Christ's College | |
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First Court, Christ's College
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Arms of Christ's College, being the arms of the foundress Lady Margaret Beaufort: Royal arms of England a bordure componée azure and argent
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University | University of Cambridge |
Location | St Andrew's Street (map) |
Motto | Souvent me Souvient (Old French) |
Motto in English | I often remember |
Founders |
William Byngham (1437); nominally, King Henry VI (1448) |
Established | 1437; refounded 1505 |
Named for | Jesus Christ |
Previous names | God's House (1437–1505) |
Sister colleges |
Wadham College, Oxford Branford College, Yale Adams House, Harvard |
Master | Jane Stapleton |
Undergraduates | 450 |
Postgraduates | 170 |
Website | www |
JCR | www |
MCR | www |
Boat club | www |
Christ's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college includes the Master, the Fellows of the College, and about 450 undergraduate and 170 graduate students. The college was founded by William Byngham in 1437 as God's House. In 1505, the college was granted a new royal charter, was given a substantial endowment by Lady Margaret Beaufort, and changed its name to Christ's College, becoming the twelfth of the Cambridge colleges to be founded in its current form. The college is renowned for educating some of Cambridge's most famous alumni, including Charles Darwin and John Milton.
Within Cambridge, Christ's has a reputation for strong academic performance and tutorial support. It has averaged 1st place on the Tompkins Table from 1980–2006 and third place from 2006 to 2013.
As of 2015, it had an endowment of £157 million, making it one of the wealthier colleges in Cambridge.
Christ's College was founded by William Byngham in 1437 as God's House, on land which was soon after sold to enable the enlargement of King's College. Byngham obtained the first royal licence for God's House in July 1439. The college was founded to provide for the lack of grammar-school masters in England at the time, and the college has been described as "the first secondary-school training college on record". The original site of Godshouse was surrendered in 1443 to King's College, and currently about three quarters of King's College Chapel stands on the original site of God's House.
After the original royal licence of 1439, three more licenses, two in 1442 and one in 1446, were granted before in 1448 God's House received the charter upon which the college was in fact founded. In this charter, King Henry VI was named as the founder, and in the same year the college moved to its current site.
In 1505, the college was endowed by Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII, and was given the name Christ's College, perhaps at the suggestion of her confessor, the Bishop John Fisher. The expansion in the population of the college in the seventeenth century led to the building, in the 1640s, of the Fellow's Building in what is now Second Court.