Margaret had always been a deeply religious woman, but with growing years she gave ever more time to her religious observances. Many hours were spent in prayer and in services in her chapel. She observed strictly all the fasts ordained by the Church, which were very severe in those days, and she wore on certain days in each week a hair shirt, or a hair girdle, next her skin in order to mortify her flesh. In 1497 Margaret appointed a learned Cambridge scholar, John Fisher, whom she had noticed with favour at court, where he had come on business connected with his university, to be her confessor. Fisher gained great influence over her, and he used it for the good of his university, which was then by no means in a prosperous condition. Margaret was always generous with her money; Fisher says of her that she hated avarice and covetousness, and she was glad to use her wealth to promote the cause of learning. Under Fisher’s guidance she founded professorships at Cambridge and Oxford, which are still called after her. The college where Fisher had himself studied, called God’s House, was very poor, and Margaret refounded it under the name of Christ’s College, and herself made the statutes under which it was to be governed. She took great interest in it, and kept some rooms in it for herself, where she might stay when she came to Cambridge. Once when she was staying there, before the building of the College was finished, she was looking out of the window when she saw the dean beating a scholar who had misbehaved. She did not interfere to stop the punishment, but only called out in Latin, “Lente, Lente” (gently, gently), wishing that the beating might be less severe. It was in Cambridge that the famous scholar Erasmus met her on one of his visits to England, when she was an old lady, and admired her good memory and her ready wit. Before the buildings of Christ’s College were finished, Fisher won Margaret’s interest in the foundation of another college, St. John’s. At that time, the time which is known as the Renaissance, because art and learning seemed to be born again, men were eager to improve the teaching at the universities, and to make it possible for all who wished to gain knowledge. Fisher was friends with Erasmus and other learned men, and Margaret was willing to help with her money his plans for the advancement of learning, just as she had helped Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde in printing and publishing books. But though, for those days, she was a learned woman herself, she does not seem to have thought that other women should be helped to study, and it was only the learning of men that she aided by her gifts. [Illustration: _Photo: A. E. Walsham._ CHRIST’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. ]