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

Regarding the island in the village of Grantechestria, for it is the very city that Ranulph and Bede interpret as Cambridge, even if in Bede's time it was only a small city, deserted on account of wars, unless perhaps he says that the riverbed was also filled with the ruins of the ancient city, and a new origin of Cambridge. To this, if the village of Grantechestria was once a chief city and ancient, the later people seem much wiser than the former, who chose a more comfortable and pleasant place, both in waters and climate, for themselves. They are, therefore, vain things that a certain person has invented out of a desire for contention.

Ranulph. Bede.

For this city was ample, spread far and wide to the north and south of the city of Cambridge, beyond and on this side of the castle (which today exists mostly ruined, and kept for the assemblies of judges and the custody of thieves): from there to the chapel of the divine James, today enclosed and leveled to the ground, placed 500 paces from the castle, in the town (the monuments of the royal college testify that it was a town, which is called 'hows' both then and now), inhabited in ancient times, as I learned from the Barnwell history, now deserted: from here to the village of Newnham, beyond the mills, which extended itself further towards Grantechestria, the remnants of ancient Cambridge or Grantechestria still surviving, and referring to the name of the ancient city. The plows, which break up the fields between Grantechestria and Cambridge and overturn the foundations, and the monastery of the white monks, which was once there for 40 years, where they also made many cells, a church, a cloister, a dormitory, and necessary workshops, as John Swapham writes in the Barnwell history, testify that the habitation was extended further in both directions. Our age also saw it extended further, and recent memory retains it, not only ours, but of the men of our time. Even if today the city is against-

Io. Swapham, author of the Barnwell history.