It is an historic saying, that "Cambridge bred the Founders of the English Reformation and that Oxford burnt them." The statement is not without its grain of truth. The Puritan Reformation of the sixteenth century found, no doubt, its strongest adherents in the eastern counties of England; but it was not so much because the scholars of Cambridge welcomed more heartily than their brothers in the western university the teaching of the scholars of Geneva, but because the people of East Anglia, two centuries before, had been saturated with the Bible teaching of the "poore priestes" of Wycliffe's school, and throughout the whole of the intervening period had secretly cherished it. For the present, however, the curtain drops on the age of the schoolmen with the death of Wycliffe. When it rises again, we shall find ourselves in the age of the New Learning. What the transition was from one time to the other, how deeply the Revival of Learning influenced the reformation of religion, we shall hear in the succeeding chapters. CHAPTER VII TWO ROYAL FOUNDATIONS "Tax not the royal saint with vain expense, With ill-matched aims the architect who planned, Albeit labouring for a scanty band Of white-robed scholars only--this immense And glorious work of fine intelligence! Give all thou can'st: high Heaven rejects the lore Of nicely calculated less or more; So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof, Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells, Where light and shade repose, where music dwells Lingering--and wandering on as loth to die; Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof That they were born for immortality." --WORDSWORTH'S _Sonnet on King's College Chapel_. Henry VI.--The most pitiful Character in all English History--His devotion to Learning and his Saintly Spirit--His foundation of Eton and King's College--The Building of King's College Chapel--Its architect, Reginald of Ely, the Cathedral Master-Mason--Its relation to the Ely Lady Chapel--Its stained glass Windows--Its close Foundation--Queens' College--Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Wydville--The buildings of Queens'--Similarity to Haddon Hall--Its most famous Resident, Erasmus--His _Novum Instrumentum_ edited within its Walls.