JESUS COLLEGE.

ANCIENT writings have recorded, that Jesus College rose out of an ancient monastery; not as a young phœnix is said to spring, out of the ashes of an old one, merely invigorated with strength; but as a butterfly springs from the chrysalis, in a new form, and with different powers; and we have evidence sufficiently clear to the sight, that what appears now, as a college of scholars, was formerly a religious house.

Jesus College, as an endowed foundation, is certainly not the third in succession of our present colleges; but on account of the antiquity of the College of Nuns, which preceded it, I place it here, and it suits my

convenience.

The tale of the nunnery of St. Radegunda, or Radegundis for that was the name of the guardian saint of the old establishment-must be short:

Radegunda, or Radegundis, was a queen of France, who retiring from public life, resigned herself to monastic seclusion. Hence, according to the fashion of the times, she received canonization. Churches and religious houses in abundance were dedicated to St. Rade

a In the charter of foundation it is thus described:

❝ Scholarium in grammatica erudiendorum," 1497. 12 Hen. VII.

gundis; and it was creditable for a sainted queen, more so, perhaps, for having been married, to be looked to as the protectress of virginity: perhaps, the reader may not dislike the more formal account of Mr. Parker": ❝to acquaint you then with her original," says he, “Radegundis was a queen of France, daughter of Bertram, King of Thuringia in Germany, and wife to the most potent Lothair, King of the Francs, the son of Clovis the Great, the first Christian King of France: she, about the year of our Lord 460, leaving her husband, retired into a monastery at Poictiers, and there founded the abbey of the Holy Cross, where they still shew her tomb."

We have several instances no less remarkable in our own history. A wife of the King of the West Angles--her name Etheldreda---was the foundress, and herself the first abbess, of the famous monastery that bore her name in the Isle of Ely. The kingdom of Kent also could boast two royal ladies, who founded monasteries of veiled nuns, and who became the abbesses; Sexburga, of Shepey, and Mildred, of Thanet; and Edith, a royal dame, founded a nunnery at Wilton; all saints, like Etheldreda, and who all worked miracles as well as she d

เ

a Hist. of Cambridge, p. 116.

b Called in Orig. Jes. Bertharius.

c Origines Jesuanæ MS. has it 560, and dates her death 1190, by er ror, I suppose, in the copyist.

d Lambarde gives a sort of sauce to his "Perambulations of Kent," by mixing with them many of the miracles of these ladies, such as their lying in ovens three hours without feeling the fire; drawing water over hills, contrary to nature; banishing some noisy birds, that used to dis

turb a particular neighbourhood; casting out the devil, &c. plenty of

The honour of endowing, and perhaps of dedicating to St. Radegundis, this nunnery, or (as it is called in the charter of Foundation of Jesus College) priory, is ascribed to Malcolm Earl of Cambridge and Huntingdon, and King of Scotland, in the middle of the twelfth century, though a little cell of Benedictines had been settled there, we are told, before that period.

It has already been shewn, how very inaccurate Dr. Fuller is in fixing the date of Malcolm's endowment of this nunnery; so it is needless to dwell on it here. It would be easy to enlarge on the ancestry, dignities, and successors of Malcolm, as Mr. Parker has done; but, xoguparmı zv Bacinevσib, In kings you reach the summit : a king of Scotland is a king of Scotland; capable of receiving little ornament from relationship, and of giving as little to a monastery c.

which things are in the Nova Legenda Angliæ, and I rather wonder that good Mr. Bentham, whose very valuable History of Ely is written sufficiently according to the taste of the monkish times, did not give us more of the miracles of Etheldreda.

a In the charter of Foundation of Jésus College it is entitled, Licentia ad Prioratum Sanctæ Radegundis supprimendum et Collegium fundandum, &c. Rymer's Fœdera, Vol. 12.

There were other places in England sacred to St. Radegundis; at Bradsole, a village near Dover, in the county of Kent, was a monastery of St. Radegundis, whose abbot used to be called by the king's brief to Parliament, and therefore ranked among the proceres Regni.

There was also a chapel dedicated to her in the Crypts of St. Paul's. Dugdale's Hist. of St. Paul's, p. 226.

Pindar. Ob. Od. 1.

• To enter, however, into the sympathies of Malcolm, the founder of the nunnery, and the saint protectress, I cannot forbear copying from the Orig. Jes, what the author copies from Dempster and David Camerarius. Deniq. ut paria hic omnia videantur, Radegunda licet uxor

It was quite natural for ladies of distinction to become benefactresses to nunneries: accordingly we find, that Lady Constantia, consort of Eustace, Duke of Bologne, and son and heir of our King Stephen, was a considerable benefactress to this house; which I the "rather mention, because Mr. Parker speaks as if Constantia gave them only the fishery from the bridge of Cambridge to the Abbey of Croyland; whereas, she gave them lands also, and these are, I suppose, what are called Nun's Lands to this day. The deed of conveyance, copied from the archives of Jesus College, the reader will find in the note.

The immoralities of monasteries became the subject of complaint very early in the 13th and 14th centuries:

Lotharii virgo tamen fuit. Malcolmus quoque ab abhorrendis nuptiis virgo communiter dictus erat. Illam Scriptores Gallici inter suæ Gen'tis Sanctulas; hunc Scoti inter Gentiles Divos enumerant.

a Constantia, Comitissa Nigello Eliensi Episcopo et omni clero et omnibus baronibus Cantabrig. Scir. et Burgensibus de Cantebrig. tam futuris quam præsentibus salutem. Sciatis me dedisse et concessisse sanctimonialibus de Cantebrig. totam terram earum infra Burgum et extra tam possidendam quam possessam quiete de hagabulo et de langabulo, et totam piscaturam, et aquam quæ Burgo pertinet tam libere & quiete et honorifice, sicut Maritus meus Comes Eustachi liberius et honorificentius habuimus, pro anima mariti mei comitis Eustachi et pro anima Matildæ Reginæ, et antecessorum nostrorum, necnon,pro salute regis Stephani in perpetuam Eleemosynam. His testibus N. Eliensi Episcopo, sans date.

In the reign of King Stephen, i. e. between 1135 and 1154, Eustace, Earl of Boulogne, son of King Stephen, was married to the Princess Constantia, sister of Lewis the VIIth, ou le Jeune, A. D. 1137. Henry's History.

The above Nigellus was Bishop of Ely, from the year 1133 to 1169. The same book of archives contains also King Stephen's confirmation of the same grant, together with Nigellus's.