Cambridge and Its Story (Illustrated)

“Geographical and commercial importance of the city site—Map of the county a palimpsest—Glamour of the Fenland—Cambridge the gateway of East Anglia—The Roman roads—The Roman station—The Castle Hill—Stourbridge Fair—Cambridge a chief centre of English commerce. One could wish perhaps that the story of Cambridge should begin, as so many good stories of men and cities have begun, in the antique realm of poetry and romance. That it did so begin our forefathers indeed had little doubt. John Lydgate, the poet, a Benedictine monk of Bury, “the disciple”—as he is proud to call himself—“of Geoffrey Chaucer,” but best remembered perhaps by later times as the writer of “London Lackpenny” and “Troy Book,” has left certain verses on the foundation of the Town and University of Cambridge, which are still preserved to us. Some stanzas of that fourteenth-century poem will serve to show in what a cloudland of empty legend it was at one time thought that the story of the beginnings of Cambridge might be found”.