Caius College Research Articles

IV. Robert Brady, 1627–1700. A Cambridge Historian of the Restoration

In the first great age of English scholarship, to write history was to write polemics. England was a legal, not a geographical expression; to write her history was to interpret her law, or the relation of that law to the Crown, and so to take sides in the battle of parties. The law was timeless; its principles were the same in all ages; the past was a storehouse, not of mere examples, but of authoritative precedents. A statute whose making was ‘beyond memory’ was of greater authority than one whose beginnings were known. What the constitution was it had always been and to define its past was to define its true nature in the present. No scholar wrote more openly to support a cause than Dr Robert Brady, who was Master of Caius College from 1660 to 1700 and defended the Stuart monarchy with his learning in the last ten years of its existence; but the paradox of his career is that no man did more to bring to an end the climate of thought in which his work had been born. An interpreter of history in an age remembered rather for great textual scholars, he was a principal agent in bringing English historical method out of its medieval and into its modern period. For the student of English historiography in its peculiar and intimate connexions with legal and political thought he is, therefore, a notable figure.

The Seven Deadly Sins and the Devil's Court in the Trinity College Cambridge French Text of the Ancrene Riwle

Definite Progress in Ancrene Riwle studies has been achieved in recent years. Work on the diplomatic editions of the ME MSS. has been steadily proceeding and these texts will shortly begin to appear in print. The year 1944 was marked by the appearance of the Latin version edited by Charlotte D'Evelyn, and also by the publication of the late J. A- Herbert's edition of the French version preserved in British Museum MS. Cotton Vitellius F vii. This edition, the product of patient and exacting labor devoted to deciphering a MS. long considered hopelessly illegible through damage in the Cottonian fire, a labor carried to completion despite failing health, amidst the dislocation, privation, and distress of total war, constitutes for those who knew Herbert a fitting memorial to his long career of expert and meticulous scholarship. A second French version of the Ancrene Riwle, forming part of the collection of religious tracts contained in Trinity College Cambridge MS. 883 (R.14.7), had been discovered by Miss Hope Emily Allen in 1936, and described by her in relation to its general characteristics in 1940, when she conjectured that it would prove to be distinct from the Vitellius French version and an independent translation from an English original. The text of the Ancrene Riwle portion of this version is still unprinted except for the short passages cited for illustration by-Miss Allen, and consequently most scholars of Middle English have had little opportunity to form an opinion of the nature and interest of its text. Since the diplomatic editions of all the Ancrene Riwle MSS under way for the EETS naturally proceed slowly, although a promising start has already been made, it seems advisable to offer now some evidence as to the textual problems raised by this second French version whose text, although cut up and expanded for use in the “Compilation”, appears likely to prove very valuable for the study of the interrelationships of the various Ancrene Riwle texts. It is here proposed to offer for the consideration of Ancrene Riwle scholars a representative specimen of the Trinity French Text in order to prepare the way for the diplomatic edition to follow later. The passage chosen corresponds to that printed in 1920 by Joseph Hall from two Cambridge MSS., Corpus Christi College 402 and Caius College 234, with textual comments and accompanied by variants from all the MSS then known. This is the passage in which the Seven Deadly Sins are represented allegorically as animals, and in which is described the Devil's Court where each type of sinner is assigned his appropriate position and function.

Rowland Harry Biffen 1874-1949

Genetic science owes to Biffen a contribution of central importance to its growth. His wheat breeding substantially benefited British agriculture and promoted the application of science to the art of breeding. In the teaching of agricultural botany he combined with expository power a width of knowledge that made him one of the founders of the subject in its modern form. R. H. Biffen was the eldest of the family, of two boys and three girls, of Henry John and Mary Biffen. He was born on 28 May 1874 at Cheltenham where his father was Headmaster of the Christ Church Higher Grade School. His boyhood pleasure was to roam the Cotswold countryside collecting plants, fossils and flint implements or, with equal zest, sketching its grey stone buildings. At Cheltenham Grammar School, which he attended from 1883 to 1893, chemistry was then the only science taught. In its laboratory, well equipped for the times, he was left largely to teach himself but with encouragement, always gratefully remembered, from the enthusiastic Science Master. This kind of schooling must have been well suited to his sturdily independent mind. It enabled him to enter Emmanuel College, Cambridge, at Michaelmas 1893 as an Exhibitioner. A year later he became a Scholar of his College and with a first class in both parts of the Natural Sciences Tripos he graduated in 1896. For his outstanding position in Part II of the Tripos he was at once awarded the Frank Smart Studentship in Botany at Gonville and Caius College which is devoted to the encouragement of botanical research. He became a member of this College during its tenure, as the regulations required. In those unhurried days, with no organized postgraduate preparation for a scientific career nor the trammel of research degrees, this coveted award gave grand opportunity to youthful enterprise and originality. Biffen, luckily, soon got his chance and, characteristically, seized it. Having become interested in rubber-producing plant-latexes he accepted an invitation to join a small expedition to Brazil, Mexico and the West Indies, for the study of sources of rubber. His travel journal, in keeping with his habitual economy of words and material, consisted of a very small pocket diary, now deposited in the Library of the Botany School. He set out intent on investigating coagulation of latex but his travel of several months in 1897-1898 was to awaken a wider interest.

The science and practice of entomology.

Entomology in Great Britain remained for long enough the care of amateurs. A long line of distinguished naturalists whose chief interest lay with the insects runs through the nineteenth century. There was A. H. Haworth (1767–1833), a lawyer by profession, the founder of the first entomological societies in this country; there was William Kirby (1759–1850), Fellow of Gonville and Caius College and rector of Barham in the county of Suffolk for fifty-eight years, who, with William Spence (1783–1860), produced the standard work on insects that was to hold the field for half a century. There was George Newport (1803–54), physician and surgeon, who published a remarkable series of papers on the anatomy and physiology of insects. There was the lawyer’s clerk and engraver John Curtis (1791–1862) and Miss Ormerod (1828–1901) who, in the second half of the century laid the foundations of agricultural entomology in Britain. There was Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury) (1834–1913), worthy of remembrance indeed, for it was he who sponsored the Early Closing Act and gave us our bank holidays. As a relaxation from a most active public life, Lubbock laid the groundwork of our knowledge of the sensory physiology of the Hymenoptera; it was Lubbock who proved that bees distinguish colours and can be trained to associate particular colours with the presence of food; that the vision of ants extends into the ultra-violet; and who suggested, far ahead of his time, that ants find their way home by remembering the direction of the sun.

The Economy of Ceylon.

Journal Article The Economy of Ceylon Get access The Economy of Ceylon. By Sir IVOR Jennings. (Bombay and London : Oxford University Press, 1948. Pp. ix + 224. 10s. 6d.) P. T. Bauer P. T. Bauer Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 60, Issue 237, 1 March 1950, Pages 150–151, https://doi.org/10.2307/2227226 Published: 01 March 1950

Britain's Colonies in World Trade.

Journal Article Britain's Colonies in World Trade Get access Britain's Colonies in World Trade. By F. V. Meyer. (London : Oxford University Press (Royal Institute of International Affairs), 1948. Pp. xvi and 273. 18s.) P. T. Bauer P. T. Bauer Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 59, Issue 236, 1 December 1949, Pages 597–600, https://doi.org/10.2307/2226591 Published: 01 December 1949

Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge

Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge

Sir James Chadwick, F.R.S.

SIR JAMES CHADWICK has been pre-elected Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, of which he has been a fellow and more lately an honorary fellow. Sir James began his scientific work under Rutherford in Manchester ; after studying in the University of Berlin he was interned in Germany during the First World War, and there continued his scientific researches. When Rutherford moved to Manchester, Chadwick joined him and took part in Rutherford‘s classical researches on the disintegration of elements by α-particles. With Bieler and later with Rutherford he studied the scattering of α-particles by hydrogen and heavier nuclei, and from these experiments determined the law of force around atomic nuclei. He became assistant director of research under Rutherford at Cambridge, and as such was responsible for the training of Rutherford‘s young research students and for the satisfaction of their modest needs. Many nuclear physicists will remember the attic of the Cavendish equipped with ancient vacuum pumps, gold-leaf electroscopes and the simple apparatus for counting α-particles which was then the main tool of nuclear research. The discovery of the neutron in 1932, followed by the photodisintegration of the deuteron (with Goldhaber) and the creation of electron pairs by γ-rays (with Blackett and Occhialini), marked the peak of Chadwick‘s experimental work. In 1935 he was appointed Lyon Jones professor of physics in the University of Liverpool, and at once embarked on the construction of a 36-in. cyclotron, completing this just prior to the Second World War.

University of Cambridge

GENEBAL SMUTS was installed as chancellor of the University of Cambridge on June 10. He then conferred honorary degrees on the following, among others : Mr. Winston Churchill ; Sir Stafford Cripps ; Sir Hector Hetherington, principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Glasgow ; Mr. Charles Seymour, president of Yale University ; Mr. J. F. Cameron, master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge ; Sir Hugh Lett, president of the British Medical Association ; Sir Wilson Jameson, chief medical officer of the Ministries of Health and Education; Sir Richard Livingstone, vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford ; Sir Robert Robinson, president of the Royal Society ; Sir Paul Fildes, of the Medical Research Council ; and Mr. Arnold Toynbee, director of studies in the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

Announcements

SIR JAMES CHADWICK, honorary fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and Lyon Jones professor of physics in the University of Liverpool, has been pre-elected Master of the College to succeed Mr. J. F. Cameron, who retires on September 30.

Mr. J. L. Chaworth-Musters

JAMES LAWRENCE CHAWORTH-MUSTERS died on April 12. Born in 1901 at Annesley, Nottinghamshire, the son of a landowning family, the associations of his early youth with country life and pursuits led to an enduring interest in natural history, more especially in animals as living creatures. He was educated at Rugby and Caius College, Cambridge ; but lack of sympathy with studies in which animals are more often seen as dead objects for dissection in the laboratory than as living organisms, and the horizons opened to him through participation in an expedition to Jan Mayen in 1920, impelled him to cut short his academic career. The possession of property in Norway resulted in his spending much time there, and he became deeply interested in the faunai differences he observed as compared with Britain. This interest was widened as he studied the subject ; but he mainly concerned himself with mammals and birds, and commenced a serious study of the Palaearctic members of the groups at the British Museum (Natural History), with frequent field expeditions to collect and observe. His journeyings took him to Cyrenaica in 1926, the mountains of Greece in 1931, the U.S.S.R. in 1936, the High Atlas of Morocco in 1937 and Afghanistan in 1939 ; from all these expeditions he brought back new knowledge and additional material for study and to amplify the national collection.

Geography at Bedford College, London : Mr. Gordon Manley

MR. GORDON MANLEY will go to the newly created chair of geography at Bedford College, University of London, with wide experience of university life in Britain and as an acknowledged authority on climatology. Mr. Manley graduated at both the Universities of Manchester and Cambridge, where he was an exhibitioner of Gonville arid Caius College, and he has held university posts successively at Birmingham, Durham—as first head of the Geography Department —and Cambridge. His interests in the meteorological aspects of snow-cover may have derived from his enthusiasm for the Peanines and the Lake District as a keen mountaineer and rock climber as well as geographer. A visit to East Greenland as a member of Mr. J. M. Wordie's expedition of 1926 confirmed these interests. More recently he has analysed long-period temperature records in the north of England and revealed the gradual warming of our winters since 1820. The close resemblance between these changes and those for Stockholm suggests that this matter is of far more than local significance. In these early records Mr. Manley sees a valuable source of information that may throw light on the greater climatic changes of the Pleistocene Ice Age. Mr. Manley is, too, a keen but balanced advocate of the geographer's contribution to meteorology. This was the theme of his second presidential address to the Royal Meteorological Society. The Buchan Prize in 1943, the Symons Lecture in 1944, and the Murchison Grant of the Royal Geographical Society in 1947, all marked Mr. Manley's contributions to climatology ; but his papers also include other branches of geography, particularly the history of cartography. Mr. Manley remained at Cambridge long enough to see the university give somewhat belated recognition to meteorological studies by setting up a Meteorological Committee, of which he was the first secretary.

Studies in Bracton

I have elsewhere drawn attention to a manuscript containing three works on canon law that Bracton laid under contribution, namely Tancred's Ordo judiciarius, Raymond of Peñafort's Summa de matrimonio and William of Drogheda's Summa aurea. This manuscript has been ascribed to the late thirteenth century by Dr. M. R. James; but dating a manuscript by the character of the handwriting can rarely be exact, and there seemed a possibility that the book might prove to be one that Bracton himself had used or that was related in some way to such a one. Through the kindness of the Council of Gonville and Caius College I have been able to examine the manuscript at leisure and, while it tells us less than might have been hoped, yet it does seem to throw a little fresh light upon Bracton's treatise and one of Bracton's sources.

Dr. S. H. Daukes, O.B.E

By the death of Sidney Herbert Daukes, the medical profession has lost its leading authority on the modern medical museum. Daukes died on September 3 after a short illness. The son of the Rev. S. Whitfield Daukes, vicar of Holy Trinity, Beckenham, he was born on April 20, 1879. He was educated at Lancing College where he distinguished himself in various sports, and at Caius College, Cambridge. He took a second class in the Natural Science Tripos in 1900 and then studied medicine at the London Hospital. He qualified M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. in 1905 and in the same year graduated M.B., B.Ch., Cambridge. After several years spent in hospital appointments and in general practice, he took his D.P.H. in 1912 and in 1913 the D.T.M. & H. By the outbreak of the First World War he had held a post as assistant school medical officer at Leeds and was chief assistant school medical officer for Norfolk.

Agricultural Research Council: Prof. I. de Burgh Daly, F.R.S

Prof. Daly has held the chair of physiology in the University of Edinburgh since 1933. He was educated at Rossall School, at the University of Cambridge, where he took first-class honours in Part I of the Natural Science Tripos and was Thurston Medallist of Caius College, and at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. In the First World War Prof. Daly was a fighter pilot in the Royal Naval Air Service. He was a member of the staff of the Department of Physiology, University College, London, during 1919–23, a Beit Memorial Fellow, and lecturer in experimental physiology in the University of Wales, Cardiff, in 1923, before being appointed professor of physiology in the University of Birmingham in 1927, where he worked until he was appointed to Edinburgh in 1933. During the Second World War, Prof. Daly carried out research on the physiology of high-altitude flying and on poison gases in Edinburgh during 1939–43. From 1943 until 1945 he was director of the Physiological Laboratory of the Medical Research Council at Lulworth, which was responsible for the investigation of the physiological factors determining the fighting efficiency of the crews in armoured fighting vehicles.

John William Watson Stephens, 1865-1946

John William Watson Stephens was born at Ferryside, near Carmarthen, on 2 March 1865, the second of three sons of John Stephens, barrister-at-law, and Martha, daughter of Captain David Davies, R.M., Transmawr, Carmarthenshire. The family was an old Carmarthenshire one with many branches living in the neighbourhood, and Stephens after retirement lived and died in the house in which he was born. His early boyhood was spent at Ferryside where he went to a small preparatory school. Later he was sent for a term to Christ’s College, Brecon, and then to Dulwich College, where he distinguished himself by winning prizes in successive years for mathematics and Greek in 1879, chemistry 1880-1882, as also two prizes in this subject in 1883, together with one in physics and one in physiology in the same year. Having decided to embark on a medical career, he entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in October 1884, taking his B.A. and Natural Science Tripos in 1887. He received his medical education at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, taking his M.B., B.C. in 1893, followed by the D.P.H. in 1894. After qualifying he continued to work during 1895 and 1896 at St Bartholomew’s as Sir Trevor Lawrence Research Student in Pathology and Bacteriology, publishing several papers on bacteriological Subjects. He was President of the Abernethian Society in 1896. His main recreation at this time was Rugby football and he played forward for Barts when they won the Hospital Cup. He also played at times for Carmarthen. In 1896-1897 he continued to work on pathology at Cambridge as John Lucas Walker Student in Pathology under A. A. Kanthack, then Professor of Pathology, Cambridge University. He used frequently to refer to Kanthack for whom he evidently had a high respect and affection, and whose influence in turning his attention to research he often acknowledged. At this time he was greatly interested in the study of snake venoms and on the testing of the isotonic point, now usually referred to as the fragility test, of the red blood corpuscles, a technique he later applied to the investigation of blackwater fever.

Royal Naval Scientific Service : Sir Charles Wright, K.C.B., O.B.E

CHARLES SEYMOUR WRIGHT, who has just resigned from the post of chief of the Royal Naval Scientific Service, was born in Toronto in 1887. He was educated at Upper Canada College and the University of Toronto. He won a Wollaston Research Studentship and an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship, with which he proceeded to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He did research work at the Cavendish Laboratory during 1908-10. He joined Captain Scott as scientist to the Antarctic Expedition, 1910-13. After the return of the survivors of this expedition, he spent a year at Cambridge until the outbreak of war. He joined the Royal Engineers in 1914, first as wireless officer to the 5th Corps, during which period heearned the Military Cross. He later became O.C. Wireless of the 2nd Army, and for his services at this time was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He was decorated with the O.B.E. for his subsequent work in the Intelligence Division of the General Staff.

Full Powers and Ratification: a Study in the Development of Treaty-Making Procedure

Journal Article Full Powers and Ratification: a Study in the Development of Treaty-Making Procedure Get access Full Powers and Ratification: a Study in the Development of Treaty-Making Procedure. By J. Mervyn Jones, Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; sometime Whewell Scholar in International Law in the University of Cambridge. 1946. (London: Cambridge University Press. Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law. 8¾″ × 5½″. xv +182 pp. 12s. 6d.) B. A. Wortley B. A. Wortley Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 23, Issue 2, April 1947, Pages 250–251, https://doi.org/10.2307/3018913 Published: 01 April 1947

Dr. Charles S. Myers, C.B.E., F.R.S

WHEN the complete story of the last forty years of development of experimental and applied psychology in Briitak (written, it will become clear that an enormous wnount of this development was due directle enthusiasm, foresight, scientific knowledege and organising skill of Dr. C. S. Myers. For soie Vime there was no certainty that psychology would claim him for life. Literature, music, philosophy, archaeology all attracted and held him, as well as natural science. It was, however, as a student of natural science that he gained an exhibition at Gonville and Caius College in 1891, and later a scholarship. He had a distinguished student career at Cambridge, where his interests turned chiefly in the direction of biological studies, and from physiology and anatomy he went on, through the influence of Rivers and Haddon, to experimental psychology and anthropology.

National Coal Board: Director-General of Research

DR. W. IDRIS JONES, in accepting the post of director-general of research for the National Coal Board, becomes the chief executive officer of Sir Charles Ellis, the scientific member. The Board is composed of functional members responsible respectively for production, marketing, labour, finance and scientific work. The scientific member's responsibility embraces problems ranging from day-to-day investigations connected with quality control to long-term research. Dr. W. Idris Jones, who is forty-six years of age, has wide scientific and technical experience to help him in this important appointment. He graduated at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. He was a Rhondda and Frank Smart research student of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and took his Ph.D. (Cantab.) degree in 1925. After leaving Cambridge, he joined the research staff of Messrs. Synthetic Ammonia and Nitrates, Ltd, (later I.C.I. (F. and S.P.), Ltd.), at Billingham-on-Tees, and was later appointed a group manager in the Oil Division, where he was concerned with the development of the coal hydrogenation process. He was appointed director of research of the Powell Duffryn Co. in April 1933, an appointment which he has held until now.