Queens’ College, Cambridge or Queens’ College, Cambridge
I was interested by a note on the website of Queens’ College, Cambridge, because the use of the apostrophe in English is governed by such simple rules that it is hard to see how there can be much dispute about it.
The college says that everyone is told to spell it Queens’ College because it was founded by two Queens of England: Margaret of Anjou, the wife of Henry VI, in 1448, and Elizabeth Woodville, the wife Edward IV, in 1465. But the college adds quite correctly that an apostrophe to indicate the possessive is ‘of no great antiquity’. (It is much more recent than the foundation of the college.)
The archivists of Queens’ find that the earliest examples of the name spelt with any apostrophe always have the apostrophe before the ‘s’.
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