King’s College Chapel took a century to build and to furnish (from 1446 to 1547). The form we see today is the result of the work of three dynasties (Lancastrian, Yorkist, Tudor) and five monarchs (Henry VI, Edward IV, Richard III, Henry VII, Henry VIII). The Chapel’s early years coincided with two conflicts, the later stages of the Hundred Years’ War with France and the English civil war, known as the Wars of the Roses. The later years of the Chapel overlapped with the onset in England of the Renaissance and the turmoil of the Protestant Reformation. The lecture will attempt to show you how this complex history can be recognised in the fabric and fittings of the Chapel. We shall also need to consider a more testing question: why was this, the most splendid of all late Medieval European university chapels, built in Cambridge, whose University at the time was regarded as, at best, of the second rank?