Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely Part 12

The other Ladies' College, at Girton, has got a chapel, where the Church of England services are performed. This is the oldest of all the ladies' colleges connected with Oxford or Cambridge, and hence comes its position no less than two miles to the west of Castle Hill; for when the idea was first started, the close proximity of young men was deprecated almost in the trenchant spirit of Princess Ida. The very first start, indeed, was made (in 1869) no less than thirty miles away, at Hitchin, and only when this was found intolerable did the pioneers move (in 1872) to Girton.[95] There the beautiful grounds and splendid range of buildings give an impression of s.p.a.ce rivalling Newnham; but the College is not nearly so large, and is somewhat more select. Here each student has a sitting-room as well as a bedroom, after the fas.h.i.+on of the men's Colleges.

[Footnote 95: Newnham is just younger, having been opened 1875. It then consisted of one Hall only.]

Immediately to the north of Newnham is Selwyn College, a denominational inst.i.tution belonging to the Church of England, corresponding to Keble College at Oxford, and, like it, recognised by the University, not indeed as a College, but as a "Public Hostel,"

whose undergraduates are not mere "non-collegiate students." Such "unattached" students are under a "Censor" and a special syndicate, and have a centre in the "Fitzwilliam Hall" (close to the museum of that name), where they have to report themselves daily.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Back Court, Jesus College._]

Looking eastwards from the Castle Hill, we see a wide, open green stretching from the further bank of the river, and beyond it a low church tower rising amid trees. This is the tower of Jesus College Chapel, once the Priory Church of St. Radegund. This lady was a Frankish queen of the sixth century, and a friend of the poet Venantius, the author of the well-known hymns _Vexilla Regis_ and _Pange Lingua_. Under her dedication a Benedictine nunnery was founded here at the beginning of the eleventh century. It was never a large or wealthy inst.i.tution, but continued to flourish for four hundred years and more. In 1455 its account books, still preserved among the archives of Jesus College, show an income of 70 per annum, equivalent in purchasing power to some 1,200 at the present value of money.

Every Benedictine nun ranked socially as a gentlewoman, so that this income needed careful administration to make it suffice for the nine or ten sisters in residence. The Convent, however, was at this date quite solvent, but in less than twenty years a single incapable Prioress had run it deep in debt. The butcher's bill alone then amounted to 21 (equivalent to over 350), and, having no cash to pay withal, the nuns were taking two of his daughters free amongst the boarders whom they educated. They were also alienating their capital, so that the income was rapidly dwindling. In 1481 it had decreased by more than 50 per cent., and was only 30. The next Prioress was a strong and capable ruler, imposed upon the convent by the Bishop of the Diocese, who was its Visitor. But things had gone too far, and, in spite of her efforts, the place dwindled away. By 1496 there were only two nuns left, and, under Royal license, the convent was turned into "Jesus College" by the same Visitor. His name was Alc.o.c.k, so his coat of arms bore three c.o.c.ks' heads, with yet another c.o.c.k for crest. This device confronts us at every turn in our pa.s.sage through the College.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Jesus College Chapel, East End._]

To reach it from Castle Hill, the most pleasant way is by descending the street, and turning to the left past St. Giles' Church. This road will soon bring us to the river, at a lock, where we cross by an iron foot-bridge. We are now on the open Green we saw from above, which is known as "Midsummer Common," from the great fair held there at that season. As we make our way over it, we see to our left along the river bank the long white boathouses[96] of the various colleges; for it is not till below this lock that the river becomes navigable for an eight-oar, and all the University rowing is done between it and that next below, at Baitsbite, three miles and more down the stream to the northward. Baitsbite[97] is the starting-point of the annual college races, held at the conclusion of the May Term.[98] As is well known, these are decided by "b.u.mping," the boats all starting simultaneously one behind another, with a clear interval of two lengths between each. Any boat making a b.u.mp takes the place of its defeated rival in the next race, and has the privilege of rowing back to its boat-house with its flag flying.[99] This is also done by the boat Head of the River, which, of course, cannot b.u.mp, though it may be b.u.mped. Should a boat make its b.u.mp on each of the four evenings that the races last, the crew are said to "get their oars," each man's oar becoming his personal property and being usually hung in his rooms as a trophy, appropriately painted with the College colours. These colours are also worn for racing; the most easily recognised being the bright scarlet of Lady Margaret (St. John's), the black and white of Trinity Hall, the green of Queens', the black and yellow of Clare, and the red and black of Jesus. The flags always bear the College arms, except that "First Trinity" fly the three crowned lions of King Edward the Third.

[Footnote 96: These are large wooden edifices containing sheds for the boats below and dressing-rooms for the crews above.]

[Footnote 97: See Chapter XIII.]

[Footnote 98: There are also races in the Lent Term for the less exalted boats. But only the first division in the May races has any general interest. Each division contains sixteen boats, and the last boat of each division is also the first of the division below, being thus known as a "sandwich boat."]

[Footnote 99: The races end at Chesterton, about a mile below the boathouses.]

Leaving the distant prospect of the boathouses behind us, we resume our way to Jesus College, the grounds of which are separated from Midsummer Common by a broad ditch. Skirting this, we come to "Jesus Lane," and, turning to the right, reach the main entrance to the College, opposite the red brick facade of "Westcott House" (like Ridley Hall, an Anglican Clergy Training School), and the tall spire of the new Church of All Saints.[100] Iron gates admit us into a long pa.s.sage, between red brick walls, known as "the Chimney," which conducts us to the College gate. Jesus is a large college, with several courts, but all that is much worth seeing is the chapel with its cloisters, to reach which we must seek a low-browed doorway to the east of the entrance gate. Both are relics of the nunnery. The latter, indeed, were rebuilt in the eighteenth century; but the nineteenth has rediscovered, in their eastern range, the beautiful Early English entrance into the Nuns' Chapter House. At the north-east corner of the cloisters we find the door into the chapel.

[Footnote 100: This church, as has been already said, formerly stood at the other end of its Parish, in the old Jewry, hard by Trinity and St. John's.]

This bears little resemblance to the conventional College Chapel, being a cruciform church of the ordinary Norman shape, with a central tower. Very little of the work, however, is Norman, for the nuns did not get far on with their design till the twelfth century had come in and the Early English period had commenced. A beautiful gem of this style the chapel is, and, for once in a way, the drastic "restoration"

to which it was subjected in early Victorian days is matter of real thankfulness.[101] The building had been sadly mauled about in the course of ages; the high-pitched roof lowered, the eastern lancets destroyed. All is now brought back, in excellent taste, to what it was at first. The old chancel has become the chapel proper, the transepts and the short nave serving as the ante-chapel.

[Footnote 101: This restoration had the advantage of being carried out under the auspices of a man of real architectural taste (though better known by his geological distinction), the Rev. Osmund Fisher, then Dean of the College. The discovery of the Chapter House entrance in the cloisters was also due to him.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Oriel of Hall, Jesus College._]

In this the windows are filled with fine Morris gla.s.s, the rich hues of which are, unfortunately, much faded from their pristine brilliance. That at the end of the south transept, which first meets the eye, is occupied, above, by a magnificent group of the Celestial Hierarchy, in all its nine Orders--Angels, Archangels, Virtues, Princ.i.p.alities, Dominions, Powers, Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim, with the addition, in the tenth place, of Man, as the image of G.o.d; and, below, by nine Saints, including St. Radegund, with the addition of Bishop Alc.o.c.k. The four other windows of the transept show the four Evangelists, each attending a pair of Sibyls,[102] and, in the tower lights, Gospel scenes ill.u.s.trating the Incarnation, Pa.s.sion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ respectively. The nave windows, on the south, have Patriarchs and Prophets, with scenes beneath from the life or writings of each; and, on the north, emblematic figures representing the Cardinal and Theological Virtues, each trampling under her feet the contrary Vice.

[Footnote 102: Some words put by Virgil into the mouth of the Sibyl (or prophetess) of c.u.mae were supposed by the early Christians of Rome (to whom the idea of Sibylline books being prophetic was familiar from Roman History) to foretell the Incarnation. Hence she, and her sister Sibyls of other fictions as well, came to be considered inspired, and before long a whole literature of imaginary Sibylline predictions was in circulation.]

The most notable of the alumni of Jesus College was also one of the earliest--Archbishop Cranmer. It is from his having been here that he is so often and so ridiculously said to have been brought up in a _Jesuit_ seminary![103] Another notability was the poet Coleridge, who was here from 1790 to 1792. He was not an academic success, for, like his contemporaries, Wordsworth at St. John's, and Southey at Christ Church, he was carried away by the revolutionary spirit then rampant, and, being more audacious than they, got into more sc.r.a.pes. One of his freaks was to trace out in gunpowder on the college lawns the words LIBERTY AND EQUALITY, which not only produced a sensation when the train was fired, but left the obnoxious sentiment permanently branded on the sacred gra.s.s. Finally he ran away. But he was taken back, and did not lose his love for his old college; for, long afterwards, we find him writing of "the friendly Cloisters and happy Grove of quiet, ever-honoured Jesus College, Cambridge." The Grove is the name given to the gra.s.sy field, begirt with trees, which is bordered by the ditch separating the College grounds from Midsummer Common.

[Footnote 103: The Jesuits, of course, did not come into being for years after Cranmer's academic day.]

The western portion of that common is often called "Jesus Green." It witnessed the execution of the only Marian martyr burnt at Cambridge.

His pile was largely formed of Protestant books of devotion, one of which, "a Communion Book," he picked up and read diligently till the flames overpowered him, "praising G.o.d, who had sent him this consolation in his death."

CHAPTER VII

=Sidney Suss.e.x College=, Oliver Cromwell, Fellow Commoners.--Holy Trinity, Simeon, Henry Martyn.--=Christ's College=, "G.o.d'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.=--Coe Fen.--First Mile Stone.--Barnwell, Priory, Abbey Church.--Lepers Chapel, Stourbridge Fair, Vanity Fair.

Following Jesus Lane from the "Chimney" gate townwards, we once more strike into the Via Devana, here called Sidney Street, from the College filling the angle between the two roads. It is not a pretentious inst.i.tution, having always been amongst the smallest colleges. But it has nurtured one man of colossal individuality, the great Protector, Oliver Cromwell. For Sidney Suss.e.x College (as its full name runs, from its foundress, Lady Frances Sidney,[104] Countess of Suss.e.x) was inst.i.tuted (in 1596) for the very purpose of fostering such _alumni_. The earliest statutes of the College decree that its members shall be taught, before all else, to "detest and abhor Popery." Besides Cromwell, his right-hand man, Edward Montagu, Earl of Manchester, who distinguished himself when in authority at Cambridge during the Civil War by ejecting from their parishes so many recusant High Church parsons and filling their places with Puritan divines, was also a Sidney man. Both he and Cromwell were "Fellow Commoners," a name given to privileged undergraduates who, on payment of extra fees, were permitted to rank with the Fellows and to dine at the High Table.

They also wore a more ornate gown than the ordinary undergraduate. It is only of late years that this plutocratic arrangement has been discontinued in the University. The site of Sidney was formerly that of the Franciscan Convent, with its splendid church, considered the finest in Cambridge. At the dissolution of the convent the University tried to secure this from King Henry the Eighth as the University Church. But the King's price was too high, the negotiations fell through, and the glorious building was remorselessly and utterly demolished.

[Footnote 104: Her husband had been over the Royal Excise, and the College s.h.i.+eld bears the familiar Broad Arrow of that department.]

Pa.s.sing by Sidney, which has nothing to detain us, we shortly note a church on our right hand. This is Holy Trinity, the special home of the Evangelical movement in Cambridge. In the early days of that movement (and of the nineteenth century) the pulpit here was occupied by its great leader, Charles Simeon, Fellow of King's College, who through much persecution, through evil report and good report, championed the cause till he saw it triumphant. And a series of like-minded men has followed him.[105] The grey stone building just beside the church is the Henry Martyn Hall, built in memory of that great Evangelical pioneer and missionary. It is used for meetings connected with the movement.

[Footnote 105: The church is architecturally naught, outside; but the tower arches, within, form the loveliest gem in Cambridge.]

Leaving Holy Trinity to our right, a turn in the street brings us face to face with the grey stone front of Christ's College, one of the most ideal in Cambridge. We owe it, like St. John's, to the bounty of the Lady Margaret Tudor, King Henry the Seventh's mother, whose beautiful character has already been dwelt upon in our last chapter. And she bestowed it upon us under the same inspiration as in the case of St.

John's, that of her friend and confessor, Bishop Fisher, and, in doing so, adopted the same plan of transforming and expanding an earlier Foundation. This was a very small "School of Grammar," which never attained to the dignity of collegiate rank, founded in 1430 by John Bingham, parson of St. John Zachary, just before he and his Church were swept away to make room for King's College. It was then removed to this site, just outside the "Barnwell Gate" of Cambridge, where it maintained a microscopic existence for the rest of that century.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Christ's College Chapel._]

At the beginning of the next it had the good fortune to be taken up by Lady Margaret, who increased the number of residents maintained in it from five to sixty, and changed the name from "G.o.d's House" to "Christ's College." At the same time she planned out the princ.i.p.al court, as it now exists. Unlike St. John's, it was at least partly completed before her death, for the historian Fuller tells a pretty story of how she here beheld from a window the dean administering to one of the scholars the corporal chastis.e.m.e.nt which was at that day the recognised means of discipline,[106] and called out to him "_Lente! Lente!_" ("Gently! gently!") The College is appropriately full of her memory: her portrait adorns the Hall; on the front of the Gate Tower stands her statue, between the Plantagenet Rose and the Tudor Portcullis, and beneath it are carved her armorial bearings, as at St. John's, with the addition of the crest, a demi-eagle of gold rising out of a crown.[107] On either side are the three feathers of the Prince of Wales. These same arms, emblazoned, are over the inner gateway that leads into the Gardens, with her own beautiful motto, "_Souvent me souvient_" ("Oft I bethink me"). And in the Library under a gla.s.s shade is a reproduction of the upper part of her person, with the hands folded in prayer, from her monument in Westminster Abbey.

[Footnote 106: The rod retained its use in this connection till the eighteenth century. In the seventeenth, during the period of Puritan ascendancy, it was made a University enactment that if any undergraduate should "by day or night enter any river, ditch, lake, pond, mere, or any other water within the County of Cambridge, whether for the sake of swimming or of was.h.i.+ng," he should be flogged in his College hall. It must be remembered that students then entered at least five years earlier than now.]

[Footnote 107: This crest is absent from the Johnian gate-tower, but is found above the iron gate leading into the Backs.]

But, to the ordinary visitor, the memory of even Lady Margaret is, at Christ's, overshadowed by the mightier memory of John Milton, who was in residence here for seven years, from 1625 till, in 1632, he became a Master of Arts. In residence along with him was his "Lycidas," whose real name was Edward King. In the gardens an ancient mulberry tree, so old that its stem has to be encased in a pyramid of turf, and its remaining arms jealously sh.o.r.ed up, is called by his name. The tradition that he himself planted it is probably unfounded, but it was actually there in his day, one of the score of these trees which, by the desire of King James the First, were placed in the gardens.

The gardens here are amongst the few College Gardens which at Cambridge are open to the public. During certain hours visitors are admitted, and no small privilege it is; for there are few lovelier spots than this verdurous lawn, shut in on one side by the grey "Garden Front" of the College,[108] with its bal.u.s.traded cornice and transomed windows, and everywhere else "bosomed high in tufted trees";[109]--an ideal place for Milton's own

"retired Leisure, That in trim gardens takes his pleasure."[110]

[Footnote 108: This front belongs to an isolated block known as the "Fellows' Buildings," erected shortly after Milton's time.]

[Footnote 109: "L'Allegro."]

[Footnote 110: "Il Penseroso."]

Hidden in a thicket at the north-eastern corner is a sequestered swimming-bath, fed by a stream drawn off from Hobson's conduit. To climb the statue beside this and dive off the head is a current feat amongst Christ's men. Something of a feat it is; requiring considerable sureness of foot and skill in balancing oneself.

To reach the Gardens we must cross the first court, a singularly pleasant example of a College Court, rendered the more picturesque by the central gra.s.s-plot being circular instead of the usual rectangle, and pa.s.s on through the "Screens" at its north-eastern corner. Here we are in another Court, only in part surrounded by buildings; the "Fellows' Buildings" being immediately in front of us. As Christ's, unlike most Colleges, has but one entrance,[111] we shall have to retrace our steps. In pa.s.sing the Hall we should, if possible, look in to note the portraits of the College worthies.

Amongst these are to be found not only Lady Margaret, Bishop Fisher, and Milton, but Quarles (the author of the "Emblems"), Paley, the Evidencer of Christianity,[112] who was a Fellow here in the eighteenth century, and the epoch-making name of Charles Darwin, the Apostle of Evolution.

[Footnote 111: A small back door, however, leads from the kitchen into "Christ's Lane" (on the south). On one famous occasion, when, at a time of popular excitement, the students were confined to the College, sympathisers from without burst this in (using the bar which closes the lane to vehicles as a battering-ram) and set them free.]

[Footnote 112: Paley's _Evidences_ is still one of the set subjects in the "Littlego" (or "Previous Examination") which every student must pa.s.s before being allowed to proceed further.]

From Christ's we continue along the Via Devana, here called St.

Andrew's Street from the unlovely church of that name[113] which we see opposite the College. Of old the name was Preachers' Street, from the great preaching Order of the Dominican Friars, who from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century here found their home. The site of their House is now occupied by our next College, Emmanuel, as that of the Franciscans was by Sidney. It is remarkable that the ground of both the great Orders which were called into existence specially to preach the doctrines of Catholicism should have pa.s.sed into the hands of men whose main object was to contest those doctrines. But so it was. Emmanuel, like Sidney, was founded (1584) expressly to combat the errors of Popery; and the Founder, Sir Thomas Mildmay, a courtier of Queen Elizabeth, has left on record his special wish that his College should turn out a constant supply of able Puritan divines.

[Footnote 113: Unlovely as this church is, it is a monument of the piety and generosity of one of the most pious and generous men Cambridge has ever known, Dr. Perry, first Bishop of Australia, who, while a Fellow of Trinity, devoted his private fortune to the ecclesiastical needs of the town, and thus enabled no fewer than three large churches to be built. Unhappily it was at a period of execrable taste (the earliest Victorian), and the three are far from beautiful or correct examples of ecclesiastical architecture. But when the then newly formed Camden Society (for the revival of a purer style of building) ventured to hint as much, a storm of Protestant indignation arouse throughout Cambridge, and a public protest against such Romish criticism was actually signed by every resident Fellow of Trinity!]