With Trinity College are joined together in indissoluble matrimony the two great periods of college building, and the culminating point of the renascence is reached: so that Trinity, alone, represents Cambridge architecturally and morally in its historical character of a university of the rebirth from its dawn to its meridian. [Sidenote: King’s Hall A.D. 1337.] When Henry VIII., whose effigy adorns the great gate, proposed to make a vast college on this site, he was proposing to expand the “great college” built by Edward III. whose effigy graces the older gateway within the court. Edward II. had maintained thirteen students at Cambridge as early as 1317 and the number was increased later to thirty-two: it was however left to his son to carry out the design of a “House-of-Scholars of the King.”[226] We have already had frequently to refer to this building, in which new interest has been awakened since the restoration (in 1904-6) of part of the old Hall lying behind King Edward’s gateway towards the bowling green, and presenting architectural features fully justifying its xiv century fame as the most considerable collegiate enterprise thitherto undertaken. The Hall lay to the north west of the present quadrangle, covering the space now occupied by the ante-chapel,[227] Edward’s gate, and the Master’s lodge. The acquisition of the site affords a most interesting glimpse into contemporary Cambridge history: for no site represented such various interests and recalled so many of the great local names. The first plot of ground obtained was a messuage of Robert de Croyland’s in 1336. Eight years later Edmund Walsyngham’s house was purchased; the house of Sir John de Cambridge who was knight of the shire and alderman of the guild of S. Mary was sold to the college in 1350 by his son Thomas; and the next year saw the purchase from Thomas son of Sir Constantine de Mortimer, of a waste parcel of land next the river and S. John’s Hospital, called the Cornhythe, which abutted on the last named property. Croyland’s and Walsyngham’s houses were first adapted, and formed a small irregular quadrangle. Later in the xiv century a new (irregular) court was constructed on the north of the present chapel. The original entrance was situated where the sundial now is; here stood the Great Gate, the present [Illustration: THE LIBRARY WINDOW, ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, FROM THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS From this spot beautiful views are obtained up and down the river.]