Historiae Cantebrigiensis Academiae ab urbe condita, liber primus [-secundus]

Refutation of the Oxford arguments.

and of Grantechestria, an error prevailed in the same matter due to the varied naming, so that one city was held to be two: and that it was said that Cambridge grew from the ruins of Grantechestria (which now exists): and that they claim there were three orders of men in Grantechestria, scholars, athletes, and wrestlers, and citizens: and that they say a king lived in it, that he pronounced justice, and that where the small estate or manor of Burghwash is now, as it is today, with elms, with a triple trench, once wet, now dry, and fortified with a double rampart, they claim it was a royal palace: not knowing that Cambridge was once called Grantechestria, and that both were one and the same city. That all these things were in the city of Grantechestria, as it was that Cambridge and a gymnasium, and not different and separate, one can know from the fact that writers report that scholars lived in it, that it was the palace of Guthelinus, that a king pronounced justice in it, and that when he died, Martia his wife reigned in it (because Cecilius his son was not yet mature for the kingdom) and that she sanctioned the Martian laws in it, and she, when she had fulfilled her life, was buried at Cambridge, together with her husband Guthelinus, next to the tower of the stars, which the astronomer Nobicianus built to contemplate the stars. That it was one city is also shown by the fact that two such great cities positioned so close to each other would not agree well in matters and negotiation, since one would have harmed the other greatly, like Florence and Fiesole. The Oxonian, however, thinks there were two, new and old; he calls the new one Cambridge, which now is, and the old one Grantechestria, a village placed nearby, and thinks that one grew from the ruins of the other. But if the village of Grantechestria is an ancient city, where is the river Canta, or Granta, upon which it is placed? Where is the paved bridge? But will he also say that those things were transferred here? For now the Granta not only washes Cambridge, but also flows between it, and as if by a bridge once in-