Cambridge (England) -- Description and travel; University of Cambridge
KING'S COLLEGE.--Henry VI. was only twenty when, in 1441, he founded
King's College. In that year the pious young Sovereign himself laid
the foundation stone, and five years later it is believed that he
performed the same ceremony in relation to the chapel, which grew to
perfection so slowly that it was not until 1515 that the structure had
assumed its present stately form.
It was Henry's plan to associate his college at Eton, which he founded
at the same time, with King's. The school he had established under the
shadow of his palace at Windsor was to be the nursery for his
foundation at Cambridge in the same fashion as William of Wykeham had
connected Winchester and New College, Oxford. Henry's first plan was
for a smaller college than the splendid foundation he afterwards began
to achieve with the endowments obtained from the recently-suppressed
alien monasteries. Had the young King's reign been peaceful, there is
little doubt that a complete college carried out on such magnificent
lines as the chapel would have come into being; but Henry became
involved in a disastrous civil war, and his ambitious plans for a
great quadrangle and cloister, three other courts, one on the opposite
side of the river connected with a covered bridge and an imposing gate
tower as well, never came to fruition. Fortunately, Henry's successor,
anxious to be called the founder of the college, subscribed towards
the continuance of the chapel, but he also diverted (a mild expression
for robbery) a large part of Henry's endowments. Richard III., in his
brief reign, found time to contribute £700 to the college, but it was
not until the very end of the next reign that Henry VII., in 1508,
devoted the first of two sums of £5,000 to the chapel, so that the
work of finishing the building could go forward to its completion,
which took place in 1515.
At the present time the chapel is on the north side of the college,
but when originally planned it stood on the south, for the single
court which was built is now incorporated in the University Library,
and the existing buildings, all comparatively modern, stand in
somewhat disjointed fashion to the south, and extend from King's
Parade down to the river. Fellows' Building, the isolated block
running north and south between the chapel and this long perspective
of bastard Gothic, was designed by Gibbs in the first quarter of the
eighteenth century, and its severe lines, broken by an open archway in
the centre, are a remarkable contrast to the graceful detail, of the
chapel. Framed by the great arch, there is a delicious peep of smooth
lawn sloping slightly to the river, with a forest-like background
beyond.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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