Cambridge University was chartered early in the thirteenth
century, and much of the town's medieval architecture still
remains: winding streets, spired churches, and turreted
buildings. Sir Christopher Wren designed the chapel of Pembroke
College in 1663. Early in the nineteenth century, Cambridge was
a center of Greek-Revival architecture, including William
Wilkins's neoclassical Downing College (begun in 1806).
Cambridge has long been associated with statesmen and jurists
such as Sir William Cecil, Edward Coke, Robert Walpole, and
William Pitt the Younger. The distinguished poets and writers at
Cambridge include Christopher Marlowe (BA 1584, MA 1587), Edmund
Spenser, John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Robert
Herrick, Sir John Suckling, John Milton (MA 1632), Andrew
Marvell, Thomas Gray (BA 1738, Regius Professor of Modern
History 1768), Laurence Sterne, Horace Walpole, Byron, and
Coleridge. Wordsworth was at St. John's College from 1787 to
1791, but failed to take a degree. Cambridge was also a ce