Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely Part 11

Till lately the tower of Great St. Mary's was a historical record of the stirring scenes amid which it arose, for it was slowly built during the course of no fewer than 120 years, being begun in the last decade of the fifteenth century and finished in the first of the seventeenth. Thus the lower stages were of Perpendicular Gothic, the higher of Renaissance style. Unhappily the Victorian restorers took it in hand, and rebuilt the top as, in their view, it would have been built had it been completed without this long delay, so that all historical interest is now lost. It contains a fine peal of twelve bells, on which sound the famous chimes composed in 1790 by Dr.

Jowett,[84] tutor of Trinity Hall, which, since their adoption in the Westminster clock tower, have spread so widely throughout the country and the Empire. Their cadences are:

1st Quarter 1236 2nd " 3126, 3213 3rd " 1326, 6213, 1236 4th " 3126, 3213, 1326, 6213

[Footnote 84: It is hard upon Dr. Jowett that his name should have come down to posterity a.s.sociated, not with this real contribution to the gladness of the world, but with a satirical quatrain on the tiny plot which he reclaimed from the street in the angle of Trinity Hall adjoining Clare:

"A little garden little Jowett made, And fenced it with a little palisade; And would you know the mind of little Jowett, This little garden will a little show it."]

The hour is struck on the tenor bell. These bells are of eighteenth century date: two more have been added since.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Peas Hill._]

Great St. Mary's, for all its University connection, still remains what it was before the University came into being, a Parish Church; its Parish consisting of the Market Place, which opens out to the east of it, and is called locally "Market Hill." Whence this curious use of the latter word arose is not known, but it is immemorial at Cambridge for any expansion of a street into something wider. Besides Market Hill, there are the smaller s.p.a.ces of Peas Hill and St. Andrew's Hill.

All are utterly flat; yet, so potent is the word in the imagination of the Cambridge townsfolk, that such expressions as "I wonder the Hill don't fall down upon you" may be overheard in market disputes. Market Hill is not very large for its purpose even now; but till the nineteenth century it was much smaller, with more than one range of houses enc.u.mbering its area. On the southern side stands the Guildhall, a far from imposing structure, and in the centre rises the fountain supplied by the water of Hobson's Conduit, as described in our first chapter. The present structure was erected in 1855, the earlier one (put up in 1614) being then removed to its present position at the junction of Lensfield Road and Trumpington Road.[85]

[Footnote 85: There was a fountain here, however, long before Hobson's day--at least as early as the fourteenth century--but whence the water came is not known. If, as seems probable, it was a natural spring, its existence was probably the factor which originally determined the site of the Market.]

Like the University Church, the Market Place has witnessed many stirring scenes. Here, in the fierce but short-lived Socialistic outbreak which we commonly a.s.sociate with the name of Wat Tyler, when dreams were afloat of melting down all existing distinctions into one great _Magna Societas_, which should redress all wrongs and make all men equal in all things, a mighty bonfire was made by the insurgent peasantry of all the books and doc.u.ments which could be looted from the University Chest in Great St. Mary's, and from the various Colleges and Hostels then existing. The Mayor of Cambridge was compelled to give the sanction of his presence to the deed; and finally the ashes were scattered to the winds, with the cry: "Away with the skill of the clerks! Away with it!"

Two centuries later, in 1555, the Hill saw another burning, of a more gruesome character. The Catholic reaction under Queen Mary was then in full swing; and it was determined to visit with the extreme penalty of the laws against heresy the corpses of two notable pioneers of the Reformation, Dr. Bucer and Dr. f.a.gius. Both were amongst the band of German Protestants who, under King Edward the Sixth, flocked over to disseminate the new Religion in England, and both had died while promulgating their tenets at Cambridge. They were now torn from their graves, and chained, in their coffins, to the stake, the pyre which incinerated them being chiefly composed of their own condemned books.

Within the last decade two other notable conflagrations have here been kindled. When Lord Kitchener, then Sirdar of Egypt, and fresh from his victories over the Mahdi, visited Cambridge to receive an Honorary Degree, his presence amongst us was greeted by the wildest orgies. A huge bonfire was kindled on the Hill, the pile ultimately stretching diagonally across almost the entire area, and fed with ever fresh supplies of wood, for which the whole town was scoured. Railings were torn up wholesale (notably, as has been said, in the Backs), shutters were wrenched from shop windows, and even doors from houses; while h.o.a.rdings, gates, and tradesmen's barrows were seized and devoted to the flames. Like scenes, a few years later, on a somewhat smaller scale, celebrated the relief of Ladysmith in the Boer War.

These riotous proceedings were the work of the wilder spirits of University and Town alike. But in the earlier part of the Nineteenth Century many a fierce collision between Town and Gown took place on the Hill. The Fifth of November was the annual occasion consecrated by custom to these conflicts. Bands of undergraduates paraded the streets shouting "Gown! Gown!" while bands of the fiercer element amongst the townsfolk did the like, to the cry of "Town! Town!" Fights were thus frequent, in spite of the efforts of the authorities, both Civic and Academic. Gownsmen took to flight at the appearance of the Proctors and their "Bulldogs,"[86] but it was to re-form elsewhere, and few were actually caught. The Police, when they came into existence, in the early 'forties, were more formidable. They invariably took the side of the Town,[87] and it was due to them that the "Fifth" became less and less pugilistic, till it is now only a memory. Fisticuffs were all very well, but batons made the fun not good enough.

[Footnote 86: This is the name bestowed on the stalwart officials a couple of whom attend each Proctor and exercise such physical coercion of delinquents as he may bid.]

[Footnote 87: One specially remembered conflict, when Rose Crescent was held by the Gown against an overwhelming force, till a police charge drove them in headlong rout to take refuge in Trinity, was made the subject of a parody of Macaulay's Horatius, to be found in Clark's _Guide to Cambridge_.]

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 Alc.o.c.k.--Midsummer Common.--Boat Houses, b.u.mping Races.--=Jesus College=, "Chimney," Cloisters, Chapter House, Chapel, Cranmer, Coleridge.

Starting once more from the Great Gate of Trinity and turning northwards past St. John's we soon reach the "Via Devana," the old Roman road which, as has been said, is the backbone of Cambridge, traversing the town, under various names, from end to end. At this point of its course it is called Bridge-street. Opposite to us, as we enter it, rises one of the most distinctive buildings of Cambridge, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, popularly known as "the Round Church." Its strange shape is an echo of the Crusading period, during the whole of which such reproductions of the famous church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, the deliverance of which from the Turks was the Crusaders' dream, were erected in various parts of England.

Earliest in date comes the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Northampton, built at the very beginning of the twelfth century, in the opening fervour of the first Crusade, which has also given us the beautiful old chapel of Ludlow Castle (now in ruins) and this church in Cambridge. The gallant but fruitless effort of Richard Coeur de Lion to retrieve the disastrous loss of Jerusalem is commemorated by the Temple Church in London, completed at the very close of that century; while the yet more fruitless endeavours of Edward the First, a century later again, in the last expiring flash of Crusading zeal, inspired the latest of our English Round Churches, that of Maplestead in Ess.e.x. In all these churches the reproduction of their original is of a very modified character.

So it is with our Cambridge example. It consists, indeed, (or, rather originally consisted) of a circular nave surrounded by an ambulatory, like its Jerusalem prototype, and _may_, like it, have had a domed roof, though this is scarcely probable. But there the likeness must always have ended; and the structure has, in later days, been altered and re-altered time after time. At first there was probably a small semicircular eastern apse, which within a century gave place to an Early English chancel. This, in turn, was superseded by the present chancel with its aisles, built in the fifteenth century, when an octagonal bell-tower was also erected over the nave. Finally, in 1841, the newly-formed "Camden Society" for the restoration of ancient churches was permitted to work its will upon this one, and proceeded to reconstruct it in accordance with what they imagined ought to have been the design of its first builders.[88] And this imaginary ideal, with its pointed roof and tiny Norman windows, is all that we now see.

Nevertheless, the sight, more especially inside, is impressive in no small degree.

[Footnote 88: This design included the undoubted feature of a stone altar, the setting up of which gave occasion, after much litigation, for the promulgation of the well-known Judgment, which declares that in the Church of England the Law permits only a movable wooden table.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Church of the Holy Sepulchre._]

Behind the Round Church rise the sumptuous rooms of the "Union[89]

Society," a University club primarily inst.i.tuted as an a.s.sociation for the cultivation of oratory amongst undergraduates, which has now added to its central debating hall a library, dining-room, smoking-room, and the other adjuncts of a first-cla.s.s club. Here, on each Tuesday evening during Term, debates are held, usually on current political or social situations, theological polemics being strictly barred. When the Society was first inst.i.tuted, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, current politics were also prohibited (by the University authorities), and could only be discussed under a decent veil of reference to antiquity. But the comparative merits of the causes championed by Caesar and Pompey, or by the Cavaliers and Roundheads, were so easily made to apply to the burning questions of the day, that the prohibition speedily become obsolete. Many a well-known Parliamentary orator has won his first fame on the benches of the Union, Lord Macaulay being a notable example. His perfervid outpourings here swept away all opposition, and his friend and contemporary, Mackworth Praed, records how the issue of any debate is irrevocably decided--

"When the Favourite comes, With his trumpets and drums, And his arms, and his metaphors, crossed."

[Footnote 89: So called because in union with the twin Society at Oxford; members of each having, _ipso facto_, all the privileges of members.h.i.+p in the other.]

Leaving the Round Church behind us, and proceeding westwards, we pa.s.s the Church of St. Clement, with its inscription DEUM COLE ("Wors.h.i.+p G.o.d"), which has nothing to detain us, and shortly arrive at "the Great Bridge,"[90] that famous pa.s.sage of the river to which the town owes its name and its very existence. It can never have been an imposing structure, in spite of its high-sounding t.i.tle, and is now represented by an exceedingly commonplace iron span. But, as the only pa.s.sage of the Cam approachable by an army, in fore-drainage days, for many a long mile, it was of old a strategic point of first-cla.s.s importance, and more than once played a notable part in English history. Its possession by the anti-monarchical forces shattered the last efforts both of King John and of Charles the First, and brought about, as we shall see, the speedy ruin and death of the former.

[Footnote 90: So called to distinguish it from the smaller town bridges by Newnham Mill and Garret Hostel.]

To the North of the Bridge, and on the Eastern bank of the River, is the last of the many "Hithes" (or Quays), of which we read so much in connection with old Cambridge, remaining in actual use for traffic.

Here we may to this day see exemplified the ancient local proverb, "Here water kindleth fire;" for barges loaded with fire-wood and turf from the fens still discharge their cargoes at this spot.

The old name of the Great Bridge has, for at least a century,[91] been commonly superseded by the appellation of "Magdalene Bridge," which provokes singularly humiliating comparisons with the beautiful structure bearing that name at Oxford. In both cases it is derived from the adjoining College of St. Mary Magdalene (spelt, by a mere freak, at Oxford without the final e). Our College, however, is of a sadly lower grade than that at Oxford, with its ideal tower, and its beautiful chapel, and its grey cloisters, and its green "Walks" beside the Cherwell. Here we have but little beauty, and no very great historical interest. The College was first founded, in the middle of the fifteenth century, for the benefit of Benedictine students. It belonged to the great Abbey of Crowland, in the Huntingdons.h.i.+re Fenland (though Ely, and other neighbouring Benedictine Houses, took part in the building), and was called Buckingham College, from its first special benefactor, Henry Stafford, the second Duke of Buckingham. At the suppression of the Abbeys, this College, like all other monastic property, was confiscated by King Henry the Eighth, who granted it to his favourite, Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor. By him it was re-founded under its present name, and the nomination of the Master continues, even to this day, to be vested in his descendants.

The existing representative of his family is Lord Braybrooke;[92] the name of whose seat, at Audley End, near Saffron Walden in Ess.e.x, records the fact that the whole property of the Benedictine Abbey of Walden was also granted to Lord Chancellor Audley. This Abbey had shared in the building of Buckingham College.

[Footnote 91: We find "Magdalene Bridge" in Wordsworth's "Prelude."]

[Footnote 92: Over the entrance gateway may be seen the arms of Lord Braybrooke's family, the Nevilles. These are also the arms of the College.]

The beginnings of the re-founded College were on a very small scale, with only a single College servant (who acted as cook). Even forty years later this number, as Dr. Caius tells us, had only increased to three. To this day, indeed, Magdalene remains a small and select College. It consists of a single Court, representing Buckingham College, and the further side only of a second Court beyond. This isolated side, an admirable arcade, built at the close of the seventeenth century, contains the special treasure of the College, the collection of books bequeathed to it by the famous diarist, Samuel Pepys. This remains, as he himself arranged it, in twelve oaken "presses" with gla.s.s doors; the books on each shelf being brought to a common top level by appropriately graduated blocks of wood (shaped in imitation of their backs) inserted under each. The Library is on view on Tuesdays and Thursdays during Full Term, from 11.30 to 1 o'clock.

Over the door is the Pepys motto: _Mens cujusque is est quisque._ ("Each man's mind is his very Self.")

Pepys had been a student here, and his portrait, by Lely, hangs in the Hall. So does that of another distinguished Magdalene man, Charles Kingsley, who was in residence 1839 to 1842. College tradition still records how he used surrept.i.tiously to climb out of the College in the very early summer mornings, to be off on one of those piscatorial excursions which he so dearly loved. Another well-known writer connected with Magdalene is Mr. A. C. Benson, whose "College Window"

was in the ground floor of the Pepysian Library range, on the North side, looking into the gardens of the Master's Lodge. In these gardens is a high terraced walk, beneath an old wall. Both terrace and wall are supposed to be connected with the ancient defences of Cambridge, but this is not proven.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _St. Peter's Church._]

We have, however, now come to the region where those defences did actually exist. For beyond this wall to the West rises the steep slope, partly natural and partly artificial, of the "Castle Hill,"

towering into the great mound on which stood the Norman Keep. This was built by William the Conqueror; but long before his day the site, defensible by nature, and commanding the all-important pa.s.sage of the river, had been utilised for military purposes. Here, probably, was a British post, the _Cam-Rhydd_ or "Ford of the Cam," which became the Roman Camboritum.[93] Here Oliver Cromwell, as commander over the forces of the "a.s.sociated Counties,"[94] set up fortifications which baffled the gallant effort to retrieve his fallen fortunes made by Charles the First after the fatal battle of Naseby. Having there left his matchless infantry, "lying with their pikes charged every way as when they lived," the unfortunate monarch, with the remains of his cavalry, broke through the network of the enemies' squadrons in full pursuit "like hounds after a fresh stag," and made a dash for the Eastern Counties, "where he had a party forming." Huntingdon he took by surprise, and "twice affronted the lines of Cambridge." But these were too strong to be rushed by horse-soldiers, and, as there was no other pa.s.sage over the Cam, he had to retire, finally evading his pursuers, and making his way safely to Oxford, with all the loot acquired in this raid, "six waggons loaded with money, two thousand horses, and three thousand head of cattle." And the remembrance of Anglo-Saxon lines of defence round the site is perpetuated in the name "Borough," which still clings to it.

[Footnote 93: In spite of the enticing similarity of sound, it is fairly established that the word Camboritum is not the parent of the word Cambridge. In mediaeval times we only read of "Granta-bridge."]

[Footnote 94: These were Norfolk, Suffolk, Ess.e.x, Cambs, Hunts, Beds and Herts, which combined to raise a common force (on the Parliamentary side).]

Many antiquarians, indeed, hold that the Cambridge of early days (anyhow down to the ninth century) was wholly confined to this small area, some quarter of a mile square, and that the extension of the town across the river was due to the expulsion of the inhabitants by Danish and Norman intruders. Be that as it may, we are here undoubtedly in the earliest Cambridge. The Castle has gradually pa.s.sed away, till no ruins, even, are now left. Its modern representative, the County Court-house, where the a.s.sizes are held, and the County Gaol, stand at the western foot of the great mound, whereon the Norman Keep no longer rises. From the summit is to be obtained a delightful view of Cambridge, with the "green-m.u.f.fled" ring of the Backs, and the grey inner ring of the river-side Colleges, dominated by King's College Chapel, girding in the western flank of the Town, and starting almost from our feet; the long line of the East Anglian heights bounding our southern and eastern prospect; and to the north the "boundless plain," with the towers of Ely on the far horizon.

Close below us, and really at our very feet, rise the two churches of this earliest Cambridge, that of St. Giles, now merely a handsome modern edifice of imposing size, and that of St. Peter, also modern in its present form, but embodying some ancient features. It is the smallest church in Cambridge, only thirty-five feet in length by fifteen in width, being the reconstructed fragment of a larger structure built in the twelfth century, and pulled down in the eighteenth, when the Parish was united to that of St. Giles. It contains a fine late Norman font, with grotesque figures at each corner--two-tailed Mer-men, each grasping his tails in either hand. At one time the Borough had yet a third church, "All Hallows by the Castle" (so called to distinguish it from "All Hallows in the Jewry"), but this has wholly disappeared, Parish and all.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Remains of St. Radegund's Priory._]

Beyond the spire of St. Peter's, as seen from the top of Castle Hill, may be distinguished a small mediaeval building, known, for some forgotten reason, by the high-sounding t.i.tle of "the School of Pythagoras." This lies just off the street to the eastward, at the point where this ceases to be a street, and merges into the open road that runs along the Backs. It is worth seeking out, for it is a picturesque little edifice, and an interesting example of a twelfth-century house built of stone. Wood, or, at the best, brick, were the materials then commonly used. In spite of the name, there is no reason to suppose that it was ever used for scholastic purposes, or anything more than a mere private dwelling-house. But Walter de Merton, the founder of Merton College, Oxford, actually acquired land hereabouts, apparently with some idea of starting a sister establishment at Cambridge. This land still belongs to Merton.

The great red brick and white stone edifice opposite the entrance to the School of Pythagoras is "Westminster College," wherein candidates for the Presbyterian ministry go through their theological course, after completing their secular studies at the University. A like inst.i.tution for Anglicans, built in like style (which, indeed, is all but universal in modern academic work), is Ridley Hall, at the other end of the Backs. Neither of these is recognised by the University as anything more than a private lodging-house, nor is the similar (but much smaller) Roman Catholic seminary of Edmundhouse, on the slope above Westminster College.

The same non-recognition extends to the great Ladies' College of Newnham, which flings out its widespread "halls" over a lavish s.p.a.ce adjoining Ridley. The grand bronze entrance gates to these "vestal precincts," inscribed with the name of the first Princ.i.p.al of the College, Miss Anne Jemima Clough (sister to the poet Arthur Clough) are hard by the more modest entrance to Ridley, and admit the visitor to a scene which reminds us of those in Tennyson's "Princess." And there are almost as many maidens here as he has a.s.signed to his imaginary College, for Newnham is surpa.s.sed in the number of its students by Trinity only. Each has her own room, in which the bed becomes by day a sofa. Each is a.s.signed to one of the "Halls," which in many respects are treated as separate ent.i.ties, but all share the common collegiate life. There is, however, no chapel, for Newnham is most strictly undenominational. Students are, of course, free to attend any place of wors.h.i.+p they may prefer, the preference being largely given to King's College Chapel. Hence a French traveller, who came over to study Women's Education in England, is said to have answered when asked on his return what religion was professed at Newnham: "Mostly, I think, the King's religion."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Jesus College Gateway._]