Cambridge University
The start of the university is generally taken as 1209, when scholars from Oxford migrated to Cambridge to escape Oxford’s riots of “town and gown” (townspeople versus scholars). The first college, Peterhouse, was founded in 1284 by Hugo de Balsham, bishop of Ely. Over the next three centuries another 15 colleges were founded, and in 1318 Cambridge received formal recognition as a studium generale, or university, from Pope John XXII.
Cambridge remained fairly insignificant until about 1502, when a professorship of divinity was founded—the oldest in the university. In 1511 Desiderius Erasmus went to Cambridge and did much to instil the new learning of the Renaissance there. In 1546 Henry VIII founded Trinity College; in 1570 Elizabeth I gave the university a revised body of statutes, and in 1571 the university was formally incorporated by act of Parliament.
The colleges and collegiate institutions of the university are: Christ’s (1505), Churchill (1960), Clare (1326), Clare Hall (1966), Corpus Christi (1352), Darwin (1964), Downing (1800), Emmanuel (1584), Fitzwilliam (1869), Girton (1869), Gonville and Caius (1348), Homerton (1977), Hughes Hall (1885), Jesus (1496), King’s (1441), Lucy Cavendish (1965), Magdalene (1542), New Hall (1954), Newnham (1871), Pembroke (1347), Peterhouse (1284), Queens’ (1448), Robinson (1977), St. Catharine’s (1473), St. Edmund’s House (1896), St. John’s (1511), Selwyn (1882), Sidney Sussex (1596), Trinity (1546), Trinity Hall (1350), and Wolfson (1965).
Today, the university library is one of a handful in the country that is entitled to a copy of every book published in Great Britain. Noteworthy collections include the Acton Library of medieval, ecclesiastical, and modern history, the W.G. Aston Japanese library, the papers of Charles Darwin, and the Wade Chinese collection.
The Fitzwilliam Museum contains, among other things, important collections of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities; medieval and modern manuscripts; and paintings of European masters.