christ’s may be cited as a fair specimen of the normal cambridge college. its court and gate-tower have suffered considerably since they were first built, having been recased with stone in 1724. this pious work was undertaken with funds supplied by dr thomas lynford, fellow of the college and archdeacon of barnstaple, and is as well done as one can expect of anything so radical. two years later, the west front of pembroke was treated in the same way, and the two may be cited together as in some measure a vindication of the early georgian restorer. all that was done was to make the face of the college flat and remove all superficial irregularities, while the general lines of the building were scrupulously maintained. dr lynford is not responsible for the interior of the court, which belongs to a later part of the[163] century, and is due to essex or one of his kind. originally, we may imagine a quadrangle of dark red brick, very like the courts at st john’s and queens’. the gate-towers of all three colleges are very similar; in that of christ’s the foundress’ statue is a modern addition. the present chapel, north of the court, is substantially the chapel of lady margaret beaufort’s foundation, and the small vestries are partly of that date. as for the rest, it is very good work of the middle of the last century imposed on italian gothic, and the antechapel, with its wooden columns, is admirable. above the altar is a good window by some german or flemish artist, not unlike the east window at peterhouse, and of much the same period. the organ, in a gallery north of the sanctuary, is by father smith, and the case is an excellent piece of woodwork. at the west end is a curious portrait of the foundress, and the chapel has a strong historical interest as the burying-place of the cambridge platonists, cudworth, more, and mede.
between the chapel and hall stands the master’s lodge, placed so as to communicate with both. the hall has been very well[164] restored, and is now a good gothic hall, with an oriel full of excellent portrait glass, representing all the worthies of the college, from the lady margaret down to paley in his archdeacon’s apron and darwin in his doctor’s gown. beyond the hall, and facing westwards, is the lovely building of 1642, which is usually attributed to inigo jones. a range of older buildings, constituting the south side of the court, used to impede the full view of this beautiful structure; but these were moved back early in the century, and rebuilt in the hideous taste of the time. however, we are the gainers by it. although the work at clare is, as a whole, a better specimen of the period, the christ’s building has the advantage of perfect uniformity, and is an excellent example of the transition from renaissance gothic to the style of which wren is the chief exponent. its base is pierced by a gateway leading into the famous garden, a classic resort which is a very competent rival of any garden at oxford. of the new buildings at the north-eastern extremity of the college, it is unnecessary to say anything; they are moderate, but are hardly worth a detailed[165] inspection. their architect was mr j. j. stevenson. within the last three years messrs bodley and garner have been employed upon the street front, and, needless to say, have restored it with their usual conservative skill.
for the beginnings of christ’s college we must go back to the year 1436. william bingham, rector of st john zachary in the city of london, founded a small hostel or grammar college in connection with clare, and placed it on a site which is now occupied by the western part of king’s college chapel and a portion of the great court of king’s. four years later, henry vi.’s great experiment forced bingham to seek other quarters, which he eventually found in preachers’ street, the thoroughfare leading from the barnwell gate to the dominican friary. here he re-founded his college under the picturesque name of god’s house, which it had already borne in its former position. but, like so many similar institutions, its revenues languished. bingham’s society was to consist of a master with the title of proctor, and of twenty-four scholars. by the beginning of the sixteenth century, the house maintained only four scholars besides the proctor. there is a story that the great john fisher, bishop of rochester, was bred at this hostel; and that his affection for it was the cause which moved him to bring its destitution to the notice of his friend, lady[166] margaret beaufort. it is, at all events, more than certain that fisher, who guided his patroness in her pious resolves, called her attention to the case, and so laid the foundation, as it were, of christ’s and st john’s. there is no satisfactory evidence as to the time at which she conceived the idea of founding st john’s. probably, the notion of a college had taken her fancy long before, and it is not unlikely that the opportunity of founding two colleges presented itself at one time. at any rate, her first work was to re-establish god’s house in 1505. the task of converting st john’s hospital into st john’s college required several years of preliminaries and formalities. but in god’s house she had a college already to her hand. henry vi. had apparently promised bingham some compensation for the removal of the house, but the greater work of founding king’s and the civil troubles which soon engrossed the crown had prevented him from fulfilling his promise. the lady margaret, devoted to the memory of the “royal saint,” endowed the society on the scale approved by him, and provided funds for the maintenance of a master, twelve fellows and forty-seven scholars. and “from her singular devotion to the name of jesus christ”—the same motive which had prompted alcock to call his foundation jesus college—she founded the college under the invocation of christ. we have thus two colleges at cambridge which recall the popular devotion of the name of jesus, then lately established and approved.
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it may or may not be true that the foundress had rooms reserved for her use in the master’s lodge. the story seems contrary to the spirit of that age or of any other, but a point may have been stretched in her favour. the testimony for this legend rests upon an anecdote told by fuller. “the lady margaret,” he says, “once … came to christ’s college to behold it when partly built, and looking out of a window, saw the dean call a faulty scholar to correction, to whom she said ‘lente, lente,’ gently, gently, as accounting it better to mitigate his punishment than to procure his pardon; mercy and justice making the best medley to offenders.” this is scarcely sufficient authority for the tradition. there are no less than four portraits of the lady margaret in the college, the best of which is perhaps that at the west end of the chapel, closely resembling the picture in the hall at st john’s. the combination room also contains a portrait of bishop fisher, and both these pious friends of learning are commemorated in the oriel of the hall. from the foundation of the college onwards, its history has been peaceful and comparatively uneventful. in its early years, it seems to have anticipated the lodging-house system, for we are told that some of the scholars were lodged in the brazen george, an inn opposite the college, and that the doors of this hostelry were closed and opened at the same time as the doors of the college.
leland the antiquary and hugh latimer were among the earlier members of the college. but the history of christ’s is centred in one[168] event, the seven years’ residence of john milton, who entered as a pensioner in 1625, and went down with his master’s degree in 1632. “john milton of london,” the entry runs in english “son of john milton, was initialed in the elements of letters under mr gill, master of st paul’s school; was admitted a lesser pensioner feb. 12th, 1624 [o.s.] under mr chappell, and paid entrance fee 10s.” mr chappell, on the authority of dr johnson, is said to have flogged the poet. “there is reason to believe that milton was regarded in his college with no great fondness. that he obtained no fellowship is certain, but the unkindness with which he was treated was not merely negative.” milton himself says enough to make the truth of this statement at least doubtful; for his language, ten years after his departure from cambridge, is not merely the language of a man who had forgotten old grudges, but breathes a lively affection for his college. the flogging possibly took place; the university was then nothing but a large public school, and each college was a separate boarding-house. milton, when he went up, was just sixteen, and boys of sixteen are not past flogging. if he went down without a fellowship, he was surely, in spite of that, a most promising student. his latin verses, which we still read as we read ovid and propertius, are the finest poetry, and not mere academical exercises; his skill in italian marks a degree of culture unknown even in that italianised age. in addition to his[169] scholarship, he possessed extraordinary personal beauty, which gives him among poets something of that eminence possessed by raffaelle among painters. we are told that he was called the “lady of the college.” and, while at christ’s, he wrote some of his most lasting works, including the famous hymn on the nativity, which was written in 1629. his verses on hobson, the university carrier, are well known, and lycidas, the elegy on his college friend, edward king, appeared at cambridge in 1637. his noble verses at a solemn musick, containing some of the finest and most imaginative lines in english, belong to this early period. the master under whom his residence took place was dr thomas bainbrigge, master from 1620 to 1645. cromwell had gone down from sidney before milton came up to christ’s, but he was still in the neighbourhood of cambridge. milton’s mulberry-tree, the palladium of the college, may or may not be milton’s; but to believe the tradition does no violence to our faith. the memory of milton had a more than usually potent influence on another poet, wordsworth.
among the band of my compeers was one
whom chance had stationed in the very room
honoured by milton’s name. o temperate bard!
be it confest that, for the first time, seated
within thy innocent lodge and oratory,
one of a festive circle, i poured out
libations, to thy memory drank, till pride
and gratitude grew dizzy in a brain
never excited by the fumes of wine
before that hour, or since.
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and this, from internal evidence, must have been on a winter sunday afternoon before chapel! for the inebriated poet, always a sad idler at cambridge, had to run back “ostrich-like” to chapel, where he arrived late and, full of wine and milton, swaggered up to his place through “the inferior throng of plain burghers.” here was a young gentleman who deserved flogging!
but the presence of milton must not allow us to forget the band of contemplative scholars and philosophers who, in his time, were the ruling influence in the college, and now lie beneath the chapel floor. the course of the reformed and puritan doctrines was largely determined by the study of platonic philosophy, just as the aristotelian system had allied itself to catholic theology. platonism in cambridge is the result of two opposing forces: on the positive side, the teaching of erasmus; on the negative side, the publication of hobbes’ leviathan in 1651. this book received many reputations from cambridge men; two of the best known are the work of dr bramhall of sidney, bishop of derry and afterwards primate of ireland, and of dr cumberland of magdalene, the painful bishop of peterborough. but the most effective opposition to hobbes’ materialistic and mathematical science came from christ’s. the first of the cambridge platonists was the meditative mede, who died in 1638. he was a fellow of the college in milton’s time, and spent his days in wandering about the college backs and fields, absorbed in[171] mystical speculation, of which the eventual outcome was his work on the apocalypse. in the evening, members of the college would resort to his rooms, and he would ask them “quid dubitas? what doubts have you met in your studies to-day?” and, having heard their answers, would set their minds at rest and dismiss them with prayer. but mede was scarcely so remarkable as henry more, the author of the mystery of godliness and other books, who devoted his life at cambridge to platonic speculations, and even extended his enquiries to the neo-platonic writers and the hebrew cabala. ralph cudworth* was three years his junior, and survived him one year. this man, the greatest of the company, was master of clare for some time, and, in 1654, became master of christ’s, where he remained, unmoved by the restoration, till his death in 1688. he was the most powerful of hobbes’ adversaries, and his true intellectual system of the universe, published in 1678, is a fairly convincing counterblast to the leviathan. however, cudworth was rather a talented pedant than a genius: he lessened the value of his work by recondite allusions, and his critical capacity was impaired by prejudice. but, in that age of laborious theology, cudworth’s book deserves a position next to, although far below, leighton’s commentary on st peter.
it is a somewhat melancholy fact that the only other poet of whom christ’s can boast besides milton is that master of tortured conceits, francis quarles. curiously enough, the portrait,[172] probably of quarles, in the combination room, which bears the motto “nec ingratus nec inutilis videar vixisse” was at one time supposed to be that of milton. but the college has had eminent students in other departments. dr seth ward,* a little younger than milton, is known as the bishop of salisbury during the time of james ii. and the revolution. in 1766, at the age of twenty-three, william paley* was elected a fellow, and remained at cambridge for ten years. paley’s early life is said to have been careless and riotous. one morning, however, when lying late in bed, a friend and boon-companion came into his room, and treated him to what is sometimes known as a “straight talk.” this admonition awakened paley’s conscience, and led in time to the publication of the famous evidences of christianity and to the archdeaconry of carlisle. in all probability, no historical name is so often on the undergraduate’s lips—not always with blessings—as the name of this reclaimed ne’er-do-weel. the evidences, as is well known, form part of the subjects for the previous examination or little-go, and have in this capacity given birth to an especial department of literature in the shape of “paley sheets” and other précis of the heavy work. a less logical but more human theologian was john kaye,* master from 1814 to 1830, and bishop successively of bristol and lincoln.
if, among statesmen, christ’s can put forward lord liverpool, famous for his interminable ministry of more than twenty years, she has had[173] in science, a son who is as famous in his branch of study as milton is in poetry. this was charles robert darwin (* ouless) who came up to christ’s in the twenties with the intention of taking holy orders. at cambridge, however, he found such opportunities for research that he abandoned his design, and, at the recommendation of professor henslow, who then held the botanical chair, went out as naturalist to the beagle. this was the beginning of his scientific career and of the revolution in biological science which he effected. a tablet with his profile in relief has been placed in the room occupied by him, which is at present occupied by the norrisian professor of divinity, dr armitage robinson. to-day christ’s not only claims as its master dr john peile, the eminent classical philologist, but the greatest of living scholars who have devoted themselves to the study of their own language—the editor of langland and chaucer, professor skeat. and cambridge men will always remember with pleasure that christ’s was the college of the most pleasant of all english versifiers, charles stuart calverley (then blayds) who not only, by his light verses, added to the gaiety of the nation, but, by his translation of theocritus, increased the range of english poetry.
