Graduation under the Medical and Scottish Universities Acts : with some account of the origin of universities and degrees / by Robert Christison.

  • Robert Christison
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Graduation under the Medical and Scottish Universities Acts : with some account of the origin of universities and degrees / by Robert Christison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    92/100 (page 92)
    writers claim for Cambridge a foundation by the Saxon king Edward the Elder, son of Alfred, whom he suc- ceeded in 901, reigning till 925 ; that others claim for it an earlier foundation, in 630, by Sigibert, king of the East Angles ; and lastly, that others have advanced pretensions to a foundation, which they even call a restoration only, by the almost mythical Prince Arthur, in the year 581. In support of the last fable, appeal is made, not only to a document professing to be a charter granted and dated by that prince at London — which city never was in his possession—but likewise to a bull of Pope Honorius I., granted in 424, and mentioning Cambridge as then a university, with a chancellor, a rector, doctores, scholares, and all other usual academic distinctions, such as are well known to have had no existence for many centuries afterwards. Du Boulay even gives copies of these documents, which present the customary formalities of royal charters and Papal bulls. ISTot the least amusing result of this inquiry is, that it ends by assigning, by authority of King Arthur himself, for the real original founder, a certain British potentate, Lucius L, who is assumed to have been the first prince in Britain to em- brace Christianity, and who owed his conversion to certain Cambridge Doctores, somewhere about the year 180 ! [Bulceiy Hist. Univ. Paris, i. 290.]