The flag at Gonville & Caius joins a host of others which have been raised in Cambridge today to mark the 90th birthday of Her Majesty the Queen. In honour of the occasion Fellows and undergraduates will toast the Queen during a formal dinner this evening. The festivities will have an extra significance for two of the College’s most senior members who also celebrate their birthdays today: the Master of the College, Professor Sir Alan Fersht and Life Fellow Dr John Casey. Also dining at Caius tonight are Labour MP and Caian Keith Vaz and an International Development delegation from Africa, whose members are joining him in a visit to his old College.

Caius is proud of its long connection with royalty, which stretches back to the time of the Edward III. It was he who during his long 50-year reign granted a licence in 1348 to our founder, the country parson Edmund Gonville, to establish and endow a Hall consisting of a Master and 20 fellows. 

Around 200 years later our second founder, Dr John Caius, is reputed to have been personal physician to no fewer than three monarchs: Edward VI, Mary Tudor and Queen Elizabeth I. Intriguingly, the letter at the top of the Charter re-founding the College in 1557 depicting Mary and her husband Philip II of Spain, illustrated below, was never decorated with the vibrant colours which are usual in illuminated manuscripts. Theories abound as to why – it’s thought that perhaps nobody was willing to pay for the work to be done after the death of Mary the following year and the subsequent accession of Elizabeth I.

Since then the College has played host to numerous royal visitors, including the first monarch of the United Kingdom, James I of England and VI of Scotland in 1614; the present Queen’s husband, the Duke of Edinburgh in 2007 and her son the Prince of Wales in 1998.

College records reveal that preparations for the visit of an earlier Prince of Wales, in 1612, were extensive (and expensive). “For glasing Hall windows against the Prince’s coming, 5s,” read the College accounts. “For 6 loads of sand, 6s. For 12 new pannells for the Hall screen, 6s.” Fortunately, a visit by the Prince of Hesse a year earlier had proved somewhat less costly, the College accounts record: “Wine and cakes for the entertaynment of the Prince of Hesse, 4s 6d.” Meanwhile, the vast sum of 10 shillings (more than the cost of the 12 new pannells) was spent on “Musitians, for when the King passed by Humility Gate” in 1614.