SECTION VII

Summary

A. D. 1534–35. 27 Hen. VIII.

A combination against Doctor Metcalfe.

see more of him in our History of Cambridge, anno 1509.

This year the young fry of fellows of St. John's in Cambridge combined, yea, conspired against their old master, Dr. Metcalfe, a man much meriting of his house, it being hard to say, whether St. John's oweth more to the Lady Margaret, or Dr. Metcalfe; she by her bounty founded it, he by his providence kept it from being confounded: many a pound he gave, more he got of his friends for this college. Indeed he was none of the greatest Rabbins, but he made many good scholars under him. Thus the dull and blunt whetstone may be said virtually to be all edge, because setting a sharpness on other instruments. Metcalfe, with Themistocles, could not fiddle, but he knew how to make a little college a great one, by his two and twenty years prudent government thereof.

Great deserts soon forgotten.

2. I find not a particular of the faults, which the fellows laid to Metcalfe's charge. It may be the greatest matter was, because he was old, they young; he froward, they factious. Indeed he was overfrozen in his northern rigour, and could not be thawed, to ungive any thing of the rigidness of his discipline. Besides, I suspect him too stubborn in his Romish mumsimus, which gave his adversaries advantage against him, who would not be quiet till they had cast him out of his mastership.