Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/225

 that in 1458 John Falbeck, from Thorndon in Suffolk, left money to any one who should make this pilgrimage, and John Stalton Mercer gave a cloth of red tissue to be laid on the 'good veker's' grave. A fifteenth-century manuscript in Merton College Library (Oxford) still preserves a metrical prayer in English verse composed by 'Master Richard Castre.' This composition is followed by another English poem, entitled 'Psalterium Fraternæ Caritatis,' perhaps by the same author. Other works enumerated by Tanner are: 'A Summa Summarum of the Ten Commandments,' and homilies on the eight beatitudes, and on the relationship between master and servant, father and son, man and wife—all apparently written in Latin. To these Tanner adds certain discourses from St. Bernard.



CAITHNESS, [See  (1821–1881).]

CAIUS or KAY, JOHN, sometimes called the elder (fl. 1480), poet, is the author of an English poem relating the history of the siege of Rhodes unsuccessfully undertaken by Mahommed II in 1480. It was printed in London in 1506, but has no printer's name, and although some of the type resembles that used by Caxton, it is not from his press. Warton describes the book as a translation of the 'Obsidionis Rhodiæ Vrbis Descriptio,' which was written by 'Gulielmus Caorsinus or Caoursin,' vice-chamberlain for forty years of the knights of Malta, and published at Ulm in his collected works in 1496. Caius dedicates his translation to Edward IV, whose 'humble poete lawreate' he describes himself. But the expression does not imply that the writer held any official position at court. Three copies of the book are now known—two in the British Museum and a third in Earl Spencer's library at Althorp. An early manuscript version is in the British Museum (MS. Cotton. Titus A. xxvi. 161).



CAIUS, JOHN (1510–1573), occasionally referred to as John Caius, junior, in order to distinguish him from another [q. v.] who was poet laureate to Edward IV, was an eminent scholar and physician of the sixteenth century. His name is generally supposed to be a Latinised form of the English name Kay or Kaye. He was born at Norwich on 6 Oct. 1510, the son of Robert Caius and Alice (Wodanell) his wife, and may be regarded as the first of a series of eminent men who have practised and adorned the profession of medicine in that city. For a knowledge of the main facts of his literary career we are indebted chiefly to the account given by himself in his sketch entitled 'De Libris propriis Liber,' written, about three years before his death, at the request of his friend Thomas Hatcher. He appears to have received a good elementary education in his native city, and on 12 Sept. 1529 was admitted a student of Gonville Hall in the university of Cambridge, where, owing to the successive labours of Erasmus, Sir John Cheke, and Sir Thomas Smith, the new learning, and especially the study of Greek, was being cultivated with great success. It was also the time when Cheke and Smith were endeavouring to introduce a new method of pronouncing Greek, an innovation which gave rise to considerable controversy. Caius, who seems from the first to have inclined to the conservative view, took a lively interest in the contest, and subsequently wrote a treatise on the subject. The bent of his studies at that period shows that he was designing to become a theologian. He translated into English a Latin paraphrase of St. Jude by Erasmus, and epitomised the same writer's popular treatise, entitled 'Ratio veræ Theologiæ,' for the benefit of a young friend whose mind had been perplexed by the new opinions then becoming current. In November 1533 he was appointed principal of Fiswick's Hostel in the university, and on 6 Dec. in the same year was elected a fellow of Gonville Hall. In 1535 he commenced M.A., and in the course of the year made his submission, in common with the rest of the society, to the royal injunctions sent down for the purpose of remodelling the discipline of the university and introducing the new learning. It may consequently be inferred that when he left England for Padua in 1539 he had not definitely pledged himself to the acceptance of the tenets of catholicism; that he ultimately did so, is attributed to the associations which he formed while resident at the latter university. At Padua, according to his own statement (De Libris propriis, p. 163), he lectured on the Greek text of Aristotle 'concurrently' with Realdus Columbus, but his name does not appear in the 'Fasti' of Facciolati, who gives lists of the teachers and professors in the university from the earliest times. While at Padua, however, there can be no doubt that his attention was mainly given to those scientific acquirements for which he afterwards