Jesus College, Cambridge

Jesus College at the University of Cambridge was founded in 1496 on the site of a Benedictine nunnery by John Alcock, then Bishop of Ely. It is traditionally held that the nunnery was turned into a college because the nunnery had gained a reputation for licentiousness.

Famous Jesuans

• Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, and compiler of the Book of Common Prayer
• John Bale, Bishop of Ossory
• Thomas Goodrich, Bishop of Ely
• Sir Fulke Greville (1568), friend and biographer of Sir Philip Sidney
• John Eliot (1619), apostle of the North American Indians, who translated the Bible into the Algonquin language
• Geoffrey Downs, John Edmunds, and John Golding (also known as a translator of Ovid), all Protestant propagandists
• Richard Sterne (Master, 1634), and later Archbishop of York
• William Beale (Master, 1632),
• John Flamsteed, (1670) the first Astronomer Royal
• Thomas Herring (1710) and Matthew Hutton (1710), both Archbishops of Canterbury
• John Jortin (1715), ecclesiastical historian
• Henry Venn (1742), a leader of the Evangelical movement in the Church of England
• Gilbert Wakefield (1772), principal of two nonconformist academies
• Laurence Sterne (1733)
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1791)
• David Hartley (1722), philosopher
• Robert Malthus (1784), population theorist
• Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, novelist and critic, universally known as 'Q'
• Arthur Gray (Master, 1912-40)
• E.M.W. Tillyard (Master, 1945-59), literary critic
• Steve Fairbairn, rowing coach
• Alistair Cooke, broadcaster
• Jacob Bronowski, broadcaster
• Robert Gittings, poet and biographer
• Raymond Williams, literary and cultural critic, who subsequently returned to Jesus to become Professor of Drama
• David Hare, playwright
• Nick Hornby, novelist and journalist
• Lisa Jardine, literary critic (and Bronowski's daughter), the college's first woman fellow elected in 1976
• Steve Waddington of The Beloved
• Prince Edward (read history 1983-1986)
• James Wood, literary critic
• Lord Renfrew (Master 1986-1998), archaeologist