In October 1558 Lord Bolbec entered Queens’ College in Cambridge, where his father, though not a university man, had personal contacts. A key was ordered for the boy's room, and one Otte, a smith, hired to repair the lock:

On 14 November the young lord's name was entered on the University's matriculation register:

The previous March five boys had matriculated as impubes (‘immature’), and now, in November, four, including two others from Queens’. The following May eight matriculated, aged nine to twelve. No other boy from the period was quite as young as Lord Bolbec, but then no other was the son of an earl.

Boys were admitted to Cambridge colleges not because they were intellectually precocious, but because their families could afford to lodge them under the supervision of college dons, just as other well-heeled boys joined noble or royal households. Though impubes might receive instruction, they were not academically accountable. Indeed, ‘fellow commoners’ (as they were called) were ‘not in general considered as over full of learning’ – at least in later years. Lord Bolbec doubtless applied himself to such studies as were set for him, above all (one must imagine) to the mastery of Latin prose and verse.

In January 1559 the boy's name was entered on the books of St John's College:

Though he secured dining rights at this second college, he remained resident in Queens’:

These payments are for the repair of window-glass, which might have been broken from the inside or the outside. Either way, the young lord's presence spelled trouble for the college.

On 23 November 1558 Thomas Peacock, a staunch Roman Catholic, became President of Queens’.