Little is known, or need be told, of Cecil’s early youth. He went to school successively at Grantham and Stamford, and in May 1535, when he was fifteen years of age, entered St. John’s College, Cambridge, to embark upon deeper studies. His anonymous biographer, who lived in his household in his later years, and can only have spoken by hearsay of his college days, says[5] that he was so “diligent and paineful as he hired a bell-ringer to call him up at foure of the clock every morninge; with which early rising and late watchinge, and continuall sitting, there fell abundance of humours into his leggs, then very hardly cured, which was thought one of the original causes of his gowt.” It is, at all events, certain that he threw himself with avidity into the studies which were then especially claiming the attention of scholars, and in a very short time became remarkable for his wide knowledge of Greek especially, and for his extraordinary general aptitude and application. It is said, indeed, that he gratuitously read the Greek lecture at St. John’s before he was nineteen years of age. By good fortune it happened that the University was at the time of his residence the centre of a new intellectual movement, the young leaders of which at once became Cecil’s chosen friends. Already the new learning had taken fast hold of the brighter spirits, and although Luther’s works were openly forbidden, they were secretly read by a little company of students who met for the purpose at a tavern in Cambridge called the White Horse; Erasmus had left memories of his teaching behind him at Queen’s, and Melancthon’s books were eagerly studied. A brilliant young King’s scholar, named Thomas Smith, read the Greek lectures at Queen’s College, and assembled under him a band of scholars, such as have rarely been united at one time. Cheke, Ascham, Matthew Parker, Nicholas Bacon, Bill, Watson, and Haddon, amongst many others, who afterwards achieved fame, were Cecil’s intimate companions; and Cheke especially, who belonged to the same college, and was somewhat older, systematically helped him, doubtless for a consideration. Cheke’s capacity was almost as remarkable as that of his fellow King’s scholar, Smith. He was poor, but of ancient family, the son of a college-beadle whose widow on his death had to maintain her children by keeping a wine-shop in the town; although he subsequently became the Regius Professor of Greek, and tutor to Edward VI., and, by the aid of Smith, reformed the vicious pronunciation of Latin and Greek upon which the Churchmen had insisted. Humble John Cheke was Cecil’s bosom friend, and to his mother’s wine-shop the rich courtier’s son must often have been a welcome visitor.