England -- Description and travel; England -- Social life and customs
It is on record that Edward I. in 1254 (whilst still Prince of Wales)
visited the town of Cambridge, and acted as arbitrator in quarrels between
the townsmen and the students. He decided that thirteen scholars and
thirteen burgesses of the town should be chosen to represent both interests
on a Board of Control. His son, Edward II., continued his father's
interest in Cambridge, and maintained, at his own expense, a group of
scholars there. In 1257 Hugh de Balsham, the tenth bishop of the diocese,
placed and endowed at St. John's Hospital a group of secular students known
as "Ely students." At this time also Walter de Merton, Chancellor of
England, assigned his manor of Malden, Surrey, as endowment for "poor
scholars in the schools of Cambridge, who were to live according to his
directions." In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in this as at other
universities, scholars lived each at his own charge. Sometimes three or
four clubbed together, but each had his own "founder and benefactor." Some
scholars elected their own principal, and paid a fixed rate for board and
lodging, and this hostel system developed into the collegiate system which
distinguishes English universities from all others. Now Cambridge has
seventeen of these colleges.
Among the architectural features of special interest at Cambridge is a
chapel built by Matthew Wren, the uncle of Sir Christopher Wren. It is a
fine specimen of seventeenth-century work. The various college buildings
date from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. The dates are:
Michaelhouse 1324, Clare 1338, Peterhouse 1284, King's Hall 1337, Pembroke
1347, Gonville Hall 1348, Trinity Hall 1356, Corpus Christi 1382, King's
College 1441, Queens' 1448, St. Catharine's 1473, Jesus 1495, Christ's
1505, St. John's 1509, Magdalene 1542, Trinity 1546, Caius 1557, Emmanuel
1584, Sidney Sussex 1595. Modern colleges are Downing College, Girton
College, and Newnham College. Girton College occupies Girton Manor on the
Huntingdon Road, an eleventh-century house built by Picot the Norman
Sheriff of Cambridge. Earlier it had been the site of a Roman and
Anglo-Saxon burial-ground. The college was founded by Madame Bodichon and
Miss Emily Davies. Newnham College began in a hired house with five
students in 1871. Miss Anne J. Clough was the founder. The present Newnham
Hall is composed of several buildings acquired since.
For the historical student a brief roll of some of Cambridge's great men
would include: Green, Lyly, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Nash, Fletcher, Sterne,
Thackeray, Bacon, Milton, Dryden, Cranmer, the two great Cecils,
Walsingham, Cromwell, Walpole, Chesterfield, Pitt, Wilberforce,
Castlereagh, Palmerston, Herrick, Hutchinson, Marvell, Jeremy Taylor,
Ascham, Erasmus, Spenser, Wren, Hook, Evelyn, More, Newton, and Darwin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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