All that authentic history records is that the Earl of Pembroke died suddenly whilst on a mission to the Court of France in June 1324. His widow expended a large part of her very considerable fortune both in France and England on works of piety. In 1342 she founded the Abbey of Denny in Cambridgeshire for nuns of the Order of S. Clare. The Charter of Foundation of Pembroke College is dated 9th June 1348. It is to be regretted that the earliest Rule given to the College, or to the _Aula seu Domus de Valence Marie_, the Hall of Valence Marie, as it was at first called, is not extant. A revised rule of the conjectural date of 1366, and another of perhaps not more than ten years later, furnished, however, the data upon which Dr. Ainslie, Master of the College from 1828 to 1870, drew up an abstract of its constitution and early history.[38] The most interesting feature of this constitution is the provision made in the first instance for the management of the College by the Franciscans, and its abolition on a later revision. According to the first code--"the head of the College was to be elected by the fellows, and to be distinguished by the title of the Keeper of the House." There were to be annually elected two rectors, _the one a Friar Minor_, the other a secular. This provision of the two rectors was abolished in the later code, and with it apparently all official connection between the College and the Franciscan Order, and it may be perhaps conjectured all association also with the sister foundation at Denny, concerning which the foundress, in her final _Vale_ of the earlier code, had given to the fellows of the House of Valence Marie the following quaint direction, that "on all occasions they should give their best counsel and aid to the Abbess and Sisters of Denny, who had from her a common origin with them." [Illustration: Pembroke College Oriels & Entrance]