It has been said that the decorous quadrangle of St Catharine’s gives the stranger the impression of an old manor house rather than of a college; and the trees which guard it on the side of Trumpington Street are certainly a party to the illusion. The western front of the college, which occupies one side of King’s Lane, has a more definitely scholastic air. For the most part the buildings are uninteresting. The tiny court at the north-west angle dates from 1626; the rest of the college is the fruit of a rebuilding which went on slowly from 1680 to 1755. Loggan, who published his illustrations soon after the work was begun, figures, with some optimism, an eastern fa?ade with a central cupola. This, however, was never attempted. The chapel is an interesting piece of Queen Anne architecture, dating from 1704;[136] and lately a fine organ by Norman & Beard of Norwich has been placed in it. In the present century, the Hall has been restored in the Gothic style, but otherwise no radical alteration has been made.
 
St Catharine’s is, in a certain sense, the daughter of King’s, for its founder was Robert Woodlark,* provost of the latter college. The reason for its foundation is not very obvious: it was probably merely a pious act on the part of Woodlark, of whom we know very little beyond this. The site on which it stood occupied the greater part of that oblong space which still is bounded on the north by King’s Lane and on the south by Silver (then Small Bridges) Street. Even now the space is somewhat cramped by houses; then the college was thoroughly “town-bound,” as Fuller puts it. However, although one of the smallest colleges in Cambridge, it has given, in comparison with its size, more famous men to England than any college in either University. These men are all clergy, and their names are among the most reverend in Church history. Seventy-four years after the foundation of the college, Edwin Sandys* became master. He is chiefly known as Archbishop of York and as a translator of the Bible, and, while in exile abroad during Mary’s reign, he cultivated friendly relations with foreign Protestant churches. As Master of St Catharine’s and Vice-Chancellor,[139] he went through a critical experience, which is narrated by Fuller. The Duke of Northumberland, who was at Cambridge in the hope of intercepting Mary’s progress from the Eastern Counties to London, ordered Sandys to preach before him at the University Church. Sandys was a timid man and had very little faith in Lady Jane Grey’s cause, so that the order caused him some perplexity. He rose at a very early hour next morning, and took the sortes Biblicae after the approved manner of the sixteenth century. The text at which his Bible opened was the sixteenth and seventeenth verses of the first chapter of Joshua, “All that thou commandest us we will do, and whithersoever thou sendest us we will go. According as we hearkened unto Moses in all things, so will we hearken unto thee: only the Lord thy God be with thee, as he was with Moses.” He preached from this text in so politic a manner that no one could find a handle of accusation against him. The exacting Northumberland came back to Cambridge after a short tour in Suffolk, well aware that his enterprise was over, and with the forlorn hope that, if he proclaimed Mary queen, he might win his pardon. He invited Sandys to join in the proclamation with him, but the Vice-Chancellor refused with an answer that must have been a very cold comfort to Northumberland. The Duke, however, went through the business mechanically at the old Market Cross, and was arrested very soon afterwards at his lodgings in King’s. Sandys escaped to the Netherlands,[140] and returned when Elizabeth came to the throne. He is buried at Southwell, where the archbishops of York had one of their palaces.

John Overall, Bishop of Lichfield, and afterwards of Norwich, another of the translators of the Bible, was master from 1598 to 1607. The college leaned throughout its history to the Puritanic side of the religious question, and Richard Sibbes, master from 1626 to 1635, is one of those strongly Puritan divines who had the advantage of an Un............