

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1910

Richard Clay and Sons, Limited.
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

PREFACE

The Highways of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely are usually regarded as unattractive compared with those of England in general. Nor is this criticism wholly unfair. The county does lack the features which most make for picturesque rural scenery. There are no high hills, little even of undulation, and, what is yet more fatal, a sad sparsity of timber. The Highways, then, seem to the traveller merely stretches of ground to be got over as speedily as may be, and he rejoices that their flatness lends itself so well to this end.

It is however far otherwise with the Byways. These abound with picturesque nooks and corners. In every village charming features are to be found,—thatched and timbered cottages, hedgerow elms, bright willow-shaded watercourses, old-time village greens, and, above all, old-time village churches, often noble, and never without artistic and historical interest of high order. Few counties better repay exploration than Cambridgeshire.

And if the Highways are devoid of attraction during their course through the country districts, they make up for it by the supreme beauty and interest of their passage through the towns. Cambridge itself is, as all know, amongst the loveliest and most interesting places in existence, with its world-famed colleges and its epoch-making history. And Ely stands in the very first rank amongst the glorious cathedrals of England.

To introduce my readers, then, to the unique interest of these two places, with special regard to the points mostly passed over in guide-books, has been my chief purpose in the following pages. And to those who may think that a disproportionate amount of my space has been allotted to these, I would apologise by reminding them that the vast majority of travellers perforce confine their visits to such special centres, and have no time for exploring country lanes. But those who can make the time will find it (as this book, I hope, will show them) time well spent, and their exploration no small treat.

I need scarcely add that on such well-worn themes originality is hardly possible, and that I have made use both of my own earlier writings on the subject, and of those of others, my debt to whom I gratefully acknowledge. Most especially am I bound to do so with regard to Messrs. Atkinson and Clark, whose monumental work "Cambridge Described" is a veritable mine of information, and to Professor and Mrs. Hughes for the help which I have found in their "County Geography of Cambridgeshire."

Edward Conybeare.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER IPAGE

Cambridge Greenery. — The Backs. — The Lawns. — Logan's Views. — Old Common Fields. — Old Cambridge. — Origin of Cambridge. — The Castle. — Camboritum. — Granta-ceaster. — Danes in Cambridge. — Cambridgeshire formed. — Battle of Ringmere. — Norman Conquest. — The Jewry. — Religious Houses. — Rise of University. — Town and Gown. — Proctors. — The Colleges. — Examinations. — College Life. — Cambridge and Oxford [1]

CHAPTER II

Entrance to Cambridge. — Railways. — Roman Catholic Church. — Street runlets, Hobson, Perne. — Fitzwilliam Museum. — Peterhouse, Chapel, Deer-park. — Little St. Mary's Church, Washington Arms. — Gray's window. — Pembroke College, Large and Small Colleges, "Querela Cantabrigiensis," Ridley's Farewell. — St. Botolph's Church. — The King's Ditch. — Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Guilds, St. Benet's Church, Firehooks, Corpus Library, Corpus Ghost. — St. Catherine's College. — King's Parade. — Pitt Press. — Newnham Bridge, Hermits. — The Backs River, College Bridges, Hithes [20]

CHAPTER III

Queens' College, Erasmus, Cloisters, Carmelites, Chapel. — Old Mill Street. — King's College, Henry VI, King's and Eton, Henry's "Will." — King's College Chapel, Wordsworth, Milton, Windows, Rosa Solis, Screens, Stalls, Vaulting, Side-Chapels, View from Roof [47]

CHAPTER IV

Spiked gates. — Old Kings. — University Library, Origin, Growth, Codex Bezæ. — Trinity Hall, Colours, Library. — Clare College, "Poison Cup," Court, Bridge, Avenue. — The Backs, Sirdar Bonfire, College Gardens. — Trinity College, Michaelhouse, King's Hall, Henry VIII, Boat-clubs, Avenue, College Livings, Bridge, Library, Byron, Nevile's Court, Cloisters, Echo, "Freshman's Pillar," Prince Edward, Royal Ball, Goodhart, Buttery, College Plate, Grace-cup, Kitchen, Hall, Combination Room, Marquis of Granby, Tutors, Old Court, Fountain, Gate Towers, Clock, Lodge, Chapel, Newton, Organ, Bentley, Windows, Macaulay [78]

CHAPTER V

Whewell's Courts. — All Saints' Cross. — The Jewry. — Divinity School. — St. John's College, Trinity and John's, Lady Margaret, Fisher, Hospital of St. John, Gate Tower, First Court, Hall, Wordsworth, Compulsory Worship, Combination Room, Second Court, Library, Great Bible, Third Court, Bridge of Sighs, New Court, Roof-climbing, Blazers, Wilderness. — Caius College, Gonville, The Three Gates, Kitchen, "Blues." — Senate House, Congregations, Vice-Chancellor, Voting, Degree-giving. — University Church, Mr. Tripos, Golgotha, Sermons, Tower, Chimes, Jowett. — Market Hill, Peasant Revolt, Wat Tyler, Bucer and Fagius, Bonfires, Town and Gown [108]

CHAPTER VI

Round Church. — Union Society. — The "Great Bridge," Hithe. — Magdalene College, Buckingham College, Pepys, Charles Kingsley, the "College Window," Master's Garden. — Castle Hill, Camboritum, Cromwell's Rampart, Repulse of Charles I, the "Borough," View from Castle. — St. Peter's Church. — "School of Pythagoras." — Westminster College. — Ridley Hall. — Newnham College. — Selwyn College. — Convent of St. Radegund, Bishop Alcock. — Midsummer Common. — Boat Houses, Bumping Races. — Jesus College, "Chimney," Cloisters, Chapter House, Chapel, Cranmer, Coleridge [132]

CHAPTER VII

Sidney College, Oliver Cromwell, Fellow Commoners. — Holy Trinity, Simeon, Henry Martyn. — Christ's College, "God's House," Lady Margaret, Flogging of Students, Bathing forbidden, Milton, Lycidas, Gardens, Paley, Darwin. — Great St. Andrew's, Bishop Perry. — Emmanuel College, Harvard, Sancroft, Chapel, Ponds. — University Museums. — Downing College, Miss Edgeworth. — Coe Fen. — First Mile Stone. — Barnwell, Priory, Abbey Church. — Lepers' Chapel, Stourbridge Fair, Vanity Fair [151]

CHAPTER VIII

Roads from Cambridge. — Cambs and Isle of Ely, Girvii, East Angles, Mercians, Formation of County. — Newmarket Road. — Quy. — Fleam Dyke. — Devil's Dyke. — Icknield Way. — Iceni, Ostorius, Boadicea. — Newmarket Heath, First Racing. — Exning, Anna. — Snailwell. — Fordham. — Soham, St. Felix. — Stuntney. — Wicken. — Chippenham. — Isleham, Lectern. — Eastern Heights. — Chevely, Cambridge Corporation. — Kirtling. — Wood Ditton. — Stetchworth. — Borough Green. — Bottisham. — Swaffham Bulbeck. — The Lodes. — Swaffham Prior. — Reach, Peat, Submerged Forest. — Burwell, Church, Clunch, Brass, Castle, Geoffry de Magnaville [168]

CHAPTER IX

Hills Road. — Gog Magogs. — Vandlebury. — Babraham, Peter Pence. — Old Railway. — Hildersham, Brasses, Clapper Stile. — Linton. — Horseheath. — Bartlow, St. Christopher, Battle of Assandun. — Cherry Hinton, War Ditches, Saffron. — Teversham. — Fulbourn, Brasses. — Wilbraham. — Fleam Dyke, Wild Flowers, Butterflies, Ostorius, Last Cambs Battle. — Balsham, Battle of Ringmere, Massacre, Church Brasses, Grooved Stones [201]

CHAPTER X

London Road. — Trumpington, Church, Brass, Chaucer's Mill, Byron's Pool, Upper River. — Grantchester, Church. — Cam and Granta. — The Shelfords. — Sawston, Old-world Industries, Hall, Hiding-Hole, "Little John." — Whittlesford, Old Hospital. — Duxford. — Triplow Heath, Civil War. — Fowlmere, Hinxton, Sacring Bell. — Ickleton, Monolith Pillars. — Chesterford. — Icknield Way. — Saffron Walden [219]

CHAPTER XI

London Road. — Hauxton Bridge, Indulgences, Church, Becket Fresco. — Burnt Mill. — Haslingfield. — White Hill, View, Clunch Pits, Chapel, Papal Bulla. — Barrington, Green, Church, Porch Seats, Chest, Fountains, Finds, Coprolite Digging, Hall. — Foxton. — Shepreth. — Meldreth, Parish Stocks. — Melbourn, Shipmoney. — Royston, Origin, Cave, Heath. — Bassingbourn, Old Accounts, Villenage. — Black Death. — Ashwell, Source of Cam, Church, Graffiti. — Akeman Street. — Barton Butts. — Comberton Maze. — Harlton Church, Old Pit. — Orwell Maypole, Church, Epitaph. — Wimpole Hall, Queen Victoria. — Arrington. — Shingay, Hospitallers, Fairy Cart. — Wendy. — Artesian Wells. — Guilden Morden, Screen, St. Edmund, Confessionals [235]

CHAPTER XII

Oxford Road, Observatory, Neptune, Cambridge Discoveries. — Coton. — Madingley. — Hardwick. — Toft, St. Hubert. — Childerley, Charles I. — Knapwell. — Bourn. — Caxton. — Eltisley, St. Pandiania, Storm. — St. Neot's, Neotus and Alfred. — Paxton Hill. — Godmanchester, Port Meadow. — Huntingdon, Cromwell's Penance. — The Hemingfords. — St. Ives. — Holywell. — Overcote. — Earith, the Bedford Rivers, "Parallax" [265]

CHAPTER XIII

Island of Ely. — Haddenham. — Aldreth, Conqueror's Causeway, Belsars Hill. — Wilburton. — Sutton. — Wentworth. — Via Devana. — Girton, College. — Oakington, Holdsworth. — Elsworth. — Conington, Ancient Bells. — Long Stanton, Queen Elizabeth. — Willingham, Stone Chamber. — Over, Gurgoyles. — Swavesey, Finials. — Ely Road. — Chesterton. — Fen Ditton. — Milton, Altar Rails. — Horningsea. — Bait's Bite, Start of Race. — Clayhithe. — Waterbeach. — Car Dyke. — Denny. — Stretham. — Upware. — Wicken Fen. [282]

CHAPTER XIV

Ely. — Island and Isle. — St. Augustine. — St. Etheldreda, Life, Death, Burial, St. Audrey's Fair. — Danish Sack of Ely. — Alfred's College. — Abbey Restored. — Brithnoth, Song of Maldon. — Battle of Assundun. — Canute at Ely. — Edward the Confessor. — Alfred the Etheling. — Camp of Refuge, Hereward, Norman Conquest, Tabula Eliensis, Nomenclature, Norman Minster. — Bishops of Ely, Rule over Isle. — Ely Place, Ely House [303]

CHAPTER XV

Bishop Northwold. — Presbytery Dedicated. — Barons at Ely. — Fall of Tower, Alan of Walsingham, Octagon. — Queen Philippa. — Lady Chapel, John of Wisbech, Bishop Goodrich. — Bishop Alcock. — Bishop West. — Styles of Architecture. — Monastic Industries. — Mediæval Account Books. — Clothing and Food of Monks. — Benedictine Rule. — Dissolution of Abbey. — Bishop Thirlby. — Bishop Wren. — Bishop Gunning. — Bishop Turner [324]

CHAPTER XVI

Approach to Ely. — The Park. — Walpole Gate. — Crauden Chapel. — Western Tower, Galilee. — Nave. — Baptistery. — Roof. — Prior's Door. — Cloisters. — Owen's Cross. — Octagon. — Alan's Grave. — Transepts. — St. Edmund's Chapel. — Choir Stalls. — Presbytery. — Norman Piers. — Reredos. — Candlesticks [344]

CHAPTER XVII

Monuments. — West's Chapel. — Alcock's Chapel. — Northwold Cenotaph. — Bassevi. — Shrine of Etheldreda. — Lady Chapel. — View from Tower. — Triforium. — Exterior of Minster. — Palace, "Duties" of Goodrich. — St. Mary's. — St. Cross. — Cromwell's House. — Cromwell at Ely. — St. John's Farm. — Theological College. — Waterworks. — Basket-making [366]

CHAPTER XVIII

Boundary of Fens. — Roman Works, Car Dyke, Sea Wall, Causeway. — Archipelago. — Littleport, Agrarian Riots. — Denver Sluice. — Roslyn Pit. — Fenland Abbeys, Chatteris, Ramsey, Peterborough, Thorney, Crowland [386]

CHAPTER XIX

Draining of Fens — Monastic Works, Morton's Learn. — Diversion of Ouse. — Local Government, Jurats, Discontent. — Jacobean polemics. — First Drainage Company. — Rising of Fen-men. — Second Company, Huguenot Labourers. — Third Company, Earl of Bedford, Vermuyden. — Old River. — Cromwell. — Fourth Company, Prisoner Slaves, New River, Denver Sluice. — Later Developments [398]

CHAPTER XX

Coveney. — Manea. — Doddington. — March, Angel Roof. — Whittlesea. — Old Course of Ouse, Well Stream. — Upwell, Outwell. — Emneth. — Elm. — The Marshland — West Walton. — Walsoken. — Walpole. — Cross Keys. — Leverington. — Tydd. — Wisbech, Church, Trade, Castle, Catholic Prisoners, Clarkson. — The Wash. — King John. [409]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS
IN
CAMBRIDGE AND ELY

Cambridge

St. Benet's Church and Corpus Christi College.

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS
IN
CAMBRIDGESHIRE

CHAPTER I

Cambridge Greenery.—The "Backs."—The Lawns.—Logan's Views.—Old Common Fields.—Old Cambridge.—Origin of Cambridge.—The Castle.—Camboritum.—Granta-ceaster.—Danes in Cambridge.—Cambridgeshire formed.—Battle of Ringmere.—Norman Conquest.—The Jewry.—Religious Houses.—Rise of University.—Town and Gown.—Proctors.—The Colleges.—Examinations.—College Life.—Cambridge and Oxford.

Cambridge has been described by an appreciative American novelist as "a harmony in grey and green." And indeed it is true that few towns are so shot through and through with greenery. The London Road enters the place through two miles of umbrageous leafage; wide, open spaces of grass-land—Stourbridge Common, Midsummer Common, Coldham Common, Empty Common, Donkey Common, Peter's Field, Parker's Piece, Christ's Pieces, Jesus Green, Sheep's Green, Coe Fen—penetrate from the outskirts, north, south, and east, right to the heart of the town; while the world-famous "Backs," where the road runs beneath ancestral elms, between a continuous series of bowery College gardens and precincts—Queens', King's, Clare, Trinity, St. John's—with their beckoning vistas of long avenues of lime and chestnut, ring it in to the west, and form a scene of park-like loveliness to be found nowhere else on earth. Port Meadow, at Oxford, and the Magdalen Walks, furnish the nearest comparison; but only to show how far in front Cambridge stands in greenery. Even inside the Colleges this precedence shows itself; for in Cambridge every College Court in the place, almost without exception, unlike so many of the "Quads" of Oxford, has its central grass-plot.

These lawns, it may be noted, are sacrosanct, not to be profaned by the foot of anyone but a Fellow of the College[1] itself. No outsider, from another College, however high in academic rank, may, unless accompanied by a Fellow, cross over them; still less any member of the College, old or young, who is not himself a Fellow, nor any casual visitor, even of the privileged sex. Should any such attempt be made, the College porters will politely, but quite firmly, remove the transgressor. This convention is absolutely necessary for the very existence of the greensward, which, if allowed to be traversed by all-comers, would speedily be cut up and ruined.

This greenery, however, is a comparatively recent development in the history of Cambridge, most of it dating no further back than the latter half of the seventeenth century. In the last decade of that century an artist named David Logan (or Loggan), said to have been of Danish nationality but Scotch extraction, made a series of views of the various Cambridge Colleges, elaborated with extraordinary care and fidelity. So truthful and observant was he that a mysterious bird, long a puzzle in his drawing of the great court of Trinity, has lately been discovered, by reference to the College muniments, to have been a tame eagle then kept by the Society. His views were reissued in 1905 by Mr. J. W. Clark, the greatest living authority on Cambridge antiquities, and should be consulted by all who are interested in the development of Cambridge. In these views the existing avenues in the College enclosures at the "Backs" may be observed, but all of young trees quite recently planted (as indeed we know to have been the case from the College records), while right up to these enclosures run open treeless fields, not meadows, but corn-land, where harvesters may be seen at work and sheep grazing upon the fallow land. Most of the now green Commons are in like manner shown to have been then under the plough.

The late Professor Maitland, whose recent death has been so irreparable a loss to Cambridge and to the whole historical side of English education, has shown (in his Township and Borough) how truly these views of Logan's represent the seventeenth century facts, and how, somewhat earlier, the arable fields had come even to the river bank on the west of the town; or, to use his own more accurate language, that the western fields of Cambridge extended to the river bank. Every old English town and village, it must be remembered, was in theory (and originally in practice) self-supporting, and contained within its boundary sufficient arable and pasture land to feed its own inhabitants and their cattle. These were known as the "Common Fields" of the place. They were not "Commons" in our modern sense of the word, but were divided into small holdings amongst the townsmen, each man's holding consisting of so many tiny strips, never more than an acre in extent, scattered as widely as possible to make things fair for all. They were cultivated upon the three course system; every landholder having the right to pasture a proportionate number of cattle on the fallow of the year, as well as in the Common Meadows. The Common Fields of Cambridge comprised about five square miles, with the inhabited part of the township nearly in the centre, and roughly coincided with the existing Parliamentary Borough, though somewhat more extensive.

This inhabited part, the mediæval town of Cambridge, was comprised, (at least from the tenth century to the eighteenth,) in the space bounded by the river on the west, and on the east by a ditch, known finally as the "King's Ditch," from having been widened by Henry the Third in the Barons' War. This ditch left the Cam at the "King's Mill," (the modern representative of which still stands just above Silver Street Bridge,) and proceeded along the line of Mill Lane, Pembroke Street, Tibbs Row, Hobson Street, and Park Street, to fall into the river again opposite Magdalene College. Beyond the "Great Bridge," from which the place derived its name, a small cluster of houses climbed the steep bank, on the summit of which stood the Castle. Our earliest records show this area as by no means thickly covered with houses. Not only the inhabitants, but all their cattle lived in it; so there must have been many little farmyards and gardens interspersed amongst the dwellings.

Domesday Book gives the number of these as only 400, and a couple of centuries later, in 1279, when the University was already in full existence, there were scarcely more. By the middle of the eighteenth century this number had trebled. But even in 1801, as may be seen in Lyson's plan of the town, the King's Ditch, which was then still an open watercourse, remained substantially the boundary of inhabited Cambridge. And the vast suburban extensions in the areas of Barnwell, Newnham, Chesterton, and Cherry Hinton are mostly very recent indeed; the bulk in fact belonging to the last half century. Their rise, and the continuous intrusion of ever fresh University and College buildings, has had the effect of once more depleting the area of mediæval Cambridge, which to-day contains barely 800 houses. The whole of the University buildings, whether ancient or modern, are contained within this area, with the exception of the Colleges of Peterhouse, Pembroke, Christ's and Jesus (which together with a few of the Museums, stand just beyond the Ditch), and the New Court of St. John's College, which is on the other side of the river, in the old Common Field. The ecclesiastical and feminine foundations similarly situated, Selwyn College, Westminster College, Ridley Hall, Newnham College, and Girton College, are not recognised by the University as being strictly "Colleges" at all.

Peterhouse Wall, Coe Fen.

Such was old Cambridge; with its eleven ancient parishes of St. Peter, St. Giles, St. Clement, Holy Trinity, St. Michael, St. Mary (the greater), St. Edward, St. Benet, St. Botolph, All Saints, and St. John (which was destroyed to make room for King's College). Before the twelfth century closed three more churches were added, those of the Holy Sepulchre, of St. Peter (now St. Mary's the less) outside the "Trumpington Gate," of St. Andrew (the greater) outside the Barnwell Gate, and St. Andrew (the less) in the detached suburb which grew up round the great "Abbey" (really an Augustinian Priory) of Barnwell.

Old Cambridge probably owed its constitution—(quite possibly its very existence)—to the genius with which "the Children of Alfred," Edward the Elder and his Sister, the "Lady of the Mercians," reorganised the Midlands after the great cataclysm of the Danish wars, which in the previous generation had swept over the district, obliterating all earlier landmarks and boundaries. One pirate horde, under the most renowned of all their chieftains, Guthrum—the deadliest antagonist, and afterwards the most faithful ally, of our great Alfred,—had for a space settled themselves in Cambridge, and from that strategic position overawed East Anglia on the one hand and Mercia on the other.[2]

The Cambridge which they sacked was not, however, as it would seem, the later mediæval town which we have been already considering, but a much smaller stronghold on the western bank of the River, comprising what is now known as "Castle End," and is still sometimes called "the Borough" par excellence. At this point the Cam, one bank or other of which is usually swampy even now, and was actually swamp in early days, is touched by higher and firmer ground on both sides. The height to the west is quite respectable, rising some eighty feet above the stream. Here, therefore, and here alone, was there of old any convenient passage-way for an army; the river elsewhere forming an almost insuperable barrier to military operations, from the Fens almost to its source. Such a site was sure to be amongst the earliest occupied; and we find, accordingly, that both Romans and Anglo-Saxons (presumably Mercians) successively held it. Most probably it was also a British site; but the great Castle mound, which earlier antiquaries attributed to the Britons, has been shown by Professor Hughes to be, mainly at least, a Norman work.

This site was the original Cambridge, and may even have been called by that very name in its earliest form. For it is hard not to identify the Roman settlement (which the spade shows to have existed here) with the "Camboritum," which from the "Itinerary of Antoninus" (an official road book, probably of the third century A.D.) must have been somewhere in this immediate neighbourhood. And the word Camboritum is plausibly derived from the British Cam Rhydd "the ford of the Cam." Cam (which, being interpreted, signifies crooked) may well have been the British name for a stream with so tortuous a course. But, if so, it was not continuously used, so far as records can tell us.

The Roman Camboritum doubtless shared the almost universal destruction of Roman stations which marked the English conquest of Britain; and the site is described as still "a waste chester" two centuries later, when the monks of Ely sought amid the ruins for a stone coffin in which to entomb their foundress, St. Ethelreda. By this time the older name both of the town and of the river seems to have been forgotten. The latter was called, by the English, the Granta, and the former was accordingly known only as Granta-ceaster—the chester, or ruined Roman city, upon the Granta. (It should be noted that the village now called Grantchester was, till comparatively recent days, known as Grant-set.)

Yet another century, and we find, in the days of King Egbert, the grandfather of Alfred and the first King acknowledged by the whole English nation, that a bridge had been built (or rebuilt) over the old ford; and therewith the old site of Camboritum had been reoccupied under the new name of Granta-bridge, by which it is known throughout mediæval history. We do not meet with "Cambridge" in literature till the fourteenth century, nor with "Cam" till almost the date of "Camus, reverend sire," in Milton's Lycidas.

However this may be, it is pretty certain that the Cambridge on which Guthrum, in the year 872, marched from Repton was the "Borough" of Castle End. After holding, or, as one chronicler (Gaimar) would have us believe, only besieging it, for a whole year, the Danish host hastily made off to Wareham in Dorsetshire, to take part in that life and death struggle in the west which began with Alfred's great naval victory off Swanage, then drove him into hiding at Athelney, and ended with the Peace of Wedmore. By that treaty all England north of the Watling Street was ceded to the Danes as an under-kingdom, the "Dane-Law"; Guthrum, now a Christian and Alfred's godson, being set on the throne. Cambridge thus became undisputedly a Danish town. The district around was divided "with a rope" (i.e. by chain measure) amongst the invaders, and submitted as an organic whole, some half century later, to King Edward the Elder. It was probably at this time that the town began to extend itself into the East Anglian district to the east of the Cam. (Throughout its whole length the river, with its marshy banks, was the boundary between the old English kingdoms of Mercia and East Anglia; and traces of this are to be found in the distinctive customs of adjoining villages, on one side or the other of the stream, even to this day.) The "Saxon," or Romanesque, tower of St. Benet's Church, may well be of this date, erected by the English inhabitants dispossessed of their homes in the Borough by the conquering Danes who lorded it over them.

After its submission to Edward the Elder, Cambridge began its career as a County Town, giving its name, (as was the case in nearly all these new Edwardian counties,) to the surrounding district, which thus became known as Grantabrig-shire. The name covered only the southern part of the present county; for the Isle of Ely was reconstituted under the ancient jurisdiction of its great abbots and bishops. To this day, indeed, it has its own separate County Council, and even a separate motor-car lettering. The new political unit soon began to display no small local patriotism; for we read that in the fatal battle of Ringmere, fought on Ascension Day, 1010, between the fresh Danish invaders, who were then pouring over the land, and the united forces of East Anglia under the hero Ulfcytel, "soon fled the East English. There stood Grantabryg-shire fast only."

The Backs, Clare College Gate.

The victorious Danes, naturally, proceeded to wreak special vengeance on such obstinate foes. The county was ravaged with a ferocity even beyond the usual Danish harryings, and Cambridge itself was sacked and burnt. When it arose from its ashes, in the quieter days of the Danish Canute, the first "King of England," (his native predecessors having been Kings "of the English,") it was organised, Danish fashion, into ten Wards, each with its own "Lawman." In the reign of Edward the Confessor, it had, as we have seen, 400 dwelling-houses (masurae), not urban cottages closely packed in rows, but mostly tenements of the farmhouse type, each with its farmyard, the abodes of the husbandmen who owned and tilled the Common Fields of the town.

This number of houses shows Cambridge to have been at this time an important place, equal in population to a whole average "Hundred," with its ten villages; and as such we find it counted for legal purposes under the Norman and Plantagenet dynasties. But its Common Fields were by no means proportionately extensive,[3] so that many of the inhabitants must already have depended upon trade for their living.

If Cambridge fared ill at the hands of the Danes, it fared little better at those of the Normans. William the Conqueror made the place his headquarters in his operations against Hereward's "Camp of Refuge" at Ely. This resulted in the ruin of fifty-three out of the 400 houses, besides twenty-seven more pulled down to make room for his new Castle, which with its outworks and huge central keep occupied the greater part of the old Roman site to the west of the Bridge. The loss of these eighty houses probably brought down the population to little over 2,000 souls. Even with this reduction, however, the town might still claim to rank in the first class of English cities at the time; and this is shown by the growth of a Jewry within its walls, in the area bounded by St. John's College, Trinity College, and Bridge Street. For the Jews, (who first came into England as camp-followers of the Norman invaders,) naturally struck for the wealthier towns in which to form their settlement. As the place grew in importance Religious Houses began rapidly to spring up in and around it; the first being the great Augustinian Abbey of Barnwell, founded by Picot, the Sheriff of Cambridge under William the Conqueror.

The next generation saw Augustinian Canons settled in the town itself, at the Hospital (now the College) of St. John; and Benedictine nuns at the Priory of St. Radegund just beyond the King's Ditch, where their conventual church is still used as the Chapel of Jesus College. A century later, and friars of all the Orders came flocking into Cambridge; the Grey Franciscans, the Black Dominicans, the White Carmelites, the Austin Friars, the Friars of the Sack, the Friars of Bethlehem. The sites occupied by the first three of these names are to-day represented by the Colleges of Sidney, Emmanuel, and Queens'. Friars always made for the chief centres of life, and by the thirteenth century Cambridge had become emphatically such, by the rise of that institution destined to give it a perennial fame, the University.

How this rise of the University came about is an as yet unsolved problem in history. As in the case of Oxford, the great name of Alfred was invoked, by unscrupulous mediæval fabricators, as concerned in its foundation. And it is possible that there may be really traceable some distant connection with that great saint and hero. For Alfred actually did found amidst the ruins of Ely, after its sack by the Danes, a small College of priests, which lived on to be the nucleus of the restored Abbey in the days of his grandson Edgar the Peaceful. And it is also historical fact that this restored Abbey was specially renowned for the famous school attached to it—so famous as to count amongst its scholars more than one future monarch. Furthermore we know that the Ely monks taught in Cambridge also, and this may well have been the first germ of the University.

At any rate it is certain that, in 1209, when the schools of Oxford were for a while closed by the Government, as the outcome of a more than usually outrageous "rag," large numbers of the students migrated to Cambridge; which seems to point to the place having already some educational repute. From henceforward, at all events, it attained European reputation in this respect, for, in 1229, we find another batch of expelled students, this time from Paris, settling themselves here, and yet another swarm of Oxonians twenty years later.

The University had now become an organic body, with its Chancellor, its masters, and its scholars or "clerks," so called because, being not wholly illiterate, the Law considered them as potential members of the clerical profession, and gave them special immunities accordingly. They were not amenable to lay jurisdiction, but only to the milder "Courts Christian," in which the death-penalty was never inflicted. It seems not infrequently to have been deserved; for the earliest undergraduates were, at first, an utterly lawless lot, and made themselves most unpleasant neighbours to the "burgesses" of the Town.

When first they made their appearance the inhabitants of Cambridge had just bought the right to call themselves by this dignified name. This bargain was the upshot of a Royal visit in 1207 from King John, who, in consideration of a payment of 250 marks, (equivalent to £5,000 at the present value of money,) granted Cambridge a Charter of Incorporation, with the right to be governed by a Provost and bailiffs of their own (instead of by the King's Sheriff), and to regulate their own markets. Twenty years later, (by a further contribution to the royal purse,) the Provost acquired the higher title of Mayor.

But almost simultaneously, his prerogatives began to be curtailed by the rising power of the University, to whose "Taxers" was given, in 1231, the sole right of fixing the rents which might be demanded for lodgings from the inrushing swarm of students; while the regulation of the market weights and measures became vested in the Proctors. The authority of the Taxers died out when the Collegiate system became universal, but has been revived in recent days by the "Lodging-house Syndicate": that of the Proctors over the Market has become obsolete; not so long, however, but that, to this day, there may be seen, in the possession of the Senior Proctor for each year, an iron cylinder, a yard long and an inch in diameter, which was, not so many decades ago, the standard test for the dimensions of every roll of butter sold in Cambridge. For butter in Cambridge was retailed by the inch; a custom which still lingers on sporadically amongst our vendors.

The student population speedily became far more numerous than the townsfolk, and their accommodation must have been no small problem. At first the need was met wholly by private enterprise: University lodgers thronged the private houses and the annexes, or "hostels," as they are named, run up for their sole use by speculative landlords. These hostels gradually attained to more or less of official recognition by the University, and paved the way for the setting up of Colleges.

St. Michael's and All Angels.

The first actual College was Peterhouse, founded by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, in 1284, and was of the nature of an experiment, the success of which it took a whole generation to establish. Once proved, a host of imitators appeared; and the following generation saw no fewer than seven similar foundations, Michaelhouse and King's Hall (the germs of Trinity College), Clare, Pembroke, Gonville, Trinity Hall, and Corpus Christi College. Then came a break of a century, followed by another outburst of zeal, which in the next hundred years produced yet another seven: King's, Queens', St. Catharine's, Jesus, Christ's, St. John's, and Magdalene. The last four of these were earlier religious and scholastic foundations remodelled; and a like process during the half century succeeding the Reformation has given us the Colleges of Trinity, Caius, Emmanuel, and Sidney. Not till the nineteenth century was the list added to by the appearance of Downing.

The original idea in all these foundations was to provide, not so much for the students as for the masters who taught them. To these it was an immense advantage to be able to dwell together in small groups and in quiet quarters, where they could engage in research and prepare their lectures, shut away from the turmoil of the seething crowd of Town and Gown in the streets. And it speedily appeared that if the seclusion of a College was helpful to the teacher it was even more helpful to the taught. For the test applied to students by the University before conferring upon them a Degree was by public disputations in the schools, each candidate having to support or oppose some literary or scientific thesis.

The memory of these wordy "opponencies" is still preserved in the denomination of "Wrangler" bestowed on the candidates who obtain a First Class in the Mathematical Examination for an "Honour" Degree, and by every examination through which such a Degree can be obtained being called a "Tripos,"[4] from the three-legged stool which played a notable part in those old ordeals. The test demanded steadiness of nerve and readiness of wit, as well as mere knowledge; and, in all these, the Scholar of a College, well catered and cared for, was far better equipped than his lawless, and often all but foodless, non-Collegiate competitor.

Thus every College found itself confronted by a great demand for admissions, which was met by the introduction of Scholars, so far as the pecuniary resources of the Foundation would admit, and, ultimately, by the admission of "Pensioners";—students who, without being members of the Foundation, were willing to pay for a share in its educational advantages. These Pensioners finally came to outnumber, (in every College), the masters and scholars together, as they do still. The original non-Collegiate students proportionately dwindled in number; till the depopulation of the University during the religious ups and downs of the Reformation era put an end to them altogether. For three hundred years afterwards no one was admitted to the University unless attached to one of the Colleges, till, in the later decades of the nineteenth century, the great expansion which marked that period called Non-Collegiate Students, on a limited and tentative scale, once more into existence.

Substantially, however, at the present day, the Colleges are Cambridge; and to the visitor their buildings completely out-bulk those which belong to the University—the Senate House, the University Church and Library, the Examination Hall, and the various Museums and Laboratories. Each College consists of an enclosed precinct, (to which the students are confined at night,) containing blocks of apartments, (usually arranged in "Courts,") for Fellows, Scholars, and Pensioners, a special "Lodge" for the Master; a Chapel; a Library; and a Hall, with Kitchen and Buttery attached. Here the Masters sit at the "High Table" on a dais across the upper end of the Hall, and the students at less pretentious boards arranged longitudinally. All are bound to dine in Hall, unless by special leave; but other meals may be in your own rooms, of which each student has a suite of three, in which he is said to "keep." All three are within one general outer door, or "oak," to be opened only by a latch-key, and "sported" whenever the owner desires his citadel to be inaccessible. Over the oak, on the outside, is painted his name (always in white capital letters upon a black ground), while at the foot of each staircase a similarly painted list gives the names of all the men whose rooms are to be found upon it. Each student's suite invariably comprises a sitting (or "keeping") room, a bedroom, and a pantry, or "gyp-room." This last name records the fact that till lately the functions of a housemaid were discharged by male servants known as "gyps,"[5] who are now almost universally superseded by female "bedmakers" appointed by the College Tutors.

The Tutors are immediately responsible for the general supervision of the students in the College: the actual teaching is done by Lecturers in the various subjects, who have special apartments, "Lecture Rooms," provided in every College for their purposes. Every student has to attend a certain quota of lectures, but otherwise is very much left to educate himself, his progress being checked by periodical College examinations, in addition to those required by the University to be passed before he can be admitted to a Degree. The lowest Degree is that of B.A. (Bachelor of Arts). Three years after attaining this a man may proceed to become M.A. (Master of Arts), when he ceases to be "in statu pupillari," and is no longer subject to the authority of the Proctors.

These officers perambulate the town after dark to punish University wrong-doers, usually by a fine of 6s. 8d., or some multiple of that sum, the unit being a survival from mediæval numismatics, as equivalent to half a "Mark." More serious offences are met by "Rustication," for a Term or a year, during which the offender may not show himself in Cambridge, and, in extreme cases, by expulsion from the University altogether. These punishments can also be inflicted by the authorities of each College on the students of that College. But in this domestic forum, for smaller offences the place of fines is taken by "gating" for a certain period, during which the nocturnal enclosure of the culprit begins at some earlier hour than usual.

As a regular rule the College gates are shut at ten p.m., after which no outsider (student or visitor) may enter, and no inmate (under the Degree of M.A.) pass out; though to students already out uncensured admission is given until midnight. Once inside the gates the student is under no obligation to keep to his own rooms, but has the run of the College all night. He is bound, however, to spend his nights within the walls, and not even for a single night may he be absent without a duly signed exeat from the College authorities giving him leave. And, as he must be in residence when they require it of him, so is he also forbidden to be in residence at such seasons as they bar; during the greater part of each Vacation, for example, comprising half the year.

Theoretically the Three Terms into which the Academic Year is divided consist of about ten weeks apiece; but, in practice, they have only eight of "Full Term," during which residence is compulsory. The first of these is the "Michaelmas," or, as it is popularly called the "October" term, lasting from about mid-October to mid-December. After the Christmas vacation follows the "Lent" term, from the middle of January to the middle of March. Then comes a month of Easter vacation, and then the "Easter" (more generally known as the "May") term; at the end of which the close of the working year is celebrated by a series of social festivities in connection with the College boat races, collectively designated "the May Week," though invariably taking place in June. Finally comes the "Long Vacation" (the last word being omitted in popular parlance), lasting till a new year begins in October. Many of the more studious men are, however, permitted to reside during July and August for the purposes of private reading. A man in residence, we may mention, is said to be "up"; thus we meet with such phrases as "coming up," "going down," and being "sent down," when ordered to leave Cambridge, temporarily or permanently, for disciplinary reasons.

All this is very unlike Continental or American University life, but is almost the ditto of Oxford. For Cambridge is the sister-daughter of Oxford. It was by Oxonian colonists that the University of Cambridge was begun; the earliest Cambridge College, Peterhouse, was not only suggested by the earliest Oxford Foundation, Merton, but borrowed its very Statutes; and the development of the two seats of learning has twinned itself throughout the centuries to an extent unparalleled elsewhere in history. The result is that to-day there are no two places in the world so alike, socially, intellectually, and even physically, as Oxford and Cambridge. The latter has at present the larger number of students; but each has approximately the same number of Colleges, and of satellite Collegiate institutions, formally or informally connected with the University (e.g., the Ladies' Colleges); and in each the Academic organisation, the social code, and the life led by both students and teachers, is almost absolutely identical. To experts well acquainted with both places the minute shades of difference are of extreme interest; but to the average visitor the places are as like as twin sisters. The very names of the Colleges are the same in no less than a third of the cases. If there is a Trinity at Cambridge there is also a Trinity at Oxford, if there is a Magdalen at Oxford there is a Magdalene at Cambridge; while St. John's, Jesus, Corpus Christi, and Pembroke are all in like manner duplicated. And, both at Oxford and Cambridge, Colleges are named from Queens; though a subtle difference in spelling (Queen's and Queens') records the fact that, while one Queen founded the Oxford College, two were concerned in the Cambridge foundation.

Oriel in Library, St. John's College.

With regard to picturesqueness and architectural merit it is difficult to assign the pre-eminence to either place, so far as the University and Collegiate buildings are concerned. Of each distinctive feature, considered separately, the choicest specimen is to be found in Cambridge—the best College Chapel at King's; the finest College Hall and College Courts at Trinity; the most characteristic and beautiful Library at St. John's. But, out-taken these, Oxford can show several examples of each feature better than the next best at Cambridge. And, apart from the University buildings, the town of Cambridge, with its narrow streets and mean public edifices, is hopelessly outclassed by the beautiful city of Oxford. Invidious comparisons, however, are, in the case of sisters, more than ordinarily odious.

CHAPTER II

Entrance to Cambridge.—Railways.—Roman Catholic Church.—Street runlets, Hobson, Perne.—Fitzwilliam Museum.—Peterhouse, Chapel, Deer-park.—Little St. Mary's Church, Washington Arms.—Gray's window.—Pembroke College, Large and Small Colleges, "Querela Cantabrigiensis," Ridley's farewell.—St. Botolph's Church.—The King's Ditch.—Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Guilds, St. Benet's Church, Fire-hooks, Corpus Library, Corpus Ghost.—St. Catharine's College.—King's Parade.—Pitt Press.—Newnham Bridge, Hermits.—The Backs River, College Bridges, Hithes.

Having thus given the reader a very meagre and sketchy outline of the sort of knowledge needful for a due appreciation of Cambridge, and leaving him to fill in such details as he pleases from the numberless histories and guide books, large and small (and for the most part excellent) which he will find quite readily accessible, we will now suppose him to be entering the town.

Should he do this from the railway station he will have to face a mile or so of "long unlovely street" to begin with. For when railroads were first made—(the Great Eastern line from London to Cambridge being constructed in 1845)—they were regarded with extreme suspicion and dislike by the authorities of both Universities. The noise of the trains, it was declared, would be fatal to their studies; the facility of running up to London would hopelessly demoralise their undergraduates; bad characters from the metropolis would come down in shoals to prey upon them. Thus both Oxford and Cambridge strenuously opposed any near approach of this new-fangled abomination to their hallowed precincts. Oxford actually succeeded in keeping the main line of the Great Western as far off from it as Didcot, ten miles away, whence it did not penetrate to the city itself till a considerably later date, when prejudice had been overcome by the patent advantages of the new locomotion, and a station hard by was welcomed. At Oxford, therefore, no such distance divides the railway and the Colleges as at Cambridge, where from the first the station stood in its present place. This, at the date of its construction, was far beyond even the outermost buildings of the town, with which it is connected by the old Roman road, the main artery of Cambridge, running straight, as Roman roads do run, for miles on either side to the "Great Bridge." To antiquarians this road is known as the Via Devana, because its objective is supposed to have been the old Roman city of Deva (Chester); during its passage through Cambridge it has no fewer than seven official designations, to the frequent discomfiture of strangers.

Where it conducts the visitor townwards from the railway station it presents, as we have said, a somewhat dreary vista; dignified only by the beautifully proportioned spire of the Roman Catholic Church, built in 1885. The erection of this edifice was due to the generosity of a single benefactor, Mrs. Lyne-Stephens, a French lady, who, early in the reign of Queen Victoria, won fame and fortune as the most renowned ballet dancer of the London stage. The Church is popularly called, in Cambridge, a Cathedral; but this is a misnomer, for the Bishop's See is not here but at Northampton.

The cross-roads at which the church is placed rejoice in the inane designation of Hyde Park Corner. The best approach to Cambridge is by the westward road of the four, which leads into the London Road (or Trumpington Road, as it is here called), that umbrageous avenue of leafage spoken of in our opening sentences. Keeping along this towards the town, we find ourselves confronted with one of the prettiest and most uncommon amongst the minor attractions of Cambridge, the runlets of clear water which sparkle along the side of either pavement.

This pleasant feature is attributed to the benevolence of an ancient Cambridge worthy, Thomas Hobson, who dwelt here from the reign of Henry the Eighth to that of Charles the First. By trade he was a "carrier," a profession which at that date included not merely the transport of goods but the provision of locomotion for passengers—then almost wholly equestrian. Thus Hobson not only himself travelled regularly to and from London with his stage-waggon, but kept a large stable of horses, not fewer than "forty good cattle," ready for hire—even supplying his customers with boots and whips for their journey. But he was very autocratic in the matter, and would never allow any steed to be chosen except in accordance with his will. "This or none" he would say to any hirer who dared to remonstrate. And his business was so prosperous that he could afford to say it, and thus give rise to the still current expression "Hobson's Choice." He rose to be Mayor of Cambridge, and his portrait still hangs in the Guildhall.

Finally when he died, at the age of eighty-six, in 1630, he gained the honour of a serio-comic epitaph from Milton, then a student of Christ's College, "on the University Carrier who sickened in the time of his Vacancy, on being forbid to go to London by reason of the Plague."

"Here lieth one who did most truly prove
That he could never die while he could move;
So hung his destiny, never to rot
While he might still jog on and keep his trot.
.........
Rest, that gives all men life, gave him his death,
And too much breathing put him out of breath;
Nor were it contradiction to affirm
Too long Vacation hastened on his Term.
........
But had his doings lasted as they were
He had been an immortal carrier."

The popular tradition, (attested by an inscription on the fountain in the Market Place,) which gives this hero the whole credit of the street runlets, seems, however, to go too far, though they were certainly first made during his life-time. Their source is in some springs which issue from the chalk near Great Shelford, four miles south-east of Cambridge, and which are called, as such sources are commonly called hereabouts, "The Nine Wells"—nine being used as an indefinite number. It is interesting to remember that this conception evolved itself also amongst the ancient Greeks, who talked of the "Nine Fountains" at Athens, and the "Nine Ways" at Amphipolis, with exactly the same indefiniteness of numeration. The ancient outfall of these springs seems to have been by what is now called "Vicar's Brook," which is bridged by the London Road at the first milestone from Cambridge. Till the eighteenth century the bridge was a ford, known as Trumpington Ford. The earliest proposal to intercept the stream near this spot and divert its course through the town, was due, not to Hobson, but to another worthy (or unworthy) contemporary of his, Dr. Andrew Perne, then Master of Peterhouse College, a divine of such an accommodating breadth of view that he alone, amongst all the higher authorities of the University, succeeded in retaining his post and his emoluments throughout the horrible see-saw of the Reformation period.

We first hear of him in the reign of Edward the Sixth, as a Protestant of such stalwart calibre that he destroyed as "idolatrous" almost every single book in the University Library. Under Mary he figures as no less ardent a Catholic, even to the degree of digging up and publicly burning (in default of living heretics) the corpses of the celebrated Protestant teachers Bucer and Fagius. Finally the accession of Elizabeth convinced him once more that Protestantism was the truest form of Christianity; and she lived long enough to keep him from again changing his principles. This amazing versatility naturally did not pass without comment. The wits of the University coined from his name the Latin verb pernare "to be a turn-coat," and declared that the A.P. which showed on a new weather-cock given by him to his College stood for A Protestant or A Papist indifferently.

It was this man who, in 1574, started the idea of bringing the Shelford water into Cambridge. The plan was carried out by "Undertakers" (who hoped to make money by it), in 1610, and amongst these Hobson would seem to have been the predominant partner.

Peterhouse.

Accompanied by the rippling of these runlets (which only represent a very small amount of the water brought by "Hobson's Conduit" into Cambridge) we shortly reach our first University edifice, the Fitzwilliam Museum, fronted by a singularly fine façade of classical architecture, and having in the Entrance Hall a really magnificent staircase of coloured marbles. It should be noted that the four lions which flank the façade are (unlike those in Trafalgar Square) all in differing attitudes. The Museum (which is open to the public three days in the week and to members of the University on all days) contains a fine collection of pictures and antiques, the nucleus of which is a bequest made in 1816 by Viscount Fitzwilliam. The Egyptian section is specially noteworthy, and the water-colours by Turner. The building was commenced in 1837, but was not finally completed till 1875, when the cost had run up to a hundred and fifteen thousand pounds.

The long-fronted Hospital on the opposite side of the road is the modern representative of an ancient institution which gave to this region, then quite the extremity of Cambridge, the name (as appears in our oldest maps) of Spittal End.

Adjoining the Museum we find ourselves arriving at our first College, St. Peter's College, more commonly called Peterhouse, the same of which the inevitable Dr. Perne was so long Master. (We may here note that in Cambridge this name "Master" is the designation of the Head of every College except King's, which has a "Provost," and Queens', with its "President.") Peterhouse, as has been mentioned in our first chapter, was the earliest College to be founded in Cambridge. Its founder Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, derived his idea from Merton College at Oxford, which had been in existence some twenty years when, in 1281, he introduced its system into Cambridge, and even adopted its very statutes. He first designed to incorporate his College with the already existing quasi-monastic Brotherhood of the Hospital of St. John (now St. John's College). The double Rule, however, bred so many quarrels that he settled his "Scholars of Ely" on their present site; their abode being dubbed Peterhouse from the adjoining church of St. Peter (now St. Mary's the Less), which for three hundred and fifty years served as the College Chapel, and is still connected by a covered passage with the College buildings.

The existing Chapel was built by yet another Bishop of Ely closely connected with the College, Dr. Matthew Wren, Master here 1625-1634. He was uncle to the great Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St. Paul's, and had enough architectural originality of his own to aim at copying the beautiful tracery of the mediæval church-builders. It was the first time that any such attempt had been made in England; and this going behind the Reformation roused the Protestant feeling of the time to fury. Men declared it incredible that there could be "so much Popery in so small a chapel"; and when the Civil War gave the Puritans their opportunity Wren paid for being so far in advance of his age by an imprisonment of not less than eighteen years, till released, in 1660, by the Restoration. The Chapel windows are now filled with some fine Munich glass, the only example of this work in Cambridge.

Besides the Chapel, the Library here is remarkable, and the "Combination Room" boasts itself as almost, if not quite, the finest apartment of its kind in all Cambridge. This name, we may mention, is given in every College to the parlour whither the M.A.'s retire, after dining in Hall, for wine, dessert, and conversation.[6] That of Peterhouse is a luxurious apartment, panelled with oak, and with stained-glass windows.

Another feature of the College is its little deer park, the only one in Cambridge, and, with the exception of Magdalen College, Oxford, the only one in either University. Access to this is obtained by passing through the passage between the Hall and the Kitchen. Beyond the deer park again an iron gate leads to the College Gardens, the only College Gardens in Cambridge which visitors may freely enter. And they are well worth entering.

There is, however, no way through this College, as there is through many, and we must leave it through the same gate as we entered by, thus returning to the street. Over the gate we observe the coat of arms belonging to the College, the armorial bearings of the founder surrounded by a border of crowns. This feature will be seen in every College, for each has its own arms, and these are invariably emblazoned above the entrance.

St. Mary the Less, South side.

Architecturally attached to Peterhouse is, as has been said, the church of St. Mary "the less," so called in contradistinction to "Great" St. Mary's, which here, as at Oxford, is the designation of the "University Church." This is the only really beautiful church in Cambridge, the tracery of the windows being exquisite flowing Decorated. All date from the fourteenth century, when the present structure displaced the earlier church dedicated to St. Peter. One feature of interest here is a monument put up to Richard Washington, who was minister of this church in the beginning of the eighteenth century. He was of the same family as the great George Washington, and in the coat of arms here displayed we may see the origin of the American Stars and Stripes, while the crest has become the American eagle.[7]

To the west of the church we get a view of the back of Peterhouse in its untouched picturesqueness, abutting on the churchyard, at the end of which comes another Museum, that of Classical Archæology. This is reached by a narrow lane, having the church on one side, and on the other "Emmanuel," the leading Congregationalist place of worship in Cambridge. As we return between these into the street we should look up at the buildings of Peterhouse and notice, in front of the window at the top corner of the ivy-clad wall, an erection of stout iron bars. By these hangs a tale; for the window belongs to the rooms traditionally occupied by the poet Gray when in residence here. It is said that he caused these bars to be put up, from his constitutional dread of fire, and that he kept a stout rope constantly affixed to them as a means of escape in case of need. Awakened one night by shouts of "Fire! Fire!" he slid down this rope in deshabille—to find himself plunged at the bottom into a huge vat of water placed there by his friends. So runs the tale; which adds that Gray migrated in disgust from Peterhouse to Pembroke. That he did so migrate is quite historical.

To reach his new College, Gray had only to cross the street; for almost immediately opposite to Peterhouse are seen the more widely extended buildings of Pembroke. Not so very many years ago they were the less widely extended of the two; for while Peterhouse has remained comparatively stationary, Pembroke, more than any other College, has partaken in the wonderful expansion which the last half century has wrought in the number of University students at Cambridge.

Peterhouse, from St. Mary's Churchyard.

From the Restoration onwards the Colleges of Cambridge were for two hundred years, till the middle of the nineteenth century, divisible in numerical strength between two strongly marked classes. At the top came the two great Societies of Trinity and St. John's; of which the former gradually drew ahead, and came to have some four hundred students to St. John's two hundred. The remaining fifteen Foundations were classed together as the "Small Colleges"; the largest of them being well under a hundred strong, and the smallest (amongst them Pembroke) small indeed. But with the great extension of the University curriculum, by the addition of a host of literary and scientific subjects to the Mathematics which had previously been the sole avenue to a Degree, there has come as marked an increase in the number of students, and the old College classification has broken down. Trinity, indeed, remains at the top, even more than ever, having almost doubled its overwhelming numbers; but St. John's has been caught up and overpassed by several of the once "small" Colleges, amongst them by Pembroke. And yet, in the year 1858, Pembroke had only one solitary freshman; and he migrated to Caius, in dread, as the tale then ran, of being divided into sections by the authorities, to satisfy the demands of the Mathematical, Classical, and Philosophical lecturers provided by the College.

The result is that Pembroke, even beyond most Colleges, is a medley of architectural additions. When Gray migrated to it, and for a century thereafter, the modest range of low white stone which still contains the main entrance, formed the whole frontage; the College buildings being a small quadrangle about half the size of the present First Court. It was, in fact (except for a new Chapel, built by Wren in 1663, and still in use), no larger than it was at its first foundation, in 1346, by Mary, widow of Amory de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, and daughter of Guy, Count of Chatillon and St. Paul. Her widowhood was brought about, according to tradition, by her husband being accidentally slain, before her eyes, on their very wedding day, at the tournament held to celebrate the nuptials. Modern criticism disputes this tragic tale, but it was believed in Gray's day, and he has referred, in his well-known list of the Founders of Cambridge Colleges, to

"sad Chatillon, on her bridal morn
Who wept her bleeding love."

On her widowhood, however occasioned, she retired from the world, and took the veil at Denny Abbey, between Cambridge and Ely. The College was founded by her in her husband's memory, and has ever since displayed her armorial bearings, the coats of Valence and St. Paul dimidiated.

At the time of the Civil War, the "Querela Cantabrigiensis" (a contemporary publication, written in the Royalist interest), in denouncing the misdeeds of the Parliamentary forces, complains bitterly that "fourscore ragged soldiers, who had been lowzing before Crowland nigh a fortnight, were turned loose into Pembroke Hall, being one of the least Halls of the University, to kennel there, and charged by their officers to shift for themselves, who, without more ado, broke open the Fellows' and Scholars' chambers, and took their beds from under them."

A century before this we find Bishop Ridley, the famous Protestant martyr, dwelling on this College (of which he had been Master) in his touching farewell to Cambridge, composed shortly before his execution:

"Farewell, Pembroke Hall, of late my own College, my care and my charge ... mine own dear College! In thy orchard—(the walls, butts,[8] and trees, if they could speak, would bear me witness)—I learnt without book almost all Paul's Epistles; yea, and I ween all the Canonical Epistles also, save only the Apocalypse—of which study, although in time a great part did depart from me, yet the sweet smell thereof I trust I shall carry with me into Heaven; for the profit thereof I think I have felt in all my lifetime ever after. And, I ween, of late there was that did the like. The Lord grant that this zeal and love toward that part of God's Word, which is a key and true commentary to all the Holy Scripture, may ever abide in that College so long as the world shall endure."

Besides Bishop Ridley, Pembroke can boast other well-known Protestant divines of the Reformation era, Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury, Whitgift, his successor, and Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester. The mitre and pastoral staff of the last named (both of brass, and the former quite unwearable) are preserved amongst the College treasures. So is also a magnificent silver-gilt cup, the gift of the Foundress, which still goes round the High Table on special Feast Days. It bears two inscriptions in old English characters. Round the bowl is an exhortation to "drenk and mak gud cher" for love of St. Dennis—to whom Marie de Valence, as a Frenchwoman, had a special devotion—while round the stem are the words "M.V. God. help.at.ned."

This cup is the more valuable as being almost the only piece of mediæval plate still surviving in Cambridge. In ancient days the College Halls and Chapels were abundantly supplied, but when the Civil War broke out the loyal Gownsmen, with one accord, devoted all their silver to the service of the King and sent it off to him at Oxford. But it never got there; for Cromwell gained his first distinction by pouncing upon the convoy "with a ragged rout of peasants," and then compelled the surrender of what little was left in Cambridge. How this cup escaped is not known.

Nor is Pembroke's lay list of distinguished alumni less notable than its clerical. Besides Gray, it has another poet of the first rank in Edmund Spenser, and no less a statesman than the younger Pitt. Amongst men of science it counts the late Sir George Gabriel Stokes, whose memory is still fresh, and the all too much forgotten seventeenth century astronomer, Dr. Long. Of the latter a striking memorial long remained in the College—a copper globe, eighteen feet in diameter, pierced to represent the celestial sphere, and so arranged that thirty observers at once could find place within it and see the sequence of the constellations as the globe revolved. Unhappily this object of unique interest has been improved off the face of the earth, amongst the various innovations to which Pembroke has specially lent itself.

The original foundation of this College (which was for some time more commonly called "Marie Valence Hall") consisted of a Master, fifteen scholars, and four Bible clerks. It has now twelve Fellows, thirty-three scholars, and upwards of two hundred students in residence.

St. Botolph's Church.

A few yards from Pembroke stands the Parish Church of St. Botolph, which, according to the original design of the Foundress, would have been as closely connected with the College as is Little St. Mary's with Peterhouse. In the first inception of the Collegiate system the idea was that the Members of each College (which was only regarded as a glorified dwelling house of the period, and the Society of which, till their "Hall" was built, were, actually, to begin with, quartered in already existing dwelling houses) should worship in the nearest Parish Church, like other parishioners. Only by special licence from the Pope could a private Chapel for a College, or any other mansion, be erected. That granted by Pope Urban the Fifth (during the Papal exile at Avignon) for the Chapel of Pembroke is still extant in the Papal Register. It is dated July 1366, and runs as follows:

"To the Warden and College of Scholars of Valence Marie Hall, Cambridge:

License, on the petition of their Foundress, Mary de Sancto Paulo, Countess of Pembroke, to have a Chapel founded and built by the said Countess within their walls, wherein Masses and other Divine Offices may be celebrated by Priests of the said College; saving the rights of the Parish Church."

The Parochial rights here spoken of mean the exclusive right of the Parish Priest to celebrate marriages and to receive the dues known as "Easter Offerings "and "Surplice Fees."

The dedication of St. Botolph's Church notifies us that we are now entering Cambridge proper. For this Saint, who was historically an abbot, the pioneer of the Benedictine Order in East Anglia, became adopted by travellers as their special patron; and his churches were, accordingly, placed for the most part at the gates of towns that his benediction might speed the parting voyager. We thus find them at no fewer than four of the London exits, Aldgate, Aldersgate, Bishopsgate, and Billingsgate, and in more than sixty other places, mostly in East Anglia. That which we are now considering was associated with the entrance to Cambridge known as "Trumpington Gate," where the mediæval traveller from London made his way into the town by crossing the ancient defensive work called "The King's Ditch."

The construction of this great trench was popularly ascribed to King Henry the Third, who, in his struggle with the Barons, desired to keep a firm hold on the important strategic centre of Cambridge. There is some reason, however, to suppose that he did not actually initiate the idea of thus insulating the town by running a ditch across the bend of the river on which it stands, but merely deepened and widened an earlier trench, originally made, perhaps, by the Danes during their occupation of the place, and remade by King John. However this may be, the ditch utterly failed of its purpose. Not only was it unequal to keeping the Barons out, but it could not even preserve the town from being pillaged by a local marauder, Geoffry de Magnaville or Maundeville, who made his lair in the neighbouring fens.

The King's Ditch left the river at "the King's Mill" (now Newnham Mill), and re-entered it opposite Magdalene College. It remained an open watercourse (and a common sewer) till near the beginning of the nineteenth century, when it was filled in, none too soon, for sanitary reasons. Timber bridges spanned the stream at "Barnwell Gate," where the "Via Devana" entered the town, as well as here at "Trumpington Gate." These gates themselves, if they ever had any material existence, were probably, at the most, little more than toll-bars.

St. Botolph's Church was intended, as we have seen, to be specially connected with Pembroke College. Between them, however, there has always existed a block of buildings, while immediately adjoining the church on the other side there has arisen a College of later foundation, that of St. Mary and Corpus Christi, familiarly known as "Corpus." Unlike the other Colleges of Cambridge, this owes its existence not to the generosity of any private benefactor, but to that of two mediæval Guilds, the Guild of St. Mary and the Guild of Corpus Christi, which combined to leave future ages this splendid memorial of their beneficence.

These Guilds were merely two out of many such bodies in the Cambridge of that day; for the Guild was the Benefit Society of the mediæval period, and every respectable citizen was enrolled in one—often, indeed, in more than one. The Guild, collectively, saw to the personal interests of its members; aided them in distress, old age, and sickness; contributed towards the expenses of their burial; and finally provided Masses for their souls. This last item ultimately proved fatal to the Guilds, which were suppressed wholesale at the Reformation, as being thus tainted with Popish superstition, and their property confiscated for the benefit of the Royal exchequer.

Guilds, like our Benefit Societies, were voluntary associations, co-opting their members, and established on various bases. Earliest to rise, in all English boroughs, was the Merchant Guild, which regulated the entire trade of the town; fixing at its general meetings, called "Morning Talks," the market price of each staple commodity, and the hours and places at which it might be bought and sold, besides punishing rigorously (by fine or expulsion from the Guild) any unfair dealing, such as underselling, or "regrating,"—i.e., making a "corner" in any article as we should now say. Somewhat later each craft began to have its own Guild, supplanting to a large extent the older and more general organisation, whose executive insensibly became merged in the Town Council. To this day, however, the building in which that Council meets for its "Morning Talks," is called the Guildhall in most English towns.

Besides the trading Guilds, there arose others organised on a definitely religious basis, the members of which were bound to special devotion in some particular direction, from which the Guild took its name. Amongst these were the two to whom we owe the existence of "Corpus"—those of "Corpus Christi" and "Blessed Mary," the former having been (in 1342) the original inceptors of the idea. The armorial bearings of the College still testify to its double origin, being, quarterly, three lilies, (the emblems of Our Lady,) and a pelican "in her piety" (i.e., feeding her young with her own blood, as contemporary legend imagined to be the case), as a reference to the Holy Eucharist.

The College, which was founded 1352, was originally intended only for the education of a small number of priests, and consisted only of one small court, now known as the Old Court, which happily still exists in almost its original condition. It is a venerable and secluded spot, with ivy-grown walls and mullioned lattices, well worth a visit. From its north-eastern corner extends a long gallery pierced by an archway, connecting the College with the Church of St. Benedict, or "Benet," as it is commonly vocalised.[9] From this connection the College became popularly known as "Benet College," just as Peterhouse was so called from its like connection with the ancient church of "St. Peter by Trumpington Gate." But while Peterhouse retains its old designation, that of "Benet" has now become wholly disused, though only within the last century.

St. Benet's Church, Interior.

This connecting gallery is of red brick, toned by age into delicious mellowness, and is best seen from the back of the College, where a quiet little lane ("Free School Lane"), one of the most charming amongst the byways of Cambridge, gives access through the above mentioned archway into the quiet little church yard of this quiet little church, with its Saxon tower, the oldest monument of ecclesiastical architecture in Cambridge, and one of the most picturesque. The precise date of its erection, and how the church came to exist at all, is, and will probably remain, an unsolved problem in history. Some authorities imagine that it points to an East Anglian settlement to the east of the Cam, distinct from the Mercian "Grantabridge" on the western bank, where the old Roman town once stood; others believe that it was built by the English inhabitants expelled from that town by the Danes in the time of King Alfred. Whatever may be the truth there is no small fascination in this venerable relic of the old English days, with its "long and short" stonework, the rudely-fashioned Romanesque pilasters in its windows, and the nondescript "portal-guarding" lions of its interior archway. The body of the church has been altered and re-altered time and again during the ages: at the bases of the present chancel-arch those of two earlier predecessors may be observed, and the south wall of the chancel is honeycombed with disused openings once leading into the Collegiate buildings of Corpus, while the existing stairway (also disused) is seen in the eastern corner of the south aisle. The church is thus of rare interest to the architectural student, and its history has been exhaustively dealt with by Mr. Atkinson (Cambridge Illustrated, p. 133). A glass case in the south aisle contains various relics of antiquity belonging to it, and beside them an ancient iron "fire-hook," used of old for tearing down blazing roofs and buildings.[10]

Out-taken the Old Court, Corpus has nothing in the way of buildings that has either beauty or interest, the College having been remorselessly remodelled about 1825. But the contents of its Library surpass all else of the kind in Cambridge, containing, as it does, what is probably the identical Gospel Book used by St. Augustine in his conversion of the English, and what is probably the identical copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle written for King Alfred, if not by his own hand. These priceless treasures once formed part of the library of Canterbury Abbey, which was sold by Henry the Eighth, at its suppression, as waste paper. Such relics as survived twenty years of this profanation were rescued by Archbishop Parker (the first Protestant Archbishop), in Elizabeth's reign, and were presented by him to the College, of which he had been Master.[11] To guard, so far as possible, against their again coming "to such base uses," he accompanied his gift with the condition that if a certain number of the MSS. were ever missing, the whole should pass to Caius College, and thence to Trinity Hall in case of a like loss. The authorities of these Colleges have (and exercise) the right of annual inspection: so far quite fruitlessly, as no single MS. has disappeared during the last three centuries. But the result has been to render this Library harder of access to visitors than any other, and it can only be seen by special arrangement with the Librarian, who has to be present in person, along with some other Fellow or Scholar of the College, before strangers can be introduced.

Corpus has the reputation of being haunted by a ghost, the existence of which has been taken quite seriously even within the present century. But the tale of its origin has a most suspicious number of variants. Some hold it to be the spirit of a poor motherless girl of seventeen, the daughter of Dr. Spenser (Master from 1667 to 1693), who died of fright at being discovered by her father while enjoying a clandestine interview with her undergraduate lover. (This tragedy is fairly historical.) Others declare that it is the lover; who was locked, or locked himself, into a cupboard, where he died of suffocation! Others again have a tale of a student from King's, who (in order not to haunt his own College) came hither to kill himself! That strange noises, not yet accounted for, are heard in some of the rooms, is, apparently, an established fact.

Opposite the Gate-tower of Corpus an open roadside esplanade, shaded by lime trees, marks the still vacant space destined by St. Catharine's College, in the seventeenth century, for a Library, to complete its red-brick quadrangle, a design which has come to nothing. The interior of the Court, which is not without dignity, still lies open to view, shut in only by what was then meant to be a merely temporary iron railing, with St. Catharine's wheel conspicuous above the entrance. The College was founded as a kind of satellite to King's College, by Robert Woodlark, the third Provost of that great Foundation, in 1475. It has always remained a small and comparatively poor Society.

If we pass through the Court, such as it is, of St. Catharine's, (familiarly known as "Cat's,") the western gate will bring us out into Queens' Lane. We shall, however, do better to reach this most fascinating of all Cambridge byways not thus but through the College from which it derives its name, Queens'. To do this we must turn westwards down Silver Street, a few yards south of St. Catharine's, and just opposite St. Botolph's Church. Before taking this turn we should give a glance northward along Trumpington Street at the splendid mass of Collegiate and University buildings which here come into view. High above all rises the glorious fabric of King's College Chapel, while, beyond it, the classical façades of the Senate House and the University Library, the fine gateway of Caius College, and the further off tower of St. John's College, fill the eye with a delightful sense of aesthetic culture and harmony.

Entering Silver Street, a mean thoroughfare, all too narrow for its volume of traffic, and demanding no small caution from all and sundry, we have on our left a building for all the world like a College—so frequently, indeed, mistaken for one by newcomers, as to have gained the nickname of "the Freshman's College." In reality this is the University Printing Press, or the Pitt Press, as it is commonly called; the existing frontage opposite Pembroke having been erected in 1831, in memory of that statesman, who was a member of Pembroke College.[12] All the official printing of the University is done here, and the building also serves as the quarters of the University Registrary, who keeps the record of Entrances, Degrees, etc.

At the end of Silver Street, which is, happily, little over a hundred yards in length, we reach an iron bridge over the Cam; its placid stream "footing slow," as Milton says (in Lycidas), and only some thirty feet in breadth. Above the bridge, however, it widens out into a broad pool, enlivened by the rush of water from the "King's Mill," beyond which the eye ranges over the open levels of "Sheep's Green." Both the mill and the bridge are amongst the oldest features of Cambridge, and the tolls payable at both were in mediæval times a Royal monopoly. The King's agent in collecting them on this bridge (known as "The Small Bridge" in contradistinction to the more important structure beneath the Castle) was a hermit, for whose accommodation a small bridge-house and chapel were built. This curious use of hermits, as keepers of roads and bridges, was common in Cambridgeshire before the Reformation.

At Silver Street bridge the river enters on its course through the enchanted ground of the "Backs," and the visitor will do well to take water at the adjoining boat-house; for the stream here forms for half a mile a byway lovely beyond words, not to be matched elsewhere in all the world; flowing, as it does, between venerable piles of academic masonry, and "trim gardens," the haunts of "retired leisure"; umbrageous, as it is, with the shade of lime, and elm, and beech, and chestnut, and weeping willow, and laburnum; spanned, as it is, by bridge after bridge, each a new revelation of exquisite design.

First we find ourselves with the old red brick fabric of Queens' College on the one bank and the thicket of "Queens' Grove" on the other, joined together by a wooden bridge, attributed to Sir Isaac Newton, the Great Natural Philosopher and discoverer of the Law of Gravity. A miracle of ingenious construction is this bridge, formed of a series of mutually supporting beams requiring not a single bolt to hold them together. Such at least it was till a few years ago, when the old timbers, after two hundred years' wear, fell into decay and had to be replaced, as nearly in facsimile as modern skill could compass.

A few yards further and the red brick of Queens' gives place to the white stone of King's; the proximity reminding us that the Founders of these two beautiful Colleges were husband and wife, "the Royal Saint," King Henry the Sixth, and his heroic Consort, Margaret of Anjou. Poor young things! They were but twenty-two and fifteen respectively when they began these monuments of their liberality and devotion—upon the very eve of that miserable conflict, the wars of "the rival Roses," which brought about the downfall and death of both. But their work survived them, to be completed by Royal successors; King's by Henry the Seventh, Queens' by Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Henry's rival, Edward the Fourth of York.

Clare Bridge.

King's Bridge, beneath which we now glide, is a single delicate rib of stone, a marked contrast to the elaborate woodwork of Queens', and to the three arches of grey stone and balustraded parapet of Clare, the next in order. Between these the river widens, and the view opens out on either side; a spacious meadow dotted and bounded with elms and limes on the west, and on the east as spacious a lawn beyond which rise the buildings of King's and of Clare College, and the west front of that glory of Cambridge and of the world, King's College Chapel. This reach of the river used, a few years ago, to be the scene of a pretty annual merry-making, known as the "Boat Show," which formed part of the attractions of the "May Week."[13] Hither the College boats which had been contending for precedence in the May Races used to row up in procession and draw up side by side in a mass occupying the whole breadth of the stream. Each crew rose in turn with uplifted oars to salute the victors who had attained (or retained) the Headship of the River; after which the procession returned to the boat houses two miles below. (The races were rowed two miles below again, where the stream is wide enough for the due manipulation of an eight-oar.)[14]

Clare Bridge passed, the College gardens of Clare and Trinity Hall (which last must not be confounded with the larger and later foundation of Trinity College) flank our course on either side for a short space, till the next bridge, Garret Hostel Bridge, which proclaims its non-Collegiate origin by being (like Newnham Bridge) a tasteless structure of iron. It is, in fact, a public thoroughfare; the road leading to it, Garret Hostel Lane, being the solitary survival of the dozen or so of little streets which gave access to the River from mediæval Cambridge, till the banks were usurped by the Colleges. And in its name we have the last surviving reminder of those "Hostels," or officially recognised lodging houses, which, before Colleges came into being (and for some while after), provided accommodation for the swarming students of the mediæval University.

Garret Hostel itself, together with others, was swallowed up by the gigantic College which we now reach, Trinity. Trinity Bridge, a cycloidal curve carried on three arches, is led up to on either side by the "long walk of limes" sung by Tennyson in "In Memoriam"; and the splendid range of chestnuts which, as we pass beneath it, opens upon us to the north-west, forms the boundary between the paddocks of Trinity and St. John's. On the east rises the vast fabric of Trinity Library built by Sir Christopher Wren, with its magnificent range of arched windows and its warm yellow sandstone, an occasional violet block adding to the effect, a veritable feast of quiet colour, especially when glowing in the evening sun, and contrasting pleasingly with the paler tint of the New Court of St. John's College, which, with its plethora of crocketed pinnacles, here bounds our view to the left front. To the right front rises the square tower of St. John's Chapel, picturesquely reflected in the still waters.

A slight bend in the stream, overhung by great elms, brings us to St. John's Bridge, a fine three arched structure of brick and stone built in 1696.[15] Beyond it the College buildings rise, like those of Queens', directly from the water—to the west the white stone abutments of the New Court, to the east the red brick walls and oriel window of the Library, the most beautiful building of its class in either Cambridge or Oxford. On it we can read the date 1624, and the letters I. L. C. S. standing for Johannes Lincolnensis Custos Sigilli, which commemorate the benefactor John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, to whose generosity we owe this gem of architecture. In his day, and for long after, St. John's was quite the largest College in Cambridge, rivalled only, for a moment, by Emmanuel. The present supremacy of Trinity did not begin till late in the eighteenth century.

The river is here spanned by the latest of the College bridges, a single arch of stone high in air, carrying a pathway vaulted over with stone and lighted on either side by grated windows, after the fashion of the "Bridge of Sighs" at Venice. It was built about 1830 to form a communication between the older part of the College on the eastern side of the river and the recently erected New Court on the western, while giving no opportunity for illicit leaving of the College. As has been already stated, students, while bound to be inside the College gates all night, are not bound to keep to their rooms, but may wander about the Courts at any hour.

St. John's Bridge.

With St. John's the Collegiate buildings cease and are succeeded by the last remaining "Hithes," or quays, used for commercial traffic, which of old lined the banks for the whole length of Cambridge. We read of Corn Hithe, Pease Hithe, Flax Hithe, Garlic Hithe and others. For the river was to old Cambridge all and more than all that the railways are now, the great artery of traffic, by which goods were far more easily and cheaply conveyed than along the roads of the period, which were always rough and often mere "Sloughs of Despond." Most especially was this the case with fuel, so that in the seventeenth century it was a familiar local saying that "here water kindleth fire." These ancient hithes, like the street-ways leading to them, have been almost all absorbed by the various College precincts. The last, as we have said, are to be seen yet, still in use, with barges (still laden chiefly with firewood) lying at them, below St. John's, by the side of the "Great Bridge," that famous passage of the river to which Cambridge owes both its name and its very existence. Opposite the lowest of them there is one more riverside College, Magdalene, an old monastic educational establishment turned to its present purpose at the time of the Reformation by Lord Thomas Audley of Saffron Walden, a courtier of King Henry the Eighth, who had obtained a grant of it from that rapacious monarch.

Our Cam byway here ends; for the river here passes out of the populated area of Cambridge. It is noteworthy that this area abuts on its banks to the same extent and no more than it did seven hundred years ago. The King's Ditch, which then bounded it, left the stream at the King's Mill, where our voyage started, and rejoined it just opposite Magdalene, where that voyage closes. It is well worth while, however, to retrace our course, for we shall find fresh loveliness in the reverse views of the exquisite scenery through which we have passed; and may note the many disused archways in the College walls, which tell how, scarcely a generation ago, this unique gem of English landscape was actually defiled by being used as a shamelessly open sewer.

CHAPTER III

Queens' College, Erasmus, Cloisters, Carmelites, Chapel.—Old Mill Street.—King's College, Henry the Sixth, King's and Eton, Henry's "Will."—King's College Chapel, Wordsworth, Milton, Windows, Rosa Solis, Screen, Stalls, Vaulting, Side-Chapels, View from Roof.

When we disembark once more at Silver Street Bridge, we find ourselves standing beneath the sombre old red-brick walls of Queens', indented just above us by a small projecting turret which we should not leave without notice, for it bears the name and, by tradition, was assigned to the use of the famous Erasmus during the months he spent in Cambridge. This great light of the Reformation, or, more properly speaking, of the intellectual revival which led up to it, was brought here by the influence of the saintly chancellor, Sir Thomas More, whose great wish was to broaden the University outlook by the introduction of the Classical spirit. Hitherto its curriculum had been almost exclusively confined to Aristotelian philosophy, adapted to dogmatic Christianity by the great mediæval Schoolmen, especially St. Thomas Aquinas. Erasmus brought in the knowledge of Greek, which he had acquired from the learned exiles whom the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 had driven to the west. Unhappily he, in no small degree, depreciated this great gift, by clogging it with his own self-opinionated pronunciation of the language, instead of taking it as actually spoken. Strange to say, this "Erasmian" barbarism shortly became a badge of Protestantism (though Erasmus himself lived and died a Catholic). It was thus enforced during the reign of Edward the Sixth, forbidden in that of Mary, and enforced again under Elizabeth. To this day it remains with us, and cuts us off from the living tongue of Hellas.

To enter Queens' it is advisable to cross the iron bridge, and recross the river by Sir Isaac Newton's wooden structure. Passing through the low doorway into which it leads we find ourselves in the most picturesque of all College Courts, bounded by the Hall in face of us, and on the other three sides by a low range of ancient red-brick cloisters. These once belonged to the Carmelite nuns, who removed to this site when flooded out of their original quarters at Newnham. In 1538 they sold their House to the College, just in time to escape its confiscation, at the suppression of the monasteries, by Henry the Eighth, who, as it was, required the purchase-money to be paid over to him. Having obtained the property Queens' at once built over the northern cloisters the beautiful gallery which serves as the drawing-room of the President's Lodge—(it has been stated that the Head of a College is, in Cambridge, always called the "Master," except here, where he is "President," and at King's where he is "Provost"). The gallery, which is a wooden construction overhanging the Cloister, is eighty feet long by twelve in width, with three large oriels looking into the Court. Those on the other side open into the President's garden, a charming enclosure abutting upon the river. Both gallery and garden are, of course, strictly private. Opposite the gallery, at the south-east corner of the cloisters, is a small Court of Elizabethan date, known as "Pump Court," and now-a-days as "Erasmus Court"; while from the north-east corner a tortuous little passage brings us into a more modern Court, shaded by a fine walnut-tree (whence its name of "Walnut Tree Court"). Here stands the New Chapel, the best bit of modern work in all Cambridge, erected in 1895 from the designs of Messrs. Bodley and Garner. The beautiful proportions and effective decoration of the interior are specially noteworthy.

The President's Gallery, Queens' College.

On the southern side of this court a passage (between the old Chapel and the Library) leads to the "Old Court," the original enclave of the College. This has remained practically unaltered since the Foundation, and is the best example remaining of the way in which a College was designed of old, after the fashion of the large country-house, as then built—Haddon Hall, for example, in Derbyshire. The red-brick and the white stone dressings, have mellowed, as elsewhere in Cambridge, to a tone of rich sombreness most restful and satisfying to the eye. The somewhat gaudy clock and clock tower are modern, as is also the yet gaudier sun-dial often, but erroneously, ascribed to Sir Isaac Newton. Over the Hall is emblazoned the very elaborate shield of the College, quartering the six bearings to which the poor little Queen Margaret laid claim—those of Hungary, Naples, Jerusalem, Anjou, Lorraine, and De Barre, all within a bordure "vert" added by Queen Elizabeth. Hence it is that green is to-day the distinctive Queens' colour at boating, cricket, etc.

Passing out of Queens', beneath the dignified gate-tower, we find ourselves in Queens' Lane, the quiet byway already referred to. Quiet byway as it now is, this was once a main street of Cambridge, known as Mill Street, forming (as it did before the great Colleges of King's, Trinity, and St. John's were built across it) the line of interior communication between the two bridges of the town, "the Small Bridge" by the King's Mill and "The Great Bridge" beneath the Castle. In those days it was a busy thoroughfare, thick set with burgher houses; now, in such broken lengths of it as survive, the buildings are almost wholly Collegiate. As we emerge from Queens' gate, and turn leftwards, we have on one side the dark-red bricks of that College, on the other the like buildings of St. Catharine's, while, at the further end of the street in front, our view is bounded by the white stone of the new gateway of King's. The whole effect is delightful.

Through this gateway we now make our way into the Premier[16] College of Cambridge, and soon find ourselves face to face with one of the most beautiful views of the world. Before us spreads a spacious lawn, the most extensive in existence,[17] bounded on three sides by the white and grey walls of College buildings, while on the fourth it merges into the wooded grass-land of the Backs; the river which divides it from these being scarcely perceptible from this point. We get a glimpse, however, of Clare Bridge, terminating the graceful façade of that College, which is in our immediate front. Behind us are the nineteenth-century additions to King's, and to our right front the fine pile of "Gibbs' Buildings," erected, in the eighteenth century, as a first attempt to approximate in some degree to the wishes of the Royal Founder, and transfer his College from the cramped position it had hitherto occupied, at the north of the Chapel, to the ampler site on the south which he had originally destined for it, and had cleared for his purpose by buying up and sweeping away, church and all, one of the most thickly populated parishes in Cambridge, that of "St. John Zachary" (i.e. St. John the Baptist), including a furlong's length of Mill Street.

Oriel in Queens' College.

For the scale on which Henry VI. intended to build was something hitherto quite unprecedented, and his plan took years to mature. The inspiration of it was originally caught from William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, whose genius first conceived the idea of twinned Colleges, in the provinces and at the University, from the former of which the Scholars should pass on to complete their education at the latter. This idea Wykeham himself first carried into effect by the foundation of the College at Winchester and of New College at Oxford. And, fired by his example, Henry VI., when only twenty, resolved on doing the same thing himself with truly Royal magnificence. His Scholars should begin their course at Eton, beneath the walls of Windsor Castle, his birthplace and favourite residence, and should thence pass to finish it at Cambridge, in the College which he would there dedicate to his own Patron Saint Nicolas, on whose Feast, December 6th (still "Founder's Day" to all Etonians and King's men), he was born.

This was in 1440. He at once put hand to the work, and that same year signed the Charters for both Colleges; the Head of each being called "Provost," in order, as he said, "to weld the two Colleges together in a bond of everlasting brotherhood,"—a bond which actually lasted in its entirety till 1870, and of which traces even yet remain.

The acquisition of the sites involved complicated legal transactions which occupied several years; but by 1444 Eton was sufficiently advanced to receive its first Scholars, a colony brought by William of Waynflete from Winchester; and by 1446 Henry was able to dedicate the first stone of his Cambridge chapel. Every dimension of this glorious edifice he himself worked out with the utmost minuteness, and set down, as he would have it completed, in that notable record of his purposes still preserved in the College Library, and known as his "Will." The word had not in those days its present purely posthumous signification, but was used of any formal disposition of a man's estate, or any part of it, to some given purpose.

In this document, "one of the most remarkable works in the English language," as Mr. J. W. Clark styles it, the King describes his future College so accurately that a complete plan and elevation of the whole can be drawn from it. We thus learn that Gibbs' Building represents what was meant to be the western side of an enclosed court, with a fountain in the midst of it. The Chapel was to form the northern side of this court; the entrance, with its turreted gate-tower, the eastern; the Hall and Library, the western. The great lawn before us was not to be, as now, an empty space, but was to be occupied, partly by a small "kitchen court" containing the various offices (bake-house, brew-house, etc.), partly by a cloistered cemetery between the Chapel and the river, from the western side of which was to rise a pinnacled tower, 220 feet high, the rival to that at Magdalen, Oxford, which was already being planned by William of Waynflete. Another turreted gate-tower, on the very bank of the river, was to give access to the College Bridge (further north than the present one). Had this plan been carried out in its entirety, King's would indeed have been, as the historian Stow puts it, "such that the like colledge could scarce have been found again in any Christian land."

Queens' College Gateway.

Unhappily its splendid design was brought to nought by the great tragedy of the Wars of the Roses, which broke out almost immediately. The singular mildness with which that conflict was waged (except on the actual field of battle), with no wasting of lands, with no burning of towns or villages, with no slaughter (and scarcely any plunder) of non-combatants, permitted the work on the Chapel, which, as we have seen, was already begun, to proceed, though slowly, and did not even stop the conveyance of stone from the chosen quarry at Huddleston in Yorkshire. The payment of the workmen was a harder matter, for Henry was far from being a wealthy monarch. He and his wife between them had less than the equivalent of £50,000 per annum, all too little for the expenses of their position, even in days of peace. Still the pay was found, in a certain measure, and the workmen came and went till dispersed by the appalling tidings that their Royal Saint had been deposed and murdered in the Tower. Then in panic horror they flung down their tools and fled, with such haste that they did not even complete the job on a block of stone, already half sawn through, which lay, as Logan's print of 1680 shows it, in the south-east corner of the present Great Court, Henry's intended quadrangle, a testimony to their despair, for upwards of three centuries. Then, when the idea of carrying out his intention was at last revived, this stone was appropriately used as the first to be employed for that purpose, the Foundation Stone of Gibbs' Building.

The work on the Chapel thus abruptly stopped by the Founder's death remained in abeyance for the remainder of the century. Not till 1508 was it resumed. The shell of the building was finished 1515; the glass and woodwork being added under Henry the Eighth. But in the end it was completed substantially in accordance with the Founder's Will, and is the only part of his design that has been so completed. His huge campanile, his cloisters, his gate towers, never came into being; and though the Great Court is now where he meant it to be, it is built in a fashion very different from his design.

This we see at a glance as we enter it round the southern end of Gibbs' Building. For it is not an enclosed quadrangle, but formed of two detached blocks to south and west, while the east side is only a stone screen, erected in 1825, and of a sadly inferior style. But the "goodly conduit" of the Founder's Will does rise in the midst,[18] and the north side is actually formed, as he decreed, by his glorious Chapel, the most magnificent in the world, which now rises before us in all its grandeur as we behold it across the Court.

And if the outside view is impressive, that which greets us when we enter is absolutely overpowering in its majesty. The sense of space and repose; the up-running lines of the shafting catching the eye whithersoever it turns, and leading it up to the myriad-celled spans of the vault; the subdued light through the pictured windows staining the venerable masonry; the great organ, upborne by the rich oaken screen, dominating the whole vista, combine to form, as has been well said, "a Sursum Corda done into stone," uplifting indeed to heart and sense alike. And when to this feast of visual harmony is added the feast of aural harmony, when the clear and mellow voices of the Choir blend with the majestic tones of the organ,

"And thunder-music, rolling, shakes
The prophets blazoned on the panes,"

we can understand how the inspiration of the scene has thrilled poet after poet, not Tennyson only, as above quoted, but Wordsworth, and even Milton, Puritan as he was, yet more. To the former King's College Chapel suggested one of the most exquisite of his sonnets:

"Tax not the Royal Saint with vain expense,
With ill-matched aims the architect, who planned,
Albeit labouring for a scanty band
Of white-robed scholars only, this immense
And glorious work of fine intelligence.
'Give all thou canst! High Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely calculated less and more.'
So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense
These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof,
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells,
Where light and shade repose, where Music dwells,
Lingering and wandering on as loth to die;
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality."

And Milton, when he came under the spell of this most glorious sanctuary, forwent all his conscientious objections to the Laudian revival of ornate services, "the scrannel pipes of wretched straw," and all the rest of his denunciations, and was, in spite of himself, carried away into forgetfulness of all save the glory and the beauty around him. Hear him in "Il Penseroso":

"But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloister's pale,
And love the high embowed roof,
With antique pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow
To the full-voiced choir below,
In Service high and Anthem clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies
And bring all Heaven before mine eyes."

Clare College from King's.

This passage is memorable, not only for its own intrinsic loveliness, but because we, very probably, have in it a key to the great historical puzzle connected with King's College Chapel. How came these "storied windows," with their hundreds of pictured prophets, saints, and angels, to escape the ruthless destruction which was meted out to all such "idolatrous" representations, throughout the length and breadth of the county, by the Parliamentary authorities at Cambridge? William Dowsing, their authorised agent, went from church to church, in town and village, shattering and defacing, and has left us a minute record of his proceedings, in which he evidently took a keen personal delight. Thus, amongst the colleges we have already noticed, he tells us that, at Peterhouse, "we pulled down two mighty great Angells with wings, and diverse other Angells, and the four Evangelists, and Peter with his Keies over the Chappell Dore, and about 100 Chirubims." At Queens' "we beat down a 110 superstitious pictures, besides Chirubims"; and so on, with monotonous repetition, entry after entry. The account also records the sums which each college had to pay him for his trouble, and such a sum (of extra amount in consideration of the magnitude of the task) was actually paid him by the Bursar of King's. Yet here are the windows before our eyes to-day in unbroken, unblemished dignity.

No contemporary explanation is forthcoming, and the true facts of the case seem to have been kept so close, and to have been known to so few, that no tradition, even, of them was handed down to posterity. As time went on, the wildest and most impossible theories were evolved to account for the marvel. It was gravely said that the windows had been taken down by the Fellows themselves in a single night, and securely buried from the baffled spite of the Roundheads before morning, till better times; the place of each being known to one Fellow only! That the west window alone remained plain till the latter part of the nineteenth century (a peculiarity really not explained by history), was held proof positive that the Fellow in charge of that particular burial was done to death by the Puritans without betraying his secret; which equally defied the researches of later generations. Such searches were actually made. A more sentimental variant of the story made the hider a pious little chorister, shot down by Cromwell in the chapel itself for refusing to reveal where lay his precious charge! Through the empty casement a white dove flew in, and hovered over the heroic innocent! It need scarcely be pointed out that to remove the glass from a single one of these huge windows would be a work of days for a fully equipped band of professional glaziers supplied with scaffolding; yet these absurd tales were gravely repeated, and the missing window was actually sought for. The truth of the matter will, probably, now never be known. But it is certain that the windows could not have been spared without the connivance, at least, of Oliver Cromwell, whose influence was at that time paramount in Cambridge; and it is a plausible conjecture that his protection of them was due to the intercession of his friend John Milton, to whom, as we have seen, the Chapel and its "dim religious light" meant so much.

A full study of these wonderful windows, crowded as they are with marvellously elaborate detail, is a work demanding hours of close attention under the direction of a competent guide. Even for the cursory examination which will suffice most of us the use of a guide-book is essential; and it is fortunate that one has been brought out (purchasable at any Cambridge book-shop for the modest sum of sixpence) by Dr. M. R. James, the present Provost of King's, who is the supreme European authority on ancient stained glass.

The general scheme of decoration is the representation of the life of Our Lady (to whom the College is dedicated), beginning in the westernmost window of the north side, with her traditional birth, and going on round the Chapel, till it ends, in the westernmost window of the south side, with her Assumption and Coronation. But as the traditions concerning her did not provide a sufficient number of scenes for the requirements of the designer, the series is eked out, not only by various incidents in her Son's life wherein she does not appear (such as His Baptism, Temptation, and Passion), but by the three windows to the western side of the great screen on the south being filled with subjects drawn from the stories of St. Peter and St. Paul; all being, however, within the traditional period of her life-time.

A first glance at the windows produces only the effect of a gorgeous maze of colouring, through which we marvel that any clue should have been found. Next to the general effect of the ineffably harmonious blending of hues, the audacious vividness of the hues themselves, red and green and blue and gold and purple, is what first impresses the eye. Then we notice how, down the central light of each window, stand, one above another, four great figures, human or angelic, each displaying an inscribed scroll.[19] These figures are known as the Messengers, and when not Angels they are Old Testament Prophets. Their scrolls, which are in Latin, refer, sometimes by direct description, oftener by a suggestive text, to the subjects depicted in the Lights on either hand of them. The inscriptions, however, are of very little practical use to the visitor. Age has rendered many of them wholly, and more partially, illegible; while the black-letter characters of their crowded Latin words are not easy to decipher at the best. They are, moreover, by no means free from actual blunders, and the connection between text and scene is sometimes far from obvious. Their interest, in fact, is for experts; and less-gifted visitors will do well to content themselves with the interpretation given in the guide-book.

The same advice applies to the glass in general. It is not worth while to spend on a detailed study of the windows the time necessarily involved. Much of the work is excellent, and almost every window has its points of interest, but much, especially amongst the heads of the figures, is far from pleasing. This fact is largely owing to a considerable "restoration" undertaken in the Early Victorian era; when the art of glass-painting was at a sadly low ebb, and when the uncurbed restorer positively revelled in substituting for ancient decay his spick-and-span modern conceptions. But, as has been said, almost every window has features deserving that time should be made for their notice, which we now proceed to point out.

Each window contains four scenes, the upper and lower, to left and right of the central "Messengers," being normally co-related as Type and Antitype. This relation, however, is not universal, and does not occur in the first window of the series (that in the north-west corner of the Chapel), where the four scenes consecutively illustrate the legend connected with the birth of Our Lady. The story runs that her parents, Joachim and Anna, were childless even unto old age, and that, in consequence, Joachim, on presenting his offering in the Temple, was insulted by the High Priest. As he sadly sought retirement in the country an Angel appeared to him with the message that he should return to Jerusalem, where his wife would meet him at the Temple gate, and a daughter would be born to them.

The upper left-hand of the window shows the mitred High-Priest waving away Joachim, who is sorrowfully departing. His face is beautifully rendered. In the upper right-hand corner we see him kneeling before a green and gold angel hovering downwards. The rural surroundings are suggested by a pastoral composition. Note the sheep-dog and the shepherd's bagpipes.

King's College Chapel.

In the lower left-hand light Joachim and Anna are meeting before the Temple gate; and in the right-hand Anna is sitting up in a blue bed with red curtains, watching the infant Mary being washed. Mary has long golden curls, and her face is that of an adult; but Dr. James considers this head a later insertion. This window is known to have been repeatedly and promiscuously repaired (even as early as 1590), and was in utter confusion till the latest releading (1896). The repairs seem to have been executed with any old bits of glass the glazier might happen to have in stock. On one fragment (now removed) some coins of Charles the First were represented. Most of the windows have suffered, more or less, in this way, but none (except that over the south door) to the same extent as this first window, which though the first in order of subject, seems not to have been the first inserted, or at least completed; for at the top may be read the date 1527, whereas the window over the screen on the north side contains that of 1517.

These two dates are respectively near the inception and the completion of the glazing, which was begun 1515, the year when Luther began the Reformation by the publication of his famous Theses, and finished 1531, the year in which that Reformation was first inaugurated in England by the King being declared Supreme Head of the Anglican Church. The windows, however, must have been designed at a date considerably earlier, for in the heraldic devices which fill the small top lights Henry the Seventh, not Henry the Eighth, is treated throughout as the reigning monarch; his shield being blazoned in the central compartment, while the latter is only commemorated by the initials H. K.,—the last standing for his ill-fated wife Katharine of Aragon. These heraldic devices are the same in all the windows, and show the rival roses of York and Lancaster, the Tudor Portcullis and Hawthorn Bush, the Fleur-de-lys, and the initials H. E. (for Henry the Seventh and his Queen, Elizabeth of York). All the glass is of English manufacture, the work of four London firms, but it seems probable that the artists were to some extent under both Flemish and Italian influence.

Passing on to the second window, we find it thus arranged:

Type
Presentation of a golden table in the
Temple at Delphi.		Type
The Marriage of Tobias and Sara.
(Tobit vii. 13.)
Antitype
Presentation of the Virgin in the
Temple at Jerusalem.		Antitype
The Marriage of Mary and Joseph.

The first scene here is the only instance in the Chapel of a non-Scriptural incident being made use of as a Type. It is the Classical legend (found in Valerius Maximus, an obscure Latin writer used in the sixteenth century as a school book), which tells how a question as to the ownership of a golden table found in the nets of some Milesian fishermen was referred to the Delphic oracle of Apollo for solution. To whom should this table of pure gold be made over? The Oracle replied "To the Wisest." The prize was therefore given to Thales, the wisest Milesian of the day, who modestly passed it on to another sage, and he to yet another. Finally, after thus going the round of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, it came into the hands of Solon the Athenian, who declared that "the Wisest" could be no other than Apollo himself, and accordingly presented the table to the God in the Temple of Delphi. By a strange application, this tale was considered, in mediæval literature, as typical of the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple at Jerusalem; her purity and that of the gold being, apparently, the connecting idea.

In the window we see the offering of the golden table; Apollo being represented by a golden image bearing a shield emblazoned with the Sun, and a banner. Beneath is Mary, as a young girl dressed in blue, walking up the steps of the Temple; an incident much dwelt on in the legend. In the upper Marriage scene note the Angel Raphael, the comrade and guide of Tobias; and, in the lower, Joseph's rod, the sign from which (a dove appearing upon it) marked him out, amongst all her suitors, as Mary's destined husband. This scene suggests a reminiscence of Raphael's well-known cartoon on the subject, which had lately been painted.

In the third window the arrangement is:

Type
The Fall
(Eve's disobedience).		 Type
The Burning Bush
(remaining unconsumed).
————
Antitype
The Annunciation
(Mary's obedience).		 Antitype
The Nativity
(Mary remaining a Virgin).

Note the human head and hands of the Serpent, and the brilliant ruddiness of the apple. Also the ruby flames of the bush, and the representation of God the Father at its summit. Moses is in the act of putting off his shoes from his feet. In the Nativity scene the Babe can only be discovered by following the gaze of the child Angels who are clustering round in adoration. Contrary to the usual convention, which shows Him sitting on His Mother's knee as if a couple of years old, He is here represented realistically as an actual new-born baby. Above both lower lights in this window is a renaissance arcading.

In the fourth window we have:

Type
The Circumcision of Isaac.		 Type
The visit of the Queen of Sheba to
Solomon.
————
Antitype
The Circumcision of Christ.		 Antitype
The visit of the Wise Men to Christ.

The face of Abraham and that of the officiating priest below are both good, and so is that of the Queen. The Epiphany Star is a fine object, and the effect of its light irradiating the thatch of the manger-shed is most powerfully rendered.

The fifth window gives us

Type
The Legal Purification of a woman.		 Type
Jacob's flight from the vengeance
of Esau.
————
Antitype
The Purification of Mary.		 Antitype
The Flight into Egypt.

In the Purification scene the faces of Simeon, who is the main figure, Mary, and Joseph (carrying the dove-cage), are all worth looking at. So is Joseph in the Flight episode; which, however, is chiefly remarkable for introducing in the back-ground a legend from a late carol, which tells how Herod's soldiers pursued the Holy Family, and how the pursuit was miraculously checked. The fugitives met a husbandman, and instructed him to answer any inquiry for them by saying, "They passed whilst I was sowing this corn"; which was actually the case. But, lo! when the pursuers shortly came up the corn had sprung up, and was ripe already to harvest. It takes some little trouble to decipher this scene. The Purification is seen through an arcade of the Temple, on the frieze of which is a group of classical horsemen like those of the Parthenon.

The next window is that over the great organ screen dividing the ante-chapel from the choir. It is arranged thus:

Type
The Golden Calf
(the introduction of Idolatry).		 Type
The Massacre of the Seed Royal by
Queen Athaliah.
————
Antitype
The idols of Egypt falling before
the Holy Child
(the overthrow of Idolatry).		 Antitype
The Massacre of the Innocents by
King Herod.

The Golden Calf is set high on a magnificent ruby pillar. Before it Moses is breaking the Tables of the Law; one fragment of which shows a Flemish inscription. Below, an idol is falling headlong from a precisely similar pillar. The kneeling figure in this scene is the Governor Aphrodisius, who was converted by the miracle; as is recorded in the apocryphal "Gospel of the Infancy." In the Massacre scene Queen Athaliah is represented by a conventional figure of the Virgo Coronata (with her Babe in her arms). The artist evidently had this figure in stock, and used it rather than take the trouble of producing something less incorrect. Near her there is a minutely depicted mediæval thatched house worthy of notice. So is the business-like callousness in the expression on the leading soldier's countenance. This window bears, as has been said, the date 1517, written 15017.

We are now in the choir, where our first window gives:

Type
Naaman washing in Jordan.		 Type
Esau tempted by Jacob to sell his
birthright.
————
Antitype
Christ baptised in Jordan.		 Antitype
Christ tempted by the Devil.

All three Temptations are given, the first being in the foreground. The countenance of the Devil (as a respectable old man) is a marvellous study.

The second window in the choir is:

Type
The raising of the Shunamite's son.		 Type
The Triumph of David
(I Sam. xvii).
————
Antitype
The raising of Lazarus.		 Antitype
The Triumphal Entry.

The Shunamite's house is another bit of minute detail. Note the dishes on the shelf in front. Note also the magnificently gigantic head of Goliath borne by David on the point of the Philistine's own huge sword.

The third window:

Type
The Manna.		 Type
The Fall of the Angels.
————
Antitype
The Last Supper.		 Antitype
The Agony in Gethsemane.

The manna is shown as falling in the shape of Communion Breads. Below, Christ gives the sop to the red-haired Judas, while Peter, who thus becomes aware of the traitor's identity, clenches his fist with a gesture of menace extraordinarily forcible.

The connection between the right-hand subjects is not obvious. Dr. James suggests that it refers to Christ's speaking of the casting out of Satan as a result of His Passion (John xii. 31). The smaller scale of this scene, and the nimbi given to Christ and the Apostles point to its having been the work of a special artist.

The fourth choir window:

Type
Cain murders Abel.		 Type
The mocking of David by Shimei.
————
Antitype
Judas betrays Christ.		 Antitype
The mocking of Christ.

Cain is killing Abel with a large bone. Note the ruby fires of their respective altars in the back-ground, Abel's spiring upwards in full flame, while Cain's is blown down to the earth. In the betrayal scene the face of Malchus, as he lies upon the ground with his broken lantern under him, should be observed. It is highly expressive.

The fifth window:

Type
Jeremiah in prison.		 Type
Noah mocked by Ham.
————
Antitype
Christ before Annas.		 Antitype
Christ mocked by Herod.

We have now reached the last window of the northern range, that in the north-east corner of the Chapel. It shows us:

Type
Job scourged by Satan.		 Type
Solomon crowned by his mother.
(Cant. iii. 11.)
————
Antitype
Christ scourged by Pilate.		 Antitype
Christ crowned with thorns.

In the scourging scene we may note the singularly unpleasing features and expression of the Saviour's face; which Dr. James holds to be purposely so delineated, in reference to the words of Isaiah: "He hath no form nor comeliness, and when we see Him there is no beauty that we should desire Him." We do not, indeed, find in the entire series of windows one single attempt to represent Him worthily. The conventional face, familiar throughout the ages to Christian Art, even from the first century, and probably a real recollection of Him, is consistently departed from (as is characteristic of the Renaissance period), and with it has gone every divine and exalted association. Where even the genius of Michael Angelo failed, we cannot look to find the glassworkers of London succeeding.

The great east window has no central messengers, and thus contains six scenes, each occupying three lights, arranged thus:

Type
The Nailing to the
Cross.		 Type
Christ crucified
(the Piercing).		 Type
The Descent from the
Cross.
——————
Antitype
Ecce Homo!		 Antitype
The Sentence.		 Antitype
The Way of Sorrows.

There is little to call for special notice in this window. Structural conditions necessitate the Cross being of abnormal height. In the background of the Way of Sorrows is a vivid ruby patch, which may be meant for the Field of Blood.