ships and Scholarships rather by favour than by merit. To remedy these evils in some measure, his munificence transformed the decaying Gonville Hall into the College which still bears his name, and which he dedicated to his own chosen study, that of Medicine. He himself became the first Master; but the growing Protestantism of the age detected in his rooms a store of Popish vestments and service-books, burnt them in the College court, and drove` him from his own foundation to end his days in London.

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§ 44. This was in 1573, and not long afterwards this same growth of Protestant sentiment found further expression, in the foundation, on the site of the Dominican Convent, of the first college definitely intended to develop that sentiment. In 1584 Sir Walter Mildmay obtained a royal license" to erect and endow a certain college . . for the propagation of the pure Gospel of Christ; to be called Emmanuel College "-a name which, like the Scriptural arms and motto of the Society, shows that we are now entering the Puritan era. In his Statutes the Founder exhorts to special watchfulness towards extirpating Papistical heresies "; and in his architectural arrangements he was careful to build the College chapel north and south, instead of east and west, while he used the site of the old convent church for the College hall. Shortly afterwards yet another conventual site was utilized for Protestant purposes, by the foundation, in 1595, of Sidney Sussex College, on the grounds where the great Franciscan church and cloisters stood of old. Like Pembroke and Clare, this College was due to the generosity of a widow, Frances Sidney, relict of the third Earl of Sussex, and its armorial bearings still show her lozenge, charged with the broad arrow1 which is the cognizance of the House of Sidney.

1 The adoption of this device as the official stamp for Government property is said to have arisen from Sir R. Sidney having been Controller of the Ordnance under James I.

§ 1-5. Oliver Cromwell at Sidney-The prisoners of WisbeachProtestantism loses favour-Elizabeth at Cambridge-Lancelot Andrews-Reactionary movement-James I. and Charles I.at

Royston.

§ 6-23. Civil War-Associated counties-Royalist march on Cambridge-Ecclesiastical disturbances-Dowsing-Profanation of churches-Ejection of incumbents-Ship-money-Cromwell at Cambridge.

§ 24-27. Lack of funds-Discontent of the army-Triplow HeathCornet Joyce-Charles at Newmarket-March on London-King detained at Royston.

§ 28-34. Changes at Cambridge-Prayer-Book torn up-Oliva Pacis -Puritan license-Mr. Tripos-University humour-Thomas Fuller-Ode to Monmouth.

§ I.

NE of the earliest students who learnt, at Sidney Sussex College, as the Founder's Statutes direct, "to detest and abhor Popery," was Oliver Cromwell, whose name introduces us to the second act of the Reformation drama.

§ 2. Already the performers in its early scenes were almost all in the tomb ere the College was founded. Amongst those who found graves in Cambridgeshire, we must not pass over "the prisoners of Wisbeach," the last survivors of the old Catholic hierarchy. Such of that hierarchy as were alive at Elizabeth's succession were,

with one exception, deposed for refusing the Oath of Supremacy, to the number of fifteen. Shortly afterwards they were imprisoned, not by any process of law, but by the royal fiat, and continued under more or less severe restraint for the rest of their lives. This was wholly on account of their religion. Lord Burghley, a hostile witness (in his "Execution of Justice in England "), testifies to their blameless characters, describing them as "faithful and quiet subjects," "persons of courteous natures," "of great modesty, learning and knowledge," secluded only "for their contrary opinions in religion, that savour not [like those of the seminary priests] of treason."

§ 3. Yet, though thus inoffensive, their doom was grievously heavy. Committed, to begin with, to solitary confinement in what Froude calls "the living death of the Tower," and other London prisons, for three or four years, they were afterwards quartered (singly) on the Protestant prelates, who were stringently ordered by the Council to prevent them from communication, either by word or letter, with anyone, and to see that they had neither paper to write withal, nor books to read (except Protestant ones). Thus, deprived of every intellectual, social, and religious solace, "pining away in miserable desolation, tossing and shifting from one keeper to another," they one by one drooped and died. But all remained steadfast to their faith; and finally the "obstinate" survivors were, in 1580, closely imprisoned, along with others in like case, in Wisbeach Castle, under the charge of the Bishop of Ely. Here they remained, "enclosed within a brick wall," and pestered by Protestant preachers (amongst them "Lancelot Andrewes of Pembroke Hall"), till death set them free. The latest to linger were Thomas Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, who died 1584, and Feckenham, the last Abbot of Westminster,

1 This work was published in 1583, to justify the execution of the seminary priests in England. Burghley's point is that quiet Papists were not put to death.

who died 1585. Both are buried (as the parish registers testify) in Wisbeach Churchyard.1

2

§ 4. And now the current of Protestant feeling, which had long run so fiercely, was checked in its course by the action of the authorities. Even in the early days of her reign, Elizabeth, on her visit to Cambridgeshire, when a play was performed before her in King's College Chapel, was shocked and disgusted by the appearance on the stage of a dog trained to walk on its hind-legs with the consecrated Host in its mouth. Afterwards, as years went by, her political instinct told her that Puritanism was likely to prove yet more antagonistic to the royal prerogative than Catholicism had, in her case, shown itself; thus leading her to favour such "reactionary" divines as Lancelot Andrewes, Master of Pembroke College and afterwards Bishop of Ely. And when her successor came to the throne, such divines were still more the objects of royal patronage, till, under Laud, their repudiation of Reformation doctrines and practices, and their persecution of the Nonconformists, who clung to Reformation principles, led to that renewed outburst of Protestantism which found expression in the Civil War.

5. The monarchs whose pertinacious adherence to the reactionary cause brought about this outbreak were not infrequently in Cambridgeshire. James I. had at Royston one of his favourite hunting-boxes, and once passed there almost twelve months of seclusion. The house in which he resided is still called the "Palace," and the

1 See Bridgett and Knox, "Queen Elizabeth and the Catholic Hierarchy," p. 197 et seq.

2 This performance (got up by the undergraduates) had been intended as an afterpiece to the play at King's. The Queen, however, was not able to remain for it, but consented that the actors should follow her to her first stage on her journey from Cambridge, and there exhibit their composition. On seeing what it was, she rose, and with an indignant rebuke swept out of the room.-Froude, “Hist. England,” vol. vii., p. 205.

three-cornered, richly-carved oaken chest in which his ruffs were kept is still preserved there. It was in this house that his unworthy favourite, the Earl of Somerset, was arrested in his very presence for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, and from this house that his son Charles, Prince of Wales, started, incognito, as John Smith, on his romantic wooing of the Spanish Infanta. In this house, moreover, at a later day, Charles I. took up his abode for a while, on his way from London to set up his standard at Nottingham at the first beginning of the Civil War; and in this house, at its close, he was lodged, on June 24, 1647, as a prisoner, by the Army, whose headquarters were for a while at Royston.

§ 6. Between these two last events Cambridgeshire had undergone its share of the stirring transactions of the civil strife. It was not the scene of any great battle, or, indeed, of any fighting at all; for the Protestant County contained almost no Royalists, and (along with Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincoln, Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Essex) was one of the seven one of the seven "Associated Counties," which combined for mutual defence, and "felt little of the war, save the cost."

§ 7. Once only, during the whole course of hostilities, did an action within our borders seem imminent. In August, 1645, the King made his last despairing effort to retrieve the ruin of his cause at Naseby by "undertaking, with a mere handful of men, a desperate march of over two hundred miles, traversing the heart of the enemies' country, entering their Associated Counties, where no army had ever yet come, and (in spite of all their victorious troops facing and following him) alarming even London itself, and returning safe to Oxford."

§ 8. From Wales, whither he had retreated after his fatal defeat, he marched, with troops of pursuing Scottish and Roundhead cavalry on every side, like hounds started at a fresh stag," through Staffordshire, Warwick

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