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Belgian diplomat, administrator, politician and writer.

Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham succeeded to the title as a boy in 1460. He became Lord High Constable of England, and perhaps the wealthiest Duke in England. Traditionally regarded as a benefactor of the Monks’ Hostel (financing the nucleus of First Court), though it is not obvious why he should have volunteered this role, and we now prefer to speak of the ‘Buckingham Benefactor’, maybe his grandmother, the Dowager Duchess, Anne Neville. At some point in the 1470s, Monks’ Hostel became known as Buckingham College. The Duke, after turning against Richard III, was executed for treason.

Benefactor of Buckingham College, who built part of First Court, probably including the Hall, 1519, but thereafter got into serious debt. ‘Formidable alike by his descent, his wealth, his wide estates, and his connections’ (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), he was a possible contender for the throne, leading to his trial and execution for treason, on very flimsy grounds.

An archaeologist, geologist and Royal Air Force (RAF) veteran who pioneered the use of aerial photography as a method of archaeological research in Britain and Ireland. He was Professor of Aerial Photographic Studies at the University of Cambridge from 1973 to 1980.

Granson of Nicholas Spierinck (c. 1470 - 1546) from the Netherlands. He left prior to 1500 and went first to Lille in France before arriving in Cambridge c. 1501. He was a book binder / stationer and also a beer brewer. He left the Cross Keys Inn to his grandon Nicholas in his will.

In 1534 Henry VIII granted the University the right to nominate three printers and sellers of books to print books approved by the Chancellor and to sell them in the University and elsewhere. Nicholas, along with Garrett Godfrey and Segar Nicholson, became one of the first three printers of what later became the Cambridge University Press.

Politician, agriculturist and sportsman.

An English painter and teacher of art, regarded as one of the foremost British portrait painters of his day. Born in Hammersmith, Spear attended the local art school before going on to the Royal College of Art in 1930. He began his teaching career at Croydon School of Art, later teaching at the Royal College of Art from 1948 to 1975, where his students included Sandra Blow

Dr Howard Somervell was a member of the 1922 and 1924 British Mount Everest Expeditions.

Howard Somervell was born on 16 April 1890, the eldest of three children and elder son of William Henry Somervell, of Brantfield, Kendal, and his wife, Florence Howard. His father worked for Somervell Brothers of Kendal, later more widely known as K Shoes. He was educated at Rugby School (1904–9) but was unhappy there. When he was eighteen he became a member of the Keswick-based Fell and Rock Climbing Club and thus started a lifetime's devotion to the mountains of the English Lake District.

Somervell went to Caius College, Cambridge, where he obtained first classes in both parts of the Natural Sciences Tripos (1911 and 1913). He then served with the British Expeditionary Force in France (1915–18) as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and was mentioned in dispatches. After the war he graduated from London's University College Hospital (MB, BCh, 1921) and became FRCS in 1920.

Somervell's Everest ambitions were stimulated in 1921 during mountaineering trips in Britain and Europe. He realised that the Himalayan region called for constant movement above 20,000 ft. Everest was to be his physical test in 1922 and 1924, but his colleagues commented too on his mental endurance.

Somervell wrote of Mallory that his outlook on life was "lofty and choice, human and loving and in a measure divine".

In 1924 Somervell was in danger of choking to death, E. F. Norton wrote: 'Somervell very nearly choked, and was handicapped for three days. Only saved by coughing up the obstructing matter with a lot of blood. That he achieved what he did in this condition was a remarkable performance'.

After the 1922 Everest expedition he set out to see India. He saw that it was ill-equipped medically and poorly provided for in the skills which he possessed. When he visited the main hospital of the south Travancore medical mission and its group of outstations centred on Neyyoor, he found only one qualified surgeon, Stephen Pugh, struggling with a queue of waiting patients which would take ten days to reduce. Somervell offered to perform those overdue operations. He returned to London and told his friends in London hospitals that he had decided to devote his life to India after another attempt on Everest. He joined the 1924 expedition on which Mallory and Irvine died.

From 1924 to 1949 Somervell worked for the south Travancore medical mission which, with its branch hospitals, could claim to be the largest of its kind in the world. He attracted young surgeons to work with him, especially in the surgery of the stomach. Somervell also pioneered the modern treatment of leprosy believing that it could be cured. His home for leprosy patients had four big dormitories for eighty patients, and there was also a leprosy settlement for permanent residents. By 1936 several scores of patients had been sent home cured and free from all symptoms of the disease.

In 1938 he was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind gold medal, and was appointed OBE in 1953.

He accepted the post of associate professor of surgery at the Vellore Christian Medical College (1949–61), then at a crucial stage of its development as a teaching hospital. It was a fitting climax to his forty years' service in India.

He died on 23 January 1975. Sir Francis Younghusband described him as 'a man of science, a man of art, a man of warm humanity and of strong religious feeling'.

Renowned for his amorous escapades and as the founder in 1819 of the ‘four-in-hand club’ and leader of the Badminton and Windsor hunts.

Author, journalist and literary hostess.

An English mezzotint engraver and print seller. Closely associated with the portrait painter Godfrey Kneller, Smith was one of leading exponents of the mezzotint medium during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and was regarded among first English-born artists to receive international recognition, alongside the younger painter William Hogarth.

An undergraduate at St John’s College, Cambridge, who matriculated in 1817. Smith was invited by the Master of Magdalane College to transcribe Samuel Pepys's diary in readiness for publication - a task which he commenced in 1819 and completed in 1822. A clergyman by profession, Smith became Rector of Baldock in 1832 and continued there until his death in 1870.

In the College Magazine
Photograph - a much later photograph (full length and bearded) as frontispiece - this photograph was presented to the College, but is now lost, College Magazine, No. 52 (1926) pp. 65-66

Latham, R. C. Pepys and His Editors (Occasional Paper No. 6, 1992) p. 2.

Mary Skinner became Pepys' mistress after the death of his wife and remained with him until the end of his life, accepted by his friends and his family as his partner.

Lydia Huntley Sigourney published over dozens of volumes of poetry and essays. Her poetry frequently engages native American and anti-slavery concerns within a religious context, and often takes the form of elegy.