CHAP. VI. town. To him we are indebted for the following brief account of the second visit, which well deserves to be quoted in its entirety: sity lines the streets. Humble demeanour authorities. 'Upon Saturday, the 13 Maii, 1615, news was brought that his majesty would be at Cambridge that night, and that in the way he meant to hunt a buck; so that at 2 of the clock the school bell and St Mary's bells rung to call the The univer- university together. The vice-chancellor set the scholars towards Spital-End; they reached to the Armitage St Ann, and above them up to the town to Trinity College, the bachelors of arts, then the gentlemen fellow-commoners, then the senior regents and non-regents, then the doctors, who stood in Trinity College gatehouse. His majesty came from Thetford, whither the buck led him, and where awhile he had rested himself, and so came about four of the clock; the scholars all saluted him with Vivat Rex. Mr mayor and of the town his fraternity stood on the hill by the spital-house, where Mr mayor, without either state or reverence, when his majesty came right against the place where he stood, stepped to his coach-side, and then kneeled down, and delivered his majesty a fair pair of perfumed gloves with gold laces, and the prince another, telling his majesty their corporation was poor, and not able to bestow any matter of value upon his majesty, and therefore invited him to accept of those, which his majesty took, and gave him his hand to kiss, and so he took his horse and rode before the king's mace-bearer to Trinity Reception College with his mace over his shoulder... His majesty made no stay till he came at Trinity College walk, where him and the prince and his nobility alighted their coach; and being within Trinity College, against the first rails, Dr Gwyn, deputy vice-chancellor, made an oration to him, giving him thanks for his love to them, that he was pleased so suddenly to come to them again, and highly extolling his majesty and virtues. The vice-chancellor and Heads kneeled while this speech was delivering, and the king stood, and prince and nobility by him. And then, the speech ended, his majesty went towards his lodge; and then, about the middle alley, the orator made another oration; which ended the king and A pair of gloves. 'We are very poor.' at Trinity. performance before the prince and nobility went to their lodgings. Then the vice- CHAP. VI. chancellor took order for the placing of the university and The second strangers, not actors: at the lower end of the stage, the of Ignoramus doctors; in a place next the stage, the regents and non- king. regents, in gowns; in the body of the hall, other strangers according to their qualities, upon the scaffolds: the upper end of the hall, beyond the stage, was wholly reserved for the king and prince's followers, and for the courtiers. About satisfaction. 8 of the clock the play began, and ended about one'; his majesty His complete was much delighted with the play, and laughed exceedingly; and oftentimes, with his hands, and by words, applauded it. Sabbath. 'On Sunday, at 9 of the clock, there was a sermon in a laborious St Mary's; at half an hour past 10 the king went to Trinity chapel, where he heard prayers and an anthem, and then a clero in Trinity, made by Mr Simpson of Trinity, which was an hour and an half long, which seemed too tedious to his majesty, and therefore he shewed some distaste, not of the clero, for it was well and learnedly performed, but that he had no care to prevent tediosity, he being wearied overnight; the clero ended, there was another anthem sung and prayers, and then his majesty went to dinner; at 3 a sermon. in St Mary's, before divers of the nobility; after dinner, about 4 of the clock, his majesty went to Mr Butler, with his nobles; the sheriff Aldered of Foulmire was very officious, and took upon him his office before his majesty, which dis- The dignity contenting the university, the vice-chancellor, upon notice university given him, informed my lord chamberlain, who, from his by the king majesty, discharged Aldered, and told him it was his majesty's only the town pleasure he should not carry himself then as a sheriff, for he shire. had not power or authority in the university, and so he slunk aside, and took his place behind, and so whilst his majesty 1 Another account of the first performance says 'it was (at the least) five howers and a halfe longe.' MS. Bodl. Add. C. ccvi. 133. The celebrated physician of the time, for an account of whom see Cooper, Annals, П 119: he was a fellow of Clare Hall, to which society, Fuller tells us, he bequeathed chalice with a cover of beaten gold, M. II. a weighing and worth three hundred 35 of the maintained against not but also against the CHAP. VI. was with Butler, where he stayed near an hour; after that The Act in Trinity chapel. The mayor held as of altogether secondary account. his majesty went to supper. 'On Monday, there was a congregation at 7, where good order and decorum was observed, and these orderly admitted [blank in the original manuscript]. 'Then about 10 the vice-chancellor and whole senate of doctors, regents, and non-regents, and those of the nobility in order, attended the vice-chancellor to Trinity college in order, the regents first, 2 and 2, in state to Trinity chapel, where they seated themselves, and thither came the king and prince, and heard the act, which was learnedly performed; and at the end Mr Cecill, the moderator, began to destroy their pleasure; he fainted the night before, and that morning, being sickly, fainted, and was carried out dead, but after a quarter of an hour recovered again; the act ended, the king went to dinner, and so, after he had made known how he was contented, suddenly departed. "The mayor, when he came to Trinity college, was put before the beadles, and the vice-chancellor went next after them, and so next before the king; and when the mayor went out, he went without serjeant or show of his mace.' The self-complacency of the wits of the university, as royalty made its second departure, must, we should imagine, have been very nearly complete. They had altogether eclipsed the town in the royal favour; they had satirised, with equal success, a leading town dignitary; while the ridicule which they had poured on their professional rivals, the common lawyers, had provoked from the victims themselves the best possible tribute to its effectiveness,—namely, unmistakeable indications that it had given them great annoyance. It hath so netled the lawiers,' wrote Chamberlain to Carleton, 'that they are almost out of all patience'.' Carleton: 20 Coke, indeed, was reported to have so far forgotten what was due to himself and his high position, as to have launched Chamberlain's account of the results to May 1615. 1 State Papers (Dom.) James the First, LXXX no. 102. Which how the common lawyers tooke, if any weare there, I know not. But I pre sume Wesmister Hall will one day crie quits with them.' MS. Bodl. U. s. the lawyers. forth from the King's Bench itself sundry scathing allusions CHAP. VI. to scholars as a class'; while certain members of the Inns of Court took to satirising 'the university man' in epigrams and lampoons, and were fully repaid in like coin. To say truth,' observes Chamberlain, 'yt was a scandall rather taken then geven, for what profession is there, wherein some particular person may not be justly taxed without imputation to Irritation of the whole?' But the recollection of the play long continued in legal circles; and 'Sir Ignoramus' appears to have become a current epithet in the Inns of Court for denoting an illiterate clerk preferred before a real scholar to a church benefice. There is one tradition, however, which all scholars will be reluctant to accept, save on better evidence than is forthcoming,—namely that the illustrious Selden composed his History of Tithes from feelings of resentment at the manner in which the class to which he belonged had been thus mercilessly assailed'. consequences the town. The townsmen of Cambridge, though not less sore at the Graver indignity done to their recorder, who had been generally as regards recognised in the carefully studied attire of Ignoramus, were still less able to retaliate on their satirists; while, contrasted with the sumptuous banquets, the intellectual diversion, and the scenic amusement provided by the university, the two cups and the scented gloves, accompanied by plaintive protestations of poverty, must have seemed very humble tribute. It may appear an exaggeration to assert that George Ruggle's clever composition was the cause why Cambridge is not at the present day a city, but it must be admitted that facts can be shewn to be strongly in favour of such a conclusion. tion seek Cambridge In the year 1605, the town had acquired an important The Corporaaccession of dignity, having received a royal charter whereby to have it was constituted a free borough, and the mayor, bailiffs, raised from and burgesses were created a corporation. Inspired by the borough to a 1 State Papers (Dom.) James the First, LXXX no. 102. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 See Cooper, Annals, 111 88 n. 2. 5 The second night was a comodie of Clare-Hall, with the helpe of two or three goode actors from other a free city. CHAP. VI. astute Brackyn, the corporation had ever since been aiming at yet higher honours, by seeking to bring about the restoration of their township to the superior rights and privileges of a city'; and on the 30 Jan. 1616, the corporation seal was affixed to a power of attorney authorising Thomas French, alderman, to exhibit and prefer to the king a petition for renewing the town charter, and for a new charter incorporating the town by the name of mayor, aldermen and citizens3. Vigilance of Suffolk. The univer sity applies for a draft of the proposed charter. Viewed in connexion with the relations that then existed between the university and the town, such a petition could not fail to be regarded with some misgiving by the former, and Suffolk, at that time chancellor, shewed himself fully on the alert. It was not however without some difficulty that, by virtue of his office as high treasurer, he succeeded in obtaining for the vice-chancellor and Heads a kind of summary of the additional privileges and immunities which the townsmen sought to obtain3. The abstract thus procured only made the academic authorities desirous of further information with respect to the claims of a community by which their own jurisdiction had so often been called in question and imperilled, and application was next made for permission to peruse the draft of the proposed charter. This request was met by a very terse and scarcely courteous reply. It would hardly do, the corporation objected, to draw out and discuss the charter before it had received the royal sanction, lion's skin. for that would be 'but to part the lion's skin'; then, again, it would involve them in considerable expense; and, lastly, it was 'only' the lord treasurer who had taken upon himself to suggest that any particulars should be given to the university, and those particulars had already been supplied, ‘as by ye noate left with you doth appeare'; and 'to draw a charter first is more than my lord treasurer thought fit.' 'And this,' concluded the urbane epistle, 'is our answer".' The cor- The university entreats Bacon, as attorneygeneral, to exert his influence in The semi-defiant tone of this missive by no means tended to reassure the university, and when it became known, shortly 1 Cambridge is designated a city their behalf. in an official record of the reign of Rich, I; see Cooper, Annals, 1 29. 2 Cooper, Annals, 1 105-6. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 1 106-7. |