Christ's College, Cambridge
Christ’s
College, Cambridge plays a key role in the events that unfold in Letters To
My Father. Most of Edward Abney’s letters
to his father are written from here and it was here that Edward met and fell
in love with Damaris, the stepdaughter of the Master of the College.
Edward Abney was actively soliciting a fellowship at the College at a time of political ferment just after the Restoration. The Master of the College since 1654 was Ralph Cudworth, the eminent Platonist theologian. Cudworth had been tactically close to the Cromwellian regime during the 1650s but had greeted Charles II’s return with a set of congratulatory regime addressed to the King. Cudworth faced considerable opposition to his reappointment as Master by Charles.
Cudworth’s dispute with Ralph Widdrington, the brother of the parliamentarian and former Speaker in the House of Commons, Sir Thomas Widdrington, is mentioned several times in the Letters. Widdrington was ultimately unsuccessful in his attempt to remove Cudworth as Master. The Fellows at Christ’s removed Widdrington, having been charged with a ‘failure of trust’ and ‘fraudulent dealing’, but he was reinstated by a Privy Council Committee after obtaining a King’s Bench mandamus on 20 June 1661.
During this time, Widdrington was in competition with Edward Abney, amongst others, for the prestigious Edward VI Fellowship, a Crown appointment.
Christ’s College, originally known as ‘God’s House’, was refounded on its present site in 1508 by Lady Margaret Beaufort, King Henry VII’s mother. The 15th century First Court of the College, consisting of the Gatehouse and Master’s Lodge, the Chapel, the Hall, the Buttery and the Library, and much of the Second Court, comprised the College as Cudworth would have known it.
According to John Peile’s history of Christ’s, whilst the College, like others, faced economic difficulties and shortage of rents after the ravages of the Civil War, Christ’s was in this period the centre of an intellectual flowering led by Cudworth and Henry More involving ‘latitudinarian’ divinity and Platonist philosophy.
More Information on Christ's College, Cambridge
www.christs.cam.ac.uk - Christ's College, Cambridge website
