Sidney Sussex college Cambridge University 2022，一个女人捐赠的学院

Описание: Sidney Sussex College is located in the historic heart of Cambridge. Sidney is one of the smaller Cambridge Colleges, and is renowned for its warm and welcoming atmosphere and friendly community.

Founded in 1596 by Lady Frances Sidney, Countess of Sussex, the College is home to a diverse and dynamic community of around 355 undergraduate students, 275 postgraduate students, and 80 Fellows.

Sidney is a very well-kept secret - whether it's our Nobel Prize-winners, Elizabethan brickwork, charming Cloister Court, the haunting Chapel, exquisite rococo Hall, medieval cellars, or beautiful ancient gardens - they all lie behind a self-effacing wall of Roman cement.

Sidney Fellows and students from 1596 have made a huge impact on all aspects of the nation's culture, religion, politics, business, legal and scientific achievements. It has also found time to produce soldiers, political cartoonists, alchemists, spies, murderers, ghosts and arsonists as well as media personalities, film and opera directors, a Premiership football club chairman, best-selling authors, the man who introduced soccer to Hungary, the 1928 Grand National winner and, so they say, Sherlock Holmes. And let's not forget the University Challenge Champions of Champions, 2002.

If you wanted to study the history of Britain over the last four hundred years, you could do worse than study the history of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

As far as the College foundation is concerned there are still many unanswered intriguing questions - about the Foundress, Lady Frances Sidney, aunt of the famous poet Sir Phillip Sidney, and her life with the top courtier and soldier the Earl of Sussex, her role at Elizabeth's court as advisor and patron of literature and music, her homes in Bermondsey near the royal palace at Greenwich, and at the magnificent New Hall at Boreham, Essex, close to the Mildmay family who founded Emmanuel, a sister protestant college. What links were there between these dynasties and why did Lady Frances want to found a college in Cambridge at all?

Lady Frances's will was written just after the Armada, five years after her husband's death (he had been a loyal catholic under Mary and a fierce rival of Leicester and his protegé, Frances's nephew, Sir Philip Sidney). Was it her idea to leave a small sum to found a College, or was it an idea generated under the powerful influence of her theological mentor Archbishop Whitgift and his circle? Whitgift was a moderate Calvinist and cruel enemy of radical puritanism who nevertheless wanted a serious transformation of the training of English priests - Sidney would have been an ideal opportunity to support this as an 'advance guard' in the creation of a powerful new nation.

What exactly were the accusations against Lady Frances by those 'complotting' her ruin, as she put it, in the fraught 1580s, which made her want to leave grand physical monuments, (the funeral one at Westminster Abbey as well as the 'goodly and godly' one at Cambridge which interests us), to help repair her reputation? A libellous pamphlet by Arthur Hall, a notorious rogue MP, who tried to woo her was burned by her nephews the Harrington family in 1588. How much were Renaissance ideas of personal honour, evident in her and the College's motto, ‘Dieu me garde de calomnie’, motivating her benefaction?

Lady Frances died in 1589 and her will's main executors, supervised by Whitgift, were Sir John Harrington, among other things guardian of the doomed Princess Elizabeth, and the lawyer Henry Grey, Earl of Kent. Without them Sidney would never have been founded. When it was easier to give the money to Clare, as the will allowed, why did they persist against such difficulties as those they faced between the reading of the will in 1589 and St. Valentine's Day 1596 when the deed was signed?