William Spicer, LL.D.
Vicar of Litlington, Cambridgeshire (Clare living), 1483
Vicar of Clopton, Northamptonshire
Will (P.C.C.) 1536
Large benefactor to Clare and to Trinity Hall.
Born in Middlesbrough in 1883
School - Darlington Grammar School
Worked in a chemical laboratory of the Darlington Forge Company
Enrolled in Armstrong College (now Kings College, University of Newcastle upon Tyne), in 1904. B.Sc. (1907), M.Sc. (1909), D.Sc.
from Cambridge (1915).
After taking a fellowship at Armstrong College, Smith moved to Clare College, Cambridge in 1912. He published his first paper on corals there.
1913-1920 - Aberystwyth College, Wales
1920-1921 - Bedford College for Women, London
1921-1922 - Toronto College
1922 - became assistant lecturer in geology at the University of Bristol. Retired in 1948.
From 1913-1930, Dr Smith undertook annual vacations which would include work at the British Museum (now the Natural History Museum) and much of this work was undertaken with Dr W.D. Lang. He and Lang would mentor students from Cambridge, including Dorothy Hill, who was working on her PhD at Cambridge in the 1930s.
During World War II, extensive bombing of the Bristol Museum damaged a number of the collections Smith worked on. Like many academics he was prevented from continuing his research at the Natural History Museum in London, due to the emergency relocation of its collections for preservation during the War.
1947 - awarded the Geological Society of London's Lyell Medal
Each year, the Stanley Smith Prize, named in his honour, is awarded to the best Level 3 student in palaeontology at the University of Bristol.
Edward Hanson "Iceberg" Smith was a United States Coast Guard admiral, oceanographer, and Arctic explorer.
He was born 29 October 1889 at Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts.
He received a Ph.D. in oceanography from Harvard, and commanded the USCGC Marion and the USCGC Northland.
Most famously, he commanded the Greenland Patrol, and led Coast Guard efforts to defend Greenland against the Germans in World War II.
After retirement from the Coast Guard, he assumed the directorship of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Matriculated at Clare, 1879.
Born in November 1859 in Denmark Hill, South London, the son of James Sharp, a Slate Merchant who made money in the massive expansion of Victorian London and retired early rather than pass the business to his sons. Sharp went to Uppingham School (noted for its music) before starting a maths degree at Clare College, Cambridge in 1879. In Oct 1882 he left for Adelaide, Australia where he stayed for nearly ten years, working for five years as Associate to the Chief Justice of South Australia and then as a partner in a private venture, the Adelaide College of Music. There, despite his lack of formal musical training, he taught Singing and Music Theory, using spare time to write compositions of his own and to conduct the Adelaide Philharmonia Society (see Hugh Anderson 'Virtue in a Wilderness' Folk Music Journal 1994).
In 1893 Sharp took a part-time music post at Ludgrove School, a prep school in North London where he had freedom to create concert programmes with new material for choirs. He stayed there till 1910, combining it with several other jobs, notably as Principal of the (private) Hampstead Conservatoire of Music (1896-1905) and as Music Tutor to the Royal Household (1904-7). He had meanwhile married Constance Birch in 1893 and they had 4 children, settling in Hampstead. He joined the Folk Song Society in 1901 and began collecting Folk Songs in 1903. He proceeded to spend the rest of his life collecting with nearly 3,000 songs collected in England and over 1,500 on his four collecting trips to the Appalachian Mountains in USA (1915-18). He died in 1924 and most of his collection was housed and curated in the Cecil Sharp House in London by his daugher Joan. This later became the Vaughan William Memorial Library. See biography by A. H. Fox Strangways and M. Karpeles (rev. ed. 1967).
Master of Clare College, Cambridge, 1612-1620
Probably son of Christopher Scott of Bamston, Essex. Baptised there 4 February 1569.
Matriculated sizar from Pembroke, Michaelmas 1588.
B.A. 1591-2; M.A. from Clare, 1595; D.D. 1613.
Fellow of Clare.
1612-1620 Master of Clare.
1619-1620 Vice-Chancellor.
Subalmoner to the King.
1615-1620 Dean of Rochester.
21 December 1620 died in London and is buried at Bamston, Essex.
John Rutter (1945-), Clare 1964, was director of Music at Clare from 1975-1979. He later formed the Cambridge Singers and continued to compose music and carols. He was awarded a CBE in the Queen's New Year Honours for 2007 (in December 2006).
Born in Lavenham, Suffolk, in 1575. He matriculated at St John's College, Cambridge in 1589 before migrating to Trinity and then gaining his BA in 1593-4.
He was later a Fellow of Clare 1598-1620.
He was also a Taxor, 1604 and was incorporated at Oxford in 1605.
He vacated his Fellowship when he succeeded to some property but he died soon after in 1622.
He is remembered as the author of the famous Cambridge play, which so delighted James I called Ignoramus. It was written in Latin in 1614-1615 by Ruggle and was modelled on an Italian Comedy by Giovanni Battista della Porta to caricature the pedantry of the legal profession. It was played before King James on 8 March 1615 on the occasion of his visit to the University and he then made a special journey to Cambridge on 13 May to see the play again.
Afterwards Ruggle was tutor at Babraham, Cambridgeshire, to the two sons of Toby Palavicino. The latter was Executor to Ruggle and paid his bequest of £100 to the College on 3 March 1624-5. Ruggle bequeathed his valuable collection of French, Spanish and Italian books to the College. [Details from Harrison index and Book of Clare, pp. 76, 143-4].