Articles THE EAGLE
The Countess of Shrewsbury’s gift, however, is of particular significance in the history of St John’s. It changed ways of thinking, responding to the growth of ambition in a late-Tudor College. Encouraged by the space at its disposal, St John’s built on the original court, demolished the early outbuildings, and set out on a march through time that has ranged over the river, and out to the west. This morning, recalling the importance of a first step in any long, ongoing journey, we might remember with particular gratitude our second foundress, Mary Cavendish, and, indeed, her grumpy but accommodating husband. Dr Mark Nicholls
1 Here, as elsewhere, I rely greatly on the detailed research into benefactions undertaken by the College’s Archivist, Malcolm Underwood. 2 G R Batho, ‘Gilbert Talbot, seventh earl of Shrewsbury (1553–1616): the “great and glorious earl”?’, Derbyshire Archaeological Journal 93 (1973), 23-32. 3 Though he had been awarded an honorary MA by Cambridge in 1595. 4 ‘The good old earl is found untainted by her faults’, it was said in 1611, ‘but forebears the Council table for her sake’ (ODNB). 5 Although Erasmus referred to his College as ‘Collegium reginae’, and the dual foundation was consistently recognised only from the nineteenth century. 6 St John’s College Archives, D57.185, fo. 4r. 7 J E B Mayor (ed.), History of the College of St John the Evangelist, Cambridge, by Thomas Baker (Cambridge, 1869), i, 190-1. 8 St John’s College Library, MS H.31.
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ARTICLES
should ask if we, as a College, have short-changed the Countess, as we shortchanged Robert Booth: College records show how she has receded in our Collegiate mind. Sixteenth-century building accounts for Second Court record donations from ‘the founders’.6 Baker in the eighteenth century twice refers to Mary as a foundress in his history of the College.7 Charles Yate, who died in 1860 describes Mary in his notes on eminent people connected with St John’s as ‘the Foundress of Second Court’,8 and indeed he labels John Williams ‘Founder of the Library’ for good measure. But neither Williams nor the Countess is ranked by Yate alongside the Foundress. Four centuries on, while Lady Margaret is prayed for each night in Term, and remembered through the post-prandial grace at High Table, that other great Catholic benefactress, Mary Cavendish, is remembered only in this annual ceremony – well down the chronological list – through her portrait and two sconces in the Combination Room, and, of course, in her Tower. In the modern College, the foundress of Second Court has become the benefactress behind a mere Gatehouse.