Gargoyle of a Tudor rogue
QUESTION Did a Cambridge college erect a gargoyle as an insult to a merchant when a property deal went awry?
Benedict Spinola was a prominent Genoese merchant in the tudor court. He was well known for his sharp practice, so when the opportunity came for him to rent land from cambridge dons and sell it off for housing, he took it.
His actions rankled so much with the college that more than 400 years later, they erected a gargoyle of him.
Spinola and his three brothers in antwerp shipped kersey, a coarse woollen cloth, and imported sweet wines, silks and spices into england.
By 1559, he was among the eight biggest taxpayers in the country.
He was favoured by elizabeth i, who permitted him to pay taxes equivalent to ‘a mere native englishman’. He was on good terms with the Queen’s adviser lord Burghley and her favourite lord
Robert dudley, and advised the crown on commercial matters with portugal, Spain and the netherlands.
a seven-acre site at aldgate in the city of london had been bequeathed to Magdalene college by lord audley, who had re-founded the college in 1542. it was immediately rented out on a lease of £9 a year.
By the 1570s, Magdalene was described as ‘by far the poorest college in cambridge’ and the dons needed to raise some money. Spinola seduced the Master and Fellows with the short-sighted prospect of increasing the annual rental on the land to £15 a year.
this could be done only by using the Queen as an intermediary. She agreed and the land was passed to Spinola. He considered a royal transfer meant he had title to the estate. He promptly sold it to the earl of oxford, who built 130 houses.
the transaction was thought by many to be illegal and was contested on more than one occasion. the first lawsuit, pursued by Barnaby Goche, Master of Magdalene in the early 17th century, landed him and the Senior Fellow in prison for two years.
By 1880, a compulsory purchase for railways and sewers reduced the meagre rent. the college drew only a nominal £2 per annum from what could have been its principal endowment. Magdalene finally had its revenge in 1989 when it commissioned Fluck and law, the creators of tV’s Spitting image, to produce a gargoyle of Spinola. He now dribbles river water into the River cam.
Ken Beith, Peterborough, Cambs.
QUESTION Are there any mathematical equations in Adam Smith’s The Wealth Of Nations, a major work on economics?
MatHeMaticS has become all pervasive in economic analysis, but adam Smith, david Ricardo, James Mill and other eminent classical economists did not use it in their theorisations.
there are no mathematical equations in 1776’s the Wealth of nations.
adam Smith was a pioneering Scottish economist and philosopher. He studied literature, history, ethics, political and moral philosophy, and taught literature and rhetoric to college students.
He is regarded as the father of political economics, and his writings have been enormously influential.
in the Wealth of nations, he contended that economic progress depends upon the pursuit of self-interest, division of labour and freedom of trade. through this, he introduced the concept of the invisible hand, which explains all sorts of phenomena from scientific progress to environmental degradation.
the Wealth of nations argues Smith’s principles through plain thinking, which are proved through plentiful examples. i suspect that if written today, it would not be published. He would have to provide evidence of mathematical model-building and regression analysis.
We are crying out for Smith’s clearthinking rational analysis. the dangers of blindly following science and giving too much weight to statistical modelling have been evident in recent times.
L. P. Smith, Oxford.
QUESTION What are the Dorian and Lydian modes in music? Do any modern songs use them?
a Mode is a type of scale (from the latin scala meaning ladder), as in ‘doh re mi fa so la ti doh’. alter just one or two of these notes and you can call your scale a mode.
these variations were described by the 4th-century Greek philosopher aristoxenus and bear the names of various Greek groups, including ionian, dorian and lydian.
Using the major scale as a starting point, each mode is derived by starting on a different pitch.
the ionian mode roughly corresponds to the familiar major scale of modern Western music. it’s the same as the c major scale without sharps or flats.
the dorian mode starts on the second pitch of a major scale. this has the effect of altering the intervals (difference in pitch) between notes.
each mode has a characteristic pitch that gives it a unique character. dorian produces a bright sound and is sometimes called the happy minor. it’s widely used in all forms of music — classical, jazz, folk and pop. a good example is What Shall We do With the drunken Sailor — you hear the dorian with the third time the word ‘sailor’ occurs.
Well-known songs in dorian include the traditional folk song Scarborough Fair, Billie Jean by Michael Jackson, Smoke on the Water by deep purple, So What by Miles davis and Get lucky by daft punk.
the Greek philosopher pythagoras believed the lydian mode ideal to foster human goodness and uplift the spirit.
its characteristic pitch is the sharp 4th, giving it a jaunty sound. You can hear this in the Simpsons theme tune, danny
Boy, Here comes My Girl by tom petty and When We dance by Sting.
Amanda Campbell, Chester, Cheshire.
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