The University of Cambridge is one of the world's oldest universities and leading academic centres, and a self-governed community of scholars. Established in 1209, the University is rich in history.

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Cambridge's famous Colleges and University buildings attract visitors from all over the world, while its museums and collections also hold many treasures which give an exciting insight into the scholarly activities of the University's academics and students.

 

The University's reputation for outstanding academic achievement is known worldwide and reflects the intellectual achievement of its students over more than eight centuries, as well as the world-class original research carried out by the staff of the University and the Colleges. Many of the University's customs and unusual terminology can be traced to roots in the early years of the University's long history, and this section of our website looks to the past to find the origins of much that is distinctive in the University of today.

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Reference : https://www.cam.ac.uk/about-the-university/history

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The Earliest Written Records of the University

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When we first come across Cambridge in written records, it was already a considerable town. The bridge across the River Cam or Granta, from which the town took its name, had existed since at least 875. The town was an important trading centre before the Domesday survey was compiled in 1086, by which time a castle stood on the rising ground to the north of the bridge, and there were already substantial commercial and residential properties as well as several churches in the main settlement which lay south of the bridge.

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Within the town, or very close to it, there were a number of other religious institutions. There had been canons in the Church of St Giles below the castle before 1112, when they moved to a new site across the River Cam at Barnwell, and the Convent of St Radegund had existed since 1135 on the site which eventually became Jesus College. There were also two hospitals, one reserved for lepers at Stourbridge, and a second, founded for paupers and dedicated to St John, which after 1200 occupied the site where St John's College now stands. Seventeen miles north of the town was the great Benedictine house of Ely which, after 1109, was the seat of a Bishopric.

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There was thus much to bring clerks (clergymen) to the town, but traders were also attracted to it. After about 1100 they could reach Cambridge easily by the river systems which drained the whole of the East Midlands, and through Lynn and Ely they had access to the sea. Much wealth accumulated in the town, and the 11 surviving medieval parish churches and at least one handsome stone house remain as evidence of this. There were food markets before 1066, and during the 12th century the nuns of St Radegund were allowed to set up a fair on their own land at Garlic Lane; the canons of Barnwell had a fair in June (later Midsummer Fair), and the leper hospital was granted the right to hold a fair which developed into the well-known and long-lasting Stourbridge Fair.

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By 1200, Cambridge was a thriving commercial community, which was also a county town and had at least one school of some distinction. Then, in 1209, scholars taking refuge from hostile townsmen in Oxford migrated to Cambridge and settled there. At first they lived in lodgings in the town, but in time houses were hired as hostels with a Master in charge of the students. By 1226 the scholars were numerous enough to have set up an organisation, represented by an official called a Chancellor, and seem to have arranged regular courses of study, taught by their own members.

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From the start there was friction between the town and the students. Students, usually aged about 14 or 15, often caused disturbances; citizens of the town, on the other hand, were known to overcharge for rooms and food. King Henry III took the scholars under his protection as early as 1231 and arranged for them to be sheltered from exploitation by their landlords. At the same time he tried to ensure that they had a monopoly of teaching, by an order that only those enrolled under the tuition of a recognised master were to be allowed to remain in the town.

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Reference : https://www.cam.ac.uk/about-the-university/history/early-records

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University of Cambridge in Medieval Times 

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The students who flocked to Cambridge soon arranged their scheme of study after the pattern that had become common in Italy and France, and which they would have known in Oxford. They studied first what would now be termed a 'foundation course' in arts - grammar, logic and rhetoric - followed later by arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy, leading to the degrees of bachelor and master.

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There were no professors; the teaching was conducted by masters who had themselves passed through the course and who had been approved or licensed by the whole body of their colleagues (the 'universitas' or university). The teaching took the form of reading and explaining texts; the examinations were oral disputations in which the candidates advanced a series of questions or theses which they disputed or argued with opponents a little senior to themselves, and finally with the masters who had taught them. Some of the masters, but by no means all, went on to advanced studies in divinity, canon and civil law, and, more rarely, medicine, which were taught and examined in the same way by those who had already passed through the course and become doctors. The doctors grouped themselves into specific faculties.

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It soon became necessary, to avoid abuse of the royal privileges conferred on scholars, to identify and authenticate the persons to whom degrees had been granted. Enrolment with a licensed master was the first step towards this; it was called matriculation because of the condition that the scholar's name must be on the master's matricula or roll, but later the University itself assumed this duty. It was also desirable to mark the stage in a scholar's progress by a ceremony of admission (graduation) to the different grades, or degrees, of membership. These were conferred by the whole body of masters, with the Chancellor exercising the power on their behalf, as his deputy, the Vice-Chancellor, came to do later. The grades of scholar became differentiated by a series of variations on the gown, hood and cap. Reminders of these terms and practices survive today.

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The Regent Masters, who were the teaching body, soon found that in addition to a ceremonial head they needed other representatives to speak and act for them. The first of these were the two Proctors (literally representatives) whom they elected annually to negotiate on their behalf with the town and other lay authorities, to keep the accounts, to safeguard their treasures and books, to moderate in examinations, and to supervise all other ceremonies. These duties were soon to be shared by other elected officers: Bedells, at first attached to the faculties, presided over ceremonies; and a Chaplain took charge of treasures and books. By the sixteenth century a Registrary recorded matriculations, admissions to degrees, and decisions of the regent masters, while an Orator wrote ceremonial letters and addresses. Most of these offices remain today, although in some cases for ceremonial purposes only.

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A community of such complexity needed rules. To this end, as problems arose, Statutes were adopted by the whole body of the University. These were not at first arranged or codified, but were noted haphazardly in books kept by the Proctors. The earliest known version of these decisions is a copy made in the mid-thirteenth century, which is now in the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome.

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Reference : https://www.cam.ac.uk/about-the-university/history/the-medieval-university

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The University of Cambridge's Move towards Independence 

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Most of the scholars of the University were at first clerks or clergymen,in holy orders of some sort, and expecting careers in the Church or in the Civil Service (as diplomats, judges or officers of the royal household). To support them during their years of study, they looked for preferment in the Church (a benefice, a canonry, even a dignity in a cathedral), but as ordained clerks they were at first subject to the local ecclesiastical authorities, that is, the Archdeacon and the Bishop of Ely.

Before the end of the 15th century, however, they had freed themselves from this, and were independent of all ecclesiastical authority except the Pope's. The Chancellor became an ecclesiastical judge in his own right, hearing all cases involving the morals or discipline of scholars, and proving the wills of all who died in residence. At about the same period, the Chancellor also provided scholars with a secular court to which they could resort for the trial of all civil and criminal cases except those concerning major crimes.

The Crown added to the University's independence. It introduced measures to protect scholars against exploitation by townspeople who had acquired market and toll rights that enabled them to raise the prices of food, fuel and candles. To counter this, the University was granted the right to proceed at law against market profiteers, and to enforce the conduct of assizes, or tests, of bread and ale by the town.

The acquisition of these powers continued to be a source of friction between town and 'gown' (the University) until the 19th century. More immediately, it is thought that the attacks on University property in the town in 1381 were partly inspired by resentment of this interference.

If this is so, the attack was ill judged, since as a result of a Royal inquiry into the disturbances, the University was granted a jurisdiction which allowed the Chancellor not only to prosecute the profiteers, but also those falsifying weights and measures, endangering public health by the adulteration of food and drink, interrupting the supplies of fresh water, or wilfully introducing infection during epidemics of 'plague'. Further control of traders was allowed to the Chancellor with the grant of jurisdiction over law suits arising during markets and fairs. The last vestiges of these rights did not disappear until the nineteenth century, and the University retains even today certain responsibilities in connection with policing and licensing.

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Reference : https://www.cam.ac.uk/about-the-university/history/moves-to-independence

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The University of Cambridge's First Buildings 

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In its earliest days, the University had no premises of its own: it relied on parish churches, especially Great St Mary's and St Benedict's (or 'Bene't's') and on the premises of the religious orders, as sites for its public ceremonies.

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Lectures, disputations and lodgings were found in private houses, which frequently changed hands or went out of use. Soon a few groups of Regent Masters, lawyers and theologians, began to build or hire larger premises for teaching and lodging. A few of the hostels survived until the 16th century when they were often acquired as part of the premises of Colleges. Unlike the Colleges, hostels had few endowments and were always privately owned.

 

Meanwhile during the late-14th century and after, the University began to acquire property on the site today known as Senate House Hill, and to build on it a group of buildings called the 'Schools' – some of which survive today as the Old Schools. Here were the teaching rooms of the higher faculties – the first building to be erected was the Divinity School – where lectures and disputations were held, the chapel, the library, and the treasury, with its chests and muniments. Most of the land and buildings in the town was still in private hands, or in those of religious houses, although from the late-13th century much was already passing to the new institutions called Colleges. Pious donors provided these Colleges in the first place for a small number of advanced students in law or divinity who would pray for the souls of their benefactors. It was later that the Colleges housed the very young undergraduates who had previously been lodged in hostels or private houses.

 

The earliest College was St Peter's or 'Peterhouse', founded in 1284 by Hugh Balsham, Bishop of Ely. King's Hall, 1317, was intended by its founder, Edward II, to provide recruits to the higher civil service. Michaelhouse, Clare, Pembroke, Gonville Hall, Trinity Hall, Corpus Christi, King's, Queens' and St Catharine's followed during the next 100 years. Three late foundations, Jesus, Christ's and St John's, emerged from the dissolution of small religious houses before 1520 and, like the King's Hall, provided for younger scholars as well as 'post-graduates'.

 

Before the middle of the 16th century, the Colleges began to play a decisive part in University life. They now nominated the Proctors from among their own members for the annual term of office, and their heads often served with the Vice-Chancellor and senior doctors as members of an advisory council which was soon to be called the Caput Senatus. From the 16th century until almost the end of the 20th century, the Head of one of the Colleges always held the office of Vice-Chancellor.

 

One of the key figures in Cambridge at this time was John Fisher, who was successively Master of Michaelhouse, Proctor, Vice-Chancellor, Chancellor (1509-35) and President of Queens'. As adviser to King Henry VII's mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, he was instrumental in the foundation of Christ's and St John's; equally importantly he evidently inspired the establishment of the first endowed university teaching post, the Lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity. He also attracted to Cambridge a number of scholars - notably Erasmus of Rotterdam - who encouraged the 'new learning' in Greek and Hebrew, helping to clear the way for the half-theological, half-philosophical speculations which produced the reformation of the church and the dissolution of the monasteries. 

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Reference : https://www.cam.ac.uk/about-the-university/history/the-physical-setting

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