JESUS COLLEGE

Summary

All spots, it has been often observed, intended for monastic purposes have been selected with remarkable taste. To the eyes of the writer, perhaps partial, the site of St. Rhadegund's nunnery is no exception to the rule, and he hopes for the concession that, as far as the neighbourhood of the Cam will allow, Jesus College is very prettily situated.

The College has two great advantages; one in the possession of a massive square tower rising from the midst of the buildings, and the other in its being isolated and detached from other buildings so that it may be looked on as a whole.

Jesus College appears to have taken the fancy of that pleasant and facetious monarch, James I., who, whatever his failings may have been in other respects, had a great taste for learning and its haunts. His remark is well known–“that if he lived at the University he would pray at King's, dine at Trinity, and study and sleep at Jesus.” There is another remark recorded by Fuller,–“King James in his way from Newmarket greatly commended Jesus College for the situation thereof as most collegiate, retired from the town, and in a meditating posture alone by itself.” Sherman says that he used to call it “Musarum Cantabrigiensium Musæum”. Nor was his admiration confined to words: for the same writer adds that “etiam atque etiam Collegium invisere dignatus est.”