Cambridge (England) -- Pictorial works; University of Cambridge -- Pictorial works
in the xviii century. Towards the end of the xiv century William
Cavendish was fellow and master of the same college, and John Cavendish
had been chancellor in 1380. In Gray’s time Lord John Cavendish was at
Cambridge, in the next century Henry Cavendish the scientist; and the
connexion of this family with the university has never been severed.
The Cecils appear at Cambridge with the rise of Burleigh’s family in
Elizabeth’s reign, and they were connected with the Bacons a family
which also came into prominence at the same time; the great Bacon was
Burleigh’s nephew, and the Cecils were kinsmen of other celebrated
Cambridge men--Cheke, Hatton, Howard, and the founder of the Brownists.
Moreover one of the early Cecils had been made water
[Sidenote: Temp. Hen. viii.]
bailiff of Whittlesey (‘bailiff of Whittlesey mere’) and keeper of the
swans in the fen district. William, first Lord Burleigh, was born in his
mother’s house at Bourn--the place which gave its name to the barony
held successively by Hereward, Picot, and Peverel. The third and fifth
lords married with the Manners, the sixth with a Cavendish. Both the
Cecils of Elizabeth’s time were chancellors of the university;
Burleigh’s eldest son Thomas Earl of Exeter and Lady Dorothy Nevill his
wife gave no less than £108 a year to Clare Hall, and ‘Mr. Cecil’ was
moderator when James visited the university in 1615. Darwin had been
preceded at Cambridge by old Erasmus Darwin, botanist and poet, the
‘Sweet Harmonist of Flora’s court’ as Cowper calls the ancestor of the
man who gave us the great harmonizing hypothesis of the century.[430]
Fletcher is another Cambridge name. Fletcher Bishop of London was at
Corpus, so was his son the dramatist; Giles the brother of the bishop,
one of Elizabeth’s ambassadors, was at King’s, his two poet sons were
Cambridge men, and there was a scientific Fletcher at Caius in the xvi
century. Greville or Grenville is another Cambridge name: Fulke
Greville, first Lord Brooke (whose mother was a Neville) was at Jesus
College, so was his cousin the second lord, whose father had been sent
to Trinity in 1595 by Robert Devereux Earl of Essex with a letter of
advice on Cambridge studies written by another old Cantabrigian, Bacon.
The first Lord Lansdowne in the time of Charles II. and Sir Bevil
Greville (ob. 1706) were both at Trinity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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