Showing 376 results

Son of Richard Cave of Stanford, Northamptonshire and his second wife Margaret, daughter of John Saxby of Northampton. Spent five years from late 1524 to 1529 in convent of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in Europe, being made a Knight of the Order in 1525. From 1529 was commander of the Order in Yeaveley and Barrow in Derbyshire. He was summoned back to Malta in 1535, but only got as far as Vienne before being sent back to England by the new Grand Master for an urgent meeting with Henry VIII. Cave's hopes of transferring to the more prestigious commandery of Shingay in Cambridgeshire were disappointed when the English Grand Prior's nephew was elected instead. The order was dissolved in 1540 and Cave committed to Protestantism. He was given a pension and the use of a house in London, became a servant to the King, focussed on his family's wool business, and when former religious were permitted to marry, married a wealthy widow, Margaret Holte, née Willington. He was MP for Leicestershire during Edward VI's reign and lived quietly under Mary I, serving as MP for Warwickshire in her last parliament and in 1553 becoming manager of one of her sister Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I)'s estates. He was immediately appointed to Elizabeth's Privy Council and made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He was MP for Warwickshire in 1559 and 1563, visited the north in 1561 to report on problems there, and served on numerous commissions including those to enforce the Acts of Uniformity and Supremacy.
Cave had one child, Margaret, who in 1565 married Sir Henry Knollys at a ceremony attended by the Queen. His extended family at the Savoy included his nieces, whose fathers, Cave's brothers, had died, and the children of other deceased relatives whose wardships he had acquired. His wife probably died in 1561. He died on 2 April 1568 and his funeral service was conducted at the Savoy Chapel, although he was buried at Stanford.

Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, was born in Westminster to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, and his wife Lady Mildred, on the 1st of June 1563. Due to a sickly childhood, Cecil was educated at home by his notably-learned mother, and also tutors; one of these tutors was almost certainly Richard Howland, who would go on to become bishop of Peterborough and Master of St John’s College. The family’s mansion was often used to entertain the royal court, so Cecil was likely acquainted with Queen Elizabeth I from his childhood.

In 1580, Cecil was admitted to Gray’s Inn. The following year he was also at Cambridge, but never obtained a degree. He was tutored at home by William Wilkinson, a fellow of St John’s, before travelling to Paris. He spent the next several years travelling and sitting in the House of Commons. He was knighted in 1591, and subsequently elevated to the privy council. In the same year, he also became the high steward of Cambridge University. At the time, his father was the acting secretary of state, and Cecil often assisted him with his work. In 1596, he was finally granted the title of secretary of state for himself, after seemingly being poised to take the role for several years.

Cecil competed with Elizabeth I’s favourite, the Earl of Essex, for various positions both before and after the death of his influential father. In May 1599 Cecil became master of the wards, a position which Essex had hoped for and which had previously been held by Burghley. The pair also clashed over their opinions on foreign policy; Essex sought escalation of warfare, while Cecil desired peace. Cecil went on to collect evidence against Essex after his 1601 revolt, and spoke at the trial which led to his execution.

After Essex’s death, Cecil was widely recognised as the most powerful privy councillor. Because of this, he was able to undertake a secret-- and technically treasonous-- correspondance with James VI of Scotland to assure him of his future ascension to the English throne. As Elizabeth’s health failed, Cecil drafted the proclamation of the new king’s ascension. His friendliness with James I ensured that Cecil held his privy council position in the court of the new king. He was also appointed lord high steward to the king’s wife. Cecil’s power increased under James I, owing in part to the king’s frequent absences from court. Cecil led the commission to investigate the Guy Fawkes plot. His position under James was cemented on the 4th of May, 1605, when Cecil was elevated to the earldom of Salisbury. In 1608, he also became the lord treasurer.

Cecil married Elizabeth Brooke, a servant of Elizabeth I, in August 1589. She was a favourite of the queen, and her influence likely contributed greatly to Cecil’s early career. They had a son, William, in 1591, and a daughter, Frances, in 1593. However, a third pregnancy sadly led to a miscarriage and Lady Cecil’s death in January of 1597. She was buried at Westminster Abbey on the insistence of the Queen, and Cecil never remarried. He died on the 24th of May, 1612.

Son of Richard Cecil of Stamford, Lincolnshire, and Jane Heckington of Bourne, Lincolnshire. Richard Cecil's father, David Cecil, was from a minor gentry family on the Welsh border and joined Henry Tudor's army, becoming one of his bodyguards and serjeant-at-arms. He moved to Stamford because a relative and patron, David Philips, lived there. Philips was a servant of Lady Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother and founder through her will of St John's College. David Cecil and his son Richard were both active in local affairs and held positions of authority, advancing their social standing. Richard Cecil became Lord Burghley through his wife. His son William succeeded as Lord Burghley on his father's death in 1533. William Cecil was educated at Stamford and Grantham Schools before matriculating at St John's in 1535, where he studied for six years although he did not take his degree.
He married Mary Cheke in 1541, sister of John Cheke, a fellow of St John's. They had one son, Thomas Cecil, before Mary died in February 1544. Cecil married Mildred Cooke in Dec. 1545. Mildred was one of the four daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, governor to Prince Edward (later Edward VI).
Cecil trained as a lawyer, entering Gray's Inn in 1541. He entered royal service when his father obtained for him the office of chief clerk of the court of common pleas, and thereafter advanced rapidly. He was knighted in 1551. A convinced Protestant, he retired from office during Mary I's reign but remained in the country and on good terms with the government. Cecil sat in Parliament in the reigns of all three of Henry VIII's children.
He entered the service of the Princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I) when she appointed him her surveyor in 1550. He had links to her circle through men such as Roger Ascham, her tutor and a fellow of St John's (both he and John Cheke were renowned Greek scholars). He built up a close relationship with Elizabeth and on her accession she appointed him Secretary of State. One of his most significant early successes was in persuading the Queen to give assistance to Scottish Protestant lords who asked for England's aid to remove the French army that had gathered in Scotland at the invitation of Mary, Queen of Scots and consort of Francis II of France (d Dec. 1560) while she declared her claim to the English throne. Elizabeth did not want to spend the money, engage in warfare, or to be seen to be aiding rebels against an anointed monarch, whereas Cecil saw not just the immediate threat but the long-term benefit of having a Protestant regime as neighbour, which he hoped would ally with England rather than its traditional alliance with France. As Elizabeth's pre-eminent councillor he took the lead in advising her on all matters of public business, foreign and domestic. In 1570 Elizabeth gave him authority to stamp her signature on routine official documents. In February 1571 he was created Baron Burghley. In 1572 he resigned the office of Secretary of State in order to become Lord Treasurer, and was made a member of the Order of the Garter. Burghley, with Francis Walsingham (Secretary of State from 1573 until his death in 1590), continued to take the lead and manoeuvre the Queen and government through all the domestic and foreign business of Elizabeth's reign until his death in 1598. He founded a political dynasty and built up a large library and gave assistance to scholars, having a particular interest in history, cartography, geography, and contemporary science. He was Chancellor of Cambridge University from 1559 until his death.

Abbot of Peterborough from 1528. First Bishop of Peterborough on the diocese's creation in 1541.

King of Britain and Ireland whose authoritarian rule and quarrels with Parliament provoked a civil war that led to his execution.
Charles I was born in Dunfermline Castle, Scotland, on 19 November 1600. He was the third child of James VI of Scotland (subsequently James I of England; 1566–1625) and his Danish wife, Anne (1574–1619), having been preceded by Henry (1594–1612) and Elizabeth (1596–1662). He was created duke of Albany at his baptism and duke of York in 1605. In Scotland he was placed in the care of Lord and Lady Fyvie, who brought him up until the age of four; he then moved to England and the household of Sir Robert and Lady Carey. Thomas Murray, a Scottish presbyterian who later became provost of Eton, oversaw his education. After his brother Henry's death in 1612 he became the sole male heir to the kingdoms of Britain and Ireland.
From the age of twelve Charles was brought up to be a king and he was gradually instructed in every aspect of rule by his father. On 3 November 1616 he was created prince of Wales. He was made a member of the privy council and sat on the naval commission.
In 1623, before succeeding to the throne, Charles made an incognito visit to Spain in order to conclude a marriage treaty with the daughter of King Philip III. When the mission failed, he pressed his father for war against Spain. In the meantime a marriage treaty was arranged with Henrietta Maria, sister of the French king, Louis XIII.
In March 1625, Charles I became king and married Henrietta Maria soon afterward. The Spanish war was proving a failure and Charles offered Parliament no explanations of his foreign policy or its costs. Problems soon arose between the new king and the Commons, and Parliament refused to vote him the right to levy tonnage and poundage (customs duties) though this right had been granted to previous monarchs for life.
The country then became involved in a war with France as well as with Spain and, in desperate need of funds, the king imposed a forced loan, which his judges declared illegal. He then dismissed the chief justice and ordered the arrest of more than 70 knights and gentlemen who refused to contribute.
By the time Charles’s third Parliament met (March 1628), the king’s government was thoroughly discredited. The House of Commons set out its complaints in the Petition of Right. By the time the fourth Parliament met in January 1629, the king’s chief advisor Lord Buckingham had been assassinated. During that parliament the speaker was held down in his chair and three resolutions were passed condemning the king’s conduct. Charles realized that such behaviour was revolutionary. For the next 11 years he ruled his kingdom without calling a Parliament.
In order that he might no longer be dependent upon parliamentary grants, he now made peace with both France and Spain. But in 1639 Charles became involved in a war against the Scots.
Charles summoned a Parliament that met in April 1640—later known as the Short Parliament—in order to raise money for the war against Scotland. The House insisted first on discussing grievances against the government and showed itself opposed to a renewal of the war; so, on May 5, the king dissolved Parliament again. A Scottish army crossed the border in August and the king’s troops panicked before a cannonade at Newburn. Charles summoned another Parliament, the Long Parliament, which met at Westminster in November 1640.
Charles was then forced to agree to a measure whereby the existing Parliament could not be dissolved without its own consent. On November 22, 1641, the Commons passed by 159 to 148 votes the Grand Remonstrance to the king, setting out all that had gone wrong since his accession.
In April the king settled in York, where he ordered the courts of justice to assemble and where royalist members of both houses gradually joined him. In June the majority of the members remaining in London sent the king the Nineteen Propositions, which included demands that no ministers should be appointed without parliamentary approval, that the army should be put under parliamentary control, and that Parliament should decide about the future of the church.
But in July both sides were urgently making ready for war. The king formally raised the royal standard at Nottingham on August 22 and sporadic fighting soon broke out all over the kingdom. Charles moved his court and military headquarters to Christ Church College, Oxford. On June 14 1645 the highly disciplined New Model Army organised and commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax with Oliver Cromwell as his second in command, defeated the king at the Battle of Naseby. By the spring of 1646 Oxford was surrounded. Charles left the city in disguise. In June, however, he was seized and taken to the army headquarters at Newmarket and then to Hampton Court. He escaped on November 11, but his friends’ plans to take him to Jersey and thence to France went astray and instead Charles found himself in the Isle of Wight, where the governor was loyal to Parliament and kept him under surveillance at Carisbrooke Castle.
In August 1648 the last of Charles’s Scottish supporters were defeated at the Battle of Preston and the second Civil War ended. The army now began to demand that the king should be put on trial for treason. On January 20, 1649, he was brought before a specially constituted high court of justice in Westminster Hall.
Charles I was charged with high treason and “other high crimes against the realm of England.” He at once refused to recognise the legality of the court because “a king cannot be tried by any superior jurisdiction on earth.” He therefore refused to plead but maintained that he stood for “the liberty of the people of England.” The sentence of death was read on January 27; his execution was ordered as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy. The sentence was carried out in Whitehall on the morning of January 30, 1649. A week later he was buried at Windsor. Charles had nine children, two of whom eventually succeeded as king (Charles II and James II), and two of whom died at or shortly after birth.

Charles II was born on the 29th of May 1630, at St James’s Palace. He was the second son of Charles I, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, but the first to survive. When the English Civil War broke out in 1642, Charles spent most of the conflict with his father until he was sent to the west country to lead the royalist forces. When King Charles surrendered to the Scots, the prince went to his mother in France. His father was executed in January of 1649, and Charles ascended to the throne of Scotland, where he reigned until 1651. He was then exiled again to France.

With the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles returned to England and to the throne. He married Catherine of Braganza, the Portugeuse infanta. The couple had no children, but Charles himself had many children by various mistresses. With no legitimate heir, when Charles died on the 6th February 1685, he was succeeded to the throne by his brother, James II.

Chertsey Abbey was founded in 666 by Erkenwald, a prince from Stallingborough, Lincolnshire, who was said to be related to Offa, King of East Anglia. The Abbey was founded as a Benedictine House, dedicated to St. Peter, and grew to become the fifth largest monastery in the country, with land covering 50,000 acres. Little is recorded of the Abbey before the mid 11th century, however it is known to have been the subject of a Viking raid in 871, after which it was rebuilt and had its land confirmed in a Charter of 889. The Abbey also suffered at least two fires in 1235 and 1381 as part of the Peasants' Revolt.

Throughout its history, Chertsey Abbey was regularly visited by the King, including King John, Henry III who held court there in 1217, Edward III and Henry VIII. The Abbey was dissolved in 1537 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, with its monks sent to Bisham to create a new order specifically to pray for the soul of Jane Seymour. However, this new House was dissolved in less than a year and within a century, the empty buildings of Chertsey Abbey had been destroyed.

Son of Nathaniel Chevalier, born c. 1730, at Casterton. He went to school at Stamford, Lincolnshire. He was admitted as sizar to St John's College, and graduated BA (1750-1), MA (1754), BD (1762), and DD (1777, Lit. Reg.). He was a Fellow of the College 1754-75, and Master 1775-89. He was also University Vice-Chancellor 1776-7, and ordained as a priest at Cambridge in 1754. He died on 7 March 1789.

Cofferer to Lady Margaret Beaufort, 1494 and 1498-9.

SJC Matric. 1712; B.A. 1715/6; M.A. 1719; Fellow 1717-1725. Nominated by St. John's to be Headmaster of Shrewsbury School in 1723, but not appointed. Rector of Buxted, Sussex, 1724-1768. Chancellor of Chichester Diocese, 1770.

The London firm of Clayton and Bell were one of the most successful and prestigious stained glass window makers of the Victorian era.
The company was founded in 1856 by John Richard Clayton (1827-1913), and Alfred Bell (1832-95). John Clayton was a London illustrator and friends with several Pre-Raphaelite artists, most notably Dante Gabriel Rosetti. Alfred Bell, by contrast, was born in Devon, the son of a farm worker. The architect Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878) saw some of Bell's drawings in the 1840s and was so impressed that he hired him and trained him in the Gothic Revival style. John Clayton trained as a sculptor under the architect Sir Charles Barry.
Bell initially formed a partnership with Nathaniel Lavers before joining forces with John Clayton and starting a new company in 1855. Sir George Gilbert Scott gave them several commissions and they were very successful very quickly. The mid-Victorian period saw a revitalisation of the Church of England. After centuries of decay, many medieval churches were restored and rebuilt, and there was a growing market for high-quality stained glass windows.
Clayton and Bell initially shared premises with Heaton & Butler. They produced the designs and Heaton & Butler supplied the kiln and the knowledge and expertise to manufacture the glass. Just three years later, in 1861, Clayton and Bell moved into large new premises on Regent Street, where they began to produce their own glass for their own designs. The company's growth was staggering; by the time they moved into their Regent Street premises Clayton and Bell were employing 300 workmen. Clayton and Bell's commercial success was due to the high demand for stained-glass windows at the time, their use of the best-quality glass available, the excellence of their designs and their employment of efficient factory methods of production. Within a few years, the firm had become one of the most prolific and proficient workshops of English stained glass. By the 1860’s and 1870’s night shifts were worked in order to fulfil the large number of commissions. Clayton and Bell then expanded from designing and making stained glass windows and began designing church murals and entire decorative schemes.
Alfred Bell and John Clayton retired from active participation in company affairs by the 1880s. The company was run by a succession of Bell's heirs; John Clement Bell (1860–1944) was succeeded by Reginald Otto Bell (1884–1950) and then by Michael Farrar-Bell (1911–1993). Unfortunately, the records of Clayton & Bell were largely lost after enemy bombing in World War II. However, their windows can be found throughout the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Among their major commissions, and perhaps the first entire cycle of glass produced in the Victorian era, is the cycle of great scholars produced for the Great Hall of the University of Sydney, designed by the colonial architect Edmund Blacket and based upon Westminster Hall in London. Among their other famous windows are the West Window of King's College Chapel, Cambridge, 1878, a very sensitive commission as much ancient glass still existed in the building, and also in Cambridge, a Last Judgement for St. John's College Chapel.
At Truro they were commissioned by John Loughborough Pearson to design windows for the new Cathedral. This work is thought to be amongst the finest Victorian stained glass in England. It tells the story of the Christian Church, starting with the birth of Jesus and finishing with the building of Truro Cathedral. The firm was also commissioned to design mosaics for the new Catholic Cathedral in Westminster, London. The altarpiece for the Chapel of Saints Augustine and Gregory, representing the conversion of England to Christianity is the work of Clayton and Bell, assembled by the Salviati firm from Murano, Italy.
Probably the most significant commission was to design the mosaics for each side and beneath the canopy of the Albert Memorial. This towering monument set on the edge of Hyde Park in London was built to commemorate Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who died in 1861. The firm of Salviati from Murano, Venice, had manufactured the mosaics to Clayton and Bell's designs. The firm of Clayton and Bell was awarded a Royal Warrant by the Queen in 1883.
The company moved from London to Buckinghamshire after WWII and ceased operating after Farrar-Bell's death in 1993.

Richard Clayton was admitted as a pensioner in 1572, but move to Oxford where he proceeded B.A. and was incorporated in that degree at Cambridge in 1576. In 1577, he was admitted to the fellowship of St John's on the Lady Margaret's foundation. He commenced M.A. at Cambridge in 1579, and was incorporated in that degree at Oxford in 1580. He received his B.D. at Cambridge in 1587 and was elected college preacher the same year. He received his D.D.in 1592.
He was made Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1593 and was installed Archdeacon of Lincoln in 1595. He was admitted as Master of SJC on 22 December 1595 in a highly politicised election manipulated by Lord Burghley.
Clayton was responsible for the building of Second Court.
He died 2 May 1612 and is buried in the College Chapel.

Giulio de’ Medici was born in 1478, a few months after the death of his father Giuliano de’ Medici. His parents had not been married, but as they were betrothed, Giulio was declared legitimate.

The young Giulio was educated by his uncle, and made both a Knight of Rhodes and Grand Prior of Capua. After his cousin Giovanni de’ Medici became Pope Leo X, Giulio was made cardinal on the 28th of September 1513. He was a favoured candidate for the papacy after Leo X’s death, but ultimately, Adrian VI was elected instead.

It was after Adrian VI’s death that Giulio was chosen as the next pope, on the 18th of November 1523. He took the papal name Clement VII. The political situation during Clement’s papacy was a complex one. Francis I and Emperor Charles V were at war, and despite the Medici family’s friendship with Charles, Clement sided with France. Clement helped organise the League of Cognac, ad was imprisoned in the Castle of Sant’ Angelo when Rome was attacked by Charles’ allies. He took refuge there again during the later sack of Rome. Eventually, Clement settled on terms of peace with Charles.

Clement was still a prisoner in Sant’ Angelo when he was visited by an envoy of King Henry VIII. Henry sought a divorce from his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and to marry Anne Boleyn. Although Clement made many concessions to Henry’s demands, he ultimately resisted the request to grant a divorce. Henry was forbidden to marry while Rome deliberated on whether his marriage to Catherine was legitimate, but secretly married Anne Boleyn anyway. The death of Archbishop Warham in England allowed Henry to install Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury, who proceeded to pronounce the marriage between Henry and Anne valid. Clement excommunicated Henry from the Catholic Church and declared his both his divorce from Catherine and his marriage to Anne as null and void. The marriage between Catherine and Henry was decreed fully legitimate, and England broke with the Catholic Church.

Clement VII died on the 25th September, 1534.

Paul Colinvaux was an ecologist, zoologist and professor emeritus at Ohio State University. He was among the last generation of "explorer" scientists, exploring the Alaskan and Siberian Arctic, the Galapagos Islands, and the Amazonian jungle on a mission to discover the history of the climate.
Colinvaux was born on September 22, 1930 in St. Albans, England. He grew up in London during the Battle of Britain, studying, even as a boy, the ecology of plant regrowth in the craters left by German bombs. He attended University College School in London, where his activities included rowing in the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta.
After graduating from UCS, Colinvaux served in the British Army of the Rhine in occupied Germany as a Second Lieutenant, Royal Artillery, 42nd Regiment. After leaving the army, Colinvaux studied at Jesus College, Cambridge completing his BA in 1956 and his MA in 1960.
After graduating, he emigrated to New Brunswick, Canada, where he was employed by a government soil survey and where he met his wife, Llewellya Hillis. Hillis and Colinvaux emigrated to the United States where Colinvaux earned his Ph.D. as a paleoecologist in 1962 from Duke University.
Colinvaux extracted fossilized pollen from the bottom of ancient lakes as a tool to investigate climate conditions at the end of the last glacial maximum. The pollen buried in the mud could then be dated and used to identify pre-historic climate conditions. In a pre-Google Earth era, without benefit of GPS technology, Colinvaux explored in the old ways, quizzing tribal fishermen and local traders, interviewing bush pilots, and poring over aerial maps to identify sectors of jungle to search for tiny, unmapped lakes undisturbed by streams or human activity. His research was instrumental in laying the foundation for modern thinking and research on Amazonian species diversity. In 1966, he discovered a new species of flower in the Galapagos, which was subsequently named for him (Passiflora colinvauxii), as was the Galapagos diatom, Amphora paulii.
After completing post-doctoral studies at Yale University, Colinvaux and Hillis both took up appointments in the Department of Botany & Zoology at Ohio State University in 1964. He became Professor Emeritus in zoology there from 1964 until 1991. In 1971 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. His skill as an orator was renowned. During his years at Ohio State University, Colinvaux won every teaching prize that could then be awarded for undergraduate teaching and he was the recipient of the Ohio State University Distinguished Scholar Award in 1985. During the Vietnam-era student uprising and occupation of Ohio State in May 1970, Colinvaux addressed, impromptu, a throng of demonstrating students, using the power of his voice and words to disperse the crowd. In 1991 Colinvaux and Hillis left Ohio State University to take positions with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. They then moved to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where they were affiliated with the Marine Biological Laboratory.
Colinvaux was the author of several books. His most famous 1979 book 'Why Big Fierce Animals are Rare' uses the second law of thermodynamics to argue that big meat-eating animals are rare because the available energy in each step in the food chain is degraded. In 1973 he authored the first undergraduate textbook in Ecology, which was used, in various editions, to educate generations of students He is also the author of 'The Fates of Nations: A Biological Theory of History' (1980) and a scientific memoir 'Amazon Expeditions: My Quest for the Ice Age Equator' (2008).
In 2013, he received a lifetime achievement award from the American Quaternary Association. He died on February 28, 2016 on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, leaving two children (Catherine and Roger) and four grandchildren.

English judge and Member of Parliament for Maldon. Graduated from Queens' College, Cambridge. Member of Lincoln's Inn (called to the bar, 1690). Elected serjeant-at-law (1705) and subsequently appointed a Baron of the Exchequer, a Justice of Common Pleas (1736) and Chief Baron of the Exchequer (1738).

George Gordon Coulton was was a British historian, known for numerous works on medieval history. He was born in King's Lynn on 15th October 1858 and attended Lynn Grammar School and then Felsted School. In 1877 he won a scholarship to St Catharine's College, Cambridge, but a severe case of blood poisoning meant he was awarded an aegrotat degree.
After leaving Cambridge, Coulton was briefly a master at a school in Malvern before being ordained deacon in 1883. By 1885 his beliefs led him to forsake his entry into the priesthood and he instead turned to teaching, holding a number of posts in various public schools.
In 1896 his employment at a coaching establishment in Eastbourne allowed him time to develop his medieval studies, and he became an expert on the primary sources of the period. From 1900 Coulton began to publish works on the medieval period, probably the most important being two anthologies of medieval sources: 'A Medieval Garner' (1910) and 'Social Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation' (1918).
In 1911 Coulton returned to Cambridge to become Birkbeck Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History at Trinity College, and in 1919 he was elected to a lectureship in the English faculty and to a Fellowship at St John's College. He retired from his faculty position in 1934, and devoted himself to research and writing. He published a number of important works during this period, among them 'The Medieval Village' (1925), 'Art and the Reformation' (1928), 'Inquisition and Liberty' (1938), 'Medieval Panorama' (1938), and 'Five Centuries of Religion', published in four volumes between 1923 and 1950, the last appearing posthumously. He spent the majority of the war years (1940-1944) in Canada, as a guest lecturer at the University of Toronto. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1929.
Coulton was something of a controversialist and much of his work was directed at Roman Catholic historians, whom he accused of having a flagrant disregard for historical accuracy. As an historian, Coulton was most noted for his attention to primary sources, particularly those illuminating religious, social and economic topics. For Coulton, historical truth, which he placed in those sources, accurately cited, was the cornerstone of historical study. Something of a modernist, he considered it his duty as an historian to confront those who proffered what he believed to be a less than accurate view of the past.
Coulton, though, is remembered for more than this confrontational reputation. His extensive scholarship, which extended much further than many historical works at the turn of the century, is rightly seen as important. He contributed to a widening of the range of medieval studies by his attention to social and economic issues. He was also a strong advocate for compulsory military service and an active member of the National Service League who wrote and spoke publicly on the subject. Coulton was keen to extend his learning to a much wider audience than just those in academic circles, being a fine public speaker and a clear and lucid writer.
In 1904 Coulton married Rose Dorothy Ilbert, and together they had two daughters. Coulton died on March 4th 1947.

Former Cambridge Blue, rowing coach and historian of the Lady Margaret Boat Club.

Son of Richard Craven. Born c. 1730 at Gouthwaite Hall, Nidderdale (West Riding of Yorkshire), he was educated at Sedbergh. He was admitted as sizar to St John's College in 1749, and graduated BA (1753), MA (1756), BD (1763), and DD (1789, Lit. Reg.). He was a Fellow of the College 1758-89, and Master 1789-1815. He was also University Vice-Chancellor in 1790. He was ordained deacon in Chester in 1756, and priest in Lincoln in 1759. For a time he was assistant Master at Harrow. He was Professor of Arabic 1770-95, and Lord Almoner's Reader in Arabic, 1770-1815. He died on 28 January 1815.