12-The Professor's Bombshell

It is 1567, and the Puritan Thomas Cartwright returns to Cambridge after
two years away in Ireland, where he has been serving as chaplain to the
Archbishop of Armagh. This Cartwright is a scholarly thirty-two year old,
an intellectual of high order. According to Theodore Beza’s estimate, ‘the
sun does not see a more learned man’, an opinion shared by others who are
in a position to judge. Cartwright has come back to Cambridge to take up
his Fellowship at Trinity once again.
He has enjoyed a long acquaintance with the ancient halls of learning
clustered around the Cam at the southern tip of the Fens; indeed, he has
already achieved a most distinguished academic career in the University.
Entering Clare Hall as a boy of twelve, twenty years before this return
from Ireland, he had gone on to St John’s two years later as a scholar under
Thomas Lever. Then on to London for legal studies in 1556 at the age of
eighteen. He returned to Cambridge in 1560, this time as Fellow at Trinity.
Then he moved on to become a Fellow at his old college, St John’s,
serving as junior Dean for a short while in 1562. After which, back to
Trinity as major Fellow until 1565. During these years, he engaged himself
in the vigorous Puritan controversy in the University over vestments, and
his arguments were successful in bringing into Trinity the reforms already
in place at St John’s. Now, in 1567, after two years absence Cartwright is
back at Trinity once again, this time to be the University preacher.