THUS sang Thomas Tusser—the author of “Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry united to as many of Good Housewifery”—of Trinity Hall and his residence there about the year 1542. And the words of the homely old rhymer—the most fluent versifier, I suppose, among farmers since Virgil, wise in his advice to others, most unlucky in the application of his own maxims—have been echoed in spirit by many generations of “Hall” men from his time onwards. And indeed there is hardly perhaps another College in Cambridge which stirs the hearts of its members with a more passionate enthusiasm of loyalty than this, which yet never speaks of itself as a “College,” but always proudly as “The Hall.” It was founded by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, in 1350, but it had an earlier origin than this. On the southern part of the present site there stood an old house, which had been provided some thirty years earlier for the use of the student-monks of Ely attending the University by the then Prior. This was John of Crauden, Prior of Ely from 1321 to 1341, a man of noble personal character, a model administrator of the great possessions of his abbey, a patron of art and learning, the friend on the one hand of Queen Philippa, and on the other of the greatest cathedral builder of the fourteenth century, Alan de Walsingham. The portrait bust of him, which may still be seen carved at the end of one of the hood moulds of the great octagon arches in the Minster, shows a strong, handsome face, dignified, benignant, pleasant; a full, frank, eloquent eye; a mouth intelligent and firm, and yet with a merry smile lurking unmistakably in its corner; altogether such a man as we may well feel might not only rightly be Queen Philippa’s friend, as the chronicler says, “propter amabilem et graciosam ipsius affabilitatem et eloquentiam,”[59] but one also who one might expect to find anxious to maintain among his convent brothers the Benedictine ideal of knowledge and learning. It was no doubt to that end that somewhere about the year 1325 he had purchased the house at Cambridge as a hostel for the use of the Ely monks. In the Obedientary Rolls of the monastery, still treasured in the muniment room of the cathedral, there is evidence that from his time onwards three or four of the Ely monks were constantly residing at Cambridge at the convent expense, taking their degrees there, and then returning to Ely.[60]

The Chapel, Trinity Hall

It is probable, however, that the residence of the Ely monks was, shortly after Crauden’s time, transferred from this hostel to the rooms provided in Monk’s College on the present site of Magdalene, for a register among the Ely muniments shows that in the twenty-fourth year of Edward III. John of Crauden’s hostel was conveyed by the Prior and Convent to the Bishop of Norwich for the purpose of his proposed college. The old Monk’s Hall was still standing in 1731, for it is contained in a plan of the College of that date preserved in the College library. A note in Warren’s “History of Trinity Hall” informs us that a part of it was destroyed in 1823. Warren himself speaks of it as “Y^e Old Building for y^e Monks, where y^e Pigeon House is.” Now all has vanished unless perhaps some underground foundations in the garden of the Master’s Lodge.

The buildings of the College, in their general arrangement, have probably been little altered since their completion in the fourteenth century. They had the peculiarity of an entrance court between the principal court and the street, like the outer court of a monastery. The original gateway, however, of this entrance—the Porter’s Court, as it was called at a later date—has been removed, and the College is now entered directly from the street.

It is probable that the Hall, forming one half of the western side of the principal court, was built during the lifetime of the founder, as also was the original eastern range, rebuilt in the last century. This would give a date, 1355, for these two ranges. The buttery and the northern block of buildings belong to 1374. In early days Trinity Hall shared with Clare Hall the Church of S. John Zachary as a joint College chapel. When in connection with the building of King’s College the Church of S. John was removed, two aisles were added to the chancel of S. Edward’s Church for the accommodation of “The Hall” students. The present chapel appears to date from the end of the fourteenth, or probably the early part of the fifteenth century. The only architectural features, however, at present visible of mediÆval character are the piscina and the buttresses on the south side.

The advowson of the Church of S. Edward, the north aisle of the chancel of which was for a time used as the College chapel, was acquired by the College in the middle of the fifteenth century, and has thus remained to our own day.

This tradition of independence, at any rate in pulpit teaching, though in less eccentric ways, has been retained by S. Edward’s down to our own time. Here in 1832, Henry John Rose, the brother of Hugh James Rose, the Cambridge Tractarian, represented the moderate wing of the new Anglican party. Here, during the years preceding his promotion to the Deanery of Ely in 1858, Harvey Goodwin preached that series of sermons, simple, pithy, robust, which Sunday by Sunday crowded with undergraduates the Church of S. Edward for nearly eight years, as a church in a university city has seldom been crowded. Here, also, in 1871 Frederick Denison Maurice—the most representative churchman probably of the nineteenth century, for it was he rather than Pusey or Newman, who, by his interpretation of the Doctrine of the Incarnation, has most profoundly moulded, inspired, and transfigured the Church ideals of the present—found an opportunity of preaching when too many of the parochial pulpits of England were closed to him.

The grave and the trivial mingle in college as in other human affairs. And so it came about that the possession of the spiritualities of S. Edward’s parish compelled the Fellows of the Hall to keep an eye on its temporalities, and from time to time to beat its bounds. Here is one record of such “beating.” It was May 23rd, viz., Ascension Day in 1734, when the Fellows deputed for the purpose started from the Three Tuns and went by the Mitre, the White Horse, and the Black Bull before reaching S. Catherine’s Hall. They penetrated King’s, but regretted to find that here the Brewhouse was shut up. They encircled Clare and Trinity Hall, therefore, and came back to the Three Tuns whence they had started two hours before. They had not, quite evidently—for the full circuit is not great—been walking all the time. The account ends:—

Oriel Window, Jesus College

It will be remembered that in the last chapter, in speaking of the books left to Corpus Christi College by Archbishop Parker, we mentioned that provision of his deed of gift by which under certain contingencies the books were to be transferred from Corpus to Trinity Hall. It is quite probable that this provision drew the attention of the authorities of the latter college to the possible need of a library. It is unknown, however, when exactly the present library was built. The style proclaims Elizabeth’s reign or thereabouts. Professor Willis conjectured about 1600. But whatever the date may be it is very fortunate that the hand of the restorer which fell so heavily upon so many other of the College buildings should have mercifully spared the library, which to this day retains its early simplicity of character, leaving it one of the most interesting of the old book rooms in the University. Mr. J. G. Clark in his valuable essay on the Development of Libraries and their fittings, published two years ago under the title “The Care of Books,” has thus spoken of the library of Trinity Hall:—

“The Library of Trinity Hall is thoroughly mediÆval in plan, being a long narrow room on the first floor of the north side of the second court, 65 feet long by 20 feet wide, with eight equi-distant windows in each side wall, and a window of four lights in the western gable. It was built about 1600, but the fittings are even later, having been added between 1626 and 1645 during the mastership of Thomas Eden, LL.D. They are therefore a deliberate return to ancient forms at a time when a different type had been adopted elsewhere.

“There are four desks and six seats on each side of the room, placed as usual, at right angles to the side walls, in the interspaces of the windows, respectively.

“These lecterns are of oak, 6 feet 7 inches long, and 7 feet high, measured to the top of the ornamental finial. There is a sloping desk at the top, beneath which is a single shelf. The bar for the chains passes under the desk, through the two vertical ends of the case. At the end furthest from the wall, the hasp of the lock is hinged to the bar and secured by two keys. Beneath the shelf there is at either end a slip of wood which indicates that there was once a movable desk which could be pulled out when required. The reader could therefore consult his convenience, and work either sitting or standing. For both these positions the heights are very suitable, and at the bottom of the case was a plinth on which he could set his feet. The seats between each pair of desks were of course put up at the same time as the desks themselves. They show an advance in comfort, being divided into two so as to allow of support to the readers’ backs.”[62]