taught and befriended at Cambridge was Richard Croke of King's College. Croke subsequently went abroad, and appeared as a lecturer on Greek at Cologne, Louvain, Leipzig, and other centres. In this capacity he achieved a considerable reputation, and when, about the year 1519, he returned to the university, he was forthwith appointed public orator for life. On entering upon office, he delivered an inaugural address, which was shortly followed by a second, and the two may be regarded as among the most noteworthy compositions in the literary history of the time, and especially valuable as showing how closely the new studies for which he pleaded were associated with that revived and more intelligent study of the Scriptures on which it was felt that the education of a more learned and efficient clergy mainly depended. Although it is difficult to suppose that Croke's estimate was quite impartial, it is deserving of note that he addresses his Cambridge audience as composed of those who had hitherto outstripped the Oxford men in every department of knowledge.

Visit of Wolsey

sity.

Such was the character and such were the tendencies of learning at Cambridge, when they suddenly became, for a time, almost lost to view to the univer- amid the revolutionary changes and the ferment of thought which ushered in the English Reformation. During the years which immediately preceded the movement, a less benign presence than that of Bishop Fisher, the dread Cardinal himself, by turns excited the hopes and the apprehensions of the university. It was well understood at

Cambridge that Wolsey bore their chancellor1 no goodwill, and it was believed that this unfriendly feeling extended, in some measure, to the whole community, and had already entailed upon them one serious loss. His munificent endowment of his new college at Ipswich, designed as it was as a nursery for his splendid foundation at Oxford, might well seem likely to divert from Cambridge not a few promising scholars from the eastern counties. The authorities now hastened, accordingly, to turn aside his displeasure by complete and unqualified submission. When Wolsey visited Cambridge in 1520, the language with which they approached him might compare for adulation and self-abasement with that customary in addressing an Oriental despot. And in 1524, following an example already set by Oxford, the university proceeded to make a complete surrender of its statutes and privileges into the Cardinal's hands, to be altered and remodelled at his pleasure, and beseeching him to continue to exercise these autocratic powers for the remainder of his lifetime.

The printing-press, which proved elsewhere such a powerful ally of the Reformation movement, took its The early Cam- rise in Cambridge soon after Erasmus' bridge press. sojourn. In a letter written to Dr. Robert Aldrich of King's College, on Christmas Day 1525, we find the great scholar sending greetings to old acquaintances in the university, and among them to one John Siberch. Siberch was both a bookseller and a printer, and in the years 1521 and 1522 he printed

1 In 1504 Fisher had been elected chancellor, and after having been re-elected annually for ten years, was re-elected for life.

eight different volumes, among them a well-known treatise by Erasmus himself, entitled De Conscribendis Epistolis. In some of these Greek type is used, and the Cambridge press would accordingly appear entitled to the distinction of having been the first in England where this feature in typography was introduced. Siberch, in fact, speaks of himself, in one of the prefaces, as 'primus utriusque linguæ in Anglia impressor,'—that is, the first printer in England to print both in Greek and in Latin. There were other booksellers and printers at that time in Cambridge, and one of them, Sygar Nicholson, who had been educated at Gonville Hall, was charged in 1529 with holding Lutheran opinions, and having Lutheran books in his possession. In the same year the opponents of the Reformation movement in the university petitioned Wolsey that only three booksellers might be permitted to ply their trade at Cambridge, who should be men of reputation and gravity,' and foreigners, with full authority to purchase books of foreign merchants. The petition appears to have received no immediate response; but in the year 1534 a royal licence was issued to the chancellor, masters, and scholars of the university to appoint, from time to time, three stationers and printers, or sellers of books, residing within the university, who might be either aliens or natives. Those thus appointed were powered both to print and to vend any books licensed by the academic authorities. In pursuance of this licence three stationers and printers were of his labours. appointed, one of the three being Sygar Nicholson, whom it may possibly have been designed

After-effects

em

to compensate for the persecution and imprisonment to which he had been subjected. It indicates, however, the extent to which the printer's enterprise was at that time associated rather with liberty of thought than university traditions, that the licensed press proved altogether sterile; and for more than half a century, from the year 1522 to 1584, it would appear that not a single book was printed at Cambridge.

CHAPTER V.

THE UNIVERSITY DURING THE REFORMATION.

WE have already seen how the two great contributing causes to the success of the Reformation,-the degeneracy of the religious orders and of ecclesiastical institutions, and the more critical and at the same time more liberal spirit generated by the Renaissance,—are clearly to be discerned as operating with considerable effect at Cambridge. We have now to note how the more direct influence of Luther's writings, combining with these causes, resulted in the formation of a theological school in the university which rendered it for a considerable period the chief centre of Protestant thought in England. It had been the boast of Lydgate in the fifteenth century, that of heresie Cambridge bare never blame'; in the sixteenth century, however, Cambridge was to become a noted haunt of what, in the eyes of Rome, was regarded as heresy of the blackest dye.

The commercial intercourse between Northern Germany and the eastern English coast, and especially with the towns of King's Lynn, Norwich, Yarmouth, and Ipswich, was in those days considerable; Luther's