Note 15 — Chapter II
Reading edition
A slight bend in the stream, overhung by great elms, brings us to St. John's Bridge, a fine three arched structure of brick and stone built in 1696.[15] Beyond it the College buildings rise, like those of Queens', directly from the water—to the west the white stone abutments of the New Court, to the east the red brick walls and oriel window of the Library, the most beautiful building of its class in either Cambridge or Oxford. On it we can read the date 1624, and the letters I. L. C. S. standing for Johannes Lincolnensis Custos Sigilli, which commemorate the benefactor John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, to whose generosity we owe this gem of architecture. In his day, and for long after, St. John's was quite the largest College in Cambridge, rivalled only, for a moment, by Emmanuel. The present supremacy of Trinity did not begin till late in the eighteenth century.