In England men belonging to what have, hitherto, been the governing classes have always sought advantages which would doubtless be less apparent in countries where nobility and gentry are synonyms and where government is not carried on by means of two such institutions as the House of Commons and the House of Lords. A _noblesse_ which gives no scions to the professions or to a representative chamber has seldom sought academic distinction. The man destined for parliament for the diplomatic service and the government office--occupations which an acute American observer has said are chosen by Englishmen as the business of their lives "without studying any other profession"[374]--prepared himself in no other way than by three or four years spent at the university, with or without graduating there. It was not however till the nineteenth century opened that the distinctively aristocratic trend of a university was defined. Throughout that century the university was _par excellence_ the seminary of the English gentleman, and the parson. A few bankers' sons might be put into their fathers' counting houses, a few government officials might place their sons at an early age in a government office, but the exception only proved the rule.
Let us look at some examples of the class from which Cambridge was recruited through the xvi and xvii centuries. Hugh Latimer (_b._ 1491) was the son of a yeoman farmer; Sir Thomas Wyatt (_b._ 1503) was the son of a knight. The father of Matthew Parker (_b._ 1504) was a Norwich merchant; Bacon (_b._ 1561) and his brother, fellow-commoners of Trinity, were sons of the Lord Keeper and nephews of Burleigh. Fletcher (_b._ 1579) the dramatist, was the son of the Bishop of London, and his cousins the poets were sons of Elizabeth's Master of the Requests and ambassador to Russia.[375] In the xvii century Herrick the poet (_b._ 1591) was the son of a goldsmith established in London; Waller (_b._ 1605) a nephew of Hampden's, a man of large private fortune; Cowley (_b._ 1618) was
[Illustration: UNIVERSITY BOAT-HOUSES ON THE CAM--SUNSET
This view is taken near Stourbridge Common and the bend of the river known as Barnwell Pool, looking towards the town.]
son to a city grocer; Marvell (_b._ 1620) son to a Yorkshire clergyman; while Temple was the son of an Irish Master of the Rolls. In the latter half of the xvii century we still hear of "the farmer's son newly come from the university"[376]--Bentley was one of them--and at the same time we hear that Tuckney, Whichcote's tutor, "had many persons of rank and quality" under him at Emmanuel College. In the xviii century, Pepys' (_b._ 1703) father was a tailor, the Wordsworths were sons of a north country attorney, Sir William Browne (_b._ 1692) was the son of a physician.