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Splendid, therefore, as our history might have appeared, if introduced with a Spanish prince, brought into this island by our own king, Garguntius, and founding a British University, and decorated in front, with the names of kings and popes, I leave these uncertainties for others to shape into what form they please, as also to Oxford historians, to manage their tale of Greek philosophers coming into this country with king Brutus, and instituting an academy at Greekland, near Oxford. For I cannot help observing how pleasantly the Oxford assertor, after convicting the Cambridge orator of having trifled, sets about trifling himself. But enough of these trifles; for stultum est absurdas opiniones accuratius refellere; "It is foolish to aim at too much accuracy in confuting absurdity."

Though I have, then, been using my eyes before I expected light, I pretend to have made no discoveries; for we can lay little stress on any literary occurrences in this ancient town, till the time of Sigebert, which, according to the venerable Bede, was about the year 637. Though even Bede says, only, that Sigebert founded, among the East Angles, (in which Cambridge lay,) a school for the instruction of boys.

a Oxoniensis Historiola ex libro procuratorum-so, also, in the Assertio Antiquitatis Oxon. Academiæ. "Nam eo tunc loci fuisse non incelebrem philosophorum scholam a Græcis olim philosophis ortam, qui cum Trojanis duce Bruto in hanc insulam appulerunt, cum ex aliis plerisque, tum ex nostra colligitur Historia," A book, probably, of equal authority, and no more, with the Black Book of Cambridge.

b This word, pueri Alfred translates geonze menn, in his Saxon translation of Bede's History; and that the word, puer, as well as infans, means often, in ancient writers, young persons, minors, infants in law, is certain. See Robinson's History of Baptism, chap. xix. of Infant Bap

All that essentially belongs to the present question lies, I think, within a small compass. All beyond rests on conjecture, or on inference, or on supposititious writings; so the whole passage from the venerable Bede shall be laid before the reader.

"In those times of the kingdom of the East Angles, after Earpwald, the successor of Reduald, Sigbert (Sigebert,) his brother, was king, a good and religious man, who, while flying from the enmities of Reduald, he became an exile in Gaul, received the laver of baptism, and returning to his country, where he enjoyed the kingdom, soon desiring to imitate those things which he saw well disposed in the Gauls, instituted a school, in which boys might be instructed in literature, with the assistance of bishop Felix, whom he introduced from Kent, (Cantia,) supplying them with pædagogues and masters, after the manner of the people of Kent";" and this is all he says upon the subject.

b

It is worthy observation, that when the abbot Adrian, and Theodore, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, were sent into this island by Pope Vitaleanus, for the purpose of giving religious and literary instruction, no notice is taken of this great University. Both of them, we are

tism: but still I must not omit to notice, that the word, pædagogus, used by Bede, seems to limit the passage to boys, as much as the correspondent Greek word used by Xenophon, in his Cyropædia. But as to Dr. Fuller's argument (Church History, p. 76.) from St. Paul's calling Christians waida, little children, and their instructors, as maidaywyes ev X8.5w, instructors in Christ, explaining the literal meaning of a word by a metaphorical application, that evidently proves nothing, one way or the other.

a Eccles. Hist. Gent. Angl. lib. 3. cap. 18.

Ibid. lib. 4. cap. 1, 2.

told, were well instructed in the Greek and Latin languages. This was in the year 668, some years after the foundation of Sigebert's school. They are described as delivering out to their hearers the metrical art, astronomy, arithmetic, and ecclesiastical discipline, and by way of proof, it is added, that to this very day, there remain some of their scholars, who know the Latin and Greek language full as well as their own, in which they were born. They also taught them the singing or chaunting in the church, which was adopted in Kent, and was thence derived to all the churches of the English. They also instructed them in the Catholic, or monastic life, and ordained over them bishops. Now, not to insist that this school of Sigebert's is not mentioned as being at Cambridge, yet, admitting it was, as being among the East Angles, and one of the twentyeight British cities mentioned by Bede, yet is it probable that no notice should have been taken of it by those, whose objects were literary, if it had been such a transcendent institution as an University is supposed to be? It was always of the genius of such reformers, and revivers of learning, to single out such institutions, to distinguish them by their eulogies, or to propose some improvements. A word or two, previously to our proceeding on the name of the place.

Our British and Saxon ancestors used often to derive the names of their principal towns from the rivers on which they were built. Cairgrant was the town (fortified with a castle called, in British, Cair) on the river Granta: and it having been the custom of the Saxons to change the British to corresponding ones in the Saxon, Cairgrant was naturally enough converted into Grantacester; the town

Turner's Hist. of Anglo Sax. Vol. ii. b. 12. c. iv.

fortified with a castle on the river Granta, as it occurs in the Saxon Chronicle; Grenta, in Doomsday Book, is the same word. For, as a Saxon gave in the name, and a Norman wrote it down, the Saxon Granta would sound the Norman Grenta; beside, that the Normans were wont industriously to pervert the Saxon language. These words are used indiscriminately, and sometimes by the same writer. However, the British Cairgrant, the Saxon Grantacester, and the Norman Grentacester, were, without doubt, the same town.

But the opinion which respects the name, Cantabrigia, and the modern Cambridge, is not so readily adjusted, some maintaining it is the ancient Cairgrant, or Grantacester; others, that as Cambridge and Grantchester, are now, so that they ever were, two distinct places.

Those, who insist, that Grantchester and Cambridge were the same place, say, that the principal part of the town lay, formerly, on the north side of the river, extending northward, towards Girton, through a village called Howse, of which Hows House still retains the name: and to the south, towards Newnham, and to what is now called Grantchester, along which, they maintain, as proofs, that anciently were found monuments of its past celebrity, some of which still remained; and, that as the town gradually extended itself to the south, Newnham and the village now called Grantchester, fell into decay, till, at length, both remain as fragments, broken off from the ancient town. Of this opinion was Dr. Caiusa.

* Ad Neunhamiæ vicum, ultra molendinam, qui se longius promovebat versus Granticestriam, veteris Cantibrigiæ, seu Granticestriæ reliquias adhuc superstites, et antiquæ urbis nomen referentes. Caii. Anlis Hist. Cant. p. 7.

VOL. I.

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Henry of Huntingdon, a writer in King Stephen's reign, expressly says, that Granteceastria was then called Cantebrigia, the name being compounded of Granta, which he calls a river of Cantebrigia".

Others, and those Cambridge historians, seem to think that the town now called Grantbridge, or Cambridge, rose out of the small village called Grantchester, and the Oxford antiquaries resolutely maintain, that Grantchester and Cambridge were two different places; that there was a royal palace and tribunal of justice at Grantchester, together with two fortified castles, and houses of scholastics.

However we adjust these matters, still it remains to ask, whence the modern name Cambridge?

As in matters of uncertainty, we choose to indulge our fancy, I remember once indulging mine upon this subject, conceiving we might refer for the origin of this word to alteration of similar or cognate letters, the abbreviation of syllables, as occurring in ancient manuscripts, and to the similarity of their sounds in ordinary conversation, being aware, at the same time, that Cam is still called a winding river, in the Welsh language.

a Lib. i.

b The following pages are thrown into notes, to prevent perplexing the

text.

Indeed, this turn for abbreviating, led men to change, as well as to drop, letters and syllables: thus, Cambodunum, Camelodunum, Campordum, for Almondbury, in Yorkshire; and Lindecollena, Lidecollena, for Lincoln city, &c. By a change not more violent than these, might Cantabrige give Cambridge; and close to Cambridge we have now Granchester for Grantecester, Milton for Midleton.

Every one must be aware of the tendency in our language to abbreviations particularly of the names of towns derived from the Saxon: thus, Oxenford, Oxford; Madwaystown, Maidstone; Dorubernia, Dofer,

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