St John's College, Cambridge, England, founded by Lady Margaret Beaufort, receives its charter.
St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge (the full, formal name of the college is the College of St John the Evangelist in the University of Cambridge) founded by the Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corporation established by a charter dated 9 April 1511. The aims of the college, as specified by its statutes, are the promotion of education, religion, learning and research. It is one of the larger Oxbridge colleges in terms of student numbers. For 2018, St. John's was ranked 9th of 29 colleges in the Tompkins Table (the annual league table of Cambridge colleges) with over 30 per cent of its students earning first-class honours.The college's alumni comprise the winners of 12 Nobel Prizes (including physicists Paul Dirac, Roger Penrose and Max Born, the latter having been affiliated with the college in the 1930s), seven prime ministers and 12 archbishops of various countries, at least two princes and three saints. The Romantic poet William Wordsworth studied at St John's, as did William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, the two abolitionists who led the movement that brought slavery to an end in the British Empire. Prince William was affiliated with the college while undertaking a university-run course in estate management in 2014.St John's is well known for its choir, its members' success in a wide variety of inter-collegiate sporting competitions and its annual May Ball. The Cambridge Apostles and the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club were both founded by members of the college. The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race tradition began with a St John's student and the college boat club, Lady Margaret Boat Club, is the oldest in the university. In 2011, the college celebrated its quincentenary, an event marked by a visit of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.