Emmanuel College, Cambridge

Emmanuel College, Cambridge was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay (1520/21-1589), Chancellor of the Exchequer to Queen Elizabeth I, for the purpose of educating Protestant preachers. The college was puritan in its outlook, and its early statutes promoted a Spartan and disciplined regimen. Owing to its strong Protestant ethos, the College grew rapidly. By the 1620s, it was the largest in Cambridge. The College did not only expand physically. Over the course of the seventeenth century, it broadened its scope and developed into a centre of humanist and latitudinarian study.