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“Next then the plenteous Ouse came far from land,

By many a city and by many a town,

And many rivers taking under-hand

Into his waters as he passeth down,

The Cle, the Were, the Grant, the Sture, the Bowne,

Thence doth by Huntingdon and Cambridge flit,

My Mother Cambridge, whom as with a crowne

He doth adorne, and is adorn’d by it

With many a gentle Muse and many a learned wit.”

—Spenser’s Faerie Queene, iv. xi. 34.

Geographical and commercial importance of the city site—Map of the county a palimpsest—Glamour of the Fenland—Cambridge the gateway of East Anglia—The Roman roads—The Roman station—The Castle Hill—Stourbridge Fair—Cambridge a chief centre of English commerce.

ONE could wish perhaps that the story of Cambridge should begin, as so many good stories of men and cities have begun, in the antique realm of poetry and romance. That it did so begin our forefathers indeed had little doubt. John Lydgate, the poet, a Benedictine monk of Bury, “the disciple”—as he is proud to call himself—“of Geoffrey Chaucer,” but best remembered perhaps by later times as the writer of “London Lackpenny” and “Troy Book,” has left certain verses on the foundation of the Town and University of Cambridge, which are still preserved to us.[1] Some stanzas of that fourteenth-century poem will serve to show in what a cloudland of empty legend it was at one time thought that the story of the beginnings of Cambridge might be found:—

“By trew recorde of the Doctor Bede

That some tyme wrotte so mikle with his hande,

And specially remembringe as I reede

In his chronicles made of England

Amounge other thynges as ye shall understand,

Whom for myne aucthour I dare alleage,

Seith the translacion and buylding of Cambridge.

. . . . . . . . . .

“Touching the date, as I rehearse can

Fro thilke tyme that the world began

Four thowsand complete by accomptès clere

And three hundred by computacion

Joyned thereto eight and fortie yeare,

When Cantebro gave the foundacion

Of thys citie and this famous towne

And of this noble universitie

Sette on this river which is called Cante.

. . . . . . . . . .

“This Cantebro, as it well knoweth

At Athenes scholed in his yougt,

All his wyttes greatlye did applie

To have acquaintance by great affection

With folke-experte in philosophie. From Athens he brought with hym downe Philosophers most sovereigne of renowne Unto Cambridge, playnlye this is the case, Anaxamander and Anaxagoras With many other myne Aucthors dothe fare, To Cambridge fast can hym spede With philosophers and let for no cost spare In the Schooles to studdie and to reede; Of whose teachinges great profit that gan spreade And great increase rose of his doctrine; Thus of Cambridge the name gan first shyne As chief schoole and universitie Unto this tyme fro the daye it began By cleare reporte in manye a far countre Unto the reign of Cassibellan. . . . . . . . . . . “And as it is put eke in memorie, Howe Julius Cesar entring this region On Cassybellan after his victorye Tooke with hym clarkes of famous renowne Fro Cambridg and ledd theim to Rome towne, Thus by processe remembred here to forne Cambridg was founded long or Chryst was borne.”

But it is not only in verse that this fabric of fable is to be found. Down even to the middle of the last century the ears of Cambridge graduates were still beguiled by strange stories of the early renown of their University—how it was founded by a Spanish Prince, Cantaber (the “Cantebro” of Lydgate’s verses), “in the 4321st year of the creation of the world,” and in the sixth year of Gurgant, King of Britain; how Athenian astronomers and philosophers, “because of the pleasantness of the place,” came to Cambridge as its earliest professors, “the king having appointed them stipends”; how King Arthur, “on the 7th of April, in the year of the Incarnacion of our Lord, 531,” granted a charter of academic privileges “to Kenet, the first Rector of the schools”; and how the University subsequently found another royal patron in the East Anglian King Sigebert, and had among its earliest Doctors of Divinity the great Saxon scholars Bede and Alcuin.

I have before me as I write a small octavo volume, a guide-book to Cambridge and its Colleges, much worn and thumbed, probably by its eighteenth-century owner, possibly by his nineteenth-century successor, in which all these fables and legends are set out in order. The book has lost its title-page, but it is easily identifiable as an English translation of Richard Parker’s Skeletos Cantabrigiensis, written about 1622, but not apparently published until a century later, when the antiquary, Thomas Hearne, printed it in his edition of Leland’s Collectanea. My English edition of the Skeletos is presumably either that which was “printed for Thomas Warner at the Black Boy, Pater Noster Row,” and without a date, or that published by “J. Bateman at the Hat and Star in S. Paul’s Churchyard,” and dated 1721. As an illustration of the kind of record which passed for history even in the last century,—for the early editions of Hallam’s “History of the Middle Ages” bear evidence that that careful historian still gave some credence to these Cambridge fables,—it may be interesting to quote one or two passages from the legendary history of Nicholas Cantelupe, which is prefixed to this English version of Parker’s book:—

“Anaximander, one of the disciples of Thales, came to this city on account of his Philosophy and great Skill in Astrology, where he left much Improvement in Learning to Posterity. After his Example, Anaxagoras, quitting his Possessions, after a long Peregrination, came to Cambridge, where he writ Books, and instructed the unlearned, for which reason that City was by the People of the Country call’d the City of Scholars.

“King Cassibelan, when he had taken upon him the Government of the Kingdom, bestowed such Preheminence on this City, that any Fugitive or Criminal, desirous to acquire Learning, flying to it, was defended in the sight of His Enemy, with Pardon, and without Molestation, Upbraiding or Affront offer’d him. For which Reason, as also on account of the Richness of the Soil, the Serenity of the Air, the great Source of Learning, and the King’s Favour, young and old, from many Parts of the Earth, resorted thither, some of whom Julius Cæsar, having vanquished Cassibelan, carry’d away to Rome, where they afterwards flourish’d.”

There then follows a letter, given without any doubt of authenticity, from Alcuin of York, purporting to be written to the scholars of Cambridge from the Court of Charles the Great:—

“To the discreet Heirs of Christ, the Scholars of the unspotted Mother Cambridge, Ælqninus, by Life a Sinner, Greeting and Glory in the Virtues of Learning. Forasmuch as Ignorance is the Mother of Error, I earnestly intreat that Youths among you be us’d to be present at the Praises of the Supreme King, not to unearth Foxes, not to hunt Hares, let them now learn the Holy Scriptures, having obtain’d Knowledge of the Science of Truth, to the end that in their perfect Age they may teach others. Call to mind, I beseech you dearly beloved the most noble Master of our Time, Bede the Priest, Doctor of your University, under whom by permission of the Divine Grace, I took the Doctor’s Degree in the Year from the Incarnation of our Lord 692, what an Inclination he had to study in His Youth, what Praise he has now among Men, and much more what Glory of Reward with God. Farewell always in Christ Jesu, by whose Grace you are assisted in Learning. Amen.”

We may omit the mythical charter of King Arthur and come to the passage concerning King Alfred, obviously intended to turn the flank of the Oxford patriots, who too circumstantially relate how their University was founded by that great scholar king.