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CHAPTER II

Cambridge in the Norman Time

"At this time the fountain of learning in Cambridge was but little, and that very troubled. Mars then frighted away the Muses, when the Mount of Parnassus was turned into a fort, and Helicon derived into a trench. And at this present, King William the Conqueror, going to subdue the monks of Ely that resisted him, made Cambridgeshire the seat of war."-FULLER.

William I. at Cambridge Castle-Cambridge at the Domesday Survey Roger Picot the Sheriff - Pythagoras School-Castle and Borough-S. Bennet's Church and its Parish-The King's Ditch-The Great and the Small Bridges-The King's and the Bishop's MillsThe River Hithes-S. Peter by the Castle and S. Giles' Church-The early streets of the City-The Augustinian Priory of Barnwell-The Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre-the Cambridge Jewry-Debt of early Scholars to the Philosophers of the SynagogueBenjamin's House-Municipal Freedom of the Borough.

ON

N the site of the ancient Roman station of which we have spoken in the preceding chapter, as guarding the river ford and the pass between forest and fen into East Anglia, William the Conqueror, returning from the conquest of York in the year 1068, founded Cambridge Castle, that "it might be "—to quote Fuller's words "a check-bit to curb this country, which otherwise was so hard-mouthed to be ruled." Here, in the following year, he took up his abode, making the castle the centre of his operations

against the rebel English who had rallied to the leadership of Hereward the Wake, in his camp of refuge at Ely. But the castle at Cambridge never became a military centre of importance. No important

Ideed of arms is recorded in connection with it. It was a mere outpost, useful only as a base of operations. It was so used by William the Conqueror. It was so used by Henry III. in his futile contest with the English baronage. It was so used by the Duke of Northumberland in his unsuccessful attempt to crush the loyalist rising of East Anglia against his plot to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne. It was so used by Oliver Cromwell when he was organising the Eastern Counties Association, and forming "his lovely company " of Ironsides. But beyond these episodes Cambridge Castle has no history. In the early part of the fourteenth century it was used as a prison for common criminals. Edward III. built his College of King's Hall with some of its materials, and from that time onwards it appears to have been used as a quarry by the royal founders of more than one college. Its last remaining outwork, the Gate House, was demolished in 1842. Now there is nothing left but the grass-grown mound, still known as Castle Hill, the resort of occasional American tourists who are wise enough to know how fine a view of the town may be obtained from that position, and, so it is said, a less frequent place of pilgrimage also to certain university freshmen who are foolish enough to accept the assurance of their fellows that "at the witching hour of night" they may best observe from Castle Hill those solemn portents which, on the doubtful authority of the University Calendar, are said to happen when "the Cambridge term divides at midnight."

But if the Castle at Cambridge, as a

"place of

arms," had practically no history, much less had the town over which nominally it stood guard. The old streets of Cambridge show no sign of ever having been packed closely within walls in the usual mediæval fashion. In the early days the town seems to have been limited to a little knot of houses round the Castle and along the street leading down to the river ford at the foot of the Castle Hill. From the Domesday Survey we learn that in the time of Edward the Confessor the town had consisted of 400 dwelling-houses, and was divided into ten wards, each governed by its own lawman ("lageman") or magistrate, a name which appears to suggest that the original organisation of the town was of Danish origin. By the year 1086 two of these wards had been thrown into one, owing to the destruction of twenty-seven houses-"pro castro"-on account of the building of the Castle, and in the remaining wards no fewer than fifty-three other dwellings are entered as "waste." Altogether, in Norman times the population of Cambridge can hardly have exceeded at the most a couple of thousand. The customs of the town were assessed at £7, the land tax at £7, 28. 2d. Both of these seem to have been new impositions, payable to the royal treasury. How this came about one cannot say, but from this time onward, all through the Middle Ages, the farm of Cambridge appears frequently to have been given as a dower to the Queen. The earldom of Cambridge and Huntingdon has been almost invariably held by a member of the Royal Family. The first steps, indeed, towards municipal independence on the part of the borough were taken when the burgesses demanded the privilege of making their customary payments direct to the King, and ridding themselves of this part, at any rate, of the authority of the sheriff. Certainly, there was much complaint made to the

Domesday Commissioners

Commissioners concerning the first Norman sheriff of Cambridgeshire, one Roger Picot, because of his hard treatment of the burgesses. Among other things, it was said that he had "required the loan of their ploughs nine times in the year, whereas in the reign of the Confessor they lent their ploughs only thrice in the year and found neither cattle nor carts," and also that he had built himself three mills upon the river to the destruction of many dwelling-houses and the confiscation of much common pasture. Reading of these things one is almost tempted to wonder, whether the old stone Norman house still standing, styled, by a tradition now lost, "the School of Pythagoras," in close proximity as it is to the river, the ford, and the castle, may not have been the residence of this sheriff or of one of his immediate successors. The house cannot, certainly, be of a later date than the latter part of the twelfth century. Originally, it appears to have consisted of a single range of building of two storeys, the lower one formerly vaulted, the upper one serving as a hall. How it came by its present name of "Pythagoras School' we do not know and certainly there is no reason to suppose that it was at any time a school. The Norman occupier, however, of this stone house, with his servants and retainers, could hardly have been other than a leading personage in the community, and must have contributed in no slight degree to its importance. Possibly it may have been owing to the destruction of houses caused by the clearing of the sites for both this mansion and for the Castle, that the dispossessed population sought habitation for themselves on the low-lying ground across the ford, on the east bank of the river. Whether this was the cause or not, certainly the town on the west bank-"the borough," as the castle end of Cambridge was still called in the memory of persons

still living overflowed at 1. an early period to the other side of the river, and gradually extending itself along the line of the Via Devana, evantually coalesced with what had before been a distinct village clustering round the ancient pre-Norman church of S. Benedict. This church, or rather its tower, is the oldest building in Cambridge and one of the most interesting. It is thus described by Mr Atkinson.2

"The tower presents those features which are usually taken to indicate a Saxon origin. It is divided into three wellmarked stages, each one of which is rather narrower than the one below it. The quoins are of the well-known long-andshort work (a sign of late date), and the lowest quoin is let into a sinking prepared for it in the plinth. The belfry windows are of two sorts; the central window on each face is of two heights, divided by a mid-wall balister shaft, supporting a through-stone of the usual character. On each side of this window there is a plain lancet at a somewhat higher level, and with rubble jambs. Above these latter there are small round holes they can hardly be called windows. Over each of the central windows there is a small pilaster, stopped by a corbel which rests on the window head; these pilasters are cut off abruptly at the top of the tower, which has probably been altered since it was first built; most likely it was originally terminated by a low spire or by gables. The rough edges of the quoins are worked with a rebate to receive the plaster which originally covered the tower. The arch between the tower and the nave springs from bold imposts, above which are rude pieces of sculpture, forming stops to the hood mould. The quoins remaining at each angle of the present nave show that it is of the same length and width as the nave of the original church and they seem to show also that the original church had neither aisles nor transepts. The chancel is also the same size as that of the early church, for though the east and north walls have

1 The Borough Boys" is a nickname still remembered as being applied to the men of the castle end by the dwellers in the east side of the river. A public-house, with the sign of "The Borough Boy," still stands in Northampton Street. and Illustrated," by T. D.

66

2 Cambridge, Described Atkinson, p. 133.

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