Michael Prichard, with assistance and contributions from Christopher Brooke and Richard Duncan-Jones, Gonville & Caius College: The Statutes of the Founders (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2017), xxii + 640 pages.

Abstract

This chapter studies Michael Prichard's edition, with translation and copious additional material, of the early statutes of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Although the full work is his, he gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the late Christopher Brooke and Richard Duncan-Edwards, the latter for assisting with the text and translation. Prichard's book is divided into two more or less equal parts. The first part contains texts with translations on the facing pages of the statutes of Edmund Gonville; both the 1353 and 1355 versions of the statutes of William Bateman with John Caius's exposition of them; and the 1573 statutes of John Caius, with the significant modifications added after Caius's death by his friend Matthew Parker, then Archbishop of Canterbury. The second part of the book, titled ‘Background and Aftermath’ is a set of extensive essays. The ‘background’ essays discuss the circumstances in which the statutes of the three founders came into being. The five ‘aftermath’ essays explore topics on which Caius had left clear instructions, but which were either the subject of fierce dispute, or else quietly ignored. They are respectively: the Fellows and the Governing Body, the Master's powers of veto, the supposed preference to candidates from Norfolk, the remuneration of the Fellows, and their dividends.