600th Anniversary Celebrations of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

Most Oxford and Cambridge colleges were founded by aristocrats or churchmen, but Corpus was an exception. It was established in 1352 by the two Cambridge guilds of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary to train priests in theology and canon law, and to provide prayers for the souls of guildsmen departed. Henry, Duke of Lancaster, obtained a royal license from Edward III for the tiny foundation, which began with only a master and two fellows.

The college has the oldest complete quad in the university, to which a second court was added in the 1820s, an unseemly innovation which has always perturbed conservatives. The college library is one of the glories of Cambridge. Matthew Parker, who was master in Henry VIII’s time before going on to be Archbishop of Canterbury, left the college a manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, thought to be King Alfred’s own copy, as well as a sixth-century book of the gospels believed to have been given to St Augustine of Canterbury by Pope Gregory the Great and a psalter that once belonged to Thomas Becket. Besides two other Archbishops of Canterbury – Tenison and Herring – past members of Corpus include Christopher Marlowe, the eighteenth-century archaeologist and Druid-fancier William Stukeley and Sir George Thomson, Nobel Prize-winning physicist.

The college celebrated its 600th anniversary with a dinner on the feast day of Corpus Christi in 1952. After the traditional toasts to Church and Queen and the ancient house, a drinking horn used for the purpose ever since the college was founded was passed round as a loving cup.

Then on the 21st the Master and Fellows entertained hundreds of former members of the college to an afternoon garden party. The dons and college servants played a team of former members at cricket while an ox, sent over by the city of Corpus Christi, Texas, was roasted whole for ten hours before being ceremoniously carved by three of the college cooks. After which the college, replete, settled down to its seventh century.