Cambridge's Collegiate Crisis: King Henry VIII and the Suppression of Colleges, 1546

Abstract

This article examines in detail the University of Cambridge's robust response to the threat of suppression from the time of the promulgation of the Chantries Act at Christmas 1545 until the foundation of Trinity College the following Christmas. Particular attention is paid to chronology. The university lobbied influential friends and alumni at court to ensure its continued existence. King Henry VIII's dissolution of religious foundations from 1535, and the infamous ‘Valor Ecclesiasticus,’ the great survey of their assets that preceded it, had cast a large shadow over the university and its endowments. Even if established for secular scholars rather than clergy, the colleges were nonetheless religious foundations, and were regarded as such for the purposes of taxation and during the visitation of the universities in 1535. When the king began surveying colleges and collegiate churches in late 1545 with a view to their suppression, for eight anxious weeks the university's existence was genuinely called into question, calling for a university survival strategy.