ar the
entrance gate of the College.

The Hospital had the opportunity of becoming the earliest College in
Cambridge. Hugo de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, obtained in 1280 a licence
from King Edward I. to introduce a certain number of scholars of the
University into the Hospital, to be governed according to the rules of
the scholars of Merton. The regular canons and the scholars were to form
one body and one College. The Bishop gave additional endowments to
provide for the scholars, but the scheme was a failure. Thomas Baker,
the historian of the College, suggests that "the scholars were overwise
and the brethren over good." All we do know is that both were eager to
part company. The Bishop accordingly removed the scholars in 1284 to his
College of Peterhouse, now known as the oldest College in Cambridge. His
endowments were transferred with the scholars, and perhaps something
besides, for shortly afterwards the brethren complained of their losses.
It was then decreed that Peterhouse should pay twenty shillings
annually to the Hospital, an acknowledgment of seniority still made by
Peterhouse to St. John's College.

For another two hundred years the Hospital went on, not however
forgetting its temporary dignity, and occasionally describing itself, in
leases of its property, as the College of St. John.

Towards the end of the fifteenth, or beginning of the sixteenth century,
the old house seems to have fallen into bad ways. The brethren were
accused of having squandered its belongings, of having granted
improvident leases, of having even sold the holy vessels of their
Chapel.

At this juncture the Lady Margaret came to the rescue. She had already
founded Christ's College in Cambridge, and intended to still further
endow the wealthy Abbey of Westminster. Her religious adviser, John
Fisher, sometime Master of Michael-House and President of Queens'
College in Cambridge, then Bishop of Rochester and Chancellor of the
University, persuaded her to bestow further gifts on Cambridge,
suggesting the Hospital of St. John as the basis for the new College.
The then Bishop of Ely, James Stanley, was her stepson, and in 1507 an
agreement was entered into with him for the suppression of the Hospital
and the foundation of the College, the Lady Margaret undertaking to
obtain the requisite Bull from the Pope, and the licence of the King.
Before this could be carried out King Henry VII. died, 21st April 1509,
and the Lady Margaret on the 29