King's College Chapel, Cambridge

“ Above our heads the fan tracery of the stone roof seems literally to hang from the sky, so delicate and light is the workmanship. The Cambridge graduate in our party, and those indefatigable sightseers our American friends, compare it with King's College Chapel, which was built about this period by the same King's munificence, and probably by the same architect. The windows were once all filled with painted glass, only a few fragments of which, notably the founder's figure at the east end, are left. ”

“ On the northern side of the quadrangle are the chapel and King Edward's Court, and in the centre of the southern side the Queen's Tower, with a statue of Queen Mary. In the centre of the quadrangle is a quaint conduit. The chapel is a plain wainscoted room, with an ante-chapel filled with busts of former members of the college—among them Bacon and Macaulay—and also a noble statue of Newton. Trinity College Hall is one hundred feet long and the finest in Cambridge, its walls being adorned with several portraits. ”

“ Cambridge has also made better use of her river than has her sister university; she has taken it into her confidence, bridged it in a dozen places, and built her colleges so that the waters mirror some of her most beautiful buildings. Further than this, in the glorious chapel Henry VI. built for King's College, Cambridge possesses one of the three finest Perpendicular chapels in the country—a feature Oxford cannot match, and in the church of the Holy Sepulchre Cambridge boasts the earliest of the four round churches of the Order of the Knights Templars which survive at this day. ”

“ A large range of building, similar in style to the Fellows’ building, was erected in 1889, and in 1895-97 Messrs. Bodley & Garner enlarged the old library, and altered and refaced the street front, extending the building to Christ’s Lane, and thus added much to the dignity of the College buildings, as seen from S. Andrew’s Street. The “re-beautifying the chappell,” as the then Master, Dr. Covel, called it, took place in 1702-3, when it was panelled by John Austin, who did similar work about the same time in King’s College chapel. The chapel has no remarkable or beautiful features. ”

“ The accounts of the institution remain, and point to a style of living which would not be very highly accounted of now, but was positively luxurious for medieval Cambridge. The scholars attended chapel at St Mary’s by the Market and All Saints’ in the Jewry, until, in Edward IV.’s reign, they obtained leave to found a chapel for themselves. King’s Hall naturally became the nucleus of Henry’s college, and the lesser buildings found their centre in its court, enlarged and beautified. John Redman, the last master of King’s Hall, became the first master of Trinity College. ”

“ The present vast chapel of King's College, though not completed until long after Henry's time, is the only part of the existing structure which corresponds to his magnificent designs. He laid the first stone of it on 25 July 1446. Between 1445 and 1453 Henry made constant visits to Cambridge to watch over the progress of his foundations, staying mostly at the King's Hall, a college now absorbed in Trinity. The foundation of Queens' College, Cambridge, by Margaret of Anjou (1448) must be attributed mainly to Henry's influence. ”

“ With regard to picturesqueness and architectural merit it is difficult to assign the pre-eminence to either place, so far as the University and Collegiate buildings are concerned. Of each distinctive feature, considered separately, the choicest specimen is to be found in Cambridge—the best College Chapel at King's; the finest College Hall and College Courts at Trinity; the most characteristic and beautiful Library at St. John's. But, out-taken these, Oxford can show several examples of each feature better than the next best at Cambridge. ”

“ The most beautiful of the college buildings is King's Chapel. A Cambridge man is sure to take you to one of the bridges spanning the wretched little stream called the 'Silver Cam,' that you may see the architectural beauties of this building. ”

“ Even the legend “Song Room” over a doorway falls in with the illusion. James I. said that if he lived in the university he would pray at King’s, eat at Trinity, and study and sleep at Jesus.
The chapel is the original conventual church [200] as rebuilt by Alcock. It contains xii century work, and represents the transition from Norman to Early English. The character of the college has been consistently evangelical in spite of the fact that Bancroft the Laudian archbishop before Laud, was here, and that he migrated here from Christ’s on account of the latter’s reputation for Puritanism. ”

“ The canopies of the stalls and the panel work east of them were executed in 1675-1679.
The Altar Table, from a design by Mr. Garner, was first used on Advent Sunday, 1902; and the woodwork round the chancel was finished in 1911. The architects were Messrs. Blow and Billary, the work being executed by Messrs. Rattee and Kett, the celebrated ecclesiastical builders, of Cambridge. ”

“ A list of the service-books, plate, copes and other vestments, altar-cloths, curtains, gold embroidery, etc., kept in this oratory in 1479 is given in my booklet of 1917 on King’s Hall. The building was small and the Society continued to use All Saints’ church for its more important services.
The desirability of having a chapel large enough [86] for all college purposes was obvious, and in 1464 the Society began the erection of such a building, on ground beyond the eastern extension of the cloister court. ”

“ Upon the death of a provost of King’s College, Cambridge, the fellows are obliged, according to their statutes, to be shut up in their celebrated chapel till they have agreed upon the election of a successor, a custom not unlike that to which the cardinals are subject at Rome, upon the death of a pope, where not uncommonly some half dozen are brought out dead before an election takes place. ”

“ He was also engaged in 1693 to keep in order the organ in Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge, at a yearly salary of £3.
[13] Heads of Colleges have the right of impaling with their own arms the arms of the College of which they are the head in the same way as a Bishop impales the arms of the See over which he presides. ”

“ Although the architectural interest of Cambridge, so far as churches are concerned, is centred in the college chapels, there are nevertheless several churches which are not devoid of interest, and one or two which are quite unique. The visitor who takes the trouble to examine them will be amply repaid, although his reminiscences of them will, after a cursory inspection, be rather confused. Starting, then, from the western door of the University Church, and proceeding along King’s Parade, he will find, just opposite King’s gateway, the narrow passage which leads to St Edward’s Church. ”

“ Internally, the charm of the general effect is extraordinary, and every Cambridge man must have felt it at some time or other. Its length is 316 feet, its breadth 451⁄2 feet, its height 78 feet; and this vast area is flooded with the exquisite colours of the stained windows. Even the roof, an unbroken expanse of that development of vaulting known as fan tracery, must give the palm to the windows. Without its stained glass, King’s Chapel would be, like the Lady [98] Chapel at Ely, merely an interesting relic. ”

“ It has been argued that public worship is distasteful in later life because of the compulsory chapels of boyhood. If this were really so, evidence should be forthcoming that those who come from schools where there is no compulsory attendance at chapel, because there is no chapel to attend, are more eager to avail themselves of the opportunities offered by college chapels than are their more chapel ridden contemporaries. ”

“ To the right on entering the great gateway is the chapel, a late Tudor building begun by Queen Mary and finished by her sister Elizabeth about the year 1567. The exterior is quite mediaeval, and all the internal woodwork, including the great baldachino of gilded oak, the stalls and the organ screen dividing the chapel into two, dates from the beginning of the eighteenth century. In the ante-chapel the memory of some of the college's most distinguished sons is perpetuated in white marble. ”

“ Augustus Austen Leigh, Provost of the College from 1888 to 1905, in writing a history of the College, says: "Like other really great works, King's Chapel produces an impression which is instantaneous, and at the same time permanent. It does not disarm criticism, but [44] it compels admiration. ”

“ It is cold and stiff, and the [247] plaster roof brings bad taste to a climax. In the Gothic court north of this is the Library, which corresponds to the refectory of the old Dominican house—the Hall is on the site of the chapel. It was, till the Restoration, the college chapel. Sancroft, to whose initiative Wren’s work is due, gave it a valuable collection of old books, chiefly Bibles, and its Oriental manuscripts were carefully described by Sir William Jones. The chief modern addition to Emmanuel is the large brick building at the east end of the college garden. ”

“ King’s Hall owed its origin to the establishment of scholars in the University of Cambridge by Edward II in 1317, and was put on a permanent footing by Edward III in 1337. The original home of the Society was a large two-storeyed house, built of wood and thatched, bought from Robert de Croyland, and situated on the ground now occupied by the walks and grass plot in front of the chapel. No chapel or oratory was connected with it, and the [85] Society worshipped in All Saints’ church which then stood on the green in Trinity Street facing our present chapel. ”

“ An existing hostel formed one side, but the others were all erected for the special purpose of the college. A hall and kitchen were built to the east, and on the street side opposite was a gateway placed between students' rooms. Marie de St. Paul also received permission from two successive Avignonese Popes to build a chapel with a bell tower at the north-west corner of the quadrangle, and to some extent these exist to-day, incorporated in the reference library and an adjoining lecture-room. ”

“ Sir Gilbert Scott's idea was that the new Chapel should be of the same period of architecture as the old, but it is absolutely different in design; in the lover of things old there must always be a feeling of regret for what has gone. The mural tablets in the old Chapel were removed to the new Ante-Chapel, the slabs in the floor were left. It is worth noting that Eleazar Knox, a Fellow of the College, and one of the sons of John Knox, the famous Scotch Reformer, was buried in the Chapel in 1591. ”

“ It can truly be said that stone seems, by the cunning labour of the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight and density and suspended aloft as if by magic, while the fretted roof is achieved with the wonderful minuteness and airy security of a cobweb. Similar roofs appear in Bath Abbey (the architect of which was Dr. Oliver King, a member of King's) , in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, in Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster, in Sherborne Minster, and in the ambulatory of the choir of Peterborough ”

“ This organ is the largest and best-toned in Cambridge, [51] but it is far from being as effective as the King's organ, to which the magnificent acoustic properties of its Chapel lend so wondrous a power. In Trinity there is always the sensation that the harmonies are boxed in; indeed the shape of the Chapel does very much suggest a box. In justice, however, to its designers, it must be remembered that the box-like effect would be very much lessened by the east and west windows with which it was originally provided. The latter was closed by Nevile's putting back the clock tower to abut upon it ”

“ At the north-east corner of the cloisters we find the door into the chapel.
This bears little resemblance to the conventional College Chapel, being a cruciform church of the ordinary Norman shape, with a central tower. Very little of the work, however, is Norman, for the nuns did not get far on with their design (p. 149) till the twelfth century had come in and the Early English period had commenced. A beautiful gem of this style the chapel is, and, for once in a way, the drastic "restoration" to which it was subjected in early Victorian days is matter of real thankfulness. ”

“ And if anyone is inclined to criticise, let him look at the exterior on a moonlight night from the south side of the Quadrangle, or from the top of Trinity Street, or let him take his stand within the ante-chapel at the northwest corner on a bright summer's day, and cast his eye along the coloured glass and stone vaulting till he catches a part of the east window rising above the stately rood-loft; and if he does not feel that there is an inspiration in the building which is above criticism, he must be a man that hath no music in himself. ”

“ The history of the college divides itself naturally into periods. The first is a period of consolidation, extending from 1546 to 1593. During this time, the college suffered the ordinary vicissitudes of the Reformation. Its chapel, which had been projected by Henry VIII., was begun by Mary and finished, probably out of a sense of duty, by Elizabeth. In 1553, William Bill, the second master, who had been appointed under Edward VI., had to retire in favour of a Catholic master, John Christopherson, but was of course restored at the accession of Elizabeth. ”