Reminiscences of the University, Town and County of Cambridge, from the Year 1780

Henry Gunning (1768 1854) was a Bedell at the University of Cambridge for over sixty years, and in this capacity attended on the Vice-Chancellor at official ceremonies and published the results of votes held in the Senate House. This two-volume work, written shortly before his death, and published posthumously in 1854, was controversial. News of its publication caused consternation about what he might say, and senior members of the University are noticeably absent from the subscription list. Gunning had been active in town politics as well as university affairs, and, though he includes amusing and perhaps embarrassing anecdotes about Cambridge figures, he is not malicious. He makes it clear that Cambridge was at a low point academically when he arrived as a student, but he lived to see the beginnings of reform in the Victorian period. Volume 1 deals with his life from 1784 to 1794, when he became a Bedell.