WILLIAM GILBERT. 261 



fires spread thither and burned it out. There was not 

 much in the atmosphere of a place where half a dozen 

 rank Gospellers went to the stake of a morning and as 

 many more in the afternoon, to encourage free thought in 

 a boy even of Gilbert's mental strength; nor was eight 

 hours' work a day over the Sententise Pueriles, or the 

 Accidence (which Mr. Robert Wrennald, in consideration 

 of six pounds, thirteen shillings and four pence annually 

 paid him, taught in the school which King Henry VIII. 

 had founded) 1 especially calculated to expand the faculty 

 of original ideation in any one. 



At the age of eighteen, Gilbert matriculated at St. 

 John's College, Cambridge. The condition of the Uni- 

 versity, then and for several years afterwards, was any- 

 thing but one likely to promote the scholarship or foster 

 the natural abilities of its students. It had fallen far be- 

 low the high standards of Ascham and Cheke; it was 

 destitute of leaders capable of stimulating others by their 

 example to honorable exertion; its undergraduates were 

 disorderly, insubordinate and even riotous, addicted to 

 gaudy clothes, the taverns and the gambling houses, 

 while religious dissensions ran high between the sympa- 

 thizers with Rome and the adherents of the new Puritan- 

 ism which had found lodgment chiefly in the colleges of 

 Trinity and St. John's. Whatever Cambridge then 

 achieved in advancing real knowledge was the outcome 

 of individual genius rising superior to the prevalent in- 

 fluences of the culture which surrounded it. To science 

 and its votaries, the great University then offered no per- 

 manent home. 2 



Gilbert's progress was unremittingly upward. He at- 

 tained his bachelor's degree in 1560, became a Fellow on 

 Symson's Foundation in 1561, ''commenced" M. A., in 

 1564, and during the two years following, was mathematical 



1 P. Morant : The History and Antiquities of Colchester. London, 1748. 



2 The University of Cambridge : Mullinger. Cambridge, 1884. v. ii., 

 pp. 100, 573, 574. 



