Note 26 — Chapter I · THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Abbot Sampson (b. 1135) had himself been “a poor clerke” at the school of Bury, and William Diss, a Norfolk man, was the schoolmaster. In 1160 Sampson became its magister scholarum. He proceeded to buy certain stone houses—those solid structures which either as Jewish or Norman building were sought for at Cambridge and at Oxford also—so that the scholars might live rent free; and in 1198 he endowed the magister scolarum grammaticalium so that the tuition too became free. (The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, newly edited by Sir Ernest Clarke, M.A., F.S.A.) “School Hall Street” was just outside the abbey precincts, and answered to the “School Street” and the Vicus Glomeriae in Cambridge. There was an ancient chapel in Cambridge dedicated to the patron saint of Bury, and one of the chief possessions of that rich abbey was the manor of Mildenhall, which provided the expenses of its sacrist and cellarer: it is at least an interesting coincidence that Robert and Edmund of Mildenhall were original fellows of Michaelhouse; the former was its second master, third master, according to Le Neve, of Peterhouse, and chancellor of the university in 1334. An abbot and a monk of Bury are two of those to be specially commemorated in every mass said by the scholars of the new foundation of Michaelhouse (1324); and Curteys the 24th abbot of Bury was one of the personages invited by Henry VI. to assist at the laying of the foundation stone of King’s College. Walter Diss (a name well known in Bury) was a famous Carmelite friar at Cambridge in the xiv c. Fuller preserves the legend that Jocelyn, Abbot Sampson’s Boswell, had studied in the Cambridge schools, the source of which is Bale who was a Carmelite of Norwich and Cambridge. Together these things perhaps suggest that the schools of Cambridge and Bury had some relation to each other as well as to Orléans.

Bury was reckoned among fen monasteries because of its Suffolk property (of which Mildenhall formed part) where the See of Ely possessed several manors.