In 1589 died an excellent lady, Frances Lady Sussex, widow of the second Earl. She was the daughter of Sir William Sidney, and would in any case have achieved a negative distinction as the wife of Thomas Radcliffe and the aunt of Sir Philip Sidney. But in her will she left a legacy of five thousand pounds, to be employed by her executors in the foundation of a college at Cambridge, or, in case the bequest were insufficient, in enlarging Clare Hall. Six years later, the executors bought a site from Trinity College. When Henry VIII. founded Trinity, he made over to it the lands of the Franciscan Friary which, until the dissolution, had occupied the space between the modern Sidney Street and the King’s Ditch. The buildings were apparently taken down and used as a quarry for Henry’s new college. Thus the site was vacant, and the executors, after making a preliminary payment of a hundred marks, took over the ground on a perpetual lease, and engaged to pay a rent of £13. 6s. 8d. yearly. These executors, the actual founders of Sidney, were the Earl of Kent and Sir John Harrington, the translator of Ariosto. The college was called the College of the Lady Frances Sidney Sussex, and took her arms, Radcliffe impaling Sidney. The pheon, the heraldic symbol of the Sidneys, is the badge of the college, and, like the eagle of St John’s and the silver crescent of Trinity Hall, has given its title to the college magazine of our own days. The first master was appointed in 1598. He was Dr James Montagu,* and became Bishop of Winchester, where he died in 1618. But, in spite of this augury, the history of Sidney is the reverse of prelatical. Of late years, the college has somewhat retrieved its past record, but, on the whole, its distinction is Puritan. It is, however, a college whose history finds its centre in one event, and that event is vague and shadowy. In the college books, under the date April 23rd, 1616, is the following inscription, “Oliverus Cromwell, Huntingdoniensis, admissus ad commensum sociorum Aprilis vicesimo sexto; Tutore Magᵒ Ricardo Howlet.” Few colleges boast such a fellow-commoner. The note which follows, written in after years by a good Royalist, is worth transcribing: “Hic fuit grandis ille impostor, carnifex perditissimus, qui, pientissimo rege Carolo primo nefaria caede sublato, ipsum usurpavit thronum, et tria regna per quinque ferme annorum spatium, sub protectoris nomine, indomita tyrannide vexavit.” Vexavit, as Polonius would say, is good. No language is more abusive than aptly handled Latin! This “big impostor and most damn’d butcher” stayed at Cambridge till July, 1617, and then, like many great men, left without taking his degree. His contribution to the social life of his college has been stigmatised as discreditable, but this is probably invidious rumour and nothing more. The window of his room—which, by the way, dates from 1827 or thereabout—is still shown to the credulous. There is an admirable portrait of him in the hall,