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Pietro Torrigiano was a fifteenth-century Florentine sculptor who played an important role in introducing Renaissance art to England. In the account of his life given by Giorgio Vasari, Torrigiano was born in Florence in 1472 and studied art in Florence as a young man under the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici. He came to England c.1509 and in 1511, was commissioned to create the monument for the tomb of Lady Margaret Beaufort. He went on to receive appointments for a number of other royal works, including a commission to create a terracotta bust of King Henry VII and the monument and effigies of Henry VII and Queen Elizabeth of York. The monument and effigies may still be seen in the Henry VII Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey and were completed c.1517. Torrigiano spent the later years of his life in Spain, especially at Seville. He died in 1528.

Master of the Free School at Hereford.

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

Born in 1430 to Owen Tudor and the dowager queen Catherine of Valois at Much Hadham Palace in Hertfordshire, Edmund Tudor was the half-brother of Henry VI of England and father to Henry VII. After the death of his mother in 1437, Edmund and his brother Jasper were raised in the care of Katherine de la Pole, the eldest daughter of the 2nd Earl of Suffolk, Michael de la Pole. He became a prominent member of the royal court of Henry VI and was ennobled as Earl of Richmond in 1449.

In 1453, Edmund was given the wardship of the then nine-year old Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby. The two were married two years later at Bletsoe Castle on 1st November 1455 and the marriage was subsequently consummated. However, Edmund died before the birth of their son, Henry.

As half-brother to the King, Edmund was inevitably implicated in the bloody power struggles of the Wars of the Roses. In late 1455, he was sent to Wales to enforce the authority of the King and remained there until August 1456 in order to suppress a rebellion led by Gruffydd ap Nicholas. During this time, however, Henry VI was incarcerated by Richard, Duke of York, who resumed the office of Protector and sent troops under William Herbert in August 1456 to seize South Wales. On reaching Carmarthen Castle, Herbert’s forces captured Edmund and imprisoned him in the Castle. He died in captivity in November 1456.

Francis Turner was the oldest son of Thomas Turner, Dean of Canterbury. He was born 23 August 1637. From Winchester College, where he was elected scholar in 1651, Francis proceeded to New College, Oxford, where he was admitted probationer fellow on 7 November 1655, and graduated B. A. on 14 April 1659 and M. A. on 14 January 1663.
Turner’s preferments were mainly due to the favour of the Duke of York, to whom he was chaplain. In February 1664/5 he was incorporated at Cambridge, and on 8 May 1666 he was admitted fellow commoner in St. John's College, Cambridge, to which the patronage of Peter Gunning, the Regius Professor of Divinity, attracted him.
On 11 April 1670 he succeeded Gunning as Master of St. John's, Cambridge; he was vice-chancellor in 1678, and resigned his mastership, "because of a faction," at Christmas 1679.

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

Thomas Watson was born near Durham in 1515. Watson matriculated in 1529 and received his B.A. in 1532/3 and his M.A. in 1536. He received his degree in theology in 1543, the year in which he became domestic chaplain to Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester.
On the accession of Queen Mary, Watson was admitted Master 28 September 1553, but he soon left the College, being appointed Dean of Durham 18 November 1553; he was then appointed Bishop of Lincoln by Papal Bull dated 24 March 1556-1557, but was deprived of his bishopric on the accession of Queen Elizabeth I and spent the rest of his life in imprisonment or restraint of various kinds.

For more information see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

George Fiddes Watt was a portrait painter and engraver. He was born in Aberdeen on 15 February 1873, the only son and the eldest of the five children of George Watt and his wife, Jean Frost. On leaving school at fourteen, he was apprenticed to a firm of lithographic printers in Aberdeen. During these next seven years he also attended evening classes at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen.
At the age of twenty-one Watt went to Edinburgh to study in the life class of the Royal Scottish Academy. For a time he struggled to make ends meet, but through exhibiting his paintings at the academy from 1897 he soon obtained small commissions, particularly for portraits of local dignitaries such as Provost Smith of Peterhead (1901) and Provost Wallace of Tain (1908). When commissions continued to come in steadily, he began renting a large studio at 178 Cromwell Road and exhibiting at the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.
In 1903 Watt married Jean Willox, art teacher at Peterhead Academy, and youngest daughter of William Willox of Park, a farmer in the Buchan area of Aberdeenshire. They had three sons and a daughter.
He first began to attract attention with a number of portraits of women, including one of his wife which was his first exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1906. A portrait of his mother painted in 1910 was later bought out of the Chantrey bequest for the Tate Gallery in 1930.
Watt's later reputation, however, rests on his portraits of men. He was interested in strong character, expressed with vigour and freedom of handling. His most vital works probably date from before the First World War and he is seen at his best, for example, in the series of senior legal figures at the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh: Lord Salvesen (1911), Lord Kingsburgh (1912), and Lord Dundas (1916).
Watt's work is regarded as being in the Scottish tradition stemming from Henry Raeburn, with its unaffected simplicity and robust directness of handling. He was much in demand in both Scotland and England for official portraits and painted, among others, Herbert Henry Asquith and Lord Loreburn (both 1912) for Balliol College, Oxford; Cosmo Gordon Lang (1914) for All Souls, Oxford; Arthur James Balfour (1919) for Eton College; Lord Ullswater (1922) for the House of Commons; Sir Joseph Thomson (1923) for Trinity College, Cambridge and Robert Forsyth Scott (1913) for St. John’s College, Cambridge.
After 1930 he ceased exhibiting at the Royal Academy and painted less and less as his eyesight had started to fail. He had been elected an associate (1910) and a full member (1924) of the Royal Scottish Academy and his last exhibit there was in 1941.
In 1940, when the bombing of London became severe, Watt retired to Cults, near Aberdeen. In 1955 the University of Aberdeen awarded him the honorary degree of LLD and late in life he was granted a civil-list pension. His wife died in 1956 and her death was a severe blow to him. In his later years, he became a well-known figure in Aberdeen, with his Vandyke beard, wearing a deer stalking cap, and carrying a long shepherd's crook. Fiddes Watt died at his home in Aberdeen, on 22 November 1960. His work is represented in most Scottish collections, including the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, which has four paintings. A bronze statue of Watt by Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones, made in 1942, is in Aberdeen.

Sir Richard Wentworth, 5th Lord le Despenser, was born circa 1480 at Nettlestead, Kent. He was the son of Sir Henry Wentworth by his first wife, Anne (Saye) Wentworth, and married Anne Tyrrell around 1499. He served as Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk. On his death in October 1528, Sir Richard was buried at Ipswich in Suffolk.

Meynnart Wewcyck was a Flemish painter. He was responsible for drawing the design for Lady Margaret's tomb, a copy of which was then given to the sculptor in charge of producing the gilt-bronze tomb effigy, Pietro Torrigiano.

William Whitaker was a prominent Protestant Calvinistic Anglican churchman, academic, and theologian. He was Master of St. John's College, and a leading divine in the university in the latter half of the sixteenth century. His uncle was Alexander Nowell, the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral and catechist.

He was born at Holme, near Burnley, Lancashire, in 1548. He received his early education at the local parish school and then was enrolled in St Paul's School in London by his protestant uncle Alexander Nowell. Whitaker came up to Trinity College in October 1564. He was subsequently elected a scholar on the same foundation, proceeded B.A. in March 1568, and on 6 September 1569 was elected to a minor fellowship, and on 25 March 1571 to a major fellowship, at his college. In 1571 he commenced M.A. He was supported financially at Cambridge by his uncle.

On 3 February 1578 he was installed canon of Norwich Cathedral, and in the same year was admitted to the degree of B.D., and incorporated on 14 July at Oxford. In 1580 he was appointed by the crown to the regius professorship of divinity, to which Elizabeth shortly after added the chancellorship of St. Paul's, London, and from this time his position as the champion of the teaching of the Protestant and Reformed Church of England appears to have been definitely taken up

On 28 February 1586 Whitaker, on the recommendation of Whitgift and Burghley, was appointed by the crown to the mastership of St. John's College. The appointment was, however, opposed by a majority of the fellows on the ground of his supposed leanings towards puritanism. His rule as an administrator justified in almost equal measure the appointment and its objectors. The college increased greatly in numbers and reputation, but the puritan party gained ground considerably in the society. Whitaker was a no less resolute opponent of Lutheranism than of Roman doctrine and ritual.

In 1587 he was created D.D.; and in 1593, on the mastership of Trinity College falling vacant by the preferment of Dr. John Still to the bishopric of Bath and Wells, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the post.