Peterhouse College Chapel
The west front of the east wing, containing the chapel, erected in 1628-32 at the instigation of Matthew Wren, Master of Peterhouse from 1625-34. The architecture reflects the High Anglican ideals of Charles I - which is interesting, because it was during this time that the college accommodated and nurtured several scholars who would later become eminent Puritans, among them Colonel John Hutchinson, who became Sheriff of Nottinghamshire in 1658. He was also one of the 59 signatories of King Charles I's death warrant.
Hutchinson's wife and biographer, Lucy, tells us that he was admitted to the college at the age of twelve in 1627 "...under the tuition of one Mr Norwich, an admirable scholar who by his civil demeanour to him won so much upon his good nature, that he loved and reverenced him as a father, and betook himself with such delight to his studies that he attained to a great height of learning, and performed public exercises in the college with much applause, and upon their importunity took a degree in the university, whereof he was at that time the grace, there not being any gentleman in the town that lived with such regularity in himself, and such general love and good esteem of all persons as he did. He kept not company with any of the vain young persons, but with the graver men, and those by whose conversation he might gain improvement. He never missed the chapel, where he began to take notice of their stretching superstition to idolatry; and was courted much into a more solemn practice of it than he could admit, though yet he considered not the emptiness and carnality, to say no more, of that public service which was then in use. For his exercise he practised tennis, and played admirable well at it; for his diversion, he chose music, and got a very good hand, which afterwards he improved to a great mastery on the viol. There were masters that taught to dance and vault, whom he practised with, being very agile and apt for all such becoming exercises. His father stinted not his expense, which the bounty of his mind made pretty large, for he was very liberal to his tutors and servitors and to the meaner offices of the house. He was enticed to bow to their great idol, learning, and had a higher veneration for it a long time than can strictly be allowed; yet he then looked upon it as a handmaid to devotion, and as the great improver of natural reason. His tutor and the masters that governed the College while he was there, were of Arminian principles, and that College was noted above all the town for Popish superstitious practices; yet through the mercy of God, notwithstanding the mutual kindness the whole household had for him and he for them, he came away after five years' study there, untainted with those principles or practices, though not yet enlightened to discern the spring of them in the rites and usages of the English church."
Reference: Hutchinson, Lucy. (2000) Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, ed. N. H. Keeble (pp42-43). London: Phoenix Press. Revised edition of text by Rev Julius Hutchinson in 1806. Originally written in 1671.
Peterhouse College Chapel
The west front of the east wing, containing the chapel, erected in 1628-32 at the instigation of Matthew Wren, Master of Peterhouse from 1625-34. The architecture reflects the High Anglican ideals of Charles I - which is interesting, because it was during this time that the college accommodated and nurtured several scholars who would later become eminent Puritans, among them Colonel John Hutchinson, who became Sheriff of Nottinghamshire in 1658. He was also one of the 59 signatories of King Charles I's death warrant.
Hutchinson's wife and biographer, Lucy, tells us that he was admitted to the college at the age of twelve in 1627 "...under the tuition of one Mr Norwich, an admirable scholar who by his civil demeanour to him won so much upon his good nature, that he loved and reverenced him as a father, and betook himself with such delight to his studies that he attained to a great height of learning, and performed public exercises in the college with much applause, and upon their importunity took a degree in the university, whereof he was at that time the grace, there not being any gentleman in the town that lived with such regularity in himself, and such general love and good esteem of all persons as he did. He kept not company with any of the vain young persons, but with the graver men, and those by whose conversation he might gain improvement. He never missed the chapel, where he began to take notice of their stretching superstition to idolatry; and was courted much into a more solemn practice of it than he could admit, though yet he considered not the emptiness and carnality, to say no more, of that public service which was then in use. For his exercise he practised tennis, and played admirable well at it; for his diversion, he chose music, and got a very good hand, which afterwards he improved to a great mastery on the viol. There were masters that taught to dance and vault, whom he practised with, being very agile and apt for all such becoming exercises. His father stinted not his expense, which the bounty of his mind made pretty large, for he was very liberal to his tutors and servitors and to the meaner offices of the house. He was enticed to bow to their great idol, learning, and had a higher veneration for it a long time than can strictly be allowed; yet he then looked upon it as a handmaid to devotion, and as the great improver of natural reason. His tutor and the masters that governed the College while he was there, were of Arminian principles, and that College was noted above all the town for Popish superstitious practices; yet through the mercy of God, notwithstanding the mutual kindness the whole household had for him and he for them, he came away after five years' study there, untainted with those principles or practices, though not yet enlightened to discern the spring of them in the rites and usages of the English church."
Reference: Hutchinson, Lucy. (2000) Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, ed. N. H. Keeble (pp42-43). London: Phoenix Press. Revised edition of text by Rev Julius Hutchinson in 1806. Originally written in 1671.