̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Tudor

Trinity College prayer book belonged to Thomas Cromwell, new research suggests

ta385 — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Hever Castle curator, Alison Palmer, recognised the bejewelled, silver gilt binding of Trinity’s Book of Hours from the famous portrait of Thomas Cromwell painted by Hans Holbein the Younger in 1532-3, which hangs in the Frick Collection in New York. Palmer then worked with colleagues Kate McCaffrey and Dr Owen Emmerson to uncover the mystery of the book’s ownership.

̽��ֱ��researchers followed a provenance trail that links the book from its donor, Dame Anne Sadleir, directly back to Thomas Cromwell. A team of experts have reviewed the new evidence and are confident that this is the very same book in the Holbein painting and that it belonged to Thomas Cromwell.

̽��ֱ��Hardouyn Hours is thought to be the only object from any Tudor portrait to survive to this day.

̽��ֱ��team established that the book, printed in Paris by Germain Hardouyn in 1527 or 1528, would have been among the books left by Cromwell to his secretary and protege Ralph Sadleir.

̽��ֱ��book came to Trinity from Dame Anne Sadleir who married the grandson of Cromwell’s secretary. Anne was the daughter of the eminent lawyer Sir Edward Coke, a member of Trinity. She donated this Book of Hours, along with Trinity’s best-known manuscript – ̽��ֱ��Trinity Apocalypse – to the College in 1660.

Trinity’s Librarian Dr Nicolas Bell has collaborated with researchers at Cambridge and beyond to find out more about the Hardouyn Hours.

Based on a note in the front of the book, the gems on the covers and clasps were thought to be jaspers or jacinths, but analysis by Joanna Symonowicz, a doctoral researcher working with Dr Giuliana Di Martino in the ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy, has used Raman spectroscopy to identify them as grossular garnets.

Michèle Bimbenet-Privat, formerly curator of metalwork at the Louvre in Paris, has confirmed that the silver gilt edging was made by Pierre Mangot, goldsmith to King Francis I of France. Mangot, who had moved to Paris the previous year from Blois, also made items for members of the Boleyn family. Mangot’s hallmark is the letter ‘M’ and a lower case ‘a’ tells us that the binding was made between December 1529 and 1530, in Paris, only a year or two after the book was printed.

̽��ֱ��Holbein portrait celebrates Cromwell’s appointment as Master of the Jewel House which may explain why the Hardouyn Hours features so prominently.

Dr Nicolas Bell said: “This book of devotional prayers is remarkable for its unusually grand binding, covered with velvet, jewels and highly decorated silver gilt borders, all of which date from the time it was printed and illuminated. It has been enormously exciting to position this luxurious creation in the very centre of the court of Henry VIII, where we know that both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn owned copies of the very same edition.”

Kate McCaffrey, from Hever Castle, said: “We now believe that Anne Boleyn, Catherine of Aragon, and Thomas Cromwell all owned a copy of the same prayer book… We are confident that this discovery will shed new light on the often-troubled relationship between these giants of the Tudor court.”

Dr Tracy Borman said it was: “ ̽��ֱ��most exciting Cromwell discovery in a generation – if not more.”

Hever Castle recently exhibited Catherine of Aragon’s 1527 prayer book (on loan from the Morgan Library in New York) alongside Anne Boleyn’s 1527 Book of Hours.

̽��ֱ��Hardouyn Hours will be on loan to Hever Castle for their exhibition Catherine & Anne: Queens, Rivals, Mothers which runs until 10 November 2023. This is the first time that the book has ever been lent by Trinity College since it was received on 10th August 1660.

̽��ֱ��Hardouyn Hours, a jewelled fifteenth-century prayer book in Trinity College Library belonged to Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to King Henry VIII, new research has found.

̽��ֱ��most exciting Cromwell discovery in a generation – if not more.

Tracy Borman

Thomas Cromwell painted by Hans Holbein the Younger in 1532-3. ̽��ֱ��Frick Collection

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Katherine Parr did not persuade Henry VIII to found Trinity College Cambridge

ta385 — Tue, 17 May 2022 05:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��story that Trinity College Cambridge was only founded because Henry VIII’s last wife, Katherine Parr, pleaded with him to do so, has become part of the folklore of Cambridge ̽��ֱ��. It resurfaced again in Cambridge News this month, along with the claim that it was only the queen’s intervention that stopped Henry from closing down some or all of the Cambridge colleges.

But research by Richard Rex, Professor of Reformation History at Cambridge, now shows that this much loved and repeated tale is misleading. Rex’s study, published in ̽��ֱ��Journal of Ecclesiastical History, reveals that numerous powerful people at Court helped to defend the university from the potential threat posed by the king in his final few years, and that Henry had already decided to establish Trinity before the university lobbied Katherine Parr.

̽��ֱ��university’s fears centred on the Chantries Act of 1545, which empowered the king to take over, at will, any of the ‘colleges, free chapels, chantries, hospitals’ or other religious foundations with which his kingdom abounded. In principle this power could certainly have swept up the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge to swell the royal coffers.

But as Professor Rex explains: “While the Chantries Act did indeed give Henry the power to suppress any college or church foundation he chose, it’s clear that the university’s friends at Court did all they could, from the start, to ensure that this new power would not be used against Cambridge or Oxford.”

“Even before the universities knew what was going on, they were given different treatment from the rest of England and Wales as the new law was put into effect.”

Cambridge did write to Katherine Parr, among others, to lobby against the potential threat to their interests. But her reply only confirms what other sources studied by Rex also make clear: that Henry had already taken the decision to found Christ Church in Oxford and Trinity in Cambridge.

Parr’s letter, dated 26 February 1546 and preserved in Corpus Christi College’s library in Cambridge, assures the university that the king:
‘being such a patron to good learning doth tender [i.e. favour] you so much that he will rather advance learning and erect new occasion thereof than to confound those your ancient and godly institutions’.

Even though the processes for establishing the twin foundations were delayed so that the colleges only came into being a month or two before Henry’s death at the end of January 1547, key parts of the plan were already in place as early as summer 1545.

Rex said: “Katherine Parr was undoubtedly a patron of learning and in particular of the ‘new learning’ of the Protestant Reformation. But the idea that she had a crucial role in the foundation of Trinity is romantic fiction with only the slenderest basis in the historical record.”

Rex’s study undermines other long-held assumptions based on chronological errors, including that Cambridge’s lobbying secured the favourable appointment of university insiders Matthew Parker, John Redman and William May as commissioners to survey its Colleges for the king.

In fact, their appointment preceded any known Cambridge lobbying by about a month and, Rex argues, this came about thanks to ‘the unsolicited intervention of the university’s friends at court’. Rex found supporting evidence for this among Matthew Parker’s papers in Corpus Christi’s library, which still bears Parker’s name because he left the College his magnificent private collection of books and manuscripts.

Rex, himself a student at Trinity in the 1980s, made these discoveries while working with Colin Armstrong (another Trinity alum) on a chapter for a forthcoming book about the college’s history.

̽��ֱ��popular narrative which emphasises Parr’s influence and that of Cambridge lobbyists originated in a book published in 1884 by J.B. Mullinger entitled ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge from the royal injunctions of 1545 to the accession of Charles the First. Mullinger was a historian and librarian at St John's College Cambridge. But Rex concludes that he both misread and misdated the patchy original sources which describe these events.

He said: “When I started this work, I simply wanted to nail down the traditional story by checking the sources and footnotes. It had been retold so often by so many good historians that I had no reason to doubt it was true. But I found that the whole thing was a mess, the chronology didn’t make any sense. So I set about trying to put the record straight.”

“ ̽��ֱ��fact that Cambridge and Oxford were, from the start, set apart from the rest of the country in the implementation of the Chantries Act is just one among several indications that Henry VIII already had something special in mind for them.

“Henry’s plan to establish lasting memorials to himself in both universities had probably been in his mind since mid-1545 at the latest. ̽��ֱ��‘Cambridge version’ of events appears to have been an academic flight of fancy. Our lobbying efforts weren’t quite as influential as we once liked to imagine.”

“Strangely, a fashion has grown up of attributing too much of what Henry VIII did to the influence of those closest to him – Wolsey, Cromwell, Anne Boleyn, or Katherine Parr. Like anyone, Henry was liable to be influenced by those around him. But the big decisions – and the founding of Christ Church and Trinity were big decisions – were his.”

Reference
R Rex, ‘ ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the Chantries Act of 1545’, ̽��ֱ��Journal of Ecclesiastical History (2022); doi.org/10.1017/S0022046921001494

King Henry VIII had already made up his mind to found Trinity College Cambridge and Christ Church Oxford before Cambridge lobbied his queen, a re-examination of 16th-century sources suggests. Professor Richard Rex's study undermines a popular 'Cambridge version' of events, sheds new light on the Chantries Act and emphasises the king's ability to take big decisions.

Henry’s plan to establish lasting memorials to himself in both universities had probably been in his mind since mid-1545 at the latest

Richard Rex

̽��ֱ��Master and Fellows, Trinity College Cambridge

Henry VIII statue on the Great Gate of Trinity College Cambridge

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Queen Elizabeth I would tell Boris to tax the rich rather than cut universal credit, a new book argues

ta385 — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 09:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��Tudor Monarch introduced the world’s first universal welfare state in 1601, groundbreaking at the time, in response to repeated plague outbreaks and famines. ̽��ֱ��‘Poor Laws’ required all of England’s 10,000 parishes to take responsibility for their poor – anyone who refused to contribute could face prison. For the next 200 years, England was better placed to weather plagues, crop failures, and recessions than anywhere else in Europe and it laid the foundations for the Industrial Revolution.

Simon Szreter, Professor of History and Public Policy at Cambridge and co-author of After ̽��ֱ��Virus – Lessons from the Past for a Better Future, said: “ ̽��ֱ��evidence of history is that societies and economies fare much better with a strong welfare state and when you cut welfare to make savings, you damage society and the economy.

“Elizabeth was able to introduce an extraordinary and comprehensive response to the problems that had worried her for so long. Her ‘Poor Laws’ of 1598 and 1601 put the responsibility on local communities to care for their neighbours to make sure no one would fall into destitution. This included orphans, widows, the old, infirm, sick, involuntarily unemployed and single mothers and their children. This was the world’s first social security and welfare system – nothing like this had existed before.”

In After ̽��ֱ��Virus, Szreter and his co-author Hilary Cooper, a former government economist and senior policy maker, explore why the UK was so unprepared for the Covid-19 pandemic and suffered one of the highest death rates and worst economic contractions of the major world economies.

̽��ֱ��book draws lessons from history and its authors say that ‘Good Queen Bess’, as Elizabeth I became known, was truly revolutionary and would not have accepted Boris Johnson’s government’s cut to universal credit. ̽��ֱ��£20 weekly increase to universal credit was introduced last year in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, but it has been controversially halted in October 2021.

Cooper, an expert in labour markets, children’s services and local development, said: “Elizabeth would absolutely have taxed the rich to support the poor in the aftermath of a virus that has claimed the lives of nearly 140,000 people in the UK.

Cooper said: “ ̽��ֱ��lesson today is the same: we cut welfare – including education and health - at our peril. Covid-19 hit the poorest the hardest, with death rates highest in deprived areas and among people of colour. We must learn from the successes from our past and start investing in our population’s wellbeing instead of repeating the mistakes of austerity.”

Szreter, Fellow at St John’s College, said: “Britain had the world’s first welfare state – put in place 400 years ago by Elizabeth I – and the country actually became richer for it. With an unavoidable responsibility to provide for the poor the wealthy increased their philanthropy, funding alms houses, schools, apprenticeships and hospitals to prevent them falling into hardship in the first place.

“It was a welfare system that worked because the prosperous set about contributing and investing in their fellow citizens while Justices of the Peace rigorously enforced payments into the poor law funds. With the old and the sick cared for, the young in particular were liberated to follow the work, migrating to towns and cities where new jobs were becoming available, secure, too, in the knowledge that their parish would support them if things didn’t work out.

“This security ended famine nearly 150 years ahead of other European nations and paved the basis for Britain to emerge as the world’s first industrial nation. ̽��ֱ��labour mobility and rapid urban growth that was unique to Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was facilitated by the security the poor law provided.”

Szreter’s research encompasses economic, social and public health history. He was the first non-American to win the American Public Health Association’s Viseltear Prize. He added: “This week’s cuts to universal credit and the continued inflexibility of the five-week wait to receive benefits will not encourage anyone to take risks in today’s labour market, while the dire state of social care leaves many unable to move from where they can easily care for ageing relatives. Welfare savings are simply a false economy.”

Although the book offers optimism and a clear manifesto for change, it also offers a warning – that Covid-19 is a ‘dress rehearsal’ for bigger crises ahead. Cooper explained: “Covid-19 is a warning shot across our bows, there are going to be many more global crises – climate change and biodiversity collapse are the big threats. Perhaps Covid-19 will be the warning the world needed to learn lessons from the past.”

Reference

After the Virus: Lessons from the Past for a Better Future by Hilary Cooper and Simon Szreter is published by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press.

A new book about how Covid-19 rocked the world argues that Elizabeth I would have supported the poor in the aftermath of the pandemic.

̽��ֱ��evidence of history is that societies and economies fare much better with a strong welfare state

Simon Szreter

National Portrait Gallery, London

Queen Elizabeth I by unknown continental artist (c.1575), NPG 2082.

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Cutting welfare to protect the economy ignores lessons of history, researchers claim

tdk25 — Fri, 02 Dec 2016 06:00:14 +0000

Cutting welfare and social care budgets during times of economic hardship is an “historically obsolete” strategy that ignores the very roots of British prosperity, a group of Cambridge academics have warned.

Writing in the leading medical journal, ̽��ֱ��Lancet, a team of researchers argue that squeezing health and welfare spending in order to reduce taxes, and on the basis that these are luxuries that can only be afforded when times are good, overlooks a critical lesson of British history – namely that they are central to the nation’s economic success.

̽��ֱ��authors are all part of a group based at St John’s College, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, which is studying the causes of health inequalities and looking at how research in this area can be used to inform policy interventions.

Drawing on recent research, they argue that the concept of a British welfare state, widely thought to have begun after the Second World War, actually dates back to a “precocious welfare system” forged during the reign of Elizabeth I, which was fundamental to England’s emergence as “the most dynamic economy in the world”.

While the Chancellor of the Exchequer has said that there will be no further welfare savings during the present Parliament beyond those already announced, the paper is directly critical of the continuation of those existing policies, which have reduced welfare spending overall in the name of economic austerity.

Referring to the statement made by the former Prime Minister, David Cameron, that “you can only have a strong NHS if you have a strong economy”, the authors argue: “ ̽��ֱ��narrow view that spending on the National Health Service and social care is largely a burden on the economy is blind to the large national return to prosperity that comes from all citizens benefiting from a true sense of social security.”

They continue: “There are signs that Theresa May subscribes to the same historically obsolete view. Despite her inaugural statement as Prime Minister, her Chancellor’s autumn statement signals continuing austerity with further cuts inflicted on the poor and their children, the vulnerable, and infirm older people.”

By contrast, the paper argues that a universalist approach of progressively-funded health and welfare spending is an integral part of economic growth, and something that modern states cannot afford to do without. That conclusion is echoed in a new educational film, developed from work by Simon Szreter, Professor of History & Public Policy at Cambridge and a co-author of the Lancet piece.

“We are arguing from history that there needs to be an end to this idea of setting economic growth in opposition to the goal of welfare provision,” Professor Szreter said. “A healthy society needs both, and the suggestion of history is that they seem to feed each other.”

Perhaps surprisingly, the paper traces that feedback loop to the Tudor era, and specifically the Elizabethan Poor Laws in 1598 and 1601. These enshrined in law an absolute “right of relief” for every subject of the Crown, funding the policy with a community tax and applying both through the local Parish.

̽��ֱ��authors say that this not only represented the world’s first social security system, but also made the elderly less reliant on their children for support, increased labour mobility, enabled urban growth and eased Britain’s transition to an industrial economy. ̽��ֱ��system also maintained a level of demand by supporting the purchasing power of the poor when food prices rose.

Rather than stifling Britain’s economy, the paper argues that the system was therefore essential to helping the country to become the most urbanized society in the world, and the world’s leading economy, between 1600 and 1800. Although the population more than doubled during this time, key indicators of prosperity - such as life expectancy - actually improved.

“Overall, it facilitated the most sustained period of rising economic prosperity in the nation’s history,” the authors observe.

̽��ֱ��authors go on to link the economic growth that the nation experienced under the welfare state after 1945 with similar universalist principles of progressively-funded health and welfare provision, arguing that these stimulated a dynamic period of per capita economic growth, and cut the rich-poor divide to an all-time low during the 1970s.

Conversely, they argue that the economy has stagnated when such principles have been abandoned. ̽��ֱ��Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 overhauled the earlier Elizabethan Laws in an effort to prevent abuses of the system that were felt to be draining the pockets of honest taxpayers. Infamously, this involved providing relief through workhouses in which the appalling conditions, seared into social consciousness by authors like Charles Dickens, were so bad that only the truly destitute sought their help.

̽��ֱ��study suggests that there is no evidence that this approach, which came close to criminalising the poor, actually brought about much economic benefit. In fact, British growth rates gradually fell behind the country’s rivals’ after 1870 - and only recovered after 1950, in the postwar decades of the revived, universalist welfare state.

̽��ֱ��authors also point out that to cut welfare budgets because this will relieve taxation on “hard-working families” implies that those who need welfare are somehow unproductive. Just as the Victorian 1834 measures attempted to address a perceived problem with the “idle poor”, current strategies often dub benefits claimants, directly or indirectly, as “scroungers”.

“ ̽��ֱ��interests of the poor and the wealthy are not mutually opposed in a zero-sum game,” the authors conclude. “Investment in policies that develop human and social capital will underpin economic opportunities and security for the whole population.”

̽��ֱ��paper, Health and welfare as a burden on the state? ̽��ֱ��dangers of forgetting history is published in ̽��ֱ��Lancet.

Amid ongoing welfare cuts, researchers argue that investment in health and social care have been integral to British economic success since 1600.

There needs to be an end to this idea of setting economic growth in opposition to the goal of welfare provision. ̽��ֱ��suggestion of history is that they seem to feed each other.

Simon Szreter

Peter Higginbotham via Wikimedia Commons

Dinner time in St Pancras Workhouse, London, 1911. Workhouses, established under the Poor Law Amendment Act, were part of a Victorian programme that cut universal welfare support and stigmatised many poor people as “unproductive”.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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King’s College Chapel: an architectural masterpiece and the man who told its story

amb206 — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 11:33:23 +0000

In the mid-1950s a fellow and archivist of King’s College, Cambridge, was asked to write a 10,000-word history of the building closest to his heart. John Saltmarsh never tired of showing visitors around King’s College Chapel, one of the world’s finest examples of late perpendicular gothic architecture and a building ablaze with Tudor symbolism. Saltmarsh was the perfect man for the task: he was an economic historian with a particular interest in the medieval world; he was a meticulous researcher; and he was a gifted writer.

But Saltmarsh was also an eccentric. He exceeded his 10,000 word brief – or rather he totally ignored it. By the time he died, in September 1974, Saltmarsh had turned his extraordinarily detailed research in the King’s College archives, or ‘muniments’ as he knew them, into a manuscript of approximately 220,000 words typed on a manual typewriter. There was yet another snag: when cancer overtook Saltmarsh, he had still not completed his manuscript, which bore copious notes and handwritten corrections. Impressively, none of the facts that he marked with the word “check” have later been found to be incorrect.

Writing two months before he died, Saltmarsh expressed the hope that King’s College Chapel: A History and Commentary would one day be finished: “This is a large book on which I have been engaged for many years, and on which many years’ work remains to do. If I am unable to complete and publish it, I hope that a typescript copy will be kept in King’s College Library for the use of future scholars.” For four decades, several versions of Saltmarsh’s manuscript lay safely in King’s College archive while the college struggled with the problem of publication.

Meanwhile the chapel itself approached its 500th anniversary. It was in 1515 that the extraordinarily ambitious stonework, conceived by Henry VI and begun by the master mason Reginald Ely, was completed by workmen overseen by John Wastell. Beneath a timber roof, which was clad with lead to keep out the weather, teams of masons spent months perched on scaffolding to assemble the chapel’s celebrated fan vaulting which ascends to the elaborate bosses punctuating the great spine of the building.

Last year, the decision was made to publish Saltmarsh’s unfinished work in full, complete with his many notes. During its years unpublished in the archives, his manuscript had become something akin to a treasure in its own right as well as a precious resource for anyone interested in the making of a masterpiece. Wisely, the college concluded that to tamper with Saltmarsh’s unfinished opus would be a mistake. His book was perhaps destined to remain forever a work in progress – and Saltmarsh himself was famously infuriated by the slightest editorial interference.

̽��ֱ��chapel, too, was an ambitious project that spent a long time in gestation. Plans were first drawn up in the 1440s according to instructions from Henry VI, whose statue stands in the college’s front court. Construction went in fits and starts as political upheaval depleted the royal coffers. ̽��ֱ��chapel’s growing pains are clearly visible on its outward flanks where the stone changes from white magnesian limestone quarried in Yorkshire to oolitic limestone from Northamptonshire. Late in his reign, Henry VII came to the rescue, sending funds in two instalments (an oak chest on display in a side chapel contained £500) to fund the labour and materials to bring his predecessor’s vision of an important building to fruition.

King’s College Chapel exudes importance – worldly as well as spiritual. As Saltmarsh explains, its central location marked a bold departure from the sites chosen by earlier Cambridge colleges, which hunkered down among the narrow lanes, almost invisible to the passer-by. Under Henry VI’s directions, a whole area of the town was purchased. Several hostels, a church and half a street were cleared to make way for a chapel of impressive dimensions, its supersize inspired by the King’s visit to Winchester Cathedral – all this to serve a college with just 20 scholars.

̽��ֱ��chapel is free-standing, as are many of the buildings around it. But the original plan was for the building to form one side of an enclosed court, keeping the College members in and the townspeople out. In early drawings, this front court, entered from King’s Parade (then known as the High Street), led to a cloister and bell tower. Had the structures which the college’s founder, King Henry VI, envisaged for the space between the chapel and the River Cam been built, the Backs would look very different today – and the most iconic view of Cambridge would simply not exist.

What makes the chapel interior so exceptional is its stonework. Its fan vaulting is the largest in Europe – sometimes described as one of the wonders of the world. Entering the building, the visitor is struck first by the upward reach of its fluted columns and then by the repeated armorials which bear the symbols of the most powerful, and only recently united, families in the land. Sinuous dragons are paired with sleek greyhounds to convey the bond between the houses of Tudor and Beaufort.

No-one knows how long Saltmarsh spent among the muniments, poring over medieval contracts and building accounts, and deciphering the handwriting of long-dead clerks of the works to unlock the chapel’s secrets. His mind absorbed, and processed, the tiniest snippets of information. He recreates a world in which stone was transported down the waterways from Northampton, timber came from the woods at Ashdon Hales in Essex, and clunch (chalky limestone used as infill for the substantial walls) was hauled from the Cambridgeshire village of Barrington.

Saltmarsh was born into a family who can trace their ancestry back to the Normans. His father was a prosperous East Anglian farmer. Although educated at home by a governess and later at private schools, he spent much of his childhood among working people – in forges, farmyards and flour mills. His affinity for those responsible for growing, making and doing shines through. He discusses the craftsmen’s techniques, backgrounds and seasonal work patterns, even, since many of them came from Bury St Edmunds, their probable Suffolk accents.

̽��ֱ��cast of King’s College Chapel runs into hundreds; many are mentioned by name. In 1508-9, a man named Edmund Cokerd supplied the college with ‘18 battering axes’ while John Mondy was paid for ‘120 spikings’ (large nails). Some key figures emerge: the individuals who steered the project forward, sometimes putting up their own money to cover costs. Saltmarsh paints vivid profiles of the master masons (the word architect had yet to emerge), Reginald Ely, Simon Clerk and John Wastell. Clerk, the less-known of the three, designed the fan vaulting.

It is thought that a number of carved faces, which appear in the ornamentation high up in the antechapel, might be portraits of some of the men who worked on the chapel. When the interior was cleaned in the 1960s, Saltmarsh was able to send photographers up the scaffolding to take pictures of these heads, hewn from stone and almost hidden from view in the detail of a series of tabernacles. These men are palpably real – stern, bearded, determined – their features chiselled into the fabric of the building.

Only one woman appears in the building records. Saltmarsh writes that Margaret Collens (or Colyeinson) “was in the rope and twine trade, and supplied the rope for the cart and the robinets, or hoisting tackle, and bottomed out the great sieves that were used for sifting lime”. Typically, he adds: “Probably she was in business before as well as during her widowhood, for when she supplied ropes to the college in 1507-8 she was described in the Mundum Book [college accounts] as ‘uxor Colynson’ though in later years as ‘relicta Colynson’.” In Latin, uxor is wife while relicta is widow.

This charming detail is one of countless dozens: King’s College Chapel is a mighty doorstop of a book. Lists and tables set out information gleaned from fortnightly accounts records of wages and payments for materials. ̽��ֱ��book’s 95 plates were identified and sourced by its editors to match Saltmarsh’s intentions. Despite his impulse to pursue, expand on and communicate the tiniest detail, Saltmarsh’s text is not a difficult read. His sentences are short; his flow is admirably logical. ̽��ֱ��cadence of his prose is close to that of speech.

As a sought-after public speaker, Saltmarsh seldom turned down an invitation to talk to local groups. But he was often unwell. At school, rather than taking part in games, he grew prize-winning sweet peas. His entire adult life was spent at King’s where he was first an exceptional student and later archivist, librarian, lecturer and vice-provost. A dedicated scholar of local history, he took undergraduates on walks through Cambridge and out into the countryside, teaching them to observe and study their surroundings.

Saltmarsh’s legacy to the college he loved is a book that brims over with snapshots of the achievements not only of the rich and powerful but also of the ordinary people. Against all the odds, they created a chapel that has for 500 years remained an integral part of the college and the wider community, not least on Christmas Eve when millions of people tune into the BBC to hear the treble voice of a chorister rising into the candle-lit space.

King’s College Chapel: A History and Commentary by John Saltmarsh is published by Jarrold Publishing (2015). ̽��ֱ��book is edited by Peter Monteith, assistant archivist at King’s College, and Dr Bert Vaux, linguistics specialist and fellow of King’s. It is available from ̽��ֱ��Shop at King’s.

Inset images: King’s College Chapel: A History and Commentary by John Saltmarsh (Jarrold Publishing); A view of Cambridge including the chapel, drawn by John Hamond and dated 22 February 1592 (The Provost and Fellows of King’s College, Cambridge); King's College Chapel (The Provost and Fellows of King’s College, Cambridge).

Five hundred years ago the masons working on one of the world’s most famous buildings completed the stonework of a chapel conceived some 70 years earlier. For several decades, King’s College Chapel had stood partially built in the heart of Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��story of the chapel is told in riveting detail by John Saltmarsh, who died in 1974 before completing his magnum opus.

Saltmarsh’s legacy to the college he loved is a book that brims over with snapshots of the achievements not only of the rich and powerful but also of the ordinary people

King's 141215

Jarrold Publishing (2015)

King’s College Chapel: A History and Commentary by John Saltmarsh

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Wondering what to pack for university? A guitar, perhaps, for the “refresshynge of the witte”?

amb206 — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 11:40:14 +0000

Sometimes, it’s only when you arrive at college that you realise precisely what is vital for student life. In a letter dated 18 June 1562, a servant wrote that his master, an undergraduate at Oxford, needed “a gitterne and bowe and arrows the whyche I thinke to be necessarye for hym…” ̽��ֱ��servant’s name was Thomas Madock and his master was John Somerford. Madock’s letter is addressed to Charles Mainwaring of Croxton, who was probably Somerford’s guardian.

Gitterne is an old word for guitar – alternative spellings (a ‘foreign’ instrument guaranteed a great proliferation) include gittern, quinterne and even gyttron. As instruments that were highly portable, and relatively easy to learn to a modest standard, guitars became increasingly popular in the second half of the 16th century, vying with and eventually overtaking other stringed instruments such as the lute.

Madock’s letter is one of many details that make Christopher Page’s latest book ̽��ֱ��Guitar in Tudor England: A Social and Musical History compelling reading for anyone interested in the ways in which people acquire and use things, and their skills with those things, to define and maintain their place in society – and, of course, to have fun.

In researching the book, Page has scoured archives that range from the patent rolls of Bloody Mary in the National Archives at Kew to household inventories on the Isle of Wight. In doing so, he creates a rich and often entertaining picture of the Tudor world seen through the lens of a ‘newfangled’ musical instrument. He looks not just at the history of the uptake of the guitar, and its contribution to courtly and popular music, but also at representations in art and architecture, most notably its appearance among the decorative motifs of the exquisite Eglantine Table (a piece of furniture made in Italy to celebrate marriages between powerful English dynasties).

Page’s book is the second in a three-part series devoted to the history of the guitar from 1547, when Henry VIII died, to 1837 and the accession of Victoria. It shines a light, in particular, on the rise of guitar-playing as one of the constructs of masculinity. Madock’s comments that a gittern and bows and arrows are “necessarye”, and that his charge is “verye desirous” to obtain them, are revealing: the implication is that without these must-have items his master is unable to fulfil his potential as a gentleman of not just means but also taste and talent.

̽��ֱ��bows and arrows requested in Madock’s letter were for sport. Most towns would have had a butt – an area for the practise of archery – a fact recorded by names of streets and fields. Laws requiring archery practice date back to the 13th century: England needed men trained to use the longbow. By the 16th century, archery was recreational. But, along with fencing and dancing, music-making and archery were accomplishments expected of well-born and aspiring young men.

̽��ֱ��guitar’s emergence as a fashionable plaything was rapid. In the 1540s it was regarded as “strange”, derived from the French meaning ‘foreign’. Some years later the first traces of imported guitars appear in the records kept by the Port of London: a list of stringed instruments includes the duty to be paid on “Gitterns the dosen”. Early on, the guitar trade was dominated by a single individual, a draper named John White who imported instruments from Antwerp. Soon the role of the gittern as part of a “young man’s lyfe” guaranteed a thriving trade in guitars and guitar strings.

Inventories held by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge suggest that in the period 1535-1605 around a fifth of its members (chiefly scholars and fellows but also domestic staff) owned a musical instrument. Mental health was taken seriously: music-making was an antidote to melancholy brought about by the rigours of study in a town pestilential in summer and perennially damp in winter. Music practice is described as a form of “pleasant learning” that brings real benefits to the young man “for the refresshynge of his witte”.

Music, according to the Tudor guitarist Thomas Wythorne, enlivened the spirits, bringing a “fors with it lyk unto A heavenly inspirasion”. Guitar-players had other advantages too. In the hands of an amorous young man, the guitar was a means of courting young ladies who would flock to the player “lyke beez to hunny”. In the Paris of the 1540s (far more fashionable than London) lovelorn serenaders did “nightly walke the streates before their louers gates, tearing the poor strings of their instruments”.

Guitars made an initial impact at the luxury end of the market. Henry VIII (responsible for the completion of King’s College Chapel and the founding of Trinity College) was probably the first named owner of one under the name of ‘Spanish viol’. His daughter Elizabeth I (who visited Cambridge and berated its scholars for their torn and soiled clothes) was presented with a boxed set of three as a New Years Day gift in 1559. ̽��ֱ��record of the gifts shows that she asked to have them brought to her. A portrait of her favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, features a guitar, complete with musical score, in its elaborately decorative border.

̽��ֱ��instruments were also purchased by men of learning. ̽��ֱ��1591 probate inventory of Thomas Lorkin, Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge, included an extensive library of 631 volumes as well as “a lute with a case and 2 Gittornes”, with an overall value of 20s. Fourteen years later, the inventory of his son-in-law Edward Liveley, Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, also included “In the studye… a gitterne in a case”.

As imports from Europe, guitars were both luxury goods (thus highly desirable) and foreign (thus potentially dangerous). Similarly, the social profile of the instrument trod a thin line between the exclusive and the popular. Once affordable, the guitar became a favourite with apprentices (who came from a wide spectrum of society). In Cambridge, the butler of Peterhouse College (as it then was) owned a guitar as well as a small number of books – an example of a townsman able to invest in his own improvement.

Sixteenth-century apprentices, like students today, were notorious for boisterousness. High spirits brought out some of the worst aspects of their elders. In 1554 a consortium of employers in Newcastle issued ‘An Act for the Apparell of Appryntyses’ to counter a woeful decline in moral standards. ̽��ֱ��wayward young men concerned were upbraided for their fancy clothes and beards, drinking and dancing, the pursuit of harlots, and playing “gitterns by nyght”.

̽��ֱ��last word should go to the wholesome-sounding Dennys Bucke, whose probate inventory was drawn up in 1584. Bucke was a yeoman – a tenant farmer renting good arable land in north Norfolk. Itemised room by room, his belongings point to the emergence of a middling sort with the financial wherewithal to lift themselves to a new level of prosperity. Few of Bucke’s things speak of luxury; most are practical. But he is the possessor of a gitterne.

̽��ֱ��presence in Bucke’s gitterne in his “parlor chamber”, along with “fower fetherbedds” and a “warming pann”, hints not just at a comfortable life for its recently departed owner and but also to a flourishing long-term future for the guitar itself as an instrument of the people. ̽��ֱ��guitar has never looked back.

̽��ֱ��Guitar in Tudor England: A Social and Musical History by Christopher Page is published by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press.

Inset images: ̽��ֱ��guitar shown in marquetry on the Eglantine Table, now at Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire. Probably made to commemorate the marriage of Elizabeth (Bess) of Hardwick to George Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury, in 1567. Photograph by Marzena Pogorzaly (Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press); 'An instruction to the Gitterne', f. 15 r-v (Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press); Detail from a portrait of Robert Dudley ( ̽��ֱ��Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge).

What to take to university is a question foremost in the minds of thousands of freshers up and down the country. Christopher Page’s latest book ‘ ̽��ֱ��Guitar in Tudor England’ reveals that 16th century students faced similar dilemmas – though their packing lists were rather different.

In the hands of an amorous young man, the guitar was a means of courting young ladies who would flock to the player “lyke beez to hunny”

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press

Detail of one of the triumphal arches built for the entrance of James I to London in March 1603, devised by Stephen Harrison and engraved by William Kip. Photograph by Michael Fleming.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Cod bones from Mary Rose reveal globalised fish trade in Tudor England

sc604 — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 23:09:30 +0000

New stable isotope and ancient DNA analysis of the bones of stored cod provisions recovered from the wreck of the Tudor warship Mary Rose, which sank off the coast of southern England in 1545, has revealed that the fish in the ship’s stores had been caught in surprisingly distant waters: the northern North Sea and the fishing grounds of Iceland – despite England having well developed local fisheries by the 16^th century.

Test results from one of the sample bones has led archaeologists to suspect that some of the stored cod came from as far away as Newfoundland in eastern Canada.

̽��ֱ��research team say that the findings show how naval provisioning played an important role in the early expansion of the fish trade overseas, and how that expansion helped fuel the growth of the English navy. Commercial exploitation of fish and the growth of naval sea power were “mutually reinforcing aspects of globalisation” in Renaissance Europe, they say.

“ ̽��ֱ��findings contribute to the idea that the demand for preserved fish was exceeding the supply that local English and Irish fisheries were able to provide in order to feed growing – and increasingly urban – populations. We know from these bones that one of the sources of demand was naval provisions,” said Dr James Barrett, from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

“ ̽��ֱ��existence and development of globalised fisheries was one of the things that made the growth of the navy possible. ̽��ֱ��navy was a key mechanism of maritime expansion, while at the same time being sustained by that expansion. ̽��ֱ��story of the cod trade is a microcosm of globalisation during this pivotal period that marked the beginning of an organised English navy, which would go on to become the Royal Navy,” he said.

̽��ֱ��study, led by researchers from the universities of Cambridge, Hull and York, is published today in the open access journal Royal Society Open Science.

Built in 1510, the Mary Rose was one of the most famous ships in England, a former flagship of Henry VIII’s fleet, when it mysteriously heeled over and sank in the Solent channel during a battle with an invading French fleet in 1545, taking almost all of its crew – over 400 men – down with it, as well as a full store of provisions. Rediscovered in the 1970s and raised in 1982, the remains are an extraordinary time capsule of naval life during the Tudor period.

Among the remains of the ship’s supplies were thousands of bones from dried or salted cod from casks and baskets – staples of Tudor naval diet. ̽��ֱ��researchers took a small selection of eleven bones from the various different holds of the ship, and analysed them using two techniques: stable isotope analysis, which reflects the diet and environmental conditions of the fish based on the bone’s protein chemistry, and ancient DNA analysis, which reflects genetic drift, gene flow and natural selection.

Separately, the techniques gave very broad answers, but when cross-referenced with each other and the historical record they provided researchers with increasingly reliable evidence for which waters the cod had been fished from almost 500 years ago.

̽��ֱ��best indication for three of the samples was that they were fished in the northern North Sea, possibly the Scottish Northern Isles, where there were known fisheries that produced dried cod preserved in salt.

Another seven of the samples probably came from waters off the cost of Iceland. Due to the cold and dry climate, many Icelanders preserved cod by air-drying it during winter months, a product known as ‘stockfish’, which was frequently traded with the English. English fishermen also worked Icelandic waters themselves, to produce salt cod. At the time, England to Iceland was a three to six month round trip, usually departing in spring and returning in early autumn after a season of trade and/or fishing.

One bone sample appeared to have come from the other side of the Atlantic. While not definitive, the most likely evidence pointed to Newfoundland, an island off the northeast Canadian coast famous for its historical cod fishery. While such distances for fishing may seem surprising for the time, James Barrett says that – as the English Newfoundland fishery had begun in 1502, in the wake of John Cabot’s exploratory voyage of 1497 – this is entirely plausible. French, Spanish and Portuguese fishermen also took advantage of this new source of cod.

“At the time of the Mary Rose in 1545, Newfoundland was a small-scale seasonal fishery where mariners went to fish and then come home. Within a century the Newfoundland fishery had become a major economic concern, of greater value than the fur trade, for example,” said Barrett.

“ ̽��ֱ��need for fish stocks was an important driver of involvement in north-eastern North America. ̽��ֱ��fish trade was one of the key links in the causal chain of European expansion to that continent,” he said. A typical outbound journey time from England to Newfoundland was around five weeks.

Records from just after the time of the Mary Rose show that a standard daily ration of preserved cod was a quarter of a fish served with ship biscuit, two ounces of butter and a gallon of beer. This was dished up three times a week. ̽��ֱ��bone samples show that these fish could range from approximately 70cm to over a metre in length, so a quarter of cod was a significant portion. “Preserved cod was great value for money as a provision, particularly as space and durability were an issue on board a ship,” said Barrett.

Before the reign of Henry VIII, another driver for the cod fisheries was the fact that fish was a suitable food during Christian fasts such as Lent as an alternative to milk and cheese, and, as Barrett points out, “urban populations didn’t have room for cows in their back yards”.

Once Henry VIII split from the church and the Reformation was ushered in, religious associations with meals of fish started to dissipate, threatening to send England’s fisheries, and subsequently its navy, into decline.

Thus Elizabeth I, Henry’s successor, instigated weekly ‘fish days’ to encourage domestic consumption and consequently a commercial fleet to not only help feed the navy but also ensure a supply of mariners to help run it when needed.

“ ̽��ֱ��importance of ‘victualling’ the navy continued to grow in the seventeenth century, most famously during the Restoration when its administration was systematized under Samuel Pepys,” said Barrett.

“Military sea power was a prerequisite for the concurrent – and subsequent – development of England’s sea-borne colonialism. Yet by sourcing the cod bones from the Mary Rose, we see that the navy itself was first sustained, in part, by fishermen working distant northern and transatlantic waters,” he said.

Arguably the most challenging aspect of the research was creating the historical context, the ‘base map’, for the researchers to compare their Mary Rose specimens to. Due to chemical pollution of the world’s oceans over the last few hundred years, and changes in the genetic structure of cod populations due to fishing pressures and climate change, the team had to find and use ancient cod bones for their study’s comparison controls, as modern cod bones would have been useless.

“Thankfully, when making dried cod, part of the process was chopping the head off,” said Barrett. “This meant we could use skull bones from archaeological sites to get both genetic and isotopic signatures for all these regions. ̽��ֱ��lion’s share of the work was finding and analysing the over 300 control samples.”

̽��ֱ��research was funded by the Leverhulme Trust, with an accompanying grant from the Fishmongers’ Company, one of the twelve livery companies of the City of London.

Reference:
Hutchinson WF, et al. 2015 ̽��ֱ��globalization of naval provisioning: ancient DNA and stable isotope analyses of stored cod from the wreck of the Mary Rose, AD 1545. R. Soc. open sci. 2: 150199. DOI: 10.1098/rsos.150199

New analysis shows warship’s dried fish provisions were sourced from as far away as Icelandic and possibly even transatlantic waters. Researchers show how boom in fishing trade helped fuel the growth of the English navy, and vice versa.

̽��ֱ��story of the cod trade is a microcosm of globalisation during this pivotal period that marked the beginning of an organised English navy, which would go on to become the Royal Navy

James Barrett

Left: Copyright Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge Right: Cluny Johnstone

Left: ̽��ֱ��Mary Rose as depicted in the Anthony Roll. Right: one of the cod bones used in the study.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Going to the dogs: the 500-year old greyhounds of King’s and in the fight against cancer

amb206 — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 11:03:00 +0000

Scroll to the end of the article to listen to the podcast.

̽��ֱ��fabulous architecture of King’s College Chapel is not just about piety. Its gravity-defying fan vaulting, decorative sculpture and stunning windows are an assertion of legitimacy by a royal family under pressure. ̽��ֱ��Tudors faced many threats – from other claimants to the throne (both dynastic rivals and pretenders) as well as from disease and infertility.

̽��ֱ��chapel was constructed over a period of 70 years (1446-1515) under the instructions of four English kings: Henry VI, Richard III, Henry VII and Henry VIII. All four were obsessed by questions of succession; the provision of a healthy male heir was vital to carrying the family line forward.

Henry VII (the first Tudor king) was responsible for the phase of building which saw the creation of the interior that today draws thousands of visitors. Henry VII’s master mason John Wastell and chief carver Thomas Stockton were tasked with creating a chapel ablaze with the emblems of royal dynasties that were sometimes warring, sometimes united.

In Carving in King’s Chapel, a booklet published in 1970, the historian John Saltmarsh wrote that the antechapel at King’s represented “the most lavish display of worldly pomp to be found anywhere in English Gothic”. One of the most eye-catching features of the stone ornamentation of the antechapel is its imposing Tudor armorials – great stone badges.

Saltmarsh described how “over and over again the arms of Henry VII are repeated with his dragon and his greyhound, the crowned Tudor rose, the crowned portcullis which was the badge of his mother’s house of Beaufort, and the crowned fleur de lis for his titular kingship of France”.

Each shield (or escutcheon) is flanked by heraldic ‘supporters’: a dragon on the left and a greyhound on the right. Carved from pale limestone, the slender greyhounds have collars set with jewels, marking them out as favoured members of a wealthy household. All the shields have holes in their left-hand corners. This is a reference to jousting: a knight would pass his lance through the hole in the shield in order to defend himself while tilting at his opponent.

“ ̽��ֱ��Renaissance sculptor skilfully reveals the physical characteristics of the greyhounds which stand on their long thin legs and with their front legs both against, and in front of, the vertical architectural framework structuring the walls, thus placing the animal both inside, and in front of, the three- dimensional space of the heraldic devices,” says Professor Jean Michel Massing, Fellow in History of Art at King’s and co-author of a recent book about King’s Chapel.

“ ̽��ֱ��elongated bodies of the slim-built animals are elegant, with their broad chests, while their alertness is emphasised by their heads which are turned to catch the gaze of the viewers, with ears pricked and elongated muzzles.“

̽��ֱ��greyhound is the symbol of the Beaufort family; the dragon is the emblem of the Tudors. Henry VII’s mother was Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, and his father Edmund Tudor. Margaret was just 13 years old when she gave birth to Henry. Edmund died before his son was born. Margaret, who went on to marry a further three times, founded two Cambridge colleges: St John’s and Christ’s.

As a symbol of celebrity and loyalty, the greyhound is etched into the visual identity of not just one but several powerful families, making its presence in King’s Chapel even more potent. ̽��ֱ��animal was the emblem of the Richmond family as well as the Beaufort family. Edmund Tudor, First Earl of Richmond and father of Henry VII, was granted a white greyhound as a heraldic supporter by his half-brother Henry VI.

“ ̽��ֱ��greyhound is both a Lancastrian emblem and a Tudor one – and thus very handy as a heraldic expression of the dynastic right of the Tudors to the English throne,” says Peter Jones, the librarian at King’s College. “In this way the dynastic badges in the Chapel are all about legitimacy, a right to rule inherited from the Chapel’s founder, Henry VI, by the Tudors.”

̽��ֱ��lean forms of dragon and greyhound can also be spotted in carving on the wooden rood screen that divides the antechapel from the choir stalls and altar. ̽��ֱ��carvings are in the Renaissance manner and made by foreign craftsman. “ ̽��ֱ��carvings feature the linked initials of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, who was executed that year,” says Professor Paul Binski, Professor of Medieval Art and author of Gothic Wonder. “ ̽��ֱ��screen and stalls at King’s display some of the earliest Renaissance detailing in England and show how influential courts were in changing taste.”

Built for hunting, coursing and lolling beside open fires, greyhounds feature in art as far back as 5,000 years.

Considered one of the world’s oldest breeds, greyhounds are the world’s second fastest mammals (cheetahs are marginally faster) and their large ribcages contain big hearts and lungs. ̽��ֱ��animals achieve their famously high speeds by arching and then contracting their spines like an arching spring.

When it became apparent to vets that greyhounds suffer markedly more than other breeds from bone cancer (osteosarcoma), it was suggested that the disease may result from the stress they experience when they are raced competitively. But preliminary investigation soon showed that greyhounds which never race, and are simply kept as pets, also have a high incidence of the disease with the likelihood of bone cancer increasing as the dogs grow older.

Professor Matthew Allen and his colleagues at the Department of Veterinary Medicine are developing new ways to diagnose and treat bone cancer in dogs. “Greyhounds and other larger breeds, including the Rottweiler, are significantly more likely to develop bone cancer than small dogs,” says Allen. “Environmental factors may make a contribution but it’s clear from the data that genetics play a key role in the development of osteosarcoma. Our research has recently identified five genes that are associated with spread (metastasis) of osteosarcoma in dogs, opening up possibilities for better diagnosis and treatment.”

̽��ֱ��dog is an excellent translational model which will help scientists to diagnose and treat humans with bone cancer. Osteosarcoma eats away healthy bone tissue, leaving weaker, damaged bone which can break easily, even with normal activity. In dogs, the disease typically first develops between the ages of five and seven, a stage of life that is ‘middle age’ for dogs. ̽��ֱ��treatment most commonly offered by vets is amputation followed by chemotherapy and perhaps radiation therapy.

“Amputation seems drastic but dogs manage well with three legs – even greyhounds. But removing the affected leg doesn’t cure the animal. In combination with chemotherapy, it can provide good quality of life for an average of 14 months,” says Allen. “Our work into gene expression in canine osteosarcoma will enable us to better predict which dogs are most at risk of developing metastasis, and should allow us to design better therapies for these patients. Perhaps most importantly, given the close similarities between canine and human osteosarcoma, the work should have direct and tangible benefits to the diagnosis and treatment of humans with this disease.”

Humans are some ten times less likely to develop bone cancer than dogs. But osteosarcoma is notoriously hard to treat in people. It often develops during the late teen years and progresses fast, spreading to other parts of the body with devastating results. “In humans, physicians do everything they can do to save the limb that is affected using therapeutic treatments and implants to replace the damaged bone,” says Allen. “But, especially if the cancer has spread beyond the bone, the long term prognosis can be poor, with five-year survival rates hovering around 50%.”

In addition to collaborating with physicians who treat human osteosarcoma, Allen and colleagues will be working with a network of veterinary practices to reach owners of greyhounds and other large breeds throughout the country. ̽��ֱ��goal of this programme will be to collect samples of tumours from dogs with primary and metastatic osteosarcoma and to determine whether the genes identified in the research to date can be used to discriminate between tumours with different levels of aggressive behaviour.

“In our experience, the general public is keen to help,” says Allen. “Owners have an opportunity to transform a terrible situation – a diagnosis of osteosarcoma in their dog – into hope for the future by contributing to research that will help to understand and treat the disease in dogs and, ultimately, in humans.”

Next in the Cambridge Animal Alphabet: H is for an animal whose model teeth can be found in the Whipple Museum, which dominate the frieze adorning the Parthenon, and which played a central role in the rise of many great civilisations.

Inset images: Greyhounds on King's College Chapel (Mike Dixon © 2011 King's College, Cambridge); 'Interior of a hall - detail', by Nicolaes de Gyselaer (Fitzwilliam Museum); Osteosarcoma in the dog, showing the significant bone destruction that is typical of this tumour (top). In this dog, the tumour was successfully removed and the bone replaced with a metal implant (lower panel), in a procedure known as limb-sparing surgery (Matthew Allen).

The Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, G is for Greyhound – as heraldic symbols of the Tudors' right to rule, and as part of important research into treatments for osteosarcoma in dogs and humans.

̽��ֱ��greyhound is both a Lancastrian emblem and a Tudor one – and thus very handy as a heraldic expression of the dynastic right of the Tudors to the English throne

Peter Jones

Escutcheon on King's College Chapel

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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