500 Years of Women at Christ's
4 November 2018
It seems appropriate that, as we celebrate the anniversary of the admission of female students to Christ’s, the beautiful stained-glass window behind me reminds us that women have played a role in the College for rather longer than 40 years. Depicted in front of Christ’s as it would have looked in the early sixteenth century is our Foundress, Lady Margaret Beaufort – mother of the Tudor dynasty, a woman renowned for her learning and piety, and possessed of substantial political and legal authority. Yet the Chapel building also reminds us of the challenges of being a woman with power in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It is a commonly repeated story that Lady Margaret was prevented from setting foot in her all-male College, and was instead confined to the upper floors of the Master’s Lodge during her visits. The entrance to Christ’s known as Chapel Gate was, if not constructed for her use, then certainly served to facilitate her admission to the College. I like the legend – which like all such stories probably contains at least a grain of truth – that the oriel window above the choir stalls was installed so that she could keep an eye on her Fellows and students. The same is often said of the two windows above High Table in Hall.
On the basis of these restrictions to where Lady Margaret could go in Christ’s, it has sometimes been assumed that women were entirely prevented from crossing the threshold. It’s true that Lady Margaret’s Statutes, drawn up in 1506 and not superseded for some centuries, forbade Fellows and students from marrying or bringing women into any rooms of the College, which – the statutes state – ‘we desire no woman shall enter’. But that’s not the end of the story – or even the sentence. For in the same breath as women were prevented from entering the College, they were also permitted admittance. For it was desired that no woman shall enter ‘unless she be thoroughly honest, and very rarely, excepting at a time of sickness, one known and approved by the Master’. From this we learn that women were occasionally allowed entrance with the permission of the Master, and that some women – such as nurses – could move more or less freely in College at times of plague or illness. This is far from a ringing endorsement of the inclusion of women in the sixteenth-century Christ’s community, but it nevertheless reveals something not simply about their presence in College but also the vital functions they were called upon to perform.
There have, in fact, always been women at Christ’s. Ever since Lady Margaret’s days, a small army of female staff has served the College in numerous ways. As part of the 40th anniversary celebrations, I have been researching some of these women. My training as a historian – training that I am fortunate enough to owe in large part to Christ’s – has taught me that it can be difficult to recover the experiences of these women and details about their lives and work. Nevertheless it is possible to gain some insights into the long history of women at Christ’s, and the general absence of archival material concerning female staff only makes the evidence we do have all the more striking and poignant.
When I sat down to write my address for this evening, I started to think particularly about the question of space – the physical topography of the College and the places to which women have historically been denied or granted access. We have already noted how some places – such as Chapel, or Hall – have had their architecture adapted to suit a Founder whose gender prevented her from inhabiting many of the College’s all-male spaces. But if we start to think about the staff of Christ’s, rather than its Fellows or students, we can build up a rather different picture. My hunch is that the clause in the Statutes forbidding women entry onto College property never referred to the staff, but simply to those women whom it was thought would distract the students and Fellows from their academic studies.
There are two examples of places in Christ’s where women would have been a frequent presence, one perhaps more surprising than the other. The first is the Master’s Lodge. Since the late sixteenth-century, when Cambridge Masters were first permitted by Elizabeth I to get married, the Lodge has been used as a family home. Not only did Masters’ wives and children live in the Lodge, but so too did the female staff required to attend them – at various times a housekeeper, a lady’s maid, a governess and nanny, and maidservants to assist with the running of the house. Most of these women, like Lady Margaret before them, would have had their movement around the College restricted, coming and going only through Chapel Gate.
Perhaps more surprisingly, we might think about the Porters’ Lodge as a family home too. The role of porter tended to pass down through families, and the extended families of porters were also commonly employed in other roles in Christ’s. By contrast with today, the Porter’s Lodge was also a residential building – and sometimes it must have been quite a squeeze. The 1841 census suggests that, at the time, it was occupied by brothers Laud and Thomas Nichols – the head porter and under porter respectively – as well as Laud’s wife, his five daughters, and two female servants. More remarkably still, and because working for Christ’s was a family affair, the wives of porters could also be called upon to fulfil the duties of porter. This was the case, for example, in 1710, when Goodwife Furnase, the wife of porter George Furnase, took over his duties after his death. If anything, then, the Porters’ Lodge was – at times – a space dominated by women – an image that stands in stark contrast with how we might imagine College 150 years ago.
As we celebrate 40 years since our College – founded by a woman, five centuries ago – first began to afford women the same educational and academic opportunities as men, it is important not to forget the other vital roles that women have always – and continue – to perform at Christ’s. It is heartening, in light of the long history of women at Christ’s, that for forty years women have been able to participate fully in all aspects of College life and not simply to watch on through specially installed windows – and very good to see ample evidence of this here tonight.