The will of John Tracy, Fellow of Gonville and Caius, is a revealing document. Composed in April 1579, Tracy not only declared his faith in Christ as his ‘onlye savior & redemer’, and declared that he believed himself among the saved, but also explicitly rejected Catholic doctrine, stating that ‘no wourke or wourkes of men be they never so beauetifull or gloriouse in the sight of the world can meritt any one jott or part of our salvacion’. This seems almost combative, and certainly directly confrontational: this is not just a Protestant statement, but a sideswipe at Catholic teachings. It thus fits neatly within a narrative of conflict and a growing group within Cambridge who considered themselves among the godly.

Yet this will also offers insight into another, quieter story, for it gives some idea of Tracy's social world within the university. He left money for the ‘poore scholers’ of his original college, Peterhouse, but also left a ring – ‘for a small remebraunce’ – to the Master of that college, the much-derided Andrew Perne. Tracy also gave similar tokens to seven of his fellow members of Gonville and Caius. Just a few years later all of these men – Thomas Legge, Richard Swale, Robert Church, Stephen Perse, John Paman, Richard Gerrard and Paul Gold – would be involved in the bitter, strongly confessional disputes within the college, and not all on the same side. In the course of this it would be declared that two years earlier – so within a year of Tracy writing his will – the college scholars ‘seemed to be divided into protestauntes & papistes’, a conflict itself reflecting a deep schism within the college Fellowship. Yet Tracy could apparently not just remain civil with both groups but retain some personal fondness for all these men, as expressed by the rings that he bestowed upon them. He also gave cheaper rings to all the other college Fellows. This bequest, then, seems to be an expression of communal feeling and identity, and of a type of fellowship that might, in theory at least, cross confessional lines. This, then, is a very different type and a very different pace of religious change.

It is exactly this slower, more incremental reformation that this chapter seeks to explore.