Epochs of Church History

EDITED BY THE

PROFESSOR MANDELL CREIGHTON.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Ballantyne Press

BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.

EDINBURGH AND LONDON

A HISTORY

OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.

BY

J. BASS MULLINGER, M. A.

LECTURER IN HISTORY AT ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE.

LONDON:
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1888.

All rights reserved.

LIBRARY OF THE LELAND STANFORD JR. UNIVERSITY.

A.37565.

PREFACE.

ALTHOUGH the present volume appears as one of a series especially designed to illustrate Church History, the writer has not sought to modify the treatment of the subject in order to establish its claim to a place in such a category. The following sketch will suffice to show that it was in the University of Cambridge that the Reformation in England had its real commencement; that it was there that Puritanism first assumed a distinct organisation, and at the same time encountered the most effective resistance; that it was there also that a movement which most materially influenced the religious thought of the seventeenth century,-the teaching of the Cambridge Platonists,—took its rise and made its most important contributions to the cause of freedom and toleration. It is not necessary to refer to yet later movements to prove the close connection which has always existed between the