Cambridge

Cambridge grew around the bridge over the Cam that gave the Saxons their Grantebrycge, at the edge of the Fens. Its first town charter came from Henry I between 1120 and 1131. The university began in 1209, when scholars fled Oxford after a townsman hanged two of their number, and its oldest college, Peterhouse, was founded in 1284. The Black Death of 1349 struck hard: sixteen of the forty scholars of King's Hall died, and the north of the town was almost wiped out.

Town and university clashed. After townsmen joined the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, a new charter of 1382 cut their liberties and gave the university charge of baking, brewing, and weights and measures. In 1446 Henry VI began King's College Chapel, which was finished under Henry VIII in 1515. Hobson's Conduit, built in the early 1600s, brought clean water from Nine Wells after repeated plagues, and in 1643 Parliament gave command of Cambridge to Oliver Cromwell, who had studied at Sidney Sussex College.