Founder of the Royal Academy of Music, London in 1823.
Duchess of Kent and mother of Queen Victoria. The fourth daughter of Franz Friedrich Anton (Francis), duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (b. 1750), and his wife Augusta Caroline Sophia.
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.
Lord Thomas Audley’s son-in-law and successor, in virtue of his second marriage in 1558 to Margaret Audley, Thomas Audley’s daughter. A courtier and diplomat, who became probably the richest man in England, and who (fatally) planned to marry (as his fourth wife) Mary Queen of Scots. He was a benefactor to the College, though not to the extent promised (1564) in terms of funds and endowment, owing to imprisonment in 1568 and subsequent execution for treason. He made no appointment to the Mastership.
Father of Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria.
Ninth child of George III and Queen Charlotte.
Wife of Frederick VIII, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg; daughter of Ernst, 4th Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg.
The tenth child of George III and Queen Charlotte.
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.
1926 she went to St Hilda's College, Oxford, and in 1929 obtained First Class Honours in English language and literature.
1929 -1931 accepted a temporary post at the University of Birmingham.
1931-1934 worked as an assistant lecturer at the Royal Holloway College, London before returning to Birmingham where she joined the English department (1934–41).
In 1941 she returned to Oxford to become a tutor (1941–54), and later Fellow (1942–66), at her old college.
In 1954 she was made reader in Renaissance studies and after one set-back was elected in 1966 Merton professor of English language and literature, with a fellowship at Lady Margaret Hall. The distinction of being the first woman to hold this chair gave her special satisfaction. She exerted herself as a supervisor and was as successful as she was strict.
To her Oxford DLitt (1963) and Cambridge honorary LittD (1981) she added honorary degrees from eight other universities.
She was appointed CBE in 1962 and a DBE in 1967.
She was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1958, twice won the Crawshay prize (1952 and 1980), and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.
In person Helen Gardner was small and sturdy. Vivacious, temperamental, and occasionally overbearing, she appreciated good food and drink, liked to dress well, and revelled in parties where she talked well but, as she herself knew, too much. She was kinder in her actions than in her wit.
She retired in 1975 and died, unmarried, on 4 June 1986 in a nursing home at Bicester, Oxfordshire.
Born on in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State.
In December 1910 he won an exhibition to Exeter College, Oxford and went up to the University in 1911 to read Classics. In 1913 he achieved a Second and changed to study English. He achieved a First in his finals in 1915.
He served in France during the war including at the Battle of the Somme. In October 1916 he got Trench Fever and returned to England where he remained for the rest of the war.
1920 – appointed reader in English language at the University of Leeds.
1925 – 1945 held the Rawlinson and Bosworth chair of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University and was a Fellow of Pembroke College.
1945 – 1959 was the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College.
Tolkien was a close friend of C. S. Lewis, a co-member of the informal literary discussion group The Inklings.
He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972.
Amongst his work are The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Born in Willesden, north London, on 25 July 1897. Attended University College School in Hampstead in 1912.
In December 1915 he won a scholarship in history to Peterhouse, Cambridge but war service intervened and he was commissioned into the West Yorkshire regiment. He saw active service on the western front, chiefly as his battalion's signals officer. He was wounded and captured in the German offensive of March 1918 and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner.
Willey went up to Peterhouse in January 1919, and took the second part of the historical tripos in the summer of 1920, obtaining a First. He then switched to the newly established English tripos, taking a First in 1921. He won the Le Bas prize in 1922. He began to lecture (as a freelancer) for the English course in 1923.
Following the reorganisation of the University in 1926, he held one of the new probationary faculty lectureships at Cambridge for five years.
In 1934 he was appointed to a permanent lectureship, becoming a Fellow of Pembroke College in 1935.
On 20 July 1923 he married Zélie Murlis Ricks with whom he was to have two sons and two daughters. Following his marriage he and his family lived at 282 Hills Road, but in 1938 he commissioned an architectural colleague to design a much larger house on land at 18 Adams Road, where apart from two extended periods as a visiting professor in the USA, he lived until his death.
Willey's life coincided with, and was profoundly shaped by, the heyday of the Cambridge English tripos, which had been taught for the first time in 1919.
In 1946 he was elected Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's successor as the King Edward VII Professor at Cambridge, and he held the chair until retirement in 1964.
He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1947.
Subsequent honours included Fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature, an honorary DLitt from Manchester University, and an honorary fellowship at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was for twelve years chair of the Dove Cottage Trustees, and from 1958 to 1964 he served as president (vice-master) of his college.
He gave the Hibbert lectures in 1959.
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.
Master of Magdalene College, 1813 - 1853
Third son of 2nd Baron Braybrooke, he assumed the name of Grenville in recognition of a legacy from a maternal uncle. Educated at Trinity College.
He was appointed Master by his father at the controversial age of 24. This made him ineligible on two accounts as the Master should be 30 years of age 'or thereabouts' and in Holy Orders. The first was ignored and the second was resolved when he was hastily ordained deacon and priest on the same day in Trinity College Chapel.
As a Master of a College he valued good breeding and gentlemanly behaviour and was addicted to genealogy and noble pedigrees. Academic activity was low on his list of priorities.
To provide more undergraduate rooms he moved out of First Court and into a separate new Lodge in 1835.
He was also responsible for starting a project to transcribe and publish Samuel Pepys' diary which had lain unread and virtually unknown in the library [see Cunich, P., Hoyle, D., Duffy, E., Hyam, R., A History of Magdalene College Cambridge, 1428-1988 pp. 195-199 and Latham, R. C. Pepys and his Editors (Occasional Paper no 6, 1992, p. 2) for further details]
Vice-Chancellor, 1818-1819
Dean of Windsor, 1846
Arms in Hall glass, E3. Memorial brass in Chapel.
Admitted pensioner aged 17 at Magdalene College 22 May 1897
Son of Francis William Otter, of West Grinstead Lodge, West Grinstead, Horsham, [Sussex], deceased and Dorothea Mary Augusta, daughter of Sir Walter Wyndham Burrell, Bart.
Born 1879
Eton School, one term only
Matriculated, Michaelmas term 1897
Lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion, the Royal Sussex Regiment and served in the Great War.
Captain and Adjt., Sussex Yeomanry.
Married Patience Marion, only daughter of Sir Edmund Loder, Bart, on 21 June 1904
Had issue
Lived at Selehurst, Horsham, Sussex
Died on 6 August 1940 and is buried at Lower Beeding, Sussex
Matriculated in 1774; Senior Wrangler in 1778 aged 19
Made a Fellow in 1778
Appointed Tutor in 1782
Appointed Professor of Chemistry in 1794
President of the College in 1798
1813-1837 Jacksonian Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy
In 1800 he resigned his Tutorship (but not his University Professorship) and became Vicar of St Giles's parish in Cambridge. He had no previous experience of parochial work. By 1817 he had built two schoolrooms - one for 400 boys and one for 300 girls, and had englarged the church from his private benevolence.
In 1836 he became Rector of Little Stonham in Suffolk where he died on 12 January 1837.
A skilled engineering model-maker, he foresaw the time when steam would be the main power for travel by land and sea, and he predicted that the technology would one day be found to travel through the air. He was also an influential pioneer and agitator against the slave trade and played a leading part in the related inauguration of the Protestant missionary movement. Marsden, Brown, Robert Grant and Lord Glenelg were among his protégés.
Articles in the College Magazine:
Article: 'William Farish, 1759-1837', by Charles Smyth, College Magazine, No. 76, December 1937
Article, ''William Farish, 1759-1837', by Dr K. R. Webb, College Magazine, No. 86, Michaelmas 1955
First Master of Magdalene, 1544-1546.
Dean of Bangor Cathedral from 1534. At the time he was made Master he also held two rectories of Llaneingan and Aber in Carnarvonshire and the vicarage of Terrnington St John in Norfolk to which he had been presented by the Bishop of Ely in 1541. Had no connections with Cambridge prior to being made Master.
Master of Magdalene College, 1853-1904
Educated at Eton.
Matriculated at Magdalene in 1845 otaining a second in the Classical Tripos in 1849
Made a Bye-Fellow in 1849
Rector of Heydon, 1851-1902, Rural Dean of Saffron Walden, 1873-1879
Master of Magdalene, 1853-1904, sometimes with office of Bursar or Dean
Vice-Chancellor, 1859-1861 (during the residence of the Prince of Wales)
'As Master he performed his duties conscientiously, for a long time combining them with the tasks of Bursar, and occasionally acting as Dean. Although he was quite a good cricketer and enjoyed shooting he was neither a hunting nor a rowing man'. He was sufficiently popular with the undergraduates for a new boat to be named after him in 1877. He was not feared as a strict disciplinarian. His 50 year Mastership though oversaw the decline in the standards of the College leaving it on the brink of ruin.
A. C. Benson described him as 'a dear old man' and thought his wife was 'the evil genius of the place'. Her view was that 'the College was a disagreeable sort of incumbrance on the Mastership'.
In 1902 he became 6th Baron Braybrooke (following the deaths of his elder 3 brothers). This meant that for a short time he was Visitor and Master.
Eugene Power was born in Traverse City, Michigan and received his BA degree (1927) and his MBA (1930) from the University of Michigan.
During World War II, Power directed the microfilming of thousands of rare books and other printed materials in British libraries. He paid the library a minimal fee per exposure and then took the film to the United States where he sold copies to US libraries. The idea was both a clever business arrangement and a benefit to American scholars, who lacked access to European library collections. It was also an inventive form of preservation in light of wartime threats to libraries. Queen Elizabeth II knighted Power in the 1970s for this preservation work.
In 1938 he founded University Microfilms International in Michigan. The company merged microfilming with xerography, helping to make out-of-print books available for circulation again. The company also pioneered a business model for publishing limited-interest doctoral dissertations, becoming the publisher of record for all U.S. dissertations in 1951.
University Microfilms was acquired by the Xerox Corporation in 1962 for $8 million. Power continued to work for Xerox until his mandatory retirement in 1970 at the age of 65. The company he founded is now ProQuest.
In 1967, Power created the Power Foundation for Philanthropy. He donated funds to establish the Power Center for the Performing Arts at his alma mater, the University of Michigan. He also endowed a scholarship program at the university (affiliated for many years with Magdalene College at Cambridge University) and helped to buy the site of the Battle of Hastings in England to preserve it from real estate speculation.
Power served two terms as a regent of the University of Michigan, served on the council of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and became president of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges in 1970. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1975.
In 1987, Marion Island in Lake Michigan, was renamed "Power Island". Power died of Parkinson's disease in 1993 at the age of 88.
Master of Magdalene College, 1781-1797
Educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford in the late 1730s where he was a young tearaway, repeatedly in trouble for being drunk, even during divine service, which he often skipped. A major transformation in his character must later have taken place, perhaps due to his service as an Army Chaplain.
He lost his left arm 'when very young' the result of 'the unexpected going off of his companion's gun'. He was skilful in concealing the injury.
Married Martha Ferrar in 1755.
Vice-Chancellor, 1784-1785.
Dean of Peterborough, 1792-1797.
The first Anglican sermons against the slave trade were preached by Peckard in the College Chapel, leading to courageous and galvanic sermons in Great St Mary’s in 1783 and 1784, and to the prize essay which inspired Thomas Clarkson's campaign. Peckard was also a notable benefactor to the College.
Memorial brass in the Old Library.
College Mgazine:
Article: 'Peter Peckard', College Magazine, No. 1, 1956-57, pp.15-23
Article: 'The Peckard Bicentenary', College Magazine, vol. 42, 1997-98, pp. 29-31
Son of the Rev. Francis Jourdain (Pembroke College, Oxford), of Ashbourne vicarage, Derbyshire.
School - Derby.
Admitted as a Pensioner (age 18) on 1 August 1889.
Prizeman; Scholar, 1891; B.A. 1892.
Kept a school at Clifton, near Ashbourne in Derbyshire.
Served in the Great War, 1914-19 (Capt., R. Fusiliers; Staff Capt., War Office; wounded; Brevet-Major; mentioned in Secretary of State's List for "valuable services").
Of Charlynch, near Bridgwater in Somerset.
Died on 31 July 1942, in Newquay, Cornwall.