“The pure house of Emmanuel” occupies the site of the house of Dominican Friars outside Barnwell Gate. At the dissolution the buildings were left untouched, and, when Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Treasurer of the Household, came into possession of the land, he had his materials for a college all ready. Sir Walter was a strong Puritan, and was on that account no great favourite with Queen Elizabeth. She met him one day and said, “Sir Walter, I hear that you have erected a Puritan foundation.” Sir Walter, however, disclaimed the insinuation, “No, Madam; far be it from me to countenance anything contrary to your established laws; but I have set an acorn, which, when it becomes an oak, God alone knows what will be the fruit thereof.” The acorn, nevertheless, grew into a very Puritan oak. The buildings seem to have been erected in a curious spirit; for, if not Sir Walter, at all events his executors, revelled in the fact that the secular buildings of the foundation stood upon the Friary church, and did all they could to obliterate the monastic plan of the buildings. But, beyond this unnecessary manifestation of spite, the college was admirably governed and its students were—and all through its history have been—serious and law-abiding. Sir Walter founded it as “a College of Theology, Science, Philosophy, and Literature, for the extension of the pure Gospel of Christ our only Mediator, to the honour and glory of Almighty God,” and appointed, as its first master, Dr Laurence Chaderton, who ruled the college for thirty-eight years, and had a great part in the Authorised Version of the Bible. Under Dr Chaderton, the foundation increased in learning and godliness, and Fuller said of it, “Sure I am, at this day it hath overshadowed all the Universities, more than a moiety of the present masters of colleges being bred therein.” Dr Branthwaite* of Caius, Dr Whichcot* of King’s, Dr Samuel Ward* of Sidney, and the famous Ralph Cudworth* of Clare and Christ’s, all held fellowships at Emmanuel.

As time went on, the Puritanism of Emmanuel became more and more pronounced. The services in the chapel savoured of Congregationalism and were altogether opposed to the Laudian revival of church life and doctrine. Under the first Dr Sancroft, the college ritual was thus reported to the Archbishop, “They receive that Holy Sacrament, sitting upon forms about the Communion Table, and do pull the Loaf one from the other, after the minister hath begun. And so the Cup, one drinking as it were to another, like good fellows, without any particular application of the said words, more than once for all.” This expression of shocked piety has nothing in its wording which allows us to expect exaggeration. The servers at the altar were also “Fellows’ subsizars,” and not in holy orders. However, one fails to see any extravagant Protestantism in this arrangement. Emmanuel chapel must have presented a strange contrast to Wren’s and Cosin’s chapel at Peterhouse, or to the chapel at Queens’ which Dowsing ransacked so unceremoniously. The college, meanwhile, was the nursery of American colonisers, and has therefore always been a goal of American pilgrimage. Mr Everett’s bombastic passage on the subject has been often quoted; its eloquence is scarcely of the finest type. But, in company with a row of Pilgrim Fathers, Emmanuel produced John Harvard, the founder of the greatest American University, and may therefore be called the mother of American education.

But, in common with St John’s and other colleges, Emmanuel lost its Puritanism with years. The Restoration brought in a better state of feeling, and, under the second Dr Sancroft and his successors, Doctors Breton* and Holbech,* the college devoted its energies to building. William Sancroft became Archbishop of Canterbury, and kept up the traditions of his college in refusing to acknowledge James II.’s Declaration. He was the chief of the seven bishops who signed the famous petition against that document. Afterwards, as a non-juror, he resigned his archbishoprick. But the best of all the sons of Emmanuel was another non-juror, William Law, who was for many years a fellow, and held the living of King’s Cliffe in Northamptonshire. This great man has become better known to the world since the publication of his biography by Canon Overton, and the reprinting of his letters to Bishop Hoadly. He was a staunch and able supporter of the Church’s principles, but his most abiding monument is the half mystical but intensely practical treatise called A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. The book has had an influence second only to that of the Pilgrim’s Progress, and its wide application may be judged from the fact that it affected people so widely different as Dr Johnson and Richard Hurrell Froude. Its simple but vivid style and its picturesque quaintness, account very largely for its popularity. In later years, Law, a solitary and meditative man, took up the half-understood ideas of German mysticism, and became a blind disciple of Jacob Behmen. These later aberrations have somewhat eclipsed his legitimate fame. The college has commemorated him by a window in the chapel. In connection with Law, it is interesting to remember that another mystical writer, Joseph Hall, Bishop, first of Exeter and afterwards of Norwich, was a fellow of Emmanuel. There is a portrait of Hall in the splendid collection at the Lodge, in which he is represented as wearing a gold medal. This medal was given him by the States General as a recognition of his services at the Synod of Dort, and the original is still in the possession of the college.

There is also, in the same collection, an admirable portrait of Sancroft, who, beyond his contributions to the new chapel, was a great benefactor to the library. This library is one of the most valuable in Cambridge. Bishop Bedell of Kilmore, who pursued his studies at Emmanuel with great success, and was a fellow of the college, left it a Hebrew Bible which he had bought for its weight in silver. Among other treasures it contains a MS. of Chrysostom and a copy of Wyclif’s Bible, with the inscription “Ihu help us, for we ben feble.” To return to the portraits in the Master’s Lodge. We find there an excellent portrait of that accomplished diplomat and typical prig, Sir William Temple, by Lely. And, among other seventeenth-century worthies, we are glad to see the portrait of the greatest of Cambridge builders, Ralph Symons, “Effigies Radulphi Simons,” the inscription goes, “Architecti sua aetate peritissimi qui praeter plurima aedificia ab eo praeclare facta, duo collegia Emanuelis hoc Sydneii illud exstruxit integre. Magnam etiam partem Trinitatis reconcinnavit amplissime.”

After the time of Law and the non-jurors, the history of Emmanuel is very quiet, and the stately ease for which its buildings are conspicuous possessed the college. During the mastership of Dr William Richardson,* in 1765, a member of the college published a book which had a tremendous effect on English literature. This was the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, collected by Bishop Percy of Dromore. The labours of this antiquarian are a lasting glory to his college. A similar taste was apparent in Richardson’s successor, “rare” Richard Farmer (*Romney) who was master from 1775 to 1797. The love of himself and his coterie for Shakspeare took him, night after night, to the theatre at Stourbridge Fair, and his affection for the drama combined with his good-fellowship made him something of a curiosity at the time when most college masters were dry and pedantic. To the same period belongs Samuel Parr, whose pipe, tobacco-box, and stopper are preserved by the College. He was undoubtedly a wit and a good talker, but his jokes were lengthy and pompous, and he scarcely deserves the praise of those admirers who have likened him to Dr Johnson and Sydney Smith. For most of us, possibly, he lives entirely by virtue of de Quincey’s essay upon him.

The two most famous scholars whom Emmanuel produced in the eighteenth century were Joshua Barnes,* Professor of Greek at its beginning, and Richard Hurd,* Bishop in succession of Lichfield and Worcester, who died in 1808. Hurd was a theologian with a somewhat dull pen, and is now chiefly remembered as the disciple, friend and biographer of Bishop Warburton. At the beginning of this century Sir Busick Harwood, a scientific man greatly in advance of his age, was Professor of Anatomy. Gell, the antiquary and explorer of Pompeii, who died in 1836, was also an Emmanuel man. But the present century, although the standard of work and scholarship has been high, is not prolific in eminent names. Our greatest living historian, Dr Creighton, held a fellowship at Emmanuel according to the terms of the Dixie Professorship, but Cambridge cannot count him as her own. At present, the college is rapidly increasing in numbers and emulates the modern popularity of Pembroke; and it has the distinction, rare at Cambridge, of success on the river and in the schools alike.