Seats of Learning: Oxford and Cambridge in recent studies

Abstract

When, in the second decade of this century, the Master of Christ's College, Cambridge undertook extensive work on his Lodge, a nest of four rats was discovered. These were no ordinary rodents, but mummified English black rats of the early sixteenth century. And they were discovered in no ordinary nest-they had furnished it in part with pages of a Caxton, a Wynkyn de Worde, an early edition of Horace, fragments of fourteenthcentury manuscripts and some playing cards dating from circa 1510 [1]. In their particular choice of comforts the rats had symbolised that combination of the pursuit of scholarship and pleasure which has been a feature of Oxbridge life, despite periods when one or the other has tried to dominate. 121