Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cawston, Michael de
CAWSTON or CAUSTON, MICHAEL de (d. 1395), master of Michaelhouse, Cambridge, was a Norfolk man (Carter, History of Cambridge, i. 403), presumably a native of the village of Cawston, about twelve miles north-west of Norwich. He became fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge (Le Keux, Memorials of Cambridge, i. 56, ed. C. H. Cooper), doctor of divinity, and master of Michaelhouse. His appointment as master was apparently made subsequently to 1359, when William of Gotham is mentioned as holding that office (Carter, p. 303). In 1361 (or 1362, as Le Neve gives the date, Fasti, iii. 598, ed. Hardy) Cawston was chancellor of his university. He is famous as one of its benefactors; and it was enacted by the ancient statutes ‘that each year for ever in the three general processions a special recommendation should be made of [his] soul’ (Anc. Stat. 172, James Heywood's Collection of Statutes for Cambridge, p. 175). Cawston's munificence is also said to have extended to all the colleges that subsisted at his time in the university, his gifts to their libraries being specially commemorated. A note in one of the volumes presented by him to Peterhouse describes him as holding, besides his Cambridge office, the preferment of dean of Chichester (Carter, p. 38). His name does not occur in Le Neve's list (ubi supra, i. 256); but here there is a gap of a number of years between the elevation of Dean Richard le Scrope to the bishopric of Chichester in 1383 and the next name in the series, that of John de Maydenhith, who emerges in 1400. It is natural then to place Cawston in this interval. He died in 1395 (according to Peacock, Observations on the Statutes of Cambridge, appendix, p. xvi, note; and Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, i. 142), for the date 1396 (given in Cooper;s edition of Le Keux, l.c.) is apparently a misprint.
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