Had its origin in 1564, when Queen Elizabeth visited the University of
Cambridge, and "the Public Orator, addressing Her Majesty, embraced
the opportunity of extolling the antiquity of the University to which
he belonged above that of Oxford. This occasioned Thomas Key, Master
of University, College, Oxford, to compose a small treatise on the
antiquity of his own University, which he referred to the fabulous
period when the Greek professors accompanied BRUTE to England; and to
the less ambiguous era of 870, when Science was invited to the banks
of the Isis, under the auspices of the great Alfred. A MS. copy of
this production of Thomas Key accidentally came into the hands of the
Earl of Leicester, from whom it passed into those of Dr. John Caius
(master and founder of Gonvile and Caius Colleges, Cambridge,) who,
resolving not to be vanquished in asserting the chronological claims
of his own University, undertook to prove the foundation of Cambridge
by CANTABER, nearly four hundred years before the Christian era. He
thus assigned the birth of Cambridge to more than 1200 anterior to
that which had been secondarily ascribed to Oxford by the champion of
that seat of learning; and yet it can be hardly maintained that he had
the best of the argument, since the primary foundation by the son of
Æneas, it is evident, remains unimpeached, and the name of Brute, to
say the least of it, is quite as creditable as that of Cantaber. The
work which Dr. John Caius published, though under a feigned name,
along with that which it was written to refute, was entitled, '_De
Antiquitate Catabrigiensis Academiæ_, libri ii. _in quorum 2do. de
Oxoniensis quoque gymnasii antiquitate disseritur, et Cantabrigiense
longe eo antiquius esse definitur, Londinense Authore: adjunximus
assertionem antiquitatis Oxoniensis Academiæ ab Oxoniensi quodam annis
jam elapsis duobus ad reginam conscriptam in qua docere conatur,
Oxoniense gymnasium Cantabrigiensi antiquius esse: ut ex collatione
facile intelligas, utra sit antequior. Excusum Londini,_ A. D. 1568,
_Mense Augusto, per Henricum Bynnenum,_ 12mo.'" and is extant in the
British Museum. As may well be supposed by those who are acquainted
with the progress of literary warfare, this work of Dr. John Caius
drew from his namesake, Thomas Caius, a vindication of that which
it was intended to refute; and this work he entitled "_Thomæ Caii
Vindiciæ Antiquitatis Academiæ Oxoniensis contra Joannem Caium
Cantabrigiensem._" These two singular productions were subsequently
published together by Hearne, the Oxford antiquary, who, with a
prejudice natural enough, boasts that the forcible logic of the Oxford
advocate "broke the heart and precipitated the death of his Cambridge
antagonist." In other words, Dr. John Caius, it is said,