THE FOUNDING OF CAMBRIDGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15175, 14 December 1912, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE FOUNDING OF CAMBRIDGE

Is " Cambridge and. Its Story" {Methuen, ! London), Mr. Arthur Gray exhibits the part played by Cambridge in the national life. The origin of the University is traced to the social, political, and intellectual conditions of England in the twelfth century, and the varying types seen in tho constitution of the colleges are connected with the modifications in intellectual ideals introduced in successive periods. The story of Cambridge since the Reformation is treated in connection with the college careers of some of its most famous sons who carried its influences into fields of science and letters beyond the University pale, and the opportunity taken of portraying the scenes and manners of academic life which were present to them during their residence in the University. Mr. Maxwell Armfield has drawn sixteen charming illustrations, which are printed in colour, and there are sixteen reproductions from photographs. Of its foundation we read:. —

" In the year 1209 we hear definitely of the presence of clerks at Cambridge, and they came from Oxford. What was happening in England to cause this migration? The land lay under an interdict. King John was boycotted by bishops and clergy; terror of the papal sword prevented any beneficed clergyman from holding intercourse with him. The King was not slow to retaliate on the' clerks where he had an opportunity, and, as fortune would havo it, he was than uncomfortably near the Oxford clerks, at Woodstock. A scholar accidentally killed a, woman and took to flight. 'The prefect of the town,' whatever that official may have been, with a posse of townsmen arrested three clerks who lodged in the same house as the homicide. Though they were innocent of the crime they were thrown into gaol, and then, by the King's order, taken outside the town and hanged, in contempt of the liberty of the Church. The whole of the scholars, three thousand in numberso we } era toldabandoned the Oxford schools in

consequence and went to study, some at Cambridge, others at Reading or Maid-

"Dr. RashdaJl says that it was this migration from Oxford in 1209 which led to the establishment ci a permanent University at Cambridge. He supplies no evi- • device for -the assumption. We know no more than ■we are . told by Matthew of Paris. It is just as likely that the Oxford clerks went to Cambridge because schools were already established there. On ai j other supposition it is not easy to cCe v " v they made a permanent home there, an not either at Reading .or Maidstone. j "Permanence in his abode was the _last thing that the scholar dreamt of or desired. The picture of the tree of knowledge, planted ineradicable and inviolate m. ■ a walled garden and extending its traits from summer to summer to the quiet cultivator, was far from the visions of the thirteenth century. All over Christendom it was the age of the wandering scholars With strange' forms of speech they passed from land to land, citizens of- all and of none. Bee-like they swarmed wherever the fancy took them or there were flowers to rifle, An old French monk, says o. them in the twelfth century: 4ln Paris tiey seek liberal arts, ia Orleans authors, a» Salerno gallipots, at Toledo demons, and in no place decent manners.. _ *■„ " The English scholar was constantly on the wing. The Universities had no endowments to attach them to the soil. Hired lodgings and lecture-room made no abiding city for the student. It was a simple thSa? for -him to pack up his 20 books clothed in black or red and transport them on his lean how to fresh academic fields ! Migrations on a large scale were as much ' the rale as the exception m ihe unquiet days of John and Henry 111. There ha.* always been a kind of freemasonry between i Cambridge and Oxford undergraduates that shows itself in turbulence. The rag at one seat of learning has a trick of reproduring itself, with no long interval, at the I other. The bond of fellowship was even stronger 700 years ago It little j. where they .lived : Golyas of Oxford and ; Golvas of Cambridge were sworn brothers. ! and" their hand was against all o»her men.