Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely Part 9

"fools," "sots," and other scurrilous names, as they piteously set forth in their complaints to their Visitor,[53] the Bishop of Ely.

Finally he was degraded by the Senate,[54] and reduced to the status of "a bare Harry-Soph," as a contemporary diarist (quoted by Mr.

Clark)[55] puts it. But no Master, except Nevile and Barrow, has left so enduring a mark upon the College; for the ruinous expenditure into which he dragooned the unhappy Fellows has given the Chapel not only the baldachino, but the stalls, the panelling, and the organ; to say nothing of the clock, and the splendid oak staircase in the Lodge.

[Footnote 52: By his arrogance Bentley incurred the undying hatred of Pope, who denounces him in the "Dunciad" as boasting himself (in addressing Dullness)

"Thy mighty Scholiast, whose unwearied pains Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains; Turn what they will to verse, their toil is vain; Critics like me shall make it prose again."]

[Footnote 53: To every College is attached some high-placed personage as Visitor, with a vague, but by no means unreal, power of interference when appealed to. Bentley was only saved from deposition by the sudden death of the Visitor.]

[Footnote 54: The Senate is the general a.s.sembly of Masters of Arts, which is the supreme University authority.]

[Footnote 55: _Guide to Cambridge_, p. 129. The meaning of the curious word "Harry-Soph" is apparently equivalent to a student unequal to a Degree. Bentley was deprived of all his Degrees.]

The profuse gilding and painting which enriches walls and roof in the Chapel is due to a restoration some forty years ago, when the outside was also faced with stone, and the windows filled with stained gla.s.s, commemorating ecclesiastical and other celebrities throughout all the Christian centuries. The Apostles appear in the most easterly windows on either side; whence the series progresses in chronological order westwards. The figures are for the most part powerfully drawn, and should be examined through an opera gla.s.s to appreciate their wealth of detail. We can thus see that Hildebrand has driven his crosier through the eagles of the Imperial Crown, that Dante, Matthew Paris, and Roger Bacon, hold in their hands copies of their own greatest works, that Giotto is studying an elevation of his Campanile; while noted church-builders, like St. Hugh of Lincoln and William of Wykeham, carry models of their edifices. The hapless Mary Tudor holds one of this very Chapel, of which she was the Foundress. It is appropriate that the beautiful silver cross over the Altar should be Spanish work of her date, though only placed there a few years ago by the generosity of some members of the College who met with it while travelling in Spain. It was originally a processional cross, and has been adapted for its new purpose with artistic skill of the first order.

When we leave the Chapel, and proceed towards the Great Gate, we are treading on cla.s.sic ground. For it was along this flagged path that Macaulay, while at Trinity, used to take his daily exercise, pacing a.s.siduously up and down, always the while devouring some author, whose pages he turned over with incredible rapidity, and at the same pace whether they were filled with the weightiest thought or the lightest fancy. Yet whether the book were profound philosophy or exquisite poetry or the tras.h.i.+est of rhyme and fiction, he was ever afterwards able to recall its whole scheme and even to quote lengthy portions of it verbatim. His rooms were in the staircase facing us--the set on the ground-floor to the left of the entrance. This particular staircase has been the home of more great men than any other in the University.

The ground-floor rooms opposite Macaulay's were those of Thackeray,[56] and the set above Thackeray's are hallowed as the habitation of Sir Isaac Newton: for whom the College built an observatory on the roof of the Gate Tower, and who also had the use of a small bit of ground which we see outside the gate, now a railed-in lawn, but then a pretty little garden, as Logan's view shows, with trees and flower-beds, surrounded by a high wall.

[Footnote 56: Readers of _Esmond_ will remember that Thackeray quarters that hero on this same staircase, "close by the gate, and near to the famous Mr. Newton's lodgings." Thackeray was in residence 1829-31, Macaulay 1818-24, Newton 1662-1717.]

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 Wors.h.i.+p, 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 f.a.gius, Bonfires, Town and Gown.

We are now outside the Great Gate of Trinity; but, across the street, in front of us, rises yet another gate belonging to the College, and leading into its two newest Courts, named from Dr. Whewell, who left this n.o.ble memorial of his Masters.h.i.+p.[57] Those who list to enter them will at once see why the first is popularly known as "the Spittoon," and the second as "the Billiard Table"; but there is little more to see or to say about them.

[Footnote 57: Whewell was Master of Trinity from 1841 to 1866.]

The slender and lofty stone cross to the north of these buildings marks the site of the ancient church of All Saints, which was pulled down in the middle of last century, to be rebuilt at the further extremity of its parish, opposite the entrance to Jesus College. Its earliest name (in the twelfth century) was "All Hallows in the Jewry"; for Cambridge made good its claim to be amongst the larger towns of England by having, like the most of them, its Ghetto, or quarter (more or less sharply divided off from the rest), in which alone the Jews might reside. They were nowhere popular residents, for they were outside the pale of the Law (which refused to take cognisance of aliens in race and religion) and mere "chattels" of the Crown. This position, however ignominious, gave them special privileges as against their neighbours. They were too useful as financial a.s.sets to allow of their being murdered or robbed by anyone but their Royal owner himself; and, secure in his protection, they took small pains to conceal their contempt for their Christian neighbours, who retaliated by as much petty persecution as they dared, and, now and then, by a wholesale ma.s.sacre. Finally matters became so strained that in the fourteenth century, under Richard the Second, the whole race of Israel were expelled from England, not to return till the days of Cromwell.

They had originally come to our sh.o.r.es in the train of the Conqueror's army, thus conveniently enabling the Norman soldiers to turn their English loot into hard cash. Their quarter in Cambridge was the small triangular piece of ground between St. John's Street, Sidney Street, and All Saints' Pa.s.sage.

North again of All Saints' Cross we see the new red-brick walls and white stone dressings of the Divinity School, where the Professors of that subject hold their cla.s.ses and lectures. Opposite to this rise the stately buildings of St. John's College. We may note how very near they approach to those of Trinity. These two great Foundations, so long holding undisputed pre-eminence in the University, are, in fact, nearer neighbours than any other two Colleges in Cambridge--nearer, even, than King's and Clare. The narrow lane that parts their respective buildings belongs to St. John's, and is bounded on the Trinity side only by a brick wall. This flimsy part.i.tion induced Dr.

Bentley, when congratulated on becoming Master of Trinity, to reply, with characteristic infelicity, "By the help of my G.o.d, I have leapt over a wall." An unverified tradition hence arose that he had actually made his way into the College, on the Great Gate being shut against his entry, by a ladder applied to the wall of the Trinity Fellows'

Bowling Green.[58] Keen as has been the age-long rivalry between Trinity and St. John's, they have been more closely connected than any other two Colleges; and no fewer than four times has a Johnian become Master of Trinity. The respective Founders were also closely connected; for St. John's was founded (earlier in her grandson's reign) by Lady Margaret Tudor, grandmother to Henry the Eighth.

[Footnote 58: This Bowling Green lies to the west of Trinity Chapel, and is one of the choicest gems of Cambridge, a gracious, walled oblong of turf, with a wooded terrace overlooking the river at its western end, and at the east, the lately discovered fourteenth century front of the College Bursary, once forming part of King's Hall. The privilege of entering this Paradise can only be attained under the escort of a Fellow.]

This n.o.ble lady is one of the choice characters of history. Her disposition, as depicted for us by the one who knew her best, her Confessor, the saintly Bishop Fisher, reads almost like an embodiment of St. Paul's encomium on Charity: "Bounteous she was, and liberal ...

of singular easiness to be spoken unto ... of marvellous gentleness unto all folk ... unkind to no creature, nor forgetful of any kindness or service done to her (which is no little part of very n.o.bleness).

She was not vengeable nor cruel; but ready anon to forget and forgive injuries done unto her, at the least desire or motion made unto her for the same. Merciful also and piteous she was unto such as was grieved and wrongfully troubled, and to them that were in poverty or sickness or any other misery. To G.o.d and to the Church full obedient and tractable, searching His honour and pleasure full busily. A wareness of herself she had always, to eschew everything that might dishonour any n.o.ble woman.... All England for her death have cause of weeping."[59]

[Footnote 59: The above quotation, as well as that which follows, is from the sermon preached by Fisher in Westminster Abbey at her burial.

(I have modernised the spelling.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Trinity College Chapel and St. John's Gateway._]

Lady Margaret was of Plantagenet stock, being great-granddaughter to "old John of Gaunt, time honoured Lancaster," and one of the legitimatised family of the Beauforts. Her first husband was the Welsh Earl Edmund Tudor, the father of her only child, Henry of Richmond, who afterwards succeeded to the throne of England as Henry the Seventh. After his death she twice married again; but none of her nuptials were of long continuance, and her true life was that of her widowhood, when she became famed as the Lady Bountiful of the Kingdom: "the mother of both the Universities; the very patroness of all the learned men of England;[60] the loving sister of all virtuous and devout persons; the comforter of all good Religious; the true defendress of all good priests and clerks; the mirror and example of honour to all n.o.ble men and women; the common mediatrice for all the common people of this realm.... Everyone that knew her loved her, and everything she said or did became her." Before her death she had endowed Preachers.h.i.+ps and Professors.h.i.+ps of Divinity (which still remain), both at Oxford and Cambridge, and had seen her first Collegiate Foundation, that of Christ's College, rise into full life.

Her second and greater Foundation, St. John's College, she only lived to plan and to endow. When she died, on the 29th of June, 1509 (in the bright dawn of her grandson's reign and marriage--both alike destined to end in so miserable a tragedy), the buildings were not yet commenced.

[Footnote 60: Amongst these we must count Erasmus; who composed the epitaph on her tomb.]

She left their erection, however, in the best of hands. It was to her friend and counsellor, Bishop Fisher, who knew her so well, and appreciated her so dearly, that she committed the carrying out of her great design. He was markedly qualified for this purpose, not only by his connection with herself, but by special acquaintance with the spot. For in him we find yet another link between St. John's and Trinity. As Master of Michaelhouse,[61] some years earlier, he had been a close neighbour of the ancient Hospital of St. John, and had noted how far that venerable fraternity had outlived its usefulness.

Originally a semi-monastic inst.i.tution, founded in 1135, as a sort of alms-house for necessitous old men, the lack of any sufficient discipline had brought it to decay. The attempt made by Bishop Hugh de Balsham, in the century after its foundation, to leaven it with the scholars whom he afterwards transported to Peterhouse had proved a failure, and by the sixteenth century the few Brethren left were far from satisfactory in their ways.[62] Fisher, therefore, suggested to Lady Margaret to turn the Hospital into a College, under the same patronage, and after her death, set promptly to work to make the requisite alterations in the existing buildings.

[Footnote 61: Michaelhouse was one of the const.i.tuent Colleges of Trinity.]

[Footnote 62: We need not, however, take too literally the statement in the Instrument of Suppression, that but two ill-conducted Brethren remained. For, as Mr. Clark has shown, that Instrument was copied verbatim from the earlier one used for the turning of St. Radegund's Priory into Jesus College.]

His first act was to enclose a Court, the Gate Tower of which should worthily commemorate the Foundress. In this his success was complete.

The tower, which to this day forms the main entrance to the College, is a delightful example of what may be done in architecture by a skilful use of red brick. The quoining is of stone, and of stone also are the elaborate decorations. In the centre above the first string-course a richly-canopied niche contains the statue of St. John the Evangelist. Below this, and immediately above the gate, is to be seen Lady Margaret's s.h.i.+eld, the three lions of England, quartered with the three lilies of France, within a bordure barred azure and argent, supported by the antelopes of the Beaufort family. On either side of both statue and s.h.i.+eld appear the Plantagenet rose and the Tudor portcullis, each surmounted by an Imperial crown (just as we so constantly find them in King's College Chapel), and all round is sprinkled the Margaret flower, the daisy. The whole forms a beautiful piece of composition which makes us regret that more of Fisher's work is not left. All the First Court, indeed, is his, but it has been altered out of all knowledge. Now its chief feature is the soaring mid-Victorian chapel, the largest in Cambridge (except, of course, King's), the most pleasing view of which is to be gained from the Trinity Backs, where the tower, framed in foliage, exquisitely doubles itself on the surface of the river. This ambitious fabric was built by Sir Gilbert Scott in the 'sixties; and a line of cement on the lawn of the Court alone traces for us the foundations of Fisher's original Chapel.

The Hall ranks in size and beauty next to that of Trinity. The most interesting of its portraits are those of Lady Margaret, Bishop Fisher, and the poet Wordsworth, who was a resident member of the College from 1787 to 1791. His rooms, as he tells in "The Prelude,"

were in the south-western staircase of the "First Court," just above the kitchen:

"The Evangelist St. John my Patron was: Three Gothic Courts are his, and in the first Was my abiding-place, a nook obscure.

Right underneath, the College Kitchens made A humming sound, less tuneable than bees, But hardly less industrious, with shrill notes Of sharp command and scolding intermixed."

Wordsworth was not a very contented student. He shared the anarchical ideas then floating in the air, and soon to explode in the French Revolution. College discipline was eminently distasteful to him, and, above all, he detested the obligation to attend the Services in the College Chapel (which, indeed, were, in those days, conducted in far from ideal fas.h.i.+on).[63] In "The Prelude," he breaks out against them in unmeasured terms:

"Be Folly and False-seeming free to affect Whatever formal gait of Discipline Shall raise them highest in their own esteem: Let them parade amongst the Schools at will, But spare the House of G.o.d! Was ever known The witless shepherd who persists to drive A flock that thirsts not to a pool disliked?

A weight must surely hang on days begun And ended with such mockery. Be wise, Ye Presidents[64] and Deans, and to your bells Give seasonable rest, for 'tis a sound Hollow as ever vexed the tranquil air; And your officious doings bring disgrace On the plain steeples of our English Church, Whose wors.h.i.+p, 'mid remotest village trees Suffers for this."

[Footnote 63: There was no attempt at music, no organ even, anywhere save at King's, Trinity, and St. John's, and these three Colleges kept between them a choir of six "lay clerks" (elderly for the most part), who used to hurry from service to service, as did also the single organist employed! And this went on till 1842!]

[Footnote 64: At St. John's, the t.i.tle of President is given to the Vice-master of the College.]

It is interesting to note that these sentiments are echoed, a year or two later, from Oxford, by Southey, then also in his youthful paroxysm of Revolutionary fervour. He lets himself go in his "Ode to the Chapel Bell":

"O how I hate the sound! It is the knell That still a requiem tolls to Comfort's hour; And loth am I, at Superst.i.tion's bell, To quit, or Morpheus', or the Muse's bower.

Better to lie and doze than gape amain, Hearing still mumbled o'er the same eternal strain, * * * * *

The snuffling, snaffling Fellow's nasal tone, And Romish rites retained, though Romish faith be flown."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Hall, St. John's College._]

The Hall of St. John's was the scene of notable Christmas feasting in the good old days of academic prosperity. Daily, from Christmas to Twelfth Night, boars' heads, turkeys, gargantuan pasties, and cups of a peculiarly enticing composition, went the round of the board. After the fatal agricultural depression of the 'seventies these hospitable doings dwindled more and more, till now they are wholly of the past.

From the Hall we can often obtain permission to ascend to the unique glory of St. John's College, the Combination Room, which is incomparably finer than any other apartment of the same kind, either at Oxford or Cambridge. It is a s.p.a.cious panelled gallery, running east and west, nearly 100 feet in length, lighted by transomed windows[65] along the southern side, and with a richly decorated plaster ceiling, the work of the same Italian artists who erected the fountain in the Great Court of Trinity, just at the time when this room was in building. For here we have got beyond Lady Margaret's "First" Court. The Combination Room forms the north side of the "Second" Court, erected at the very end of the sixteenth century (simultaneously with the Great Court of Trinity) by another n.o.ble benefactress, Lady Mary Cavendish, Countess of Shrewsbury, whose coat of arms (Cavendish impaled with Talbot) stands over the western gate.

[Footnote 65: In one of these windows should be noted a portrait of Henrietta Maria, the Queen of Charles the First, who was once entertained in this apartment.]

This splendid benefaction was intended to be anonymous, as was also that which, in the "Third" Court, has given to St. John's yet another unique beauty, its exquisite Library, which (like the Combination Room) stands at the head, architecturally, of all College libraries, whether at Oxford or Cambridge. The benefactor in this case was Dr.

John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln and Keeper of the Great Seal. His initials, as has been already mentioned, may be seen upon the outside of the western wall, beside the beautiful oriel window, overlooking the river, with which the room terminates, and his escutcheon hangs on the eastern wall, inside, over the door. For in his case, too, as in that of Lady Mary Cavendish, the secret leaked out before the work was finished, and in 1624 the letters I. L. C. S. (denoting Iohannes Lincolnensis Custos Sigilli) disclosed to pa.s.sers-by the donor's ident.i.ty.

The original bookcases of dark oak still project from either wall.

They have mostly been heightened to make room for more books, but the additional shelves have been added not above but at the bottom, so that the sloping desks of the old tops still remain, though too high to be used; but the pair nearest the door remain at their original height. In the panelled end of each shelf may be noticed a tiny folding door, which on being opened proves to contain the catalogue, in crabbed early seventeenth century writing, of the books which the shelf held when first filled. The Library, however, contains nothing of any very special interest, its most noteworthy exhibit being an edition de luxe of the "Great Bible" issued in 1540 by Royal authority under the auspices of Archbishop Cranmer. This was the first English Bible authorised to be read in churches, and a copy was ordered to be set up in every parish church throughout the realm; the object being that every man might have access to it, and read for his own edification. He was not, however, allowed to take it home with him, and it was usually chained to the reading-desk to prevent this. And, as yet, there was no provision for any reading of Scripture in public wors.h.i.+p, beyond the Epistles and Gospels of the Ma.s.s, the "sense"