Christ’s and S. John’s, and even in that second gateway of King’s Hall which is the present entrance gate of Trinity.[237] The only gateway in Cambridge which varies completely from these models is Alcock’s at Jesus, which is much lighter in character. The xvi century gateways of Caius are “the first specimens of the revival of stone work.”[238] The ornamental gateway is a distinctive feature of Cambridge college architecture. The room over the gate was used as a muniment room; in S. John’s the chamber in the tower serves this purpose.
Caius College A.D. 1557.
In 1557 Doctor John Keys (whose name was Latinised as Caius) built and incorporated with Gonville Hall a college for scientific research and medical studies—the illustrious society which has since been known as Gonville and Caius College.
Keys or Caius was one of the great physicians of the xvi century; physician to Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, and President of the College of Physicians. He was a Yorkshireman by race but a native of Norwich, and had been Principal of Physwick hostel which was at that time attached to Gonville Hall. Italian universities had turned his mind from the study of divinity to that of medicine and he became a doctor in that faculty at Padua in 1541, two years after leaving Cambridge. At Padua he lived with one of the earliest anatomists—Vesalius; and he himself lectured for twenty years on anatomy to the surgeons in London, at the request of Henry VIII.[239] He was Master of the college of which he was co-founder, but regularly spent the emoluments on fresh buildings at Caius. He was not only a great naturalist, the first English anatomist, a great physician, and an eminent classic,[240] but also a distinguished antiquary, and to him we owe one of the most valuable histories of the university. He had withal “a perverse stomach to the professors of the gospel,” and clung like Metcalfe of S. John’s and Baker of King’s to the old religion and the old ways of worship.[241] He is buried in the college chapel, and the simple words Fui Caius are inscribed over him. The foundation-stone of Caius he had himself inscribed: Johannes Caius posuit sapientiae; “John Caius dedicated it to knowledge.”
He built his college in two parallel ranges, east and west; a chapel and the Master’s lodge occupying the north side. On the south was a low wall with a gateway. “We decree,” he writes in the statutes of Caius, “that no building be constructed which shall shut in the entire south side of the college of our foundation, lest for lack of free ventilation the air should become foul.” This appreciation of the all-importance of air and sun to living organisms was more than three hundred years in advance of his time. If his instructions be not carried out, he says, the health of the college will be impaired, and disease and death will ensue. Closed quadrangles had been built in Cambridge ever
