In 1631, Crashaw went up to Pembroke College,
Cambridge, and three years later took his degree; also,
in the same year, publishing a volume of Latin epigrams
on selected New Testament texts entitled Epigrammatum
Sacrorum Liber. In 1635, he became a Fellow of Peterhouse,
then the centre of Laudian High Churchmanship in
Cambridge. For eight years Crashaw enjoyed the 'little
contentfull kingdom', as he called it, of his 'beloved Patri-
mony in St. Peter'. Although the date of his ordination
is not known, he served, during this time, as curate in the
adjoining church of Little St. Mary's. His earliest biographer
refers in glowing terms to the eloquence of Crashaw's
preaching there ('those thronged Sermons on each Sunday
and Holiday, that ravished more like Poems . . . scattering
not so much Sentences as Extasies'). None of these, un-
fortunately, has survived.

It was in his Cambridge years, too, that Crashaw became
friendly with Nicholas Ferrar, founder of the Anglican com-
munity at Little Gidding, and was a frequent visitor at the
celebrated vigils there.

Like all his friends and colleagues, he was a staunch
Royalist; and two years after the outbreak of civil war he
was ejected from his Fellowship by the Parliamentary Com-
missioners. Thenceforth Crashaw's biography is a history of
rootlessness, frustration, and repeated disappointments. He
was for a time in Holland, and later in Paris; where, about
1646--according to the contemporary historian Anthony
à Wood--Cowley found him, 'being a meer Scholar and
very shiftless . . . in a sorry condition'. Crashaw had by now
become converted to the Roman Catholic faith; and
Henrietta Maria, exiled in Paris, addressed a dispatch to the
Pope recommending the poet and his edifying example
(praise echoed by Cowley in his elegy: