Caius College

“ Caius was born in 1510, and studied at Gonville Hall, Cambridge, which was ultimately to be better known by his own name. He went to Padua in 1539, and lived in the same house with the celebrated anatomist, Vesalius. He became professor of Greek at Padua, and took the M.D. there in 1541. He became F.R.C.P. in 1547, and settled in London in 1552. He was president of the College in 1555. He was physician to Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, but he is said to have been removed from the latter position because of his Romish tendencies. ”

“ At a somewhat later date Caius ordered his students to be in bed by eight o’clock at night, but they made up for this by rising very early in the morning. In general the punishment for minor faults was left to the discretion of the authorities. This was only reasonable, for a medieval college was a mixed community of lads and men, the members being of all ages from about fourteen or fifteen upwards; and rules enforced on boys of fourteen could not be applied to men of twenty-three or twenty-four, who were in fact already taking part in the teaching of the junior scholars. ”

“ Going to Caius College, Cambridge, he was thirteenth wrangler in 1811, obtained several of the classical prizes of the university, and became a fellow and lecturer at Emmanuel College. In 1813 he travelled in Germany and made the acquaintance of some of the great scholars of Germany. ”

“ The arrangement of buildings at Caius is rather curious, and no Cambridge college has been so transformed since its foundation. The chapel is between the two lesser courts; the hall is at the back of everything, and its position is far from obvious. Caius may be said to consist of two halves: the first half, to the east, borders Trinity Street, and is the New Court; the second and westerly half is an oblong bounded on three sides by narrow lanes and on the other by the rest of the college. ”

“ In 1568 he became fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was noted as an active tutor, and of the old way of thinking in religious matters. On 27 June 1573 he was appointed master of Caius College, and took with him thither many of his pupils from Jesus College. Some time between 1563 and 1574 he was regius professor of civil law, but he does not seem at any time to have been, as is sometimes stated, regius professor of Hebrew. At Caius Legge's conduct soon brought him into trouble. ”

“ After this he resided wholly at Cambridge, living by his fellowship at Caius College. Dying there at the end of August 1697, he was buried on 1 Sept. in the church of St. Michael, in which parish the college is situated. He corresponded with several learned men in Holland. ”

“ Whistler [President of the Royal College of Physicians] told a pretty story, related by Muffet, a good author, of Dr. Caius, that built Caius College, that being very old, and living only at that time upon woman’s milk, he, while he fed upon the milk of an angry, fretful woman, was so himself; and then being advised to take it of a good-natured, patient woman, he did become so beyond the common temper of his age.—30th: I was pleased to see the person who had his blood taken out ... saying he finds himself much better since, and as a new man. ”

“ Three sides of the main quadrangle, Tree Court, including the frontage towards Trinity Street, are modern (1870) . The interior of this court is picturesque, and the design of the smaller Caius Court was inspired by Caius himself. He also designed the gates of Honour, Virtue and Humility, of which the two first stand in situ; the gate of Honour is a peculiarly good example of early Renaissance work. Caius is buried in the chapel.
Jesus College lies apart from and to the north-east of the majority of the colleges. It was founded in 1406 by John Alcock, bishop of Ely. ”

“ He was physician to Edward VI., Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. He returned to Cambridge from London for a few days in June 1573, about a month before his death, and resigned the mastership to Dr Legge, a tutor at Jesus College. He died at his London House, in St Bartholomew’s, on the 29th of July, 1573, but his body was brought to Cambridge, and buried in the chapel under the well-known monument which he had designed. Dr Caius was a learned, active and benevolent man. ”

“ There is only a little of the earliest building remaining; the greater part of the present college dates from the second half of the 18th century. The chapel, however, is by Sir Christopher Wren (1677) . Richard Holdsworth, Gresham professor, and William Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, were masters of this college; Bishops Joseph Hall and Thomas Percy were among its alumni, as was John Harvard, principal founder of the great American college which bears his name.
Gonville and Caius College (commonly called Caius, pronounced Kees) , stands mainly on the west side of Trinity Street. ”

“ He was educated at King’s College, London, and Caius College, Cambridge, and in 1858 was ordained. After some years of work in various country curacies and livings he became in 1869 theological lecturer and tutor at Caius College. ”

“ Of the generation next succeeding Linacre's was John Kaye, or Key (or Caius, as it has been long pedantically spelt) . Like Linacre (the elegant writer and intimate friend of Erasmus) , Caius is associated with letters not less than medicine. Born of a respectable Norfolk family, Caius raised, on the foundation of Gonvil Hall, the college in the University of Cambridge that bears his name—to which Eastern Counties' men do mostly resort. Those who know Cambridge remember the quaint humour with which, in obedience to the founder's will, the gates of Caius are named. ”

“ But ‘upon second thoughts, and perhaps a desire of a sedate and academical life’ (Wood, Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss) , iii. 1127) , he entered Caius College, Cambridge, as a fellow-commoner on 12 June 1615, and proceeding M.A. in the following year, lived at Cambridge until 1619, when he became rector of Burghclere, Hampshire. ”

“ He went up to Caius College, Cambridge, of which he was Tancred student. After taking his degree, he was for two years head mathematical master at Ascham School, Bournemouth, and became in 1880 headmaster of St. ”

“ Dr. John Caius, Kaye, or Key, of Gonville-hall, Cambridge, succeeded Linacre in the Presidency; like him he had travelled in Italy for his improvement in the study of Medicine, and having resided in Padua and Bologna, where he took his Doctor’s degree, and 8was for some years Greek lecturer, he pursued his travels through Germany and France. After his return to England, he was called to Court as Physician to king Edward the 6th; in 1547 he was made a Fellow of the College of Physicians, the rights and privileges of which he most strenuously asserted and augmented. ”

“ During the mastership of John Hills, Sibbes’ predecessor, John Gostlin, the eccentric master of Caius, gave the Bull Inn, which was his personal property, to the college, and thus the society was enabled to enlarge its frontiers. Nevertheless, the commotions of the Civil Wars delayed operations until long after the Restoration, when Dr John Eachard, master in 1675, carried out the longed-for improvements. There is no college whose external appearance belies a medieval foundation more than St Catharine’s. ”

“ The rough and ready penalty of the birch is, however, frequently mentioned in the statutes of Corpus and of other sixteenth-century Colleges. Cardinal Wolsey thought it proper that an undergraduate should be whipped until he had completed his twentieth year. At Trinity, Cambridge (where offenders were sociably flogged before the assembled College on Friday evenings) the age was eighteen. Dr Caius restricted the rod to scholars who were not adult. "We call those adults," he says, "who have completed their eighteenth year. ”

“ He was Fellow, Censor, and President of the London College; and even in advanced life never absented himself from our meetings without a dispensation. He was buried in the Chapel of the College he had founded at Cambridge; and the simple inscription upon his monument, while it records the date of his death, adds a sentiment which should reconcile us to the frail and doubtful tenure of our present existence, by the certainty and permanence of well-merited posthumous fame:—
‘Fui Caius. ”

“ During his residence in Shrewsbury the 'sweating sickness' broke out, and at the request of his friend Robert Warmington he compiled a short tract in English, 'A Boke or Counseill against the Sweate or Sweating Sicknesse,' which he afterwards expanded into the longer Latin treatise, 'De Ephemera Britannica.' He was shortly after appointed one of the Physicians to King Edward VI, and retained his post under Queen Mary. In the practice of his profession Caius soon acquired considerable wealth, which, being unmarried, he resolved to employ in the encouragement of science and learning. ”

“ Gesner, the great European biologist of the time, who was on terms of intimate relation by correspondence with Caius and knew his work on plants and animals very well, styled him, in the preface to his "Icones Animalium," "a man of consummate erudition, fidelity and diligence as well as judgment," and in an epistle to Queen Elizabeth bestows upon him the eulogium of "the most learned physician of his age." Caius has the merit of introducing the regular practice of dissection into the English teaching of medicine. ”

“ Caius's own list above referred to contains seventy-two titles, including sixteen original works, seven versions from Greek into Latin, and ten commentaries, besides texts, discovered, edited, and amended, but all the rest appear to have perished. Some, he says, were lost through the dilatoriness of Oporinus, the printer of Basel.
Caius's medical writings have a high value. Living in an age when book-learning was the mark of the skilled physician, and himself a profound scholar, he was still notable for his power of observation. ”

“ Caius's Latin writing is terse and lucid. It is evidently modelled on the style of Celsus, from whom he borrows many words, and sometimes whole phrases. His English is vigorous. He was a good naturalist, as well as an excellent physician and scholar. In every department of learning he seems to have been proficient. ”

“ There is no escape; one life and one death is appointed for us both, to spend the one and to meet the other, in the service of the people." Caius was no sooner arrived in Sardinia, but he gave exemplary proofs of his high merit; he not only excelled all the young men of his age in his actions against his enemies, in doing justice to his inferiors, and in showing all obedience and respect to his superior officer; but likewise in temperance, frugality, and industry, he surpassed even those who were much older than himself. ”

“ But while Aemilianus thought that for such work obedience, faithfulness, courage, temperance were all that were required of a man, Caius, who had these virtues in a high degree, had also an active questioning mind. It did not seem to him that the men who ruled the State were wise or just or generous enough to lay down, once for all, the lines on which it was to move for ever. The citizen had a duty to the Republic beyond that of loyal and obedient devotion. He must use not only his arm in its service but his mind also. He must help it to grow ”

“ For, when the vote had been taken, every man not having a vote had been expelled from the city, and forbidden to come within five miles of it till the voting was over. Caius had come to live in the Forum instead of on the Palatine when he returned to Rome, among his friends as he thought; and still even in little matters he stood forward as the champion of the poor against the rich. There was going to be a show of gladiators in the Forum, and the magistrates had enclosed the arena with benches, which they meant to hire out. ”

“ Modern higher algebra is especially occupied with the theory of linear transformations. Its development is mainly the work of Cayley and Sylvester.
Arthur Cayley, born at Richmond, in Surrey, in 1821, was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. [74] He came out Senior Wrangler in 1842. He then devoted some years to the study and practice of law. On the foundation of the Sadlerian professorship at Cambridge, he accepted the offer of that chair, thus giving up a profession promising wealth for a very modest provision, but which would enable him to give all his time to mathematics. ”

“ Caius not liking the fellow’s look, and, suspecting what he came for, began to revile him and challenged him to fight, which the fellow refusing, Caius, in a fit of honest passion, beat him soundly, as such a mischief-maker and carrier of wicked messages deserved; which coming to the ears of Regan and her husband, they ordered Caius to be put in the stocks, though he was a messenger from the king her father and in that character demanded the highest respect. So that the first thing the king saw when he entered the castle was his faithful servant Caius sitting in that disgraceful situation. ”

“ The man who originates is always so far greater than the man who imitates, and Caius only followed where his brother led. He was not greater than but only like his brother in his bravery, in his culture, in the faculty of inspiring in his friends strong enthusiasm and devotion, in his unswerving pursuit of a definite object, and, as his sending the son of Fulvius Flaccus to the Senate just before his death proves in the teeth of all assertions to the contrary, in his willingness to use his personal influence in order to avoid civil bloodshed. ”