Riches and Responsibility: the Financial History of Trinity College, Cambridge

Riches and Responsibility: the Financial History of Trinity College, Cambridge (2008) by Robert Neild. Hardcover, 166 pages.

In the summer of 2005 Robert Neild found that his college possessed detailed financial records going back to 1547, the first year of the college’s life. Having immersed himself in this archive, he traced the fortunes of Trinity College over more than four and a half centuries and looked into what caused the changes he observed. The result is a fascinating account of the evolution of the richest college in Britain and of the society around it.

We are shown how after Henry VIII, the founder of the College, and his daughters had made Trinity rich, it was brought to insolvency by a master who spent too lavishly on magnificent buildings, and how – after subsequent ups and downs and quarrels over the income – it was made richer than before by the investment skills of a recent senior bursar.