been made of the agreeable situation of this college, and, incidentally, of the principal portraits. With respect to the gardens (I mean the master's and fellows', for they are both worth noticing,) though they contain but little of shrubbery, they are, at least, the best fruit gardens in the university, with walls Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit, Paradise Lost, book 3. In the fellows' garden is a good proportion of flowers and plants, which, to assist the botanical student, are marked with their scientific names, according to the system of Linnæus. PEMBROKE HALL. CABINETS, though small, may contain great treasures: and this Hall, though not large, has always possessed its full share of literary merit, and, in several respects, surpassed in celebrity some that are larger. For, on considering the rank, and the number of its patrons, the many eminent men who have been educated here, and the literary character which, as members of the academical body, its students have long sustained; none, for its size, go beyond it. Kings and nobles, popes and prelates, take precedency in the world; and such have been its patrons; and in great abundance. Medallists and poets, senior wranglers, and mathematicians, take precedency in the University, and of these its full proportion is boasted, and not without reason, by Pembroke Hall. This hall, or college, then, was founded by a lady, one by birth allied to royal blood, and who, though unfortunate, was not disgraced, by marriage. a Maria de Sancto Paulo was related to the first blood, both in France and England. Her father was Guido de Chastilion, Earl de Sancto Paulo in France; her mother, Marie de Britannie, daughter of John de Dreux, Earl of Richmond, and Duke of Bretagne, and of Beatrice, daughter of Henry III. Baroness of Voisser and Mountanacte: and she was the third wife of Audamarie de Valence, Earl of Pembroke. ■ So called in the first deed of conveyance. Our lady had the misfortune to lose her husband the very day she was married: Leland has noticed the circumstances attending his death: let it suffice to say, it was at one of the fashionable barbarisms of that age, a tournament, or hastiludia, at her nuptials. It is therefore usual to say of this lady, that she was virgin, wife, and widow, all in one day. Though with respect to a former Earl of Pembroke, some of the estates of that family had devolved, on the death of the Lady Valentia, to the crown, still it retained large fortunes: and notwithstanding the untimely death of her husband, it is said, that the Lady Valentia, of whom we are here speaking, had been solemnly appointed his joint executrix, with others; so that she was most abundantly rich. Upon the death of her husband also, it is said, her mind took a turn of devotion; and that having resolved on a single life, she consecrated her vast possessions to religious uses. Among other charities, Denny Abbey, in this county, founded in the twenty-eighth year of Edward, according to the strict and famous order of St. Clare, was the child of her birth; and it was enjoined on those who were elected into her college, to be constant in their visits to this religious house, as their ghostly counsellors and instruc tors. But the foundation, which bears her name, seems to have been the first which employed her regards. It was originally called the college of Maria de Valencia, but has since been changed into Pembroke Hall. The lady, we are told, continued in widowhood 60 years, having lived many years after the foundation of Chauncy's Hist. of Hertfordshire. |