When and by
whom the churches aforesaid were built I have elsewhere made relation.
That of Oxford also was repaired in the time of Edward the Fourth and
Henry the Seventh, when Doctor Fitz James, a great helper in that
work, was warden of Merton College; but ere long, after it was
finished, one tempest in a night so defaced the same that it left few
pinnacles standing about the church and steeple, which since that time
have never been repaired. There were sometime four and twenty parish
churches in the town and suburbs; but now there are scarcely sixteen.
There have been also 1200 burgesses, of which 400 dwelt in the
suburbs; and so many students were there in the time of Henry the
Third that he allowed them twenty miles compass about the town for
their provision of victuals.
The common schools of Cambridge also are far more beautiful than those
of Oxford, only the Divinity School of Oxford excepted, which for fine
and excellent workmanship cometh next the mould of the King's Chapel
in Cambridge, than the which two, with the Chapel that King Henry the
Seventh did build at Westminster, there are not (in my opinion) made
of lime and stone three more notable piles within the compass of
Europe.
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