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Daughter of Hugh de Kevelioc, 5th Earl of Chester, and Bertrade de Montfort of Evreux. She had four sisters and one brother, Ranulf, who succeeded his father as 6th Earl of Chester when he died when Hawise was one year old. In 1231 Ranulf resigned the title of Earl of Lincoln in Hawise's favour, making her Countess of Lincoln suo jure (in her own right), with which title she was formally invested by the King in 1232, the day after Ranulf's death. With her sisters, she was his co-heiress, and inherited the castle and manor of Bolingbroke as well as other large estates. Hawise married first Robert de Quincy, with whom she had one daughter, Margaret, who inherited her title and estates. She married secondly Sir Warren de Bostoke, with whom she had one son, Sir Henry de Bostoke.

The Reverend Charles Edward Graves was born in London on 11th November 1839, the son of James John, a silk manufacturer. He attended Leamington College and Shrewsbury School, before matriculating at St John’s in 1858. He graduated BA (2nd Classic) in 1862 and was elected a Fellow in 1863; however he had to renounce this position when he married in 1865. Graves was ordained the following year, serving for two years as curate of St Luke’s in Chesterton, and for eight years as chaplain of Magdalene College. Following the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act of 1877, which meant that Fellows were no longer required to remain celibate, Graves was re-elected a Fellow in 1893. It was during this stint that he also served as a Tutor, alongside Dr Tanner, from 1895 to 1905.

He was popular while engaged as a private Tutor for Classics, as well as when employed as a lecturer, and was known for his generosity and humour. He died on 21st October 1920, and was survived by his son and four daughters.

Obituary in The Eagle: Vol 42, Lent 1921, p. 57

Benians was born in Goudhurst, Kent in 1880. His father was the headmaster of Bethany School in Goudhurst, and it was here that Benians received his schooling. He was admitted to St John's in 1899 and achieved his BA in 1902. He became Lightfoot Scholar in 1903, Allen Scholar in 1903, and achieved his MA as well as being the Adam Smith Prizeman in 1906. He also became a Fellow in 1906, and then in 1911 he was elected to the Albert Kahn Travelling Fellowship. For the period 1913-19, Benians was a Local Adviser to Indian Students. He was appointed Lecturer in History in 1910, became a Tutor in 1918, and Senior Tutor in 1927. In the same year he was made University Lecturer in History, specialising in the history of the British colonies and dependencies, and the United States of America. He was Master of St John's from 1933 until his death in 1952, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the University 1939-41. In 1939 he was awarded an honorary LittD from Trinity College Dublin, before then also becoming an Honorary Fellow in 1947.

Benians married Sylvia Mary Dodd, daughter of J. Thoedore Dodd, at St Giles', Oxford in 1918, and together they had one son and two daughters. He died on 13 February 1952.

Member of Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge; Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, 1979-1989

Sarah was the daughter of Edward Alston of London, physician, President of the College of Physicians, who was knighted by King Charles II at the Restoration in 1660, and his wife Susanna, daughter of Christopher Hudson of Norwich and widow of Jasper Hussey, fishmonger of Billingsgate. Sarah married in 1652 George Grimston, son of barrister and politician Sir Harbottle Grimston. George Grimston died three years later and their two children died in infancy. Sarah married, secondly, Lord John Seymour, son and heir of the second Duke of Somerset. Unlike her first marriage, this was a marriage of convenience by which Seymour benefitted financially and Sir Edward gained entrance into the circle of the aristocracy; it was an unhappy match. Her marriage settlement did allow for a measure of financial independence, with £300 per annum set aside for her sole use, a wise precaution given the Somerset family's financial difficulties and her husband's gambling addiction. Following Somerset's death in 1675, Sarah was permitted to retain her title and her control of her late husband's estates in Herefordshire. In 1682 she married Henry Hare, second Baron Coleraine, again through the marriage settlement retaining some financial autonomy. She died in 1692.

Anthony Tuckney was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and a fellow there from 1619 to 1630. He was town preacher at Boston, Lincolnshire from 1629 and in 1633, succeeded John Cotton as vicar of St Botolph's Church, Boston. From 1645 to 1653 he was Master of Emmanuel and then from 1653 to 1661 Master of St John's College, Cambridge. In 1655, he became the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge – then the seat of Puritan thought. After the English Restoration in 1660, he was removed from his positions and retired from professional life.
For more information on Tuckney see the Oxford DNB

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.

Kenneth Budden was born on 23rd June 1915 in Portsmouth, the son of George Easthope Budden, Engineer and Civil Servant, Admiralty, and Hannah Gertrude Homer Rea. He was admitted to St John’s in 1933 to study Natural Sciences where he chose to specialise in Physics. He graduated BA in 1936 and subsequently joined a research group in the Cavendish Laboratory working on the propagation of very-long-wavelength radio waves, being awarded his PhD in 1940.

Between 1939 and 1941 Budden was employed by the Telecommunications Research Establishment, before moving to the British Air Commission, Washington, DC 1941-1944. In 1945 he was engaged with Air Command, South-East Asia before working at Delanium Limited as Director of Research until 1947.

In 1947 he returned to the University of Cambridge and St John’s, initially as a University Demonstrator in Physics until 1953 when he became Lecturer in Physics, a position he held until 1965. Between 1965 and 1982 Budden achieved the position of Reader in Physics (Emeritus 1982). Parallel to this, at St John’s he was a Supervisor in Physics from 1947 to 1956, as well as Lecturer between 1956 and 1982, and Director of Studies for Physics 1961-77. He was also a Fellow of the College from 1947 until his death in 2005.

Budden wrote numerous books and papers on the propagation of radio waves, and in 1999 was awarded the Gold Medal of The Royal Astronomical Society in recognition of his contribution to Geophysics.

Obituary in The Eagle: Vol 88, 2006, p. 80

Joseph Bickersteth Mayor was born in the Cape of Good Hope, on October 24th 1828, to Rev. Robert Mayor and his wife Charlotte. He was educated at Rugby School—of which he would later become a Governor—before going up to Cambridge in 1847; following his two older brothers, Robert and John. All three Mayor brothers would become Fellows; Joseph was appointed Fellow in 1852, the year after he took his degree. He was also given the position of College Lecturer in Moral Science.

Mayor was ordained as a Deacon in 1859, and a Priest in 1860, the same year that he became a Tutor at Cambridge. Three years later, his marriage to Miss A.J. Grote made it necessary to give up his position at the College, and he instead became the Head Master of a school in London. This was later followed by his appointment as a Professor at King’s College, first in Classical Literature and then in Moral Philosophy. He left his post in 1883, and moved to live out the rest of his life in Kingston-on-Thames.

There, Mayor undertook important work with local schools, but most of his focus fell to writing. He published many different works, the most important of which include his translations of Cicero, De Natura Deorum, Epistle of St. James, Clement of Alexandria, and Epistle of St. Jude and Second Epistle of Peter.

Mayor died on the 29th of November, 1916.

Obituary in the Eagle, vol. 38, Easter 1917, p. 323

Adams was born at Lidcot farm, Cornwall, in 1819, the eldest son of a tenant farmer. He developed an early interest in astronomy and in 1831 was sent to his cousin's academy, where he distinguished himself in classics and spent his spare time on astronomy and mathematics. Adams's progress was such that his parents decided that he should be sent to university, and in October 1839 he sat for examinations at St John's College and won a sizarship. In July 1841, at the end of his second year, he wrote himself the following memorandum: 'Formed a design ... of investigating, as soon as possible after taking my degree, the irregularities in the motion of Uranus, which are yet unaccounted for; in order to find whether they may be attributed to the action of an undiscovered planet beyond it ...' Having won the highest mathematical prizes in his college, Adams graduated in 1843 as senior wrangler and won a fellowship. He could now return to his deferred investigation of Uranus. By October 1843 Adams, aged just 24, had arrived at a solution of the inverse perturbation problem and although his first result was approximate, it convinced him that the disturbances of Uranus were due to an undiscovered planet.

In February 1844 Adams applied to the astronomer royal, Sir George Biddell Airy, for more exact data on Uranus. With Airy's figures Adams then computed values for the elliptic elements, mass, and heliocentric longitude of the hypothetical planet. He gave his results to James Challis, Director of the Cambridge Observatory, in September 1845, and after two unsuccessful attempts to present his work to Airy in person, left a copy at the Royal Observatory in October. Airy replied to Adams a few weeks later but did not institute a search for the planet until July 1846.

In the meantime the French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier had independently published several papers on Uranus and reached the same conclusions as Adams regarding an exterior planet. It was as a result of Le Verrier's efforts that Johann Gottfried Galle, of the Berlin Observatory, discovered Neptune on 23 September 1846, less than one degree distant from where Le Verrier had predicted it would lie. While Le Verrier was showered with honours, Adams's earlier prediction, which agreed closely with Le Verrier's, remained unpublished. First publicised in a letter from Sir John Herschel to the London Athenaeum in October 1846 it provoked a long and bitter controversy over priority of discovery and the issue became a public sensation. Adams and Le Verrier themselves, however, met at Oxford in 1847 and became good friends. Adams was offered a knighthood by Queen Victoria in 1847 but declined. In 1848 the Adams Prize was founded at Cambridge and the Royal Society awarded him its highest award, the Copley Medal.

Adams was elected President of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1851 and began work on lunar theory. On the expiration of his fellowship at St John's he moved to Pembroke College in 1853 and shortly afterwards presented to the Royal Society a remarkable paper on the secular acceleration of the Moon's mean motion, showing Laplace's 1788 solution to be incorrect. While this provoked a sharp scientific controversy, Adams was later proved to be right.

In 1858 Adams became Professor of Mathematics at St Andrew's University but returned to Cambridge in 1859 to become Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry. In 1861 he took over as Director of the Cambridge Observatory and two years later married Eliza Bruce of Dublin. In the 1860s and 70s he undertook work on the Leonid system, observations for the Astronomische Gesellschaft program, work on Bernoulli numbers and Euler's constant, and the arrangement and cataloguing of Newton's mathematical papers, presented to Cambridge University by Lord Portsmouth. While much of Adams's later work has been superseded, as the co-discoverer of Neptune he occupies a special place in the history of science.

Joseph Timmis Ward was born in Banbury in 1853, and subsequently educated at King’s School, Rochester. He was matriculated at St John’s in 1872, and took his degree in 1876 as Senior Wrangler. Following this, he was first Smith’s prizeman, and was elected to a Fellowship that lasted until his death.
Ward was ordained as a deacon in 1877, and then as a priest at Ely in 1879. After returning to Cambridge, he became mathematical lecturer at St John’s, where he also served as a tutor for twelve years started in 1883. From 1896 to 1903, he was also Senior Dean.
Ward was an original founder of Westcott House, Cambridge. He was a supporter of the Cambridge Mission to Delhi, and served as Secretary of the Committee for the St John’s College Mission at Walworth c.1906-1910. He died in Cambridge on the 23rd June 1935.

Obituary in the Eagle: Vol. 49, Mich 1935, p. 122

Leonard Pilkington, was the younger brother of James Pilkingon. He, like his brother, was born at Rivington, Lancashire. Leonard matriculated at St John's as a sizar and graduated BA in 1544. He was appointed to the fellowship in 1546 and proceeded to the MA the following year. He was named mathematical examiner at the College in 1548, lecturer in mathematics in 1550 and a senior fellow in 1551. He was ordained a deacon at St Paul's, London in May 1552, and he was appointed preacher at St John's later that year. He was forced to resign his fellowship shortly after Mary took the throne. He left England like his brother. He returned to England upon Elizabeth's accession. He was named Master of the College on 19 October 1561 succeeding his brother James.
For more information see the Oxford DNB

James Pilkington, was the son of Richard Pilkington and his wife, Alice, of Rivington, Lancashire. He was one of seven boys, his younger brother Leonard (1527-1599) was also Master of St John's. James Pilkington entered Pembroke College at 16 but soon transferred to St John's, receiving his B.A. in 1539. He was elected to the Fellowship shortly after receiving his degree. He became a senior fellow and preacher, taking part in the a disputation on transubstantiation. He was ordained between 1547-1550 and was presented to the vicarage of Kirby in Kendal by Edward VI but he resigned to continue his studies at Cambridge, taking his BTh. in 1551.

Pilkington left for the continent upon Mary's accession to the throne, travelling to Switzerland and Germany. He was appointed Master of St John's shortly after his return to England in 1559. In February 1561 he was made Bishop of Durham and resigned the mastership of SJC in October of that year. He was succeeded by his brother Leonard.

For more information see the Oxford DNB

Joseph Robson Tanner was born on the 28th July 1860, the son of Joseph Tanner, who headed a printing firm in Somerset. He was educated at Mill Hill School, before coming up to St John’s in 1879. There, he placed in the First Class of the Historical Tripos, and was both Treasurer and President of the Union Society. Tanner became a Fellow of the College in 1886; from there, he also held posts as College Lecturer in History (1883-1912), Director of Historical Studies (1905-1920), Assistant Tutor (1895-1900), Tutor (1900-1912) and Tutorial Bursar (1900-1921). He was also a member of the Council of the Senate, the Press Syndicate, and edited the Historical Register of the University of Cambridge.
Tanner continued to write frequently after his post-war retirement from College services, producing and editing works such as the Cambridge Medieval History, Samuel Pepys and the Royal Navy, and English Constitutional Conflicts of the Seventeenth Century.
Tanner was married in 1888, to Charlotte Maria Larkman. He died on the 16th January 1931, and his funeral was held in the College Chapel the following week.

Obituary in the Eagle: Vol. 46, Easter 1931, p. 184

Robert Booth matriculated as a sizar at St John's, 1565, graduated BA 1571, MA 1574, and was made a Fellow of St John's in 1573, where he also served as Bursar. He came from Cheshire and was probably the son of John Booth of Dunham Massey. Booth seems to have been in the household of the Countess of Shrewsbury and it was through his advocacy that St John's Second Court was built. He made a bequest of £300 to pay for a fountain in Second Court, but the money was used for other purposes