Foundation

The Foundress of the College was Mary de St Pol, daughter of Guy de Chatillon and the widow of Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke. On Christmas Eve 1347 Edward III granted her the licence for the foundation. The original buildings comprised in a single court (now called First Court) all the component parts of a college - chapel, hall, kitchen and buttery, Master's lodgings, students' rooms - and the statutes provided for a manciple, a cook, a barber and a laundress. Both the founding of the College and the building of the chapel - the first college chapel in Cambridge - required the grant of a Papal Bull.

In the early part of the fifteenth century, three influential Fellows of Pembroke acted as advisors to Henry VI. They were William Lyndewode, who was author of the great compendium of canon law known as the Provinciale and was Keeper of the Privy Seal; John Somerset, who was the King's physician and afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer; and John Langton, who was the King's chaplain. It was on the recommendations of these counsellors that Henry undertook the foundation of Pembroke's great academic neighbour, King's College; he also made significant gifts to Pembroke, including the manor and advowson of Soham. Other notable Pembroke men of the fifteenth century were Laurence Booth, afterwards Archbishop of York, who built a library for the College, and Thomas Langton, who died just before his consecration as Archbishop of Canterbury and is best remembered today for his gift of the 'Anathema' Cup, which carries the unusual warning that anyone removing it will be cursed. Richard Fox, Master in the early years of the next century, became the founder of Corpus Christi College at Oxford.

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