St John’s College Library Newsletter L
Michaelmas 2024
VOLUME 8, ISSUE 1
500th anniversary of the Linacre Lecture 2024 is the 500th anniversary of the foundation by Thomas Linacre of the Linacre Lecturership in Medicine. This was a stipendiary position held by a Fellow of St John’s until 1908, when College Council changed the form of the post and established instead the annual “Linacre Lecture” to be given by a leading research scientist in the general field of medicine. This year’s lecture was given by Professor Charles Swanton, Deputy Clinical Director of The Francis Crick Institute, on the subject of ‘Air Pollution and Lung Cancer Promotion’. Linacre was a renowned humanist scholar, counting men like Sir Thomas More amongst his close friends, and Erasmus and Prince Arthur (elder brother to Henry VIII) as his pupils. In 1509 he was appointed Physician to King Henry VIII; he is famous for being the driving force behind the foundation of the Royal College of Physicians and its first President. Like Lady Margaret Beaufort, his patronage of academic institutions embraced both Oxford and Cambridge, in both of which places he founded Readerships in Medicine. The College Archives holds records relating to the lecture at both ends of the chronological spectrum: documents establishing the lecturership as well as audio recordings of the most recent lectures. The draft agreement of June 1524 is a fragile manuscript comprising five sheets of paper stitched together end-to-end and rolled up. The final indenture of agreement, dated August 1524, is a large parchment document in a beautifully clear hand, with four seals and the signatures of Linacre, Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London and John Stokesley. Other archival evidence includes records relating to