As To The Antiquity Of The University In This Town, The Originals
And Founders Of The Several Colleges, Their Revenues,
Laws,
government, and governors, they are so effectually and so largely
treated of by other authors, and are so foreign
To the familiar
design of these letters, that I refer my readers to Mr. Camden's
"Britannia" and the author of the "Antiquities of Cambridge," and
other such learned writers, by whom they may be fully informed.
The present Vice-Chancellor is Dr. Snape, formerly Master of Eaton
School near Windsor, and famous for his dispute with, and evident
advantage over, the late Bishop of Bangor in the time of his
government; the dispute between the University and the Master of
Trinity College has been brought to a head so as to employ the pens
of the learned on both sides, but at last prosecuted in a judicial
way so as to deprive Dr. Bentley of all his dignities and offices
in the university; but the doctor flying to the royal protection,
the university is under a writ of mandamus, to show cause why they
do not restore the doctor again, to which it seems they demur, and
that demur has not, that we hear, been argued, at least when these
sheets were sent to the press. What will be the issue time must
show.
From Cambridge the road lies north-west on the edge of the fens to
Huntingdon, where it joins the great north road. On this side it
is all an agreeable corn country as above, adorned with several
seats of gentlemen; but the chief is the noble house, seat, or
mansion of Wimple or Wimple Hall, formerly built at a vast expense
by the late Earl of Radnor, adorned with all the natural beauties
of situation, and to which was added all the most exquisite
contrivances which the best heads could invent to make it
artificially as well as naturally pleasant.
However, the fate of the Radnor family so directing, it was bought
with the whole estate about it by the late Duke of Newcastle, in a
partition of whose immense estate it fell to the Right Honourable
the Lord Harley, son and heir-apparent of the present Earl of
Oxford and Mortimer, in right of the Lady Harriet Cavendish, only
daughter of the said Duke of Newcastle, who is married to his
lordship, and brought him this estate and many other, sufficient to
denominate her the richest heiress in Great Britain.
Here his lordship resides, and has already so recommended himself
to this county as to be by a great majority chosen Knight of the
Shire for the county of Cambridge.
From Cambridge, my design obliging me, and the direct road in part
concurring, I came back through the west part of the county of
Essex, and at Saffron Walden I saw the ruins of the once largest
and most magnificent pile in all this part of England--viz., Audley
End--built by, and decaying with, the noble Dukes and Earls of
Suffolk.
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