Certainly at Cambridge, though perhaps hardly to the same extent as at Oxford, the material influence on the town of the Jewry is traceable. At Oxford, it is said that nearly all the larger dwelling-houses, which were subsequently converted into hostels, bore traces of their Jewish origin in their names, such as Moysey's Hall, Lombard's Hall, Jacob's Hall, and each of the successive Town Halls of the borough had previously been Jewish houses. We have some evidence of a similar conversion at Cambridge. In the first half of the thirteenth century, before we hear either of Tolbooth or of Guildhall, the enlarged judicial responsibilities of the town authorities made it necessary that they should be in possession of some strong building suitable for a prison. Accordingly, in 1224, we find King Henry III. granting to the burgesses the House of Benjamin, the Jew, for the purposes of a gaol. It is said that either the next house or a part of Benjamin's House had been the Synagogue of the Jewry, and was granted in the first instance to the Franciscan Friars on their arrival in the city. Benjamin's House, although it had been altered from time to time, appears never to have been entirely rebuilt, and some fragments of this, the earliest of Cambridge municipal buildings, are perhaps still to be found embedded in the walls of the old Town Arms public-house--a room in which, as late as the seventeenth century, was still known as "The Star Chamber"--at the western side of Butter Row, in the block of old buildings at the corner of Market Square, adjoining the new frontage of the Guildhall. With this relic of the ancient Jewry we reach the last remaining building in Cambridge that had any existence in Norman times. And with the close of this age--the age of the Crusades--we already find the Cambridge burgess safely in possession, not only of that personal freedom which had descended to him by traditional usage from the communal customs of his early Teutonic forefathers, but also of many privileges which he had bought in hard cash from his Norman conqueror. Before the time of the first charter of King John (1201) Cambridge had passed through most of the earlier steps of emancipation which eventually led to complete self-government. The town-bell ringing out from the old tower of S. Benet's already summoned the Cambridge freemen to a borough mote in which the principles of civic justice, of loyal association, of mutual counsel, of mutual aid, were acknowledged by every member of a free, self-ruling assembly. CHAPTER III THE BEGINNINGS OF UNIVERSITY LIFE "Si tollis libertatem, tollis dignitatem."--S. COLUMBAN.