Robert Woodlark

rdf:langString Robert Woodlark

rdf:langString Robert Woodlark (also spelled Wodelarke) was the Provost of King's College, Cambridge, and the founder of St Catharine's College, Cambridge. He was also a professor of Sacred theology at the University. Woodlark was one of the founding Fellows of King's College in 1441. He was appointed Provost of King's in 1452, eventually being succeeded in 1479, by Walter Field. While the Provost of King's, Woodlark began the preparations for the foundation of a new college, which he established in 1473. His vision for the college was one populated by a small society of priests. Indeed, Woodlark's original statutes for the governance of the college expressly excluded the teaching of medicine or law. Woodlark did not contemplate undergraduates at the college, instead desiring a small community of senior scholars of theology and philosophy. Woodlark served as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge from 1459 to 1460, and again from 1462 to 1463. Woodlark never truly served as Master of St. Catharine's, instead appointing Richard Roche as the college's first true master in 1475.