Death at the Alma Mater

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Founded around the time King Henry VIII was selling off "his" monasteries, St. Michael's College of the University of Cambridge spreads in haphazard fashion by the River Cam, a model of functional medieval architecture wedded to Tudor bombast and, later, Victorian excess.

The University itself, of which the college is a part, was formed by a group of tearaway scholars escaping the wrath of the townspeople of Oxford, where clashes had ended with two students being hanged for murder, which incident should have given everyone in Cambridge pause. But by this time-the early 1200s-the inhabitants of Cambridge had survived the Romans, the Saxons, the Vikings, and the Normans, and, perhaps numbed into apathy at the sight of yet more new arrivals, rashly allowed the fledgling seat of learning to take hold.

St. Mike's, as it is inevitably called, is one of the lesser-known of thirty-two Cambridge colleges-a former Master liked to insist it was as well known as Trinity, which is like saying Marks and Spencer is as well known as Harrods-and it has never, even from its earliest days, been among the wealthiest of colleges. Indeed, it has more than once in its long history flirted with financial disaster. One early benefactor, having promised the college a substantial legacy, on the strength of which promise the college incurred various debts, was found on his death to be worth only?23. There were many other such incidents as the college slumbered its way through the centuries, betraying either a touching naivete or a rampant incompetence on the part of those entrusted with St. Mike's care.

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