adequate for the help of the general reader in appreciating the story of which the artist has been able to give so poetic an interpretation. C. W. S. THE DEANERY, ELY, _Michaelmas_, 1903. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii CHAPTER I LEGENDARY ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY 1 Geographical and commercial importance of the city site--Map of the county a palimpsest--Glamour of the Fenland--Cambridge the gateway of East Anglia--The Roman roads--The Roman station--The Castle Hill--Stourbridge Fair--Cambridge a chief centre of English commerce. CHAPTER II CAMBRIDGE IN THE NORMAN TIME 22 William I. at Cambridge Castle--Cambridge at the Domesday Survey--Roger Picot the Sheriff--Pythagoras School--Castle and Borough--S. Benet's Church and its Parish--The King's Ditch--The Great and the Small Bridges--The King's and the Bishop's Mills--The River Hythes--S. Peter by the Castle and S. Giles Church--The early Streets of the City--The Augustinian Priory of Barnwell--The Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre--The Cambridge Jewry--Debt of early Scholars to the Philosophers of the Synagogue--Benjamin's House--Municipal Freedom of the Borough. CHAPTER III THE BEGINNINGS OF UNIVERSITY LIFE 49 Monastic Origins--Continuity of Learning in Early England--The School of York--The Venerable Bede--Alcuin and the Schools of Charles the Great--The Danish Invasions--The Benedictine Revival--The Monkish Chroniclers--The Coming of the Friars--The Franciscan and Dominican Houses at Cambridge--The Franciscan Scholars--Roger Bacon--Bishop Grosseteste--The New Aristotle and the Scientific Spirit--The Scholastic Philosophy--Aquinas--Migration of Scholars from Paris to Cambridge--The term "University"--The Colleges and the Hostels--The Course of Study--Trivium and Quadrivium--The Four Faculties--England a Paradise of Clerks--Parable of the Monk's Pen. CHAPTER IV THE EARLIEST COLLEGE FOUNDATION: PETERHOUSE 71 The Early Monastic Houses in Cambridge--Student Proselytising by the Friars--The Oxford College of Merton a Protest against this Tendency--The Rule of Merton taken as a Model by Hugh de Balsham, Founder of Peterhouse--The Hospital of S. John--The Scholars of Ely--Domestic Economy of the College--The Dress of the Mediæval Student--Peterhouse Buildings--Little S. Mary's Church--The Perne Library--The College Chapel. CHAPTER V THE COLLEGES OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 93 The Fourteenth Century an Age of Great Men and Great Events but not of Great Scholars--Petrarch and Richard of Bury--Michael House--The King's Scholars--King's Hall--Clare Hall--Pembroke College--Gonville Hall--Dr. John Caius--His Three Gates of Humility, Virtue, and Honour. CHAPTER VI THE COLLEGE OF THE CAMBRIDGE GUILDS 120