H. F. Fletcher states that the College in which one studied was the ‘most significant factor in the education of any individual student’, and Emmanuel College gave a distinctive, formative experience to its students in a number of ways. It also played an influential role in the shaping of seventeenth-century England – both Old and New – and alumni contributed to major religious conferences in the seventeenth century, including Hampton Court, the Synod of Dordt and, during Venning's lifetime, the Westminster Assembly.

Emmanuel College had been founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay (1520/1–89), with Laurence Chaderton as Master (d.1640). It was to educate:

This was a vision shared – with mixed religious and political motives – by the College's benefactors, which had included Sir Francis Walsingham. Due to its stated purpose, its reputation for puritanism was an early development; although Mildmay denied that Emmanuel was a ‘Puritan foundation’ to Queen Elizabeth. Given the negative connotations attached to the term, and Elizabeth's disapproval, he was hardly likely to do otherwise. In fact, the very name of the College, derived from the Hebrew Messianic title of Isaiah 7:14, had been used as a superscript and greeting between zealous evangelicals in their correspondence during the second half of the sixteenth century. Prince notes of Emmanuel that it was a ‘Colledge famous for having sent forth, many excellent Preachers’, while John Evelyn had also described it as ‘that zealous house’. In fact, the ‘influence of the college would be a continual thread in the fortunes of English and North American Puritanism between the 1580s and 1640s’.

The Academic Staff

Emmanuel College consisted of a Master, fourteen Fellows, fifty scholars and ten poor scholars, which, including other staff and students, totalled 310 individuals. At the same time, Queen's College had 190 individuals, Christ's College a combined population of 166, and Trinity College, a combined body of 440 staff and students.