Preface

Summary

To the University generally, Christ's College is known as an institution founded by the Lady Margaret, and with very few exceptions members of the college themselves would be startled to learn that in 1505 it was almost seventy years old, though the formal title, given by its charter in 1505 at the request of the Lady Margaret, makes the actual position clear enough when it opens ‘Christ's College by Henry the sixth King of England first begun’.

The history of the college from 1505 has been written by Dr John Peile (Master 1887 to 1910), but he gives the earlier period, prior to 1505, no more than eight pages, in the course of which he refers to ‘The few documents concerning God's House which I have found in the Muniment Room’. It is the history of the college before 1505 that is here portrayed and it is drawn entirely from contemporary documents. In the main, the muniments of which use has been made have been discovered in the ownership of the college; they must be more numerous than Dr Peile has supposed, for I have examined at least 200, all of which are earlier than the charter of Henry the Seventh. In addition, the muniments of the University Registry, Trinity Hall, Clare, Corpus Christi, King's and Trinity Colleges have yielded information of greater or smaller importance, and the archives of the borough of Cambridge have been examined with some little success. Outside Cambridge, documents of value for the history of the college have been found in the Public Record Office, in the Diocesan Registries of Ely and Lincoln, in the Principal Probate Registry at Somerset House, and amongst the University Wills preserved in the District Probate Registry at Peterborough.