Robert Woodlark

Robert Woodlark (also spelled Wodelarke)^[1] was an English academic and priest. He 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.^[2]

Robert Woodlark. Coloured mezzotint

He was the son of Richard Woodlark of Wakerley, Northamptonshire. Robert Woodlark was one of the founding Fellows of King's College in 1441.^[3] He was appointed Provost of King's in 1452, eventually being succeeded in 1479, by Walter Field.^[4] He was surveyor of King's College Chapel during its building and master of the works there, 1452–5.

While Provost of King's, Woodlark began the preparations for the foundation of a new college, which he established in 1473.^[5] He drew up the original statutes for the governance of the college and obtained a charter from Edward IV, 16 August 1475. His vision for the college was one populated by a small society of priests.^[6] Indeed, Woodlark's original statutes 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.^[7]

Woodlark served as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge from 1459 to 1460, and again from 1462 to 1463.^[8]

Woodlark never served as Master of St Catharine's, instead appointing Richard Roche as the college's first true master in 1475.^[9]