Ronald Derek Hayes was a student of St John’s College. After being educated at Latymer Upper School, he came up to the Cambridge to read Geography and received a grant from the Worts Fund to study the peasant economy of Northern Portugal. He gave a talk to the Purchas Society about his research, and became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Hayes died on the 30th August 2018, at the age of eighty-six.
Heitland was born in 1847 in Colkirk, Norfolk, and was educated at Dedham Grammar School and Shrewsbury School. Being the son of an unsuccessful gentleman farmer he had to rely on a scholarship to enter St John's College. Heitland graduated BA as Senior Classic in 1871 and was immediately elected a Fellow of the College. He was College Lecturer in classics 1871-85 and Tutor 1883-93. Heitland was a prolific author, mostly of classical works. His most distinguished publications were 'Agricola' (1921), on agricultural labour in antiquity, and the 'History of the Roman Republic' (1909), which in its day was compared to Mommsen's great work. In 1901 Heitland married the daughter of the Master of St John's, Henry Bateson. Margaret Bateson was a journalist and stalwart of the suffragette movement. Heitland died in 1935.
Obituary in The Eagle: Vol 49, Mich 1935, p119
Henry VII, born Henry Tudor, was King of England from August 1485 to April 1509. He was the only son of Lady Margaret Beaufort and Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond, born at Pembroke Castle in Wales in 1457.
Henry never met his father, who died several months prior to Henry’s birth. Henry and his newly-widowed mother, thirteen years old at the time, were therefore initially protected by Henry’s uncle, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke. In 1561, guardianship of Lady Margaret and Henry passed to William Herbert, who assumed the Earldom of Pembroke after Jasper’s exile abroad. Henry lived in the Herbert household until Herbert’s death in 1469.
When Edward IV of England regained control of the crown in 1471, Henry was one of a number of Lancastrians who fled to Brittany. Henry’s main claim to the English crown and challenge to the Yorkist king was through Lady Margaret, who was the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. During most of the next fourteen years, Henry was protected by Francis II, Duke of Brittany. By 1483, he held the strongest claim to sovereignty on the Lancastrian side.
In August 1485, Henry finally defeated the incumbent Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in order to become King of England. His coronation was held in Westminster Abbey on 30 October 1485. When Henry married Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV, in early 1486, he not only reinforced his existing claim to the English throne, but also brought an end to the long-standing conflict known as the Wars of the Roses, fought between the two rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet.
Henry’s reign of almost twenty-four years was characterised by relative stability and fiscal prudence. He was father to four children by Elizabeth: Arthur, Margaret, Henry and Mary. In April 1509, Henry died of tuberculosis at Richmond Palace. He is buried alongside his wife, Elizabeth, in a specially-commissioned chapel at Westminster Abbey.
Henry VIII was King of England from 1509 until his death in 1547. He was the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, and grandson of Lady Margaret Beaufort. Born Henry Tudor in June 1491, he was raised with his sisters and received a first-class education under the supervision of his grandmother, who helped to ensure that Henry was tutored by some of the finest scholars of the day. After the death of his older brother, Arthur, in 1502, he became the new heir to the throne and was crowned King of England following the death of his father on 23rd June 1509, shortly before Henry’s eighteenth birthday. By this time, he had married his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, his brother’s widow. The couple had only daughter who survived infancy, Mary, born in 1516.
Henry is often noted for having had six successive wives during the course of his life. His second marriage to Anne Boleyn in 1533 followed the annulment of his marriage to Catherine and, in the face of papal opposition, a break with the Church of Rome that led in turn to the English Reformation and the appointment of Henry as Supreme Head of the Church of England. His marriage to Anne, and subsequent marriages to Jane Seymour (m.1536), Anne of Cleves (m.1540), Catherine Howard (m.1540), and Catherine Parr (m.1543), resulted in two further children: a daughter, Elizabeth, born to Anne Boleyn in 1533, and a son, Edward, born to Jane Seymour in 1537.
Henry’s reign saw important changes not only to the formation of the church, but to the legal union of England and Wales, with the Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 and 1542, and to England’s relationship with Ireland, following the Crown of Ireland Act of 1542. Henry also introduced significant measures to expand and develop the Royal Navy and engaged in an active, albeit expensive and often unsuccessful, foreign policy of wars against King Francis I of France and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. While as a young man he was highly-respected for his learning, athleticism and handsome appearance, the latter years of Henry’s life were characterised by periods of ill health and increased paranoia. He died in 1547 and was interred in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.
Of Threshfield. Admitted 1639. BA 1643 from Christ's College. Rector of a moiety of Linton, Yorkshire. Buried on 6 May 1674 in Linton church. Nephew Richard Hewitt placed a commemorative brass in Linton church (see correspondence and papers of Robert F Scott, former reference D90.862).
The priory was probably founded c. 1148 - c. 1151, originally as a daughter house of St Sulpice in Brittany. Mary, daughter of King Stephen, was a nun at St Sulpice and moved with some other nuns from St Sulpice to the nunnery of St Leonard, Stratford at Bow. When tensions arose between the nuns of St Sulpice and St Leonard it was agreed that she and the St Sulpice nuns should settle at Lillechurch in the parish of Higham, in a priory founded by her parents. The patent rolls of 1266 state that King John (1189-1199) granted the manor of Lillechurch to the priory, but this may be the confirmation of a grant by a predecessor, i.e. Stephen. In 1227 Henry III granted the manor to the Abbey of St Mary and St Sulpice and the prioress and nuns of Lillechurch in frankalmoign, with an annual fair. In 1346 the nuns were granted a licence by Edward III to acquire land in Higham. However, the names Lillechurch and Higham were used interchangeably to describe the priory from at least the 1230s. The process of dissolution began in 1521, by which time Lillechurch / Higham was decaying and there were only three nuns left. Henry VIII granted the priory to St John's College on 21 October 1522, with all its possessions in Higham, Lillechurch, Shorne, Elmley, Dartford, Yalding, Brenchley, Pympe, Lamberhurst, Cliffe, Hoo, Horndon on the Hill, and 'Hylbrondeslands' in the counties of Kent and Essex. The commissary of the bishop carried out the appropriation on 19 May 1523, and it was confirmed by the bishop and the dean and chapter in March 1524, and by the archdeacon of Rochester on 1 May 1525. Pope Clement VII confirmed it by a bull dated 28 September 1524.
The Reverend Canon Edwin Hill was born in 1843 at the Collegiate School in Leicester, where his father, the Reverend Abraham Hill, was Headmaster. He matriculated at St John’s in 1862 and graduated BA 5th Wrangler in 1866. He was elected to the Fellowship of St John’s in 1867 serving until 1890. During this time he was a Steward 1874-5 and Tutor 1875-1889, before moving to Cockfield, Suffolk to take up the post of Rector. He held that position for 40 years, including a period 1901-19 as Rural Dean of Lavenham. He was made Honorary Canon of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich in 1914 until his death in 1933.
Hill died in June 1933 at home in Bury St Edmunds. He had never married and left a substantial proportion of his estate St John’s College.
Obituary in The Eagle: Vol 48, Mich 1933, p. 67
B.A. 1702, M.A.1705 (St. John's Coll., Oxon.). Headmaster of Marlborough Free School, 1703-1733.
Youngest child of Ernest Bertram and Isabella Hinde, born on 26 October 1923 in Norwich. He was educated at Oundle's preparatory school followed by Oundle senior school. At the start of the Second World War Hinde signed up for the RAF, and following a length training in Africa, Hinde was posted to a Coastal Command, initially on Catalina flying boats, and then Sunderlands, before being promoted to flight lieutenant (1941-5). Following demobilization, Hinde received an exhibition to St John's College, where he read chemistry, physiology, and zoology; achieving a First in Part II of the Zoology Tripos in 1948. On 11 August the same year, he married Hester Cecily Coutts, who had been studying at Newnham College, Cambridge. They then moved to Oxford where Hinde undertook his DPhil at the Edward Grey Institute, and had four children together (two sons, two daughters). In 1950, Hinde returned to Cambridge at the invitation of William Thorpe to take up the position of curator of the Ornithological Field Station at Madingley, which he retained until 1965. Under Hinde's guidance, Madingley field station evolved as an important centre for the study of behaviour. Hester and Robert Hinde divorced in 1970, and on 7 May 1971 Hinde married Joan Gladys Stevenson, an American psychologist. They had two daughters together, and collaborated on the study of child development.
During his career, Hinde published a vast amount of work, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (1974), Honorary Fellow of the British Academy (2002) and the Royal College of Psychiatrists (1988), foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (1978), and an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1974). He also received awards and medals for his various research. Nevertheless, he was always a devoted member of St John's College, being a Fellow (1951-54, 1958-89, and 1994-2016) and, after retiring from his Royal Society Professorship in 1989, serving as Master (1989-94). He was also made an Honorary Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford (1986), and Trinity College, Dublin (1990), and received honorary doctorates from from the Université Libre (Brussels, 1974), Université de Paris (Nanterre, 1979), Stirling University (1991), Göteborg University (Sweden, 1991), Edinburgh University (1992), University of Western Ontario (Canada, 1996), and Oxford University (1998). In 1988 he was made a CBE and in 1996 was awarded the royal medal of the Royal Society.
Hinde was not only a dedicated academic, but also recognised the need for a responsible society, and was committed to the peace movement. He became chair and president of the British Pugwash Group and president of the Movement for the Abolition of War. He maintained an academically active life long after his official retirement age, during which period he wrote some of his most socially-important books. He died of prostate cancer at the Arthur Rank Hospice in Great Shelford, Cambridge on 23 December 2016. A memorial service was held in St John's College Chapel on 13 May 2017, and a conference in his honour was organised by the college on 1 June 2018.
Born on 26 November 1918 in Walsall, to Thomas Henry and Emma Hinsley. He was educated at the local elementary school, and then at Queen Mary's Grammar School, Walsall, before winning a scholarship to St John's College to read history. He obtained a First in Part I of the Historical Tripos (1939), but never went on to complete a first or any subsequent degree. After the breakout of the Second World War, Hinsley was recruited into the naval section at the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park. Here, he became the leading expert on decryption and analysis of German wireless traffic and, after the capture of the German Enigma Code machines and materials, played a vital role in supplying the Admiralty with crucial intelligence analysis derived from Admiral Doenitz's signals, which helped to win the battle against U-boats in the Atlantic. In later life he wrote both official and more personal accounts of the work that had been undertaken at Bletchley Park.
At the conclusion of the war Hinsley returned to St John's College, where he had been elected a research fellow in 1944. On 6 April 1946, Hinsley married Hilary Brett Brett-Smith (Goldsmith's reader in English at Oxford 1939-47), with whom he went on to have three children (2 sons, 1 daughter). He became a university lecturer in history (1949-65), tutor (1956-63) reader in the history of international relations (1965-69), and professor of the history of international relations (1969-83). He also served as President (1975-9) and then Master (1979-89) of St John's College, and in the office of University Vice-Chancellor (1981-3). One of his greatest achievements during his time at Cambridge was the establishment of the research school in the history of international relations in the 1960s and 70s. His research and publications, as well as the research and publications of his PhD students changed the way in which both international relations and their history were studied, and the result was an alteration in the intellectual basis of discussion.
Hinsley was made OBE for his work at Bletchley Park in 1946, was awarded an FBA in 1981, and was also knighted in 1985. He was an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College Dublin (1981), and Darwin College, Cambridge (1987), and was awarded an Honorary DLitt from Witwatersrand (1985) and DMilSci from Royal Roads Military College, Canada (1987). He died of lung cancer at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, on 16 February 1998.
Henry Hornby was secretary, dean of chapel and chancellor to Lady Margaret Beaufort, and a key figure in the foundation of St. John's College, Cambridge. After graduating D.D. in 1495, Hornby was appointed Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. He became Master of Peterhouse in 1509. Other notable appointments include Rector of Burton Bradstock, Dorset (1495-1517); Prebendary of Southwell (1496-1518); Prebendary of Lincoln (1501-1518), Dean of Wimborne, Dorset; and Rector of Orwell (1508-1518).
Adm. sizar to St. John's College, 1709; B.A. 1712-1713, M.A. 1716. Headmaster of Shrewsbury School, 1735-1754, and antiquarian.
How, John Charles Halland, Rev.
Matric. at St. John's College, Michaelmas 1900: B.A. 1903, M.A. 1907. Hebrew Lecturer at St. John's College, 1906-1920, and Precentor and Hebrew Lecturer at Trinity College, 1907-1920. Showed sustained interest in missionary work, serving first as Assistant Missioner of Wellington College Mission, Walworth, 1905-1906, then as Treasurer of the St. John's College Mission, c.1908-1909. How later became Diocesan Missioner of Manchester, 1924-1926.
Howard, Thomas, 14th Earl of Arundel, 4th Earl of Surrey, 1st Earl of Norfolk
Richard Howland was admitted as a pensioner at Christ's College on 18 March 1558 but migrated to SJC. He graduated B.A. in 1561. He was elected to the felllowship of Peterhouse in 1562 and proceeded to M.A. in 1564. In 1569, he was presented to the rectory of Stathern, Leicestershire by the Master and fellows of Peterhouse. He was appointed Master of Magdalene College by Lord Burghley in 1576. Howland was tipped to replace John Whitgift as master of Trinity upon Whitgift's resignation but the crown had already selected John Still to replace Whitgift. Howland was chosen to take Still's place as the head of St John's.
He was admitted Master 20 July 1577, finding a college full of religious dissensions but with new statutes. The choice of a successor threatened to involve the college in a fierce internal struggle and it was arranged that Howland should continue to hold the mastership with his bishopric (Peterborough); he resigned in February 1586.
Robert Leslie Howland was born in 1905 to Robert Howland and Mary Helen Turner in Watford. In 1913 the family moved to New York, where he attended the Noble School, before returning to Great Britain to attend a Preparatory School in Dundee, followed by Shrewsbury School.
He matriculated at St John’s in 1924 to read Classics, and graduated BA in 1928. He taught briefly at Eton College, before returning to St John’s after being elected to the Fellowship on 1929. He remained a Fellow the rest of his life. He was appointed Tutor in 1932, and began lecturing at the Classical Faculty two years later. He became a Faculty Assistant Lecturer in 1936 and a University Lecturer in 1938. After serving in the Second World War, he returned to the College and became Senior Proctor 1951-52, Senior Tutor in 1956, and was elected President in 1963. Howland served as Warden of Madingley Hall, succeeding Edward Miller, in 1965 and remained in that post until his retirement in 1975.
Howland was an accomplished shot-putter, having competed for the British National Athletic Team from 1927 to 1939, and representing Great Britain at the Amsterdam Olympics in 1928. In 1950, he won the Cambridgeshire title aged 45.
Howland died in 1986 age 80 leaving two sons and one daughter.
Obituary in The Eagle: Vol 71, 1987, p55
Accessible online at:
https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Eagle/Eagle%20Volumes/1980s/Eagle_1987.pdf
Author, naturalist, and ornithologist. A founding member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.