The University of Cambridge

James Bass Mullinger (1834-1917) was a University Lecturer in History and Librarian at St. John’s College, Cambridge. His monumental three-volume history of the university was the standard one at the turn of the twentieth century. For most of his career Mullinger worked on the project alongside his academic duties and his writing for periodicals, the first volume appearing in 1873 and the last in 1911. His extraordinary range of knowledge and the sheer scale of the work make this ambitious project a landmark in the history of universities in Britain. Volume 2 covers 1535-1625, a century that saw the most turbulent changes in the university as in the country as a whole. In particular, Mullinger shows how the Reformation was enthusiastically supported by Cambridge men, and how it affected education in the period, ending with an assessment of the divisions that were to lead to the Civil War.